The Divide: Origins by Mitchel Grace Read Free Book Online Page A

to kill me,” Zoe said.
    As
Max looked down at her, he realized that what he did was wrong in no way. This
man might have been his friend at one time, but he was also toxic. He had saved
an innocent girl’s life, and no sin could be too much to bear if that was the
result.
    “Come
on. Let’s get you washed up,” Max said.
    “How?
We don’t have power to anything but an air conditioner.”
    “I’m
going to hook it up to the breaker. The only reason I didn’t do that before was
because I was trying to limit the use of it so maybe we could stay here longer.
It’s clear that we’ve got to get out of here, though. In a couple of hours when
the pipes unfreeze, we’ll be able to turn the water on. It won’t be warm, but
we can shower. After two days, I’m looking forward to it. Until then, we’ll
just have to get you clean with some towels.”
    “And
after that?”
    “I
don’t know. I think we need to move. I’ve just got to figure out where we can
go. It isn’t like anywhere’s going to be safe, is it?”
    “I don’t know, but let’s get those
towels. I don’t think I can take having this guy’s blood on me for another
second.”
    Max
found her some towels, and then Zoe went into the next room to clean herself up
and change into some clothes that she had gotten at home. It wasn’t ideal. Her
skin was stained in spots with Jerome’s blood, but it would have to do until
morning. Once she was back in the living room and beside the warm fireplace,
Max asked her a question.
    “How
would you feel about Texas?”
    “What
about it?”
    “We
could go there.”
    “Okay,
but what makes you think it’s any better there?”
    “It
probably isn’t, but Jerome had a brother who lived there. He was older, and
when his parents moved up north, he was already in college. They used to write
each other all the time. He even called him a few times. The main thing they
discussed over the last few months was this disaster. I thought they were
crazy, but it turns out they and the media were right for once. His brother was
one of these people we used to think of as paranoid. Every time something
happened, he stocked up on food and ammunition. He even wrote Jerome telling
him how if something did happen that he needed to find a way to get to Texas.
He’s supposed to have enough food to last a couple of years, plenty of guns,
and a generator with enough gas to power the place for a while. It turns out
that he was a genius. He’s probably the only man in the world living it up
right now.”
    “Let
me get this straight. You want me to stay with the brother of a man who tried
to kill me. I’m not even mentioning the fact that you did kill his brother. How is that conversation going to end?”
    “We’ll
lie. We can say that Jerome told us all about his setup in Texas. Then we’ll
feed him a story about how Jerome died a hero’s death. Maybe he’ll let us stay
if he thinks we were friends with his brother.”
    “Do
you even know where this guy lives in Texas?”
    “At
some house about an hour outside of Houston. I know it’s not much to go on, but
we’re running out of wood, and the gas won’t last much longer. We’ve got to go
somewhere, and that sounds like a good bet to me.”
    “All
right. I’ll follow your lead on this one. That’s a long drive, though. How are
we going to survive that long in these conditions?”
    “We
can gather everything possible here. We’ll bring all the canned goods and the
bottled water from the fridge. As for the heat, I know the truck air
conditioner won’t keep up, but we’ll find a way to manage. At night, we won’t
have a choice other than to find shelter if things keep going like they are. I
can’t drive in a blizzard. We can look for more houses like this one as the day
gets late, and we’ll simply make it our own for the night.”
    “And
what if someone’s already staying in it?”
    “We’ll
do what we have to.”
    “No,
we won’t. Your friends killed everyone