Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) Read Online Free PDF Page A

intersection. Dead traffic lights bobbed over the tank lodged in the center of the four-way. Two Marines sat on the turret, SAWs in their laps. The silly looking guns spat so many bullets they could literally cut a man in half within seconds. One used his weapon to wave them through the empty intersection.
    Raising a hand in acknowledgement, Aunt Mavis turned left onto the street leading to their neighborhood. A large, white banner flapped from the eaves of a chain grocery store, announcing the grand reopening tomorrow. What good would stocked shelves do? Few had been able to work in the last months. Most didn’t have any money, relying solely on the aid packages from the Guard.
    Aunt Mavis’s attention flitted to the burned-out strip mall on the corner opposite the grocery store. “Some of the buildings were abandoned before the Rattling Death hit. The work went to China, India or elsewhere and wasn’t coming back.”
    Aunt Mavis chewed on her bottom lip and white dotted her knuckles.
    Sunnie ripped a sliver of dry skin from her thumb. Pink flesh winked at her before blood oozed into the opening. Outsourcing. The favorite refrain of her aunt’s generation. So much so, that the complaint had been as common as the weather. “Yeah. And...”
    “And, we’ll find it very difficult to build the items we need if China does push us into war.” Aunt Mavis eased the Civic down the street.
    Collapsed rafters were visible through the shattered storefronts. On each side, graffiti marked the six-foot high concrete walls edging the road. The wind moaned through the skeletal remains of charred shrubs and loose bone-white limbs of the eucalyptus trees clattered against their trunks.
    Sunnie pinched the collar of her jacket tighter and adjusted the vent. Some life had returned. Fuzzy, green bougainvilleas shuddered and splattered the ground with their crimson blossoms. Yellow puff-balls swayed at the tips of the weeds.
    “The neighborhoods are the worst. All those empty homes where neighbors once lived.” Aunt Mavis maneuvered around a cluster of burned out vehicles and braked. She stared down the road as if she could see the taped and boarded up homes in the neighborhood.
    Sunnie shrugged. She had barely met most of the neighbors before the quarantine went into effect. But Aunt Mavis and Uncle Jack who had lived here since their marriage, had raised their son here. Now all that was gone. Now, the men were gone. Forever. Sunnie’s nails bit into her palms. At least, Aunt Mavis had photos of her family. Who knew if she’d ever be able to return home and collect remembrances of her mother, brother, sister and stepfather?
    Metal creaked, jerking her thoughts back to the Civic. A sign proclaiming that trespassers will be shot swung from the chain lashed between two eucalyptus trees, blocking street access to the neighborhood. Tipped onto its side, a blackened Jeep Liberty attested to the will of the neighborhood to enforce the sign.
    “I thought North Korea was threatening war not China.” Sunnie combed her fingers through her hair.
    “North Korea wouldn’t do anything without China’s blessing.”
    “So you think there’ll be a war then?” Sunnie scanned the area. Seven firebombed vehicles—three with bullet holes punched in their sides and one with arrows in its tires. Victims of the gauntlet created by two rusted dumpsters near the first street and lots of tall trees on either side.
    Aunt Mavis honked the horn twice, waited a beat then hit it one more time. Shifting the car into park, she leaned forward until her chin rested atop of the steering wheel and stared through the windshield. “I would have thought Mr. Quartermain would have challenged us by now.”
    Sunnie rolled her eyes. Really? First the movie premiere then this. Did her aunt think she’d be put off twice in an hour? And who cared about old Mr. Quartermain? The man could wake up at dawn, and it would be noon, before he managed to reach the foot of his bed.