How the World Ends Read Online Free PDF Page A

news. Maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow to tell them.
    “Yes, Jonah?” Rachel asks, looking at me with raised eyebrows.
    “I don’t think it’ll be a problem. I’ll just leave extra early.”
    Rachel smiles, and motions to the kids, who have started climbing out off their chairs, “In that case you kids need to get to bed early tonight.” She gives me a meaningful smile, “Daddy and I have some grown-up things to take care of.”
    Jewel hops off her booster seat and makes for the stairs. In the process of catching Gwyn as he leaps from his chair in an effort to match his sister’s actions, I raise an eyebrow towards Rachel. “Business, you say?”
    “Yes, Jonah.” She says, suddenly seductive. Well, as seductive as you can be when you’re cleaning up the table spillage of two small children. “And I mean to have your full attention.”
    …
    The Hadlys
    The soft rain outside lends its pitter-patter rhythm to the growing slumber of the suburban landscape. It is a stark contrast, sixty miles to the west, to the insistent downpour which punishes the inner city concrete for its harsh greyness and unnatural bleakness. The creeping night is thrust forward here, to roam free among desperate hearts and wounded minds.
    The darkness is something to sink into. Consciousness, as it moves, can only ever go up or down; on one path lies enlightenment, on another, despair. And we are tethered to one motion , thinks Phillip Hadly, as he stands by the riverbank, looking up at the building high above him. We can go only one direction, as we are drawn unavoidably into a cycle of events that envelop us in their ferocious need to disseminate a purpose.
    I am the causality, Phillip thinks to himself, smiling at the thought of his brother’s wife in bed, miles away, safe and sound, sleeping, and oblivious to the inevitable truth that she had planted in his destiny. She lit the candle, but I am the flame that will sweep through the halls of power and bring them to their knees.
    Several lights blink off in succession in the tower above: the signal.
    Phillip strides with purpose towards the stairs that lead from the riverfront to a rear exit. His job is the simplest of all tonight, he knows, yet the entire plan hinge on his success now, and that fuels him. His skills have never been in demand, and he has never been given the chance to meet his full potential. He wants this chance to exercise his power. He waits outside the door at the top of the cement stairs.
    The woman, his brother’s wife, is not tucked up in here bed, miles away. Rather, she is watching from her vantage point of two-hundred feet, across the river. She knows Phillip’s desires with intimate detail. She has honed his yearning for power, his lust for control, his delusion of good intentions, into a weapon ready to strike down anything to slake his growing thirst. As she waits for James Hadly, her husband, to walk out the door, intending to get home across the river without any fuss, she knows the blade is ready to do her bidding. She does not doubt that Phillip will do what has been told is the right thing to do.
    But she also knows that his hands will be cold and sweaty, and that wet palms are apt to slip on the hilt of even a well-crafted blade. Indeed, she has hedged all her bets on this eventuality to eliminate both the mayor and his brother in one fell swoop.
    But insurance is always useful, she thinks to herself, as she steps from one shadow to another, waiting. Lucia Hadly manages a bit of a smile as she quietly gets closer to the footbridge that leads across to the exit. The rain thumping on her umbrella keeps even time with her racing heartbeat. Why is this the right thing to do? How can revolution ever change anything? She doesn’t care for the answers, though, so she ignores the questions in her mind. She simply wants out, and she believes this is the way.
    The mayor, thinking he is finally safe to withdraw after the fallout from the debacle