Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse by John F. Leonard

Author:John F. Leonard [Leonard, John F.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Post-Apocalyptic | Dystopian
Publisher: John F Leonard
Published: 2016-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

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The Lowtons house was an aging semi-detached but it bordered a newer housing estate. That estate had an unusual design, lines of bungalows alternating with lines of link-detached houses. Vehicular access was generally at the rear of these properties, a footpath and garden at the front. The result was a warren of interconnected paths and very few actual roads. George had figured out a course whereby he could cover the first part of the journey using these paths and the passageways between buildings. He wasn’t sure if it was safer but it would be more direct. More than that, the idea of being out in the open, on the roads, felt too exposed.

Too open. Fewer places to hide.

Pausing to check the back garden, he edged outside and quietly closed what was left of the door behind him.

This was it then.

He felt as though he were setting out on some expedition fraught with danger. Which, although he had no way of truly comprehending the extent of that danger, was entirely accurate. He looked at his house and garden and a wave of emotion passed over him causing tears to prickle his eyes.

The dilapidated shed.

Two mismatched and mildewed plastic soccer goals with nets bleached grey from years of sitting in the sun and rain.

A spread of discarded footballs in various stages of deflation. The tattered trampoline that they no longer used, waiting patiently for his dad to dismantle and remove it. George and Elliot had outgrown it. They were getting too big now, and too old really, too preoccupied by other distractions and new things.

George didn’t think anyone would be dismantling it now. It would simply sit there forever until it collapsed and then the remnants would in turn simply lie where they’d fallen.

There was a sense of finality to that moment. He scrubbed at his eyes, irritated with himself for feeling so stupidly emotional about leaving his house. He knew it wasn’t just the house, although it was true that he had always loved living there. It was the whole thing. What his parents had turned into and what he’d done to one of them. The unspeakably awful conflict in the loft.

The absolute change that had taken place in such a staggeringly short span of time.

There was no going back from that or any of this. It wasn’t a dream and he wasn’t going to wake up and find everything normal, sunlight streaming through the gap in his curtains and either his mom or dad handing him a glass of milk and asking what he wanted for breakfast when he went downstairs.

They were both gone. One completely, dead in his bedroom if you wanted to check. One in a way that he didn’t begin to understand but which left a slimy metallic dread in his mouth.

He wiped his eyes one more time and made his way to a gate at the bottom of the garden. The gate led onto an alley that separated this row of older residences from the newer estate.

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