Exodus Read Online Free PDF Page B

how deathly quiet it was in the house. Surely she should have heard the hammer of the rain on the slate roof of the house; there was no attic space above her head, afterall, just the rough beams running through the open space where it would have been. She was sure the storm had been just seconds behind her when she had crested the hill. She glanced back out through the windows. The sky was overcast, but there was still no sign of the storm over the valley, and the trees remained as still as stone giants.
    The sky outside her window lit up momentarily, but Emily could not see the lightning bolt. She did, however, hear the thunder that rolled in a second later; the pressure wave rattled the glass in the windows and sent poor Thor to his belly as he tried to wrap himself even tighter around her legs.
    This dog was a tangle of contradictions, she was quickly learning. Here was this incredibly valiant animal that had pulled her, quite literally, from the jaws of death reduced to a quivering puppy as the thunderstorm raged on the far side of the house.
    “Well, I guess we know what your Kryptonite is now, don’t we, Superdog?” Thor apparently didn’t see the funny side as he whined and continued to push himself against her legs.
    “Come on. We might as well make the most of it. Let’s eat.”

    Each evening since leaving Manhattan, Emily had placed a call to Jacob using the satellite phone she had picked up from the offices of the newspaper where she had worked. Ostensibly it was a nightly routine that Jacob insisted on so he knew she was safe, but Emily thought it was equal part Jacob’s way of helping ensure she remained connected to reality. It would be so very easy to lose sight of her goals out here, alone except for Thor and Jacob’s distant, but always welcome, voice.
    The hiss of static filled her ear as she waited for him to pick up her call. The past few days had seen a slow degeneration of the quality of each call she made. Whether that was down to technical problems with the now unmonitored satellite or the red storm’s interference, she could not say. It was worrisome either way.
    “Hello, Emily.” Jacob’s voice sounded distant as it ebbed in and out.
    Emily quickly filled him in on her day and the disconcertingly violent storm that had forced her to hole up for the night. “What’s weird, though, is that the storm didn’t seem to touch this valley,” she explained.
    Usually Jacob would find her revelation too fascinating to resist and offer some kind of a theory. So, when he didn’t offer up his usual attempt at an explanation for the weather phenomenon, Emily asked him if everything was okay.
    He paused for a second before answering. “No. Things here have been getting a little…strained,” he admitted. “The shock of what happened has worn off, and we’re beginning to feel the pressure. I…we all left wives and families behind, and I think I held out a little hope that maybe there would be more survivors. Knowing that they are all dead, well, let’s just say it’s taking its toll.”
    It would have been easy for Emily to offer up some kind of false hope to Jacob, but that would have been all it was. Instead, she simply said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Not your fault, Em,” he replied. “I can handle it. After all, we are all the family we have left now.”
    “So, I’m thinking about trying my hand at a little grand theft auto,” she said, changing the subject.
    “What?”
    “I’m thinking of stealing a car.” She laughed. “Of course, I’m going to have to learn to drive it first.”
    “That’s a great idea,” Jacob replied, his voice becoming all but inaudible above a sudden whoosh of static. “Make sure you choose something simple and automatic. It needs to be automatic.”
    “It scares the living crap out of me, to be honest, but it’s going to take forever by bike, and I’ll probably freeze to death before I make it even halfway to you. And after my little encounter