The Echo

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The September sun burned the treetops in a kaleidoscope of gold, scarlet, and a purple so Doomsday deep that the forest appeared bruised in spots.

The air was clean, with much of the haze confined to the eastern horizon behind them, where Charlotte and Winston-Salem had burned to nothing. No one had informed the birds that the world had ended, so their songs and chirrups rang from the high branches. All in all, Rachel Wheeler considered it just another ordinary day in After.

If you don’t think about the dead and the changed. And the next solar storm that could fry us all to madness.

Her legs were sore, but they’d grown stronger with the miles. DeVontay Jones, the dark-skinned man with the glass eye walking behind her, couldn’t even keep pace. Or perhaps he was dawdling so that Stephen could explore like an ordinary boy, dashing to grab a flower here or poke a stick in a mud puddle there. Stephen kicked at the first of autumn’s fallen leaves, taking joy in the loud scuffing sounds.

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