Apocalypse Weird: Genesis (The White Dragon Book 1) Read Free Page A

fire.
    “Okay, wait! Wait, wait, there’s one more thing,” Jo yelled over the music. “My girl is eighteen today!” She waved Kasey to come to her. “To the best friend anyone can possibly have! May you never get married and always be around at 3 o’clock in the morning when I need to call you.”
    Kasey shook her head but embraced Jo when she hugged her.
    “Happy Birthday, Kasey,” the others said, sang, or yelled, depending on their alcohol intake.
    “You gonna kiss him soon?” Jo asked into Kasey’s ear when she hugged her.
    “Shut up!”
    “He’s cute.”
    “That may well be the case but—”
    “There’s no but. Just ’cause you had back luck once or twice, doesn’t mean the world’s gonna end.”
    “Well it did.”
    “Actually, it didn’t. We’re still here and I don’t see anything happening any time soon that’s gonna change that.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Don’t wait too long. After tonight, he’s fair game.”
    “You’re impossible,” Kasey said.
    “I’m gonna have another beer. You want one?”
    “Sure.”
    Jo danced her way to the cooler. Kasey stood there for a moment. The fading daylight painted the sky in shades of dark blue. The orange line at the horizon would only be there for another few minutes before giving way to the night sky. Something far out caught her eye as if a small part of the orange glow had turned red for but an instant. Then it was gone.
    Jack sat by the fire stoking it with part of a branch, beer in hand. He didn’t seem to mind sitting there by himself. She decided to sit with him for a while but before she could walk over, Veronica, another girl from her class, sat down next to him and they started talking. It might be just as well. She went over to Jo and grabbed a beer from the cooler.
    “Cheers,” she said even though she didn’t feel very cheerful all of a sudden.
    “Skoll,” Jo replied.
    “You wanna dance?”
    “I thought you’d never ask.”
     
    Kasey lost herself in the music for a while, fleeing into the rhythm of the bass drum. There were two dreams she’d had throughout her life. They came back on a regular basis, sometimes within days of each other, at other times separated by months. One of them she’d had for years until it stopped, just short of her fifteenth birthday. She had filled pages upon pages of her diary about it before it simply stopped, never to return.
    A few months later, another one began. This one was always accompanied by drums. In it, she saw herself on a straight, deserted road that disappeared into the horizon. The pavement was broken, the double yellow line in the center almost unrecognizable. To her right, a mountain range rose in the glimmering heat. The deep sound of the drums pushed her forward ever further, without stopping, without allowing her to rest. She’d felt the thirst for days but the land she walked was dry and scorched and unforgiving. The amulet glowed like an ember under her shirt and her skin was burned from its unrelenting heat. But she dared not take it off. It was part of her now, part of the rhythm that gave her life, irrevocably connected to her.
    “Kasey. Kasey. Kasey !”
    She opened her eyes. A wave of dizziness lingered for a moment.
    “You okay?” Jack asked.
    “Yeah. I’m fine. What happened?”
    “Nothing. The music stopped and you didn’t, that’s all.”
    “I think I drank a little too much.”
    “You wanna sit?”
    “Yeah.”
    The fire had burned down. A few people had left the party. Did she dance for that long?
    “How about over there?” she asked, pointing at a spot closer to the water.
    “Sure.”
    They sat down in the sand next to each other.
    “You want something to drink?” Jack asked.
    “Water maybe.”
    “Coming right up.”
    Jack disappeared and came back thirty seconds later with two water bottles in hand.
    “Thanks!”
    “You’re welcome.”
    “Tell me about Albuquerque,” she asked.
    “There’s not much to tell really. We weren’t there