Page 58 of Bound in Ashes

It was tranquil, serene.

A perversion.

Like Mother Nature was laughing at us, creating a beauty like this in a dead world.

My stomach roiled, the oatmeal I ate for breakfast threatening to make a reappearance.

I swallowed the bile back and looked ahead.

“We’ll be quick. In and out. Less than thirty minutes,” he said.

I nodded and got behind Jack as we walked down the black asphalt.

This was two conjoined cul-de-sacs with about five houses each leading out to the main road.

Mist clung to the overgrown grass, and as I looked, it seemed so…normal.

But it wasn’t.

Because some of that mist was tinged pink with blood.

The basketball on one driveway had a handprint on it that would have been adorable if it were made with finger paint but turned my stomach when I realized it belonged to the man who lay dead next to it, his intestines exploding out like confetti.

There were some golf clubs thrown across another lawn.

All of it a bizarre pantomime of normalcy that was perverse.

“It’s quiet,” Jack said.

I noticed that too, surprised by it.

But then again, I shouldn’t have been able to be surprised by anything.

Not at this point.

Not in this world.

“You see that up there?”

I looked to where Jack was and saw an open door.

I nodded, and together, we approached quickly, quietly.

Jack nodded to one side of the white wooden stairs, and then took the other.

I looked through, grateful for the lattice that allowed me to see Jack, and we waited.

Heavy footsteps pounded, and in the blink of an eye, Jack sprung.

“Asia Newman?”

I looked at the man who Jack was holding, his forearm wrapped around the other man’s neck, the gun pointed at his head.

“Chris?”

It was Christopher Hayes, the sheriff’s son. One who looked remarkably unperturbed that he was on the verge of being choked out with a gun to his head.

“It’s Christopher. Dad says I’m not in elementary school anymore,” he said.