IMPACT (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

towards him. He nodded nervously.
    “Ahem… yes, sure. So. I’ve been tracking the bulletin boards, and received a few updates from GliderBB and /b/tardReborn, and,” he paused, reminding himself the others hadn’t the faintest idea of what those names meant. They were often at a loss when he spoke. “Ahem… you know, my contacts online.” No use, here, going into the story of the scattered, surviving hacker community.
    “And?” asked Bill.
    “Well, there’s little news, this week. Umm…”
    “Yes…?” Bill edged him on.
    Sean flicked through a notebook, thick with scribbled notes and drawings.
    “… lot of reports of looting and, you know, violence all over the place. A large gang of meteorwraiths is active on the border with Wales. London is a mess. There’s been another tsunami on the western coast of Ireland. The usual, really.”
    Sean hesitated.
    “What is it, Sean?” asked Catherine. Sean turned red under her gaze.
    “Well, there’s no news at all from Europa’s impact zone, as usual… but… Nero–”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, you see,” Sean started explaining, looking to the floor, incapable of raising his eyes to meet Catherine’s. “Hackers in Russia and the Nero area are generally very active. Those of them left, y’know, but… the amount of communication from them has, like, dropped. As in – a lot . Say 25 percent or so. Not sure why that is.”
    “Okay.”
    “Anything else?” asked Bill. Paul couldn’t help but notice the former military man’s unease at treating this spotty kid as an equal member on the Council.
    “Not really, no,” concluded Sean. He slowly relaxed, as if he’d just wrapped up a rather difficult exam in school.
    Paul observed the others. He knew that they were disappointed, although they tried not to show it. Sean – or R3dPill , as he was apparently known online – had come to fill the gap left by newspapers and magazines, and everyone was constantly on the lookout for a juicy story from the outside world, both inside the Council and among the locals. Starved of the royal scandals and VIP reports they’d been bombarded with before the impact, the cataclysmic stories that occasionally surfaced on the web were all they had to entertain them.
    “Well,” said Bill. “Let’s move on to the issue of the food and medicine supplies. Who wants to start?”
    “So,” began Frank Bailey, a chubby farmer who was in charge of overseeing food production. “The results from the orchards are unsatisfying, as we had predicted. Pity, yes. But, on the other hand, we’ve had a ten percent increase in the yield from the vegetable and square-foot gardens. Which means,” he added with a sarcastic little hint of a smile, “more delicious cauliflowers for all of us.”
    They giggled. Cauliflowers, along with a handful of other vegetables, had proven resilient against the post-impact lack of sunlight. Which meant they had been eating ungodly amounts of them.
    “As Catherine requested, we’re working on distributing garlic, for whatever medical reason that was, and it seems to be working out okay so far. Bloody unpleasant to eat the stuff raw, even without chewing it, but you know.”
    “Thank you, Frank,” said Catherine.
    “In terms of livestock, we’re out of pork of course, but we should have enough cattle for the next three to five months if we stick to the ration plan.”
    “And how are you doing in terms of workforce?” asked Bill.
    “Well… I’m training a few of the new lads, the ones from what-was-Paris, and the other blokes that came in a couple of weeks ago. They’re learning. Young, most of them, which is good. But they grew up with Game Boys, or whatever they were called, in their hands. Not shovels. Slow progress, but not too bad.”
    As Frank spoke, Paul considered the radical shift in peoples’ social status since the impact. Those who made a living performing what the former higher ranks of society had thought of as menial or humble