After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

had torn free from the plane’s body, then slipped into the growing darkness. Rachel stroked Stephen’s brown hair. The bedtime routine had started a week ago, when Stephen announced that his mother used to sing to him. Since they’d left her in a hotel room where Stephen had been trapped with her corpse for three days, Rachel had taken on an ever-deepening mothering role.
    But even that was colored with guilt. She’d been the “responsible one” when her younger sister Chelsea had drowned, and her whole life afterward had been about making amends. Rachel had trained to be a school counselor because she wasn’t Catholic enough to become a nun. Now there were no more schools, and the only person she could counsel was a ten-year-old boy who had seen his world shatter in the blink of an eye.
    “What song would you like?”
    Stephen snuggled into the jacket. He looked years younger, almost like a toddler with his thick lashes and pursed lips. “Beatles.”
    That didn’t narrow it down much, but it was too late for the rousing fun of “Yellow Submarine.” And “Help!” would be a little too maudlin. She took a breath and began “Blackbird.”
    She made it fine through the chorus, even though she wasn’t a great singer, choosing a low, sweet lilt. The tune itself was like a bird, sinking and then rising, testing the wind and finding its altitude. And on the final verse, her voice broke, sunken eyes learning to see. She managed to turn the stutter into a vocal embellishment and recover for the finale, wondering if this was the moment they’d been waiting for all their lives.
    “Sing it again,” Stephen murmured, eyes closed.
    “In a little bit, honey. I need to go check on DeVontay. Be right back.” She kissed his forehead and he was asleep before she reached the wreck’s opening.
    Outside, the air was crisp with autumn’s cool, a skein of stars brilliant against the blue-black ceiling of the universe. The vivid lime-green auroras so deep and haunting in the wake of the electromagnetic upheavals had diminished but still hung like a ghost overhead. The smoke of distant cities had grown thinner over the past week, giving her hope that the worst might be over.
    But hope was something she didn’t quite trust, and any temptation to call upon whatever divine force might be beyond the wall of stars vanished when she saw the plane’s shattered passenger area.
    “That was a pretty song,” DeVontay said from the darkness behind her.
    She turned, unable to make out his shape against the trees. “You weren’t supposed to listen.”
    “It’s not like I could put on the headphones and jam to my iPod.”
    “It’s amazing how quiet it is out here.”
    They both listened to the muted chirrup of insects, the orchestra rubbing legs and wings together to warm up for a nightly performance.
    “You can see the stars, too,” DeVontay said. “There’s the Dipper and Cassiopeia.”
    The Big Dipper was obvious, but Rachel squinted against the field above, straining to discern depth. She tried to recall the assignments from her college astronomy lab. Her lab partner had been a tall guy named Randy Woodard who smelled of clove cigarettes, and she’d spent too much of the lab making small talk that she wished would lead to big talk. In the end, Randy turned out to be dating a library assistant and she made a B-minus.
    She hated herself for not knowing Cassiopeia, as if the information would somehow give her control over their place in the universe. “I don’t see it.”
    Then DeVontay drew close behind her, his breath on her neck, reaching one arm around to grip her wrist. He guided her hand until they were both pointing at the sky and waving in the shape of a W. “There,” he said, in a voice that was almost inaudible. “Those five points.”
    He held her hand a moment longer and she stiffened, not sure whether she wanted to sag back against his body. She sensed his muscles coiled like a tiger’s, though she couldn’t