Read After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) for Free Online Page A

knows nothing.”
    He’d had a very limited view of events since the solar storm—this new phase of evolution the woman Rachel had referred to as “After.” He’d adjusted to a perception of Zapheads as bloodthirsty, mindless killers and of fellow human survivors as desperate potential killers, all tossed into a stew of rotten bodies and failed technology.
    But if a wider change was underway, wouldn’t the military be the strongest organized force? Wouldn’t that rigid chain of command have a better chance of enduring in chaos, and wouldn’t those commanders have the most information about the current state of affairs?
    And isn’t that the reason I am following them? For answers?
    “Whoever you are, you better stay back,” the scrawny soldier shouted at the trees. “Or I’ll blow you to hell.”
    Crewcut snorted. “Even if they can hear, they sure as shit don’t listen.”
    The chuckling was almost a liquid hissing now, like moist air pouring from a dozen punctured tires. The soldiers slowly backed toward the porch of the mobile home, whether instinctively or through some sort of unspoken tactical ploy.
    They left their prisoner by the road, where he turned in slow circles, tilting his head left and right. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a string of blood trickled forth.
    Branches stirred behind Campbell, followed by the muted flutter of disturbed leaves on the forest floor. He rolled with his back against the trunk of an oak, the rough bark scouring him into a heightened sense of awareness.
    He breathed through his mouth in order to hear more clearly. Through the trees, the sky had turned an ashen gray with approaching dusk, and the blackness pooled among the base of the trees. Night was rising more than it was descending, crawling up from the hidden pores of the earth.
    If anything was moving in that blackness, Campbell had no hope of detecting it.
    A metallic thud vibrated from the clearing, followed by another. Crewcut, still deathly calm, said, “Quit banging. Nobody’s home, dumbass.”
    The scrawny soldier knocked twice more on the trailer door before slamming the door handle with the butt of his rifle. “Maybe we ought to make a run for it.”
    “We’ve got orders.”
    “Nobody ordered us to get killed.”
    Although Campbell could see nothing in the ebony ink of the forest, he could sense movement all around him. The trailer’s yard was spacious enough to catch the last ragged shreds of sunset. Crewcut, standing on the porch, raised his assault weapon.
    The hissing rose to a brittle crescendo, seemingly all around him.
    The dusk was torn by a staccato burst of three shots.
    The prisoner’s chest erupted in a bloom of red, and then he staggered forward two steps and collapsed.
    The hissing immediately gave way to an oppressive silence.

 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    “Holy hell, Jonesy, you shot it.”
    Crewcut swept the barrel of his weapon at the forest surrounding the trailer. “Quiet.”
    Campbell, who had ducked at the report of the gun, crawled backwards away from the clearing, dragging his pack through the damp leaves. The sudden quiet was freighted with menace, as if the trees themselves were tensed for an attack. Campbell wanted to put some distance between he and the gunmen before they got trigger-happy in their panic.
    “We were supposed to bring it to camp,” the scrawny soldier whined. “Sarge will be pissed.”
    “Plenty more where that came from.”
    “What’s out there? Is it them ?”
    Campbell held his breath and dropped to the ground, expecting bullets to rip overhead at any moment. Through the foliage, he saw Crewcut leave the vantage point of the porch and veer across the yard so he could check around the trailer. The gray air of dusk was leaden with expectation.
    “Move out,” Crewcut said, waving his gun down the road in the direction they’d been heading before their pit stop.
    The scrawny soldier, Zimmerman, hurried down the porch steps and dashed across the