After: The Shock Read Online Free

city, death had sent its sweet musk into the sky as if to
mark the territory it now ruled. And, in the absence of governments, law, and
civilization, death was the only world order remaining.
    Pete
followed him to the van, still shucking items from the purse, calling out as he
dropped them. “Hair clip…fingernail file…a little billfold with—”
    Campbell looked back to see Pete
stopped in the middle of the glittering asphalt, staring at the fold of vinyl
in his hand. His friend’s abrupt silence was amplified by the desolation around
them.
    “Family
pictures, man,” Pete whispered.
    Campbell hadn’t thought of his
family all day. Dad Brian, a financial advisor, a guy you could toss a football
and drink beers with, a solid Republican who’d vote “liberal” if he was mad at
the stock market. Mom Mary, like most every Mary in the world, pretty,
pleasant, and Catholic-loyal, although she’d made relief mission trips to eight
different countries. Little brother Ted, or Turdfinger, as Campbell used to
call him, back before Ted hit his growth spurt and could kick his butt.
    The
Grimes family lived on Lake James, in the North Carolina foothills, with the
3,000-square-foot Swiss-style house and little speedboat dock that was expected
of people in Dad’s circle. Campbell tried to picture the three of them out on
the lake: Dad at the helm with his sun visor, shades, and tanned face, Mom
perched loyally by the outboard motor and keeping an eye on Ted, who trailed
behind them and cut his skis through the greenish-brown water.
    But
that other image—the one with them all slumped and rotting in front of the
widescreen TV, flies dive-bombing their eyes—was the one that burned into his
head.
    “We’ll
get there, Pete,” Campbell said, with a conviction he didn’t feel.
    Pete
flapped the little photo album. “Yeah, and then what? Don’t you think her family is sitting there with dinner on the table, waiting for Mom or Sis or
Wife to walk through the door and bitch about the traffic?”
    Pete’s
drinking not only slowed them down and increased the danger of traveling by
bicycle on cluttered roads, but it also made him prone to blubbering. And Campbell did not want any damned blubbering at the moment. The world had already thrown
itself the biggest Pity Party of all time, and the clam dip had definitely gone
bad.
    “Let’s
check this out and get moving,” Campbell said, eyeing the smoky horizon. “We
have to find a safe place to crash before dark.”
    Campbell hoped the rear door of
the van was unlocked. He didn’t want to open the cab. Pete dropped the purse
and said, “Hey, don’t you want to—”
    –check
it out, Bro?
    But
he was already swinging the door open and Marvin the Martian was definitely
very angry indeed, because a blur of bulky movement exploded out of the
shadows.
    The
impact stunned Campbell, and breath exploded from his lungs as he landed flat
on the asphalt. The scrabbling creature standing over him smelled like the ozone
of an electrical short, spiced with sour perspiration, urine, and a primal
aroma that didn’t have a name but was known by prey of every species.
    He
could dimly hear Pete yelling somewhere far away, and the creature’s long ropes
of hair whipped in his face, blinding him as he tried to roll. A jolt of agony
flared in his shoulder, and he kicked upward. The creature seemed to have eight
arms, and all of them were searching for a hunk of meat.
    Campbell
punched upward and hit something soft, and he had the goofy image of his hand
vanishing into the creature’s face, as if it were Marvin the Martian’s black
gap of nothingness. Then it rained, and the rain was warm and heavy, and a
muffled krunk repeated itself as someone were beating a damp drum in a
distant jungle.
    The
creature slumped on top of him, and then its weight moved to the side, and
there was Pete leaning over him, a massive pipe wrench clenched in his right
fist. The head of the wrench was clotted with hair