Aftermath

want to spend my life tending sheep, boiling water over log fires and wearing homemade clothes. Why should I? Why should any of us? I tried it, but it didn’t work out. There are too few of us left to make a difference anymore, too much damage has been done. They tried to stop us, said we’d be back like last time, but Coop and I had made up our minds.
    We left just after ten this morning and we were back on the mainland by eleven. Everything has changed beyond all recognition here. Buildings have started to disappear—swallowed up by moss and weeds, a crawling layer of green slowly overtaking everything. There are huge cracks in some of the roads, craterlike potholes in others, and some buildings have already collapsed. And when you look closer, hidden among all the greenery and rubble, there are bones everywhere. Those bones are all that’s left of everyone else. Jack said it was going to be like this, but until you see it for yourself, you can’t begin to appreciate the scale of it all. It makes you realize how insignificant you actually are.
    Before we left the island I went to see Jack one last time. He had his face buried in a book, as usual. He said he’d come across a word in the dictionary that summed everything up, and he told me to look it up once I got here.
    Coop and I walked through a town this afternoon. We took tins of food from a supermarket and strolled down the overgrown high street like we owned the place, drinking wine, shouting out, and doing whatever the hell we wanted. It felt good, like a lot of ghosts had been laid to rest. Later we found this house. We checked it was empty and structurally sound, then set up camp for the night. Coop was asleep in minutes, but I can’t switch off like he does. Maybe I will in the future, but not yet.
    In a small office on the ground floor of the house, I found a dictionary and I looked up Jack’s word like I promised him I would. Aftermath . I didn’t know it had two meanings. The first was obvious, the one that everybody knows: something that follows after a disastrous or unfortunate event, like the aftermath of a war. But it was the second definition that struck me: a new growth of grass following mowing or ploughing. Jack was a deeper man than he’d ever admit. I thought our little community was the aftermath, but he saw the greenery which is slowly covering everything as the aftermath of the human race.
    Michael used to say that all any of us can do now is make the most of the time we have left. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.
    We are the last of the living.

 
     
    Also by David Moody
     
    Hater
     
    Dog Blood
     
    Them or Us
     
    Autumn
     
    Autumn: The City
     
    Autumn: Purification
     
    Autumn: Disintegration
     

 
    David Moody is the author of the Hater and Autumn series.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

AUTUMN: AFTERMATH . Copyright © 2012 by David Moody. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Moody, David, 1970–
Autumn : aftermath / David Moody.
        p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-57002-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4299-2685-0 (e-book)
  1.  Zombies—Fiction.   2.  Survival—Fiction.   3.  Regression (Civilization)—Fiction.   I.  Title.
PR6113.O5447A9523 2012
823'.92—dc23
2011040981

e-ISBN 9781429926850

First Edition: March 2012