page_370 < previous page page_370 next page > Page 370 claw my way through the rubble. The immensity of the situation was mind boggling. I stood in a gray world void of detail and bathed in an eerie unreal silence. My numbed fingers fumbled along the length of the still intact utility belt looking for the flashlight until my fingers discovered it. Praise the Lord, it worked. The probing pale yellow beam ricocheted from one pile of rubble to the next. The scene was numbing. It resembled a battlefield. Charred remains of Korbac's army of generals were everywhere. The hooded true believers were now little more than piles of purposeless ashes. The still eviscerated mortal remains of the young officer Gregory were mercifully partially hidden by a jagged chunk of granite. The final moments of Bert and Polly Johnson, along with the young woman called Angie, would forever remain a brooding secret. Little more than charred and twisted fragments of their once human forms remained. I played the beam of light across the scene of devastation until my stomach revolted and the horrible realization of what I was witnessing stuck in my throat. As I slumped to my knees in the debris, I caught a barely perceptible movement out of the corner of my eye. The beam of my flashlight snapped up  < previous page page_370 next page >