Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 by James Harden Read Free Book Online Page A

can walk in a
day. Or a night.”
    “You expect me to believe that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve only got three water bottles here.
No food. That’s not enough water to make that trip.”
    “Each bottle is two liters,” he says. “I
drink one a day. It’s not much. But it’s enough to survive on.”
    “What about your food?”
    “Hunger got the better of me,” he whispers.
“Hunger always gets the better of me.”
    “So it looks like you’re stranded out
here,” Kenji says. “No food. No water. You’re a dead man.”
    He smiles again. It’s a goofy and creepy
and delusional kind of smile. Maybe he’s too dehydrated to know how truly dead
he already is. And maybe we are too.
    “Not dead yet,” he whispers.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “There’s water, if you know where to look.
It’s close.”
    Kenji looks up and down this lonely road.
There was nothing but desert in all directions. The horizon ended in heat
mirages.
    There is definitely no water here.
    There
is nothing in the desert.
    “I’ve been out here a long time,” I say.
“There’s no water. There’s no digging for it. There’s no rain. There’s no
creeks, or rivers or lakes. There’s nothing.”
    “There is,” he answers confidently and
eagerly. Like someone who is happy to share a secret. “There are underground
rivers. Canyons. They are hidden and narrow. They fill up in the wet season.
They flow from the top end, all the way through the middle of the country. All
the way down.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “How do you think I made it so far? I’ve
got three bottles. One for each day. I’ve been out here for six. Six long days.
Six long nights. There’s an oasis not far from here. A freshwater river. Carved
its way through the desert a million years ago.”
    “An oasis? You expect us to believe that?”
    “You will believe it when you see it. When
you drink from it.”
    “And you can take us there?” Sarah asks.
    The man nods slowly. “I sure can. You give
me some food. You give me some water. I’ll take you there.”
    We all look at each other, unsure of what
to do. Could we trust this guy?
    Trust
is a dangerous thing. A deadly thing.
    “We don’t have a choice,” Sarah says.
    “Yes we do,” I say. “We push through. We
can make it.”
    Sarah shakes her head. “No, we won’t make
it. We’re already dehydrated. The town is another two or three days’ walk. We
won’t make it. Our pace has slowed considerably. And Kenji is making mistakes.
We’re all making mistakes. We’re getting careless.” She lowers her head. “We
didn’t even check under the truck or any of the trailers when we got here.
We’re slipping. We’re slipping because we’re dehydrated. Because we’re
exhausted.”
    “I don’t like this,” I say, not knowing
what else to say. Because right now, we are stuck. We knew this would be hard,
but it was taking longer than expected. Probably because we were already
struggling when we set off, we were already starving and malnourished.
    This apocalypse, this plague, it is making
us weaker by the day.
    “She’s right,” Kenji says. “We need water.”
    Kenji slings his back pack off and finds a
pair of zip ties he took from the dead soldiers in the Blackhawk wreckage. “But
we’re tying you up,” he says to the stranger. “If you lead us into a trap, if
anything goes wrong, it will end bad for you. Do you understand?”
    “Nothing will go wrong,” he says.
“Everything is right. We are going to the oasis. Finally.”
    He is smiling. He is happy and delusional.
    He is definitely dehydrated.
    “What’s your name?” I ask.
    “Billy,” he answers, offering his hand for
me to shake.
    I don’t take it. Instead I say, “Billy, if
you screw us over, I will kill you myself.”
    He nods to let me know he understands. He
is smiling, squinting his eyes against the harsh desert sun.
    Kenji pulls him to his feet, and ties his
hands in front of his body. He does not