Title: Sanctuary
Author: Pauline Creeden
Genre: Apocalyptic/dystopian, clean
NA
In a heart-racing thriller described as Falling Skies meets
The Walking Dead, Jennie struggles to find a safe place for what’s left of her
family. But it seems as though there is no place sacred, no place secure. First
the aliens attacked the sun, making it dimmer, weaker, and half what it used to
be. Then they attacked the water supply, killing one-third of Earth’s
population with a bitter contaminate. And when they unleash a new terror on
humankind, the victims will wish for death, but will not find it…When the world
shatters to pieces around her, will Jennie find the strength she needs to keep
going?
Purchase:
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Excerpt
Jennie filled the
glass and set it on the counter. She needed an
ibuprofen.
As she reached up
to the top shelf in the pantry, a vibration started in her
chest. Holding the
white bottle in her hand, she turned around
confused.
Like a jet when it
flew too low, the rumble increased in intensity as it
approached. Jennie
watched the glass tremble on the counter top for a moment
before fear clenched
her stomach. “MOM!?”
She rushed to the
sink and looked out the window, but her mother wasn’t in the
garden any more.
Jennie barreled through the kitchen, the vibrations in her
chest like bass on a
stereo. “MOM?”
When Jennie
reached the back door, she saw them. Four large dog-like
creatures with pinched
faces like bulldogs and lion-like manes. They snarled, and
one of them leapt at
the window on the top half of the door when it saw her.
Jennie jumped back and
fell hard on the cold tile floor. The bottle of painkiller
bounced across the
kitchen tiles. The creature slammed against the window a
second time, cracking
it. She blinked hard. Her heart sunk, and the hairs on her
arms stood on end. A
horrendous gargling howl rent the air, causing a shiver down
her spine. She
held her breath and waited for the creature to slam into the
door again.
“What on earth?”
she whispered to herself.
When the third
attempt never came, she scrambled toward the door. Blinking
hard, she used the
door knob to help herself stand. Out the cracked window, her
mother was still
out of sight, but the last of the dogs headed across the
field behind her
backyard.
“MOM?” Jennie
called out.
The rumbling
faded, and the vibrations in her chest receded with the
dogs. She pulled open
the door and rushed onto their back deck. “Mom, where are
you?”
When she reached
the banister, she looked over the side. Her mom lay sprawled
with one hand on
the lattice. Blood gushed from Mom’s leg and her opposite
arm. Jennie’s ears
rang and flooded with every beat of her heart.
Jennie didn’t know
how she got to the second floor of her house, but she found
herself shaking her
sleeping father. How had he slept through the rumbling?
“Outside, it’s Mom…”
Her father leapt
from the bed. Mickey, her little brother, lay asleep and
undisturbed. Dad ran
down the stairs and outside in his flannel pajama bottoms
and white t-shirt. He
scooped Mom up to his chest and carried her inside. Blood
stained his shirt in
crimson.
“Jennie, call
911!” Her father had said it at least
three times before it finally registered in her
brain.
She pulled the
cell phone from her pocket, but it refused to connect. With
a groan, she
grabbed the cordless from the wall receiver, glad her heart
stopped pounding in
her head so she could
hear.
“All operators are
busy at this time,” a mechanical voice deadpanned, “Please
stay on the line,
and the next available operator will take your
call.”
“They have me on
hold, Dad. Should I hang up and try again?” She held the
phone in both hands
away from her face.
“No, just stay on
the line.” Her father lifted the shredded jeans from Mom’s
leg. “It looks like
a shark bite. What on earth
happened?”
Jennie took in the
damage through tear-filled eyes. A huge chunk was taken from
her mother’s calf,
exposing the fibrous tendons that covered the bone in her
leg. A bloodstain
grew on the beige couch. Was she going to die? Panic rose
up.
“What happened,
Jennie?”
“I...I...They
looked like lions, or dogs, or something. The rumbling shook
the whole house…I
tried to go outside to get Mom, but—” A sob blocked her
throat.
Her father grabbed
a throw pillow and held it against the leg. Mom’s exposed
forearm laid across
her chest in much the same condition as her
calf.
“Grab me the duct
tape.”
Jennie suddenly
remembered the phone, put it back to her ear, and headed to
the hall closet.
She reached for the shelf above the jackets and grabbed the
junk basket next to
the toolbox.
“Please stay on
the line. An operator will be with you shortly.”
She shoved the
phone in the crook of her neck and fished through the
box. Half the contents dropped around her feet. Who
cares? When her fingers wrapped
around the silver duct tape, a short-lived relief sent
prickles down her arms.
But the urgency gripped her chest in less than a heart beat,
and she threw the
junk basket on the ground with the rest of the items.
“Hurry, Jennie!”
her father called from the living room. “And turn on the TV.
Maybe they’ll have
something about what’s going
on.”
She handed her
father the tape and turned toward the TV. The mechanical
voice on the phone
came through again, followed by more easy
listening.
When she clicked
on the TV, the shouting and wailing began before the picture
warmed up on the
screen. A sideways picture of New York
City
broke through, with the shaky voice of the
newscaster voicing over.
“What we are
watching now – I can’t believe it – is live footage of
Times
Square
,” the newscaster’s
voice paused for a deep breath. “We’ve
lost our man on the scene and his camera man to what appears
to be some kind of
new alien creature. Just a short half-hour ago, the doors to
the ship that
hovered above Central
Park opened and these
dog-like creatures flooded out.”
Jennie couldn’t
pull her eyes from the screen. She straightened and dropped
the phone on the
hardwood. The battery popped out and skidded across the
floor.
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About
Pauline
In simple language, Pauline Creeden creates worlds that are
both familiar and strange, often pulling the veil between dimensions. She
becomes the main character in each of her stories, and because she has ADD, she
will get bored if she pretends to be one person for too long. Pauline is a
horse trainer from Virginia, but writing is her therapy.
Armored Hearts, her joint effort with author Melissa Turner
Lee, has been awarded the Crowned Heart for Excellence by InDtale Magazine. It
is also the 2013 Book Junkie's Choice Winner in Historical Fiction. Her debut
novel, Sanctuary, won 1st Place Christian YA Title 2013 Dante Rosetti Award and
2014 Reader's Choice Gold Award for Best YA Horror Novel.
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