Corman Grant and the Legion of Death (Special Preview)

Free Sample from Chapter Two - "The Midnight Attack"

Corman soon found out that the Safe House had had many strict rules and leaders that had made sure nobody stepped a toe out of line. There was a fighting teacher who went by Ace, (although everybody had known him simply as 'that fighting guy'), there was a teacher who taught students how to survive on their own for extended periods of time, and there was even a teacher named Cadence, who had taught the delicate art of hiding from your greatest enemies.

Corman took notice that each teacher had been over fifteen, but none had been over twenty. As a matter of fact, nobody in the Safe House had been older than twenty—it was a place meant entirely for children and teenagers, like a secret society that nobody above that age could step inside of. Many of his teachers had had to look up at Corman when speaking to him, but Ace the Fighting Teacher had had to look down just to see the top of his head.

The Sleeping Quarters in the Safe House were cramped compartments with nothing but a cushion, a pillow, and a simple, soft blanket to cover them up from the cold breeze that circulated around the room. Hundreds of kids got into their compartments at night, as soon as Ace came in shouting, "All in their beds! All in their beds! There will be a nightly check-up in about ten minutes, so we expect everybody to be in their beds! Or else, we can assure you, there will be the harshest punishment imaginable. Anyway, sweet dreams, little apocalypse-survivors!"

"How do they expect me to fit in there?" Corman said to Jonah, as he began to lay his blanket across his bed. "I'm claustrophobic. I can't stay in there for a full night."  

"Claustrophobic?" Jonah said, pausing and looking at him with his eyebrow pointing up into the air. "Sorry Corman,but you're going to have to forget about that kind of stuff now.These compartments are designed so that we are protected at all costs. If we're breached at night, we'll all be safe and hidden in these things, and they're indestructible."   

"What do you mean?" Corman asked. "With all the stuff you have in this place, you can't just get a couple of kids to keep an eye on the place at night?"  

"Oh, we do have some," Jonah said. "We usually just scare some of the ten­-year-­olds into doing it."

"So let me get this straight," Corman asked. "In the case of an invasion, our first line of defense is an army of ten­-year-­olds?"    

"Well, yeah. But don't put it like that. It makes us sound weak. They're actually our best­-trained soldiers in that age group. Most of those guys could take on a full army of a tiny nation, if they had the resources. We're lucky we have them.They're essential to some, if not most, of our activities."

"Wow," Corman said, throwing a pillow into the tiny compartment door. "You guys have really thought this one through."

Jonah decided not to say anything. He leaned into his compartment and fluffed the pillows one more time.

Corman's compartment was metallic and had a sliding door with one tiny little hole in it, identical to all the other ones that lined up next to it in perfect, symmetrical rows spanning across the wall. He peered inside of it, trying to get a good idea of how well he would be sleeping that night.

Inside, it was a whole other story, for as soon as he poked his head into it, the back of the compartment stretched out, making it look like more of a refrigerator box instead of one meant for a pair of shoes. "Woah," Corman said, his eyes widening from the inside.

"What, the compartments?" Jonah's voice rang from the outside of the compartment. "Yeah, they're pretty cool. Stick yourself in it and it'll expand into a ginormous bedroom."

And so he did. Corman climbed into the compartment, one leg at a time, and ... it expanded. At first it was a couple of centimeters, but as Corman finally cramped his last toe into the box, it grew, and it grew, quicker than a bolt of lighting. When it was done, the thing resembled a small bedroom, complete with a large bed, and a small book with a leather jacket sitting atop the covers, complete with the title: So You're Surviving the Apocalypse: A Guide to Living Life to the Fullest (Or At Least What's Left With It.)