Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After Read Online Free PDF

of the engine. “To bring the chickens once the snow’s gone. You could stay for a while.”
    “Yeah,” he says, pulling the brim of his baseball cap down so I can’t see his face. “I was thinking about it.”
    I yank off his cap and arrange his hair in a good messy way, instead of the crazy messy way his hair prefers. “There, now you look handsome. Adam likes you without a hat.”
    “How do you know?” he mutters.
    “Because he told me.” Nelly’s mouth opens. “Yep, I know all kinds of things. Adam loves me.”
    Nelly looks irritated with my teasing, so I poke him in the chest and continue. “And do you know why Adam loves me? Because I love you, and so does he. So we love each other. He does love you, you know. And he’s awesome, so don’t screw it up.”
    He fights to keep his frown in place. “How do you always redeem yourself just when I want to kill you?”
    “Love you, too.”
    We chat until the plane banks left for a landing. Whitefield isn’t completely surrounded by mountains like we are, and the towns surrounding it were larger, so they have more unwanted visitors than we do. But they also have real soldiers and a lot more ammo. The fact that I’m considered a soldier of sorts at Kingdom Come may surprise Nelly, but it astonishes me. You do what you have to nowadays, and although I’d rather paint or read, I can’t do either of those if surrounded by Lexers.
    Smoke pours from the stovepipes of the hangars and buildings, and the snow has finally melted on the runway and concrete surfaces of the airport. Everything outside the fence lies under an undisturbed blanket of snow. The plane hits the runway, and we slow to a stop in front of the main hangar. The large hangars that have been converted to living space sit behind four smaller hangars that house the communications, weapons, storage and mess hall.
    We leave the soldiers to unload the plants and head inside the communications hangar. The wall to our left is all radio equipment. A couple of uniformed soldiers sit at stations wearing headphones. Whitefield mans the radios at all hours. We do, too, but we have one or two people sitting at our small station in the building with the solar equipment. This place broadcasts daily.
    Whitefield can afford to blow through gasoline for their generators, since they scored a tanker full of fuel last fall. That’s what the soldiers do—head into previously populated places for all the things that make life easier. We’re lucky they share so readily with us, although the oats and corn that we gave in trade came in handy over the winter.
    People scribble furiously in the row of desks on the right side of the hangar. They keep track of communications from Safe Zones all over the country, as well as Whitefield’s food and fuel supplies. Will Jackson gets up from his desk nearest the glassed-in room in the back, once the airport’s office but now called Command. Will gives the impression of being four feet wide and seven feet tall, with the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard.
    “Cassie, a pleasure, as always,” he says, and envelops me in a hug that makes me feel like a tiny elf instead of five foot seven. “How’s it going?”
    I smile into his uniform shirt, somewhere down by his navel. “I’m good, Willie. How’re you?”
    Will’s laugh rings out, and he releases me. He’s nothing but kind to us, but being on his bad side doesn’t look like much fun. I’ve seen him reduce men bigger and angrier than him to tears. He’s tough but fair, and if you don’t love him, you have to respect him. But I love him.
    “Come on into Command,” Will says.
    The room, with its long table and chairs, reminds me of the conference room at the non-profit where I used to work. Instead of inspirational messages, though, giant maps of the United States, Canada and Mexico are tacked to the wall, peppered with pushpins. The red pushpins are Safe Zones that still stand. The green are the ones that have lost contact