Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

And emerging out from the trash piles, accelerating and swerving erratically past the toppled wreckage of a cattle truck still full of black jumbled skeletons, she drove on.

Exodus. Kersey. Mitch. Mama. Lacie.

Thunder. A blue-spliced glimpse, even, of lightning. Again the gray rains began.

It was earlier than she had believed. Twilight. It was the day that would die forever, the gray-blind and radiant day that would never truly end. The worst was by no means behind her.

I swear to you, Lacie.

The H4’s damaged engine growled, fuel blurted out of the still-open gas valve, out of the ruptured gas tank. The wind began to rage again, spinning up gouts of powdered obsidian glass. Wreckage blurred by to either side.

I swear to you I am coming.

The rain-wind surged in from behind, pushing the H4 at a tilt and a little faster. The gas needle wavered. Amber fuel beads sprinkled out over the hood in a glittering, liquid blossom.

A blossom of lovely spray.

Sophie beheld the vision of the headless girl again, the crimson eruption which had been the final ripples of her face inside the cage.

Silas whispered, “Go.”

Alive!

Sophie spared one last tear-fogged glance down at her gun. She looked out east. So near! Northeast, out where Mitch and Lacie might still be. Out there roved the wind, tasting the spinning fuel beads with black and uncounted tongues, swallowing them whole.

She was alive. She was dying. Go.

She gripped the wheel tighter, tighter with both of her radiation-burned and pallid hands.

(The FROM THE FIRE saga shall come to an end with Episode VI, AND THE ASHES , available in the summer of 2013 from Wonderland Imprints and the Kindle Store on Amazon.com.)

Episode I: End of Days (2012)

Episode II: The Cage (2012)

Episode III: The Hollow Men (2012)

Trilogy One: Episodes I-III (the first three installments, with additional material) (2012)

Episode IV: Archangel (2013)

Episode V: Gray Rain Exodus (2013)

Episode VI: By Blood Foretold (in preparation, 2013)

Trilogy Two: Episodes IV-VI (the second three installments, with additional material) (in preparation, 2013)

Copyright © 2013 Kent David Kelly

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder.