At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) by John Hennessy Read Free Book Online Page B

You
can’t even tell that I’m going over 100.”
    I cracked my pinky fingers. “Because there
are cars blocking the road. What if we come around a corner and
there’s a car that you can’t maneuver past. You wanna kill us?”
    Jelly started clearing his throat more. Too
tense. The road was so curvy; it snaked like a river. We could hit
a car at any moment.
    I perched myself between the front seats,
watching, waiting. As we came around a bend, I spotted the dead
car, vacant of a driver.
    Jacob dipped the wheel to his left, eyes on
the car in our lane.
    “Car! Car! Car!” I screamed. I had never
screamed so fiercely before. I fell back into my seat, still
buckled.
    “What the hell!” Jacob shouted.
    Another car drove right for us, barreling
down the road as fast, if not faster than us. It honked its horn:
BERN—BERN—BERN! We missed each other by a centimeter, I would
guess. A mere centimeter. Jacob went straight into the ditch and
out again, braking like a madman, not thinking but reacting. We
halted in the middle of the road. My nose smashed the seat in front
of me. Blood gushed for a second, then streamed down my lip.
    There were a few groans as everyone settled;
I don’t know if they were mine. “Everyone all right?” I asked. My
voice sounded broken to me. My head swam, and my blurry vision
didn’t seem to want to go back to normal. My nose ceased bleeding,
though, so that was a positive.
    “Yeah,” Tortilla uttered to no one in
particular.
    “Yeah, I am too,” Jelly replied. He groaned.
It was him who was doing all the groaning, I noticed.
    I unbuckled to examine Jacob. He was out,
fainted. “He doesn’t look good. Why did we let him drive, he wasn’t
even functioning properly.”
    “He took the key,” Tortilla said. “I don’t
know . . .”
    Jelly got out, letting me out after him. We
inspected the Trackster. “What a shame,” Jelly commented. “It was
brand new, and bam, a scratch.” The neo-plastic body was light but
incredibly durable, and even at the scary speeds we were going, the
front bumper was barely even scratched. Neo-plastic, a life-saving
material no one should have ever had to live without; it probably
prevented a million deaths a day. “What a damn shame.” He shook his
head, but it hurt and some more groans followed. He eyed Jacob.
“He’s melted, completely insane.”
    “That’s certain,” I said. “Probably enough
to be in an institution.”
    Jelly laughed. “What do we do?”
    Suddenly, a roar flew by us, so deep and
threatening; it promised vengeance. It came from the east, in the
direction of Jacob’s house.
    “Oh, no. No—no—no—no—no! What do we do?”
Jelly flew up his arms, clearing his throat over and over. His
panicky movements disoriented me for a second.
    “Stop it, Jelly!” I yelled. “Stop it.
Panicking won’t help, so stop. Help me move Jacob to the back.”
Together we lifted Jacob and plodded around the car, every labored
step ached, but we got him into the backseat. “I’ll drive.”
    Jelly’s eyes pleaded with me to let him
drive, but he said, “Sure, yeah, all right. You’re the better
driver.” He hopped into the passenger’s front.
    I got behind the wheel. I didn’t ask if they
were ready, I clicked the four-wheel-drive button, locked it into
drive, and looked out on the road ahead. I heard another roar and
zoomed away, west, toward Bellingham. The Trackster was smooth. I
had never driven a car like it. Especially since Jacob disabled the
fake engine noise. It was so quiet as I hit 80 KPH. I had heard a
gasoline engine a few years ago, and I don’t know how anyone could
stand such a noise-polluting machine; it was detrimental to my
ears.
    Most of the city’s expansion ran North and
South, leaving the lake rather undeveloped, which was nice. I liked
living so close to it. It was so much quieter there. The parks, the
people, for the most part, were all muted in comparison.
Quarter-way up Alabama Hill, the tops of the