Inhuman by Kat Falls

Author:Kat Falls [Falls, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

We sped past ravaged, desolate towns and overturned cars, all of them either scorched or rusting. But each time I started to feel hollow over the devastation, around the next bend I’d spot deer in a pasture, grazing like small herds of horses. There was wildlife everywhere, and above, the sky was blue, with high puffs of clouds.

Even though the land itself was as flat as a book, the road was so broken up, I felt like I was riding a bucking bronco. Still, Everson and I twisted in our seats, eyes wide, trying to take everything in.

Rafe had long since given up his carefree attitude and turned into an old lady, complaining about how fast I was going and how bumpy the ride was. At first I’d taken it personally, since I considered myself to be a conscientious driver, but then Everson asked Rafe if he’d ever ridden in a moving vehicle before. To my shock, Rafe hadn’t. Now he sat in the backseat, looking very green. Had he been anyone else, I might have felt sorry for him.

I made a sudden swerve off the road and heard Rafe gag as the jeep bumped down the embankment. I hadn’t had a choice. Smashed, burned-out vehicles clogged the highway in a miles-long collision dating back to the exodus. I had seen plenty of recordings of that time and been required to watch documentaries about it for school ad nauseam. But as horrifying as those recorded images were, passing miles of wreckage and glimpsing charred skeletons still belted into their seats gave me a sense of what it had really been like during the exodus. How people’s desperation to escape the plague had messed with their judgment.

After we’d driven along the shoulder for nearly an hour, Rafe said, “Got to make a stop. Pull in there.”

I didn’t want to slow down, let alone take a break, but I thought maybe he had to pee. Rafe directed me onto what once had been a golf course, according to a sign. The links were gone, replaced by deep ditches as far as I could see, and another weather-beaten sign, which read “Quarantine Cremation Site.”

As soon as I touched the brake, Rafe hopped out and strode through the waist-high grass toward one of the ditches.

If this was a cremation site, then these were graves, I realized with a start.

Everson pulled off his Kevlar body armor shirt and refastened his gun holster over his T-shirt. “I’m taking this back,” he said, scooping his gun from off the seat between us.

“Look.” I pointed to the ditch on our right. “It’s still smoking.”

As Everson and I climbed out to take a look, I saw Rafe snap a wildflower from its stem and toss it into the open grave. His lips were moving, but from where I stood, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. As Everson and I approached the smoking crater, I had a sudden, creeping sense that we weren’t alone. I paused to scan the

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