Black Autumn Travelers by Jeff Kirkham & Jason Ross

Author:Jeff Kirkham & Jason Ross [Kirkham, Jeff & Ross, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ReadyMan
Published: 2019-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

8

“The hairs on your arm will stand up

At the terror in each sip and in each sup

Will you partake of that last offered cup?

Or disappear into the potter’s ground?

When the man comes around…

Till armageddon no shalam, no shalom.”

When The Man Comes Around, Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around, 2002

Brighton Drive, Louisville, Kentucky

Red brick. White doors, white windows, and eaves. Perfect lawns and perfect trees. Even through his night vision goggles, Mat could tell that these homes were Tudor style and the neighborhood was early twenty-first century American well-to-do. Except for the trashcans overflowing the perfect country curb, and the garbage strewn about the lawns, Mat wouldn’t have thought “Armageddon.”

Then he came upon the first burned-out homes. Scorched brick walls, some of them collapsed, and the occasional isolated chimney. They punctuated the otherwise intact neighborhoods.

Mat tried to imagine how or why these homes had burned. Maybe the families had attempted cooking with fire indoors. Maybe criminals had hit the homes and burned them out. Maybe vandals had lit them on fire just for fun. One thing was certain: no firemen had come to stop the blaze. They had burned unchecked until the fire ran out of fuel.

As soon as he could, Mat abandoned the main roads of Louisville in favor of the dense grid of residential streets crisscrossing the manicured neighborhoods. It was four o’clock in the morning and they hadn’t encountered any danger—just a city that looked as though every soul had vanished into thin air. Maybe it was like the old fire-and-brimstone preacher had warned. Maybe all the people except Mat and Caroline, unrepentant fornicators, had been taken up into the sky to greet the Coming of the Lord.

As so often occurred in the run-up to battle, Mat saw nothing specific to worry him. Still, his Spidey senses did backflips, his hand antsy on the AR-15 in his lap, a round in the chamber.

“You’re going to need to head northwest pretty soon.” Caroline navigated with her cell phone. For whatever reason, Google Maps began working the moment they passed the city boundaries. It was a good thing, because the big laminated map wasn’t detailed enough to get them to her parents’ house. “We’re looking for Brindle Road, but we still need to work our way a mile north.”

All the lights in the truck, including the dome light, had been turned off. The only light in the cab was Caroline’s cell phone. Mat moved along at fifteen miles an hour, his Raptor nearly silent in the dewy, late September morning.

“Roll down your window, please,” Mat asked.

“It’s cold outside and I feel safer with it up.”

“You’re not safer with it up and, if I have to shoot, the back blast will cook your eardrums with the windows rolled up.”

Caroline rolled all the windows down and bundled up in her wind breaker. The smell of death wafted into the cab.

“Also, I know it’s a pain in the ass, but please put your backpack on.” Mat reached around and handed Caroline one of the packs.

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