War (The Four Horsemen #2) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,3

are true—

Then Jerusalem is fucked.

A small noise leaves my lips, and War—if that is, in fact, War—turns my way.

I duck back down.

Oh my God, oh my God, ohmyGod.

A horseman of the apocalypse might actually be standing twenty meters from me.

The hoof beats pause, then leave the main road. Suddenly, I hear the clop—clop—clop of them heading up the hill towards me.

I cover my mouth, muffling the sound of my breathing, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I can hear the crunch of dry brush and the horse’s noisy exhalations.

I don’t know how close the horseman gets before he stops. It seems as though he’s right outside the building, that if I stood and reached out the window, I could pet his steed. The hair on my arms rises.

The horse stops, and I wait for its rider to dismount.

Could that really be War?

But why wouldn’t it be him? Jerusalem has been the epicenter of several religions for centuries. It’s a good place to bring about the end of the world—it’s even been foretold that this is where the world ends on the Day of Judgment.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

I still am.

After one long minute, I hear the retreating footfalls of War’s—shit, I guess I’m assuming it really is War—horse.

I wait until the footfalls are sufficiently far away before I gasp, a fearful tear slipping out.

Oh my God.

I don’t move. Not until I’m sure War has moved along.

But just when I think he’s gone, I hear more hoof beats. Several more hoof beats.

Who else could possibly be following the horseman?

The hoof beats seem to multiply on themselves until it starts to sound like thunder.

I peer from that shell of a window. What I see takes my breath away.

There must be hundreds of riders all squeezed onto the road, armed with knives and bows and swords and all other manner of weaponry.

My heart begins to pound faster and faster, and yet I keep still, so still, afraid to even breathe too loudly.

I wait for them to pass, but they keep coming, the riders followed by what look like foot soldiers, and those followed by horse-drawn carts.

The longer I watch, the more riders pass me by, until it becomes clear that there aren’t merely hundreds of men, but thousands of them, all who follow in War’s wake.

There’s only one reason this many armed men are traveling together.

War isn’t simply riding into Jerusalem.

He’s invading it.

Chapter 2

I wait until the entire army has passed through before I leave my hiding spot. I step out of the building on shaky feet, unsure what to do.

I’m no saint. I’m no hero.

I stare at that road heading west, in the direction opposite the army, and it looks awfully enticing.

I glance in the other direction, towards where the army headed.

My home.

Leave, my mother’s voice says in my head, leave with the clothes on your back and never come back. Leave and save yourself.

I make my way to the road, leaving behind the branches I chopped down. I glance both ways—west, away from the city, and east, back to Jerusalem.

I rub my forehead. Goddamn but what should I do?

I go over my survival code again: Bend the rules—but don’t break them. Stick to the truth. Avoid notice. Listen to your instincts. Be brave.

Always be brave.

Of course, these are the rules to staying alive. I don’t need the rules to know that going west will increase my survival odds while going east will lower them. It shouldn’t be a question at all—I should go west.

But when I turn and start down the road, my feet don’t take me west.

Instead I march back towards Jerusalem. Back to my house and the army and the horseman.

Maybe it’s stupidity, or morbid curiosity.

Or maybe the apocalypse hasn’t beaten the last bit of selflessness out of me after all.

I’m still no saint.

By the time I arrive in the city, the streets are already running red with blood.

I press the back of my hand to my mouth, trying to cover up the sick smell of meat that tinges the air. I have to step around the bloody bodies that litter the streets. Many of the buildings are burning, and smoke and ash billow about me.

In the distance I can hear people screaming, but right here, right where I’m walking, the people have already been killed off, and the silence seems to be a thing itself.

Before New Palestine was New Palestine, Israel’s military drafted most of its citizens. Since my country’s civil war, there’s been no mandatory conscription, but most