Let's depart for one podcast and get away from the monster stories and the Bigfoot stories and the

wherewolf stories and ghost stories and read something that's just normal.

What you're about to hear are the first few scenes from a novel titled

Salvage This World by the author Michael Ferris Smith. When I'm done reading this

I'll talk to you a little more about what you're about to hear.

So here we go.

She stood bathed in twilight, the dust in her hair and a kid on her hip,

and she stared at the approaching storm as if trying to figure how to wrangle the

thunderheads and steer them to a distant and parched land

where desperate souls would pay whatever ransom she demanded. The acres of sugar cane cut to nub surrounding the house, a dry autumn turned to an unpredictable winter.

And then 11 days ago, he left and she'd seen no one since.

It was a mile walk along the dirt road that separated the acreage, another eight miles to walk to the nearest telephone,

but even if she wanted to bundle up and make it she wouldn't know who to call.

He was gone and he had taken the car and the cigarettes and every dollar except the stash

she kept hidden beneath the floor plank in the closet.

She had finished the last of the whiskey three nights before. The milk had run out yesterday.

Jesse stared at the storm and the wind began to blow and dust. yesterday. of something else. She shifted the child from one hip to the other and pointed out at the

lightning and said, look at the light. Do you see the light? One side of the sky was thick with

storm clouds and the other side of the sky was thick with storm clouds and the other side of the sky was wrapped in a

restaurant belt that bled into the horizon like an open wound and the child lifted a small hand

and pointed at the light, but it was not the lightning he saw,

but a gathering of headlights approaching in the distance.

...