Winds of Ares: An Apocalypse Thriller by Druga, Jacqueline (most recommended books TXT) 📕

Rosie’s two grandchildren were safe, then just as Rosie made her way over the hood of the bus, it again jolted violently, only this time it dropped.

The bus sunk another three feet into the mud.

It was the bus equivalent of the Titanic. Perched out of its abyss of death, sinking fast. My husband still on the hood of the bus, trying to get people out.

Liza followed after Rosie, and then nothing for a few seconds until we helped Rick off the hood of the bus.

Another tremor of the ground caused the bus to sink even more, and a flow of screams carried to us.

“Lane!” Martin shouted. “Get out of there.”

What? Why was Martin shouting for my husband to get out of there?

I stepped back, rain falling fast against my face. I swiped away the water and my eyes followed the rope from the truck to the bus.

Lane wasn’t on the hood anymore, he was inside.

“Lane!” I screamed.

Another rumble of the ground, and with one final shake, the bus dropped completely. That was when I heard the scream that I would hear the rest of my life.

A woman’s scream. That haunting, frightened scream.

“Oh, God, help!”

Her last cry out.

That was all I heard.

Gone.

Muffled beneath the thick bath of death.

Martin dove for the rope still attached to his truck. His feet slipped in the mud as he tried to hold on.

I was too hysterical. Screaming for my husband who had disappeared with the bus.

Martin pulled as best as he could, then everyone joined him in grabbing on to that rope. Even Rosie’s grandchildren. They held on and pulled. The rope veered to the right and everyone gave their all, fighting against the current.

Then I saw an arm.

It extended from the mud, slamming down to the road.

A single arm.

One I recognized.

Lane’s.

I dove forward for it. I couldn’t get a grip on his flesh, but I could grab his sleeve.

I couldn’t even purchase a foothold; the fabric of his shirt was slipping from my grip and my fingers struggled to hold on to something. Then Martin lunged down next to me and reached into the mud.

The two of us weren’t enough. Lane felt so heavy.

All I could feel was the fabric of his shirt, clutched in my fingers. I don’t recall who else joined in the effort, reaching in, grabbing, adding their strength. Lane’s head emerged from the mud. He gasped and coughed, and when he did, Martin latched on, lifting him.

I was useless. I didn’t have the strength, I realized when Rick moved me out of the way and reached into the mud.

My fingers slipped from my husband’s shirt.

But they had him.

It took both men to lift him, but they did, and it wasn’t just Lane.

In his arms was a woman, Colleen.

My husband was conscious, but she wasn’t. As they pulled both of them out of the mud river, Lane released his grip on her and scooted back. Her limp body sunk into the mud that covered the road.

Was she breathing?

She didn’t look like it.

Anita sprang into action, kneeling at the side of the woman. She opened her mouth, and using her fingers, scooped stuff out of the woman’s mouth.

The moment was frantic, I felt it in my bones, heart beating out of control.

I was still processing everything. I went from happy and grateful that my husband was alive to fearful and worried about the woman Anita worked to resuscitate.

In the span of two hours, we went from hopeful with sunny skies to death.

It was so hard to process, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. Would we, like Alice, have been safer going back? In my determination to go east, was I leading us into the worst of it?

The moment at hand was a whirlwind.

Anita desperately trying to revive a life while reconciling that we had just lost six more people.

Six people gone, never to be found, buried in that school bus at the bottom of that muddy river of hell.

SIXTEEN – HOSING DOWN

Colleen didn’t drown as much as she choked. Despite Anita’s best efforts, she wasn’t able to revive her.

Another person gone.

How did we get to this point?

At least, in my mind, I believed Alice and the others were safe. I had to believe that. Our pilgrimage had become deadly.

There was no way to know what was going on or which direction was best. The exit ahead of us Lane had suggested didn’t take us directly to the interstate, it took us to answers as to what had happened.

I didn’t realize how close to the Mississippi we actually were until we crossed it and saw how high and raging it was. Whatever storm burst through it caused massive flooding and mudslides of astronomical proportions.

I feared that we would run into more flooding or mud, thankfully we didn’t.

Our thirty person, five vehicle caravan had been reduced to thirteen people, two vehicles and six horses.

I don’t know how we managed to keep them healthy and fine.

My anxiety level was up looking at the map. It was a logistical nightmare for possible flooding.

We were right smack dab in the middle of an upside down horseshoe of water.

The Mississippi to the west, Ohio and Tennessee rivers to our north and the Kentucky lakes to the east.

Pushing through meant going another forty miles. Everyone was cold, wet and dirty. We needed to stop, but I just wanted to get beyond the lake.

Everything just seemed flattened as we drove through. Overturned cars, billboards lay on the road. It was hard to believe with all we had been through, it was still early in the day.

The sky didn’t give any indication of the time.

It remained gray and, in that pre-storm looking state.

My estimate by looking at the map was, if we stopped for ninety minutes, we could get another two hundred miles in before it would get too dark to travel.

We needed that two hundred miles, because at the point where we took a break, we still had six hundred miles to go.

Six hundred miles and eighteen