Connor looked down at the empty streets of Melville. Despite years of neglect, years of being abandoned, they’d never looked cleaner. No broken bottles littering the gutters. No discarded cigarette butts cluttering the pavements. No drunk people sprawled in the middle of the roads. There was a time when he would have been one of them.
Instead, the streets were quiet. Peaceful. Here and there, the flash of an animal seeking shelter from the unaccustomed chatter. Was that a hyena slinking up 4th Avenue, heading towards 7th Street?
“Look, Gertie.” She didn’t look. Didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge the sound of his voice. “If this is real… if you’re immune… then you can save millions of lives. Hell, more important than that – you can get the world back on track. Let people out of isolation. Maybe even kick-start the world economy again.”
Now she turned. But now she was calm. Connor hated it when women were this calm.
“What economy? It’s gone. Dead. Even before it died, it was sick. Toxic. Fuelled by lives sacrificed to an endless hamster wheel, so those at the top could feast on the misery of those they’d enslaved.”
“That’s a bit – ”
“We’ll start fresh. No money. No slavery. Nothing but good intentions and a common goal.”
Bjorn stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “Do you want to knock her out when we leave, or should we just gag her?”
Gertie’s eyes bulged. “How dare you?”
Connor holstered his weapon. His strategic brain had finally identified who was friend and who was foe.
“I don’t hit girls.” He shrugged. “And neither will you.”
⛥
Catch Burning Books at the Blairgowrie Book Fair on Saturday the 26th of March, from 10am. Free entrance. https://www.facebook.com/BurningRosesNovel/events
Read Big Day Out in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.
Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud at www.bit.ly/FreeBurning. Or read them on Kindle Unlimited.
No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.
Anyone in Johannesburg who would like a signed copy (of any of my books) can have one delivered to their door by Big Bad Wolf Motorcycle Maniac Deliveries. No charge for delivery.
⛥
For a different experience, listen to these weekly episodes as Spotify podcasts, Apple podcasts, or Google podcasts.
⛥
If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at No.1 on Amazon. Find all the above details and links at www.amazon.com/author/burning.
In case you missed the link while listening to the podcast, that’s www.amazon.com/author/burning.
⛥
Cheers.
Burning Books 