Exodus Read Online Free Page B

and it hinted at an intelligence so far ahead of humanity’s that it was godlike in its brutal, ruthless efficiency.
    Shading her eyes from the glare, Emily scanned the road. If she had been in a car, she would have had to turn around and find some secondary road that hopefully wasn’t as choked. It was one advantage the bike had over a car; obstructions like this meant she only had to walk until she found a clear route through the mess. It wasn’t much of an advantage, though, and again she wished she had taken driving lessons. A nice, safe BMW or Mercedes looked more and more attractive with every aching muscle that reminded her she still had a very, very long way to go.
    Still, she consoled herself, a car was one thing. Solving how and where she would find gasoline for it was another thing altogether. She’d figure it all out when she could. The important thing right now was to get past this roadblock and continue on her way.
    A concrete footpath ran parallel to the road, a line of trees separating it from the crush of vehicles. The path had not been resurfaced in years. It was a lot rougher to ride on than the blacktop. But, while uncomfortable for her long-suffering butt, it was better than pushing the bike through the lanes of empty cars.
    Emily stumbled across the downed airliner two miles farther along the route.
    It had come back to earth in the center of the town, smashing through houses and demolishing everything for several hundred feet. Burned-out shells of homes lay on either side of the deep furrow gouged out of the earth. The blackened skeletons of trees, unaffected by the original crash but destroyed, she assumed, by the subsequent fire, extended off in all directions and had helped spread the blaze away from the crash site. The pungent odor of jet fuel still lingered in the air, mixing with the smell of burned wood and…something else…something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
    The debris field stretched for at least a mile; scattered wreckage was strewn across the road and what was left of rooftops. In the street in front of Emily lay the cowling of one of the airliner’s engines. The actual engine was nowhere to be seen, though. Not far from the disemboweled cowling, Emily saw the first body. At least, she assumed it was a body. She had heard the phrase
burned beyond recognition
, and, looking at the black lump of charcoal, she understood exactly what it meant.
    “Thor. Sit and stay,” she told the malamute, afraid he might step on some small piece of debris or broken glass while she approached the body. There was no way to distinguish whether it had been a man or a woman as the burns extended over every inch of it. The body was curled almost into a fetal position; the arms and hands looked like claws, twisted up to the blackened chest, the legs pulled almost up to the chin. White teeth gleamed incongruously from behind fleshless charcoal lips. The body smelled of overcooked meat, like a roast that had been left too long in the oven.
    “Interesting,” she said, surprising herself with how simple it was for the reporter within her to still so easily disengage from what should have been a horribly disturbing sight. She glancedup from the corpse; in the wreckage of a destroyed car—it was impossible to distinguish the make or model—another body sat on the frame and springs of what had once been the driver’s seat. The body’s skeletal hands gripped what was left of the steering wheel. Again, the corpse was unrecognizable, but, she noted, it was still there. It had not been consumed by the red dust.
    Did that mean the red rain needed live flesh to consume and use to create the creatures so intent on changing her world? Emily could not say. Maybe it had been the fire that destroyed the red rain infection? It was impossible to discern, but it was certainly interesting. Whatever the reason, it was good to know that the rain could be stopped. It might be too late for most of the earth’s