Refuge Book 1 - Night of the Blood Sky by Jeremy Robinson, Jeremy Bishop Read Free Book Online Page A

her mouth. What the hell? she thought, isolating a small, hard grain in her mouth and spitting it into her hand.
    Sand.
    A thin film of it covered the road. She leaned forward and shook her hands through her hair, messing it up more than she would have preferred, but the grit against her skull was already starting to annoy her. The sand fell like thick dandruff, bouncing on the macadam around her feet.
    She heard the scuff of feet behind her. She turned to find Griffin bending to pick up her sheriff’s hat. He dusted it off and handed it back to her.
    “There’s a sand pile in Ashland for when the roads get icy,” she said, answering the question she thought he was going to ask. “But I don’t see how a wind could carry it all the way here. They keep it covered most of the year. Though that would explain the smell in the air.”
    Griffin looked confused, but sniffed the air and said, “Salt.”
    “It’s got to be from Ashland,” she said, trying to convince herself, but not really believing it.
    “Becky,” he said. “I think the sand might be the least of our worries.”
    This got her attention. “What do you mean?”
    The sound of screeching tires filled the air. A car, headlights out, tore around a side street corner and barreled toward them.
    “Look out!” both Rule and Griffin shouted in unison and moved to tackle each other out of the way, but the driver saw them and hit the brakes. Tires squealed over the pavement, and the sporty SUV swung to the side, stopping ten feet away.
    Without missing a beat, the driver’s side door popped open and a half-dressed Winslow Herman sprang barefoot onto the road, while Carol Herman, still in the passenger’s seat, put the vehicle in park and turned on the hazards.
    “Winslow,” Rule chided, “What in the name of God’s green—”
    “The stars!” he shouted, wide-eyed. “The stars!”
    Rule looked up at the sky. Aside from the red glow occasionally concealing them, the stars, in her opinion, were right where they should be—above her head. But then she noticed something that was wrong. “The moon...”
    “That’s what I was going to tell you,” Griffin said. “The moon shouldn’t be full, and it shouldn’t be overhead.”
    “That’s not all,” Winslow said, his voice shaking with either excitement or panic. “The stars...they’re all wrong. They’re not our stars. And neither is the moon.”
    Rule nearly argued, but quickly saw that he was right. She’d looked at the moon a lot as a kid. Her father had been obsessed with the lunar landings. And she’d even looked at the moon through Winslow’s telescope a few times. The pattern of shadows and craters had become familiar to her. But not anymore. The sphere above her head was a stranger. The craters weren’t where they were supposed to be.
    She wanted to ask ‘What does it mean?’ but that was the obvious next question, and Winslow answered it with his usual informed tone, as though explaining a scientific law. “We’re no longer on Earth.”

 
     
    9
     
    Phillip Beaumont lifted his head with a groan. Without thought, he put his hand to his head and winced. The pain was intense—a combination of a deep, throbbing pain and the sharp sting of salty fingers touching an open wound.
    What happened? he thought, blinking his eyes. Everything was blurry—not because of an injury but because his glasses were missing.
    He searched the area with his hands, patting his pants, which were sticky. He searched the seat beneath him and then absentmindedly placed a hand on his belly. He quickly recognized the hard, smooth surface of a lens. It wasn’t his glasses, but at least he could see.
    With one eye closed, he raised the lens to his right eye and the world came into focus. He was in his truck, but a white sheet had been thrown over the steering wheel.
    Not a sheet , his mind told him, the airbag .
    His memory scratched at the inside of his skull, clawing its way back to the surface. He looked down