Last Light Falling Read Online Free Page A

paternal detachment I may have had growing up, it was Finnegan who taught me the fundamentals of self-sufficiency. I don’t begrudge my father for not being around. I realized how hard he worked to keep our family surviving, but it would have been nice to be around him more while I was young.
    Finnegan taught me very well about the art of warfare, how to be invisible to my enemies, and sly enough to be virtually unseen to the deadliest killer. This is probably why I didn’t play with dolls all that much as a kid, or have tea parties with the neighborhood girls, because of Finnegan’s nonsensical way of living vicariously through me, as if I was the son he always wanted. I guess he noticed right away that I had the potential to be an efficient and effective hunter. He taught me how to hunt for food and not sport. I’m absolutely opposed to sport hunting. The idea carries no sensible purpose, and I detest the very thought of it. I knew of several hunters in town who took pleasure in killing for the fun of it, and I was all too eager to let Finnegan know about it. When I was eight years old, Finnegan showed me and Gabe how to counter such scum.
    We would set trip wires along the tree line of the back bank where most of the deer would stroll. This was the only creek in the area that wasn’t dry. Finnegan knew exactly where the poachers would set up for the best line of sight to the deer. He was always one step ahead of them.
    We set up decoys in that line of sight, just across the creek. They looked incredibly real, and no one would ever know the difference. When the hunters came to the spot that Finnegan said they would, it was all too easy to deceive those rednecks. After shots were fired, striking the decoys down, the idiots quickly ran toward their kill, half-drunk of course, tripping the lines we set. From there it was too hilarious notto laugh, yet I restrained myself by covering my mouth with my shirt so we weren’t heard.
    The tripped wires gave way to a large, rotting branch as our counter weight that was slightly supported by a steel rod. When the lines were pulled by the hunters’ feet, the steel flung out like a cannon shot, leaving the half-ton branch falling with force and pulling a net, camouflaged with leaves, up in the air with our prey. The hunters became the hunted, and I reveled in every minute of it. My sides delightfully hurt from the laughter, seeing beards and butt cracks pressed tightly against the hanging mesh. That was probably the last time I ever laughed that hard with enjoyment.
    Before Finnegan was deployed, he left me with his mentor and good friend, Henry Matsuda, to make sure I continued with my martial arts training. I guess he knew something I didn’t, but nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed it, and I have been training ever since three to four times a week. Henry is a very understanding teacher when it comes to managing time, but when we are training, he unremittingly pushes me to the point of exhaustion. While it wears me out, I crave enough of it to come back for more—it’s an addiction. Not only does it make me stronger, it keeps me from drowning further into depression after the death of my parents. I train, while Gabe invents. This gives us the needed skills to mask our internal pain.
    It’s been nearly five years since we’ve seen Finnegan. Apparently, he was needed for a highly classified special ops arrangement, but we never heard from him again. Not a single letter, call, or visit. No one knew where he was, and the government never shed any light on the subject. I could only conclude one of two things: his location and status was top secret and kept hidden from kin, or he was dead. As much as I wanted to believe the former, I heavily considered the later as reality. That’s about the time when the unrest started here in America.
    It’s 2053 in the year of our Lord, and much has changed in our nation’s capital in the last six years. The providence of our democracy has