After: First Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 0) (7 page)

That’s when Rachel realized the only movement on the street was a woman in business suit running awkwardly between the stranded vehicles, one high-heel missing, hair trailing out behind her in tangles.

No, there were others.

Chasing the woman.

The nearest was a man in a khaki uniform shirt with a cloth insignia on the shoulder, like some sort of delivery driver. He slapped against the side of the bus as if not seeing it and staggered for a moment before continuing after the screeching woman. As if drawn by her cries, a man in a scuffed leather jacket dodged between vehicles toward her. His pursuit was blocked by two cars that had collided bumper to bumper, and he scrambled over the hood of an Audi sedan, sending bits of broken glass winking to the street. They were both gaining on the woman, who was too frantic to remove her lone high heel. She hobble-clopped toward the storefront of an electronics repair shop, where an old woman was collapsed against the door.

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
.

CHAPTER ONE

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

THE HOME

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
.

MEAT CAMP

By Scott Nicholson & J.T. Warren

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
.

CREATIVE SPIRIT

By Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist’s retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban’s form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller
Creative Spirit
or view it at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

DISINTEGRATION

By Scott Nicholson

A Top 30 Kindle bestseller.

When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.

Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion.

But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood. And the childhood games have become deadly serious.

Learn more about the psychological thriller
Disintegration
or
view it at Amazon
or
Amazon UK

THE RED CHURCH

Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost.

The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

Learn more about the
real haunted church
that inspired The Red Church or view it for
Kindle at Amazon
or
Amazon UK

DRUMMER BOY

Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as "The Jangling Hole," and the wind carries a whispered name.

It's the eve of a Civil War re-enactment, and the town of Titusville is preparing to host a staged battle. The weekend warriors aren’t aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from over.

And one misfit kid is all that stands between the town and a sinister evil force…

Learn more about
Drummer Boy
and the Appalachian legend that inspired the novel or
view it at Amazon
or
Amazon UK

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.