Then Rachel noticed the other bodies… at least four that she could see at a glance. She recognized a pink cardigan sweater she’d loaned to Mira, and then recognized the long dark hair splayed out around her head where Mira lay prone on the sidewalk near a bus stop.
Call 9-1-1.
Rachel reached for her cell phone on the nightstand, although surely the police already knew about an incident this big. But the phone was dead.
Her grandfather had tried to teach her about firearms, but she had resisted, refusing to buy into the violence of the world. Now she wished she had a weapon. But she didn’t know whom to shoot. Or why.
Rachel shoved the screen out of the window and yelled at the panicked woman, hoping to draw the attention of her attackers. But while the woman turned and looked up, the two men plunged ahead, closing the distance. They were on her in an instant and began tearing at her clothes and hair.
A rape, in broad daylight?
But that didn’t square with the carnage below, or the dead bodies. This was big. Way big.
And she remembered the stories about solar flares. She squinted at the rim of flaming orange that burned like a promise across the city skyline.
Rachel didn’t yet realize it, but she was witnessing the glimmer of a new dawn, a world where death claimed its throne and the few survivors could hardly count themselves as lucky. Because the survivors would be alive and nothing more, while others among them—those who’d been sparked into a cataclysmic upheaval of evolution—would be more than alive.
This was the first light of After.
Someone pounded on the door.
Scott Nicholson is the international bestselling author of more than 20 thrillers, including The Home, Disintegration, Liquid Fear, and Speed Dating with the Dead. His books have appeared in the Kindle Top 100 more than a dozen times in five different countries. Visit his website at www.hauntedcomputer.com or view his Amazon Author Central page. Sign up for the Tao of Boo newsletter for giveaways and free books: http://eepurl.com/tOE89.
Look for the other books in the After post-apocalyptic series! If you read them and enjoy them, please consider writing a review so the series can grow.
AFTER: THE SHOCK
Book 1 in the post-apocalyptic series
By Scott Nicholson
A massive solar storm wipes out the earth’s technological infrastructure and kills billions. As the survivors struggle to adapt, they discover some among them have…changed. The first book in the After series.
Learn more about it at Haunted Computer.
There were three of them.
She’d stopped naming them a week ago. It had been an amusing distraction for a while—and the Good Lord only knew, she needed distractions—but then they’d all started blending together, the Black-Eyed Susans, the Raisinheads and the Meat Throats.
Now, though, Rachel Wheeler couldn’t resist looking through the grimy drugstore window as she waited, crouched in the litter of baby powder and cellophane.
Stumpy.
The one on the right, sitting on the sidewalk bench surrounded by a mountain of bulging plastic bags, was missing his left arm just below the elbow. The wound was swathed in a filthy towel strapped in place with duct tape, stained dark brown at its blunt end.
Stumpy was waiting for a bus that would never come. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was a Zaphead. He might just be another of the schizophrenic homeless, one of the underclass that hadn’t even noticed that the world had ended. Although gaunt, he didn’t appear particularly motivated to kill, obsessed instead with swatting away the flies that swirled around his stump.
He was fifty feet away, and she could outrun him easy. All she had to do was run as if her life depended on it. It wouldn’t be much of a challenge because her life had depended on it for days.
A hundred yards down the street, The Beard, the guy staggering back and forth, was almost certainly a Zaphead. His expression was hidden by the unkempt hair, but he was hunched and his fists were clenched, rage curling around whatever strange energy burned inside of him.
Okay, Beard, you’ve solved my little dilemma of whether I should head south or head north.
The mountains were her destination, and they lay to the northwest, but she wasn’t willing to risk The Beard.
The word “destination” sounded odd in her thoughts, because of the root “destiny.” Such abstractions were laughable now, but laughter was the only weapon against the fear that sapped the strength from her legs. And she needed her legs.
Oh, yes, Lord, give me stumps for hands, but please don’t mess with my legs.
In this scary new world, in this After, you had to run, dragging your guilt and fear and all the dark weight of Before.
Learn more about After: The Shock at Haunted Computer, order a personally signed paper copy, or get the Kindle copy at Amazon US or Amazon UK.
AFTER: THE ECHO
Book 2 in the post-apocalytpic series
By Scott Nicholson
Six weeks after a massive solar storm wipes out billions, a small group of survivors must face a future that may have no room for them. A group of mutants called “Zapheads” are evolving to replace humans at the top of the food chain.
Learn more about the After series at Haunted Computer, order a personally signed paper copy, or get a Kindle copy at Amazon US or Amazon UK.
Other books by Scott Nicholson
A Top 50 Kindle bestseller.
Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s past as an insane asylum. In development as a feature film.
Learn more about The Home or view it on Amazon US or Amazon UK.
In a desperate attempt to save their land from tax foreclosure, Delphus Fraley and his daughter open a camp for at-risk kids, with the goal of building character through experience in the Appalachian Mountain outdoors.
But a strange infection contaminating the camp’s mess hall soon triggers a violent rampage. As the isolated camp turns into a bloodbath, camp counselor Jenny Usher first fights to save the children, and then finds she must fight to save herself.
Because this infection doesn’t just kill, it brings the dead back to life…
Adapted from Scott Nicholson’s original horror screenplay.
View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK.