Cannibal Reign Read Online Free Page B

chips the furthest thing from his mind. “I’m Jack.”
    A slightly bemused smile spread across her face. “Does this often work for you, Jack?”
    He chuckled. “Truthfully, I’m a little out of practice.”
    “I can see that,” she said dryly.
    “Okay,” he said, feeling silly. “Safe travels.”
    “You too,” she said, returning her attention to the task at hand. She heard him muttering to himself as he walked away— My kingdom for some time! —and couldn’t help chuckling.
    He stepped up to the counter and allowed the clerk to ring up the chips and beer. “How much do I owe you on pump nine?”
    “It shut off at a dollar twelve,” the clerk said. “You pretty much gotta hold the handle the whole time with those pumps. They’re touchy.”
    “All right,” Forrest said. “I’ll pay for this stuff and come back after I fill up.”
    He was still waiting for the tank to fill when the woman came out with a bag in her hand and walked across the lot toward her car. He watched her for a moment then trotted off after her, unable to help himself.
    “Excuse me! Miss?”
    She turned as she was about to put her key into the door, looking annoyed. “I’ve got a boyfriend.”
    “Never doubted it for a second,” he said, more businesslike now, taking a pen from this pocket and writing his cell number down on the potato chip receipt. “Keep this number for a few months. I know this sounds like another stupid line,” he admitted, “but you may hear something in the news soon, something that frightens you. If you do, I might be able to help.”
    She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “I knew there was something odd about you. What am I supposed to hear that’ll frighten me into calling a total stranger?”
    “If I told you, you’d never believe me. And that’s the truth. Just let the number float around the bottom of your purse. Throw it away in a few months. It can’t hurt anything.”
    “How will I know if I’m hearing the right thing? I don’t scare very easily.”
    She wasn’t taking him seriously, but he didn’t seem at all dangerous to her, and he was the most intriguing person she’d run into between Nebraska and South Carolina, where she’d been visiting her sister.
    “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If you have even the slightest doubt about it . . . that’s not it.”
    She put the slip of paper into her purse. “Thanks . . . I guess.”
    “Drive careful,” he said, and headed back to the Humvee.
    Finding that the pump had shut off again, he mumbled an obscenity as he grabbed the handle and squeezed the trigger mechanism. He was watching the digits add up when the woman came walking over.
    “Elizabeth never really said that, you know . . . ‘Time. Time. My kingdom for some time.’ ”
    He smiled at her, feeling butterflies. “Well then she should have.”
    “I know I’ve played right into your hands on this, but I need you to tell me what it is . . . this scary thing.”
    “Honestly, you won’t believe me.”
    After considering the situation for a moment, she took the receipt from her purse and stuck it under the wiper blade of the Humvee. “I’m over it,” she said, and turned to walk away.
    “It’s an asteroid,” he blurted.
    She turned back around. “A what?”
    “A rogue asteroid. It’s two miles wide and it’s on a collision course with North America.”
    “You were right,” she said, her eyes wide. “I don’t believe you. Goodbye.”
    “In eighty-seven days it’s going to slam into us somewhere between the Mexican border and the Yukon Territory at a hundred and ten thousand miles an hour.”
    She paused and stood looking at him.
    “I’m told the resultant explosion and ensuing firestorm will kill every living creature aboveground out to a radius of eight or nine hundred miles. After that the sun’s going to be obscured from the sky for an awfully long time.” He plucked the number from under the blade and offered it back to