Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire Read Online Free PDF

in hordes, a wave of disease and death washing over the world.
    Using her boot to shovel dirt over the fire, Rachael tugged her bags back over her shoulders then buckled her knives and swords back on. She took a moment to stare down at the Orc, the rotted skin peeling back from the mouth and forehead, unseeing eyes staring past her face into the unknown. It didn’t feel real. It still felt like a video game, like she was in a very realistic virtual reality, that when it got to be too much she could press start and go back to reality.
    Her cellphone had fallen into the dirt and she picked it up gently, brushing the dust from the screen and tucking it into a pocket on her bag. One day she’d leave the phone behind. One day she’d give up her hope to return to the world before.
    Today was not that day.
    Back on the road, Rachael tugged her bag up over her shoulders, eyes casting around as she tried to find a sign for where she was, what direction to head in. Some of the signs on I95 had suffered significant damage, and she constantly had to compare her old paper map with fallen signs and old landmarks.
    Rachael had driven this road a couple of times over the years, on family road trips or trips with her friends. Things looked so different from car windows, like a movie. Rachael passed a rest stop, a flicker of a memory from long ago, a kid from a different life peering out the dark car windows over her Gameboy. There was trash scattered around here now, fallen fences and abandoned cars. It looked so different, like something she recognized but also unrecognizable. Like that feeling you get in a dream when you know something but it’s not exact.
    There were a handful of Orcs wandering around, and Rachael cleared them quickly, her sword a blur as it hissed through the air, bodies slumping to the ground.
    Inside the rest stop there was nothing standing, though bodies of fallen dead scattered around in heaps. Stepping around them carefully, Rachael grabbed a few bags of chips and some candy from the store, tucking a few five-hour energies into her pack.
    Turning to leave, she noticed something written on the wall of the information center. It was hard to see, though it looked like it had been purposely wiped off and distorted. Half of a map taped to the sign was ripped, a few pieces lying around the floor. But it looked like the start of a circle, or some sort of writing on the map. Maybe that’s where there were survivors? Could the information center be the place that someone had posted directions to a safe zone?
    Squinting at the wall, the smudged out letters, she could make part of the words. Appoma- Ri-er Re- Stati-.
    Picking up the few pieces of map papers she could find, Rachael pieced them together carefully on the table. Some of the crucial pieces were missing, but she could tell a general direction. Somewhere off the next exit there seemed to be something. She could see the edges of a circle drawn on the map, though what city or landmark they identified was lost. But maybe there would be more signs as she headed that way.
    She pulled out her map and scoured it for anything that might contain the words written on the wall. The font was so small it was hard to read, and she pulled the map as close to her face as possible as she looked for anything, any hints at all.
    Finally something caught her eyes. Appomattox River Rescue Station . That had to be it! It was in about the same place that the shredded map had indicated something. Copying as much of the information onto the new map as she could, she tucked that into a pouch at her waist, heading back onto the road and looking for a sign of an exit.
    She wasn’t sure how long that information had been there. She had no proof that it was actually legitimate, but for now she had nothing else to go on. This was the first sign of possible life, first hint of a location of people, and she was going to take it and hope for the best.
    Turning off the next exit, avoiding the