Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield Read Free Book Online

“Sammi…you have to know how dangerous it is to be out there alone.”
    “ You were alone. How far have you walked, anyway?” Sammi demanded. “Since you, you know, woke up.”
    “Look, Sammi…you can’t tell anyone what I’m telling you. About me being attacked.”
    Sammi nodded solemnly. “I promise.”
    “No, really. You can’t tell anyone .”
    Sammi nodded again.
    “And you have to stop going outside on your own.”
    This time Sammi didn’t react, didn’t meet her eyes.
    “Say it, Sammi, please. I know you don’t like being cooped up here, but just promise me you won’t go out alone.”
    Sammi rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, I promise .”
    Cass sighed. “I don’t know how far I’ve walked, really. At first I didn’t… It was like I was sleeping and awake at the same time. I didn’t go very far for a while. I was stopping a lot…maybe that was a week. Until I felt right again. And even then…” Cass passed a hand over her eyes, rubbed the skin between her eyebrows. “Even then I didn’t cover a lot of distance. Because of trying to hide when it was light out. You know, to keep watch.”
    And at night, when the moon went behind a cloud, or the stars failed to light the sky, she couldn’t go very far at all, because she couldn’t see. Back in the library, she’d hoarded matches and two good flashlights and a cache of batteries. But she had none of that when she woke up. No pack, no food, no supplies, and she was wearing clothes she’d never seen before.
    How far did she travel every night: maybe a few miles? As close as she could figure it, Cass had started out about thirty-five miles down-mountain, maybe a little more since she had weaved back and forth to avoid going too close to the road. The Beaters didn’t leave the roads when they could help it; they liked to follow an easy path, and their stumbling, awkward gait did not lend itself to obstacles. On uneven terrain they stumbled and fell a lot.
    Still, if they’d caught her scent, a glimpse of her in the woods, nothing would stop them from coming after her, no matter how deep she ran, so she had tried to stay out of sight of the road. And roads eventually ran into towns, which she had to avoid more and more once she noticed, like Smoke had said, that the Beaters were clustering around the population centers of Before.
    One time, a few days after she woke up, she’d been dozing the afternoon away in the skeleton of a live oak tree. It was a hundred yards or so from the road, and upwind, so Cass figured it would be safe enough. Low in the foothills, the trees were sparse to begin with, and most had died; there was little in the way of cover.
    A sound broke nearby and she came awake instantly, her heart racing. She almost fell as she looked around for the source of the sound. Then she spotted the man who had walked directly below the tree, his footfalls cracking on broken branches. He was walking fast, a bulky pack on his shoulders, his gait sure and strong. A loner, Cass guessed, someone who—like Sammi—would rather take his chances outside than live cooped up in a shelter.
    Suddenly there was a second sound. Over on the road.
    Cass had been so focused on the man that she hadn’t seen them approach. Beaters—four of them, stumbling and crying out—and they’d heard him, too.
    Fear turned Cass’s blood cold.
    For a second, the man paused, looking around wildly. His eyes went wide and he began to run, faster than Cass had ever seen a man run. After a few dozen paces he shrugged the pack off his back, and it fell to the ground as the Beaters’ cries escalated into enraged screams. Unburdened, he ran even faster.
    But he wasn’t fast enough.
    It was dumb luck that he ran forward. If he had run perpendicular to the road, the Beaters would have come close enough to Cass’s tree to smell her. As it was, Cass guessed the man stayed ahead of them for a quarter mile before they caught up. She watched the whole time, willing the man