Free A Fractured World: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure (Gallen Book 1) by Laurence Moore

through the kitchen and out into the dark night, the wind whistling through the rotten timbers of the old barn and banging the corrugated iron door on the second building. Switching off the torch, Stone sprinted towards it. He burst into a large empty room lined with booths and tables and chairs and a long counter thick with dust and mould. The smell was bad and filled his lungs. He coughed, spat, and flicked on the torch.
    “Stone raised me. Taught me what my father had taught him. He wasn’t much of a talker but he showed me everything I needed to know. I’m still here now, thanks to him and thanks to you. Stone still hunts the men who killed his family but we’ve never found them. They must be long dead by now. Look, it’s the signal.”
    Stone had flashed the torch three times. Tomas climbed back into the jeep, turned on the engine and pressed down on the accelerator. The engine growled in the stillness of the night as he swept down the sloping road and turned onto the hard ground, crunching stone and gravel. He nosed the jeep behind the old barn and hoped it would be unseen from the road.
    Killing the engine, he grabbed his pack and crossbow and led Emil towards the building where Stone had signalled from.
    She grimaced as she stepped inside.
    “It smells disgusting.”
    “The back door is blocked up,” said Stone. “Windows boarded.”
    Nodding, Tomas set about making a small fire and boiled water with ground powder stirred in. Stone eased into one of the booths and took out the maps. He spread the map of Gallen across the table, once again tracing his finger across it. The fire crackled and spat. He then opened another map, a more detailed one, straight lines, rooms and corridors. He stared at the map for a long time, only breaking his attention to take a mouthful of hot drink. Emil watched him across the rim of her drink, thinking of the story that Tomas had told her. She looked into the bearded man’s sunken eyes and no longer saw the cold death she had first seen. All she saw now was pain.
    “More?” offered Tomas.
    She shook her head.
    “Sleep,” said Stone, not looking up. “I’ll take the first …”
    He stopped. They all heard it. The sudden roar of a bike. Stone shifted back a piece of board covering the window he sat at. He glimpsed the solitary headlamp of a motorcycle coming down the road. Tomas stamped out the fire and rolled across the long counter, dropping behind, crossbow pointing at the door. Emil scrambled behind the row of booths, out of view. Stone went to the doorway, removed the wedge holding the door in place and stood in the corner, in the shadows.
    The sound of the bike was a deafening roar and it wasn’t passing. The engine was slowing. The tyres were churning up the hard soil. It sounded as if it was about to crash through the door and roll up to the counter; but it stopped outside and the rider climbed from it, his boots crunching loudly on the ground. There was a scraping sound and the door was gingerly nudged open and the biker stepped inside, a crowbar in his black leather gloved fist.
    “Hello,” he called out.

Ten
    “Drop it,” said Tomas.
    The biker didn’t react. He was an older man, wearing faded blue denim and black leather stretched over a round stomach. He had thick arms and legs. He peered through brass coloured eye glasses perched on a squat nose and was still weighing up the crowbar in his hand against the crossbow pointing at his chest.
    “Just you?” asked the man.
    Stone pinned the steel barrel of his revolver against the base of the biker’s neck.
    “Drop it,” he said.
    Wordlessly, the crowbar clattered to the floor and Tomas sprang over the counter to scoop it up. Stone nudged the man towards the nearest booth.
    “Sit,” he said. “Hands on the table.”
    The biker carefully followed the instructions and rested his gloved palms on the dusty table top. His face was grizzled and he had a straggly grey beard. Tomas leaned his crossbow against