Death Springs Eternal: The Rift Book III by Robert J. Duperre, Jesse David Young Read Free Book Online Page A

working brain. If she were able to see it through the layers of flesh and amniotic fluid, she would recognize it as a viable human entity, though it wouldn’t be much larger than a peach. She also realized how much she needed this broken shell of a man to regain his drive, his passion, or else everything they’d done, all the miles they had journeyed trying to stay alive, would be for nothing. Her irritation formed a ball of hatred in her gut.
    Easy for me to pass judgment , she thought, running a hand through her greasy hair in an attempt to calm down. I don’t know what it’s like being in his shoes. So she did the one thing she could, the one thing she did over and over again for weeks on end: she coddled him.
    Stripping down to nothing but her panties and sliding under the covers, Kyra pressed her stomach into her lover’s back and draped her arm over his shoulder, using her fingers to trace a line from his elbow to his chest. He rustled, and she heard the shotgun fall off the bed, hitting the carpeted floor with a stifled clunk. His hand grabbed hers and pulled it tight to his chest. Kyra snaked her other arm underneath his head and turned his face to her. His eyes were closed, and his forehead furrowed, but he pursed his lips just the same. Kyra planted a kiss on them and pressed her cheek against his. She felt the damp lines of tears, old and new, on his flesh.
    “I love you,” she whispered, and shut her eyes.
     
    *    *    *
     
    There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, allowing the sun to shine down unfiltered. The sun looked so huge it should have been at least a hundred degrees outside, but Josh felt a chill nonetheless. His feet pounded the sidewalk as he walked, the sounds echoing in his ears as if he were in a tunnel.
    He gazed at the various houses he passed by, listening to the chirping birds and children playing in their backyards. Tears welled in his eyes as he took it all in, experiencing through that laughter what it meant to be young and carefree once more. He took in a deep breath, cherishing the smell of lilacs and freshly cut grass, but it was another smell that caused his perfect vision to falter, for underneath everything else he caught a faint whiff of jasmine.
    Josh stopped in his tracks, looking left to right, forward and back. It was all a dream. It had to be. How else to explain how bright and cheery Dover appeared? Only in his dreams could such a dark and dreary place be filled with such lightness.
    But that wasn’t it, and he knew it. He wasn’t dreaming, at least not entirely. That smell of jasmine again, and he put one foot in front of the other. She was here—Isabella, the lady of shadows, his guide through the darkness, whose visits had become sporadic at best over the past six months. There was no other way to explain the sensations. Excitement blossomed within him. He had to find her.
    He passed sight after familiar sight as he walked—the supermarket, the hair salon, the tobacconist where he’d upended his Bonneville, Stacy’s Bar and Grille, The Pit. People were everywhere, and there were cars driving down the road. Carol Hemingway, the middle-aged divorcee who lived next door to his parents, pulled her station wagon up to the curb, stepped out, and then faced his direction. She saluted him with two fingers, passed along a kind smile and nod, then got back into her car and drove away. Josh watched the vehicle disappear around the corner, dumbfounded.
    That’s when he noticed Carol wasn’t the only one whose attention had turned to him. There was a large group of women sitting on lawn chairs in front of Tae Kim’s Beauty Salon. They stood up and cheered when he looked in their direction, clapping with their hands in the air like they would for a returning hero. Three of them stepped forward, mouthing thank you beneath the chorus of cheers.
    “Thank you for caring for Andrew,” said one woman.
    “And Francis,” said another.
    “And Meghan,” said the third.
    The rest