After The Virus Read Online Free

placed that life firmly behind her with every step she took.
    ∞
    B.B. didn’t stay in the wheelbarrow for more than a few days, which was good, because despite all the Pilates, Rhiannon’s shoulders screamed.
    Going was slow with B.B. limping. They stopped often for supplies, but never slept where they scavenged. Dog food was oddly easy to find. She tried to not let B.B. gorge, but it was difficult rationing a starving animal, and despite her injury, B.B. bulked up fast.
    It was four days before they saw another human.
    ∞
    Memory was a trap as sure as chain or concrete; one that she’d armored against even before she found herself living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; where haunting and terror were everyday events. It didn’t do to dwell, wasn’t a functional way for her at least, but some days, like today, with the sun warm on her back and B.B.’s nails click, click, clicking on the pavement, her mind wandered.
    Often, when people got hint of the bits of terrible she’d confronted in her life, they wondered at the fact that she wasn’t lying in a basement somewhere with a needle in her arm and a hole in her soul.
    Rhiannon couldn’t answer those survivor questions, couldn’t be a life coach or some sort of role model, because she had no idea what made her different, what made her brain different than others who had suffered. She had made the best of the situation, controlled it as much as possible, and walked away when she got the chance. Though some ties proved harder to break than others.
    Sometimes the other person refused to let go.
    In moments of weakness, she worried that the armor — all the years of protective layers built up around her heart and soul — had nothing underneath to protect.
    Enough dwelling, Rhiannon. Keep on moving onward. She had a plan — get away — and someone to protect — B.B. — that was as far as she needed to focus.
    Except, except… the billboard haunted her. She had thought — when she had time to even think — that she could shed that image and become… what, she didn’t know, but something other than herself. But that billboard, the fact they hadn’t raped her, the fact they’d given her a guided tour on the way in. It felt… planned? Contrived? Maybe she was just paranoid after so many years of so many fan stalkers, only one of which had ever laid violent hands on her and she had to admit, if only to herself, that she had some culpability in that situation.
    B.B. pressed a shoulder against her knee, and even before her brain cleared of its memory fog, Rhiannon could feel the tension rippling through the dog’s flank.
    B.B. must have sensed the man about a mile before, because her nose was glued to the ground.
    She, confident they’d left the city behind, had carelessly pushed their traveling farther into daylight.
    He, the man, had laid traps.
    B.B.’s questing nose dislodged a pile of ripped up, wilted wildflowers, and Rhiannon yanked the dog backwards seconds from triggering a wicked leghold trap. A trap big enough for a bear.
    She froze, standing in the middle of the road with her fist clench around B.B.’s collar. Every muscle in her body screamed exposure. Sheer rock rose to her left and dropped into a massive river to her right. No one was crazy enough to ride those rapids. Not anymore.
    She tamped down on her flight instinct. She let her gaze wander farther up the road where seemingly random piles of leaves, weeds, and grass barely covered more traps. So he was a moron then, but obviously violent.
    Whistling.
    B.B. growled, her target uncertain but her belly low. Rhiannon finally unfroze, had sense enough to drop to the ground, and crawl to the cliff edge. B.B. followed.
    He was a hundred feet below: naked, hairy and fishing. Weren’t two of those three illegal? Or at least they used to be. She’d be worried about that hook, as a man.
    The idea of fresh salmon beckoned, but leg traps? That’s a big no way, no how.
    She tried to ease