Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
“Tuck, look,” Emily said, grabbing my arm as she stopped and pointed to the end of a wide street. I stared, taking a moment to make sense of what I saw. It was a pile of wreckage sitting in the middle of the road, a crumpled helicopter with a news logo barely visible that had obviously crashed onto the tops of several cars.
“Jesus,” I muttered, wondering again how many aircraft had been in the sky when the solar flare hit and whether all of them had crash-landed like ours had. How many survivors were there and how many hadn’t had pilots as good as ours?
We walked through a neighborhood of small family homes, where there were red and blue X’s on many of the doors. I remembered back to news footage I’d seen of Hurricane Katrina and the houses with the X’s spray-painted on them indicating a dead body was inside and wondered if that was the case here too. But authorities had marked the houses then; there were no authorities anywhere in sight now.
A man walked by us with a dead seagull in his hands and when I turned toward him to ask about the x’s, he pulled out a knife as he whipped the dead bird behind him and screamed, “Get back!”
I raised one hand and grabbed Emily’s arm with the other. “We don’t want your bird,” I said. “I was just wondering why there are x’s on the doors.”
The man blew out a rattly breath and took another step back, still holding the seagull behind him, which I assumed he was planning on eating. “Gangs,” he said. “Turf wars. Downtown is the worst. They’ve already taken over hotels and restaurants. Those who fought back died. They control the streets and the food down there. Some of the smaller gangs are laying claim to residential areas. No homes are safe.” He looked up the street as though thinking of his own home and then mumbled, “I gotta go. Good luck.”
My heart had dropped as he’d spoken. Gangs were staking claim to homes? Whole neighborhoods?
I heard the rumble of an engine and turned toward the sound. The man stopped and looked back at us. “If you have anything of value on you, I’d hide,” he said, and then he darted between two houses and disappeared.
Anything of value. That phrase had recently taken on a whole new meaning.
I pulled Emily onto a porch on the other side of the street, and we ducked behind the railing, our eyes meeting as the rumble grew louder. She blinked, features contorted with alarm as she grabbed my hand.
The vehicle passed by slowly, the sounds of male chatter accompanying the growl of the car. I raised my head a bare inch and peeked over the wooden barrier we were kneeling behind. A red classic convertible Ferrari was just rounding the corner, men holding guns sitting on the tops of the seats on both sides, their heads turning as they surveyed the area. One of the men tossed his cigarette right before another man said, “We’ve been through here. Let’s go.” And the car made a sudden turn, tires squealing as they disappeared around a corner.
“What the hell?” Emily breathed.
“The gangs that man just mentioned. Probably out looking for food and water,” I said. Other than the cars and weapons they obviously already had, that was what was of value now.
We remained behind the railing for several more minutes, the roar of the car receding, before we left the porch. I looked over my shoulder and swore I saw the movement of a curtain. Someone had watched us as we’d taken cover on their porch. A shiver snaked down my spine. I needed to be more careful. Stay sharp, Mattice, I could hear Hosea saying, the same advice he’d given me in prison, the reminder that had helped keep me from getting regular beatdowns. And worse.
Although if what the man in the car had said was true, they’d been through here already which had to mean these homes were stripped of sustenance. And the man clutching the dead bird suddenly made much more sense.
We started walking, and Emily took my hand. “Are there gangs in your uncle’s neighborhood?” she asked. But she must have figured there were after the stories I’d told her about who I’d fallen in with when I’d moved here. I just nodded.
“Gangs will want to take over the areas that have the most resources though, right?” she asked. “Once the police aren’t an issue and alarms no longer work, they’ll target the wealthy.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “The power structure has flipped. But still, anyone who has anything at all is a target at a time like this.”
“Even that man with the bird,” Emily murmured.
On the outskirts of that neighborhood, the smell of death rose again, so strong and abhorrent that we were both forced to take an item of clothing from our backpacks and cover our faces. “It’s a hospital,” Emily said, her voice muffled. “Oh God, Tuck, I can’t. We have to go around.”