First Light

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.