Winds of Change by Jason Brannon Read Free Book Online

God
permission to use his lips. He immediately began to speak without
even realizing it. “ Alastor, the executioner, walks the
earth ,” he said. “ Woe to those who stand in his
way .”
    Pete, Chuck, and I all saw Steven faint in
time to catch him. He stayed unconscious for a couple of minutes,
and none of us dared to touch him. I think we were all a little
frightened of him at that point. Then his eyes popped open, and we
all jumped.
    “What happened?” he asked, clearly not
remembering. Hesitantly, I told him. At first, he didn’t believe a
word of what I was saying. Then, seeing the expressions on the
faces around him, he realized that it was all true.
    “I translated the message,” he said, hardly
believing it. “How is that possible, and what does it mean?”
    “I think it means we need to steer clear of
anybody named Alastor,” Pete said. “Anybody in here by that
name?”
    We all looked at each other nervously and
shook our heads.
    “Something’s on fire outside,” Leland Kennedy
interrupted, drawing our attention away from Steven.
    “That’s where the explosion came from,” Chuck
said, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “It looks like two
cars collided head-on.”
    “Somebody must have rolled down their
window,” I said. “The air got ‘em.”
    “That can’t be it,” Chuck said as a car sped
by. “There’s always a way for air to get in. The air conditioning,
the windows, the exhaust. Look at that car that’s still going. The
driver would be dead by now if air was completely responsible.”
    Seconds later the car slid off the road and
hit a tree. Clouds of smoke rolled lazily into the night sky.
    “Then again, I could be wrong,” he added.
“Maybe it’s prolonged exposure to the atmosphere that does
it.”
    “I’m tired of talking about this,” I
admitted. “Go and get the generator. Let’s get some lights going
and try to find a comfort zone that doesn’t involve talking about
death every second.”
    “That might be the best thing,” Chuck agreed,
walking toward hardware with his flashlight held out in front of
him.
    “You might as well get some rest,” I told
everybody else. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”
    For once, everyone did as they were told.
Chuck soon returned with a Honda generator. I managed to find half
a can of gas stashed behind the riding lawn mowers. Steven lugged
two of the brightest halogen work lights down the aisle, their
cords trailing behind them like entrails.
    The generator was new and started on the
second try. From that point, it was just a matter of plugging the
lights in. Soon, there was no trouble seeing everyone and
everything around us. It was certainly a lot better than being
stuck in the dark with only a couple of flashlights that worked off
of D-cell batteries.
    Of course, in the light we all saw more than
we wanted to see. There beneath our feet was the same grit that was
piled up in mounds outside the door. We had all mistaken it for the
dust and dirt that can always be found on warehouse floors. But it
was more than that. It was all that was left of the people who had
walked out of their houses that morning, never suspecting in a
million years that they would be reduced to something out of a
crematorium urn by the end of the day.
    Nobody really said anything about the dust
underfoot. We all just kind of moved to another part of the floor
and wondered how the flesh-colored ash had found its way into the
store. None of us wanted to consider the possibility that we
weren't entirely safe, that the glass doors we felt so secure
behind weren't actually anything more than microfilters, screening
out only a small portion of the contaminant from the
atmosphere.
    “I’m hungry,” Kenneth Weaver announced,
ignoring the dust underfoot. It was obvious by the boy’s girth that
he wasn’t kidding.
    “Is that all you can think about?” Jake asked
his brother. “We’re all going to die here, and all you’re worried
about