After: First Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 0) Read Online Free

UFO enthusiasts and Bigfoot fanatics. As Franklin’s visibility faded, he embraced it not as a failure but as an opportunity.
    The opportunity was this mountain compound he called Wheelerville.
    Population: one, with the mayor also serving as street sweeper, minstrel, and shoe-shine boy.
    Franklin checked the vegetables in the garden, picking some turnips to feed the goats in the adjacent pen. He often let the goats browse in the wild, but today he didn’t feel like hoofing it across the slopes to retrieve them at nightfall. Despite the ongoing crush of civilization and species extinction, the Blue Ridge was still home to predators like coyotes and bobcats.
    And predators like the U.S. Army.
    Franklin had heard the rumors of a secret installation for years. But even if it existed, Franklin took it as a good sign for his own security. The army was corrupt, but it wasn’t dumb. The army was smart enough to pick a safe zone for any secret bases.
    As the oldest mountain range in the world, the Appalachian terrain was stable and unlikely to suffer earthquakes. Likewise, a megatsunami caused by the Canary Island volcano shelf plopping into the sea would never reach this far inland. Hurricanes and tornados were broken up by the foothills, and the climate was relatively temperate for a deciduous rain forest. Indeed, the biggest threat was a prolonged blizzard, but Franklin had enough firewood and stored food to hold out for months if necessary.
    His one-room cabin was built with an adjoining storage shed that featured a series of solar panels on top, oriented toward the southeast. He opened the shed and checked the battery banks that stored the converted energy. The batteries were also connected to a micro turbine that Franklin operated on the windiest days, and he also had a backup generator with a paddle wheel that exploited rushing creek water to generate power. Seeing that the bank of batteries was fully charged, Franklin disconnected the solar panels and closed the shed, which was lined with thin sheets of copper and aluminum. The metal shielding acted as a Faraday cage, protecting the batteries and equipment from electromagnetic radiation caused by a thermonuclear explosion. If Al-Qaeda detonated a dirty bomb in the atmosphere over D.C., the pulse would wipe out half the country’s infrastructure but Franklin could still work his radios and computer, which were also stored in Faraday cages when not in use.
    Franklin entered his cabin, opening the windows to catch the afternoon breeze. He sat at his table and connected his shortwave radio, scanning the channels. After a burst of screeching static, he zeroed in on a familiar voice.
    “Charlie One-Niner, come in,” Franklin said into his desktop microphone. “It’s your buddy, the Unknown Soldier.”
    “Soldier?” said the cracked and dusty-sounding male voice on the speaker. “What in the hell’s going on down in the land of cotton?”
    Franklin had adopted the radio handle to throw any federal snoopers off his scent, and on the air he pretended he was based in Alabama, where even his most paranoid ramblings would not seem out of place. Shortwave radio signals were virtually impossible to track, so Franklin used it to network with like-minded people around the world. It was also his sole social outlet if you didn’t count the goats and chickens, and he tried not to count them too often.
    “Probably about the same as up there in Canada,” he replied. “Only with worse health care and no moose to shoot.”
    “We’re in a record heat wave,” Charlie said. “Bet it’s breaking a hundred and ten down there.”
    Franklin glanced at the thermometer on his tiny weather station. Seventy-nine, with barometric pressure rising. Pretty seasonal for August in the mountains, although the humidity was thick enough to cut with a rusty knife. “Close,” he lied. “But I’ll live.”
    “And some of those idiots still say global warming is just a goddamned theory.”
    “If