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Back Final Days
Chapters (32)
  1. ONE
  2. TWO
  3. THREE
  4. FOUR
  5. FIVE
  6. SIX
  7. SEVEN
  8. EIGHT
  9. NINE
  10. TEN
  11. ELEVEN
  12. TWELVE
  13. THIRTEEN
  14. FOURTEEN
  15. FIFTEEN
  16. SIXTEEN
  17. SEVENTEEN
  18. EIGHTEEN
  19. NINETEEN
  20. TWENTY
  21. TWENTY-ONE
  22. TWENTY-TWO
  23. TWENTY-THREE
  24. TWENTY-FOUR
  25. TWENTY-FIVE
  26. TWENTY-SIX
  27. TWENTY-SEVEN
  28. TWENTY-EIGHT
  29. TWENTY-NINE
  30. THIRTY
  31. THIRTY-ONE
  32. THIRTY-TWO

Something thumped against the side of the car. Saul jerked around, startled, and saw a uniformed ASI cop pushing a middle-aged woman with a hand-painted sign up against a window. Some of the participants in the religious service came running down the shallow embankment towards them, till Saul found himself surrounded by angrily shouting people. Sensing things might turn genuinely ugly, he pushed open the door and clambered out. Someone grabbed hold of him immediately, and Saul stumbled and nearly fell.

He twisted out of his assailant’s grasp and simultaneously lashed out with his fist, making contact with something soft amid the press of bodies all around. He ducked away from his car and ran off down the highway, between the rows of stalled vehicles, as he tried to put some distance between himself and what was starting to look like a full-scale riot. Several people stepped out of their cars, pointing beyond him, and he turned to see a phalanx of uniformed cops, wearing face-shields and wielding batons, come pouring down the opposite embankment. Soon he could hear screams, and the sound of batons striking unprotected flesh.

He stopped to catch his breath, and Saul realized that he was almost certainly going to cover the last dozen kilometres to the Array on foot.

He suddenly recalled, with a sense of longing, the tiny wrap of loup-garou still sitting in the coffee jar back home. Except you swore the damn stuff off, he reminded himself, seeing in his mind’s eye the look of contempt on Donohue’s face.

He turned his back on his car and started walking, squeezing between two vehicles and making for the verge. Other people also were abandoning their cars in large numbers. Saul heard a roar, and glanced up just as three jets flashed by overhead. They were flying towards the Array, their silver carapaces glittering in the sunlight.

He started to wonder if Farad Maalouf might be able to tell him a lot more than just where to find Jeff Cairns.

Pulling off his jacket, Saul kept moving through the tens of thousands of others who crowded the stalled highway or made their way along the tops of the neighbouring embankments. After a couple of hours of steady progress, he glanced ahead and saw where the highway divided into filter lanes leading to different sections of the Array. Aerial drones buzzed like mosquitoes overhead in the distance. He moved to higher ground so he could see more clearly which way he should be heading.