Barren sky the forsaken.., p.1
Barren Sky: The Forsaken Trilogy Book 3, page 1
Barren Sky
The Forsaken Trilogy Book 3
J. Thorn
Copyright © 2018 by J. Thorn & Zach Bohannon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Edited by
Jennifer Collins
Proofread by
Laurie Love
Formerly published in the BARREN series.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Chapter 1
The sun came over the western horizon and burned the rusted steel, turning it into a fiery reflection of the forgotten past. Dia shielded her eyes from the glare caused by the roof of one of the monstrosities. She’d seen similar structures back in Erehwon and all along the trails when she had traversed the continent. Some people had simply referred to them as “buildings” while other travelers had called them “skyscrapers.” Whatever they were, they seemed to be taller here, and there were more of them on the shore of the great Pacific.
The winds changed, forcing Dia to pull the pelt up and around her neck. The weather shifted from minute to minute in this dead city, and from one location to another. She would be sweltering in the sun on one stretch of pavement and then shivering fifty yards away. The air brought a hint of sage and, as she’d detected in every city, the unmistakable reek of oil. Whatever these people had stored had seeped into the ground over decades, contaminating the water and the land just as it had back in the Ohio territory. As the wind changed direction again with a blast of dragon breath, Dia wondered how far she would have to go before finding untainted water. It might have to be east again, considering she’d already traveled all the way to the shores of the western sea.
She looked up at the peaks of the steel mountain range stretching over the bay from what had once been Oakland to the ruins of San Francisco. Cables had snapped, and sections of roadway had long ago collapsed into the salty waters below. But the magnificence of the structure still took Dia’s breath away. She’d been living in the ruins for months, losing track of time and the seasons—both of which seemed to stretch into eternity here. And yet, every time she looked up, the bridge stared back as if daring anyone to cross her rusted limbs.
A fawn had wandered to the water’s edge and Dia had followed it. It had been weeks since her last successful hunt, and what was left of that deer had started to turn.
Dia didn’t enjoy the copper, bitter smell of blood, but she realized that only death could promise life.
A bird. Then the sound of scraping metal and a distant rumble as another hunk of steel skin slid from the bones of the ancient skyscrapers. The fawn hadn’t flinched—as if the industrial leprosy was the natural order of the world. When Dia thought about it, that assumption had proven true for her, as well, but she understood why the structures crumbled whereas the fawn didn’t care.
“Steady.”
Dia had whispered the word, knowing the ocean breeze would snag it and toss it over her shoulder and in the opposite direction of her prey. She nocked the arrow and aimed the bow at the spot right behind the deer’s right shoulder. Hitting too far back on the flank would only injure the creature, and too low would puncture the intestines and spoil the meat. As it had been in war, one perfectly placed strike could be merciful and efficient.
And in a split second, the fawn was running. It must have been alone—a rare instance for animals that tended to run in packs. In the next moment, Dia was sprinting behind it. It could have been an odor in the air or the squawk of an angry gull that spooked the fawn, but it didn’t matter what had started the hunt. Dia hadn’t see any others in days, the rumbling in her stomach reminding her of that.
The young deer ran along the promenade. A concrete railing smiled with broken teeth, hunks of the top having been broken or consumed by the angry sea. Small trees and brush had grown up through the cracks, catching tattered blue plastic bags in the branches. Dia chased it at a full run, leaping over mounds of crawling ivy and debris that been rusted brown over the years.
“Don’t cross. Please don’t cross.” Dia spoke these words loud enough for the deer to hear them.
She hadn’t had the guts to try it yet—the bridge spanned miles. Dia had spent enough time with Hado in the wild that she could tell just by looking at it that crossing the bridge would be a risk. Dia had arrived through a western passage into the Oakland ruins, but had been working up the courage to explore the sibling city across the bay. At times, it enticed her, whispering promises of unspoken adventures. But the temptation had so far been tempered by the crossing. Not only was the bridge long, but at its peak it appeared to be hundreds of feet above the choppy waters—far too high for any person to survive a fall from it. At that height, hitting the water would feel like swan diving into a granite quarry.
The fawn kept going, although in more of a trot than a run. Dia followed, the nearest bridge support rising out of the water and causing a rumbling in her stomach that no longer had to do with hunger.
Dia raised her bow twice, but each time the fawn leapt or dodged debris and continued to the foot of the bridge. She chased it around an escarpment, her blood carrying adrenaline through her veins and her chest heaving in the heavy, salt air.
The fawn stopped.
Dia waited behind a tree, watching the hooved creature as it stomped forward and then backward. Two steps toward the bridge and then one step away from it.
“You’re spooked, too. Aren’t you?”
Without pausing again, the fawn bolted toward the bridge. It ran around the remains of motorized carts with skeletons sitting inside. The deer’s white tail shot up like a beacon to Dia, allowing her to track the fawn’s progress through the mechanical graveyard high above the bay.
“Damn.”
She sprinted, her bow and arrow in one hand. Dia leapt past hunks of metal and over gaps in the concrete. The ocean air had created holes in the roadway and rotted the steel girders beneath it. As Dia jumped, she could see the angry whitecaps in the water hundreds of feet below.
The fawn ran and Dia followed. Around trucks dead on their sides and cars piled precariously on the edge of the bridge where a simple nudge might send them tumbling over. The deer never stopped, never turning to see if a predator had given chase—as if the only thing that mattered was getting off this unnatural causeway and back onto terra firma.
Dia had covered about a half of the steel span when she began to think instead of being reactive.
What the hell am I doing?
The wind that had only bit at her skin on the ground now buzzed as an invisible, angry swarm about her head, tossing her hair into her face and drying the sweat on her forehead. The temperature had plummeted, and she felt cramps in both her calf muscles. As she pursued the fawn, Dia realized that she had run through the most damaged section of the bridge. She’d come to the place where she was approximately equidistant from both ends, completely suspended above the bay and a prisoner of the primal fear that almost made her wet her pants now that she realized it.
She looked down as she climbed over a car and landed on the other side, her foot skittering off the edge of the crumbled concrete and sending hunks of it down to the waters below. The fawn hadn’t stopped running.
Dia wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t.
A steel cable smacked against the side of the bridge, the severed end skipping along the pavement like an angry serpent. She felt the sway of the monstrous structure and turned to vomit. Dia wiped the bile from the corner of her mouth and put her head down. Then, she ran faster, her lungs burning and her muscles aching.
When she looked up again, the fawn had stopped in front of a wall of ruin. Even a creature with such grace and dexterity as it had couldn’t see a way around the mangled cars. It turned and faced Dia with big black eyes and, for a moment, Dia thought it might leap from the bridge in an instinctual move to escape. Before it could do that, D
Dia sighed and closed her eyes, dropping her bow and putting her hands on her knees. When she stood up, she turned to see the silhouette of the Oakland ruins in the distance, the majority of the Bay Bridge behind her; the ruins of San Francisco now stared down at her with cold, empty eyes.
Chapter 2
She’d crossed over. There was no going back now, at least not without a monumental effort of intestinal fortitude—which she had just spent. Dia decided to skin the deer and cut several flanks of meat to keep in her bag before anything or anyone showed up. She’d heard coyotes howling at night, and the noises emerging from the ruins seemed as though they’d been channeled from Hell’s own portal. Any number of threats could emerge and steal her kill, so taking what would sustain her for a few days and leaving the rest for now was the best she could hope for.
The fawn’s blood ran off the blade of her carving knife in pink rivulets before rejoining the foamy salt water lapping at the shoreline. Even if it had been fresh water, Dia knew the ocean had been tainted. One wouldn’t need to be a water whisperer to smell the polluted stench—rotting seaweed and the bitter cut of industrial chemicals.
Dia packed the cuts after roasting a slice of the fawn’s hindquarter over a small fire. The sun had risen higher and therefore the flames wouldn’t give her away; the pungent stink of the water would almost certainly hide the aroma of roasting venison. There was nothing to be done about the smoke, which was a risk she’d take in order not to have to eat, warm, bloody meat.
With her bow in one hand and her flask almost empty, Dia licked her lips and walked back to the promenade that ran along the shore next to the bridge. She gazed outward, having kept her head down while chasing the fawn. Dia saw an island sitting just off the shore and a spur of the bridge greeting it at the water’s edge. As had been the case in Oakland and San Francisco, ruins sat in a long cold silence while the structures stared back at her.
A flash erupted. More like a reflection. The sun had caught something in one of the windows of the buildings on the island. It had only been a split second, and yet Dia knew it had indicated movement. She’d watched the sun’s rays cutting across the ruins many times, both on her travels west and in her short time spent by the bay. For some reason, this spark of light didn’t seem random or like the result of some loose panel sliding from the steel exterior of a crumbling building.
Somebody’s in there.
Her feet moved her along the walkway before she had completely decided to investigate. After all, what could be there? She hadn’t come across any survivors since moving through the Sierra Nevada pass. Dia’s last human contact had been watching Hado drown. The girl would never forget the woman’s face, the complexity of emotion showing on Hado’s exterior mirroring the conflicting feelings inside of Dia. Hado had captured Dia, taken her prisoner, turned her on her own people, and then abducted her from her captors. And through it all, Dia recognized that Hado had been like a mother and a teacher, showing the girl how to survive alone and against all odds.
“Survive.” Dia spoke the word again, hoping to convince herself that her voice still worked. “Will I if I start investigating every sign of a camp or settlement?”
The area had proven to be a challenge. While the great Pacific caressed the coastal region and the climate remained relatively consistent compared to the one on the shores of Lake Erie, she hadn’t seen much in the way of people or resources. The few animals Dia could hunt had kept her going, but it wasn’t a solution. Even Hado hadn’t been able to survive alone.
She made one last check of her bow after pulling down some low-hanging branches in front of the tree where she’d hung her kill. Stringing up the fawn would keep the ground-level vermin off it, and that was the best Dia could hope for.
Hearing the last of her water sloshing around in an almost empty flask, Dia walked toward the building where she’d seen the reflection in the window. She passed a sign that read “Treasure Island” and she wondered exactly what “treasure” had been kept here. It looked like the rest of the ruins—a dilapidated, leaning mess of old-world construction slowly being strangled by emptiness and time.
She walked on, through broken chain link fences and around the charred remains of cars bunched near the island’s only roadway exit. Weeds grew through the blackened steel and thick ivy covered the ground around the wrecks. As she came closer, Dia heard noises. Not the random crashing of the ruins collapsing into themselves, but the distinct sounds caused by humans.
The three-story building sat in the middle of a fenced complex, although the fence had fallen long ago, leaving long, sagging sections of rusted steel laying on the ground. A row of windows ran across the top floor, but Dia couldn’t remember which one had reflected light. She’d been at a different angle when she’d first seen it, but realized that it wouldn’t matter. Now that she heard sounds, she knew people were inside.
Dia ran around the east side of the building, past the main entrance and around the guard station that had once guarded a parking lot. She stayed close to the wall, her hand riding along the steel skin now pockmarked by the ocean winds after decades of exposure. She saw blue plastic barrels stacked against the wall at the rear of the building, with a door to the right of the stack. The barrels looked old and beaten, many with black stains and dented sides. And yet, no weeds or ivy had grown around them—as if they’d been recently placed.
As soon as the door opened, Dia dove behind a blue barrel that had been knocked over and laid on its side. She froze, pulling her knees up to keep her feet from being seen from the other side of the barrel. Someone exhaled, as if smoking leaf, and then she heard the door slam shut.
Dia stood and sprinted for the door. She looked down and saw the handle had been knocked off. So, the door didn’t lock, which meant those inside hadn’t expected to need to keep anyone out.
Using the tips of her fingers on her right hand, she pulled on the round hole where the knob used to be and opened the door enough for her to put her right eye to the gap. Dia saw a hallway disappearing into darkness. She opened the door far enough to squeeze inside and then shut it gently behind her. Just inside, Dia waited for her eyes to adjust, and that’s when she heard the voices. Conversation. People.
She crouched down, scampering along the wall and feeling vulnerable because there were no other doors or hallways branching off this one. If someone came out the other side, they would face off. There was no other option.
Dia realized that the hallway did not end in darkness, and that it in fact turned at a right angle, and as soon as she stuck her head around the corner, Dia realized she’d entered the building on the ground floor which sat above an open floor beneath it. More voices came to her, along with the sound of moving water and metal gears. She crept forward, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light.
The hallway ended at an open staircase comprised of steel-grate steps. She moved forward slowly, looking down the steps. Five people worked on the floor beneath her, all of them standing around a massive cistern, the top of which extended up past the level she’d been on and towards the open roof of the third floor. Pipes ran in and out of the tank, and several smaller tanks sat in a row on the right side of the factory floor.
“…down three inches. But Sirry says the Santa Ana’s are down. Rain is coming.”
Dia moved closer to the edge of the stairs. She turned her right ear toward them, hoping to hear more of the conversation taking place about twenty feet below her.
“…supply should last us another month if we get at least two inches of rain.”
Dia stopped, looked up and then around. What are they making in here?
Dia’s foot slid on the first step as she approached, knocking a loose bolt from the bottom of the railing. She held her breath as it tumbled through the air and toward the metallic contraptions built on the factory floor below her.
When the bolt hit the floor, the workers around the cistern spun around, all of them staring right at Dia.
_preview.jpg)
