Page 116 of Bound in Ashes

TWENTY-ONE

Asia

“Someone’s coming!”

It was Miles, and I heard him even though he wasn’t yelling.

He didn’t need to.

The farm—which, as much as Jack tried to warn us about noise, was always humming with activity—was now silent.

Deathly so.

Strange to think of deathly silence in a dead world.

Wasn’t that what there was supposed to be?

But somehow, someway, we’d managed to scrape out something over these last weeks.

It wasn’t normal.

It wasn’t what we’d lost.

But it was something.

But in the seconds that I stood there, watching three trucks speed down the dirt road, their wheels lifting dust and turning up gravel, but strangely without making a sound.

The trucks came to a stop, parking at an angle in a neat little row. The one in the middle, black, with an angry-looking emblem on its obnoxious chrome grill was out front.

Sheriff Hayes stepped out.

I swallowed, swiping my hands against my canvas pants, and then approached.

“Sheriff, you looked to be in a hurry,” I said.

“Where’s Levi?” the sheriff asked, looking around. “Surely he doesn’t think this is a time to lay around.”

I clenched my fists, but bit my tongue.

“You need something, Sheriff?”

It was Jack, standing behind me, the warmth of his body seeping into mine.

Unsettling and soothing.

I was glad he was here.

“Ran into some trouble scouting. Thought you folks might be able to help,” the sheriff said.

“What kind of trouble?” Jack asked.

“Well, son, what kind would you imagine?”

Jack didn’t say anything either, but I glanced back at him.

His skin, which had taken on a golden hue with all the days in the sun, now had a faint tinge of red.

But his face, otherwise, didn’t give away what he was thinking.