Sample scene of new novel AFTER

Here's the opening of the new novel, AFTER, which should be out in the fall. I will be posting bits and pieces, cover art, etc., on the blog and will need help shaping the story and deciding if it will be a series, so check back from time to time and help me get this done!

Kindle freebies:

 July 26-27: The Red Church Amazon US Amazon UK
July 30-31: Speed Dating with the Dead Amazon US Amazon UK

AFTER

By Scott Nicholson

CHAPTER ONE

There were three of them.

She’d stopped naming them a week ago. It had been an amusing distraction for a while—and the Good Lord only knew, she needed distractions—but then they’d all started blending together, the Black-Eyed Susans and the Raisinheads and the Meat Throats.

But now Rachel couldn’t resist, looking out the grimy drugstore window as she waited, crouched there in the litter of baby powder and cellophane.

Stumpy.

The one on the right, sitting on the sidewalk bench surrounded by a mountain of bulging plastic bags, was missing his left arm just below the elbow. The wound was swathed in a filthy towel, strapped in place with duct tape, stained dark brown at its blunt end.

Stumpy was waiting for a bus that would never come. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was a Zaphead. He might just be another of the schizophrenic homeless, the underclass that hadn’t even noticed the world had ended. Although gaunt, he didn’t appear particularly motivated to kill, obsessed instead with swatting away the flies that swirled around his stump.

He was fifty feet away, and she could outrun him easy. All she had to do was run as if her life depended on it. Which wouldn’t be a challenge.

The Beard, the guy staggering back and forth a hundred yards down the street, was almost certainly a Zaphead. His expression was hidden by the unkempt hair, but he was hunched and his fists were clenched, rage curling around whatever strange energy burned inside.

Okay, Beard, you’ve solved my little dilemma of whether I should head east or head west.

The mountains were her destination, and they lay to the west, but she wasn’t willing to risk The Beard.

The word “destination” sounded odd in her thoughts, because of the root “destiny.” Such abstractions were laughable now, but laughter was the only weapon against the fear that sapped the strength from her legs. And she needed her legs. Oh, yes, give her stumps for hands, but don’t mess with her legs.

In this scared new world, in this After, you had to run.

###