Only twelve more hours, Clayton had claimed. Twelve hours until their arrival. It seemed too incredible to be true.
“Want to hear the radio?” he asked his brother.
The boy only stared through the window, already calm after witnessing the brutal murder. He’d seen many like it before. They were all the same after a while. People had to do what they could to survive out in the Eastlands.
William flipped on the radio, stopping on a station that played bluegrass. A man strummed away on a banjo, singing in a high voice about a girl who’d gotten away. It was a nice tune—sad but upbeat. It mirrored exactly how William felt—sad about his mother’s death, but upbeat about the opportunities just over the horizon.
“This one’s for you, Momma,” he said, turning up the volume.
He forgot about his brother in the backseat, the miserable heat of what would be a long summer, and the blood drying on his hands and face. The music coursed through his veins like a drug. Soon, all he could think about was a picture he’d once seen of the New Dallas skyline. He’d found a poster of the city in the master bedroom of a house he and his mother had robbed in his boyhood. The buildings had seemed enormous, like relics left over from a time when gods ruled the earth.
For the next few hours, as he listened to the radio and whistled along, he imagined what city people must be like. Once he arrived, he planned to find a bench somewhere and sit and study them for a while.
It was happening. He could barely contain his excitement. After living in a barren wasteland all his life, he, William Casmas, was going to see the New Dallas Republic.
He was going to see it burn.
***
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Teenager Kip Garrity has spent the apocalypse hiding in his fortified house and training with his former-Green Beret father. But when his dad is injured and requires antibiotics to live, Kip must leave his home for the first time in years…and survive in a nightmarish world overrun with the twisted remnants of humanity…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Denoncourt is the author of fast-paced, thrilling post-apocalyptic and fantasy fiction. He studied literature and political philosophy at Colgate University and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York City. He lives in New Hampshire.
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