BLOOD SKY
Book 4 in The After Series
By Traci L. Slatton
www.tracilslatton.com
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is
Copyright © 2015 by Traci L. Slatton. All rights reserved, including the right to
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Cover designed by Gwyn Kennedy Snider www.gkscreative.com
Cover art: Brilliant Eye/Shutterstock, Copyright © iStock
Published by Parvati Press www.parvatipress.com
Visit the author website www.tracilslatton.com
ISBN (eBook) 978-1-942523-03-1
ISBN (Paperback) 978-1-942523-02-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912264
Chapter 1
The seeds of all time are planted in every discrete moment. If you pause, breathe,
and come to presence, you’ll discover this marvelous truth: that all of time is contained
within each single instant, like a giant oak is contained within a fragile brown shell. It’s
all laid out for you, all of it, the past and the future, events and people and destiny. All
you have to do is come to awareness.
So I should have known that there would be trouble. I, Emma, should have known
that love would fail, that it wouldn’t be enough to protect us all from the very person who
had plunged us into the apocalypse a few years ago.
It was all there to be seen in the first moment we met, when he saved my daughter
Mandy from the obliterating mists and then accepted my trade: myself for his protection
of the band of orphans I was shepherding around France. We talked about food, and I
pointed out that he was eating well. One notices such things after a global ecological
cataclysm that has destroyed most of the planet’s buildings and people—and all of its
manufacturing capabilities. One cares about who is eating well when one has been
scrounging for scraps for several months. Priorities come into sharp focus.
He spoke of the mists and of rebuilding. I wanted to take Mandy back home to my
husband and older daughter Emma in the Safe Zone of Edmonton, Canada. He had his
goals and I had mine; his were lofty, mine were personal. I should have known a conflict
was inevitable. But could I have predicted that the fate of the world would be tangled up
Could I have foreseen that he would be taken by madness, a madness that had
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slept within him since before the day his invention erupted to scour the Earth clean of
structures and human beings? Even with all the mindfulness of the world, could I have
known in advance that Arthur would be possessed by madness?
We left a mist-ravaged Outpost City and traveled east, mostly along the old
Trans-Canada Highway. It was summer and we were en route to Quebec, where a boat
waited to take us to Europe. ‘We’ consisted of Arthur and me and our beloved friends
from the original camp in Europe: warrior woman Jeannie and Robert her Irishman and
their infant twins, sharp-tongued French beauty Laurette and her companion Charles
Nwokocha, who had been a famed linguist in the Before, and Serbian Theo and young
Marco, the Italian whose madness had been cured by Arthur mere seconds before the
mists swarmed around us. Other comrades from Canada had joined us: Donny who had
once been a cop and inscrutable Kangee his Sioux wife, and pretty but feral Susie, saved
from a band of raiders, and the sly pickpocket Gaff from Outpost City.
We were riding at a good clip, about fifty kilometers a day, and we were south
and west of Winnipeg. In the late afternoon, we rode along a flat, straight road into a
small community named Starbuck. It seemed deserted. There was no movement, no wild
dogs or skinny cats or desperate rats scrounging for food. It felt empty and lifeless despite
leafy trees and tall grass, and desolate in the way that ghost towns often did now, in the
After. Even when a town wasn’t devoured by the mists, people didn’t want to live outside
the Safe Zones where mists never encroached.
“Let’s check houses for food,” Arthur called, from the front of our peloton of
horses and riders. He swiveled around in his saddle and nodded to Theo and Donny, who
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peeled off together, trotting toward a small brown cape on the right with an abandoned
car in the driveway. He turned toward me and Laurette and nodded again, and we picked
up our reins to veer off to the left.
“Some of these homes look sweet to me,” Jeannie called. A worn expression
scrolled over her lovely dark face with its pronounced cheekbones. “How about we find a
place with food stock and we settle in for the evening?” She was as staunch in the saddle
as ever, but since giving birth to twins a month ago, she tired easily. She pressed her lips
gently to the forehead of the infant strapped onto her chest.
Arthur eyed her without responding.
“Aye, come on, Big Mister, let’s take a breather,” said Robert. “It’s not often me
“Every break slows us down, lengthens the time it takes us to get back to Europe
and make a stand against the mists once and for all,” Arthur said.
“Arthur, we have two babies with us,” I called.
Arthur stared at me. Abruptly, he nodded. He could still see reason, at this point.
He called, “Let’s find a place big enough to accommodate all of us. Then we’ll send out
So Theo and Donny rejoined the group, and Laurette and I stayed tight to the
We rode along Arena Boulevard past a school and a recreation center to Birch
Street. Tall, fragrant pines planted in neat rows and colorful perennials showed that the
inhabitants had once taken loving care of their yards.
“Arthur,” Theo called, “big yellow house ahead, green Ford truck out front. Look
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Arthur waved his assent.
Theo and Donny trotted out ahead of us to a sprawling yellow place with a
spacious yard. I watched them dismount and take out their guns. This was the After, and
they couldn’t be too careful. There was no telling who might be hiding in the house, and
how sane they might be. Billions of people had died on The Day, that terrible Christmas
eve that the mists rolled across the globe and devoured structures, people, animals,
objects…anything with the wrong balance of metals in their chemical composition.
Fortunately, many millions of people, perhaps hundreds of millions, hadn’t died.
But some percentage of the survivors were mad, and were a threat to the rest of us. The
“Emma,” said a quiet voice from my elbow.
I turned, and it was Susie. Her heart-shaped face was solemn. She jerked her
blonde head to one side, wanting to speak to me privately. I guided my horse out a few
meters away from Laurette. Susie followed so close that my horse danced anxiously
“Quit!” I said firmly, dropping my heels in the stirrups. I looked over at Susie,
who was practically at my shoulder. “So?”
Susie frowned. “Something’s wrong. Something here in this town.”
“You’ve seen something?”
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“Then what?” I pressed, in a low voice. Perhaps Susie had felt something with a
sixth sense stimulated by the mists. All too often, the mists left strange psychic gifts in
their wake, extrasensory abilities that both tormented and enhanced the recipient. We all
feared these gifts because they often preceded madness. I had a gift, a healing gift in my
hands, and I kept careful watch over my internal state, lest I descend into a chaos from
Susie shook her head ferociously. She uttered, “Yah!” Her horse quickened its
pace and she rode off toward the yellow house without answering me.
I stared after her in bemusement. Susie who lived to kill raiders was
uncomfortable with something in Starbuck, and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain her
feeling to me. Perhaps it was ordinary intuition, perhaps it was something more. I looked
around carefully, steering my horse in a tight clockwise spin when my neck wouldn’t turn
anymore. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Streets were empty, houses were quiet
and dark. There was no movement apart from our group.
“What’s wrong?” It was Arthur, who had guided his horse close to mine. He
“Susie feels uneasy,” I murmured, still scanning the surroundings.
“She has good sensitivity, she’s open psychically,” he murmured back. “I always
think she’ll be a key piece of the equation, when we mount an attack on the mists.” He
looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
“Me, neither.” I frowned as I caught his eyes. “That’s what worries me.”
His gray eyes lit up, the way they always did when his genius struck him. Before
the mists, Arthur had been a professor of sorts, a polymath inventor involved in military
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research and development. “I know what you mean. It’s all a little too quiet.”
“Why are the yards all so tidy? And where are the dogs?” I wondered. “Packs of
wild dogs run through every ghost town. We should have seen some.”
He scowled and gathered his reins in one hand, and then pulled out his pistol with
I followed his example.
“What are we fearing?” Robert asked, riding up to us. He didn’t wait for us to
answer but drew his weapon, as well, holding it firmly in his hand despite the baby
“The quiet,” Arthur answered.
Theo yelled for us to come to the house, breaking the unnatural silence of the
sunny afternoon. Arthur motioned the rest of us to go ahead while he took up the rear and
The yellow house was spacious enough, a living room with a fireplace, four
bedrooms, and a nicely appointed den. We were eleven adults and two babies, and
Laurette assigned us all rooms. She delegated bedrooms to couples and gave Donny his
own in case Kangee showed up, put Susie in the den, and told Marco, Theo, and Gaff to
figure out their accommodations in the living room.
“I like this place, it is very well kept,” Laurette approved. She stood in the kitchen
“Too well kept.” I was going through the pantry. There was little in it, though it
was very well organized and spotlessly clean.
“I know what you mean, but why question it, it is so pleasant? You are so
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suspicious, Emma,” Laurette said. She peered over my shoulder into the cabinet. “There
are dried beans, we can use those.”
“Someone will have to hunt something, there’s not enough.”
“We can look into nearby homes, also,” Laurette said. “Susie—”
“I don’t want to go out,” Susie said. She seated herself at the kitchen nook.
I pulled out a box of Earl Grey sachets. “Cup of tea? If I can get some water
“There’s no electricity,” Susie said. She laid her head on her arms.
“The water runs,” Laurette said, turning on the faucet for a few seconds.
“There’s a fireplace,” I said.
Jeannie came into the kitchen with a twin on each hip. “I’m so thankful to be off a
horse! Emma, what have we got? Anything to snack on?” She slid into the nook table
opposite Susie, who didn’t pick up her head.
“Not much, yet. I’m still looking,” I said.
Shaggy and awkward, Gaff stood in the doorway. “Arthur is sending us to scout
“Don’t go anywhere alone,” Susie murmured.
“He said to stay in pairs,” Gaff said. “I’ll be with Marco.” He watched Susie.
“Shut up,” she answered, but her voice sounded listless, without its usual snap for
“Go on, then, Gaff,” Jeannie said. She started unbuttoning her shirt so she could
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Gaff shrugged but he scowled at Susie and then made a face at me before he went
I took his point: something was up with Susie.
Something more than what was usually up with her, that is. Susie was often quiet,
depressive. She had been kept by a group of raiders after the mists had ravaged her home
town and killed her family. The raiders had used her badly and the residue of their cruelty
stayed with her. I had helped her get free after a mist incursion, and she was closer to me
than anyone else, but she was still often remote.
“I will start a fire in the fireplace,” Laurette announced. She took a large pot from
inside a cabinet and filled it with tap water, then went to the living room.
“It won’t matter,” Susie said. “Even if she gets the fire going and she boils the
water. It won’t matter. Nothing matters.”
I leaned back against the sink, scrutinizing the girl. “Susie, you want to talk about
She turned her head to look in the other direction.
“So, food supplies?” Arthur asked, coming in. He walked over to me and put his
hands on my hips. He smiled. “Didn’t we have our first encounter in a kitchen?” He
touched my hair, lifted a blond lock to his lips. Then he leaned into me, his tall, muscled
form lithe and warm along the length of me. He breathed deeply as if inhaling me and
then he kissed me, running one hand along my neck and the other along my bottom. He
lifted his mouth from my flesh to murmur, “We’ll have our own bedroom tonight.
Privacy. Finally. It’s starting to feel like a long, long trip to Quebec without any time
alone together.” He kissed me again, hungrily, his hands roaming over me.
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I felt myself melting, responding, as always. I had this response to Arthur, an
instinctive physical surrendering. I couldn’t help myself.
“Yuck,” Susie muttered.
Arthur pulled back. He threw a glance over his shoulder at Susie, and then raised
He stood back and reached past me to open the pantry door. “It’s tidy.”
“Too tidy,” I agreed. “Not a speck of dust or an insect carcass or anything. From
what I’ve seen, the whole house is that way. Like it’s been hermetically sealed since the
Before. Which is not possible.”
“There are no cairns commemorating the dead, either,” Arthur said, his voice
deep and thoughtful. “We see them everywhere. But not for the last ten miles or so, and
“Little food, clean homes and yards, no dogs or cats or dead gerbils, and no
“Someone’s in town,” he decided. “We don’t see them, but they’re here. They’re
“I wonder why they didn’t greet us, one way or another. I doubt they’re mad.
Maybe OCD, but not crazy, not when they’re doing this much housekeeping.”
“Perhaps they were concerned about our sanity, or our intentions,” Arthur mused.
“We’re an armed group riding in tight formation. It’s a reasonable concern.”
“They know you’re not crazy,” Susie said, her voice hollow. “They’ll come.” She
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refused to say more even when Arthur and I pressed her.
Marco shot a deer with his bow and arrow, his first since returning to sanity a few
weeks ago. Theo and Robert dug a shallow pit in the front yard and made a fire for
roasting the deer, as they’d done many times before when we were on the road both here
and in France, traveling hard and fast on a mission. Tucked away in the cellar of a house
down the street, Gaff found a stash of food, including some canned goods. The big score
was Ramen noodles. Laurette used a cast iron skillet in the fireplace to make a feast of
the noodles, which had an expiration date sometime in the next millennium.
We wouldn’t have cared if the expiration date was last year, the piquancy of the
seasonings made the noodles such a treat. We all appreciated simply having food, but
delicious food, food that was well-seasoned, was cause for special celebration.
It was a warm dusk under a vast azure and plum sky. We sat outside around the
fire to eat our meal. Gaff and Marco had dragged chairs out for us, and Laurette and I had
found and lit citronella torches to discourage mosquitos, so we sat in comfort. Crickets
trilled and cicadas whirred and bats streaked overhead and moths fluttered and the air
smelled bright and fresh beneath the smoky pine of our kindling. Poplar and birch logs,
found stacked behind a neighboring home, streaked the orange flames with dancing blue,
red, and green nymphs of light.
“Does anywhere have more stars than here?” asked Robert.
“Aye, France, where we met,” Jeannie said. She exchanged a smile with Robert.
“Less light pollution here, I think, because the spaces are so vast,” Arthur
commented. He was chewing a piece of venison backstrap, the succulent meat, tender yet
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lean, along the spine of the deer. “Theo, your recipe for this meat gets better all the time.”
“Use what I find for cooking,” Theo said modestly, but he looked pleased. He’d
found some spices in the cache of noodles and used them with great efficacy.
“Something’s off,” Donny said. He set his plate on the ground beside him and
stood up. His dark, pockmarked face wore a brooding expression. He was a portly man of
African descent, grounded, calm, and steady; he’d been a cop in the Before. We all
trusted him implicitly. He muttered, “I feel it with my…other sense.”
We all grew quiet and a little tense. The mists had given Donny a special ability
to sense other minds. Sometimes he could even influence other minds. We had relied on
this mental power in other, prior missions.
“Do you feel a presence?” asked Nwokocha.
“Alexei?” Arthur asked, sitting straighter.
Donny shook his head, No. It wasn’t the Russian psychopath who had bedeviled
“Alexei will come to us, eventually,” Arthur stated. He was counting on it, in fact.
“Maybe it’s Kangee returning?” I asked, hoping to see her.
Kangee had been given a mysterious ability to travel great distances. She would
begin walking and the air would morph into red streaks and she’d be miles ahead of
where she started out. I had experienced this myself once when she carried me on her
back. Since she was unfettered by distances, she came and went from our group as she
pleased. We kept her horse with us for the occasions she joined us.
“Not Kangee, I can feel my wife from, well, wherever she is when she starts to
come back,” Donny rumbled. He stroked his chin, hard, as if he had something on it that
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he wanted to rub away. “I can’t tell. I don’t know. What’s wrong with me?”
“We are all curious, Donny, but don’t fret yourself,” Nwokocha said. He pushed
his glasses up his nose and smiled at Donny.
“I don’t know,” Donny said in frustration. “But I know they’re here. They’re here,
“They, who?” I asked. But I didn’t wait for an answer. I took my gun from my
Arthur and a few others rose, also.
Susie buried her face in her hands.
A small voice piped up, “They, us.”
A small rustle of movement intensified until it saturated the space around us.
Scattered gossamer ribbons of light twisted in the firelight like DNA helixes, and then
several small forms slowly became visible, first as columns and then as people.
I yelped, and exclamations flew up from Laurette, Jeannie, Gaff, and Marco.
“We’re here to talk to her,” said the small voice. It belonged to a dark-haired,
dark-eyed girl of about nine years old. She was one of dozens of children who suddenly
encircled us in the yard. The girl pointed a slim index finger at Susie.
Arthur took in a quick, startled breath. “What do you want with her?”
The girl looked at him and tilted her head, a birdlike pose. “She can do it. You can
help her, maybe. She can do it. Susie, come.”
“Do what?” Arthur asked.
The girl turned away from him to gesture to Susie. “I am Irina. Come with me.
You’re the one we’ve been waiting for.”
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Susie got up and walked toward Irina.
“No, Susie—” I started.
“Susie, stay where you are,” Arthur said, in his command voice.
But Susie kept walking. Her face was blank, expressionless. She took Irina’s
hand. The two of them vanished.
Theo, Laurette, and I lunged toward the now vacant spot.
“Bring her back this instant!” I yelled. I drew myself up, placed my hands on my
hips, and made a ferocious face of command. I had two children of my own, Beth and
Mandy—I knew how to scowl effectively.
“Don’t worry,” said a boy by me. He was six or seven, with ragged red hair and
missing front teeth. “Don’t worry, Emma.” He patted my arm and then he vanished, too.
All at once, all the children were gone.
Robert squeaked. “Where’d the little birds fly with our girl?”
The rest of us stood aghast, unmoving. The appearance and disappearance before
our eyes of so many people—children—was so unexpected that it befuddled us.
I was at high alert and almost jumped out of my skin when Arthur touched my
shoulder. “Arthur? We have to get Susie back!”
“Sh,” he said, his head cocked. “Listen.”
So I froze. I strained to hear what Arthur did. It was a steady susurration, a kind of
syncopated snicking that receded into the ethers. Then I got it: it was the sound of many
bodies breathing as multitudes of little feet pattered over grass and pavement.
Arthur saw the comprehension grow on my face. He nodded. “Yes. They’re
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cloaked. They’re not teleporting the way Kangee does.”
“Grab one?” I asked, under my breath.
He shook his head, No.
“Why do they want Susie?” I wondered. “Where did they take her?”
“They have to bring her back,” Gaff said. He lifted his hat off his head and
scraped his hands back over his thicket of dirty-blond hair. His narrow face was set and
stern. “I mean, she’s a heinous bitch and all, but they can’t have her. She’s one of us.”
“I think she knew they were here all along,” Laurette said slowly.
I nodded. But now what?
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