The World After (Book 1) by Casey Ryan

Author:Casey, Ryan [Casey, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Post-Apocalyptic | Dystopian | EMP
Publisher: Higher Bank Books
Published: 2017-04-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I saw the bunker in the distance, and for the first time in a long time, I felt hope.

The sun was setting, which really captured just how long we’d been walking. I was still in the habit of checking my wrist for the time, but of course, it was still jammed at that same time it had been at when the power had gone completely. Eight thirty-one. The time everything changed.

In a sense, though, I was growing less reliant on time, and that felt kind of liberating in spite of the initial difficulties adjusting to it. All that mattered, really, was the position of the sun in the sky. If the sun was lowering, then that meant darkness was coming, and we needed to find shelter.

Of course, we could keep moving in the dark and shelter in the day. That was a possibility we’d discussed; after all, the bulk of people in positions like us would be travelling in the day and resting at night. But we needed sleep, and I guess there was still a naivety deep within that didn’t want to mess up our body clocks. We wanted to maintain some level of order, of normality. Suddenly shifting our body clock was too much of a change so early in the fall.

The fall. What a thing to call it. What a way to think of it.

And yet it struck up such images.

Society, falling.

Everything around, collapsing.

But this here—this bunker—this was going to change everything.

Sue led the way, eagerly, her children’s hands in hers. It was like she was running back towards Jason, living naively under the impression that if she got there, she’d be reunited in some way. That she’d be able to bring him back from the dead.

Such was the shock of grief.

And the real grieving surely hadn’t even hit yet. Not in earnest.

“Wait up,” I said, jogging closer to Sue. Remy, Hannah, and Haz weren’t far away. “We should take it easy when we’re approaching. We don’t know for certain everything’s going to be in order here.”

“Even if it’s not,” Sue said, “it’s shelter. It’s getting dark. Maybe… maybe we’re the first ones here.”

Part of me kind of wanted that to be the case. Not because I wanted to be left to fend for myself. But because I feared what kind of people might already be in this place.

I’d seen what the prisoners who’d attacked and killed Jason were capable of. Who was to say there weren’t more people like them? Who was to say they couldn’t just do it again?

As we ran, I caught Hannah smiling at me. I knew what that smile was. I knew what that look in her eyes was. It was hope.

“This could be it,” she said as if the nightmare was on the verge of coming to a swift end. “This could really be it.”

I let myself feel that hope for a second. And I knew I’d made a mistake right then because if anything went wrong, then the pain of the fall was going to be even worse.

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