Carry the Flame Read Free Page A

the abrupt silencing of the screech. She figured the cannon had gouged the side, swung away from it, then gouged it again as the crew tried to outrun the storm. Rolling through blackness, it would have been easy enough for them to think they’d struck a rock wall—if they even noticed the impact in the blinding, deafening chaos.
    The scrapes also indicated the direction taken by the armored tank. Her eyes quickly trailed the tread pattern down the same slope the caravan had traveled yesterday. The tracks ran near or over the ones she had spotted as the storm descended. The memory turned her toward a thin gray curtain of smoke still hanging over where Augustus said his camp stood.
    But where was the tank now? Over a ridge? Hiding behind a hill? It would have been forced to stop, too. She couldn’t imagine that it had kept blundering blindly through a land pitted with deep gaps and steep drop-offs.
    She looked around again. Not a soul. Only a preternaturally bright and silent dawn after a terrifying night. The wind that forced them to find immediate shelter had flattened even the hill’s brittle, charred forest. Boulders had ceded to gusts and rolled into gullies or were piled against larger rocks, forming huddles likely to last eons. Yet all around her she saw a desert forming rapidly, a thousand years of parching compressed to hours by grinding heat and wind.
    In a coruscating flash, the blue sky blanched, as if incinerated. She rubbed her eyes to see if her vision had failed, but the atmosphere— poof— had simply returned to its most pallid appearance. Then she worried that the tank cannon had come alive; but no, it wasn’t that, either.
    Bewildered by what she’d witnessed, and uneasy over what it might mean, she checked on the sleeping children before rushing to peer inside the cab. Maul and Erik were still resting in their tight, protected hub.
    No sign of Bliss.
    She searched all around the truck, then hurried to the van, about a hundred feet away. Augustus was crawling out from under the engine, dark skin paled by dust.
    â€œWe’ve got to get moving,” he said, glancing behind him, to the sides, everywhere at once. “Something’s still burning.” He raised his eyes to the pale smoke about five miles away. “My wife, my girls. Dear God, let me find them. Alive. ”
    Jessie put her hand on his broad shoulder. “Didn’t you hear the tank last night? It came right through—”
    â€œTank? No, I never heard that. The storm was so loud I could hardly hear myself think. Was it coming from there?” He pointed to the gray smoke.
    â€œI’m not sure,” she hedged. “We won’t know till—”
    â€œOh, God.” He dropped to his knees and hung his head; in prayer, she guessed.
    â€œWe’ll go there,” she said. “I promise. But I’ve got to find Bliss.”
    He looked up. “Your girl’s missing? In this?” His eyes widened, but looked emptier for the effort, like he’d seen a holocaust—or imagined one coming.
    A nod was all Jessie managed before she turned and threw open the van’s driver door, shaking Brindle. “Where’s Jaya?”
    The scrawny, bearded stammerer opened his eyes on the empty seat beside him. Then he swung around, as if puzzled by the blind girls and babies crowded among the crates of dried fruit, produce, and smoked meats.
    â€œHe’s not back there,” Jessie said.
    â€œGoddamn h-h-him. H-H-H-He jumped out b-b-b-before I—I could st-st-stop h-him.”
    â€œBliss is gone, too.”
    She gazed at the hills, noticing that dust had collected in scores of uniform lumps against a sharp slope; but her eyes dropped at once to the tank tracks. Burned Fingers ran up, pointing to them.
    â€œThat was close. Very close,” he said.
    â€œYou see the side of the tanker?” she asked him.
    He looked over and swore in surprise.
    â€œIt