The Road to Damascus: K-Nurse Book One (K-Nurse, The Knight-Nurses of the Order of St. John 1) by Mark Leo Tapper

Author:Mark Leo Tapper [Tapper, Mark Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sousa House Press
Published: 2022-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Rory wasn't the only teenager we had to keep track of. By the time she was a junior in high school, it was time to see how Bart and Phil were coming along. They were about Rory’s age, but unlike Rory, we left them alone. We didn't want to ruin this happy time of ignorance about their real identities, and they wouldn't need training. Once awakened, all their memories and skills would be immediately available to them.

Thomas stood on the bus, holding the vertical handrail, despite the abundance of seats. He had that relaxed slump as he stood that told anyone who knew him that his muscles were wound tight and ready to spring. Our view changed block-by-block from run-down urban detritus, to tidy, multi-family homes, to the sorts of ranch houses that Realtors like to call "starter" homes. This road was the express lane from deep inner city past suburban McMansions to farmhouses, their paint peeling and flaking in untended yards.

"Follow the white guy, yellow brick, road," Thomas grunted.

I nodded. Out the window, a round old lady with a cloud of wild white hair and thick black eyeglasses was sitting in a scraggly vacant lot, an old foundation in ruins behind her. She wore a blue-and-white house dress and slumped in a lawn chair, reading the newspaper. She did not look up as the bus passed, but I couldn't take my eyes off her, craning my neck to watch her disappear behind us. The vignette was shocking and bizarre.

Thomas chuckled.

"Mama Joad," he said.

"What the fuck?" I whispered. "I mean, what the fuck?"

"Living life on her own terms," Thomas said. "She's the poster girl for the coming apocalypse."

"That's not funny," I said, because it was exactly what I was thinking.

Thomas affectionately squeezed the back of my neck, his long fingers wrapping most of the way around. His hands were dry and strong. He pulled the red cord that ran along the side of the bus above the windows, signaling a stop, and the bus eased to the side of the road. The bus driver, chewing a toothpick, squinted at Thomas, who snorted and shot the man with his thumb and index finger. The driver frowned and slapped the door closed behind us.

"Plus ça change," I said, watching the bus disappear in a cloud of dust.

"The more it stays the same," Thomas said. "We need to get up that hill." He pointed to the west, off the road. The house where Phil and Bart (no idea what their names were right now; they wouldn’t be Phil and Bart until they were awakened) lived was only a half mile from the end of an airport runway. "There's cover behind the house. Air National Guard should start their sorties any time now."

As we reached a thicket of young maple trees, we heard the first roar of jet engines overhead. We used the racket to cover our indelicate footsteps through the underbrush, settling just under a ridge that looked down on a cul-de-sac.

"The green one," Thomas said, sliding his day pack off and leaning against a thick ash tree.

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