Tremors: A Stone Braide Chronicles Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

be my soldier. You promised to keep my secrets.” She tousled his yellow curls. His fair coloring took after their father’s blond hair and brown eyes, as did her other two brothers, while she favored her mother’s dark hair, olive skin, and green eyes. The boys turned fire-coal red in the sun while she acquired a delicious bronze.
    “Father says rabbits have disease from the Sorrows, and we can’t eat them.” Dane shook his head as though it would emphasize his point. He had no idea what he was talking about, but it amused Selah that he imitated Father so well.
    The Time of Sorrows had begun with a single spectacular flash in time, 150 years ago and two hundred miles to the north. Three devices called suitcase nukes had destroyed Washington, DC, leaving nothing but a big hole in the ground and radiation that spread for hundreds of miles, affecting all life. Animals surviving the radiation suffered genetic mutations, souring their meat, as her father called it.
    But Selah had discovered a species of rabbit with sweet, clean meat. She refused to share the tidbit, or her abundance of game would rapidly grow scarce. When she caught a rabbit, she always skinned it and buried the evidence before taking the meat home. Father refused to acknowledge her prowess. He called her foolish. Yet she often wondered why he never stopped her or Mother from eating it.
    “Do you think Mother or I would feed you something bad?” she asked Dane now.
    He put his index finger to his chin, mimicking what Father did while thinking through a particularly daunting situation, waited a few seconds, then shook his head. What a little man.
    Selah squeezed him again and watched the rabbit’s tail bounce out of sight down the beach. Her gaze diverted from down the beach to across the water. On the horizon something bobbed in the sea. Her heart rate ticked up a beat. The only vessels ever to come by sea carried Landers.
    Without looking back, she patted Dane on the arm. “Run home. Tell Mother I’ll be along shortly.” She knew at that very moment it was a promise she wasn’t going to keep. But delivering the message would send him home. It looked like today might be her chance to join the family’s second business.
    “Mother said to come home right now!” Dane said again.
    Selah turned and shooed him with a flip of her hand and a pretend fist. Dane grinned and scurried off in the other direction. Her promise quickly forgotten, she worked her way around the pits of concrete and steel rubble down to the shoreline. Gray-green waves slapped at the sand, then pulled back into the surf, leaving fingers of white foam that seemed to beckon her. Within the hour, another vessel would turn into kindling, smashing itself against the sunken remnants of the city once known as Norfolk, Virginia.
    Selah climbed onto her favorite rock at the edge of the waves where the algae surface had begun to dry in the morning sun and low tide. She stood on the flattop and surveyed her world. In Dominion Borough, her clan controlled the prime sea fishing area out to the horizon in the east, south to the oil-drilling platform belonging to Waterside Borough, and north to the sea-bound wind farm belonging to Rolke Borough.
    She turned from the sea and took a reassuring glance at the ruins of the Dominion building, the namesake of her Borough. Probably majestic in ancient days, the decaying concrete and rusted steel shell presented a sad commentary of the past. Nature had worked hard to obliterate man’s ancient invasion. Kudzu vines twisted throughout the broken and missing windows, clinging to the porous surfaces, obliterating the building’s shape, and turning it into a skyward mound of vegetation with the word Dominion as a capstone. Despite annoying brothers or the uncertainty of her future, this place made her feel safe.
    She peered intently at the forested area around the building’s base. Any of her family coming down to the sea for fishing would come from that