Domino Falls Read Online Free PDF

keep up with their escorts’ white pickup truck. Terry had never liked chaperones. He had to admit that Domino Falls seemed like a dream come true so far—they hadn’t found any other settlement with a fraction of D.F.’s organization, and they’d been luckier than the people stuck outside the fences—but the rules bothered him. Had they really just spent months watching one another’s backs to just suddenly start trusting strangers?
    He checked out Kendra in the rearview, since she was in her usual seat behind him, and her forehead was furrowed with clear worry. Ursalina, as usual, was in her own world, staring at nothing out of her window. Sonia was sitting so close to Piranha, she was practically in his lap. Everyone looked ready to jump.
    At least no one from Domino Falls had insisted on riding with them. The Twins were out of reach on their bikes, but the rest of them had a last chance to talk.
    â€œQuick Council,” Terry said. “Are we okay with all this?”
    â€œDo we have a choice?” Piranha said. “I didn’t want to mess it up for everybody, but hell no, I’m not down with anything that sounds like lockup.”
    â€œYeah, and what’s up with their sniff test?” Sonia said. “They shoot us if one of their dogs doesn’t approve?”
    â€œI sure hate giving up the firepower while they make up their minds,” Ursalina said. “Maybe it’s good policy for them, but it bites hard for us.”
    â€œI don’t like it here,” Kendra said, so quietly that Terry barely heard her.
    Terry sighed, wishing he disagreed. “We have to be realistic, though,” he said. “We can’t turn around and take off, even if we knew where else to go.”
    â€œDon’t even try it,” Ursalina warned. “Those guys in the yellow shirts are former cops, military. I can smell it. Don’t make any sudden movements. Maybe this place is legit, maybe not. But gun or no gun, if anything goes down, I’m busting heads. I’ll take at least three of them with me.”
    Terry sighed. Unlike Ursalina, the blaze-of-glory routine didn’t comfort him the way it might have once, at the Barracks where they had rescued her.
    â€œLet’s not separate,” Kendra said. “Let’s ask to stay together.”
    Terry cringed at the word ask. The minute you asked anyone for permission, you gave them the power to say no. Then what? Say pretty please ?
    But they all agreed that they wanted to stay together. Nobody was going to pick them off one by one or molest one of the girls when she was alone.
    But would they be allowed to stay together? And for how long?
    It was a ten-minute drive from the checkpoint to the rest of Threadville, on a two-lane road that branched from the I-5. The town was hidden by hills and trees except for fenced farmhouses, where teams of people worked in the neatly planted groves. Some workers stood on platforms picking ripe winter oranges. Terry couldn’t identify the other trees and crops, but he thought he saw broccoli in one field. The idea of fresh fruit and vegetables made his stomach growl. An apple would taste like heaven. Were apples winter fruit?
    The radio was playing softly, so Terry turned up the volume.
    â€œâ€”the connections between us all run deep. When I created Threads in 1984, I drove up to the top of the San Fernando Valley, ate a ’shroom, and just looked out, lying across the hood of my Beamer.”
    After yahanna, it might be a while before anyone ate mushrooms for fun. Or anything else, Terry guessed. Anyone who’d taken the diet mushroom and then followed it with a flu shot had had one hell of a surprise.
    â€œI looked out at the lights, and instead of seeing a thousand points of light, I saw the connections between them. All the connections . . . then I looked up at the stars, that I’d always seen as points of light, a billion points