The Fall (Book 5): Exodus in Black Read Online Free

Only reason my intestines aren’t on the floor is the bullet was going too damn fast to tear a bigger hole. So you’re getting on that bus, I’ll give you some cover, and you’re doing it right fucking now.”
     
     
     
    Though the dust from the makeshift bomb only lasted a short while, the wind had chipped in to help. As the bus roared to life and burst through the rear of the barn, sending planks and splinters alike flying through the air, they were swallowed in a thin brown haze.
    It wasn’t enough to blind, but Emily knew it would make firing at a distance difficult at best. It was like fog in that respect; easy to penetrate close up, a nightmare from far away.
    Laura sped past on Emily’s motorcycle half a second later, turning sharply to move in the opposite direction. The bus driver, Andrea, knew to take them toward the open section of fence Kell’s escape vehicle would have opened.
    Emily moved in a crouch toward the rear of the bus, watching over the armor plating through the dirty window as Laura made her way to the front gate. Even in the haze it was easy to tell where she was thanks to the rooster tail of dust thrown up by the bike. It was equally easy to discern the gunshots aimed at her as they tore channels through the dusty air and slapped into the parched earth.
    Laura made it to the gate and slapped the emergency release, and Emily saw the tiny figure receding in the distance slump against the post in relief as the gate sprung open.
    Then Laura jerked and tumbled to the ground.
    Emily hoped it was an immediately fatal shot. No suffering.
    No one else in the bus had seen. They were hunkered down where the armor would protect them, showing they had better sense than her. An empty place opened in her heart at the loss of her friend, but the void didn’t spread as wide as it might have. Laura had gone to her death knowingly, making the choice in order to give others the chance to get clear.
    Not just by the front gate, which was the clever part. They’d lived at the compound for a few years, affording plenty of time to implement the sort of contingencies other survivor communities put in place for situations like this. The roughly built tract of communal sleeping quarters on the southern edge of the fence, for example, were all connected to a narrow tunnel leading outside the wall. It would mean crawling for a few hundred yards and kicking out a plug of dirt a foot deep, but the people in those huts had time to try thanks to Laura.
    A bullet pinged off the bus, sending Emily sprawling on her ass.
    She eyed the folding ladder welded to the roof. “Is there a rifle in here?”
    “Why?” Andrea asked from the driver’s seat.
    Emily crawled through the press of crouching bodies until she was directly beneath the ladder leading to the hatch set in the top of the bus. “I’m gonna climb up there and take a few shots. Might keep ’em from shooting at us for a minute.”
    Andrea snorted. “Just get yourself killed. And no, we don’t have a rifle. Just sit down and let me concentrate on getting us clear.”
    Emily thought about arguing, then decided against it. There were sharp edges in Andrea’s voice, and she didn’t have a mind to test herself on them. Stress and loss made cutting people easy.
    There wasn’t a person in the bus who didn’t show the signs. Even after so much damage to the world, so many personal losses, it still amazed her to see people were capable of feeling it so deeply when the worst happened. Kell often mentioned the idea of limited emotional energy, that people were only capable of spreading their grief so thin before it ran out, and Emily agreed.
    But it grew back. It seemed there was no psychological callous dense enough to prevent basic human empathy from blossoming. It reminded her of shoots of green life bursting through the blackened floor of a forest destroyed by fire.
    Nature—even human nature—was resilient as hell. Even if that ability to recover manifested