Forever After (Post Apocalyptic Romance Boxed Set) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: The Naughty List
Published: 2015-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

Six

Air rushed past Christine, and she spread her arms wide to catch the joist she knew was there. It hit her with a painful thunk, and she wrapped her limbs around it. She opened her eyes, and saw Ilsa clinging to the joist just a little closer to the building, two floors down from the one they’d left so gracelessly. “Crawl towards the wall,” she called to Ilsa, knowing the wind would carry most of her voice away. Within seconds, the other woman was standing on a pipe that ran along the side of the Block and ducking through a broken window on the other side. Christine hurried to follow and stuck her head out one last time. Several Engineers leaned their heads out the window in confusion, looking to see where the girls had fallen.

As Christine breathed the lifeless air, she remembered her first venture into the Foundation, the abandoned structure supporting their cloud-surrounded city. A boy named Sanjay dared her, and she hadn’t had the heart to tell him no, even if it meant ignoring her father’s warnings.

Besides, she wanted to prove herself, with so much extra pressure on her from David’s absence. Sanjay swore he’d been there before, that anyone could be truly happy there. She needed that so very badly. Even the chance of a minute’s relief from her father’s pain and the gap where the family’s missing members should have been was enough to galvanize her to leave the slum streets, follow him through dusty corridors, down a brittle stairwell, and into the devil’s mouth.

At first, the air was empty, and that emptiness was frightening after the odors of the Block. But as they moved and stirred up dust that hadn’t been shifted in decades, the taste of decay crept in. She gagged, and made to turn back, but he pulled her forward, his arm warm around her shoulders, like David’s when she had crawled next to him after a nightmare.

Two more flights down, the air took on a thick taste. She couldn’t place it, and was afraid to ask her guide. She began to breathe heavily, and realized that some of the pipes that had sustained this floor must have been salvaged, leaving the inside exposed and lessening the air’s ability to nourish—she tasted it more, but it satisfied her less.

She caught Sanjay sucking air through his teeth while he held onto the wall for dear life. Perhaps it should have concerned her that even her guide was having such difficulties, but instead she felt relief to see that she wasn’t the only one panting like it was summer solstice. A moment of weakness took her knees out from under her and stirred up more dust.

Sanjay giggled, his voice thinner than usual. She’d stirred up dust, and with it, the scents it concealed. “C’mon,” he said, picking her up, carrying her deeper into the belly of the Block.

Another flight down, he stopped. “Did you see that?” She looked, but there was nothing. Just decaying ceiling tiles the scavenging teams had missed, and graffiti, the remains of people like her.

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