The Tempest
Black Carbon #3
A.J. Scudiere
The Tempest - Black Carbon #3
Copyright © 2021 by AJ Scudiere
Griffyn Ink. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
FIRST EDITION
Contents
Books by A.J.
A.J.’s Renegades
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
About the Author
Want a free story?
Go to www.ReadAJS.com/join-now to get free short stories.
Look for other novels by A.J. Scudiere.
Available in bookstores, online, and at ReadAJS.com.
The NightShade Forensic Files
Book 1 - Under Dark Skies
Book 2 - Fracture Five
Book 3 - The Atlas Defect
Book 4 - Echo and Ember
Book 5 - Salvage (A Shadow Files Novel)
Book 6 - Garden of Bone
Book 7 - The Camelot Gambit
Book 8 - Dead Tide
Book 9 - Sabotage (A Shadow Files Novel) (available 2020)
Black Carbon
Book 1 - The Hunted
Book 2 - The Surface
Book 3 - The Tempest
Book 4 - The Swarm
Legends
The Landa Landa & The Aellai
FORTUNE (red)
FORTUNE (gray)
FORTUNE (Red & Gray)
The Vendetta Trifecta
Vengeance
Retribution
Justice
The Complete Vendetta Trifecta
Stand Alone Stories - Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited
Resonance
Dissonance - a companion novella to Resonance
God's Eye
Phoenix
The Shadow Constant
Stand Alone Novels by A.J. Scudiere: Resonance, God’s Eye, Phoenix, The Shadow Constant
A Collection of Blogs
Smart Chickens - Deliver Us From Email
Smart Chickens - We’re Not Like Other Families
Smart Chickens - Tele Me More
Smart Chickens - Omega Dog
Join A.J.’s Renegades here: www.ReadAJS.com
Praise for A.J. Scudiere
"There are really just 2 types of readers—those who are fans of AJ Scudiere, and those who will be."
-Bill Salina, Reviewer, Amazon
For The Shadow Constant:
"The Shadow Constant by A.J. Scudiere was one of those novels I got wrapped up in quickly and had a hard time putting down."
-Thomas Duff, Reviewer, Amazon
For Phoenix:
"It's not a book you read and forget; this is a book you read and think about, again and again . . . everything that has happened in this book could be true. That's why it sticks in your mind and keeps coming back for rethought."
-Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie
This one is for all my pandemic friends. The Tempest is just one of several books I’ve written while on lockdown. Thank you for keeping me sane and for just being there. I hope we come out the other side okay. Because, honestly, we were all pretty nuts before we got shut inside our houses for a year.
Thank you.
It’s also for anyone who has survived a catastrophic weather event. Parts of Alabama are prone to twisters. The entire northeast was under water or snow a handful of years ago. Texas just had a deep freeze. Things are getting weird. If you’ve survived, then this one is for you. I admire your fortitude so much, I wrote a whole series about it.
Acknowledgments
Books like this require research. There was too much involved to name each person who helped. But thank you to everyone who’s traveled with me to help make this series more realistic. Thank you to everyone who shared stories of the twisters they’ve been through. You helped make this book better.
1
The rumble sounded like a freight train bearing down on her as Joule drove along the virtually empty highway. Her head turned from side to side, looking for the threat. She’d been told that tornadoes were supposed to sound like trains, and that Alabama had tornadoes.
Her breathing shortened and her chest tightened, even as she tried to talk herself down. She scanned the skies and saw nothing. She should be safe.
Joule hated being ever-alert, but it had to be some level of post-traumatic stress. Lord knew, she’d had enough trauma in her life.
The flashing red light signaled a four-way stop, and as the large, dirty white pickup loomed to her right, she saw that the driver seemed wholly unconcerned with whatever disaster was bearing down on them.
Why had she gone to pick up supplies by herself?
Unable to linger at the intersection and assume she was safe if she sat still, she took the ninety-degree right-hand turn with her breath held.
“Are you kidding me?” she yelled into the empty space in the car, to the groceries sitting in too many plastic bags, to the flashing red lights and long, wooden signal arms crossing the road.
It had sounded like a freight train because it was one.
With her foot on the brake, Joule breathed at least a little easier as the red and white-striped bars came to a rest and the small motion toward her right grew into the oncoming engine and the probably thousand cars that it was towing at high speed.
The train was going to take a while and the grocery store had already been far enough away to make her worry about the ice cream melting. The prolonged stop turned her worry to certainty. If she had a spoon, she’d dig the ice cream out of the bag and eat it now, so that at least someone got to enjoy it.
Instead, she watched the cars whizz by and turned the radio on, hopping through the stations.
Country.
Country.
Christian.
Country.
Metal.
Sighing, she went back to one of the country stations. There were a few country songs she liked, and the back beyond of Alabama was not going to be the place to find an alt-rock station.
For a moment, she contemplated the nerves and jitters that came with starting a new job. She
