The Elves of Cintra (Genesis Of Shannara Book 2) by Terry Brooks

Author:Terry Brooks [Brooks, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780345502162
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Leaving the Ghosts and their field camp behind, Logan Tom drove down the highway through the deepening twilight toward the darkened buildings of Tacoma. The city hunkered down on a mostly flat plain bordered by water on one side and hills on the other. Its look was a familiar one, residences on the perimeter, downtown in the center, the whole of it a shadowy presence, unlit and seemingly uninhabited.

But there would be people, of course, perhaps living in a compound, perhaps living on the streets. There would be Freaks. There would be the usual strays and homeless. There would be things no one could imagine without first seeing them, creatures formed of the poisons and the plagues, the monsters of this brave new world.

And always, there would be feeders, waiting.

He scanned the shadows as he drove, weaving through the debris, angling for the open spots on the cracked, weed-grown pavement. He searched for movement, for any indication of life, and found little. Feral dogs and street kids. The flicker of solar-powered lamps from the dark recesses of buildings. The faint sounds of life that belied the otherwise deep silence. Now and then, he passed the remains of the dead, some of the bodies so old they had been reduced to little more than bones and bits of clothing. He tried to imagine how it had been before the wars had begun and the way back had been lost, and he could not.

His mind drifted to other times and places. It was like this in so many other cities, the aftermath of destruction, the leavings of madness and despair. So much had been rendered useless. He looked around at the devastation, at the emptiness, and it made him want to cry. But he didn’t cry anymore. Not for this. He had seen it too often. It was the legacy of his time, a world depopulated, a civilization destroyed.

Ahead, a huge domed building rose against the skyline, and in the fading light he could make out its massive support arches. It was an entertainment arena, a leftover from the time when there was order in the world. It was black and silent now, an edifice that had lost its place and purpose, a mausoleum for a time of life that was dead and gone.

He drove toward it.

The highway dipped slightly in a long sloping ramp toward the domed building, but huge piles of trash and parts of discarded cars had been hauled over to form a barricade that blocked the exit. He drove a bit closer and abandoned his plan to follow the pavement. Instead he began driving across the open spaces adjacent to the highway and then through the yards of perimeter residences, cutting past other, smaller roads, choosing rougher terrain that offered more accessible passage for the AV. The Lightning was built to crawl over barriers from which other vehicles would have turned back.

When he had gone as far as he could, close now to the dome and in sight of buildings that were clearly storefronts and warehouses, Logan stopped the AV and got out.

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