Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

up.
    Talia rolled her eyes.  “Damn, Crumb.  You’ve been brushing up on your moves, haven’t you?  That’s pretty smooth.”
    “You think?” he said, oblivious to her sarcasm.
    “No.  Now go away.”
    “Where you headed, girl?” Crumb persisted.
    “Out.”
    “Need some company, yeah?”
    “No.”
    “Fine-lookin’ woman such as you, ’course you do.”
    “I said go away, Crumb.”
    “Aww, now, wait a second, darlin’.  I seen some visions of you and me together.  Powerful apparitions, y’know?”
    “Yeah, me too.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah.  I was on one side of the planet, and you were on the other.  At the bottom of a deep, dark pit.”
    He made a wheezing sound under his respirator that might have been laughter.
    “Now, now, girl, don’t you be–”
    “Get out of my sight, Crumb,” Talia snapped.  “I mean it.”
    Crumb kept up with her for a few more paces, his expression darkening to a scowl, and then his eyes fell upon two Enforcers who stood in the road up ahead talking to a group of youths sitting on the curb.  Crumb faltered, then , with one last glare at Talia, broke off and went on his own way.
    Talia shook her head.  There had been a time when cretins such as Crumb had not been so prevalent, but these days they were more or less the norm.  Talia couldn’t seem to walk around her own neighbourhood now without sighting them, hiding in the shadows and watching, talking amongst themselves, scheming with barely concealed greed.
    She felt like an outcast in the streets she had once thought of as her own.
    Perhaps that was what had hurt Talia the most in recent times.  These days she felt like a relic, something that had been left behind.  In her younger days she, Knile and the others in their gang had lived in poverty, worse than she experienced now.  They had been afraid of Enforcers and of rival gangs, and had never known where their next meal might come from.
    It hadn’t been much of a life, but at least they had experienced a kind of togetherness.  A camaraderie.
    The sharing of their problems, of their misery, of their fears, had somehow made it all bearable.  They had divided the weight of it.  Together they had made it through, and even experienced times of happiness through the despair.
    When the group had fractured, all of that ended.  Knile and Mianda had headed their own way.  Roman had moved to Grove, and the others in the group had gone their separate ways.  For Talia, something vital had been lost.  It wasn’t just her companions who had left, but in many ways her support structure, her ability to cope with the hardships of life.
    Over the years she’d told herself that she was doing okay, but seeing Knile and Roman again had been like a cold bucket of water in the face.  She’d been deluding herself all this time.  She knew now that she’d been on a gradual slide toward despair over the past few years, that things were getting worse and that she was unlikely to turn things around unless something drastic changed.
    Maybe this was it.  Maybe this was her moment.  If she could pull Roman out of this mess and repair the damage that had been done, perhaps they could have a future together.  She and the boy could be a family again.
    Maybe she could reclaim that feeling of belonging once more.  And perhaps that was even more important than the other goal she’d been working toward all this time, the one that centred on leaving this world behind.
    She continued along the street.  Wisps of steam curled from the asphalt in the wake of the storm.  The youths who sat on the curb gave her passing glances from under their hoodies as the Enforcers continued to interrogate them about some private matter.
    Talia glanced skyward.  The klaxon would soon be sounding at the Reach.  She wondered how much time she had before the convoy set off from Grove again, and if Roman would be a part of it.
    What if he disappeared into the Reach and never came back out