After The World Ends: Rage (Book 5): After The World Ends, #5

By Jamie Thornton

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jamie Thornton.

WHAT IS SANCTUARY HIDING?

Dessa and her friends have brought the children in Project Polus to the safety of Sanctuary's walls—yet not all is what it seems.

Scientists, Security, and Support run a caste-like facility that forces people with the combo cure—people like Dessa's friends—to live outside. But Dessa is desperate for the medical help Sanctuary provides against the zombies. She is determined to make things work.

But when Dessa's group accidentally uncovers some of Sanctuary's top secret experiments, they end up facing a brutal truth, and a whole new kind of zombie.

What once seemed safe might just turn out to be the most dangerous place on the planet.

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AFTER THE WORLD ENDS is a new series in the same bestselling universe as ZOMBIES ARE HUMAN. New characters. New adventures. A thrilling zombie apocalypse awaits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamie Thornton
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201003012

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After the World Ends 5

R A G E

Jamie Thornton

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T H R E E

M O N T H S

L A T E R

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1

THREE MONTHS LATER

Odessa Seif seriously needed this day to be over.

Storing the fresh potatoes in a barrel of sand was taking forever, but she couldn’t just leave it for later. Coordinator Grove would chew her out for incompetence—again.

But if she didn’t finish soon, she would miss today’s best chance of seeing Ivan.

Her little brother might still be in a coma, but Ms. Winters swore there was progress.

Carving a hollow with one hand while placing the potato in with her other, the grains of sand flowed through her fingers. Dessa’s khaki jumpsuit crinkled at the waist from having been recently cleaned and dried by real sunlight—yesterday was laundry day above ground. The rough texture of the potato skin actually made her mouth water as she imagined it being peeled, chopped, and cooked to make fries or mashed potatoes.

Moving the sand to cover the potato, she returned to the sack for another one.

There, Dessa said to the underground warehouse around her.

While she worked, her mind traveled several levels down to Lab level. In a spotless white room slept six comatose kids, including her little brother. They were the only remaining survivors of Project Polus—Ms. Winters’ special science project that would someday save the world from the zombie-like Lyssa virus ravaging the surface. Sanctuary was still the best chance her brother had to wake up someday from his coma and be a regular kid again.

But time was slipping through Dessa’s fingers like, well, like sand.

Maybe she should ditch the potatoes.

Except Sanctuary was feeding, housing, and protecting them all.

They had to keep making this work.

They had to keep Sanctuary happy.

Sanctuary forced the combo cured—her friends—to live separately from everyone else above ground and forbid uninfected from mixing with them. That was the rule. Dessa considered herself a rule-follower, but only when the rules made sense. This no fraternizing thing was beyond stupid, and she intended to break it again today, but that meant she needed to hurry up.

The next potato went in the barrel, and then the next. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could sneak down to see her brother, search for Tigg, and then steal a visit with Amos before anyone knew different.

She saw the bottom of the sack. Almost done.

She was going to make it down to her brother in time, after all.

Soft, yet somehow still irritating, footsteps signaled that E.B. Pleasant approached.

Crap, Dessa said, looking at the few remaining potatoes, and definitely not thinking about all the things she had stolen from Supply earlier today currently burning a hole in her pockets.

She sighed and waited for E.B. Pleasant to turn the corner. His name contained a special kind of irony, since he didn’t seem to even try to be pleasant. Ever.

He stalked over, already shaking his finger. Wearing a khaki jumpsuit like her, the uniform marked him in Sanctuary’s strict hierarchy as Support. But unlike her, his position put him just under Coordinator Grove.

There were three categories of people allowed inside Sanctuary.

Scientist, Security, Support.

Coordinator Grove was in charge of all Support, which numbered in the hundreds of people.

You couldn’t stay at Sanctuary unless you had one of those three jobs, or it seemed, loved the letter S. For more than three months now, over almost all the winter season, Dessa, Cole, and Riley had worked as Support inside Sanctuary’s walls on its Supply level—confronted with S words everywhere they turned. Sanctuary’s designers must have been some special kind of super nerd.

E.B. Pleasant liked the power he had over the staff assigned to Support, and loved to remind the three of them they were on the lowest rung of that power structure. A stubborn shadow seemed permanently fixed to his face, even though regulations required Support to be clean-shaven. He was tall, with gaunt cheeks that made him look like a chain smoker at some point in his life, though not anymore. Cigarettes were severely rationed and saved for Security. He wore his hair just long enough for it to peek out from underneath the worn, dark blue baseball cap he wore even while underground like this. The color blue was reserved for Security—eggshell blue. So his dark blue hat wasn’t technically against regulations.

More than once, Dessa and Cole had speculated the hat must hide some grotesque wound, or an embarrassing bald spot, or maybe a second head.

E.B. Pleasant looked from her to the barrel, to the sack of potatoes, and back again. You’re supposed to be checking the rat traps.

The government had poured lots of money into Sanctuary, but the rats had found a way in. It had become part of her job to keep the rats out of the food. She’d become pretty good at it.

Pretty good until last week.

Last week, something had changed, though she didn’t yet know what.

The rats had already destroyed several months’ worth of cereal, contaminated fifty pounds of dehydrated protein, left blood and fur around like they’d been fighting, and fouled an entire pallet of coffee beans.

That last one had felt particularly catastrophic—not that she’d been allowed coffee these last three months. Coffee was only reserved for Scientist and Security.

Sure, yeah. Dessa forced her voice to stay—pleasant and made sure to keep the barrel in between E.B. Pleasant’s view of her pockets. It was important to keep her head down, follow the rules, and just get by. They had to earn their place with Sanctuary and win over as many people as possible to all be allowed to stay. I already checked the traps—first thing this morning, like always. I’m just finishing up with these last few potatoes and then my shift is over.

Dessa noticed she was stuck in an eerily similar situation now compared to before the Lyssa virus showed up, turned people into V’s, and wrecked the world.

Working with groceries.

Trying to get her brother back from the government that had sucked him into their system.

Unfortunately, just because the universe enjoyed playing this particular joke on her again didn’t mean she could change anything about it.

A sneer appeared on E.B. Pleasant’s face. It did nothing to improve his features. Your shift is over when I say it’s over. You need to check those rat traps again. We can’t afford anymore losses. Aren’t there supposed to be two other teenagers on shift with you? I’ll have to write this up and report your friends to the Coordinators. Dereliction of duty is—

Two minutes. Dessa motioned to the potatoes, even as she winced, realizing she had interrupted E.B. Pleasant. He would make her pay for that in some surprisingly petty way. Any chance of getting him off her back was fast fading. I just need two minutes to make sure all the potatoes are packed. I swear I will check the rat traps again after I’m done. And after she went down to check on her brother. She just needed E.B. Pleasant to leave. Cole and Riley are doing some other work on Supply level today. Check with Coordinator Grove. She’s the one who made the changes.

The way his lips twisted into a condescending half smile made her want to punch him.

"You can believe I will be checking," E.B. Pleasant said, not moving an inch. In fact, he leaned against one of the barrels like he was planning to stay a while.

Dessa kept her head down and picked up the pace of her work. I can finish up—

Riding in here on the great Dr. Winters’ coattails doesn’t mean you get a free pass to mouth off, tell lies, and lay about, E.B. Pleasant interrupted. Can you even imagine what it’s like for us—watching you walk around here like its nothing, after none of us were allowed to bring our families inside?

Dessa flinched. Sanctuary’s staff regularly found ways to remind her, Cole, and Riley of this horrific truth. When the Lyssa virus had destroyed the world, Sanctuary’s three Coordinators forbid the staff from going outside the fences for any reason. Sanctuary’s mission was nothing less than to save the world from the zombies and needed all hands on deck. There was no room for the burden families would place on supplies and research—on finding a solution to the Lyssa virus plague.

The grief and anger many of the staff felt often spilled over onto Dessa, Cole, and Riley by way of bad looks, outright insults, and just overall poor treatment. Why had the they been treated differently? Why had they been allowed to stay when spouses and kids had been refused?

It was all because of Ms. Winters.

So let me make myself clear, E.B. Pleasant said. I don’t care if you already checked the traps this morning. You need to check them now—unless you want me to write you up for insubordination? I think that would be the tenth one in three months? Coordinator Grove might not be keeping count, but I assure you, everyone else is.

He waited.

Dessa stared and realized he probably knew she had been planning to zip down to Lab to see her brother.

He was stalling her on purpose. Just to be cruel.

She had her brother and her friends and he had no one.

Something inside Dessa hardened. She wasn’t going to let him win at this game. Comatose or not, she had made a promise to her brother and planned to keep it.

2

Dessa closed her eyes for one brief moment and conjured up Amos’ face.

When her group had arrived at Sanctuary, Dessa and her friends had enjoyed hot showers and a room full of food. But then the blue suits descended, and dragged Amos, Tiana, Egg, and Delmar away by force. The four of them had the combo cure that prevented the Lyssa virus from turning them into raging zombies. Sanctuary considered the combo cure a type of contamination of the blood that could not be allowed near their lab work.

That first day, Ms. Winters believed she had failed to convince the Coordinators to accept the combo cured. She couldn’t bear to watch, and had abandoned them to their supposed fate. Dessa’s friends had been tranquilized and taken without an explanation until much later.

Dessa’s imagination had pictured cages, or lab experiments, or worse. She had raged at Cole for holding her back. All the uneaten food had scattered off the tables and was crushed underfoot. Only once she had worked Support for a few weeks had she realized the food in that room represented a great deal of wealth and power.

Dessa suspected it was Ms. Winters’ way of apologizing.

It wasn’t enough. But it wasn’t nothing either.

Later, Dessa learned Sanctuary’s three Coordinators had planned to take all the combo cured outside the fences. Only an almost mutiny among a small group of Sanctuary’s staff who basically worshiped Ms. Winters had prevented it.

A compromise had been reached to avoid a staff uprising. The combo cured were allowed to stay inside the fences, above ground, working on Farm—and were never allowed to enter Sanctuary’s underground levels or get close to an uninfected person.

Amos had taken to the situation with a stoic acceptance and coached her to do the same.

This is still way better than it was out there. Lie low, Dessa.

Amos was right, of course. Sanctuary was far better than what they would have faced outside its fences.

She blinked open her eyes and pulled her arms out of the barrel, the sand grains slipping away.

Well? E.B. Pleasant said.

Of course, E.B. Pleasant, sir. Of course, I will drop everything and check the rat traps again at this very moment. I am so grateful to everyone here at Sanctuary for taking me in.

Good, E.B. Pleasant said.

Though the sarcasm in her voice was thick enough to drip on the floor, he wasn’t savvy like Coordinator Grove. Her words actually mollified him. How dumb was he to believe she actually meant this whole falling-all-over-herself act?

I’ll finish the potatoes later, Dessa said, voice still compliant. It’s no trouble.

Of course, it’s no trouble, E. B. Pleasant said. Who would find storing potatoes in a barrel troublesome, except for someone who doesn’t deserve to be here in the first place?

Heading for the bait station, Dessa held her hands casually at her sides, blocking the bulge in her pockets. She moved out of sight without any further trouble and told herself there was still time to get it all done. Dessa could save her search for Tigg, and sneak a visit to Amos for later. What mattered was to check the traps until E.B. Pleasant got bored and found a new target.

Supply was the most bare, most industrial-looking level out of all she had yet seen. Not that she had actually, or ever would be, allowed to see all of Sanctuary. Cool colored lights glowed in such a way as to suggest a not-quite-real feeling of sunlight. They cast long shadows across the cavernous space. Cement floors and cement walls were everywhere. Sanctuary was basically a bunker, built with plenty of government money. Dessa pictured it like a flipped skyscraper. All of its levels, except for three, were built underground. The three above-ground levels were built super industrial and bare, giving no hint of the vast bunker-like facilities underneath.

On Supply level, shelves of everything from cooking oil, to garden tools, to titanium dust for 3D printers, were neatly stacked, arranged, and labeled with impeccable attention to detail—according to Coordinator Grove’s exacting standards.

Not even Dessa could find fault with it.

Grabbing the pouch of bait from a cabinet, she hooked it around her waist. A ladder leaned against the shelves. She climbed up the ladder against stacked pallets of supplies until she was on top and could reach for the first grate in the ventilation system.

Sanctuary didn’t allow the use of poisoned bait in the ductwork. No one wanted dead rats in their air. Rather, the scientists had concocted a bait that controlled reproduction—it was supposed to sterilize both male and female rats. Painless, and it didn’t harm any other animals.

That part was important to Dessa because she had seen signs of Tigg recently.

She had purposefully let the cat escape upon their arrival, fearing what Sanctuary might do to him, but that had been down several levels at Engineering. Since then, she had kept an eye out for him, hoping. Just last week, she had seen hints of his existence. He had basically been hand-raised by a bunch of kids, so if she could just find him, she knew he would leap into her arms, expecting the royal treatment of food and scratches to which he had become accustomed.

Come on, Tigg. Give me a win today, Dessa said, pulling out the binoculars she had scored from a salvage weeks ago.

Scanning the warehouse from her vantage point, she took a quick look around. The tops of the shelves stretched out long, almost vanishing from view. Their were khaki jumpsuits flitting in and out of far away aisles of shrink-wrapped supplies—and E.B. Pleasant just standing there at the elevators like he was waiting to catch her. Great.

Cole and Riley worked somewhere deep in Supply today, but she couldn’t find any sign of them. They were just two more khaki jumpsuits from this distance, even with the help of the binoculars.

Lots of activity, but no sign of a cat.

She sighed, tucked the binoculars away, and lifted herself into the ductwork. Crawling on hands and knees across the buckling metal, Dessa held back a sneeze. A small breeze ruffled her hair and cooled her bare skin, signaling that the ventilation was still working like it should.

At the first juncture, several boxes that displayed large hazard signs were strapped to the inside of the ductwork. A green light on the side blinked in a lazy beat. These boxes were scattered throughout the system. Dessa knew they had nothing to do with the rat traps because she had asked Coordinator Grove about them and gotten thoroughly chewed out for the question.

Passing by the hazard symbol boxes, she reached the first trap, which was not much bigger than a shoebox. Opening the container, she found the bait—a mixture of fat and sugar to make the chemicals irresistible—was almost gone. Little teeth marks in the remaining bait told her rats had definitely been here.

That was good. Maybe that meant the new rat problem would soon be under control.

She reached into the pouch, reset the bait, closed up the shoebox, and headed for the next box. The ventilation connected all levels in Sanctuary, except Lab, which had an isolated system that served the actual experiment rooms.

Keeping track of the different turns in her head, she eventually came to the end of the trap line. Exiting through the grate, she dropped down from the ventilation tunnel and onto a pallet of canned tomatoes before climbing down the ladder positioned for just this purpose.

You wouldn’t know it by looking around, but she had traveled almost the full length of Supply. Shelving stuffed with pallets of shrink-wrapped goods loomed overhead, creating a strange tunnel effect through the aisles. But she had made a decent mental map over the last few months. They kept potato barrels near the people elevators. Canned tomatoes meant she was on the opposite side from the elevators.

Heading to another bait station, she added a second pouch to her waist and a heavy duty garbage bag. The new pouch was stuffed with simple spring-loaded traps. Sanctuary didn’t want dead rats in the ventilation, but didn’t care otherwise. The traps broke the rat’s neck and were reusable.

She’d