Fear of God (Trials of Strength Book 1) (22 page)

‘
You knew
about the bomb?’ Anna rounded on him.

‘
I didn’t
actually think it would be used!’ Chris flustered.

We sped through the empty
streets of Greystone as the ground trembled beneath the car. We had
to avoid overturned chunks of vehicles and shredded bodies, but the
living had left, and the town was leaving too. We reached the dirt
road that led out of the surrounding mountains and drove toward
freedom.

Shit.

I couldn’t help but sigh
with relief. The ground didn’t stop moving, but we were clear, we
were finally free from the town, from my father. I buried my head
in my hands and couldn’t stop the onslaught of salty tears. Anna
asked if I was alright, but I just grabbed her and placed my lips
to hers.

The
Beginning

A month after the town
collapsed, I stepped from a shop, a scalding coffee in my hands.
The air was cold and snow drifted from the sky, late, but finally
there. We had headed over to the nearest city and booked a hotel
room once we were free. Chris explained how reporting what had
happened would be useless. The government hadn’t intervened in the
first place, they would probably lock us up to keep us
quiet.

I walked across the
street and I felt surreal. The novelty of walking amongst people
who smiled at you instead of lunged for your throat hadn’t worn off
yet. Chris and Anna stood at the window of an electronics shop,
staring at a dozen televisions playing the same news broadcast. I
took Anna’s hand, sipped my coffee and listened to the voice,
muffled behind the glass.

‘
Still no
confirmation on the events that happened in the mountain town of
Greystone,’ the reporter said. She stood near the edge of a crater
in the ground, helicopters circled the scene and men rappelled into
the chasm. ‘No bodies have been recovered yet, but the tragic
circumstances of the town have been linked to domestic terrorism,
but from who, and what happened, there is no clue.’

‘
No clue,’
Chris scoffed. ‘Not that they’d share it anyway, not without
revealing their own fingerprints.’

I nodded and
drank.

‘
If we aren’t
going to rat them out,’ Anna said. ‘What do we do?’

‘
We stop my
father,’ I answered as Chris remained silent. ‘We find your
brother, my sister if she exists, and we stop him from doing
something like this ever again. The government won’t, we can see
that, so we have to. This is just the beginning.’

‘
For all the
people who died, for them,’ Anna sighed and I squeezed her
hand.

Her free hand rested on
her stomach, a small insignificant movement, but to me it wasn’t. I
could hear her heart, her breaths. I could hear the smaller flutter
of a second heartbeat inside her body.

I turned to face her
wide-eyed, but before I could speak, a truck jumped the pavement
and came crashing towards us.

Still have lots of
questions? Check out the next entry:

Child of
Recklessness (Out Now)