A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Novels & Stories

If I puked, I’d be aiming for Bravo. Driver Dude drove down the winding road, the only way in or out of Orbit Valley, while I drummed my fingers on my bare knees. The vehicle was built for luxury, or at least, I'd heard such from the young men in my clan who dreamed of lavishness. But the pothole-ridden path was meant to disBravery visitors, so I relaxed and let the movement rock me, lulling me into semi-lucidity. As soon as we hit the paved street, my heart lurched.

I wanted to say something but he stooped for a while and djust continued flying down the express in supersonic speed. The car didn’t stop till we got to that really lonely road you know the kind in the movies with nothing but silence and then a shot from far away that makes it look like someone’s watching from afar. The car stopped and he alighted after specifically telling me to stay in the car. I went back into his car like that morning when I was meeting his friends but I didn’t go too down so I would be able to see Beck as he was standing on guard with his gun in his hand looking over and all about the lonely road of route 17

The clinic always felt too quiet in the mornings, as if silence seeped down from the ceiling tiles and settled over everything. Lola Smith could hear the hum of the lights, the slow whir of the automatic doors, even the soft scrape of her own shoes across the polished floor. She didn’t mind the quiet, not really. But on certain days, when her thoughts were too loud, she wished for more noise—anything to drown out the feeling that her life was idling in neutral.

Always the grave, waiting for me at the end of this road if I could not change things. I turned onto a quiet road where the trees were closer together and there were no houses. It was the old highway that people hardly used since the new one was built. It was the perfect place to think or to scream if I wanted to. That is when I heard it. What? A sound is coming from somewhere behind me. At first, I thought the noise was part of the song on the radio. It was too steady and clear. I turned up the music, but the sound kept going beneath it.

The road stretched ahead, winding toward the mountains—toward Selena Jones. And this time, nothing would stop us. --- The road stretched endless in front of us, the city giving way to long stretches of gray highway and then to the rolling countryside. The deeper we drove, the quieter it became—traffic thinning, buildings fading, until it was only us and the wilderness pressing in on both sides.

Two years of grief thinned Roman to a shadow of his former self. Then, one day, an anonymous email landed in his inbox. He clicked it open, his heart skipping a beat. There, in a series of photos, was Eleanor, the very person he could not stop thinking about. The second he got the lead, he had his Underboss pinpoint Eleanor's location from the buildings in the snapshot. Learning her coordinates, he dropped everything, hopped on the next flight, and zoomed off without a second thought.

"Uncle Adam, let me introduce myself again." I took a file from Alfie's hand and lightly slapped it against Uncle Adam's pale face. "I'm the chief auditor sent by the HQ, codename Grim Reaper. You were asking earlier what I could do? Well, this is my answer, Uncle Adam."

“All of it. The complete version.” The road was quiet around us. The grey afternoon light held. “Okay,” I said. The word came out smaller than I intended. He stepped forward and I held my ground and we stood in the middle of a road I didn’t know the name of, in a territory between things, and I waited for the truth I’d been walking toward for four years to finally reach me. M

THE RETURN The drive back was quiet. Not the tense quiet of the drive out — that pre-dawn silence loaded with everything that hadn't happened yet. This was a different quality of quiet entirely. The kind that follows something completed. The kind that doesn't need to be filled because it isn't empty.

He froze, looking stunned, and it wasn't until the mood in the room turned awkward that he finally agreed. I didn't have the energy to care if his tone was reluctant or resigned. My heart was full of joy as I eagerly waited for the night to fall. But as soon as the sun set, his phone rang. The signal in the mountains was weak, and all I could hear was the crackling of static, followed by a few sobs that sounded out of place. "Marshall, I'm scared. Where is everyone?" Crystal Payne's voice came through, amplified, and Marshall's face immediately hardened.