Curse of the Ancients by Matt de La Pena

Author:Matt de La Pena [Pena, Matt De La]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Historical, Action & Adventure, Childrens - Middle Grade, Young Adult, Childrens - Juvenile, Crime & Mystery, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780545386999
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 13356175
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

SERA IS sucked right back into her memory of the Cataclysm.

She sees herself in the small motorized emergency raft again, speeding through intersection after intersection. And she’s screaming, begging for all of it to stop. The fires. The flooding. The acid rain pouring down from above. The earth’s violent shaking.

Sera zips past several miles of absolute destruction until she’s out of the city and turns onto her childhood street. She lets off the gas as she nears her house, then dives overboard and swim-walks her way up the flooded driveway. When she reaches a trembling hand out for the doorknob, she half expects to black out or be whisked away — like every other time she’s tried to access her memory of the Cataclysm.

But this time she remains present.

She watches herself slowly turn the knob, push open the door, creep inside the only home she’s ever known. “Uncle Diego!” she calls out.

No answer.

Sera moves through the living room, leaving the front door wide open behind her. The wood floors are covered in two feet of grayish water. Many of her uncle’s possessions are submerged or floating randomly: books, documents, framed photos, candles, old newspapers and magazines, vases. Most of the furniture is overturned. A leg is missing from the dining room table. The TV is knocked over and punctured. The mirror below the clock is shattered and hanging askew. It looks like someone has ransacked the place, looking for something, but what?

The kitchen is even worse. The fridge is wide open and mostly cleaned out, its door ripped from the hinges. The cupboards are full of broken plates and glasses. Sera stops cold when she sees the empty wooden knife block. The utensil drawer is still full of forks and spoons. But the knives are gone. Where are the knives?

“Uncle Diego!” she calls out again.

Nothing.

Sera sloshes out of the kitchen, but when she rounds the corner she lets out a short scream. There, frozen on the stairs, is a rail-thin man wearing her uncle’s raincoat. Long, unkempt hair and shaggy beard. Bugged eyes. The man looks half-dead already.

Sera’s heart is beating inside her throat as she says, “Who are you?”

Instead of answering, the man leaps down the rest of the stairs and splashes his way across the living room.

“Stop!” Sera shouts, but he’s already out the door.

She bounds up the waterlogged stairs, her whole body now wired with fear. What if something happened to her uncle? She pushes open her own bedroom door first. A few items are scattered around the floor. But otherwise it’s the way she left it. She continues to her uncle’s bedroom door and reaches for the doorknob, preparing herself for what she might find.

She slowly pushes open the door and looks around.

There’s an unfamiliar sleeping bag in the middle of the room. Trash piled in the far corner. But nothing else out of the ordinary. The man she’d just seen had most likely been living there. But for how long? And where was her uncle?

That’s when it hits Sera.

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