Chapter 15
“THE VISTA overwhelms one, does it not?”
I’d never even noticed Pendleton approaching. Big as he was, he couldn’t compete with the immensity of the destruction before me. Everything outside Frayville, all the way to the horizon, had burned to soot and crumbled charcoal. My pulse thudded in my ears and my every muscle clenched in atavistic dread.
The fire burned out long ago, but my brain provided the stench of the smoke from Michigan’s Viking funeral.
“It must have been quite the conflagration,” Pendleton said. He hunkered down next to the driver’s side window, somehow sitting on his raised heels despite his incredibly excessive weight. “I needed to avert my eyes upon first seeing it, and I had assistance you lack.”
He’s part of Acceptance. I’d known that, but having him in
