After: The Shock Read Online Free Page B

directions. Metal clanged several streets away, like a
body falling on the hood of a car or a boot being driven into a Dumpster. She
wondered if one of the affected had caught a fresh victim. But there was no
scream.
    Had
the survivors already adjusted past the point of screaming?
    Were
there any survivors left at all?
    She
didn’t like the thought of being alone, the last human in the universe, and the
dead pharmacist’s little care package came to mind. But she loathed the pale,
grim surrender that had been painted on his dying face. That was the coward’s
way out, the path of the faithless. If such a time came, she trusted God would
first give her permission.
    Until
then…
    Rachel
secured the backpack and stepped outside, clinging close to the brick, metal,
and glass walls as she eased down the street. She paid absurd attention to each
footstep, making sure the rubber soles of her sneakers didn’t scuff on the
concrete. She didn’t know whether the Zapheads were driven to prey by
superhuman senses of sight, smell, or hearing, but she figured the apocalypse
was as good a time as any to hedge her bets.
    She’d
lived in Charlotte for two years, taking little time to learn the city. Her
world had been largely confined to West Charlotte, where she interned as a
counselor for the Department of Social Services. Rachel knew the beltway and
the exits for the larger shopping malls, the libraries, and the uptown area
where she’d visited the Mint Museum, but little else. The high, gleaming
finance centers were behind her, once busy with moneychangers and loan
officers, but were now just seventy and eighty stories of stacked mausoleum
crypts. The glass glinted red in the sunset, the towers of Babel gone silent,
and small plumes of smoke curling from some of them.
    She
picked up her pace a little, more confident now that Chain Guy apparently
hadn’t noticed her . Charlotte has to end at some point, and then you’ll hit
the woods.
    The
block ended, and she glanced into one of the cars slanted across the intersection
in the heart of a traffic jam. A woman’s head was tilted back, ponytail
dangling over the seat. Behind her was a child’s safety seat. Rachel’s heart,
already galloping, jumped a fence and missed a step.
    What
if it’s alive?
    And
the little devil on her shoulder whispered: It would be crying. Don’t stop.
    Maybe
it’s asleep, or scared, or—
    Or
dead. Maybe it’s dead, and you walk over there and peer in the glass and see
its cute little blue face and then you scream, and then Chain Guy comes running
with his steel whip, ready to play and play and play until your brains are
sausage.
    Shut
the eff up.
    I’m
the devil. You can’t tell me what to do. And I see you’re using profanity,
Rachel. That’s good. That’s very good.
    Rachel
said a quick prayer and forced herself toward the car, glancing up the street
only once. That was the litmus test: If she saw Chain Guy, it was a sign from
God that she should run for it. Otherwise, she had a moral duty to save a baby
if she could.
    As
she reached for the handle of the back door, she wasn’t sure whether it was
morality or loneliness that drove her. With a baby to care for, she had less
reason to think about the poison pills.
    But
she didn’t open the door. The safety seat was empty, a rumpled yellow blanket
piled around it.
    Rachel
hoped the baby was off with Grandmother, playing patty cake or whining for her
mom’s nipple, somewhere secure and far, far from the carnage of downtown Charlotte. She didn’t allow room for the Chain Guy’s discovery of the infant, or what
those steel links might do to tender flesh. No, such things didn’t happen under
God’s heaven.
    And
even if they did, she didn’t need to know about them. She didn’t want to know
about them.
    The
sun sank lower, the shadows flattened fatter, and the distant noises clanged
more cacophonous, building like tribal drums, only this tribe had been driven
mad with one big celestial