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He was too far away to hear it.
The nuclear shock wave would have hit the mountains anyway. Hit and bounced high and troubled the sky above them.
But the car went dead.
So did his cell phone and the radio.
All around him the lights went out.
Tom knew the letters. He’d read them somewhere. EMP. But he forgot what they stood for.
That didn’t matter. He understood what they meant.
The city was gone.
An accident?
An attempt to stop the spread?
He sat in his dead car and watched the blackness beyond the cracked windshield and wondered if he would ever know. On the backseat, Benny was silent. Tom turned and looked at him. His brother was asleep. Exhausted and out.
Or . . .
A cold hand stabbed into Tom’s chest and clamped around his heart.
Was Benny sleeping?
Was he?
Was he?
Tom turned and knelt on the seat. Reaching over into the shadows back there was so much harder than anything else he’d had to do. Harder than leaving Mom and Dad. Harder than using his sword on the neighbors.
This was Benny.
This was his baby brother.
This was everything that he had left. This was the only thing that was going to hold him to the world.
No.
God, no.
His mouth shaped the words, but he made no sound at all.
He did not dare.
If Benny was sleeping, he didn’t want to wake him.
If Benny was not sleeping, then he didn’t want to wake that, either.
He reached across a million miles of darkness.
Please, he begged.
Of God, if God was even listening. If God was even God.
Please.
