The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm Read Free Page B

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    He was twenty yards away and could not ignore the reality of what lay beneath the bolt, which stood eight feet tall. Gordie knew there was a human being under that alien object that was so unwelcome on this landscape, even in its desecrated state. His brain told him who that person was, but his heart denied that he could be the son of the victim ahead. It could be anyone .
    The tears in his eyes were no longer a reaction to the polluted air. Gordie stared at the rim of the grass circle that was now ten yards away. He told himself that he just needed to make it to the grass, though his knees felt too weak to bear him. He trudged forward, fixed on the edge of the inexplicably pristine grass ahead. He would not look at the body again until he reached the next checkpoint. Still, his breaths were becoming short and ragged. The structure of his world was crumbling around him and he struggled to steady the walls.
    Gordie looked straight down at the grass upon which he stood. His breathing was no longer subconscious as he forced long, calculated inhalations to ready himself for what he was about to see. He raised his head, and then collapsed to all fours, gasping for breath.
    He closed his eyes to regain some sense of the world, but the image of his father was burned on his retinas. Robert Leonhart’s face was twisted in some mixture of agony and terror that Gordie could not recognize. He was too broken to release the scream that had manifested in his brain as it desperately tried to escape from the prison of his skull.
    Waves of grief crashed over him. The day’s events threatened to consume him. Gordie was paralyzed, but he felt compelled to reach his father’s side—an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Shaking, he began to crawl toward his father. He gripped the grass and dragged his body forward almost against his will. His fingers dug into the earth, pulling him onward. A voice in his mind made him question whether he would survive unless he reached his father soon.
    Forward. Forward. Gordie was just feet away and another voice in his head asked, What will you do when you reach him? What’s the point? He shook those thoughts away and carried on. That voice told him there was nothing he could do for his father; a realization that was speeding toward him like a bullet, or a bolt of lightning. In reality, he knew there was no helping his father the moment he saw this apocalyptic scene, but he refused to let his body lay unaccompanied.
    Gordie reached out his arm to pull himself further, but his hand did not meet grass. His fingers recognized the thick, hairy forearm of his father by touch. When Gordie was a child, he and his father would play a game where Robert would hold out his arm and little Gordie would hang from it for as long as he could. Their record was forty-eight seconds—Robert’s shoulder generally gave out around thirty. This memory sent another jolt of pain coursing through him.
    Gordie’s right hand remained clasped around his father’s wrist while he trembled with tears, lying face down in the grass. He stayed like this for a few minutes until he could muster the strength to look up and take in Robert’s entire body.
    The bolt was protruding from his stomach angling away from his face. It looked almost like ice as it reflected and refracted light in odd ways. Gordie turned away from it in disgust, pulled himself close to his father, and rested his head on his chest, looking up at his face. Robert’s facial expression was still foreign to his son, so Gordie closed his father’s eyes and jaw, which threw into relief the strong face he once knew.
    “I love you, Dad. I’m so sorry.” Those were the last words that escaped him for some time as he buried his face into his father’s chest and sobbed. Images of lifeless teenagers piled atop one another flowed through his brain. Noah and the cavity that was once his face materialized in his mind’s eye; the demolished houses he had sped