Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon Read Online Free Page A

to get back to normal, the smell hit him.
    He had taken a shower before going to bed, and more since, but after the dream, or nightmare, he had an urge to wash again, and to keep washing. He threw on his clothes and headed for the door, worked the latch, and took one last glance back at the dog before heading out into the passageway.
    “No noise now,” he instructed her, and was answered by another quiet whine. “I’ll be right back, and then we can go get breakfast.”
    The companionway was busy as hell, and several times Wesley had stop and let hurrying crew members past. He shook his head, puzzled, thinking it must have been only him that felt like an old crone, with weak muscles and a massive headache. That’s what you get for spending most of your time on your arse in an office, while all these military types were running around , he thought.
    Eventually, he made it to the nearest shower block, but stopped twenty yards away as he saw the queue stretching down the hall. He sighed, turned, and resigned himself to the longer walk, out toward the stern, where his old quarters were. He knew there was another shower block out that way, and toilets.
    It was quieter, too quiet, as he walked into the showers, and he immediately saw why. Some time during the battle, while the ship was being pulled off the sandbar at Virginia Beach, several sections of internal structure had broken under the strain. Wesley stood in the middle of the room and watched water pouring down from above, where a massive metal girder had broken through and was pointing down at a dangerous angle. He did contemplate just standing in that torrent, which thankfully was pouring away into the drains meant to eliminate shower water. But he decided that, after all the luck he’d used up the previous day, chancing that thing coming down on his head was exactly what fate would have been waiting for.
    Please, he thought, his stomach complaining. Please let the damn toilets be usable, at least.
    This time he was in luck. The door to the toilet block was unceremoniously laying out in the corridor, flat on the deck where it had fallen, and the lighting inside was buzzing and flickering, but no big holes or fallen ceiling in there.
    Wesley dumped his wash bag on the sink and headed for the nearest stall. He heard a noise farther down, and glanced over, squinting to make out a jacket hanging over the cubicle at the end of the row. Another noise followed, someone moving around inside. He chuckled. Someone else out this way with the same idea of dodging the crowds.
    Sitting on the toilet, staring at the scuffed-up door in front of him, his thoughts drifted and eventually landed in England. He had been thinking of Amarie almost constantly since seeing her on the big screen in the mess hall, couldn’t take his mind off her, if he were honest. He had presumed her lost, along with the rest of France, hell, with the rest of Europe, and had even, after two years, ceased to think about her quite so often, to accept that she was gone. There had been nothing he could do. She hadn’t answered her phone, hadn’t been at her apartment or workplace, and he had never thought to ask, in the few short months they were dating, where her parents lived. He knew it was the south of France somewhere. Wine country. But that was it.
    And he had presumed that when the riots worsened she had taken off back home to her folks’ place. He chose to believe she had gone home and escaped the danger.
    But now, there she was, alive, in England, and with a child. The little girl was the other thought that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t have been older than two years, could she? Maybe less. Wesley had very little experience with kids, and now that he thought about it, he couldn’t really have any idea how old the child was. But if she was less than two… that meant she must have been born around the time he last saw Amarie, or maybe just after. Was the child hers? It couldn’t be. Some baby