The Effacing (Book 1.5): Valley's End by T. Anwar Clark Read Free Book Online

their guns when a thump came from the opposite side of the front door.
       Rebekah looked to Ann and whispered, “Quiet.”
       BOCK! BOCK! BOOM!
       “We’re through” Girder yelled from the back. 
        Rebekah and Ann rushed toward the rear area just as the fridge-freezer plunged to its side.
       THUMP! THUMP!
       Their trackers were trying to break through the front door. The rumbling irritated the already concave hallway, pieces of rock crashed on the floors below. The scratches at the window, pounding, shattered.
       As the young ladies made it into the back room, Jim had kicked out the last of his breach point, Girder easily slid through. A gap, just big enough for the girls and Girder to breeze through one behind the other; Jim had to position himself sideways, shove his way through the brick last. He ended up getting stuck, and emerging footfalls scarcely grew near the room within the darkness behind him.
       “Pull me through!” Jim demanded, his hand stretched outward, staring at Girder holding the wax-dripping candle.
       Girder stood stock-still, looking as if wanting to smile, but squeezed it back waiting for Jim to get what he had coming, just as planned. Ann and Maria immediately jumped to assist, grabbing Jim by his huge arm, yanking him through the slit, making a dash in route to ground level.
       There was only one of the two things they’d all feared more than Sworn and his brigade, more than burning to death in the fiery project building. Now they were on the run from it, within a searing building kept aflame by the devil himself. Sworn could have been anywhere outside.
       And that’s where they were headed.
     

CHAPTER 13
     
     
       She didn’t realize Baker watching her. If she did, she’d probably spank his rebellious ass like a newborn baby all the way back to the group. But in the heat of their situation, she would most likely keep him along, scream on him after the one-cut event was finally over.
       The rain continued to pour. The clouds from the implosion were finally settling into a wrapping mist as canals of rain water sped along the curbs and into the city’s drainage system. Maria stood on the corner of Piper and Alder street, just behind an open drain cover, where the downpour’s rapids waterfall-splashed below. She was lucky to see the opening before her. If she hadn’t stopped and looked both ways before crossing the street, she would have almost certainly ended up underground.
       She checked her ammo and skipped over the hole, trotting off in route to Valley’s End, The – burning – End, between the lightly fuming or battered vehicles for extra cover, keeping her eyes and ears open to what may have been up or down the street lying in wait.
       Baker followed Maria precisely – to the detail – in her footsteps, keeping low and being observant from about four eye-straining yards back. He moved when she’d nearly vanished through the mist, doing well until he crossed Piper and Alder. He didn’t see the hole, swallowed rain, gasping as he dropped. It was all too unexpected – how he’d wanted to be a part of something and ended up being a part of something he did not want to be a part of – although he did instigate his predicament. It may have been too soon for him to truly think, but if he would have, his thoughts would have been , I should have stayed in the house , while with the assistance of his body’s immediate-rejoinder self-preservation mechanism, he forced his palm-print into the concrete, and like a fresh load of clothes hanging out to dry, he hung loose.  
       His infamous, one-second lived cry alarmed Maria. She whirled her head around, gun stretched outward. She did not, could not, see anything more than ten feet through the fog and thought the yelp was a mind-teaser and about-faced, content with her mission.
       While feeling the prickling of hard rubbles eating away at his submerged skin, dirty rainwater on top