False Sight by Dan Krokos

Author:Dan Krokos [Krokos, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781423149859
Amazon: 1423149858
Goodreads: 13454648
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2013-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

25

I

open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. The horse collapses, head slamming the ground, legs tangled under it, skidding, churning up dirt. Peter skids with it

and then tumbles. Two more arrows stab into the dirt near his head. Some - how he turns his second tumble into a controlled forward roll. He pops to his feet and reaches up. And I’m there, leaning down off my horse at near full gallop. All my focus on his outstretched fingers, knowing I won’t get a second chance at this. Our hands collide with our forearms and his weight almost pulls me off, but I bite down with my legs and swing him up, screaming against the pain in my shoulder.

The arrows are out of range finally. Peter’s chest heaves against my back as he takes deep gulps of air. I hear Rhys laughing from ahead. My shoulder is on fire, but intact.

“I owe you one,” he says in my ear. I twist around to look at him, checking for arrows he might not be feeling yet. His eyes blaze with adrenaline.

“That’s two you owe me,” I say, and he laughs.

We ride on, deeper into the city. We pass wild dogs with stark rib cages. More cars are skewed in the road. The tires rotted away long ago. The horses stay clustered, breaking apart only to get around an obstacle. As the adrenaline fades, more of what I’m seeing makes its way to my brain. So many things made by man, long-forgotten and abandoned. People walked these sidewalks, ate in these restaurants. Cabs once packed the desolate roads. And behind everything is a possible future for my world. If we don’t stop Nina, this will be our future. A world of forgotten things.

Our pace slows after ten minutes of hard riding. We turned south a while back, and the buildings became slightly shorter, but just as dense. Every few blocks the angle is right, and I can see Gane’s version of downtown in the very far distance. I can’t tell what’s different.

The girl’s leg is soaked now, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. The stain doesn’t go past her knee. Dust sticks to the wet parts of her pants.

The street opens up into what was once a park. Some of the trees still stand, and one of them even looks alive. The rest sag, leafless, anchored in baked dirt. We ride the perimeter, staying clear of a hollow bus. Two buzzards perch at the front of the metal hulk, watching us.

“This is what you would know as Union Square,” the man in red says. “Here it was named Rowland Circle.” He takes the lead, guiding his horse into an enormous parking garage that has fared better than the buildings around it. We follow him inside and begin the descent, curling around pillars, heading deeper underground. The cars here are better preserved, but just barely. None of them have tires or windows. Every few feet, the man stops and holds a small remote in the air.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.