Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
He sat up like it was effortless and rolled to his feet, using his arms and legs to force himself upright.
A single rivulet of blood trailed down his left temple, and I walked up to him and turned his face sideways so I could see.
“A cut,” I breathed. “Does your head hurt?”
He shook his head. “Neck does a bit, though.”
I let him go, and he lifted my chin and twisted my head left and right. “You look good. Other than you look like you stood in front of a mulching machine. You have shavings of wood all over you.”
I also had a ton of microcuts everywhere. I could feel them stinging my skin.
“The tornado,” I breathed. “It was crazy.”
And it was.
I’d never be able to put into words just how scary it was.
Then again, I didn’t know if it was scary because of the plane crash I’d just survived, or because it was scary all on its own.
I would hopefully never experience one again to know either way.
Then again, by the way that the sky was looking, I might not get that wish.
“Fuck,” he said when a stray bolt of lightning landed so damn close to us it made my ears ring.
I tried to pop my ears and couldn’t.
“We have to get out of here,” I decided, jerking my head in the opposite direction of where the lightning had just struck.
He shook his head. “There’s nowhere to go.”
He was right.
There really wasn’t.
We were in the middle of a dense grove of trees, and the only clear path there was followed the path of the tornado.
“Let’s follow that path, I guess,” I suggested.
He shook his head.
He reached for his pocket, but he came up empty. “No phone.”
I held up my own hands. “Mine’s gone. It was on the tray table.”
And that had gone missing somewhere in the middle of our downward death spiral.
In fact, I distinctly remembered that tray table hitting someone…
I viciously closed that thought off.
I couldn’t think about it right now.
Not and get through this.
“Let’s walk this way,” he said as he pointed down a slope. “Maybe we can find water, then follow the stream south. We’re bound to hit something eventually.”
“If we stayed here, we might have someone find us but…”
But it looked like Mother Nature was about to throw a second fit today, and we were likely not going to be the only thing wrong after a tornado had just ripped through the world. Everything was going to be chaos for a while. We really were on our own.
“Okay.” I reached for his hand. “Let’s go.”
We went, and I noticed that he didn’t pull away.
We started walking down the hill that was closest to us, and as we did, more and more pieces of the plane could be spotted.
But all of those pieces were unrecognizable.
There wasn’t a single piece that I could pinpoint where it was located on the plane.
That is until we got to the bulk of the body of the plane, and then I could make out the metal cylinder that had once housed tons of passengers.
“Do you think they all…?”
Died?
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I didn’t want to contemplate the amount of death that had taken place. How could I…
I didn’t finish that thought, either, because we got to our first person.
A woman wearing a red dress.
And she was most certainly dead.
The tree through her body was a very good indicator.
I quickly turned away, my gaze scanning the clearing.
There were several other people in the clearing, but none of their injuries were conducive with life.
There were missing limbs.
Terribly twisted necks.
Hell, there were two that were missing a head, and their bodies were perfectly sitting in the seats that they’d buckled themselves into.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the lightning flashed across the sky.
The crack of it sounded seconds later, and it was once again so loud and close that my hair stood on end and my ears rang.
“Come on.” Finnian squeezed my hand lightly. “Let’s keep looking.”
We did.
We found several more bodies as we descended the hill. I checked them all for pulses because they looked like their limbs were still intact, but every last one of them were dead.
Movement to our left had us turning our heads, but a young doe was the only thing to make an appearance.
There were no people alive.
Not a single one.
We walked and we walked.
It felt like it was forever, but it was likely only a few minutes, until we got to our first stream.
Or, more accurately, a small river.
“Go downstream. Almost all rivers flow south,” he suggested.
I limped at his side, noticing that he didn’t limp at all.
“How do you think we survived that?” I asked him as another rumble of thunder shook the world around us.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was wondering the same thing.”
I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat and whispered, “I’m scared.”