Read Online Good Intentions (The Road to Hell Series, Book 1) by Brenda K. Davies - Free Book Online

in beside me and started the truck.
    “Where am I going?” I inquired in a hitching voice.
    “To the wall.”
    “Why? What is it you want from me?”
    “You’ll learn what you need to know as it becomes necessary.”
    With those cryptic words, he shifted the truck into drive and hit the gas. I’d been determined not to look back, but I found my gaze going to the driver’s side mirror when we got to the end of the street. In its reflection, I could see Asante, Lisa, Gage, and Bailey. Asante stood beside Lisa, who now held Bailey. He had his arms extended toward the truck while tears streaked his face. Gage was further ahead of them, bent over with his hands on his knees as if he’d chased after us.
    I didn’t care what it took. I would see them again.

CHAPTER 7
    River
    The further away from home the colonel drove, the more I realized how different things were in this area compared to my hometown. Farms and livestock stretched out as far as the eye could see with houses dotting the landscape. Some of the houses sagged from years of wear and appeared to be abandoned. Others were in better repair and had a few people wandering around outside them.
    Those people stopped what they were doing to watch the passing trucks driving down the road. Before we’d driven over the bridge and off the Cape, we’d been joined by fourteen other trucks carrying volunteers, one from each of the towns on Cape Cod. Along the way, five more trucks had joined us from nearby towns on the other side of the bridge.
    “Do you send a truck to each town in the state on this day?” I’d inquired when the other trucks first joined us.
    “No,” the colonel had answered. “We send twenty trucks out at a time until all the towns in Massachusetts have been covered.”
    “Oh.”
    I’d become silent again afterward, too lost in my own grief and thoughts to carry on a conversation with them. I could still smell Bailey’s caramel scented skin, still feel his warm body against mine. His broken wails, tear-filled eyes and flushed cheeks haunted me. A sob lodged in my throat as I stared at my clasped hands.
    I hoped he didn’t think I’d abandoned him, that I had chosen this over him. If it wasn’t for my request to make sure they were safe and away from our mother, they would have had to drag me kicking and screaming from that house. Now I knew my brothers would both be taken care of, and I didn’t have to traumatize Bailey by causing such a scene. They would be together, and they wouldn’t go hungry, and as much as this hurt, that knowledge made it better.
    My entire life, I’d known I was different from others, but I’d never expected that difference to rip me away from my family. They would be okay, I kept telling myself. Asante and Lisa would take good care of them until I could return. They would keep my mother away from my brothers. Gage was tough and he’d get Bailey through this. They’d cry, they would miss me, but they’d get through it.
    I lifted my head again to stare at the farmland passing by outside the window. “Why don’t you send some of these crops and livestock to us?” I inquired.
    The colonel glanced at me. “Your community is surviving on its own. These supplies are needed for those residing over the wall, the cities, and other areas where it is difficult to grow crops, fish, or raise livestock. Believe me, no community is better off than another. There is no wealth and plenty, not anymore. We all have to eat to survive.” His gray eyes burned into mine when he turned to look at me. “We are all equal in this world.”
    “Just a regular old utopia of kidnapping people,” I quipped bitterly.
    His clean-shaven jaw clenched at my words, forming a little dimple in the center of it. “Far from a utopia. Everything we have we’ve fought for, and in order to keep it, we must all do things we don’t want to do. Including you.”
    “Maybe if I knew what it was I’m supposed to be doing, or why I was taken, I