Fear the Survivors Read Online Free Page A

with a single momentous thrust into a headlong sprint, their negligible weight upon him like feathers on an eagle’s back as he flew across the plain.
    They were fleeing the helicopters. Fleeing the innocent Iranian soldiers he longed not to fight. Heading north, they sprinted toward the large city of Mashhad, kicking up dust in their trail as his herculean legs pistoned under them, propelling them forward.
    He did not know how they were going to make it to safety. He would figure that out as they went. He would have to circle the city and try to find a way to the sparsely populated border with Turkmenistan and then across it and on to the American embassy in that nation’s capital, Ashgabat. But that was a long way off; first he had to get them away from the closing Iranian troops.

Chapter 2: Floods of Exodus
     
    “Aw, gimme the damn remote, ya silly bitch,” said Jason to his wife. She stared at him with indignant fury at the use of the ‘b’ word and he rolled his eyes, knowing he was about to get the bitch speech again. “Here we go …”
    “ Here we go ?!” she shouted, “I’ll give ya somethin’ to roll ya fuckin’ eyes about, ya jackass. I told you thousand times, I do not appreciate bein’ called a bitch. Now, if ya don’t mind, I am tryin’ to watch the pastor.”
    Jason sat sullenly for a while, staring at the screen while a smiling man in an expensive suit fabricated from broken promises explained the vast benefits of his unique ministry to his viewers, “So you see, ma children, only through the voice of God can you be saved from the terrible plague sweeping our great nation. For the sinners have brought this down upon them, and are reaping the rewards of their godless ways.”
    The pastor went on at some length about how the purchase of his particular version of the bible, with his particular audio CD, would help ensure salvation, hinting at but never actually promising that it would save people from the terror that was indeed sweeping the nation, killing thousands as it went. Jason watched begrudgingly, unaware that the pastor’s well-placed words were sinking into his psyche, unaware of how many of them he would be repeating when he had another argument about this at his local watering hole the next day.
    It would never occur to him or his wife that the pastor was just trying to profit out of the misery of others by selling more of his trite products. Or that if the man that claimed to be a shepherd believed anything his god had ever said he would be telling his flock that they should be giving their money to the victims of the terrible disaster on the Eastern seaboard, and not to his parasitic ministry.
    But this pastor had a new CD out and he needed to move the vast stocks he had paid the printers in China to ship to him. His followers were there to provide him an income, their misguided faith in him and the platitudes he preached leading them to sacrifice their menial disposable income like lambs to his ethical slaughterhouse.
    After a while, Jason’s wife stood, groaning as she levered her rotund frame out of their plush La-Z-Boy couch, and headed to the trailer’s commode, farting as she went. Like a child spotting a forbidden treat, Jason took the opportunity to claim the remote control, and with a satisfied grin he changed the channel to where he knew reruns of Cops should be playing. But they weren’t. Instead, another special report on the events in southern Georgia was looping here as well and Jason cursed.
    “Goddamn it,” he said.
    A shout came through the thin wall between him and the toilet . “Damn it, Jason, don’t take the Lord’s fuckin’ name in vain,” admonished Jason’s wife, Theresa. Unfortunately, the strain of her shout forced out a particularly loud and potent fart, and after a moment they both started laughing.
    The reporter on the television was showing one of many sites outside Atlanta where tens of thousands of people were being put up in temporary