After the Fear (Young Adult Dystopian) by Rosanne Rivers Read Free Book Online Page B

of me knows I could blame him for all of this. Our kiss brought this on, after all. Yet I can’t hate him. His eyes change so frequently; one second they’re cold—hard around the edges—but then he looks at me, and all I see is a warm intensity. Anyway, Coral is to blame, not Dylan. Even her name makes me want to spit on something. I contemplate spitting into the air and chuckle when I visualise it coming straight back at me. That would really impress Dylan.
    I catch sight of another city in the distance. It sits like a globule of phlegm on the charcoaled landscape of what used to be England. After everyone relocated to cities, the Shepherds burnt a lot of the countryside to stop us from travelling so we would be protected from each other. At the time, there were a few rumours that the fires were to massacre anyone who refused to move, but Dad said those thoughts were quickly quashed by the threat of becoming a contestant in the Demonstrations.
    I don’t really understand how people can be so different in each city. Just as I don’t know why the Shepherds have to raise money by charging people to see others get killed, but it’s that kind of thinking which gets someone in the Stadium in the first place. So I try to remind myself that there’s a reason for it all. That the Shepherds are right and there cannot be order without sacrifice.
    As we head over the sea, the air begins to change; a shy, pink blush creeps over the cheeks of the sky while red freckles of light streak through the clouds. Then the tip of the orange sun peeks into the world. It hovers momentarily, as if deciding whether to surface or not, before rising with such strength it’s as though it never wants to take its sight off me again.
    I always imagined a sunrise to be slower than that, like a quiet creak. Instead it’s a sudden rush—urgent and painful and beautiful.
    I don’t breathe or speak or cry or move. My pain disappears. Like an addict from the times before the Shepherds, now I’ve breathed the fresh morning air I want more. I need the warmth on my skin—in between my toes and inside my ears.
    The sun throws its early light onto the sea, and a patch of un-burnt land reaches into the water. We’re flying so low over the greenery I see patchworks of old fields. The hedges have grown so wild they’re like fabric hems where the thread has jumbled and snagged. Morning shadows stretch awake, and I sense the world turning, changing.
    All too soon, I recognise the grey terrain which signifies we are nearing a city. The spinner slows as we reach the border. It’s way smaller than Juliet and I can’t see a Stadium. This must be it then. Camp.
    As we descend, a sinking claustrophobia chokes me. I imagine the border of the camp growing over my head, encapsulating me and stealing my air. I stare out of the gap to try to ease my breath. Right ahead are three identical, tall constructions which look like metal plants growing from the ground. They each have one large shaft in the middle, and jutting from those are dozens of strange, translucent pods. We swerve through them. There are a few more buildings, but most of the camp is oval-shaped fields, with grooves in the grass reminding me of the how the rail circulates around Juliet. We land just after passing an open-topped building—giant and extending into the sky like a stretched egg. Inside, some of the floors are filled with either smoke or steam, and others are murky. I swear the roof is made of water.
    Three Herd officers wait for us on the landing pad. I’m yanked from the spinner with the care given to a bag of old clothes and it’s all I can do not to collapse straight onto the tarmac. I rip the softening pads from my ears. My stumbles feel unnaturally slow, and the camp is weirdly quiet. Managing a few steps, I peer through the prongs of a metal gate which separates the landing pad from one of the wide fields I saw before. Those strange buildings sit farther in the