Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours by John F. Leonard Read Free Book Online

leaking from the place where it used to be.
    Leaking at an alarming rate.
    Not exponential. Just a lot.
    She’d sucked that bleeding finger and come back to herself.
    The pain became intense enough to bring tears to her eyes.
    <><><>
    She was walking.
    Sort of.
    Stagger creeping might have been a better description.
    She lived in Southwark but she was lost now. Had run and run and found herself lost.
    Run away from home because home had ceased to be home. It had become a house of horrors, where terrible transformations took place and dreadful events were perpetrated.
    Home had become an unknown place.
    That might have been the case for a long time.
    She didn’t know, she couldn’t think properly.
    The horror of being there and being who she was.
    If her home was really what she classed as a true home . It was difficult to say when your nightmare-grey world had suddenly turned blood red reality. Hard to know for definite if what you were experiencing was the real world or something forced into your mind by exposure to brutality.
    Angela Gacek kept going because she might rediscover it.
    She might find it again.
    A home.
    The vague thing she remembered from childhood.
    It seemed an unlikely prospect at that point, but it was still a possibility.
    <><><>
    Angela came to the end of one road and edged into the next.
    It felt radically different. The character had changed without warning. Or perhaps she was simply too self-absorbed to notice.
    It was a thoroughfare, whereas up until then, she been rattling along deserted roads.
    Mostly abandoned places.
    Unexpectedly, she found herself on some sort of high street. A street full of shops and shadows.
    Thankfully, it was empty of people.
    Empty of monsters.
    She must be heading away from the river.
    It was too rough, too much decline evident in the buildings and atmosphere, for it to be otherwise.
    There was a stationary bus at the bottom of the road but she couldn’t see the number. That might have given her a clue. Informed her of a route and possible location.
    She walked slowly.
    Eyes continually scanning.
    Pausing to take faltering steps and then turn on the spot.
    Check behind her and stumble back to the front. It hadn’t been long, but she wondered if her flight might last forever.
    Wondered if running was her new existence.
    Wondered how long she could keep moving without going insane or if that had already happened.
    In her heart, Angela had always felt that the world was a hellish place. And now it was really was.
    Hell.
    She could smell smoke in the air and flickers of hot light in the darkening sky.
    London was burning, turning into a nightmare place.
    The masks had fallen away. People had morphed into monsters. Feral things with animal claws and terrible teeth.
    It was like being inside a Beksinski painting.
    <><><>
    She’d seen packs of those monsters roaming. Had hidden and prayed not to be seen by them. One could kill her, a pack of them would rip her to pieces. She’d seen cars roar past, pursued by predators that were once human.
    Not many cars, but enough to know she wasn’t the sole survivor. It was little consolation because they didn’t stop.
    And she wasn’t sure that she wanted them to.
    In their own way, those other survivors scared her nearly as much as the monsters. The people that could endure this must be mad. They had to be.
    She was alone. Now more than ever, she was alone.
    She’d have to stop. Find somewhere safe to hide.
    Rest.
    She was exhausted, mentally and physically. Wasn’t thinking straight. No energy left in her limbs. She felt heavy and dull in every sense.
    And it would be dark soon. The idea of being out here at night was too dreadful to contemplate.
    Perhaps one of these dingy shops that she was scuttling past. They were darker than the street. It nearly made her laugh, the thought of entering one of these buildings and exploring it as a temporary refuge.
    What refuge did it offer?
    Even if it were miraculously empty, she’d