The Tempest Black Carbon #3 A.J. Scudiere The Tempest - Black Carbon #3 Copyright © 2021 by AJ Scudiere Griffyn Ink. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. FIRST EDITION Contents Books by A.J. A.J.’s Renegades Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Chapter 73 About the Author Want a free story? Go to www.ReadAJS.com/join-now to get free short stories. Look for other novels by A.J. Scudiere. Available in bookstores, online, and at ReadAJS.com. The NightShade Forensic Files Book 1 - Under Dark Skies Book 2 - Fracture Five Book 3 - The Atlas Defect Book 4 - Echo and Ember Book 5 - Salvage (A Shadow Files Novel) Book 6 - Garden of Bone Book 7 - The Camelot Gambit Book 8 - Dead Tide Book 9 - Sabotage (A Shadow Files Novel) (available 2020) Black Carbon Book 1 - The Hunted Book 2 - The Surface Book 3 - The Tempest Book 4 - The Swarm Legends The Landa Landa & The Aellai FORTUNE (red) FORTUNE (gray) FORTUNE (Red & Gray) The Vendetta Trifecta Vengeance Retribution Justice The Complete Vendetta Trifecta Stand Alone Stories - Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited Resonance Dissonance - a companion novella to Resonance God's Eye Phoenix The Shadow Constant Stand Alone Novels by A.J. Scudiere: Resonance, God’s Eye, Phoenix, The Shadow Constant A Collection of Blogs Smart Chickens - Deliver Us From Email Smart Chickens - We’re Not Like Other Families Smart Chickens - Tele Me More Smart Chickens - Omega Dog Join A.J.’s Renegades here: www.ReadAJS.com Praise for A.J. Scudiere "There are really just 2 types of readers—those who are fans of AJ Scudiere, and those who will be." -Bill Salina, Reviewer, Amazon For The Shadow Constant: "The Shadow Constant by A.J. Scudiere was one of those novels I got wrapped up in quickly and had a hard time putting down." -Thomas Duff, Reviewer, Amazon For Phoenix: "It's not a book you read and forget; this is a book you read and think about, again and again . . . everything that has happened in this book could be true. That's why it sticks in your mind and keeps coming back for rethought." -Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie This one is for all my pandemic friends. The Tempest is just one of several books I’ve written while on lockdown. Thank you for keeping me sane and for just being there. I hope we come out the other side okay. Because, honestly, we were all pretty nuts before we got shut inside our houses for a year. Thank you. It’s also for anyone who has survived a catastrophic weather event. Parts of Alabama are prone to twisters. The entire northeast was under water or snow a handful of years ago. Texas just had a deep freeze. Things are getting weird. If you’ve survived, then this one is for you. I admire your fortitude so much, I wrote a whole series about it. Acknowledgments Books like this require research. There was too much involved to name each person who helped. But thank you to everyone who’s traveled with me to help make this series more realistic. Thank you to everyone who shared stories of the twisters they’ve been through. You helped make this book better. 1 The rumble sounded like a freight train bearing down on her as Joule drove along the virtually empty highway. Her head turned from side to side, looking for the threat. She’d been told that tornadoes were supposed to sound like trains, and that Alabama had tornadoes. Her breathing shortened and her chest tightened, even as she tried to talk herself down. She scanned the skies and saw nothing. She should be safe. Joule hated being ever-alert, but it had to be some level of post-traumatic stress. Lord knew, she’d had enough trauma in her life. The flashing red light signaled a four-way stop, and as the large, dirty white pickup loomed to her right, she saw that the driver seemed wholly unconcerned with whatever disaster was bearing down on them. Why had she gone to pick up supplies by herself? Unable to linger at the intersection and assume she was safe if she sat still, she took the ninety-degree right-hand turn with her breath held. “Are you kidding me?” she yelled into the empty space in the car, to the groceries sitting in too many plastic bags, to the flashing red lights and long, wooden signal arms crossing the road. It had sounded like a freight train because it was one. With her foot on the brake, Joule breathed at least a little easier as the red and white-striped bars came to a rest and the small motion toward her right grew into the oncoming engine and the probably thousand cars that it was towing at high speed. The train was going to take a while and the grocery store had already been far enough away to make her worry about the ice cream melting. The prolonged stop turned her worry to certainty. If she had a spoon, she’d dig the ice cream out of the bag and eat it now, so that at least someone got to enjoy it. Instead, she watched the cars whizz by and turned the radio on, hopping through the stations. Country. Country. Christian. Country. Metal. Sighing, she went back to one of the country stations. There were a few country songs she liked, and the back beyond of Alabama was not going to be the place to find an alt-rock station. For a moment, she contemplated the nerves and jitters that came with starting a new job. She
