Yesterday's Gone: Season Six Read Online Free PDF Page B

threw her arms forward, pushing the branches aside, suffering cuts like she were barreling through a field of razor wire.
    The roar behind her sounded like it was whipping repeatedly at chunks of earth. With the sound, she felt tremors underfoot, convinced that the ground would split open and claim her.  
    The wind assaulted her from all sides, and branches thrashed violently, lashing and lacerating her flesh.
    She cried out from the pain.
    Mary opened her mouth and felt chunks of the world ripped up and carried away. Clumps of dirt, grass, and rock forced their way down her throat, threatening to choke her as she struggled to spit.
    The sound grew louder, swelling with a pressure that supplanted every sense except pain.
    With nothing to hold her, Mary was moments from lifting off and getting carried away by the sky.  
    Then it happened.
    Mary felt her body lift, slowly at first, then with great speed, racing upward at an angle so fast, she was certain she’d smash into something — if there was anything left of the world — and get splattered by the force in an instant. Just like that, she’d be as undone as the petals and earth.
    Mary reached out as if doing so could somehow control her flight, that she could manage and maybe slow her elliptical vortex. Shards of debris lacerated her body for the effort.  
    Her head was thrumming, dizzy. She couldn’t tell which way was up as she spun through the night sky. She wanted to look around, to gather some sense of where she was and where she was going. How near she was to the ground, if there was something she might be able to grab. Maybe she’d see Paola. Could reach her. Be with her again, as impossible as it seemed.
    She didn’t dare open her eyes; she’d lose them forever if she tried, and maybe find herself a half mile in the sky. Like in those old Roadrunner cartoons, she’d plummet to nothing the second she saw reality for what it was.
    As if reading her mind, the tornado stopped.
    So did everything else.
    And there was nothing but silence.
    Mary fell but never hit the ground.
    She found herself standing in the darkness, looking around, amazed by the world — empty except for an impossibly smooth dark soil surface.  
    Where’s all the debris?
    Where’s Paola?
    “Paola?”
    Mary was filled with an ominous chill while standing among the nothing. The world was wrong, and she was desperate to know why.
    She saw movement in the distance — a tree. One sole tree, giant, with hundreds of skeletal branches dotted by surreal, luminous red roses. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
    Something hit her head, hard.  
    Mary reached up, feeling a giant knot rising under her scalp, certain she was bleeding.
    What the hell hit me?
    She looked down and saw a small rock.
    Where did that come from?
    Another fell, maybe six feet away.
    And then another.
    Mary looked up. Her heart stopped as she saw that everything the cyclone had ripped from the ground was hundreds of feet above in one giant mass, falling fast.
    She screamed, then ran.
    Mary didn’t get far before the earth fell and buried her alive.
    And now she was farther from Paola.

    Mary woke to a muffled sound, a familiar voice saying her name.
    She remembered the Black Guardsmen raiding their hiding spot. The bomb going off.
    She opened her eyes, surprised to be alive.
    Luca’s face swam into focus. Behind him, light seeped through an apartment window.
    She still couldn’t get used to seeing him so old, now looking like he was in his late fifties. The healing had taken its toll. And he’d just used it to bring her back, just when she’d been so close to being with Paola again.  
    She sat up, surprised that her body no longer hurt. Even her headache was gone. But there was still a pain deep in her soul, an ache that even Luca couldn’t heal.
    She looked up at him then at Boricio, Ed, and Jake Barrow all standing and waiting for her to return like Lazarus.
    Mary looked at Luca again. Poor Luca. He