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Kansas stretched out in front of us like a bleak alien landscape, the shadows cast by the clouds turning everything strange I turned the radio on just to break the silence, pushed down the gas a little more, and drove onward, into the dark
We didn’t know There was nothing we could have done, and we didn’t know You can’t shoot the wind You can’t argue with the clouds There was nothing, nothing we could have done to stop the storm, and even if there had been, we didn’t know There was no fking way for us to know Nothing like that had ever happened before, and we didn’t know
It wasn’t our fault And if I say that enough ti it Oh, fk
It wasn’t our fault We didn’t know
Oh, God, we didn’t know
--Fro of Shaun Mason, June 24, 2041 Unpublished
Twenty-two
We crossed Kansas on the leading edge of the storht until the sun went down and ere driving in darkness s
o absolute that it was oppressive The clouds covered the sky until they blocked out all traces of the stars, and when the rain started--about half an hour after the sun went down--visibility dropped to alh bea after the rain started, while Ifor pursuit We hadn’t spotted anybody yet, but that didn’t ; it just ht There was a chance the rain wouldthe us Of course, there was also a chance I’d wind up shootingif I tried to fire under these conditions Sadly, that was a risk we had to take
There was one good thing about the way the as howling; with Becks and Mahir in the front seat and me at the rear, they wouldn’t be able to hear e, will you listen to that?" I whispered "It’s like it wants to blow us all the way back to California"
I don’t like it, she said, tone clipped and razor-sharp with tension It felt almost like I’d see her if I turnedthe other side of the van with her favorite 40 in her hands as she scanned the road for trouble I didn’t turn She added, There’s so after us yet?
"Maybe they’re not sure it was us" The excuse sounded stupid almost before it was out ofwith had to know he’d sent Kelly to infiltrate us--he couldn’t have triggered the outbreak in Oakland remotely, and he certainly couldn’t have called in an air strike without soht confuse the legit members of the CDC, but the corrupt ones would know exactly whothe roads So where were they?