Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

Author:Kira Jane Buxton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: none
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

S.T.

GOD KNOWS WHERE ALONG PHINNEY AVENUE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA

We had set off, the three of us, determined to find the others. The other Dennises and Cinnamons and S.T.s. The survivors. Telephone poles lay collapsed on their sides in the middle of Phinney Avenue, their wires twisted like discarded dental floss. An electronics repair shop had been ransacked and gutted, hit at one point by a hurricane of searching MoFos. I told Dennis and Cinnamon to wait by the front of the shop as I hopped through its graveyard of smashed plastic, motherboards, televisions with busted faces, and snaking wires. Shelves had been ripped from the walls, now rife with beckoning black holes. A strange, hauntingly high-pitched song provided an eerie soundtrack. I set out to find where the music came from.

A teeming mischief of rats and a clutter of spiders with hairy, beaver-brown bodies had divided the shop into their respective territories. The spiders watched me near their precious nest, rearing onto their hind legs and hissing obscenities at me. The female one was particularly vicious, vowing that if I took one more step closer, she would bind, gag, and torture my entire family with her infrangible silks. The rats were quick to assess that I wasn’t a threat, continuing with their avid grooming—they’re massively anal about personal hygiene—while some convened for a meeting about plans to create a network of tunnels they were calling “The Real Seattle Underground.” The eerie song turned out to be the symphony of rats filing down their ever-growing choppers on a hollow lead pipe, a wailing, sinister siren song that seemed perfect for the times we lived in. There were no cell phones. Cinnamon, Dennis, and I set back off down Phinney Avenue. We came across a King 5 helicopter that had crashed on top of a silver Tesla, bisecting it. Its once-sleek lines were now severed, jutting and sharp. Oily tire tracks—signs of panicked escape—zigzagged across Phinney Avenue, now a phantom of its former self.

Then we found a row of houses. The first was a towering brick Tudor home, its front yard choking on weeds, its arched entryway leading to a covered porch. I indulged in a fantasy—I just couldn’t help myself—of rapping my beak on the door. The door opens and there stands a MoFo with a straight back and clear eyes. “Are you alright?” they ask me. And then I tell them everything and, nodding their head, they stroke the length of my feathers with a smooth finger while offering me a condolence Cheeto®. The MoFo with clear, bright eyes tells us everything is going to be okay, that there’s a cure. That everything will go back to the way it was, goodness I’m devastatingly handsome, and would I like a croissant?

I was still warm, glowing from the daydream, when I hopped up the steps and under the arched entryway. I thrust myself onto a porch bench—the wooden swinging kind—to peer in through the intact bay windows. The home looked

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.