The End of the Road by Anna Legat - Book Tour
The End of the Road by Anna Legat @lovebooksgroup #lovebookstours @LegatWriter @crookedcatbooks
Book Title :
The End of the Road by Anna Legat
The fight for survival has begun
All-out war spins out of control, and it doesn’t discriminate. Governments fall, continents are obliterated, deadly viruses consume everything in their path, and what’s left of humanity is on the run. Caught in this global refugee crisis are a few unlikely survivors.
Tony, a philandering London lawyer, escapes the doomed city and his own murky past as he evacuates to the continent.
A hapless flock of Belgian nuns prays for a miracle as they watch their city turn to rubble.
Bella, a naïve teenager, thinks she is going on holiday when her father drags her across the globe to New Zealand.
Reggie, a loyal employee of a mining corporation, guards a hoard of diamonds in the African plains, fending off desperate looters.
Alyosha, a nuclear scientist, has been looking for the God-particle in Siberia, but now the world is at an end, he wishes to return home to Chernobyl.
A pair of orphaned children are cowering in the Tatra Mountains, fearing the sky will fall in on them.
Will they find an escape route before it is too late? Or are they doomed to fail?
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Excerpt
The End of the Road: Reggie, Drakensburg
They both know that something is not right. In the last
four to five hours of their relentless trek, they have not seen a single bird
flying overhead, nor heard a single sound.
“We almost there,” the youth says out loud, not so much
to inform Reggie as to assure himself that he is on the right track. Only it
does not seem that he is. By now, the kids from the village would be heard
kicking a ball and bickering over who is to go in goal next. You would be able
to pick out the shrieking voices of women foretelling doom and gloom by the
well at the outskirts of the village. Chimneys would be expelling gasps of
smoke into the blue sky. Reggie can hear the alarm in the youth’s voice. He can
tell how confused the boy is, how anxious.
A swarm of
bluebottles is humming over something hidden in the long grass. The odour is
vile: rotten and suffocating. A stray fly brushes by them and buzzes off to
join the busy swarm.
“A carcass,” Reggie says. “Something’s died there. It
stinks.”
“Someone would find it and bury it,” the youth
contradicts him. “We go and see.” He prods Reggie in the direction of the
bluebottle cloud.
The lionesses. The three lionesses, Reggie is positive
about this, who tore to shreds one of the bastards stealing Reggie’s chickens
two weeks ago. All three animals are lying still but intact. A few steps
further and the body of an enormous lion is sprawled on its side; his dusty
mane limp and wispy. It does not appear that they have been hunted, cut,
ripped, or feasted on by any scavengers. In fact, they look like they are
peacefully asleep, having a little cat nap before they pounce on the
unsuspecting village. The only sign of death is in their faces: they are
glassy-eyed and have pink foam solidified on their gaping mouths. Four huge
beasts overpowered by something invisible. As he sweeps his expert soldier’s
eyes over this mass grave, Reggie realises what it was that killed them, and he
begins to worry that it may still be lurking around.
The youth on the other hand is no longer interested in
the dead animals – he is gazing towards the village. The first couple of shacks
are only a hundred yards away. A body of a woman is slumped over the ledge of a
well, as if the woman was drawing water and her spine snapped in half leaving
her paralysed. The mortifying stillness of the place needs no further
explanation. The youth has forgotten all about Reggie. He is sleepwalking
towards his village, towards the paralysed woman – maybe his mother, or someone
close to him - dragging Reggie’s rifle behind him by the strap.
Reggie’s hands are now free. He grabs his rifle with one
hand and pulls it out of the boy’s grasp meeting no resistance. Firmly he
places his other hand on the boy’s shoulder. He speaks softly, calmingly.
“They’re all dead. Nerve gas. Poisoned. You can’t go there. There’s nothing we
can do for them.”
The youth gapes at him, trying to force his lips into
shapes meant to express his terror, but he is a fish out of water blowing
bubbles instead of words. Reggie slings his rifle over his shoulder and pulls
the boy into his arms. “We must get out of here now. It’s not safe to stay.”
Author Bio
Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her DI Gillian Marsh murder mystery series. A globe-trotter and Jack-of-all-trades, Anna has been an attorney, legal adviser, a silver-service waitress, a school teacher and a librarian. She read law at the University of South Africa and Warsaw University, then gained teaching qualifications in New Zealand. She has lived in far-flung places all over the world where she delighted in people-watching and collecting precious life experiences for her stories. Anna writes, reads, lives and breathes books and can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.
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