End of the World, Start of My Empire novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Empire
By noon there were ten thousand people on the ridge.
They had come from every camp the radio had touched.
They sat on the rocks and the truck roofs with their children on their shoulders.
Below them lay the flat gray plain between the Yard and the Governor's army.
Nobody told them to come.
They wanted to see.
The Governor's line stretched from one end of the horizon to the other.
Eight hundred trucks, forty carriers, and a row of mobile guns pointed at the Yard gate.
We walked out to meet them, the four of us, in a line.
Nobody else.
That was the only way it could count.
"Tell us what you're going to do before you do it," said Tova.
I looked at the three of them, and at the long line of steel ahead, and at the wide white sky.
"Before," I said. "I'm going to take his engines. All of them."
"All eight hundred?" said Bria.
"All eight hundred."
"Then you'll need my hand."
She took my right.
Hallie took my shoulder.
Tova put her palm on the back of my neck.
I raised my arm.
The blue light went out across the plain.
Bria's amber ran through it, and under both came a low pulse of green and a hammer-beat of red.
Eight hundred engines coughed and went still.
The silence rolled across the valley.
On the ridge ten thousand people held their breath.
Out in front of the Governor's line, the first carrier tried to fire.
Tova threw her hand out, and the red light slammed the barrel upward, and the shell soared uselessly into empty sky.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of End of the World, Start of My Empire are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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