After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) Read Online Free Page A

as well have one last smoke before I go down.”
    Jorge struck a match, the smell of sulfur strong in the cramped closet. Danny bent forward, leading with the tip of his cigarette, but Jorge applied the flame to the toilet paper instead. The fire leaped to life, and Jorge tossed the burning roll onto the other paper products.
    “Damn it!” Danny coughed and waved smoke away until he got the cigarette lit, and then he backed out fast.
    “Maybe that will burn the whole school down.” Jorge didn’t want to think about the survivors trapped in the gym. They’d have to make a run for it on their own if they wanted to live. The choice was theirs. At least Jorge had given them a chance, even if they didn’t take it or even want it.
    “I hope them Zapper babies burn in hell,” Danny said, sucking deep drags of smoke from the cigarette.
    Jorge grabbed a mop and smacked the handle against the door jamb, breaking it off just above the gray-stringed mop head. The weapon wasn’t as effective as a baseball bat, but it sported a sharp, jagged edge that might come in handy.
    Instead of passing the gym door again, Jorge led Danny down a different hallway. Although the school building was a labyrinth with additions added over several different eras, Jorge possessed a good sense of the layout from his earlier exploration. Danny followed close behind, complaining about the tobacco that was so stale “it tasted like ass.” The gunfire outside diminished to a staccato popping.
    By the time they reached the front of the building, the smoke had spread to a layer about a foot thick beneath the ceiling. The air was oily and warm, already becoming difficult to breathe. Danny tossed the cigarette away and said, “Well, if I’m going to get cancer, I may as well get it straight from the source.”
    Jorge glanced through a window set in the double doors of the main entrance. Several Zapheads crossed the parking lot, heading toward the football stadium. Although the chants had stopped, cries and screams rose from the bowl of the valley. Jorge hoped none of those anguished sounds came from Rosa or Marina.
    But if he wanted to find them, all he had to do was follow the screams.
    And fight his way through an agitated mob of Zapheads.
    “Ready?” Jorge asked.
    Danny glanced back at the shadowy forms approaching through the smoke. “Live free or die, right?”
    “So I have heard.” Jorge kicked open the door and tumbled into the bright sunlight.

CHAPTER FIVE

    DeVontay Jones wondered if he was the last man on Earth.
    He’d carried the Zaphead baby—who informed him her name was Willow—for nearly two days, accompanied by a tribe of Zapheads who moved silently through the forest unless Willow called to them. Then they repeated her words from one to another until all of the Zapheads had heard them.
    DeVontay’s cheeks and fingers were numb from the winter cold, but he wasn’t exhausted despite the long march down from the mountains. They had stopped several times to let DeVontay rest and eat, although they required no sleep themselves and only the barest of food. Once they’d reached the formerly populated outskirts, the Zapheads searched the houses, occasionally collecting dead bodies which they now hauled with them. In addition, they’d collected the corpses of the Zapheads killed in their battle with Army soldiers in the mountains.
    The Zapheads apparently trusted him with the baby, and considering he’d had his opportunities to kill her, he wondered if maybe their trust disguised something else—a knowledge that DeVontay was somehow one of them. Acceptance was the ultimate surrender, after all.
    “What will you do with all the dead people?” DeVontay asked.
    “We will make them new once we learn how,” Willow said.
    “And I’m supposed to just carry you around until you’re old enough to walk?”
    The baby gave a toothless grin. “You have a purpose.”
    “I’m not sure I want the job.”
    “You want to see Rachel,