Free After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) by Scott Nicholson

shooting?
    In the hush of the night, the cockpit seemed small and fragile against the vastness of the sky. They’d grown overconfident, sleeping more or less out in the open after so many nights spent in abandoned houses along the way. But Rachel had been sure the Zapheads were thinning out, perhaps even dropping dead from some lingering, invisible effects of the sun’s radiation.
    Now here they were in a multitude, all around them. Rachel had suffered the ultimate arrogance—the belief that this After was meant for humans, and that it was up to humans to put the pieces back together.
    Maybe, like the dinosaurs, they were merely short-term tenants, squatting on land the rightful owners had yet to claim. Placeholders in history.
    “Where’s DeVontay?” Stephen asked, a little calmer now, his sobs giving way to occasional shudders.
    Good question. He didn’t go OUT there, did he?
    Even with the high aurora and faint moonlight, she couldn’t tell if DeVontay was still at his outpost at the edge of the cockpit. Their campsite was steeped in shadows, giving Rachel the sense that the metallic shell was in truth a mausoleum that still contained the echo of those who had died here.
    This whole After was nothing but an echo, a hollow mockery of life. The ultimate indictment of an allegedly merciful God.
    “Rachel?” DeVontay called from the darkness just outside the cockpit.
    “Get in here,” she said.
    “No. We need to figure out what they want. I’m going in the woods.”
    “Damn you, don’t even think about it.” Rachel said it more loudly than she’d meant to, and she wondered if the Zapheads were listening. Did they have any comprehension of language, or was it just noise to them, an instinctive signal to close in and kill?
    Stephen stiffened in fear beside her. “What’s happening?”
    Rachel didn’t have time to conjure a suitable lie. “Something’s out there, but we’re safe in here.”
    “Right, Little Man,” DeVontay said with false cheer. “Just like in your comic books. Back in a few.”
    Rachel patted Stephen. “Wait here.” Then she scrambled across the cockpit into the moist air of night. Under the surreal swirls of the tainted atmosphere, DeVontay crossed the clearing, picking his way among the strewn wreckage. She called to him and hurried to catch up.
    “You can’t leave that boy alone,” he said to her. “Get back in there.”
    “Who made you boss?”
    “This ain’t no time to go all femi-Nazi on me.” His good eye sparked with anger, while his glass eye reflected the green aurora, round and strange, a moon in an alien planet’s sky. “I’m going in. If they follow me, take the boy and get out of here.”
    “And if they don’t follow you?”
    “Then we’re all dead anyways.”
    He started to turn but she grabbed his sleeve. “What if we get separated?”
    “Then I’ll see you at Milepost 291.”
    DeVontay took a step but she didn’t release him. Instead, she pulled herself into him. She meant to kiss his cheek but he turned, and their lips met. He was six inches taller, but they seemed to fit. His lips were full and warm and, even in the chaos and fear that pulsed through her veins, a different kind of excitement ignited.
    Yet the kiss was also steadying, an eye in the hurricane, the sane center of a twirling universe gone mad. In the heavy silence of the autumn night, the contact was electric.
    Zap.
    After several skipped heartbeats, DeVontay pulled away. He smiled. “People’s looking.”
    Rachel touched her mouth, embarrassed. There were no glittering eyes in the forest, no strange fireflies. Just the natural world.
    “I…I’m sorry.”
    “Then I hope you stay sorry. I’ll be back.”
    He jogged toward the forest, rifle held before him, its barrel glinting with the faint light. Rachel scanned the trees once more, then looked at the forlorn shattered cockpit that gleamed like a monstrous egg under an alien sky. Stephen’s pale face appeared in the opening,