“What was that?” Simone lifted Ava onto her hip and squeezed between a police car and a shuttle bus ignoring the mesmerized clamoring to get out.
“It happened to me, too! Okay? It happened to me, too!”
Minji strung her thoughts into one coherent string and said, “I think the attack came in waves. Extending outward, getting stronger. Like waves of a tsunami. Building.”
“I was almost to The Venetian when I saw the helicopters going down.” Simone tilted her head, gazing back to where they had come from. The smoke was so thick it was difficult to make out the shapes of the distinctive resorts like The Venetian. “That was the next really big attack after the initial one.”
“So how far did that one spread?” Minji hesitated, trying to discern how to get through the next tangle of bodies, vehicles and rubble.
Arthur let out a loud, startling sob. “There was a line between the event and the unaffected area. That’s what those people said at the rescue center. On the news they said to get out of the event if we were able. I did that! I should’ve been rescued. I should be on my way home to my family!”
Simone dropped back a few paces and gently patted his shoulder. “But the big second attack came and it pushed the event outward.” The man’s torment appeared to soften Simone’s view of him.
“But how far?” Arthur asked, his voice cracking. “How far did it spread?”
Minji dreaded to know the answer.
Arthur blinked his eyes rapidly, fighting tears. “This damn smoke...burning my eyes…”
The two women shared a significant look, but said nothing. They were all close to an emotional breaking point. Their physical condition wasn’t doing much better. Minji struggled to keep walking despite the stitch in her side. Bailey was still asleep, but she needed to be fed and changed soon. It was difficult to look at Ava and Jake and see their mouths oddly flexing beneath empty eyes.
It was a surreal journey past pirate ships, crashed flying saucers, castles, and towering hotels glittering in the shards of sunlight slicing through the thick, dark haze looming overhead. Automatic doorways continued to unleash more mesmerized onto the strip as they found their way to the front entrances of stores, casinos, and restaurants.
“Are we really the only people not affected?” Minji wondered aloud.
Just as the words left her mouth, the sensation of thousands of ice cold snakes writhing over her skin sent her stumbling into the rear of a van. Bailey woke up with a start and let out a cry of dismay. The sharp needle pricks assailed her brain and stole her breath away. For a single beat of her heart, her vision was stolen and replaced by the terrifying vision she had witnessed before. The colors, the sounds, the beauty, the terror…
“It’s happening again,” she gasped as her eyesight returned.
Looking toward Simone and Arthur, she saw that they were frozen in place, their eyes rolled upward.
Chapter 13
West Texas
2 PM
“Sir, we cannot allow you to enter the area,” the sheriff repeated.
Ruben rubbed his nose and shuffled his feet as he watched the news reporter attempting to stare down the local sheriff. Having lived in the area his whole life, the young man knew there was no way the uber-clean, uber-handsome man from a big news network was going to convince the sheriff to do his bidding. During Ruben’s wild high school days he’d had his fair share of run-ins with the local sheriff department while speeding on the county roads at obscene hours of the night. The deputies were all hard asses, just like Sheriff Parker. The tall, eagle-eyed silver-haired man in his severe brown uniform did not flinch when the reporter bombarded him with a dozen reasons why he should be allowed past the two vehicles forming a barricade along the two lane country road.
Narrowing his eyes at the area just beyond the police barricade, Ruben observed the
flat expanse of the plains covered in brush and populated by the transfixed people of his town.
“Can you believe this?” Ruben drawled in his thick Texas accent, folding his arms over his stocky chest.
Beside him, his best friend Chuck slid his bony fingers through his thick blond hair. “This is all sorts of fucked up. Do you think Esmer and Terry are out there?”
With a sick feeling in his gut, Ruben nodded. “My sisters are in the affected area, so yeah. Luckily Mom and Dad are still visiting friends in Eastland, so they’re safe.”
“For now. The news is reporting this thing spreads from here to California and up through Utah. This is some serious shit.” Wiping his sunburned neck with his kerchief, Chuck exhaled loudly.
Ruben and Chuck had just finished eating lunch and were returning to their jobs on a nearby ranch when they’d heard about the terrifying event gripping the western part of the country. Then the somber news that their hometown nearby was also affected reached the men and they had raced in the direction of Ruben’s home to check on his sisters. The two sheriff cars blocking the road had been a punch to the gut. Ruben surveyed the area thoughtfully, trying to formulate a plan. He had to save his sisters. With his parents away, he was in charge of his two younger siblings. Though he didn’t feel like much of an adult at twenty, he took his responsibilities very seriously.
Leaning toward Chuck, he whispered, “With Sheriff Parker distracted, maybe I can scoot along the fence by those trees. I need to get out there and find my sisters.”
“Dude, that’s all sorts of a bad idea. You might catch it.”