Read World After for Free Online

behind the cars. Even with her dried-up face, there’s something familiar about her that’s nagging me.
    Then a memory tickles my mind.
    An image of two little kids hanging onto the fence, watching their mom walk toward the aerie. Their mom turning around to blow a goodbye kiss.
    She ended up as dinner in the fetus tank of one of the scorpion angels. I broke her tank with my sword and left her there to fend for herself because I couldn’t drag her out.
    She’s alive.
    Only, she looks like she has aged fifty years. Her once beautiful eyes have sunk into her face. Her cheeks are so lean I can almost see the skeleton beneath them. Her hands are talons covered in thin skin.
    She scrambles away in abject terror as she sees us getting up from our hiding places. She’s almost on all fours as she runs off, and my heart breaks to remember her health and beauty before the monsters got to her. She can’t get very far in her condition, and she hides, trembling, behind a post-office box.
    She’s a tiny slip of a thing, but she’s a survivor and I have to respect that. She deserves to get away from the place where she was buried alive, and she’ll need energy for that. I dig through my pockets and feel the Snickers bar. I root around to see if there’s something less valuable but find nothing.
    I take a few steps toward the poor thing as she cringes in her hiding place.
    My sister has more experience with this kind of thing than I do. But I guess I’ve learned a thing or two from watching Paige befriend all those abandoned cats and damaged kids. I put the candy bar on the road where the lady can see it, then take a few steps back to give her some safe space.
    There’s a moment when the woman watches me like a beaten animal. Then she snatches the candy bar faster than I would have given her credit for. She tears off the wrapper in a split second and stuffs the candy in her mouth. Her strained face relaxes as she tastes the nutty, sweet flavor from the World Before.
    “My kids, my husband,” she says in a hoarse voice. “Where did everybody go?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “But a lot of people ended up at the Resistance camp. They might be there.”
    “What Resistance camp?”
    “It’s the Resistance who attacked the angels. People are gathering to join them.”
    She blinks at me. “I remember you. You died.”
    “Neither of us died,” I say.
    “I did,” she says. “And I went to hell.” She wraps her thin arms around herself again.
    I don’t know what to say. What difference does it make if she actually died or not? She certainly lived through hell and she looks it.
    Sanjay walks up to us like he’s approaching a stray cat. “What’s your name?”
    She glances at me for reassurance. I nod.
    “Clara.”
    “I’m Sanjay. What happened to you?”
    She looks at her jerkied hand. “I got sucked dry by a monster.”
    “What monster?” Sanjay asks.
    “The scorpion angels I told you about,” I say.
    “The hell doctor said I could go free if I led him to my little girls,” she says with her parched voice. “But I wouldn’t give them up. He said the monster would liquefy my insides and drink them. Said the mature ones wouldn’t go all the way and kill if they could help it, but the developing ones would.”
    Clara starts shaking. “He said it would be the most excruciating thing I could imagine.” She shuts her eyes as if trying to keep tears back. “Thank God I didn’t believe him.” Her voice sounds choked. “Thank God I didn’t know any better.” She starts crying in dry heaves as if all the fluid actually was sucked out of her.
    “You didn’t give up your children and you’re alive,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”
    She puts her trembling hand on my arm, then turns to Sanjay. “The monster was killing me. And out of nowhere, she came and rescued me.”
    Sanjay looks at me with new respect. I worry about her telling him about Raffe, but it turns out she passed out in the