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Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Jim LeMay
ISBN-10: 154965862X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 348
Copyright: Jan 26, 2014
ISBN-13: 9780615745206
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Bacteria win their ancient war against mankind, leaving few people alive. Young gang member John Moore and aristocratic Alicia Coleridge defy convention to find love. After her mysterious disappearance he seeks her across an empty, unsympathetic world which many have come to call the Afterworld.
In 2072 a pandemic caused by a bacterial infection that does not respond to antibiotics kills the vast majority of humanity. Too few people survive to maintain civilization. Governments collapse. The few stunned survivors struggle on in an empty, unsympathetic world which many come to call the Afterworld. Thirteen years pass. John Moore and the sisters Alicia and Jaclyn Coleridge are among the generation born too late to remember the civilized times. They come from disparate backgrounds. He is an orphan and member of a scrounger gang that roams the vacant, sometimes brutal, lands. The gang contends with others in scavenging usable goods to sell and confront the dangers of dead, collapsing cities. The sisters are daughters of a powerful mayor who rules the settlement of Coleridge Gardens as autocratically as a feudal lord.
The scrounger gang’s routine is much the same every year. They spend summers collecting pre-pandemic goods to sell at the Coleridge Gardens harvest market. They stay at the town’s only hotel, Haas House, during the market, then go to the larger town of Nellie’s Fair, situated on an island in a lake near the ruins of St. Louis, Missouri. They deposit their earnings from the market in its bank and enjoy its pleasures for a few weeks, then spend the rest of the winter at Haas House where John works as the hotel’s brewer.
As he reaches manhood John wearies of gang life, settles in Coleridge Gardens and works at the hotel as a full time brewer. He readily adapts to the settled life and finds love with Alicia Coleridge. The town, however, is not without tension. Its fiery young fundamentalist preacher, Paul Gephardt, keeps his congregation, which includes most of the townspeople, terrified of the End Times. The pandemic, he claims, was its first stage. Suddenly Gephardt disappears; at the same time Alicia is missing. Jaclyn tells John they left together but, given Alicia’s dislike of the preacher, John knows she would not have gone willingly with him. Believing the preacher must have kidnapped her he leaves to look for them.
His search takes him to Nellie’s Fair where he finds no sign of them. He happens upon Murdoch, a former gang member he met at Haas House. When John tells him he intends to search other lakeside towns, Murdoch offers to go with him. John agrees with some misgivings; Murdoch’s activities all seem illicit. The trip is a disaster. They not only find no sign of Alicia or Gephardt but Murdoch uses the trip to make money by means of illegal poker games and sales of marijuana. On the way back to Nellie’s Fair John leads them out of the way to see ruined skyscrapers that he has heard poke up through the lake.
The following day Murdoch comes to John’s hotel early to tell him that someone from Coleridge Gardens wants to meet them at Cavanaugh’s bar. John accompanies him. To his great surprise he finds Ronald Gelden, Alicia’s father-in-law, awaiting them. John learns that Gephardt had not kidnapped Alicia after all. While the Mayor was out of town he and Ronald had drugged the sisters and stole the town’s money that had been in the Mayor’s keeping. Then the preacher had drugged Ronald and left with the money. He was due to arrive in Nellie’s Fair any day and Ronald wanted help in taking it from him.
Murdoch says he can get the money from back Gephardt after he arrives and they will split it three ways. When John and he are alone Murdoch confides that he will give John Ronald’s share to return to the Mayor. John, of course, will give her his portion as well. In a few days the preacher arrives, sets up his tent and begins preaching. One night John, Murdoch and one of Murdoch’s men abduct him. Murdoch strands him in one of the skyscrapers in the lake without food or water to remain until he turns over the stolen money. In the process John finds the identity of at least one shadow that darkens the Afterworld.
After longer than John and Murdoch believed possible, Gephardt capitulates and gives them the money. Murdoch releases him on the south shore of the lake, returns to Nellie’s Fair about midnight and sends for John to meet to split the money. Gephardt’s followers have been upset by their leader’s absence. That night they initiate a religious riot throughout the town. A frenzied mob starts a fire near where John and Murdoch meet. Injured and alone, John nevertheless escapes the island in an appropriated canoe as fire engulfs the town and starts back to Coleridge Gardens.
He is not to find peace, however, until the sisters decide how to resolve the conundrum caused by the love they both feel for him.
Excerpt
John awoke to terrible pain. His head hurt abominably. As did his feet, especially the left one. A heavy weight pinned him to the ground. He sensed people around, and noise and dancing light. He heard someone shout, “This one’s dead. Let’s go!” then race away. He lay prone in the alley filth, willing his head to clear and resisting the urge to slip into unconsciousness. Though he had jumped as far from the collapsing stairway as possible it had not been quite far enough. Its weight must be what held him down. Tonight’s unusual traffic load had apparently been too much for the moldering structure.
He choked on a sudden downdraft of smoke. A blast of heat slapped his cheek. He wrenched his face around to see flames dancing in the windows of the second floor of the building above him. Bits of burning material fell on the wreckage pinning him down. He tried, futilely, to scramble free. His leap had carried him beyond the heaviest part of the structure but the scratch bag, book bag and bedroll swaddling him had caught on the broken timbers. Painfully, he shrugged out of his baggage and squirmed free. Then he extricated first the book bag and then the scratch bag. Before he could reach for the blanket roll a section of falling, blazing eave smashed the wreckage flat and showered him with sparks. He scrambled backward, stumbled to his feet and…
…almost passed out from the pain stabbing his left foot. He fell to his knees; the fierce heat brought tears to his eyes. He had to get away before the burning building collapsed on him. Carrying and dragging his burdens he crawled as rapidly as possible down the alley toward the market. A couple of buildings away, farther from the heat, he slowed down, felt a little safer.
Until he saw their top floors ignite, one after another. The fire was following him.
He crawled over to the building across the alley, pulled himself up against its wall and looped the bags over his shoulders. Leaning against the wall allowed him to hobble along without putting weight on his left foot. His right foot hurt too but at least it held his weight. Despite a backache, exacerbated by his burdens, he made much better time. Which was fortunate. The fire had leaped across the alley to the top floors of the buildings above him. It now followed him on both sides of the alley.
At the alley’s intersection with the next street he looked up and down it cautiously. Though he couldn’t see anyone, he heard people screaming and shouting in the streets downhill, where most of Fishgut and the lower reaches of Midtown appeared to be on fire. He hopped practically the whole way across the street on his right foot. The pain when he had to step lightly on his left foot for balance nearly wrenched screams from him. He continued through the alleys, partially supporting his weight by holding on to the walls when not forced to hop through or around piles of refuse...
An all too nearby scream in the direction of the swale stopped him but the smoke kept him from seeing very far ahead. Then the crash of a roof caving close behind him and thickening smoke chased him toward the scream but cautiously. A vagrant breath of cooler air struck his face and temporarily cleared the street. Not far ahead he saw three men standing before a wooden store front. A fourth, a big man, the source of the scream, stood with his back against the store, his arms spread apart. His hands had been nailed to its wall; blood ran down his sleeves and saturated the front of his shirt. The other three were beating him. Though his face was a mask of blood John recognized the man: Pussypot.
One of the three, alerted somehow, turned to face John.
An orange gleam from the flames approaching John from behind illuminated the grin that spread across Leandro’s face as he said, “Hola, amigo.”
Leandro’s other two men wheeled, withdrew their knives and started stalking toward John.
* * *
The trip from Coleridge Gardens to Nellie’s Fair normally took four days by horseback. The Mayor’s inexperience in traveling long distances, though she drove herself relentlessly, cost them an additional day. One late night the three finally topped a ridge on the road near Ferrytown.
And beheld a strange sight. Beyond the next ridge, the one from which they would look down over Ferrytown and Nellie’s Fair out on the lake, an orange glow brightened the sky. Originating, seemingly, from Nellie’s Fair’s island. Matt and Lou looked at each other and without speaking urged their horses down the hill. Something was wrong, probably terribly so. As they cantered up the next hill the glow brightened, wavered across the sky. The scent of smoke assailed them and grew more pungent as they approached the top of the ridge.
The sight from the ridge’s crest stunned them. Nellie’s Fair was burning. Fire raged over two-thirds of the town. A great crowd watched the fire from Ferrytown’s pier and the adjacent lake banks, standing utterly still, transfixed by the inferno that many of them must have just fled.
None of the three could speak.
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