Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series Read Online Free Page A

ago winks out, replaced by a dark frown. “Yes.”
    My mother steps forward. “Can he really do it?”
    “Yes,” I reply, and sadness fills me when I see the little remaining hope drain from their faces.
    Other people appear out of the darkness behind my parents like ghosts solidifying in a murky gloom, a growing throng with a murmur that is at once threatening and curious. Dane pushes himself away from the door and stands before the crowd in the gap, as if he has become the door keeping them inside.
    “There’s not much time,” he says loud, and his words echo off the distant back wall. The murmur subsides. “We must leave at once, make for Strawberry Pass and—”
    “You’re mad,” shouts a voice from the back. “Into the Radiation?”
    “Look,” Dane says, but he’s already lost them. The murmur grows again, woven with all the protests I thought we had answered last summer. Where had Dane and I gone when we were exiled? Had we forsaken God and joined the heathen mutants? Had the prophecy come true as Darius claimed? Was Dane trying to kill them all by marching them into the wastelands? “Listen!” he shouts, barely audible over their growing tumult.
    The people press forward, fear and anger evident in their tight shouts and rough faces.
    Patrick stands hard next to Dane and yells back at the crowd, telling them to listen, telling them they don’t know the truth, telling them all the things that will only make them angrier and more deaf. In seconds, Dane and Patrick are nose-to-nose with several angry old men, their white hair and crooked teeth and wrinkled eyes a harsh contrast to Dane and Patrick’s youth and strength.
    I put my hands together and wedge my way between the two boys like pushing through summer cornstalks. As they shuffle aside I raise my hands above my head, parting them in a wide arc as the First Wife would in the chapel during a sunrise reading of Redemptions. I gaze up at my hands and peer at the ceiling of the barn high above, rising to a distant, dark peak much higher than the chapel’s ceiling.
    I stand unmoving and ignoring the roiling mob, staring up between my outstretched hands, thinking of the heavens beyond the roof and pleading to God for His help. The shouting continues. After a few seconds I begin to feel silly and pointless, but I keep still. A few seconds later, the mob begins to settle. Curiosity, respect, or wonder—it doesn’t matter what quiets them, but I wait until the mob has become a congregation once again. Even once they’re silent I hold myself steady, peering into the dark heights above, trying to feel reverent and humble.
    After a time, I lower my hands and paint calmness over my face, infusing confidence into my gaze. A large group waits, a hundred or more. I look into each individual’s eyes near me, one after another. They question, they wait, and they doubt. They fear. And I know why.
    I keep my voice soft and gentle as I explain it to them. “Darius will explode the Bomb,” I begin, and a few voices strike up in the back. I pause and glare, and the protests fall silent under the weight of the crowd.
    “You all know this. Surely he told you that when he shut you in here.”
    “Can he do it?” The question comes from one of the older women right behind the old men in the front.
    Dane replies, “Yes. Though it will take him a day or more.”
    I grasp his hand and pull him to my side. It will be better if he does not talk.
    Another protest barks out from the middle of the crowd. “Why didn’t you stop him!”
    Patrick says, “We were too late.”
    “Too late!” The murmur resurges.
    Dane shouts out, “Yes, too late! Why didn’t you stop him?”
    Oh, Dane, it is a proper question but we already know the answers . We’re losing them. Their indignant shouts are filled with anger and accusation.
    I look to my father with his powerful voice, and he shouts over my head for order and calm. “Please,” he says after the room has settled again,