All Chapters of Leesa's Advent: Chapter 521 - Chapter 530

The floor of the store is much harder than the leaves and ground we’ve been sleeping on, but I don’t really mind. I’m tired enough to fall asleep anywhere, and it’s kind of nice to have a roof over our heads and solid walls around us for a change.A moment after I lay down, Kai squats beside me.“I’m going outside,” he tells me in a soft voice. “I’ll feel better keeping watch out there instead of in here. I’ve already told your father.”“Okay,” I say, understanding his unease. I’m glad he let me know he was going out, though. “I’ll sleep better knowing you’ll be watching over us.”Kai rests his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Sleep well, Leah. I won’t let anything in.”With that, he vanishes into the darkness, moving as silently as a wraith. I wake up with a shudder, opening my eyes to blackness. I know ex

Late the next day, we come to a literal fork in the road. We’ve pretty much left the developed area around Monterey and the surrounding towns behind. The landscape is once again more rustic, covered with long grasses, bushy shrubs and scattered trees. For a little while we were along the ocean again, before curving more inland.We’re on the outskirts of a small town a road sign tells us is called Castroville. Route 1, which we’ve followed for almost all our trip, heads to the left. Highway 156 veers off to the right.Dad and Lieutenant Gregerson are squatting over an old road map. I’m peering over Dad’s shoulder, curious as usual. Kai is apparently not interested in maps, because he’s standing off to the side. He’ll go along with whatever Dad decides.From Dad and the lieutenant’s discussion, I know the choice comes down to staying on Route 1, which will return to the coast and be somewhat winding as it follows the shore, or to head inland to Highway 101, which seems to be much more o

We reach the southern outskirts of Santa Cruz shortly before noon the following day. It’s a pretty big town—at least it was back before The Incident. Not San Diego or San Francisco big, but a decent sized place nonetheless. I know from our cram course about the California coast that Santa Cruz was home to a large university and was considered a very progressive city.Now, however, it looks deserted. A long section of the highway we’re following is elevated, allowing us to see a good distance in all directions. To our right, green hills covered with houses rise to a height of several hundred feet, while to our left the downtown section of the city stretches off to the ocean. From our raised vantage point, I can see a large number of destroyed buildings—far more than would be found in a similar-sized section of San Diego. I guess that comes from being so much closer to where The Incident occurred. Some of the destruction looks like it resulted from battles being fought, but a big propor

The storm lasts for the better part of two days—two very wet, cold and miserable days. Walking twenty miles a day into a driving rainstorm is not something I’d recommend to anybody. They’re safe days, though, as Kai had predicted. We see no sign of any enemies—unlike us, the hunters seem to be smart enough to stay out of the rain. The closer we get to San Francisco, the more evidence we see of past Anomalies, until we’re passing a damaged area almost every hour or so. Radar tells us that most of them are pretty old, but a couple opened up in the past few weeks, and one occurred just two days before we come upon it. There’s no way to know what came through that most recent portal. The pounding rain has washed away all traces, and Radar’s Power doesn’t tell her what passed through, only if something entered our world when the Anomaly opened. Radar confirms that something did indeed come through. Even Kai can’t tell anything because of the storm. We keep an even sharper

My first view of our destination is nothing like I expected, nothing like the pictures I’d seen in all the books we studied prior to beginning our journey. The Rock itself, as it was often affectionately called, looks as solid as ever. But gone is the stark, solid block building made even more ominous-looking by the knowledge that it served as a maximum-security prison housing the worst of the worst. In its place stands nothing more than a skeleton of the old structure, pieces of exterior wall reaching up to varying heights before crumbling away. In some places the jagged concrete sections seem no more than eight or ten feet tall, while other parts rear up almost three times that. The various outbuildings that surrounded the main prison are now little more than piles of rubble, and the distinctive lighthouse tower has completely crumbled as well. Whether the destruction resulted simply from The Incident or occurred over the years there’s no way of telling. I study th