Downpour: Dawn of Ruin Book 3: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) by Stacey Upton & Mike Kraus

Author:Stacey Upton & Mike Kraus [Upton, Stacey & Kraus, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2024-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Butler, Tennessee

Day Ten. 8:00 A.M. EST

Gentle rocking woke Rose from her sleep, along with the subtle slap of waves against a hard surface. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she’d passed out while she was kayaking back from the island, but as she explored her surroundings, Rose found she was laid out on a flat surface with a clean wool blanket covering her, and cushions under her body. She tried to sit up, but only a quarter of the way into the effort, she laid down again with a groan. A massive wave of dizziness washed through her, along with a surge of burning fire along her back and stabs of pain from both her knee and cheek. Touching her cheek and then her knee, Rose fought through an odd blankness in her mind as the pain from them eased. She closed her eyes, willing herself to remember, and as she did so, a deluge of memories of how she got all of her injuries washed over her.

“The island.”

Rose took several deep breaths before she eased herself to a sitting position to look around her. She was sleeping on the pontoon, which had been anchored on the shore of her homestead. A Coleman lantern hung from the stern, the same one that had guided her home. It was out now, but the sight of it brought back her memories from the night before.

She’d been paddling through last night’s heavy storm at the end of her energy and ability. The lightning had gone, passed beyond the eastern mountain range, depriving Rose of the only source of illumination available. The rain and the wind continued even after the lightning moved away. After hours of sightless paddling in an effort to find a shore line to follow, or a glimpse of the big bridge she was sure still stood, Rose hadn’t been able to find either one, or her way to the homestead. There was no delineation between water and land, and the only way to tell east from west was to continue to face into the blowing storm and its accompanying waves of water that nearly swamped her several times.

Despite years of living on the lake, of boating over it, swimming in it, exploring every nook and cranny, she’d been completely lost. Exhaustion and her multiple injuries combined with the fuzziness from the pain medication she’d had to take had confused her to the point Rose suspected she must be endlessly paddling her kayak in circles. She’d been on the verge of utter collapse, about to give up and let the storm and the lake take her beneath the waves, when a single pinprick of light appeared in the distance, so tiny she had to blink to make sure it was real.

Heartened by the single dot of light, she kept her eyes on it and aimed the prow toward it, her forearms aching and the blisters on her hands building and breaking as she used tiny strokes to save pulling on the gunshot furrow in her back.

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