Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides Read Free

mean?” he asked, repeating what the man had said.
    “That is easy,” Carpathia said. “It means, ‘You cannot help me. Leave me alone.’”
    “Bring Mac back around, would you? This man is going to die of exposure.”
    “I thought you were looking for your wife.”
    “I can’t leave a man to wander to his death.”
    “Millions are dead and dying. You cannot save all of them.”
    “So you’re going to let this man die?”
    “I do not see him, Captain Steele. If you think you can save him, be my guest. I do not mean to be cold, but I have the whole world at heart just now.”
    Rayford slapped his phone shut and hurried back to the lurching, mumbling man.
    As he drew near, Rayford was horrified to see why his gait was so strange and why he trailed a river of blood. He had been impaled by a gleaming white chunk of metal, apparently some piece of a fuselage. Why he was still alive, how he survived or climbed out, Rayford couldn’t imagine. The shard was imbedded from his hip to the back of his head. It had to have missed vital organs by centimeters.
    Rayford touched the man’s shoulder, causing him to wrench away. He sat heavily, and with a huge sigh toppled slowly in the sand and breathed his last. Rayford checked for a pulse, not surprised to find none. Overcome, he turned his back and knelt in the dirt. Sobs wracked his body.
    Rayford raised his hands to the sky. “Why, God? Why do I have to see this? Why send someone across my path I can’t even help? Spare Chloe and Buck! Please keep Amanda alive for me! I know I don’t deserve anything, but I can’t go on without her!”
    Usually Buck drove two blocks south and two east from the church to Loretta’s.
    But now there were no more blocks. No sidewalks, no streets, no intersections.
    For as far as Buck could see, every house in every neighborhood had been leveled. Could it have been this bad all over the world? Tsion taught that a quarter of the world’s population would fall victim to the wrath of the Lamb.
    But Buck would be surprised if even a quarter of the population of Mt. Prospect was still alive.
    He lined up the Range Rover on a southeastern course. A few degrees above the horizon the day was as beautiful as any Buck could remember. The sky, where not interrupted by smoke and dust, was baby blue. No clouds. Bright sun.
    Geysers shot skyward where fire hydrants had ruptured. A woman crawled out from the wreckage of her home, a bloody stump at her shoulder where her arm had been.
    She screamed at Buck, “Kill me! Kill me!”
    He shouted, “No!” and leaped from the Rover as she bent and grabbed a chunk of glass from a broken window and dragged it across her neck. Buck continued to yell as he sprinted to her. He only hoped she was too weak to do anything but superficial damage to her neck, and he prayed she would miss her carotid artery.
    He was within a few feet of her when she stared, startled. The glass broke and tinkled to the ground. She stepped back and tripped, her head smacking loudly on n chunk of concrete. Immediately the blood stopped pumping from her exposed arteries. Her eyes were lifeless as Buck forced her jaw open and covered her mouth with his. Buck blew air into her throat, making her chest rise and her blood trickle, but it was futile.
    Buck looked around, wondering whether to try to cover her. Across the way an elderly man stood at the edge of a crater and seemed to will himself to tumble into it. Buck could take no more. Was God preparing him for the likelihood that Chloe had not survived?
    He wearily climbed back into the Range Rover, deciding he absolutely could not stop and help anyone else who did not appear to really want it. Everywhere he looked he saw devastation, fire, water, and blood.
    Against his better judgment, Rayford left the dead man in the desert sand. What would he do when he saw others in various states of demise? How could Carpathia ignore this? Had he not a shred of humanity? Mac would have stayed and