Hell Follows After (Monster of the Apocalypse Saga) Read Online Free Page A

were people who understood time and could make or repair watches. Solar panels were easy to build using stockpiled or salvaged parts, and homes had electricity for lights. Apothecaries began to manufacture and sell powdered drugs for killing pain and for settling stomachs, and some actually worked. Music and the recording and playing of it on small devices remained, as well as radio technologies in primitive configurations. Even though oxen drew the wagons that became standard to hauling anything of value, there were antennae waving above many of them and solar panels on the sides.
    Nations, governments, city states, and county governments collapsed for lack of interest. Police and fire departments, utility companies, and water purification facilities ceased to have importance to people who knew little about them and had no reason to operate or repair them.
    There was an upside to the oblivion. The air cleared as the only thing running was for power generation on demand, and the demand was tiny. Most eventually was replaced by solar, wind, or occasionally water power. Without manufacturing, the earth was able to catch her breath and begin to stay ahead of the scarification. The normalized industrialization in creating a consumer society ceased. Without churches breeding members in order to garner ever greater amounts of money and power, the planet started to heal and become an Eden. As money became obsolete, the great gouts of sewage that were the product of manufacture stopped being dumped into the air and the waters and the earth. Those natural systems began the processes that would reinvigorate them and provide sustenance for the growth of living things.
    But it could not last. Man had survived, and man was a breeder.
    At first, strangers gathered and formed small enclaves. Some groups failed and broke up, scattering members to the wind, but some took root and grew.
    There were many early survivors carrying defective genes from decades of medical intervention, keeping people viable in order to procreate when they would surely have died otherwise. The cessation of those procedures created a cliff for those with defective genes to fall from. The earliest years were brutal, and diseases like diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and premature birth tendencies were weeded from the population. Women were especially hard hit in the first decade as they were the ones having to deal with complications of birth that had once been rare and bred out. Children suffered as those with autism and attention deficits bore the brunt of accidents that were prevented in civilized societies. Darwin would have understood.
    Eventually the population stabilized. The ratios of male to female became more normalized, and as midwifery gained a new foothold, women started to take back the control of their own birth outcomes like they had not for centuries. Few understood natural birth control techniques, and it became normal for a woman to produce a child every two or three years again. Women returned to childrearing as their most legitimate societal use with very few exceptions.
    As resources dwindled in foraging and people returned to agriculture and manufacturing, children became valued for their labor. The desire for large families, both because of high death rates and for financial reasons, gained traction.
    Many of the growing societies started to experiment with governments. Government led to money. Money led to bigger government. And so it goes. Within a century of the plague event, there were communities of men vying for territory, resources, and power. These men knew that greater populations under their control were the easiest way to ensure success in their endeavors. The human race was back on track and repopulating the earth.
    Two hundred years after the plague event, man was starting to overcome the obstacles to progress once more. A new age of exploration and trade began, and with no formal boundaries and few serious governments, the world