Life After: Episode 4 (A Serial Novel) Read Free Page B

hundred souls, three buckets
didn’t allow for more than a couple sips per person. That was the first and
last of the water we had access to. That night, there were many people
tormented by illnesses. Several people were vomiting into the hole in the
corner. A few had diarrhea. Some were delirious with fevers. By the fourth day,
we had our first death: an old man suffered a heart attack. At the next
station, we tried to tell the guards about the corpse, but they ignored us. As
we continued on, the bodies piled up and the smell…oh my God, the smell was
worse than before. Then…” Rebecca began to shake as she continued with a broken
voice. “…then on the fourth day, my mother passed out. She had complained of a
headache and fever the previous day, but there was nothing we could do to help
her. The car was sweltering and we couldn’t wake her. The doctor eventually
came to her aid, but it was too late…”
    Clark saw Rebecca’s face now. Tears dripped down her cheeks and
passed by her parched lips.
    “I’m so sorry,” Clark said.
    Rebecca lowered her head and stared at the ground. “After five
days, the living were literally sleeping on top of each other to avoid being
near the growing number of corpses. At the end of that day, we finally made it
to our destination…”
    Rebecca turned and looked at Thomas, who rubbed his eyes as he
sat up. “Wake up, Tyler,” he said.
    Charles looked at Tyler, who lay in the fetal position on the
ground. “How’s your leg?”
    Tyler rolled over and looked at the old man. “Hurts
a lot.”
    Clark helped Tyler up and they gathered their supplies. He
thought of Rebecca’s story and knew that what she experienced was being relived
by countless others across the country every day. He knew they had to move on
and find the rebel stronghold in the south. That was their only hope to one day
live in a world free from the evil that now ruled supreme.
    Clark shook his head to dispel
the horrible thoughts from his mind and instead focused on the survivors around
him. He reached into his pocket and grabbed two food bars. He handed one to
each of the boys.
    “Should I split mine with you?” Thomas asked.
    “No,” Clark said, pulling three
more bars from his pocket. “It’s all yours.”
    Back onto the barely visible trail, Clark
kept an eye out for any movement in the woods. Fortunately, nobody was nearby.
He was glad to be able to walk in nature undisturbed by the horrors of
everything going on in the world, though he knew this bliss was only temporary,
and so he continued to scan his surroundings. They found the main trail and
walked further south as the sun worked its way up into the sky. After an hour
of walking through the thick brush, Clark spotted a fork in the trail and saw a
wooden sign with carved text and an arrow pointing to the right.
    “Thank God,” Charles said.
    Clark smiled when he read the sign: Appalachian Trail. His smile
quickly faded as he heard the whistle of a nearby train, likely filled to the
brim with innocent people who would soon perish at the hands of the Imperials.
He hastened his step as they started on the trail that would lead them nearly
eight hundred miles south on their journey to find the hidden rebel base in Georgia. Though
it was unlikely he could save those en route to the concentration camps, he
knew there was a chance to save millions of others from a similar fate.

 
    # # #

 
    About the author:
    JJ Holden lives in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere.
He spends his days studying the past, enjoying the present, and pondering the
future.

 
    Contact JJ Holden at [email protected]
    For more information on this series, go to
jjholdenbooks.blogspot.com

 
    THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO…

 
    …to help this writer, anyway.

 
    Thank you for reading Life After - Episode 4. You’ve already made your way to
the top of my Favorite People list, along with George, Paul, John, Ringo , Dean Koontz, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen