There was something about the moment that felt like an end.

  Like they were finally safe, with no more doom hanging over their heads. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but that’s how it felt, and the realization of it gushed out of her in waves before she could finally speak. “I lost my radio. I was running with the kids and it must have gotten dropped and… oh, gosh, Lana. You’re okay. What about your father? And Derek? Are they with you?”

  “Derek’s okay,” Lana reported. “He’s helping with search and rescue, taking the injured to the hospital. And Dad’s alive, but… pretty beat up. Samuels said he went to find you and collapsed. But he’s awake now. Herndon won’t let him out of the hospital. You should probably go there before he knocks her out. I’ll meet you there, okay?”

  “Okay,” Elizabeth rasped into the radio. “I’m on my way.”

  She set the radio down and hugged her knees tighter as she cried. They were safe. Both of them. And Derek. All this way, hundreds of miles. Storms, bullets, bombs, earthquakes, killers—an asteroid. They’d faced all of that and more, and they were alive.

  Amelie’s arms enfolded her, and for just a bit longer, Elizabeth sobbed into her shoulder, until the peak of emotion passed. When she pulled back, the woman wore a gentle but sad smile. “Feeling better?”

  Elizabeth wiped her eyes. “Better,” she agreed. “We were lucky. A lot of others weren’t. It… almost feels thoughtless to be happy they’re still alive.”

  “I know the feeling,” Amelie said. “But we can be happy for the ones that are still with us and grieve the loss of the others at the same time. I just saw Mateo with Vincent, as well. Vince has a broken arm and a bloody nose, but he’s alive.”

  There was relief in that, as well, even as Elizabeth looked toward the library doors, beyond which cots and pallets had been made for the children whose parents were either missing or dead. “When you’re ready, we can take one of the kids. It won’t be the same for them, but… they should all have families of one kind or another.”

  Amelie looked around them, at the people helping one another, carrying the injured or treating what they could. “They all do. And so do you and yours, if you’re going to stick around.”

  Elizabeth smiled, and hugged the woman a final time. “We are,” she said. “I should go. Let me know if you need anything. I can’t imagine we’ll sleep much tonight.”

  She hurried off to the hospital, too exhausted to sprint but too anxiously excited to just walk. It left her half-jogging, half-running in turns, until finally she found Lana leaning against the wall beside the doors. Lana’s eyes were closed, her arms folded over her chest, as if she were getting what little rest she could while she had a brief moment to take it.

  For a few seconds, Elizabeth just stared at her. She looked older. Not just from the night. She looked worn, strong, scarred, and vibrant, all at once. A woman, grown into herself so that she fit in the world, somehow. All the same, when Elizabeth said her name, Lana’s eyes snapped open, and for a few seconds she was a little girl all over again as she threw herself into Elizabeth’s arms.

  “I was so scared something happened to you,” Lana said against her shoulder as she crushed the breath from Elizabeth’s lungs. “Amelie said you’d been all over town. Are you okay? Did you get hurt? What about the kids, is everyone alright?”

  “They’re all accounted for.” Elizabeth pulled back as Lana let her go. “No injuries other than a few sprained ankles and scraped knees and elbows. Your father’s inside? How bad is he?”

  Lana waved a hand. “Just exhausted. A guard tower fell on him, that’s all.”

  “A guard tower…” Elizabeth shook her head as Lana gave her a lopsided grin. “Where’s he at?”

  “Very back room,” Lana told her, moving back the wall to lean against it. “Bed on the far left, but I doubt you can miss him. He’s probably still yelling at people that he’s fine.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t help but grin as she imagined it and made her way through the doors. It was a grisly sight, full of groaning and weeping. But these were the ones who’d survived. The ones who would see the next days and live to remember. To grieve. To get on with life in whatever way they could.

  She picked her way between makeshift cots and stretchers in the packed space, and made her way to the back of the small office building, until she reached the room in the back of it and scanned the beds there for Caleb.

  She found him not far off from how Lana predicted. Not quite yelling, but scowling and restless. At least until she approached, and his eyes cut toward her—hard and furious one moment, and then soft and misty as he smiled and reached for her, sitting halfway up before he winced and let himself fall back onto the narrow stretcher. “Liz,” he said as she reached him and took his hand. “Lana couldn’t find you, I thought…”

  Whatever he was going to say, he couldn’t finish as his voice grew rough. He pulled her close and drew her into a kiss. If there had been more room, Elizabeth would have crawled onto the stretcher with him. Instead, she held his kiss for a long time before finally straightening and leaning her hip against the edge of it, surveying the damage.

  The stitches on his head were fresh where it seemed the old ones had opened up. There was a thick bandage around his upper arm, and his right arm was in a sling, an ice pack strapped to his shoulder. There were singed spots in his hair, and scrapes and cuts over his face along with a few bandages taped down around what must have been the worst of them.

  But he was here. Alive. In one piece.

  “We made it,” she told him, stroking his hair.

  He smiled weakly, his eyes half-closing. “Yeah,” he breathed. “We did. Stay with me?”

  “Always,” she promised, and did exactly that as he drifted off.

  The next days were hard. Not as hard as fighting for their lives, but difficult all the same. There wasn’t as much wreckage as Elizabeth feared the night of the assault, but houses and shelters were riddled with gunfire. Solar panels had been damaged, generators destroyed, windows shattered.

  Springfield didn’t rest the morning after. Work began the moment Apex withdrew, and continued into the daylight until, finally, shifts evolved as people rested when they couldn’t keep going, then got up and got back to it.

  They’d lost a lot of people. The list of the dead grew and grew as more were found and taken to a spot outside the walls that was more or less the official graveyard. Springfield didn’t have a crematorium, and they couldn’t spare the wood to burn bodies. So they buried their dead.

  By the fourth day, a mass funeral was held, the names of those they’d lost read aloud and grieved by everyone they’d sacrificed themselves to protect. The various markers of graves spread out seemingly too far for a place so relatively small.

  That, though, was bound to change. Once the dead were buried, a proper election for a town council was held. Caleb was encouraged to accept a position, but declined. Lana was surprised, but Elizabeth wasn’t. He’d spent every moment since the start of it all leading, planning, protecting. He wanted to take simple, honest work, and rest.

  And he had plenty of it. With Thurmond gone, Caleb took his place as the town’s engineer, with Diego to help him. Together they went to work repairing as much of Springfield’s electrical and communications infrastructure as they could. Elizabeth continued her work with Amelie, gradually slipping almost unintentionally into a teaching position—though, for the moment that mostly consisted of looking after the younger kids during the day

  One of them, a four-year-old boy named Austin, whose parents had died during the attack, came to live with their family. He hadn’t spoken a word since they unofficially adopted him, but Elizabeth was hopeful he would open up in time, with a little help and love. Caleb took to him immediately, and Austin seemed comfortable around him.

  Lana officially joined the Security Corps under Samuels, though she complained about it a bit. The way she saw it, he only accepted her and the surviving members of her unit because he’d lost so many.

  “But whatever,” she said the morning of her first official shift as Caleb and Elizabeth walked with her and Austin to get breakfast and start the fifth day of recovery. “He’s like a million years old, so he’ll retire soon and the whole security corps will become like two hundred percent less sexist and old fashioned.”

  Derek very obviously tried to bury his amusement. Likely for his own safety.

  As they passed the eastern gate—which was less gate for the moment and more of a guarded hole in the wall—Elizabeth slowed to a stop as all of them watched a black SUV pull past the guards who’d stopped it there. Unease hit her immediately, until the SUV parked a short distance inside, and a man and woman in navy suits stepped out of it instead of the black-clad Apex agents she’d half-expected to be hidden behind the tinted glass.

  “Who are these people?” Lana wondered. “Not refugees. They look official.”

  “Suits of some kind. FBI, maybe or Secret Service.”

  “Great,” Derek muttered. “That crazy Welcher lady probably wants a piece of Springfield.”

  Elizabeth glanced at him, then down at Austin, then shot Derek a warning look.

  He winced, and pressed his lips tight together, apologizing silently. There was no easy way to avoid reminding the kids that the world could be a dangerous place now, but they could spare Austin as much as possible. He didn’t need more to have nightmares about.

  They watched for a little while, along with a handful of others who’d paused out of curiosity at the visitors. After a minute or so, Tom Daniels and Pete Camby came into view from the direction of the library building. They were greeted by the suits, who handed Daniels something—a sheet of paper. Some sort of discussion took place.

  Camby looked upset, but Daniels seemed almost thoughtful. After a while, Daniels put a hand on Camby’s shoulder, said something that made the former chief-of-staff seem to straighten his shoulders a bit… and then the two of them slipped into the back seat of the SUV.

  The two suits got into the front then, and the SUV pulled forward and swung around, heading back slowly through the gate before speeding off up the road.

  “The heck?” Lana murmured. “Where are they going?”

  Elizabeth smiled as they watched the SUV take a turn off the main road, avoiding the craters left by the IEDs, and disappeared. “I don’t know. But Tom looked hopeful. I think maybe he’s going back where he belongs.”

  She wondered if the report that Camby had supposedly sent back to Cheyenne Mountain had made it there safely, then, and if that meant they no longer had the threat of the mad president who’d bombed St. Louis hanging over them. Certainly, they hadn’t seen a hint of military presence in the absence of Apex. Or, for that matter, seen another sign of Apex other than the handful of agents who’d stuck around to have their implants removed and then offered to help with the recovery effort. Most had left, though.

  The rest had been offered a surprising degree of grace, though there was still some coldness toward them. All the same, even now Elizabeth saw one of them crossing the road ahead, a bundle of scrap wood under her arm, with a Springfield local beside her. All around, in any direction Elizabeth looked, she saw the same grace and kindness. People helping one another, caring for their neighbors, rebuilding.

  And then, once the rebuilding was done, the building would begin. Not a remaking of what was there before, though.

  Elizabeth lifted Austin up and settled him on her hip to carry him the rest of the way to school. She smiled at her husband and daughter, and the man she suspected was going to be a part of their family as well one day. Sooner rather than later, if the way Derek looked at Lana was any indication.

  Above their heads, the clouds broke for a moment and sunlight poured like sweet water across the distant mountains for a few precious seconds.

  No. There was no need to rebuild the world they’d lost.

  Instead, they would build something entirely new. Something as imperfect as anything human beings made, but better than what they had before.

  All of them—Elizabeth’s family alongside everyone in Springfield and beyond—would build a home out of everything the impact had left behind.

  And they would do it together.

  Thank you for reading Falling Skies! Subscribe to Harley’s newsletter to be notified when she releases something new.

  www.harleytate.com/subscribe

  In the meantime, if you are new to Harley’s work and are interested in more, check out the After the EMP series:

  If the power grid fails, how far will you go to survive?

  Madison spends her days tending plants as an agriculture student at the University of California, Davis. She plans to graduate and put those skills to work only a few hours from home in the Central Valley. The sun has always been her friend, until now.

  When catastrophe strikes, how prepared will you be?

  Tracy starts her morning like any other, kissing her husband Walter goodbye before heading off to work at the local public library. She never expects it to end fleeing for her life in a Suburban full of food and water. Tackling life’s daily struggles is one thing, preparing to survive when it all crashes down is another.

  The end of the world brings out the best and worst in all of us.

  With no communication and no word from the government, the Sloanes find themselves grappling with the end of the modern world all on their own. Will Madison and her friends have what it takes to make it back to Sacramento and her family? Can Tracy fend off looters and thieves and help her friends and neighbors survive?

  The EMP is only the beginning.

  ALSO BY HARLEY TATE

  NUCLEAR SURVIVAL

  First Strike (exclusive newsletter prequel)

  Southern Grit:

  Brace for Impact

  Escape the Fall

  Survive the Panic

  Northern Exposure:

  Take the Hit

  Duck for Cover

  Ride it Out

  Western Strength:

  Bear the Brunt

  Shelter in Place

  Make the Cut

  AFTER THE EMP

  Darkness Falls (exclusive newsletter prequel)

  Darkness Begins

  Darkness Grows

  Darkness Rises

  Chaos Comes

  Chaos Gains

  Chaos Evolves

  Hope Sparks

  Hope Stumbles

  Hope Survives

  NO ORDINARY DAY

  No Ordinary Escape

  No Ordinary Day

  No Ordinary Getaway

  No Ordinary Mission

  Find all of Harley’s releases on Amazon today: www.amazon.com/author/harleytate.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you for reading the Falling Skies series. I hope you enjoyed reading the story as much as I enjoyed creating it.

  As I’ve mentioned before, a few liberties have been taken, especially with place names and other minor details in writing this novel. I hope you don’t hold it against me!

  If you enjoyed this book and have a moment, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Every one helps new readers discover my work and helps me keep writing the stories you want to read.

  Until next time,

  Harley

  ABOUT HARLEY TATE

  When the world as we know it falls apart, how far will you go to survive?

  Harley Tate writes edge-of-your-seat post-apocalyptic fiction exploring what happens when ordinary people are faced with impossible choices.

  The apocalypse is only the beginning.

  Find out more at:

  www.harleytate.com

 

 

  Harley Tate, War and Survival: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Falling Skies Book 5)

 

 

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