{"product_id":"armageddons-children-isbn-9780345484109","title":"Armageddon's Children","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e •\u003cb\u003e “In this exciting first of a new fantasy trilogy, bestseller Brooks effortlessly connects the Tolkien-infused magic of his Shannara books .  .  . with the urban, postapocalyptic world of his Word and the Void series. . . . Longtime Brooks fans and newcomers will be riveted.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn our world’s near future, civilization has fallen into terrifying chaos. Navigating the scarred landscape that once was America and guided by a powerful talisman, Logan Tom has sworn an oath to seek out a remarkable being born of magic and destined to lead the final fight against darkness. In time, Logan’s path will cross with others: Angel Perez, herself a survivor of death-dealing forces, and a makeshift family of refugees forced to survive among street gangs, mutants, and marauders. Common purpose will draw Logan and his allies together. Their courage and convictions will be tested and their fates will be decided, as their singular crusade begins: to take back, or lose forever, the only world they have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Dynamic . . . compelling . . . mesmerizing . . . [with] a cliff-hanger that leaves readers salivating for the sequel.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Strongly recommended . . . a transformative work.”—\u003ci\u003eSFRevu\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e | Praise for Terry Brooks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A great storyteller, Terry Brooks creates rich epics filled with mystery, magic, and memorable characters. If you haven’t read Terry Brooks, you haven’t read fantasy.”\u003cbr\u003e–Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon and Eldest\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Terry’s place is at the head of the fantasy world.” \u003cbr\u003e–Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass | \u003cb\u003eTerry Brooks\u003c\/b\u003e has thrilled readers for decades with his powers of imagination and storytelling. He is the author of more than thirty books, most of which have been \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestsellers. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest. | One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      He is fast asleep in his bed on the night that the demon and the once-men  come for his family. They have been watching the compound for days,  studying its walls and the routine of the guards who ward them. They have  waited patiently for their chance, and now it has arrived. An advance  party is over the walls and past the guards. They have opened the gates  from the inside to let in the others, and now all are pouring into the  compound. In less than five minutes, everything has been lost.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He doesn’t realize this when his father shakes him awake, but he knows  something is wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Logan, get up.” Urgency and fear are apparent in his father’s voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan blinks against the beam of the flashlight his father holds, one of  two they still possess. He sees his brother dressing across the way,  pulling on his shirt and pants, moving quickly, anxiously. Tyler isn’t  griping, isn’t saying anything, doesn’t even look over at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His father bends close, his strong features all planes and angles at the  edges of the flashlight’s beam. His big hand grips his son’s shoulder and  squeezes. “It’s time for us to leave here, Logan. Put on your clothes and  your pack and wait by the trapdoor with Tyler. Your mother and I will be  along with Megan.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His sister. He looks around, but doesn’t see her. Outside, there is  shouting and the sound of gunfire. A battle is being fought. He knows now  what has happened, even without seeing it. He has heard it talked about  all of his life, the day their enemies would find a way to break through,  the day that the walls and gates and guards and defenses would finally  give way. It has happened all across the United States. It has happened  all over the world. No one is safe anywhere. Maybe no one will ever be  safe again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He rises quickly now and dresses. His brother already has his pack  strapped across his back and tosses Logan his. The packs have been sitting  in a corner of his bedroom for as far back as he can remember. Each month,  they are unpacked, checked, and repacked. His father is a careful man, a  planner, a survivor. He has always assumed this day would come, even  though he assured his family it would not. Logan was not fooled. His  father did not speak of it directly, but in the spaces between the words  of reassurance were silent warnings. Logan did not miss them, did not  ignore their implications.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hurry, slug,” Tyler hisses at him, going out the door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He finishes fastening his boots, throws his pack over his shoulder, and  hurries after his brother. The shouts are growing louder now, more  frantic. There are screams, as well. He feels curiously removed from all  of it, as if it were happening to people with whom he had no connection,  even though these are his friends and neighbors. He feels light-headed,  and there is a buzzing in his ears. Maybe he has gotten up too fast, has  rushed himself the way he does sometimes without allowing his body to  adjust to a sudden change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Maybe it is just the first of many adjustments he is going to have to make  in his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He knows what is going to happen now. His father has told them all, taking  care to use the word if rather than the word when. They are going to have  to escape through the tunnels and flee into the surrounding countryside.  They are going to have to abandon their home and all their possessions  because otherwise they will be caught and killed. The demons and the  once-men have made it clear from the beginning that those who choose to  shut themselves away in the compounds will not be spared once their  defenses are breached. It is punishment for defiance, but it is a warning,  too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    If you want to survive, you have to place yourself in our hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    No one believes this is true, of course. No one can survive outside the  compounds. Not as a free man or woman. Not with the plagues and poisons in  the air, water, and soil. Not with the slave camps to take you in and  swallow you up. Not with the Freaks and the monsters running amok in  cities and towns and villages everywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Not with the demons and once-men seeking to exterminate the human race.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Not in this brave new world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan knows this even though he is only eight years old. He knows it  because he is dreaming it, reliving it twenty years later. His  understanding of its truths transcends time and place; he embraces the  knowledge in the form of memories. He knows it the way he already knows  how things will end.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He is standing with Tyler in front of the trapdoor when his father reaches  them, ushering his mother and sister into place. “Stay together,” he tells  them, glancing from face to face. “Look out for each other.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He carries a short-barreled Tyson 33 Flechette, a wicked black metal  weapon that when fired can tear a hole through a stone wall a foot thick.  Logan has seen it fired only once, years ago, when his father was testing  it. The sound of its discharge was deafening. There was a burning smell in  his nose and a ringing in his ears afterward. The memory stays with him to  this day. He is afraid of the weapon. If his father carries it, things are  as bad as they can possibly be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Jack.” His mother speaks his father’s name softly, and she turns and  takes him in her arms, burying her face in his shoulder. The shouts and  screams and firing are right outside their door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His father lets her hold him for a moment, then eases her away, reaches  down, and flings back the trapdoor. “Go!” he snaps, motioning them in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Tyler doesn’t hesitate; carrying the second of the two flashlights, he  goes down through the opening. Megan follows him, her green eyes huge and  damp with tears.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Logan,” his father calls when he sees his youngest hesitate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the next instant the front door blows apart in a fiery explosion that  engulfs both his mother and his father and sends him tumbling  head-over-heels down the stairway to land in a twisted heap on top of his  sister. She screams, and something heavy falls on the dirt floor next to  him, barely missing his head. In the waver of Tyler’s flashlight he looks  down and sees the Tyson Flechette. He stares at it until his brother jerks  him to his feet and snatches up the weapon himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Their eyes meet and they both know. “Run!” Tyler grunts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Together the three children hurry down the long dark corridor, following  the beam of the flashlight. In the darkness ahead, other flashlight beams  and flickering candles appear out of other tunnels that join this one, and  the sound of voices grows louder. He knows they all come from homes close  to his own. The tunnel was the joint project of many families, spearheaded  by his father and a few other men, a bolt-hole in case of the unspeakable.  Quickly the tunnels are packed, and people are pushing and shoving. Tyler,  fighting to keep Megan in tow with one hand while wielding his flashlight  with the other, shouts his name and shoves the Tyson Flechette at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan takes it without thinking. His hands close over the cool, smooth  metal of the barrel and work down to the leather-bound grip. Curiously,  the weapon feels right in his hands; it feels like it belongs there. His  fear of it dissipates as he cradles it to his chest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ahead, there is a convergence of lights, and a wooden stairway leads  upward. People are pouring out of the tunnel and up the steps into a night  filled with flashes and explosions and the sounds of death and dying. He  can feel the heat of an intense fire as he gains the opening. As he  breathes in the night air, he can smell the acrid stench of smoke and  charred timbers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He has just paused to look around, not three steps back from Tyler and  Megan, when an explosion rips the earth beneath him, flinging him backward  into the night. An eerie silence descends over his immediate surroundings.  Everything he hears now is distant and strangely muffled. He cannot see at  first, cannot even move, lying on the ground clutching the flechette as if  it were a lifeline.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He rises with difficulty, dazed and in shock. He sees bodies strewn  everywhere on the ground in front of him, all around the tunnel opening,  dozens and dozens of crumpled forms. He climbs to his feet and staggers  over to where Tyler and Megan lie still and bleeding, their eyes wide and  staring. He feels his chest tighten and his strength drain away. They are  gone. His whole family is gone. It happened so fast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sudden movement catches his eye as a knot of dark forms converges on him  from out of the darkness. Once-men, wild-eyed and feral, their faces the  faces of animals. Without thinking, without even knowing how he remembers  what to do, he snaps off the safety on the Tyson Flechette, whips up the  barrel, and fires into their midst. Dozens of them disappear, blown  backward into the night. He swings the barrel to the right and fires  again. Dozens more fly apart. He is exhilarated, become as maddened as  they are, as consumed by bloodlust. He hates them for what they have done.  He wants to destroy them all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then he sees another figure, an old man standing off to one side, tall and  stooped and ghost-gray in a cloak that hangs almost to the ground. His  eyes are fixed on Logan, peering out from beneath a slouch-brimmed hat,  and in those eyes is a cold approval that terrifies the boy. He does not  understand what it is the old man approves of, but he does understand one  thing. Without ever having come face-to-face with one before, he knows  instinctively that this is a demon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The demon smiles at him and nods.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A hand jerks him about sharply and whips the flechette out of his hands.  Eyes as hard and black as obsidian stare out of a face streaked with  grease and sweat. “Good enough, boy, but it’s time to leave now. Let’s  live to fight another day!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He takes Logan’s arm and begins to run with him into the darkness. Others  with faces painted in the same way join with him, shepherding the strays  they have gathered from the ruins of the compound. A rear guard forms up  to protect their retreat, weapons firing into the waves of once-men that  seek to reach them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Run, boy.” The man who holds him shoves him away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Fighting down the pain he feels in his gut, struggling to hold back his  tears, he does. He does not look back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    the midmorning sunlight blinded Logan Tom when he opened his eyes, and he  blinked hard to clear away the sleep as he peered out through the  windshield of the Lightning S-150 AV. The Indiana countryside, empty of  life, spread away to either side of the little copse of elms he had pulled  into the night before. The highway he had followed west toward Chicago  stretched back the way he had come and ahead the way he must go, cracked  and weed-grown and littered with debris. His gaze shifted. Fields fallow  and dried   out from weeks without rain formed a broken brown patchwork to the south.  North, about half a mile off, a farmhouse and barn sat abandoned and  derelict in a small grove of oaks turned wintry and leached of life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On the four horizons, nothing moved. Not even feeders, and feeders were  everywhere there were humans to consume.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He reached over for the staff, gripped it tightly for a moment, then ran  his hands slowly along its polished black length, feeling the reassuring  presence of the runes carved into its surface.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Another day in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He checked the gauges of the AV, a cursory examination of several banks of  lights that glimmered a uniform green in the daylight brightness. The red  lights were dark, reassuring him that nothing had approached the vehicle  during the night. He would not have slept through their audible warnings  in any case, but it didn’t hurt to make sure. The assault vehicle was his  favorite weapon against the things that hunted him, and he relied on her  the way you relied on a best friend. Not that he had ever had a best  friend. Michael had been his last real friend, but mostly he had been  Logan’s teacher. It was Michael, a genius with anything mechanical, who  had acquired and modified the AV. When he was gone, the Lightning had  become Logan’s, a small legacy from a man larger than life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He thought momentarily of his dream, of that last night with his family,  with his childhood. Twenty years ago now, but it seemed an eternity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Don’t dwell on it. Don’t give power of any kind to the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Satisfied that nothing threatened, he glanced at the solar battery  readings. Full power. He was good to go. Solar had its advantages in a  world in which the climates had been so drastically altered that the sun  shone 350 days a year all the way from the equator to Canada. When you  crossed the Mississippi, there was nothing but desert until you reached  the mountains, then more of the same after that until you got close to the  coast. The ozone layer had mostly burned away, the polar ice caps all but  vanished. Temperatures had risen everywhere, and the land that had once  been Middle America had turned stunted and dry. Old news; it had happened  more than thirty years ago. So lots of sunshine was the forecast for  today, tomorrow, and the next few centuries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rainfall? Six to eight inches a year in the wet spots.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan Tom wondered if anyone would ever again see anything that even  resembled the old world. He thought it possible his descendants might, one  extrapolated from the raw conditions of the present. But the world his  parents and grandparents had known was gone forever, as dead as the moral  and social fabric that had failed to hold it together. No one had thought  it possible. No one had believed it could happen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    No one except the Knights of the Word, who had dreamed the nightmare and  tried unsuccessfully to prevent it. Men and women conscripted to the  cause, champions of and believers in the need to keep the magic that bound  all things in balance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For there was magic in the world, born out of the time before humankind,  out of the world of Faerie, out of an older civilization. Magic that  infused and sustained, that reached beyond what could be seen or even  understood to tie together in symbiotic fashion   all life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Magic over which both the Word and the Void sought to exercise control.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was an old struggle, one that dated all the way back to the birth of  humanity. It was a struggle for supremacy between shadings of light and  dark, between gradations of good and evil. Logan Tom didn’t pretend to  understand all the nuances. It was enough that he understood the  difference between a desire to preserve and a determination to destroy.  The Knights, as servants of the Word, sought to keep the balance of the  world’s magic in check; the demons, as creatures of the Void, sought to  upset it. It was a simple enough concept to grasp and one easily embraced  if you believed in good and evil—and most humans did. They always had.  What they didn’t want to believe, what they tried repeatedly to dismiss,  was that whatever good and evil existed in the world came from within  themselves and not from some abstract source. It was easier to attribute  both to something larger than what they knew, what they could see. A  refusal to accept that it came from within was what had ultimately undone  them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Knights and the demons understood this truth and sought, respectively,  to reveal or exploit it. Both were born of the human race, evolved into  something more by becoming what they were. Until the beginning of the end,  humans hadn’t even known of their existence. Many still didn’t. Knights  and demons were the stuff of urban legend and radical religions. No one  saw them at work; no one could pick them out from other humans. Not until  they had begun to reveal themselves and their cause. Not until the balance  was tipped and the steady, purposeful destruction of all humankind a  reality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    How hard it was for them to see the truth even then, when it was staring  them in the face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Even after the plagues had killed half a billion people, no one had  believed. Even after the air was so polluted and the water was so badly  fouled that it was dangerous either to breathe or drink, no one had  believed. They had started to believe after the first nuclear weapons were  launched and whole cities vanished in the blink of an eye. They had  started to believe when the governments of countries collapsed or were  overthrown, when chemical warfare attacks and counterattacks decimated  entire populations. Enough so that they began turning what remained of  their cities into walled compounds. Enough so that they retreated into a  siege mentality that hadn’t abated as a way of life in thirty years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It got worse, of course. When food and water started to dwindle, survival  hinged on controlling what supplies remained and on acquiring new. But few  knew how to forage adequately in a world poisoned and fouled so badly that  even the soil could kill. Few knew how to develop new sources, and the  demons got to those who   did. A reticence to share with those less fortunate settled in, and   the compounds became symbols of tyranny and selfishness. Those within were  privileged, less threatened by hunger and thirst and sickness. Those  without, some already beginning to change as their bodies adjusted to the  poisons and the sicknesses that infected them, were labeled enemies for no  better reason than that they had become different from everyone else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Freaks, the regular humans called them. The street kids had given them  other names—Lizards, Croaks, Spiders, Moles. Mutants. Abominations. They  were called that and much worse. Infected by radiation and chemicals, they  were the monsters of his time, banished to the ravaged land outside the  walls of the compounds and left to their fate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan Tom looked out across the Indiana flats, reached for the AV’s  ignition, and turned it on. The engine purred softly to life, and he felt  the thrum of her metal skin vibrate beneath his seat. After a moment, he  engaged the clutch and steered out from the trees back onto the cracked  surface of the road, heading west.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The real enemies were the once-men, humans subverted not by radiation and  chemicals, but by false promises and lies that went something like this:  “Do you want to know what it will take to survive? A willingness to do  what is needed. The world has always belonged to the strongest. The weak  have never been meant to inherit anything. You choose which you want to be  in this life. By your choice, you are either with us or against us. Choose  wisely.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Demons had, of course, been telling those lies and making those false  promises to humans for centuries. But those to whom the demons whispered  were more willing to listen now. The world was a simple place in the  aftermath of civilization’s destruction: either you lived within the  compounds or you lived without. Those without believed those within weak  and afraid, and they understood fear and weakness instinctively. They had  been culled from the remnants of broken armies and scattered law  enforcement bodies, from failed militias and paramilitary organizations,  from a culture of weapons and battle, from a mind-set of hate and  suspicion and ruthless determination. Once they embraced the propaganda of  the demons, they fell quickly into the thicket of resulting madness. They  changed emotionally and psychologically first, then mentally and  physically. Layer by layer, they shed their human skin; they took on the  look and feel of monsters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Outwardly, they still looked mostly human—apart from their blank, dead  eyes and their empty expressions. Inwardly, they were something else  entirely, their humanity erased, their identity remade. Inwardly, they  were predatory and animalistic and given over to killing everything that  moved.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They were once-men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Logan Tom knew these creatures intimately. He had seen good men who had  changed to become them, some of them his friends. He had watched it happen  over and over. He had never understood it, but he had known what to do  about it. He had hunted them down and he had killed them with relentless,  unshakable determination, and he would keep hunting and killing them and  the demons that created them until either they were eradicated or he was  dead himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was the task he had been given in his service to the Word. It was, by  now, the definition of his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He was not, he understood, so different than they were. He was their  mirror image in so many ways that it frightened him. He might claim to  occupy the moral high ground, that he was only doing what was right. He  might rationalize it in any way he chose, but the result was the same. He  killed them as they killed others. He was simply better at it than they  were.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He drove west at a steady thirty miles an hour, careful to avoid the  deeper cracks and potholes that had eroded the highway, steering past what  looked to be the burned remains of fence posts used for fires and piles of  trash blown in from the now empty farms. He hadn’t seen a single soul  since he had left Cleveland yesterday. There were several compounds there,  larger than most and heavily defended. The demons and the once-men were  just now beginning to attack these, having wiped out almost all of the  smaller enclaves. Soon enough they would eliminate the bigger ones, as  well. Would have done so by now, perhaps, if not for the Knights of the  Word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    If not for him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Were there still others like him? He had no way of knowing. The Lady did  not tell him in his visions of her, and he had not encountered another  Knight in two years. He knew that at one time, others had fought as he did  to stop the demon advance, but they were few and many had died. The last  Knight he’d encountered had told him that on the East Coast, where the  damage was the worst, they were all dead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Midday came and went. He passed out of Indiana and into Illinois as the  sun eased slowly toward the western horizon until eventually the skies  began to turn a brilliant mix of gold and scarlet. His smile was bitter.  One thing about air pollution: it provided some incredibly beautiful  endings to your days. If you had to live in a poisoned world, you might as  well enjoy the scenery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He stopped the Lightning in the center of the highway and climbed out to  watch the colors expand and deepen, taking the black staff with him. He  stretched, easing the aching and stiffness he had developed in the  confines of the AV’s cab. He had grown tall and lean like his father,  exuding a rangy kind of strength. Scars crisscrossed his hands and arms,  white slashes against his darker skin. He had sustained worse damage, but  nothing that showed. Most of it was emotional. He was hardened from his  years of service to the Word, by the pain and suffering he had witnessed  and by the sense of aloneness he constantly felt. His face, like his  father’s, was all edges and planes, a warrior’s face. But his mother’s  gentle blue eyes helped to soften the harshness. Compassion reflected in  those eyes, but compassion was a luxury in which he could not often afford  to indulge. The demons and their kind did not allow for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He stared off into the distance past a broken line of crooked fence posts  to where the darkness was beginning to creep over the landscape. A failing  of the light had already turned the eastern horizon hazy. As he retied the  bandanna that held back his long dark hair, he watched the shadows from  the posts lengthen like snakes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then suddenly the late-afternoon breeze shifted, carrying with it the  stench of death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He followed his nose down the side of the road until carrion birds rose in  a black cloud from the drainage ditch that had concealed them and he could  see the remains of the bodies on which they had been feeding. He peered  down at them, trying to reconstruct what had happened. Several families  traveling on foot, he guessed. Dead several days, at least. Caught out in  the open, dispatched, then dragged here. Hard to tell what might have  gotten them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Something big and quick. Something I don’t want to run into just now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He returned to the Lightning, climbed back aboard, and drove on, following  the fading light. The sky west was clear and still bright, so he left the  headlights off. After a time, the moon came up, a narrow crescent off to  the northeast, low and silvery. Once, the light revealed something moving  through the blasted landscape, crouched low on all fours. Could have been  anything. He glanced down at the AV’s readings, but they showed nothing,  banks of green eyes shining up at him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It took him less than an hour to reach the town. He was nearly all the way  across Illinois, come to a place he had never been to before. But the Lady  had made it clear that this was where she wanted him to go. She had  visited him in his dreams, as she often did, providing him with directions  and guidance, giving him what brief relief he found from the constant  nightmares of his past. Once, another Knight had told him, they had  dreamed of the future that would come to pass if they failed in their  efforts to prevent it. Now there was no reason to dream of the future;  they were all living it. Instead he dreamed of the darker moments of his  past, of failures and missed opportunities, of losses too painful to  relive anywhere except in dreams, and of choices made that had scarred him  forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He hoped that after his business here was finished and it was time to  sleep again, the dreams might let him be for at least one night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Houses began to appear in the distance, dark boxes against the flat  landscape. There were no lights, no fires or candles, no signs of life.  But there would be life, he knew. There was life everywhere in towns this  size. Just not the sort you wanted to encounter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He eased the AV down the debris-littered highway toward the town, past  broken signs and buildings with sagging roofs and collapsed walls. Out of  the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. Feeders. Where  there were feeders, there were other things, too. He scanned the warning  gauges on the Lightning and kept driving.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He passed a small green sign off to one side of the road, its lettering  faded and worn:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    WELCOME TO\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hopewell, Illinois\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Population 25,501\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Twenty-five thousand, five hundred and one, he repeated silently. He shook  his head. Once, maybe. A hundred years ago. Several lifetimes in the past,  when the world was still in one piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He drove on toward his destination and tried not to think further of what  was lost and forever gone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Two\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Hawk walked point as the Ghosts emerged from their underground lair  beneath what had once been Pioneer Square and set out on foot for midtown  Seattle. It was an hour before midday, when trade negotiations and  exchanges usually took place, but he liked to give himself a little extra  time to cushion against the possibility of encounters with Freaks. Usually  you didn’t see much of them when it was daylight, but you never knew. It  didn’t pay to take chances. As leader, it was his responsibility to keep  the others safe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The city was quiet, the debris-littered streets empty and still.  Storefronts and apartments stood deserted and hollow, their glass windows  broken out and doors barred or sagging. The rusted hulks of cars and  trucks sat where their owners had abandoned them decades ago, a few still  in one piece, but most long since cannibalized and reduced to metal  shells. He wondered, looking at them, what the city had been like when  vehicles had tires and ran in a steady, even flow of traffic from one  street to the next. He wondered, as he always did, what the city must have  been like when it was filled with people and life. Nobody lived in the  city now outside the walls of the compounds. Not unless you counted the  Freaks and the street children, and no one did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hawk stopped the others at the cross streets that marked the northern  boundary of Pioneer Square and looked to Candle for reassurance. Her clear  blue eyes blinked at him, and she nodded. It was safe to continue. She was  only ten years old, but she could see things no one else could. More than  once, her visions had saved their lives. He didn’t know how she did it,  but he knew the Ghosts were lucky to have her. He had named her well: she  was their light against the dark.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He glanced momentarily at the others, a ragtag bunch dressed in jeans,  sweatshirts, and sneakers. He had named them all. He had tossed away their  old names and supplied them with new ones. Their names reflected their  character and temperament. They were starting over in life, he had told  them. None of them should have to carry the past into the future. They  were the Ghosts, haunting the ruins of the civilization their parents had  destroyed. One day, when they ceased to be street kids and outcasts and  could live somewhere else, he would name them something better.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Candle smiled as their eyes met, that brilliant, dazzling smile that  brightened everything around her. He had a sudden sense that she could  tell what he was thinking, and he looked quickly away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Let’s go,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They set off down First Avenue, working their way past the derelict cars  and heaps of trash, heading","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48338539938021,"sku":"NP9780345484109","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345484109.jpg?v=1769572597","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/armageddons-children-isbn-9780345484109","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}