Read What Came After for Free Online Page B

voice.
    Weller shifted to block Penny better but the old man told him not to get smart. Keep his ass right where it was if he didn’t feel like getting shot. Although if he felt like getting shot he’d come to the right place and the old man would be happy to oblige. It would make things easier. He coughed and spit and said, “A dead fellow don’t complain so much when you take his brand.” Keeping the gun on him and making a rapid cutting motion across his own neck with the flashlight. The beam jumping around in the trees and then settling back on Weller and his child.
    Penny peering around from behind her father. Light bouncing off her eyes.
    “Come on now. Get up. We got places to go.”
    They got up.
    “Load those bags full.” He stood clear of the pushed-back tarp, among the trees, pointing with the beam. “Don’t leave anything behind. That’s right. That’s right. The blanket and all.”
    Weller jammed and shoved, but everything that had fit the day before didn’t fit now.
    “You fold up that tarp and take it. I’ll carry the rope. Nobody’s coming back for any of this, so don’t get ideas.”
    Weller didn’t have ideas.
    “Now come on.”
    They went back the way they came. Weller with Penny on his back and the old man behind with the gun and the flashlight. The flashlight burning like it would burn forever. They went down to the intersection with the birdhouse hanging overhead and they turned and retraced their steps from before.
    “That’s a nice kitty cat you got there, sweetheart.”
    No answer.
    “You like kitty cats?”
    No answer. She just wrapped her arms tighter around her father’s neck. Making his breath come harder. He stopped and the old man hollered at him to go on and he went on.
    “Turn here.” The place where they’d heard that flapping sound. No sound now. Not that low rustle and not the beating of that chain. No air moving and no sound. They kept to the half-circle of blacktop. The way was uphill and they’d been hurrying and Weller slowed from the slope and Penny’s weight and his desperation all combined. The man came close and pressed something into his side. The barrel of the gun or the flashlight, who could tell. “March,” he said. Giving Weller a shove that set him stumbling. Turning off the light. Sunrise.
    It was an old elementary school. Childish drawings still hanging in what few windows were still glassed, faded-out drawings that manifested themselves one by one in the rising dawn. The rest of the windows gaping. They went around to the side. Down a little alleyway cut out of the building like where they’d keep the trash cans. A concrete curb along one side surrounding an opening covered over with a blue plastic tarp gray in the pale light. “Pull that back and go on down.” Stairs below it into darkness. “Go on. Nothing down there’s going to bite.”
    It was make a stand now or don’t make one ever. Weller kicked at the tarp and said he had to put the girl down or else he’d lose his balance.
    The old man said just don’t get smart.
    Weller put her down. She went backwards a half step and no more. Toward the mouth of the alleyway. Weller looked toward the old man and said, “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind but you don’t need us. Just take whatever we’ve got. Take whatever you want.”
    The old man pointed the gun at the child and said rest assured he would do exactly that.
     
    *
     
    Alongside a doorway at the bottom, three yellow triangles set inside a black circle. Black paint and yellow paint on a metal sign that was dented and buckled and rusted through in places but unmistakable. The words Fallout Shelter. There were no more children in this old school building, but there was still a place for children to go when the worst happened.
    “Welcome to HQ,” said the old man. He threw a switch and a generator somewhere started up and a half-dozen lightbulbs strained to life. Clear glass bulbs hanging from wires strung around a big