Here is another snippet from our weekly short stories. Paid members have access to the entire tale in our downloads section…
“You can’t do this to me! I’m a mother! I was only trying to feed my children!”
I turned my head away from the woman sitting across the aisle from me. The bus continued its journey down the uneven road, a remnant of the time when this small town in what used to be East Tennessee thrived, before the Yellowstone eruption drove its residents to the coast. Now it, like so many other areas across the former United States, had been claimed by a group trying to escape the ghosts of civilization.
“The Colony,” they called it, a religious oasis in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The first prophet had established it soon after the aftershocks ended, leading a small group of survivors to establish a utopia built on the King James Bible and the Prophet’s divine revelations.
Now the fourth prophet was in power, a charismatic leader who wanted to grow the population while weeding out troublemakers. He called it his “Holy mission from God.”
I heard the gate at the front of the old bus open, and the woman’s screams got louder. A guard, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a nightstick, was walking down the aisle while his partner stood at the gate. “No! Please! No!” The guard jabbed a needle in her arm, and she slumped, unconscious, to the floor. Can’t kill the prisoners, I thought. The Prophet needs examples to punish.
Is Andrew ready to face an old friend? Find out in D.L. Winchester's latest Eye Tale, "The White Door."
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