The After War: Novel Sample

The After War

Part I

To Alice

Chapter 1

Brian and Steve

Brian Rhodes cracked open the solid steel trapdoor of the bunker, using his shoulder to carry its weight as he stepped up to the next rung of the ladder. A rush of warm, dusty air sucked down the entry chute, pulled in like a vacuum from the plank-board shed built to conceal the shelter door and the two men who had been hiding below ground. Brian kept his pistol at eye level as the metal door creaked, and a horizontal slit of light—real sunlight—hit his eyes for the first time in over two years.

Adrenaline and fear pumped in his chest, distracting him from that first breath of fresh air. The loose wooden floor of the shed lifted as the trapdoor opened and fell off to the side, disturbing the settled dust that covered everything in that tiny room. Particle clouds rose, the motes illuminated in the strips of sunlight shining through the slats of the wooden walls. Brian stifled back a sneeze.

At the bottom of the landing, Brian's cousin Steven Driscoll stared upward, gripping the sides of the ladder.

"What's up there, Bri—"

Brian hushed him with a shake of his open palm and continued up the ladder until he was standing outside. Carefully, he rested the heavy trapdoor against the far wall of the shed.

Brian looked down the entry chute to Steven at the bottom. He knew that five minutes ago, the only thought going through Steven's mind had been the complete and utter fear of facing whatever unknown nature of humanity might remain outside that bunker door. Now his cousin looked panicked as the filtered light reflected the sheen of sweat on his forehead, his body tensed, as if the all-encompassing blackness in that room was squeezing him toward the exit. Steven's eyes darted over his shoulder in the direction of the one piece of equipment they had not shut down entirely—the walk-in freezer. The red, glowing light from the switch illuminated the far wall. Steven seemed frozen, transfixed.

Not the time to be thinking about what's in there, Brian thought.

Steven shuddered and turned to the ladder. He was halfway up when Brian hissed down to him.

"The gear, Steve. Pass the gear."

Steven jumped to the landing and hefted the first, and then the second military-issue backpack up the passageway to Brian's waiting hands. The large backpacks barely fit through the narrow opening with all the detachable pouches filled to the brim and the secondary detachable scout backpacks stuffed with the essentials.

The blackness of the bunker crept over Steven's hands as he shoved the packs through the circular opening, briefly cutting off the sunlight from the outside. Brian saw that look in his cousin's shadowy eyes, as if the darkness was seeping into his body and being filtered into his lungs from the air he breathed.

Brian was still heaving the second dark green backpack from the opening as Steven hurried to the mouth of the ladder, his broad shoulders and chest pinched momentarily at the narrow, circular entrance before pulling himself free.

Steven's eyes were darting about the walls of the shed like those of a caged animal. For a moment, they were both silent, listening to the wind outside and the occasional chatter of birds far overhead. They pressed their faces to the cracks between the plank walls, blinking their eyes at the outside world, but all they could see were slivers of the vast fields beyond.