After Today (The After Series Book 1)

by Jacqueline Hayley

  When their glasses were full, Kat gave Mackenzie an exaggerated well-go-on-then widening of her eyes, but it was Rachel who jumped in.

  “Can one of you please tell me what the hell is going on? As far as I knew, the only boyfriend is the douche back in the city.”

  “That ex-boyfriend is yesterday’s news. Today’s news headline is all about Jake Brent,” Kat declared.

  Rachel’s head tipped, obviously thinking, before she took a swallow of her wine. “Makes sense. That boy has been in love with you forever.”

  “Can we agree to refrain from calling him a boy?” Mackenzie begged. “He is not a boy. And what do you mean, he’s been in love with me forever?”

  “I thought everyone knew he had a crush on you, and we’d just decided not to talk about it,” said Rachel.

  “Does Chloe know?” Mackenzie cried, eyes wide.

  “Not sure,” Rachel mused. “Does she know now?”

  “No! No one knows.”

  “Ooh, so it is a secret. I love me a good secret,” said Kat.

  Dropping her head on to her folded arms on the table, Mackenzie groaned. “I can’t talk about this if you’re not going to take it seriously. This isn’t just a random hook up.”

  “I didn’t say it was random!” Rachel protested.

  “I know. I know I’m being sensitive about it.” Mackenzie sighed. “This feels different from anything else I’ve had before. I just really need to know you’re not going to make a joke out of it.”

  “Darling girl,”—Kat flung her arms around Mackenzie’s slouched shoulders—“you can’t honestly think we’d ever make fun of something that’s important to you. We love you. We adore Jake. We are one hundred percent behind you two getting married and making babies and living happily ever after.”

  “I’m totally down with a niece or two,” Rachel agreed.

  “So, let’s discuss the sex!” piped up Kat.

  “This is going to make me regret being celibate for the last twelve months, isn’t it?” Rachel despaired, taking a large swallow of wine.

  Mackenzie awoke the next morning disoriented, somehow expecting to be waking next to Jake. Instead, she was being spooned by Kat.

  By unspoken agreement, the four friends had again spent the night at Chloe’s, instead of heading to their own homes.

  Careful not to disturb Kat, she slipped out of her loose embrace and headed to the bathroom, almost running into a rumple-haired Chloe.

  “Morning,” Chloe mumbled.

  “Have you seen Jake?”

  Chloe shook her head.

  “I thought he might’ve called in when he got back, to let us know everything was okay.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” Chloe said.

  An insidious dread unfurled in Mackenzie’s chest, pushing aside any residual sleepiness and making her throat tighten.

  Why didn’t he come and see her when he got back?

  “Maybe it was really late, and he didn’t want to wake us,” Chloe said.

  Nodding mutely, Mackenzie closed the bathroom door with a shaking hand. She fought to hold back the fear, but it bloomed, suffocating and consuming, as she slid down the door and folded onto the tiled floor.

  She couldn’t explain it, but she knew something wasn’t right. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she attempted to hold in the knowledge. If she didn’t admit it, if she didn’t let it out, Jake would be okay.

  Pressing his hand against his side to stop the slow flow of blood, Jake gritted his teeth against swearing out loud. Any noise he made could betray their position. Closing his eyes against a wave of dizziness, he attempted to even his breathing.

  Night was finally breaking into a gray dawn, weak splinters of sunlight made its way through the dust motes to light the barn they were hiding in.

  In the farmhouse beside them, the motorcycle gang of marauders who’d chased them from downtown Dutton were drunkenly smashing and pillaging, unaware their quarry was within such close proximity.

  Over the course of the long night, they’d thrown anything flammable onto the front lawn and created a roaring bonfire, which was only now burning itself out. The thick smoke that had billowed into the sky was finally dissipating and the revelers that had crowded it were mostly passed out or asleep.

  The three gang members posted as sentry had Jake biting back his pain. Those three weren’t drunk, weren’t loud, and weren’t forgetting their mission. Already one of them had called out, asking when they were going to be moving on.

  “That drugstore is ours. This whole town is ours. And those fuckers stole from us!” He flicked a cigarette butt in impatience. “We should be hunting them.”

  “We still got whiskey here, settle down,” was yelled from inside.

  “Fuck, I wish they’d move on,” whispered Jesse, squatting beside Jake to check the crude dressing he’d applied to the gunshot wound on Jake’s side.

  He was lucky the bullet had only passed through soft tissue. Now that the bleeding was pretty much under control, the only concern was infection. And the pain. It hurt like a bitch.

  “We need to get you some proper medical attention,” said Jesse.

  “Pharmacist, doctor. Same-same.” Jake grinned and then winced as Jesse inadvertently jostled him.

  When Jim had suggested the team split, with one taking the fuel tanker and the other heading farther into town for recon, it was a solid idea. They didn’t need eight men to jack a truck, and it was well into the evening; night had fallen, and all had appeared quiet.

  Even with everything that had happened, Jake couldn’t regret his decision to go to the drugstore. Not when it meant he’d not only secured more medication for Mackenzie, but they’d met Jesse. The pharmacist had been holed up in the store since this began, surviving on bottled water and candy.

  Jesse had said it was only a matter of time before someone found the tools to break down the safety barrier to the dispensary, and so, when Jake, Rob and Lee had turned up, he’d agreed to help stock them in exchange for going with them.

  Dutton was a town in flames. Most survivors had already fled, leaving behind bodies and a motorcycle gang that had ridden into town and liked what they’d found. Lawless chaos had them thriving with a reckless abandon.

  What society had once stifled and judged, now the virus had set free. The gang roamed like modern-day Vikings, raping and pillaging—reinforcing Jake’s protective instincts toward Mackenzie tenfold.

  “How’s Lee looking?” Jake asked, glancing over into the shadows where the man was slumped.

  “Not good.” Jess sighed. “The wound is messy, and I don’t know which internal organs have been affected. We’re going to have to make a move sooner rather than later.”

  They’d had this conversation several times over the course of the night. When they’d ducked into the barn ahead of the motorcycle pack, they were only looking to hide out until the gang had passed them by. They couldn’t have known their pursuers would also stop. And stay.

  In waiting for the gang to move on before they made their own move, they’d lost the advantage of darkness. But with Lee seriously injured, they couldn’t go any farther without some form of transport, and there was no way of starting a vehicle without alerting the gang to their whereabouts.

  “We can’t risk being followed back to Sanford. And we don’t have a hope of outrunning them, even if Lee and I weren’t in this condition,” replied Jake.

  He thought briefly of Rob, who’d been shot in the leg in their escape and then run down by the motorcycles—the ringing shot of a bullet confirming his fate—before forcing his mind to Mackenzie. Thinking of her was the only thing that had gotten him through the night. The way her skin flushed a pretty pink, the pout of her ravished lips, the way she tasted. God, her taste.

  He groaned, remembering.

  “Hang in there,” Jesse instructed, misunderstanding.

  “Tell me again what your college roommate told you,” Jake said, needing to take his mind off a worrying Ma
ckenzie and a possibly dying Lee. Plus, this was the other reason he was so glad to have found Jesse—information.

  “Jono. He’s still living in Chicago and works as a rep for Pharmotech. He’s dating this girl who’s a scientist with the company, and he called me the day before everything went to shit saying something big was about to go down, but there would be a percentage of the population who were immune.

  “His girlfriend believed that if you didn’t get sick in the first day or two after this happened, then you weren’t going to. The virus had been incubating for weeks; there might be some communities that haven’t been affected, but they’ll be rare cases in remote parts of the world.

  “So the whole of Earth’s population has been incubating the virus for weeks or, with anyone still alive, being a carrier for it.”

  “So we’re immune?”

  “She seemed to think so. And it’s a theory that holds if you take me as an example. I was in contact with people showing symptoms for two days before I closed the drugstore. I even dragged a sick man out of the store and into his car.”

  “And you’re fine.”

  “Well, fine if you don’t consider I’m being hunted by a gang of psychopaths.”

  They lapsed into a silence that was broken by the muscular roar of approaching motorcycles.

  “Fuck. There are more?”

  “It’s only another two,” confirmed Jesse, peering through the slats of the barn. “But one of them has a second rider.”

  His sharp intake of breath had Jake shuffling awkwardly across the ground to join him. “Is that—?”

  “A captive? Looks like it.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “No, but I’ve only been in town for six months.”

  They watched as the rider dragged the woman off the bike, her hair wild and eyes frantic. She was a brunette, little more than a teenager, wearing an oversize sweater and sporting a vicious black eye. Whatever had happened prior to her arriving here, it was clear it had knocked any fight out of her. She was shaking with obvious fear, but didn’t struggle.

  The man holding her had greasy hair and a greasy smile, with the kind of meth-lab cunning that would see him thrive in this new world order.

  “Got ourselves a fresh one!” he crowed, presenting her like a trophy.

  “Jesus fuck,” Jesse breathed.

  “We have to help her.”

  “How? There are a dozen of them. Fourteen now.”

  “I don’t know, but we have to do something,” Jake insisted, watching as the men circled the woman like the prey she was.

  His mouth was cottony, his throat parched. It was hard to think past the pain.

  His eyes followed Jesse, who moved to crouch over Lee’s prone form before looking back at Jake with a grim expression. “He’s gone.”

  “Goddamn.”

  The woman’s scream split the air, causing the hairs on Jake’s arms to stand on end. Spurred into action, he surveyed the interior of the barn.

  “There. That ride-on mower. Push it out the side door and get it about a hundred yards away. The side of the barn’ll shield you from their view. There’s a gasoline can next to it. Use this rag as a fuse, and then run like hell to that stand of trees back there. When it goes off, I’ll run out and grab her and meet you at the trees.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You got a better plan?”

  “Jake, you’ve got a gunshot wound. You can barely walk, let alone run.”

  “That’s why you’re the one pushing the mower, and I get the easy job of rescuing the girl.”

  There was silence for one beat. Two.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Jake confirmed with a grim smile. “I’ve still got a full chamber in my rifle. You take it and I’ll take Lee’s Glock. We’ll head into that heavy forest where they won’t be able to follow on their bikes, and then double back to get to that neighboring farmhouse we saw. Hopefully, there’ll be a vehicle there.”

  “We can’t just take this one?” Jesse gestured to the beat-up pickup parked in the barn with them.

  “There won’t be time to open the barn doors to get it out. We’re going to have to do this part on foot.”

  “You’re sure you can do this? We can take five and think of an alternative.” The woman screamed again, and Jesse winced. “You’re right. Let’s do this.”

  Striding to the workbench, Jesse rummaged until he found a lighter, turning to wave it at Jake before inching open the side door. It swung silently, revealing a crisp, clear morning.

  Jake picked up Lee’s pistol, covering the man’s face with his jacket as he did so and vowing he’d return to bury him. As Jesse heaved the mower through the door, Jake stepped outside and crept up the side of the barn so he could peer around the corner.

  Someone had added fuel to the fire, and it was again roaring, the heat buffeting against Jake’s face. The woman’s arrival had caused those in the house to come out so that all fourteen of the men had her encircled.

  They cheered as the one who’d brought her pushed her to her knees, holding her immobile with a harsh grip on her hair. Another stood before her, unbuckling his belt.

  “Go. Go!” Jake whisper-shouted at Jesse.

  It was a long three minutes before Jesse glanced back, raising his thumb. He crouched to light the rag and then took off at a dead run.

  Even though he was expecting the explosion, the blast still rocked Jake, and he lost precious moments. Darting forward, one hand holding his injured side and the other the Glock, he headed straight for the circle of men who’d scattered in shock. Several headed for their motorcycles while others ran toward the explosion, firing their weapons ahead of them.

  Amid the shouts and choking smoke, Jake spied the woman, kicked to the ground by her captor while her would-be rapist stood by, perplexed, his dick hanging limp.

  Jake reacted without processing his actions, cocking pistol and firing it close range into the back of the man’s head. His eyes caught and held on those of the captor, who stared back with crazy intent.

  “If I don’t get her, neither do you,” the man snarled, spittle landing on her forehead.

  Time slowed, the thumping of blood in his ears the only sound Jake heard.

  “Please,” the woman mouthed, her eyes a desperate entreaty as the captor’s gun barrel jammed against her skull. And fired.

  “No!” A flash of bile threatened and Jake swallowed it, jerking back from the red pulpy mess before him.

  The man straightened and pointed the gun at Jake. Jake raised his own weapon—hand steady—and the two stared, unblinking, at each other.

  “Looks like we got ourselves a good ole fashioned Mexican standoff.” The man grinned, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “Go on, then, git.” He waved his weapon. “I’ll come across you again, boy, don’t you worry.”

  Walking backward, his weapon trained unwaveringly, Jake made his way to the trees where Jesse waited.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I’ve been making a list,” Rachel said, head bent over the notebook she was writing in at the kitchen counter. “I think you were right when you mentioned heading into the Evac Area for supplies.”

  Stirring creamer into her coffee, Mackenzie hummed absently. She’d used her asthma inhaler in the bathroom, and even now her heart was racing. The gathering fear was a black storm, eclipsing all else.

  Even Dex couldn’t distract her.

  “I’m thinking tampons. Toilet paper.” Rachel looked up pointedly. “Condoms.” When Mackenzie didn’t respond, Rachel closed her notebook and sat back. “What’s up?”

  Chloe entered the kitchen, tying her hair in a messy topknot and glancing between the two. “Something wrong?”

  “It’s Jake,” Mackenzie blurted. “He didn’t come home last night.”

  “How do you know? Have you been over to his house?” Chloe asked.

  “No.” Mackenzie stalled. “It’s just… I’m worried.”

  “What ar
en’t you telling me?” Chloe’s eyes flicked over her suspiciously.

  Hot guilt crept up Mackenzie’s throat, and she suddenly wished she’d told Chloe about her relationship with Jake as soon as it had become a possibility. Since when did she keep secrets from her best friend?

  Since the secret involved her little brother.

  Mackenzie’s chest tightened, and she felt for the inhaler in her pocket.

  The thrumming tension she endured every time she thought about Chloe knowing snapped. No matter the consequence, she couldn’t carry the guilt besides the worry.

  “Mac? What are you not telling me?” Chloe said.

  Dex stood beside Mackenzie, leaning against her leg and nudging his nose into her lap. “Chlo, I should’ve said something earlier. I’m so sorry…”

  “Sorry about what?” She took a step toward Mackenzie, clearly agitated. “Do you know something about Ash?”

  “It’s not Ash, it’s Jake.”

  “What about Jake?”

  The confusion on her face was wrenching for Mackenzie. She’d betrayed her best friend’s trust. Why? Why couldn’t she have just told Chloe what was happening? Why had she assumed Chloe wouldn’t approve?

  “We’re together. Seeing each other.” Mackenzie clarified when Chloe’s confusion deepened.

  “You’re what?”

  Mackenzie took a breath of her inhaler, unable to meet Chloe’s eyes. “I’m sorry we didn’t say anything sooner…”

  “We? You and my brother are a we?” Chloe stumbled back, her eyes bouncing between Mackenzie and Rachel.

  “Did you know about this?” She demanded of Rachel.

  “You hadn’t suspected?” Rachel asked carefully.

  “No, I hadn’t suspected! She’s my best friend, and he’s my little brother. The world is fucking falling apart. When the fuck did they have time to become a we? This is ridiculous!”

  Mackenzie’s cheeks burned in shame and her heart hurt. Chloe’s complete lack of acceptance—her anger—was agonizing.

  “Chlo…” she begged.

  “I don’t… no. No. I’m not having this conversation now. I’m going to see Grams.” Chloe practically ran from the kitchen.