Children of the After: The Complete Series

by Jeremy Laszlo

  Awakened by his ruckus, all three of his companions half rose, turning angered glares upon him, for an offence he had not meant to commit.

  “It’s not my fault. There were bugs in my food.”

  “That’s so gross,” Sam replied groggily. “You better not have gotten any on me,” she added, running her fingers though her hair.

  “What kind of bugs?” Will asked, already too chipper for this early in the morning. “Did you eat any?”

  Without even awaiting a response, Will began shaking the emergency light, bringing it back to life. As the room illuminated, Jack couldn’t help himself but peer back into the package he had eaten from. Blinking his eyes he looked again. Nothing. Inside the package was some sort of Tex Mex pasta substance with kernels of corn and even peanuts. At least the crunch and gush was explained.

  Grinning in embarrassment, Jack showed them all the contents of the package as they each scowled at him before laughing at the circumstance. Feeling like an idiot, Jack stood up and discarded the remnants of the package into one of the empty crates. Even though he now realized there were no bugs in it, the thought of eating it was one his stomach simply couldn’t handle.

  “Alright, alright. Ha ha, Jack thought he ate some bugs but it was just corn and peanuts. Har har. Laugh it up,” Jack said, thinking they would calm down, but boy was he wrong. “Really, guys? It’s that funny to you?” he asked as they laughed even more. “C’mon, we got a world to save and stuff. Eat some breakfast so we can figure out if we can use anything here.”

  “I can’t eat, there might be bugs in it,” Sam said, clutching her throat with one hand and putting the back of her other hand to her forehead as if she might faint.

  “You suck,” Jack stated dryly, bringing out even more laughs from his small audience.

  Shaking his head, he looked towards his feet as the lock on the door clicked and it flung open wide behind him as Sam, Tammy, and Will all jumped back in panic. Jack grinned. Telekinetic powers were awesome.

  “Whatcha afraid of?” Jack asked, returning a little of their laughter.

  After that they settled down quick enough, and waiting for them to eat their breakfast, Jack poked his head out into the hall to ensure that the coast was indeed still clear. No threats presenting themselves, he strode to the classroom next door and peeked inside.

  Walking into the room he perused all the communications radios and antennae. Noting the generator in the corner, he quickly inspected it to find the fuel tank dry as a bone. Either all the gas had evaporated, or it had been run until it ran out of fuel. Either way, without gas they wouldn’t be getting any electricity.

  Leaving the room of now useless electronics behind, Jack crossed the hall to the other rooms Sam had described the night before. Entering what she had called the map room, he took a look around quickly and found her description had pretty much summed it up. Nearing the far wall, he inspected the maps there. Several were world maps and others showed only the United States. All of them had markings in several colors of ink, mostly a smattering of arrows from one city to another, or large X’s that crossed cities off. Looking more closely at the map of the United States to his right, he noted that there was a pattern. From both east and west coasts, the arrows began at the largest cities there and worked inwards towards the central United States. He knew immediately that what he was looking at was the invasion of the aliens. They had started at the cities on the coasts and worked inland until everything was destroyed. The crossed-out cities were those that whoever had written on the map had verified was gone.

  Sweeping over the map again, Jack’s head fell. Every city. Every single one was gone. This wasn’t a local thing, not by a long shot. It hadn’t been stopped. Looking to his left, he realized that it was global. Everything was gone. Turning away from the wall of maps his eyes fell on the chalkboard upon the wall nearest the door. Upon its surface were drawn odd shapes and lines that made no sense. Letters were there, but none of them made words, seemingly placed at random across the board. Thinking that whatever it was had been whipped away long ago, Jack turned back to the hall to check on his siblings.

  * * * * *

  Sam finished up her breakfast of corn bread they had brought with them and some beef stroganoff supplied by the MREs. It was an odd breakfast, but she washed it down with a bottle of water, and began running her brush through her hair as Jack returned.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “I just checked out the rooms right here, I didn’t go down the hall at all,” Jack replied. “But I think I figured out the maps, and if I’m reading them right then it doesn’t look good.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked, as both Tammy and Will looked up from their food.

  “I might be wrong, but it looks like to me that every city, and likely every community has been destroyed. All of them, all over the world.”

  “Well. We kind of guessed as much,” Sam replied.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Will chimed in.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jack.

  “I mean that people’s bodies weren’t found. That means they aren’t dead. Right? If they were killed when the aliens attacked then there would have been more bodies, millions, no billions of them, but there weren’t.”

  “I see what you’re saying, Will, and I hope you’re right. But we have to be prepared for if you aren’t,” Jack tried to sooth his younger brother.

  “No we don’t. Jack. They have to be alive. People don’t just vanish,” Will proclaimed.

  “Before all this,” Jack said ,waving his arms around, “I would have agreed. But now, buddy, I’m not so sure. We’ll just have to wait and see. OK?”

  “You mean, you’ll just have to wait and see. I already know,” Will insisted.

  “What else?” Sam asked, trying to change the subject.

  “The generator is out of gas so no luck there unless we find some. Other than that I think we need to do some more exploring.”

  “OK,” Sam agreed. “Then let’s go have a look around.”

  Without waiting for another answer, Sam stood up and offered Tammy her hand. Pulling the other girl to her feet, they each offered Will a hand and waited for him to pocket three bags of candy before he would budge. Sam couldn’t help but grin at him. Undetermined of whether or not billions were dead or not, he was still a kid and the candy in his pockets was evidence enough for her. When this was all over she looked forward to seeing him just playing instead of looking over his shoulder or worrying about things well beyond his years.

  Once they were all up they walked out of the room together, and turning left moved deeper into the school. Classroom after classroom passed with nothing of interest to note. Reaching the intersection further down the hall, they decided to turn left and after several minutes and many passed rooms later, they found an oddity that caught their attention. Though the room looked much the same as any other with posters and whatnot upon the walls and all the desks stacked against the windows, here upon the blackboard was something peculiar.

  Looking it over Sam was certain that it was similar to the chalkboard in the map room, but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t be certain, but something about it looked familiar. Too bad it was all gibberish.

  “That’s kind of like the other one,” Jack said, pointing.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking,” Sam admitted.

  They both stared at it together for a moment but with no answers forthcoming, they moved on to the next room and then the one after that.

  Over an hour passed as they moved room to room and now in the third branch of the intersection, Sam found herself in yet another room staring at yet another chalkboard with odd writings upon it. This time Tammy and Will joined in and all four tried to figure out if it was another language or something, but after several minutes they abandoned the idea and continued on.

  Sam pondered the three chalkboards with random lines and apparent scribbles accompanied by letters that seemed p
laced haphazardly. Unless someone was crazy, running around from room to room just writing random stuff, then there had to be a reason for it. Maybe it was a code or another language disguised as random scribblings. No matter what it was, however, she wasn’t at all surprised when less than thirty minutes later they located another room in the fourth branch of the school’s only intersection. This one, like the others, seemed random. Or maybe not.

  Though she couldn’t recall exactly what letters had been on the other boards, she did note that on each board they had similar locations. For instance, this chalk board had an A in the upper left corner, followed by an E with a large space in between them. She was almost certain that one of the other boards had a Y in that same corner along with another letter though she couldn’t recall what. Something here was fishy.

  Staring up at the board with her, and shaking their heads, both her siblings and Tammy were just as confused as she was, but it didn’t matter. Sam had an idea.

  “Hang on, guys. Just wait here a minute,” Sam said without explanation.

  Focusing on the hallway she ported just outside the door and turning she focused on the intersection ahead. Porting again, she then turned and blinked back to the previous room with the odd scribblings. Looking up to the board she noted the letters U and H with space between them and committed them to memory. Then, instantaneously she was out in the hall again and back to the intersection followed by the second room they had found. Here the letters were O, E, and another E, again in the top left corner. She was beginning to think she was on to something.

  Into the hall and then down to the intersection she ported before turning once again to port back to the map room. On the board, just as she expected, were three more letters. Looking up she committed the Y, R, and another R to memory as well, before porting in three steps back to her siblings in an instant.

  Catching her breath and letting her world stop swimming, Sam picked up a piece of chalk still on the ledge below the board and wrote down all the letters away from any of the other writings.

  A.E.U.H.O.E.E.Y.R.R.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s some kind of code,” Sam admitted.

  “Like MRE?” Will asked.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “All Entities Use Hose Or Everyone Eats Your Ready Rations?” Will guessed.

  “I don’t think so,” Sam grinned.

  “Maybe it’s alpha numeric, like a phone dial or by position in the alphabet,” Jack suggested.

  “So like A is one and E is five?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, maybe it is coordinates or something, like GPS. It would explain all the maps.”

  “You might be right,” Sam admitted.

  “No,” Tammy said. “It is just scrambled.”

  “What do you mean?” Will asked at the same time as both his siblings.

  Sam watched as Tammy reached out and took the piece of chalk from her hand. Touching it to the black board she began intricately writing the letters as perfect as she had ever created them before, only she rearranged them to form words. Though her writing was immaculate, she wrote so slowly that Sam was gritting her teeth in anticipation by the time she finished.

  YOU ARE HERE

  The breath caught in Sam’s throat. Of course it was Tammy to find it. She had taught herself to read English for crying out loud. If anyone could unscramble some letters, it was her.

  Staring at the three short words on the chalk board, Sam knew exactly what it was that she had to do. It was a map, though each version was only a portion. If they were pieced together, they would likely give some important information that whoever was here before them didn’t want people to readily figure out.

  Holding out her hand, Sam accepted the piece of chalk back from Tammy and without a word she ported out of the room again.

  * * * * *

  Will watched as Sam vanished again as if she had never been there. It was a cool superpower to have and he was a little jealous that he hadn’t gotten it, but he supposed his power was just as good. If he wanted to go somewhere, he could just tell someone to carry or drive him. Then again, whenever a superhero abused their power something bad happened to them, so he supposed he had better not just start giving orders so that he could be lazy.

  Within just a few seconds Sam ported in again, scribbled a line here, a letter there and poof, she was gone. Looking at the chalkboard, it became evident to Will that this process could take a while and as such he looked around the room. Finding what he sought in the corner, he pulled the teacher’s leather office chair across the floor and hopped in it.

  Digging in his pocket, he pulled out the bag of M&M’s and tore the top off it before pouring several of the yummy little chocolate morsels in his hand. Tilting his head back he dumped the handful of candy in his mouth and just let the candy shells dissolve off slowly as Sam teleported in again, scribbled some more, and vanished. Yup. He had time.

  After at least a quarter of an hour and like fifty arrivals and departures of Sam later, a map was beginning to take shape and Tammy helped by sorting out the letters to words. At one point, Sam ported in with a map which she said was of the actual town they were in. All the while, Will sat comfortably in his chair, spinning it slowly as mouthful after mouthful of chocolate dissolved deliciously, coating his mouth in yummy goodness.

  Taking the time to daydream, Will decided that when the world sought to repay him for all of his heroic deeds, he would ask for his payment in candy. No matter how he looked at it, it was a great idea. Who wouldn’t want candy? After all, asking for the money to buy all the candy sounded kind of greedy, but a gift of candy, well that was another story altogether.

  Another fifteen, twenty, or five hundred minutes passed and Sam appeared in the room yet again, her body swaying this way and that slightly as if she had just spent the same hour or so with Will, spinning in the chair. Grinning a chocolate-stained grin at the thought, Will hopped out of his chair to inspect Sam’s map.

  As it turned out, it looked rather like a map, if a map was drawn by a dog with an unsteady paw. Aside from that, Will was fairly certain Sam should keep her powers and stay a superhero because her chances as an artist or map drawer person were probably not too good.

  “I think that’s everything,” Sam said, panting like she had just run a marathon.

  “OK. I get the highway here, and the interstate there, and looking at the map I can see both of those towns, but what the heck is that big thing at the end of the road? It doesn’t show on this map, but I guess it’s too far out of town. What do you think it is?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know, I can try and draw it again. Maybe I missed something,” Sam offered.

  “I don’t think so, Sam,” Tammy interrupted. “I don’t think it is supposed to be on any of the maps drawn by your people. I think that is why they took all the effort to hide it like this.”

  “So what do you think it is?” Sam asked, looking at Tammy for answers.”

  “It’s a spaceship,” Will answered, cocking his head on an angle and scrunching up his face. “Look,” he said, snatching the chalk from Sam’s hand.

  Approaching the board, Will reached up and wiped away a couple of the lines with his sleeve and adjusted them. Then, wiping away another section, he rearranged the lines Sam had drawn, and redrew them in an order that made sense. There it was. In its basic essence it was like any other spaceship he had seen in cartoons or old comics. It was long and pointy with fin-like supports at the bottom, and out from its side was some sort of stabilizer used to help it launch or something. Under it, was simply an X drawn on the map where the road apparently ended.

  “You’re right,” Sam said, as both Jack and Tammy nodded at him.

  It was a spaceship, though a really, really big one if drawn to scale on the map. If they headed in its direction, they shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Good enough. All he had to do to be a superhero now was go to this ship, kick the
bad guys’ butts and send them packin’ back to wherever they came from. Will had his plan all figured out. Turning around, he pulled another bag of candy from his pocket and hopped back up and into the leather chair.

  * * * * *

  Tammy stood back and looked at the map that Samantha had compiled. It was crude, but effective enough to give them the next destination on their journey. She had a feeling that whatever it was that they were supposed to do, it was at the other end of that map.

  Following the route on it would be easy enough. Follow the main highway out of town until they hit the interstate and then follow it south until they found a giant space craft.

  “How far do you think that is?” Sam asked no one in particular.

  “Hard to say,” Jack replied.

  “Not far enough,” Tammy answered.

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  “As long as it is here, we will not be safe. We have to find a way to destroy it or make them leave.”

  That was what it all boiled down to and Tammy knew it. There was little chance of peace so long as the invaders who had abducted her people and delivered them here were still allowed to force their will on this planet. It might not be her people’s home, but it was the only place she had ever been where she wasn’t a prisoner. Here she could make real choices and stand up for what she thought was right. Here she had a purpose. Here she had a chance at a future that involved peace, happiness and safety. If anything was worth fighting for, that was it.

  After all of them had committed the few important details on the map to memory, Sam reached up with her sleeve and wiped it all away. Every last line.

  “Should we leave today?” Tammy asked after Sam was finished.