From the Fire VI (The Ending) by Kent David Kelly

Author:Kent David Kelly [Kelly, Kent David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wonderland Imprints
Published: 2013-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

VI-4

Beyond the Road of Dawn

All the rest of that night, Sophie drove northward on I-25 until she was far from Loveland. She finally found a passable way east on something called Crossroads Boulevard, passing a warehouse yard of endless and sand-filled wrecks, Caterpillar dozers, RVs and Wal-Mart cargo trailers, until she found a strange, sapphire-hazed roundabout in the middle of nowhere. Some developer in recent years must have vainly tried to recreate suburbia in the middle of nowhere, and the misty roundabout was the only evidence.

The after-midnight air following the storm was much clearer, purged of the evening’s greater poison. Far off to the north, the ashen earth was actually glowing. Sophie did not want to know the source of this ghastly illumination, the roundabout’s glowing haze. With the last of her nigh-exhausted will, she continued east past a pristine sign which read, “Coming Soon 2015, Journey Homes: Starting At $319,900.”

Dust clouds from the murky and blackened south threatened to overtake the H4 a few miles on, and so she made her way north around the glow-laced dunes just beyond a mud-washed railroad crossing and there onto 257. There, seeking Colorado Road 64, several miles beyond a tangled line of flatbed railcars and spilled piles of ransacked cargo containers, she discovered a huge and seemingly ancient barn with only one of its narrow sides collapsed out into the fields. Unable to continue any farther, she off-roaded the H4 into the barn, cared for the unconscious Silas, and even dared to turn the engine off. Gas was still leaking, but not nearly as badly as before. The field repairs — despite many of the hoped-for welds being too dangerous to perform — had quieted the damaged H4’s struggles to a stubborn, erratic squeal and the hashing of grit-filled belts.

In some unknowable hour before the dawn, Sophie cared for her burned hands as best she could and the finally collapsed across the console in a deep and suffocating sleep.

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