The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time Read Free Page A

as the ISS so they didn’t cause much damage.
    Rana wiped a large Swiffer type dust catcher across the surface of the array and grimaced at how much dust it collected. No one had expected the vacuum of space to be so dirty, but the debris field that occupied their orbit still caused problems.
    A blue marble Earth in quarter phase caught her eye and brought a sharp intake of breath. Even now, resigned to living their lives on the moon and the ISS, the sight of their home world brought pangs.
    Her own country, Turkey, had been all but destroyed by quakes and fire falls, but in the western United States and Canada, in the landlocked South American countries of Bolivia and Paraguay electric lights were appearing as the ISS swept across the terminator line. Others had been noted in scattered parts of Australia, Great Britain and south central Europe, near Switzerland, if Mia Torno, their cartographer, was right.
    Of course, chaos still reigned below. She shuddered recalling the depravity they’d witnessed in the remnants of California. The thought of what passed for civilization now on Earth made her skin crawl and she was glad she’d sided with those astronauts who elected to remain in orbit and settle the moon. Truly, she and her fellow Lunies were the hope of the human race and since no one from Earth had even pinged a communications satellite in almost a decade...well, maybe that was for the best. Maybe no one left alive down there knew that Havoc’s Twin was bearing down on them and would strike the planet in less than eight years. Maybe, a small part of her hoped, the asteroid would hit California.
    She continued dusting the arrays, secure in the knowledge humanity would survive even if it was extinguished on Earth.

 
    Chapter 3: The Cheyenne
     
    Medicine Bow Mountains, Wyoming
     
    July 5, 12 A.I.
     
    Three Fingers sat quietly in the early morning darkness, listening to night birds and crickets. Sentry duty! He shrugged and stretched to remain alert. In the valley below, on the banks of the Laramie River, his village lay sleeping, or mostly so since a faint tinge of smoke still drifted up from the Council Fire. His mouth twitched but he banished the smile before it could form. Old warriors teaching lessons to young warriors was no laughing matter. Probably telling tales about their war leader Daniel Windwalker too. He remembered how Mitchell Stonehand delighted in describing the effect of Daniel’s gaze to young warriors. “In a fight,” he would shudder, “Daniel’s eyes are like a snake’s, but less human.”
    A trout splashed in the river and another image flitted across his mind: Susan Redfeather’s lithe form stepping from the water, reaching for a towel. His face split into a grin. Now that was his idea of how to spend a night. He wondered when she would agree to marry him. Maybe if he...
    What was that? The birds and insects had fallen still.
    He turned at a slight sound and that motion caused the silenced bullet to miss his heart, the force of impact slamming him to the ground.
    A dark shape stepped close and pointed something at him. Three Fingers struggled to raise his weapon but he had no strength. Susan! Her name blazed across his mind like a shooting star. My People! A single tear rolled onto his sun-browned cheek as he pulled air deep into his lungs. He had to warn his people.
    “AIIIEEE!” His ululating death cry shattered the night as a second bullet tore his soul from his body.
    Before the echoes faded, Daniel Windwalker was racing through the moonlit night toward the council fire in the center of the village. All around him men and women poured from their tipis, guns in hand, wild-eyed.
    Small-arms fire crackled along the southern perimeter of the Cheyenne camp. Thundering hooves and roaring engines split the night. A cannon boomed and a tipi vanished in a blast of smoke and flame. He peered between the tipis toward the commotion and saw an uneven, rippling motion in the darkness beyond--a