Tim folds his arms over his chest, casting me a withering glance, even though I’m only asking him to take off one measly dollar. “You can pay the full price, or you can take your business else—”
Right in the middle of his sentence, his eyes roll back.
“Tim?” I say. Even as I speak, he begins to fall. “Tim!” I lunge for him, but I’m not fast enough.
The soft sound of his body hitting the grass is lost in the collective noise of many large objects hitting the ground all at once.
I jolt at the commotion, the hairs at the back of my neck standing on end. And that’s when I notice that disquieting silence is still there—the one that began when the animals first fled. Only now, it’s more pronounced than ever.
I look around, confused. In every direction, people lie motionless. Most of them are sprawled on the grass, but there are others who lay slumped over tables.
No one moves.
One second goes by, then two, then three.
I’m aware of my own ragged breathing and the pounding of my startled heart, and my head is trying to wrap its mind around what I’m seeing.
The thing is, I know what this is. It looks impossible, and my heart doesn’t want to believe it, but something like this has happened before. It’s happened to me before.
Still, I kneel down next to the woman who had been looking at Tim’s corn. Now her sightless eyes are staring up at the clouds.
I place a hand to her neck, waiting for her pulse.
Nothing.
A sick sort of feeling twists my gut. I stand, my gaze sweeping over the market stalls once more, taking in the dozens of still bodies.
No one moves. I can hear the gentle sound of wind stirring canvas canopies, the trees rustling in the breeze, and even the distant glug of some container dripping out its contents. But there’s no idle chatter, no laughter, no shouts or screams, no noisy insects and no bird calls.
It’s completely silent.
On a whim, I check Tim’s pulse. Nothing. Then I check another and another, my breath seizing up in my throat.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Everyone is dead—everyone but me.
A small noise slips from my lips, and I can feel my body trembling, but my mind is oddly blank.
Is this what shock feels like?
I stumble out of the farmer’s market, towards Highway 78. I can’t stifle my rising horror as I pick my way through the dead.
How far does the devastation extend?
I’m passing the last line of stalls, and the highway is right in front of me, when the clop of hooves interrupts my thoughts. I think I’m imagining it, but then it gets louder.
I turn towards the sound. At first I don’t see anything, the canopy of the stall to my right blocking my view. I take a few more steps towards the road, and suddenly, I see him.
Backlit by the morning sun, looking like some dark god, is a rider clad in silver armor, a set of black wings at his back.
Those wicked wings are all I can look at for a moment. They are just as impossible to comprehend as the sea of corpses behind me.
There are four known creatures alive who have the power to kill off life in an instant. And only one of them has wings.
God’s last angel.
Death.
Chapter 2
Temple, Georgia
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
My knees nearly buckle at the realization.
My God, I’m staring down Death himself, one of the four horseman of the apocalypse.
I’ve never seen anyone—anything—like him.
He is dressed to do battle—though who could possibly stand against him is a mystery. That armor gleams as though it’s freshly polished, and those massive black wings lay folded at his back, so large that the tips of them nearly touch the ground. As the horseman rides, his eyes are pinned to something in the distance.
His face is solemn and captivating. I swear that I’ve seen the arch of that brow and the slope of that nose before in my dreams. And I’ve imagined the curve of those lips, the press of those cheekbones, and the cut of that jaw in every tragic poem read by candlelight.
He is more beautiful than I can make sense of and more terrifying than I could’ve imagined.
I must make some noise from where I stand because the horseman’s gaze lowers from the skyline, his black hair shifting a little where it skims his shoulders. For one perfect second, our eyes meet.
He has ancient eyes. Even as far away as he is, I can still see his age in them. This being has seen more of humanity than I could ever hope to. I feel the weight of all that history the longer he looks at me. His jaw clenches as he takes me in, and my skin tingles from his appraisal.