I Died When the Sky Fell, Now I Wake Up Holding Lightning novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Gate
Shelter Four was a low concrete building at the end of a dead-end road, with a chain-link fence around the lot.
By ten that morning the road was a field of people.
I looked out at them from the cab of the flatbed, easily three thousand.
They stood in the heat with children on their shoulders and dogs on short rope leashes.
Some held bags, some held pillows, and one old man held a birdcage with a dead bird in it, and nobody had told him.
Emmett eased the truck to a stop two hundred feet from the gate.
"Nobody told them it would be this many," he said.
"Somebody did," Hollis said. "They just didn't tell them the number of seats."
Behind us in the bed, Ward sat propped against a toolbox with his stitches taped, and Abel knelt beside him with the bag.
"Not a word about my wound," Ward said. "I'm walking."
"You're sitting," said Abel.
"I'm sitting while walking."
The gate stood chained.
Inside it, two rows of deputies in vests stood shoulder to shoulder, and a man at a folding table checked names off a list.
Staff badges moved through a narrow side lane, and the deputies let each person in with a nod.
They carried bags and rolled suitcases, and not one of them looked at the street.
Lorraine stood on a loading platform above the gate in a fresh gray cardigan, with a bullhorn.
"Staff and approved guests to the left lane," she said, mild and carrying. "Everyone else, please remain calm and clear the road. This facility has reached capacity."
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