Charred: Echoes of the End Book 5: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) by Justin Bell & Mike Kraus

Author:Justin Bell & Mike Kraus [Bell, Justin & Kraus, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2023-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Night had fallen as they’d made their way east, traveling down the long stretch of route 84 just south of a narrow canal heading toward the city. Up ahead, a twisting tangle of interstates converged into a chaotic cloverleaf on steroids. A sparse park stood across the water to the north and Scout followed it with her eyes, perched in the rear bed of the truck alongside Harlan, Nora, and the unconscious Cabot. Harlan’s hands remained clasped around the old man’s, pressed firmly together, as if he was trying to hold something together. Whether it was the old man or himself, Scout wasn’t sure, but Harlan continued to squeeze, to the point where she wondered if he might be cutting off circulation.

Already the world around them had transformed, the old, rustic Everglades town giving way first to more sprawling wilderness, then finally opening up into the urban blight of suburban Fort Lauderdale. Beyond the angular park to their north, broken concrete and blistered steel overwhelmed the natural order. A persistent orange glow colored the sky, scattered fires eating at the city from the inside, feeding the overhanging smoke with thicker, charcoal-colored tendrils. Snakes of soot and smoke stretched their languid, serpentine bodies toward the heavens, a dull gray octopus stretching its leathery tendrils.

“Ever seen it before?” Nora turned toward Scout, who was momentarily absorbed by the narrow stretch of water just off the north side of the road.

“Seen what?”

“Alligator Alley. That’s what this whole stretch of road is, heading back into the ‘glades.”

“This is Alligator Alley?” Scout squinted at the smooth, dark water, preferring to focus on that rather than the broken and burning city around them.

“It’s a little more eventful in the swamps than out here, but yeah, basically. If we wanted to, we could follow the water all the way into the center of the city, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to get there.”

Scout drew upright, then twisted around, looking toward the east. The thick smoke and scattered fires obscured a clear view of Fort Lauderdale proper, though she could almost picture it there, somewhere. She was totally unfamiliar with the skyline of that particular city, but in her mind she envisioned snapped-off high-rises, shattered stone, blistered concrete. A pummeled corpse of American opulence, with bleached bones and charred flesh all that remained. Scout hadn’t truly considered the full ramifications of coming to Fort Lauderdale, the stress and trauma that would come along with it. She’d never been a city girl, even in the best of times, and they were about as far from the best of times as they could get.

Everett navigated around scattered traffic along Route 84, which was far less clotted and impassable than the twisting intersections of Interstate 75 and the Sawgrass Expressway which swerved and curled in elevated overpasses above them. She’d caught a quick glimpse of the throngs of stalled traffic on those highways above, rows of immobile vehicles, pressed front-to-back and side-to-side, an impenetrable barricade of glass and steel.

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