What Came After Read Online Free

one end of the quonset hut, with pipes from the rooftop water tank going down into it. Rusted now and disused. The greenhouse glass painted over. There was an actual Volkswagen in the far corner, a dull red Beetle with a convertible top, underneath a plastic tarp to keep off the rain. Judging by the tire tracks coming in from the dirt yard, Weller had had it running. Imagine that. Where he’d gotten gasoline was a mystery of its own. MobilGo still had plenty of gas, but most of it was tied up in National Motors contracts. Once upon a time the federal government had investigated those deals, and there’d been hearings and lawsuits and at the end of it MobilGo had had to keep its stations open and sell gasoline to private citizens. But that was fifteen years ago now, back when there’d been a federal government. Here they were, not halfway into the century yet, and so much had changed.
    Carmichael rushed to the Beetle and lifted a corner of the tarp. Weller barked at him to leave that alone, and Carmichael did as he was told. Laughing at being given orders. Thinking this mechanic might deserve a chance at fixing the Hummer after all. So he played along, smiling and raising his hands before him like a person up against a bandit. Saying that’s some car, is all. It really and truly is.
    He asked Weller where he’d gotten the gasoline to run it, and Weller said that was the problem. You could scavenge the dump for what might be left in old plastic gas cans and the tanks of lawnmowers and what have you, but it never added up to much. A dribble at a time. And what you got hardly sparked. He said he couldn’t imagine filling the tank of something like that Hummer and just driving. Never mind getting access to a National Motors highway. A real highway going somewhere and you on it.
    Carmichael had to admit that he was a lucky man.
    Weller showed him around the rest of the place. He gave most of the tour with a little girl riding on his shoulders. His daughter. She was five years old, but compared to Carmichael’s son she was tiny. Not skin and bones tiny, but tiny in the way of something magical. Exactly as large as she needed to be and no larger. Skin like milk. Dirty blonde hair cut by her mother on the run, looking like a raggedy cloud in a high wind.
    Mainly, though, she was all eyes. Wide eyes blue and deep and springfed. Eyes hungry for something not yet seen.
    Her name was Penny. Penelope. It was a lot of name for a girl that small, and no one used all of it. From up on her father’s shoulders she looked down at the boy with a patient wonder that soon revealed its true self. She was going blind. It was plain from the way she turned her head and studied him. Studied him as they made their way through the quonset hut, pausing here and there and the light shifting so she could make him out better and then worse and then better again. She studied the boy so as to put him together from pieces she could gather up one by one.
    Gather up and keep, because even at her age she knew that she had to collect these treasures or lose them.
    Weller brought them back through the house and into the kitchen to meet his wife, Elizabeth. Liz. He stooped and put Penny down on the countertop where she sat content, running a toy truck over her knees. Peter looking at her up there, wishing her down on his level or below it.
    “Liz,” said Weller, “these are the folks whose car broke down.”
    Carmichael put out his hand and said his name. Syllables to conjure with all the world over, but not here. Not in this house. He introduced his son to better effect. The woman bent and put her hands on her knees to study him closer, and after a moment she decided he looked hungry.
    He certainly was, but he didn’t say. He just turned to his father, who looked at the thinly stocked shelves and glanced toward the vegetable bin and saw the familiar PharmAgra label. PharmAgra that had engineered the treacherous genetics inside just about everything that