Rebirth

This Christmas, we’ve got some fabulous treats to give away! ENTER NOW for a chance to win £5000 by clicking the link below.

www.millsandboon.co.uk/ebookxmas

“Stephen King’s The Stand in a bra and panties…. The illegitimate love child of McCarthy’s The Road and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead…Aftertime is a highly palatable amalgam of post-apocalyptic fiction, romance, and horror. Hard-core fans of post-apocalyptic fiction will love Aftertime. Romance fans will embrace it. Aficionados of zombie fiction will be stunned.”

—Paul Goat Allen, BarnesandNoble.com

“Littlefield turns what could be just another zombie apocalypse into a thoughtful and entertaining exploration of many themes…. Littlefield has a gift for pacing, her adroit and detailed world-building going down easy amid page-turning action and evocative, sensual, harrowing descriptions that bring every paragraph of this thriller to life.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The fresh, original world-building solidly supports the unfolding narrative and Littlefield’s compelling writing will keep readers turning pages late into the night to find out what happens next. Outstanding!”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

“Wildly original… Sophie Littlefield’s Aftertime is a new generation of post-apocalyptic fiction: a unique journey into a horrifying world of zombies, zealots and avarice that examines the strength of one woman, the joy of acceptance and the power of love. A must read.”

—J.T. Ellison, author of Where All the Dead Lie

“I’m geeking out of my mind after reading Aftertime because I felt almost the same way reading it as I do watching The Walking Dead: Captivated. Aftertime is hands down the best zombie book I’ve read all year. Hide your wife, hide your kids, and hide your husbands ’cause they’re eating everybody out here.”

—All Things Urban Fantasy

“[A] gripping read; sympathetic characters operate in a detailed, realistically shattered echo of modern society, and the emotional journey is as harrowing and absorbing as the physical one.”

—Paperback Dolls

“Alternately creeped me the hell out and broke my heart repeatedly.”

—The Discriminating Fangirl

“Littlefield excels at keeping the momentum going and she knows how to inject a huge beating heart into any story, even one in which humanity is barely alive.”

—Pop Culture Nerd

For M, searching for four-leaf clovers

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

THE FIRST SNOWFLAKE AFTERTIME WAS LIKE NO snowflake that ever fell Before. Cass nearly missed it, kneeling on the matted dead kaysev plants, their woody stalks poking into her skin through the thick leggings she wore beneath her dress. Her eyes had been closed, but Randall had gone on too long, the way people do when they are trying to say something meaningful about someone they didn’t know well. After a while Cass grew restless and began to look around, and there, not two feet away, the snowflake drifted past in a lazy swoop as though it had all the time in the world.

Cass licked her cracked lips, could almost feel how the flake would melt on her tongue. Until that moment she didn’t realize she had actually doubted whether snow would ever return, much as she’d doubted whether rats or sparrows or acorns or moths would return. She wished she could nudge Ruthie, or even Smoke—she knelt between the two, in the place of honor up front—but a funeral was still a funeral, and so she stayed as still as a stone.

Maybe by the time they were finished, there would be more snowflakes. A flurry, a drift: the gunmetal sky looked grudging to Cass; there would be no storm today. Besides, the temperature would rise well above freezing by noon. These early snows never lasted long.

Next to her, Ruthie sneezed. Cass wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer. Ruthie had loved the snow when she was a baby. She was still a baby—three years and two months, according to the Box’s calendar. The month and date were metal numerals hung from nails on a wooden pole, the kind people once nailed to houses and mailbox posts, back when people still lived in houses. Each morning, the first shift guard changed the numbers. Today, it read 11 * 17.

Smoke held Cass’s hand, his strong fingers wrapped around hers, and she felt his blood running sure and strong under his skin, circulating through his body and making him strong and back to his heart again, and she said the silent prayer that was part of her breathing itself now, part of every exhale: thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-for-making-him-mine. His touch, his closeness, that was what made her whole; he more than made up for every wrong man that had come along before. She closed her eyes and exhaled the prayer and waited for Randall to finish his rambling eulogy as the five other people in attendance fidgeted and sighed.