Children of the After: Awakening (book 1) Read Online Free PDF

Jack.”
    The change then was palpable, as Jack and Sam both came
closer and sat to either side of him on the bunk. Their smiles faded to the
fake ones he had become familiar with, and they both looked at him expectantly
as if he would turn into a puppy at any minute.
    “Will, we have to leave the vault and the apartment,” Jack
said
    “Are we going to look for Mom and Dad?” he asked after a
moment of contemplation.
    “Not yet, buddy. We need to find a safer place to stay.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know, pal. I thought we might head out of the city.
Maybe to Grandma’s.”
    “Grandma’s would be good, wouldn’t it, Will?” Sam asked.
    “OK. Can I take my robot?”
    “You sure can. And we need to scavenge whatever else we can
too. Do you know what scavenge means?” Jack asked.
    “Like a scavenger hunt?”
    “Exactly,” Sam said with a real smile.
    “We’ll have to be careful. The house is a real mess, but
we’ll get some clothes and whatever else we can find and look for a way
outside.”
    “OK, Jack.”
    “But first we need to take what we can from here,” Jack
concluded as he rose.
    Will watched as Jack reached out his hand and pulled Sam to
her feet, before she turned around as well and helped him out of bed. He knew
just what he wanted to take with him.

Chapter Four
    While he and Sam moved about the confined vault, collecting
what items they thought necessary, Jack found his mind wandering back to the scene
of the devastated city outside. Everything had been burned, but by what? Had
they been attacked by another country? Bombed? Could it have been a meteor or
solar flare? Had something biological happened to the people and the city
simply burned in their absence? They literally knew nothing of what had
happened over the last six months or more. Nothing. The whole world was an
unknown now, and the ‘what ifs’ were astounding.
    He didn’t know whether they would be able to find people,
and if they did, if they could trust them. There was no way of knowing if this
was an isolated incident or more widespread. Was the whole U.S. destroyed? The
world? It was his job to keep Sam and Will safe, but he didn’t even know what
safe meant anymore. They would have to be cautious. They couldn’t trust
anything or anyone. Dad had always told him to make an effort to learn about
something before making his own decisions, not to simply believe what he was
told. Jack felt that more than ever, his dad’s words applied now.
    So absent mindedly going about his task, he paused a moment
to look down into the pillowcase in his hands. Thus far he had collected a can
opener, a pair of screwdrivers, a hammer, and a set of camping silverware for
each of them, along with the other camping cooking supplies they had to include
a frying pan and camp stove with half a bottle of propane. It wasn’t much, but
would allow them to cook a meal if they found something to eat. Hunting would
have been an option if Chicago’s gun laws hadn’t gotten so strict over the past
years that it basically stripped guns from law abiding citizens, leaving only
the criminals and police armed. The crime rate had gotten terrible back then,
and that was when his dad had the vault built. If only their dad had been able
to keep one of his guns. Jack had shot his dad’s rifle before and wished he had
it now, but no such luck. They would have to scavenge for food until he came up
with something better.
    Turning, he witnessed as Will stripped the pillowcase from
his own pillow and stuffed his toy robot inside along with a deck of playing
cards. It was amusing how different his own priorities were from his younger
brother’s.
    “Hey, Sam, what did you find?” Jack asked across the
security vault.
    “I got the first aid kit and a couple books of matches from
old MREs. Toilet paper too, cause I’m not making the mistake of using leaves
again,” she joked, referencing a camping trip two years ago when she got poison
ivy all up her