Blood Red by Jason Bovberg Read Free Book Online

aircraft
for long moments, but Rachel can hear its engines now; she can tell
that it’s struggling, even this far away. The high-pitched whine
comes and goes. When she sees it again, a black trail of smoke is
snaking behind it, and its roll is turning into more of a tumble.
Rachel loses her breath. Her hand shakes wildly in front of her
face as she helplessly brings it to her mouth, wanting to stop the
emotion from exploding out of her.
    The plane is falling, spinning crazily now.
This impossible sight in the far distance, this new horror, takes
an eternity to unfold across the sky, and the terrible scream of
the airliner’s death throes still hasn’t even reached her yet. Now
it’s breaking apart into pieces large and small. Licks of orange
flame and dots of blackness color the atmosphere around it, and
everything is falling slowly downward, silently beyond the
smoke.
    Rachel jerks her head away from the sight.
Her chest is convulsing as she trudges around the front of the car,
holding onto it, trying desperately to remain standing when her
heart is telling her to simply fall down. She presses her hands to
her ears as the sounds of the distant sky explosion reach her. She
falls into the driver’s seat, crying hard, and starts up the
car.
    She drives with blurred vision, trying to
contain her breaths, which are clutching at her ribcage, rasping in
and out of her. She presses her right hand between her breasts,
willing her body calm.
    “ Daddy!” she manages to whisper, and
then she’s repeating the word beneath her tears. She’s watching the
gutters and the sidewalks, searching for him, even though her
conscious mind knows that he took his car, that he’s somewhere
else, somewhere safe and alive and probably looking for her.
Right?
    Her breathing gradually calms, although she
has to blink herself away from the memory of the falling passenger
jet. Swallowing, she forces herself to keep watching for further
survivors, scanning porches and yards and windows.
    In the distance, she sees two figures running
toward the pillar of black smoke that’s still rising above the
downtown area. She’s only a mile away from there, but she feels
incapable of moving at more than a snail’s pace, as if her mind
will permit her to observe only so many new horrors per minute.
    From nearly every home, every window,
especially the ones shaded by massive trees, glows the subtle red
radiance. She might not have noticed it had she not been looking
for it, but it’s there in the smoky air. It’s everywhere, so
omnipresent that it’s almost unnoticeable. It’s just a part of the
world. If she focuses through stinging eyes, she can see it peeking
from behind blinds, from between curtains, this damned light,
suggesting unnaturally stunted mortality in every home she passes.
There’s a lump in Rachel’s throat that she doesn’t believe will
ever subside.
    Near the corner of Magnolia and Scott,
activity catches her eye. There’s a small child on a front lawn,
writhing about, clearly in pain. Rachel brings the Honda to an
abrupt stop, shuts off the engine, and gets out of the car. The
child is perhaps two or three years old, a little barefoot blond
girl in a princess nightgown. She’s hurt somehow, mewling an almost
animal sound, her hands groping about in the grass to steady
herself.
    “Are you okay?” Rachel calls, coming closer.
“Honey, are you okay?”
    She reaches the girl and touches her
shoulder, and the girl reacts with fear, her sounds rising in pitch
to near-hysteria. The sounds make Rachel’s gut lurch; there’s
something terribly wrong with the little girl’s voice. Rachel
reaches out again to steady the girl, who’s now scrambling
awkwardly across the grass away from her. She moves as if her hands
are broken.
    The girl lifts her head to look at the
stranger who touched her, and Rachel stops, clamping her hands to
her mouth. The girl’s eyes are clouded over and the skin of her
face is pockmarked with angry welts. Her