Blog Tour : Rage Within Extract

Rage Within is the second book in the Dark Inside series by Jeyn Roberts. If you have read Dark Inside I am sure you are very excited to read Rage Within. If so I have a special treat today but I have the first two chapters of Rage Within! 

Please  note I have had to slight change around the layout of the text when I copied it over from a pdf version. 

Nothing

Greetings and salutations.

I know you missed me.

I missed me too.

What can I say? I’ve been around. I’ve been seeing everything. Slinking through the streets. Crawling through the train tunnels. Walking across water with my eyes alight with fire. Licking the crud off spoons and picking at the chewing gum on my shoes. None of it really matters. They’ve left me alone for now but I know those days are ending. The Baggers want me back. They dropped their apron strings for a split second and the naughty child bolted into the wilderness. They won’t make the same mistake again. I hear them calling me. Now they’re starting to look. I’m on their radar. Eventually they will find me and drag me back by my heels. And things will change.In a blink of an eye, history will repeat itself. Remember, we’ve been through this before. From the moment mankind stepped out of the primordial ooze, they’ve been here to keep us in our places. Obviously a select few lived to tell the tale otherwise we wouldn’t be  here now. But how many of us are going to survive this round?

 Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Time is running out.If a tree falls in the middle of the city, does anyone notice? Do they hear the creaking of the wood? Do they witness the leaves shaking above them? Do they sense the desperation or feel the sudden gush of wind against their faces? 

That one great second before gravity takes over, and what was once magnificent becomes nothing but lumber. 

Timber! 

Or do they just go about their daily chores, continue on to work with their lattes in hand, iPods blaring, BlackBerries ringing, ignoring everything they’ve witnessed?

There were warnings. There are always warnings. But we missed them. We chose not to see. We didn’t believe.

And now we are finished.

Game Over

The Baggers are gathering their armies around the world. They are taking back the cities, rebuilding civilization on their terms. They have ideas. You wouldn’t like them.

Now humans are considered a virus. A mutation. A disease. They need to be removed from this world. The Baggers will control those who are left to make sure humans don’t go back to their nasty ways.

I wake up sometimes in the dead of night. A panic I can’t explain from a dream I can’t remember. Is this my 3life? Am I destined to spend the remaining days wondering what is real and what is a nightmare?

Who am I?

I am Nothing.

Am I?

Or am I the one they’ve grown to trust?

I want to be the one she wakes up to when the morning sun nuzzles her pillow. I want to walk along the sea wall with her, holding hands and exchanging gentle glances. I want to hide her away in a castle or a log cabin where she’ll be safe and nothing can ever make her cry again.

But I’m more likely to be the one who holds the knife against her skin.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

What happens next? Your guess is as good as mine.

Three weeks before

the earthquakes,

before the world ends,

before the Baggers awaken.

Click here to read chapter two.

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THE MAN

He liked the basement. It was quiet down there. So quiet.

It made the voices that much easier to hear.

When they first started speaking to him, he tried to ignore them. He’d seen stuff on the television about people who went plumb crazy. It wasn’t a good sign. He tried silencing them. Drinking heavily and popping sleeping pills. But the voices wouldn’t go away. If anything, the drinking made them that much worse. They said terrible things. They whispered in his head about what was coming. They talked about the future. Earthquakes. Death. Chaos. They talked about how important he was. He didn’t want to believe it.

But, as time went on, the voices started to make sense.

His role was explained to him in great detail. He grew excited when they told him what he needed to do. He would play a part in this new world. He was necessary.

The basement had always been his space. Unfinished, it was cold and dark, and his wife didn’t like to go down there because she thought the place was ugly. Ugly. Her word. She much preferred her lacy curtains and bed filled with dozens of pillows that he wasn’t allowed to sleep on unless he showered first.

He kept most of his tools down here. There was a shelf at the back that was covered with all sorts of wonderful things. A power drill. A chainsaw. Dozens of plastic boxes filled with nails, screws and other bits and pieces he’d convinced her he needed. He liked to do all the handiwork and she couldn’t complain because he often did a good job. He enjoyed working with his hands.

In the middle was his work table, and he sat at it now. In front of him was a device, a wonderful contraption he’d built all by himself. He found most of the information on the internet; it was amazing what sort of stuff people could find on websites these days. 

Before the voices came, he mostly just checked his email and the occasional dirty site of which his wife would never have approved.

None of that mattered any more.

She’d been dead since the morning.

He was vaguely disappointed about this. He knew he’d be the one to kill her but he’d hoped to do it when he wasn’t so pressed for time. He’d wanted to savour the kill, enjoy the moment, making her pay for all the annoying things she’d done over the years. But she’d surprised him earlier. Come downstairs into his work haven for some odd reason or another. Her eyes had widened when she’d seen his handiwork. She couldn’t stop looking at the dynamite.When she saw his eyes, she screamed. He had to silence her. Now her body was lying in the corner. He didn’t even think about trying to get rid of it. He wouldn’t be in this house much longer. The earthquakes were coming and after that he’d leave to wherever the voices told him to go. They would have more work for him to do and he’d have to travel to another city first.When he was finished here, the entire town would be dead.

Upstairs, he could hear his children arriving home from school. Three children. One boy and two girls. Twelve, ten and seven. Cursing, he looked at his watch, wondering how the entire day had got away from him so quickly. 

‘Mom? Dad?’ His oldest son was hollering loud enough to wake the dead.

‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ he said, pleased at how calm his voice sounded.He picked the gun up off the table and doublechecked to make sure it was loaded. Standing up, he winced a bit as his knees popped. He turned and headed for the stairs. The voices whispered away at him, a soft seduction wrapping around his brain. They knew what to do and everything they said made so much sense.

There would be no remorse.

Just another job to do.