His mannerisms gave Lauren an unsettling chill. “Neo?”
An index finger over his lips now, Neo cupped his ear with his other hand. His eyes gradually grew wide as his face teemed with urgency. Then, without warning, he bolted toward Lauren.
She froze in place. Neo was now looking her directly in the eyes as he charged her. Lauren didn’t have time to react beyond tensing up and bracing for impact.
The young man crashed into her, enfolding her into his arms at the same moment an earsplitting scream was heard and the shed detonated into an outpouring, angry cloud of fire, smoke, and burning debris.
Neo held Lauren snugly, shielding as much of her body with his own as he could as a fireball raged outward, consuming all that surrounded them. A thundering shockwave trailed milliseconds after, colliding into them with the force of a runaway locomotive, launching the twosome airborne at the speed of sound.
Neo and Lauren soared yards away into the nearby ravine and touched down fiercely, charred, entangled and unconscious, on the rocky shore of a rampant Trout Run.
Chapter 24
A thunderous detonation like nothing Grace had ever before heard rocked the cabin, shattering every pane of glass in every frame mounted to its posterior. Shards flew inward, distributing violently throughout the cabin’s interior as the shockwave upset chairs, knocked picture frames from walls, plates and cups from counters, and Grace from her horizontal plane of relative comfort on the couch.
On the verge of falling asleep, Grace thought she was dreaming at first, likening what had transpired to the falling sensation that oftentimes occurred as the boundary between conscious and subconscious was breached. Palms to the hardwood, she could feel the ground rumble briefly, akin to an earthquake aftershock, the dust now falling to settle on and around her.
Grace coughed as she inadvertently inhaled a breath of sullied air and looked around. Whatever it was had gone off outside. Shards of broken glass and debris were everywhere. She felt deafened, and her ears rang in the highest of pitches as if she’d suddenly developed the world’s worst case of tinnitus. She could no longer hear the buzzing she’d heard just before Lauren had left.
She gulped at the thought, and panic began to set in. How long ago had that been? Minutes? Hours? Seconds? “Oh God…Lauren!” She yelled her sister’s name over and over again, and with no regard for her physical state, Grace forced herself upright and went about brushing off, as shards of glass adhering to her clothing embedded into her skin. She could feel the sting of the incisions, but her confusion and horror magnified by the adrenaline gushing its way through her made it inconsequential. Fighting a spell of vertigo and the pain of glass stabbing and slashing her tender feet, she trudged to the front door, opened it, and escaped to the porch.
Through the tree line, Grace could see a plume of smoke rising in the distance, blackish gray, angry and blooming. She hopped down onto the grass and took careful steps into the yard while her eyes tracked the column, a thin veneer of blood marking each step. Something was different about the air…it wasn’t clean anymore. It didn’t smell like tall grass, sun-warmed leaves or anything fresh. It smelled like dust and ash now. It smelled of fire, char, and ruin.
Grace thought she could hear someone calling her name, but the voice was muffled and far too unfamiliar to discern. Passing it off as her imagination, she pivoted and sent a glance over the cabin’s roofline, her chest aching at the sight of another smoke plume, this one much larger, broader, and closer—close enough to be in her backyard.
“Lauren!” she shrieked as her bare, bloodied feet carried her to the backyard and to a view of destruction for which she could never have prepared. The shed was gone, no longer there. It had somehow been demolished into nothing, a smoky crater of blackened earth marking the spot where it had once been. Metal and wooden debris were strewn about as far back as the wood line. Grace scanned the scene, feeling her heart beat faster by the second, but she couldn’t see her sister anywhere. Neo had been there since erecting her father’s radio gear, and the shed was where he had spent most of his time. Lauren had said she was on her way to see him. But where was she?
Screaming her sister’s name again at the top of her lungs, Grace racked her brain for answers and explanations as to what possibly could have occurred here, but she drew a blank. Her sister needed to be found, and this was becoming too much for her in her state. She began feeling dizzy. She rotated slowly to make her way back to the cabin but slowed to a stop when a hollow feeling of vacuity tore through her lower pelvis.
Shuddering, Grace glided her hand between her thighs, then examined her fingers. She keeled over and retched at the sight—her fingers and most of her palm were smeared thick in dark crimson blood.
“No…no! This isn’t happening!” Grace exclaimed on her way to her knees. “Not this! Not my baby…please, God, no!” She dissolved into tears, called for Lauren once more, then began shouting for help.
On the verge of passing out, a pair of meaty hands suddenly slid beneath Grace and heaved her from the ground as if she weighed nothing.
Grace squeezed her eyelids closed to wring out the dense tears blurring her vision. “Christian? Christian, honey? Is that you?”
“No, Grace, it isn’t. I’m sorry,” the man said, holding her in his lap. “It’s Ken, not Christian.”
“Ken?” Grace’s eyes expanded for a second before rolling backward. “Who…what are you…doing to me? Where…”
Ken gently shushed her and looked her over. “Damnation, girl…what happened to you? There’s blood
