Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation Page B

of metal, felt heat from the engine. His feet slid on the pavement, but something held him in place. His mind didn’t even allow him to consider what he was doing. He held his ground, pushing against the force of the truck—and in front of him, he saw the metal bending and breaking inward, smashing and crumbling.
    He shouted, his voice echoing, sweat creeping into his eyes, down his arms, onto his hands. He didn’t think—he just pushed against the truck, fighting its force. And in a second that felt like hours, Bran felt the force against him stop, falling back…
    There was a sound like a gunshot in Bran’s ears. He was thrown backward off his feet, and in an instant everything went black.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 9
    The Box in the Bookstore
     
    Bran heard someone breathing . It sounded like the birth of new life, as if something dead had awakened and was taking its first breath of air again. It was long and drawn out, and he felt as if it were drawing the air out of his own lungs to feed it. He tried to scream, but no sound would come. He felt someone near him, then above him, reaching out with withered, white hands. Bran couldn’t see a face before the figure disappeared like smoke. And as quickly as it had begun—
    It stopped.
    Bran gasped and found his hands clutching at the grass, his back to the ground and tents towering over each side of him. He was breathing hard and heard shouting nearby. When he sat up, he saw a big freight truck with its front smashed in, sitting far off in the middle of the road. Around it was a crowd of people, helping a woman up. He recognized her in a second: it was Rosie, alive and unhurt.
    What happened? he thought wildly, struggling to stand. A thousand questions ran through his head, but every one vanished when he felt a hand grab his shoulder and pull him up.
    "Bran!"
    When he turned, it was the last person he had expected to see. "Adi?" he said with alarm. He gasped as she clenched his shoulder with a strength he had never imagined her to have. Her eyes flashed with a strange anger.
    "Quiet!" she snapped, jerking him into the back of the booths. All of the owners were gone from their stations, and there were boxes of merchandise behind the counters, small partitions dividing the different booths from each other. Through the openings, Bran could see the group of people by Rosie. Adi pulled him out of the sight of the crowd.
    "What’s happening?" he asked anxiously. "What are you doing?"
    "I’m getting you out of sight, Bran," Adi snapped back. "And you might want to be thinking of what you’re going to tell those Duncelanders."
    "What do you mean? I don’t even know what happened!"
    "You don’t?" Adi said dryly. "You should. Or maybe you don’t. That’s the way this city is—you don’t even know who you are before it happens."
    He tried to look back. He didn’t know what Adi was talking about at all. She came to the door on the end and pushed through, opening to the clearing by the picnic tables. There was no one around, and Bran could hear the people by the truck in the distance.
    "So you don’t even know what happened," Adi said, and she spun him around to face her.
    He was at a loss for words. He didn’t know what to say or do, everything was happening so fast.
    " What happened?" Bran finally demanded, and all of a sudden, her face softened; the anger wiped away from it in an instant.
    "Bran…" she started, but she looked down, and he could see pain in her face.
    "Listen, this is very unnatural," she said, but then she shook her head. "No, actually it’s not; it’s just unnatural for where we live. I mean, in Dunce."
    Bran could see she knew something, and it looked as if she was having a very hard time telling him. She stammered for the right words, looking around as if she could pull them out of the air and say the right things.
    "I should have known. It’s my fault," she said slowly. "Usually things like this are found before now, but since we live in Dunce,