After The Fires Went Out: Descent (Book Four of the Unconventional Post-Apocalyptic Series): After The Fires Went Out, #4
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About this ebook
The story of Antoine Lagace.
The comet is coming. The town of Cochrane is already falling apart.
Ant Lagace is trying to adjust to his new role and his new family. But the new and dangerous world that's about to begin could destroy everything and everyone around him.
Read more from Regan Wolfrom
After The Fires Went Out
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Reviews for After The Fires Went Out
13 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I had really thought that I would enjoy this book. I found it very hard to keep reading, it failed to keep my interest. I also found that it was very forgettable. I felt that I had to endure long drawn out and dry descriptions.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I normally love apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, but I could not even finish this one. While it is technically well-written (no editing errors or things of that sort), it was boring, boring, boring! I will definitely not be reading the rest of the series.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I had a strange reaction to this book, and as such, this will be a strange review. I liked it, but disliked pretty much everyone in it - not that that should be the deciding factor, but it is a rarity for me. Baptiste is one strange duck (if I wasn't reading his journal entries, I would not have pegged him for survival as he is a singularly poor judge of character and should have a trail of newborns and toddlers in his wake), Sara is oddly motivated (and frankly, a punching bag), Fiona is deified, and Lisa and Graham (probably the two I'd want in my post-apocalyptic corner) blindly defer to Baptiste's mediocre judgement until it looks like suicide to continue. Ant, who is dead before the opening pages, is by far the character with the most genuine voice and someone I wish we could have gotten to know other than from his posthumous journal excerpts. Perhaps it is a post-apocalyptic plot device - a lot happens and yet nothing happens - which leaves the reader in limbo, but also only somewhat fulfilled. Regardless, I did enjoy reading ATFWO:Coyote and look forward to the next installment. Thumbs up for pop culture references (greats for signaling the time-stop of the apocalypse) and geography of remote Canadian wilderness.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was one of the longer books I've read but my disappointment was the fact that I was thrown in the middle of the story. The Author eluded to previous events in the past but never went on to tell about them. The book was well-written but I really wanted to know more about how this all started and how these people got together. I feel he spent too much time on one character. All the characters are interesting but you really don't know anything about them.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was given this book in exchange for an honest review.I enjoyed this book. I really enjoyed how the writer stayed away from the zombie post-apocalyptic invasion storyline. The storyline that was created could be very plausible. A group coming together in the insane time that follows an apocalyptic demise. I look forward to reading more from this author.
Book preview
After The Fires Went Out - Regan Wolfrom
PROLOGUE
- - -
Antoine Lagace had two journals. Not really two, exactly, since he didn’t write it that way when he was alive. But there were things in there, things that were better left out from how his friends would remember him, at least at first. Things about him, and about some of the people around him.
It wasn’t that Ant would have needed to be ashamed of what he’d done, of what had happened. That the mistakes he made were more than the people who cared about him could bear. It’s just that those parts of what happened weren’t the parts they’d needed to read at the time.
Or at least that’s what Sara Vachon had decided, not me, back when she took out some of the entries, and shared what was left with the people at McCartney Lake.
Ant’s journal is part handwritten notes, part doodles, and part lifestream, a digital conglomeration that screams out to be printed, which I imagine is the whole point of the kind of artwork that Ant liked to make. Something to hold and point to, or spit on, or maybe take a dump on, as needed.
So you can print out and hold a copy of his journal in your hands, if you’re patient enough to put it all together. It’d probably feel like he pasted it all together, just for you, some kind of collage of his thoughts.
I’ll do that soon.
-These are the parts that Sara Vachon had chosen to take out, the parts that have never been printed out and shared. I think Ant would have wanted them put back in, when the time was right.
Maybe this is the time. I don’t know. It’s not like I’m psychic or anything.
- - -
1
- - -
Thursday, May 11th
Charlotte snores. So very much.
Sometimes at night I close my eyes — not that I think I can fall asleep beside Charlotte’s sexy upturned flugelhorn nose — and I picture me riding her, not like sexual… okay, a little sexual… but it’s like she’s a riding lawnmower, and that snort-snort-gah-snort noise she makes is actually cutting the grass, as we drive in a predetermined pattern, naturally, to draw a faithful representation of my ass cheeks facing due east, to moon the varied assholes of the province of Quebec.
Some of my best ideas come from the middle of the night. I think I’ll sketch that up sometime, me astride Charlotte’s back, while she munches down on a nice field of grass and writes a message to our fellow Francophones.
So now that’s gotten a little more sexual…
-I’m surprised her parents let us share a room, but I guess that’s because A) it was never their house to begin with, and B) no one’s living in a fantasy world where I’m not porking their little girl on a regular basis.
Like usually I pork her at least once a day, twice if it’s raining outside. I’m pretty proud of that level of consistency.
I like realists like the Girards. I understand them, even if I’m not really anything like them.
But let’s be real here, because I’m feeling inspired by their cold fish approach to the universe. I love Charlotte, and I think I love her entire family. Her cousin Michelle with the heavier eyebrows, her other cousin Noah with the heaviest eyebrows of all… he’s married to a girl who’s way out of his league — and mine, though maybe less so. Then there’s her father, her mother… her uncle, her oldest sister, Victoria, and her youngest sister, Gabrielle.
Then there’s that second branch of the family, still living on their farm closer to Fletchers Lake.
But I’m not in love with any of those aforementioned Girards. Not even Noah. Or his eyebrows.
I’m only in love with Charlotte’s second youngest sister, that delightfully-flawed asshole, Natalie.
I just wish I didn’t have to act like I hated her.
Because it’s one or the other, yes? And the opposite of love is hate, so fuck me, right? I can’t be around Natalie, not without either treating her like she’s all I’ve ever wanted, or treating her like she’s that crumpled mess of hair and sludge you have to dig out of the drain of the bathtub.
There are a lot of Girards with long, brown hair. Including Noah. That means a lot of hair and sludge to clean out.
I try not to think about the fact that not all of that hair is from people’s heads.
-So I’ve learned that being the fun one isn’t great for giving yourself any free time. I don’t know how she figured it out, if it’s just some vibe I give off, but Noah and Talia’s daughter has latched onto me like a barnacle.
We do that, actually. We play barnacle, only little Franny calls it barnle
when she clamps both arms around one of my legs and sits on my foot.
Sometimes Gabby clamps onto the other leg, which looks ridiculous considering she’s a teensy bit taller than me, and the two of them come close to bringing me down, like I’m King Kong wearing high heels and sucking on his sixth bottle of Dos Equis.
It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, if I’m bitchy, if I’m half-cut, Franny wants to play with me. She says play with me, Anty
, which is confusing, because she calls every woman in the house who isn’t her mother Anty
.
It’s weird, because I’d never actually spoken to a real live two-year-old before Charlotte dragged my beautiful carcass home to her family.
Now I feel like I’ve been around kids all my life.
Maybe it’s just that a full afternoon of barnle
and hidansee
feels like fifty years or so.
In other news, Antonauts, we’ve boxed up pretty much everything that isn’t food, aside from a few changes of clothes and anything we use to shoot things and/or people. The evil left-wing media likes to pretend gender roles are dead and buried, but clearly they’re doing fine (my caveman dad’s dreams come to life), since I had to bust my ass with heavy lifting while the Girard girls did everything that didn’t put long-term muscle health in jeopardy, like filling suitcases with clothes and organizing the kitchen.
I’m not sure why the kitchen cabinets need to be organized four days before we leave forever. But I guess that’s something a simple-minded penis-holster like me will never understand.
Fisher picked this Sunday — Comet Day — to go, which I thought was as asinine as any half-assed Fisher Livingston idea, until he pointed out that the world might change more than a little when the comet spanks us, so it makes sense to see what happens before heading out, without waiting any longer than you have to.
That, and the little hiccup of those swarthy bikers who have already made it clear that they’re coming for Cochrane sooner or later, with both sooner and later falling sometime between Monday morning and Monday afternoon.
I guess they might be pulling some kind of biker prank, like twisting the caps half off your shotgun shells so all the powder falls out when you load ’em, or jabbing a socket wrench into your brownie hole while you’re passed out from too much Jack and/or peyote.
But usually when people leave notes pinned to a couple of murdered Protection Committee Patrolmen, they’re not just bullshitting you.
Usually that means you’ll be fucked pretty hard — socket wrench optional, but not required — if you stick around to find out what happens next.
- -
Friday, May 12th
Today was looking like a calm things down and you might as well smoke a joint
day, because it’s the day before the day before
, so no one’s feeling that last minute pressure just yet. I made an earnest request to spend the day stoned and/or drunk off my butt, but Charlotte had other, loftier ideas.
I should probably also mention that I’ve been out of weed for six weeks. I’ve decided to blame it on those out-of-touch politicians in Ottawa.
Charlotte wanted to go on a bike ride, up to the old greenhouses on the way to Highway 11. I told her it was the dumbest idea she’d had since breakfast, and she laughed at me, then went outside to grab her bike.
Naturally, Natalie and Gabrielle caught wind of it, and the two of them weren’t far behind her. We were lucky that Franny didn’t find out; two year olds just cannot seem to keep up with those weak little stick legs of theirs.
Natalie gave me that smile she gives me, that look like we’ve got some secret together that even I don’t seem to know about. When Natalie smiles, everyone else seems to blur up in my field of vision, which isn’t the best thing to happen to my ongoing relationship with her sister Charlotte.
I’m a good-looking yet abysmally terrible human being — I know that — but sometimes I wonder what life would be like for me if Charlotte wasn’t around anymore. (Like as if what happens to me personally would matter at all at that point.)
Would I have to move out of there and start all over? Or… could I continue on with the remaining Girards, explore things with Natalie, see where that can go…
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I wonder what kind of shitty-ass pothole-riddled hellscape would have its main thoroughfare paved with the kind of intentions I’ve got. Winnipeg, maybe?
I’d say I couldn’t look myself in the mirror, but let’s be realistic here. Those gorgeous brown eyes, that chiseled jaw… yes, I’m still the total package.
Anyway…
Because the three younger sisters were going — Victoria never goes, since outside is too far from the kitchen and its assortment of snacks — I would have to go with them.
Loving two women is never a great idea. Loving two women who happen to be sisters is probably the worst idea you could ever have, not just because any possibilities for a threesome are astronomically more difficult to pull off, but because every time they’re out together, there’s always a chance that something could happen and you’ll lose them both.
Shit like car crashes and rabid squirrel attacks would have been manageable risks before society collapse; now every second where I can’t pinpoint their exact location is an unacceptable risk.
Not that being there when it happens will actually help things. I’m not some kind of superhero.
I’m not gun-happy ol’ Baptiste.
I’m not even gun-reasonably-content Denis Girard.
I’m just Antoine Lagace. Sometimes I entertain these notions that I’d make an excellent supervillain, with an evil lair and some kind of good-guy-killing superweapons, with a super-awesome catchphrase and a maniacal laugh… but I’ve never considered myself a real-life All-Beef Hero. Not one time. Okay, one time, and by request, but even then, I ended up flipping that purple-haired girl on her belly and going all mad scientist on her rear.
-We rode to Menard Lake Road, the four of us, the girls on their little flowery bicycles, me on a beat-up old entry-level mountain bike from Canadian Tire. I’d slung one of the rifles over my shoulder, more for show than shooting. As I think I’ve made abundantly clear now, I’ve always been a fapper, not a fighter, and while I know how to kill things in theory, since my father made it a requirement of Lagace Citizenship, I’m not sure I’d be that great in a pinch.
Baptiste gets us Citizens’ Patrol types to practice once every couple weeks, at the half-cheeked shooting range he’s set up at the golf course, but I’ve always been middle of the pack, at best.
The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I’m still a better shot than the other half of the bunch. Most of ‘em couldn’t hit a rabid rampaging squirrel, even if it’s nuts were the size of a barn. And most of the squirrel nuts around here are pretty near that size.
Guys like Bron Vezeau, Lanny Smith, and Benji Cheechoo. Some of them are still around, still being terrible shots, but some have left, Cheech for one, buggered off to Kapuskasing to reconnect with his band.
People have been giving up on us for months now. Bunch of assholes.
We reached the bend at Slaughterhouse Lake and took a quick break, after only five minutes of riding, since we don’t really have the same amount of energy as little fifteen-and-fit Gabrielle, and we seem to spend half our time just trying to keep up with her.
They used to take the cattle here, to slaughter them, and they’d dump their remains in the lake. So when things were really dry, like during a hot summer with not much rain, the water levels would drop low enough that people would see the leftover carcasses sitting there in the sun.
I saw those dead cow bones out there today.
The lake levels are never this low in May.
I drew a 12 Panel Pitch for a horror movie, tentatively titled Slaughter House Lake, which, it may surprise you to know, was named for a certain lake with bits of real cow.
In the pitch, two sisters and some witty short guy — who’s totally not based on me — discover human remains on some of the exposed lake bed, and then some crazed murderer chases them around, and both sisters magically end up having their shirts ripped, and have to take off their pants… cue incestuous lesbian action, and a climax where the short guy finds a really big gun and goes to town on the evildoer.
Wait… does that count as being a hero?
You wouldn’t think I could squeeze that all into a pitch with twelve little squares, but I pulled it off. The secret is not to waste any time on things like character development. No one in Hollywood ever bought an option based on some idiot protagonist's story arc.
For some reason, I never showed that particular objet d’art to Charlotte. Maybe one day I’ll be drunk or stoned enough to show it to Natalie.
Oh, the unholy power of suggestion…
-We reached the greenhouse after another five minutes of intensely slow cycling.
It used to be the place to get your flowers and vegetables and backhoe digging, but now the greenhouse is just another abandoned homestead, with weed-filled fields in front, and the frames of nearly a dozen long quonset greenhouses, the covering ripped, torn, and mostly blown away.
That family’s been gone for about nine months. They left not long after the OPP abandoned the north, when Toronto was deemed more essential than a bunch of little mining and lumber towns in the middle of nowhere.
It comes as a shock to almost everyone when you realize that the police aren’t required to protect you. They are well within their rights to prioritize, and places like Cochrane and Iroquois Falls ended up a few lines below the bottom of the list.
That family left not just because the cops had gone, but because the cops being gone had made them the first targets of the very first marauders. The day after the OPP detachment got its Back in 50,000 Minutes
sign put up in the front window, four men in black masks showed up at the greenhouse and started taking anything that was still growing.
I’m not even sure what they had to steal in the middle of September; I guess they keep some stuff alive through the winter months, maybe?
All I know is that the family felt lucky to be alive, and they packed up and left the next day, bound for that familiar fantasyland, Temiskaming.
Everyone thinks Temiskaming is safe from the bad stuff.
I’m not sure which idiot came up with that notion.
We toured the remains of the greenhouse, not because we expected to find anything left over, but because there’s some perverse pleasure in getting all down in the dumps about a place that’s fallen apart.
Like how they used to have those photo albums from Detroit, before the Motown Revival we learned about in eighth grade history. Abandoned schools with papers and books all over the floors, that beautiful old theatre where these crazy ornate fixtures were cracking and falling down, because no one could be bothered to try and save them.
I bet those city fathers and mothers feel pretty stupid that they let things get that bad. What a fucking waste.
I feel a little like that now, looking at how these growing quonsets are practically ruined. I guess we could recover them, clean them up, repair any little twists and flaws in the structure.
I could run the whole thing myself. Plant vegetables and a few fruit trees in most of the quonsets, while reserving one for my recreational crops and another as my supervillain and/or mad scientist lair. You knew I’d come back to that yet again. You knew it.
Maybe Natalie would want to help…
That right there is how I’m going to get myself in shit. My mind always goes to Natalie first. I always see her first when I come into a room. I always mention her first out of everyone.
If I was Charlotte, I’d kick my ass.
-Natalie knew what I was thinking about. She’d seen the way I was looking at the frames and the flooring, lost in thought.
As we got back onto our bikes, she brought it up.
We could do it,
she said. Get this place going again.
For weed,
I said. Because that’s the priority.
Stop trying to get my sister stoned,
Charlotte said.
It’s about survival, Charlotte. Medicine. And uh… hemp rope…
I’d want to help,
Natalie said. As long we grow some vegetables in there, too.
We’d have some veggies,
I said. But no green peppers. We need to draw the line somewhere.
Maybe apples,
Gabrielle said. Do you think we could grow apples?
No one’s growing anything,
Charlotte said. We’re leaving on Sunday, remember?
We’re just talking,
Natalie said.
It’s not a done deal,
I said.
Charlotte knew what I was saying. She gave me an appropriate glare.
You’re coming with us,
Gabrielle said, aren’t you, Ant?
I’m stuck with you,
I said. Can’t get out now.
You can always get out,
Charlotte said. She smiled. Just not alive.
Today was looking like a calm things down and you might as well smoke a joint
day, because it’s the day before the day before
, so no one’s feeling that last minute pressure just yet. I made an earnest request to spend the day stoned and/or drunk off my butt, but Charlotte had other, loftier ideas.
I should probably also mention that I’ve been out of weed for six weeks. I’ve decided to blame it on those out-of-touch politicians in Ottawa.
Charlotte wanted to go on a bike ride, up to the old greenhouses on the way to Highway 11. I told her it was the dumbest idea she’d had since breakfast, and she laughed at me, then went outside to grab her bike.
Naturally, Natalie and Gabrielle caught wind of it, and the two of them weren’t far behind her. We were lucky that Franny didn’t find out; two year olds just cannot seem to keep up with those weak little stick legs of theirs.
Natalie gave me that smile she gives me, that look like we’ve got some secret together that even I don’t seem to know about. When Natalie smiles, everyone else seems to blur up in my field of vision, which isn’t the best thing to happen to my ongoing relationship with her sister Charlotte.
I’m a good-looking yet abysmally terrible human being — I know that — but sometimes I wonder what life would be like for me if Charlotte wasn’t around anymore. (Like as if what happens to me personally would matter at all at that point.)
Would I have to move out of there and start all over? Or… could I continue on with the remaining Girards, explore things with Natalie, see where that can go…
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I wonder what kind of shitty-ass pothole-riddled hellscape would have its main thoroughfare paved with the kind of intentions I’ve got. Winnipeg, maybe?
I’d say I couldn’t look myself in the mirror, but let’s be realistic here. Those gorgeous brown eyes, that chiseled jaw… yes, I’m still the total package.
Anyway…
Because the three younger sisters were going — Victoria never goes, since outside is too far from the kitchen and its assortment of snacks — I would have to go with them.
Loving two women is never a great idea. Loving two women who happen to be sisters is probably the worst idea you could ever have, not just because any possibilities for a threesome are astronomically more difficult to pull off, but because every time they’re out together, there’s always a chance that something could happen and you’ll lose them both.
Shit like car crashes and rabid squirrel attacks would have been manageable risks before society collapse; now every second where I can’t pinpoint their exact location is an unacceptable risk.
Not that being there when it happens will actually help things. I’m not some kind of superhero.
I’m not gun-happy ol’ Baptiste.
I’m not even gun-reasonably-content Denis Girard.
I’m just Antoine Lagace. Sometimes I entertain these notions that I’d make an excellent supervillain, with an evil lair and some kind of good-guy-killing superweapons, with a super-awesome catchphrase and a maniacal laugh… but I’ve never considered myself a real-life All-Beef Hero. Not one time. Okay, one time, and by request, but even then, I ended up flipping that purple-haired girl on her belly and going all mad scientist on her rear.
-We rode to Menard Lake Road, the four of us, the girls on their little flowery bicycles, me on a beat-up old entry-level mountain bike from Canadian Tire. I’d slung one of the rifles over my shoulder, more for show than shooting. As I think I’ve made abundantly clear now, I’ve always been a fapper, not a fighter, and while I know how to kill things in theory, since my father made it a requirement of Lagace Citizenship, I’m not sure I’d be that great in a pinch.
Baptiste gets us Citizens’ Patrol types to practice once every couple weeks, at the half-cheeked shooting range he’s set up at the golf course, but I’ve always been middle of the pack, at best.
The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I’m still a better shot than the other half of the bunch. Most of ‘em couldn’t hit a rabid rampaging squirrel, even if it’s nuts were the size of a barn. And most of the squirrel nuts around here are pretty near that size.
Guys like Bron Vezeau, Lanny Smith, and Benji Cheechoo. Some of them are still around, still being terrible shots, but some have left, Cheech for one, buggered off to Kapuskasing to reconnect with his band.
People have been giving up on us for months now. Bunch of assholes.
We reached the bend at Slaughterhouse Lake and took a quick break, after only five minutes of riding, since we don’t really have the same amount of energy as little fifteen-and-fit Gabrielle, and we seem to spend half our time just trying to keep up with her.
They used to take the cattle here, to slaughter them, and they’d dump their remains in the lake. So when things were really dry, like during a hot summer with not much rain, the water levels would drop low enough that people would see the leftover carcasses sitting there in the sun.
I saw those dead cow bones out there today.
The lake levels are never this low in May.
I drew a 12 Panel Pitch for a horror movie, tentatively titled Slaughter House Lake, which, it may surprise you to know, was named for a certain lake with bits of real cow.
In the pitch, two sisters and some witty short guy — who’s totally not based on me — discover human remains on some of the exposed lake bed, and then some crazed murderer chases them around, and both sisters magically end up having their shirts ripped, and have to take off their pants… cue incestuous lesbian action, and a climax where the short guy finds a really big gun and goes to town on the evildoer.
Wait… does that count as being a hero?
You wouldn’t think I could squeeze that all into a pitch with twelve little squares, but I pulled it off. The secret is not to waste any time on things like character development. No one in Hollywood ever bought an option based on some idiot protagonist's story arc.
For some reason, I never showed that particular objet d’art to Charlotte. Maybe one day I’ll be drunk or stoned enough to show it to Natalie.
Oh, the unholy power of suggestion…
-We reached the greenhouse after another five minutes of intensely slow cycling.
It used to be the place to get your flowers and vegetables and backhoe digging, but now the greenhouse is just another abandoned homestead, with weed-filled fields in front, and the frames of nearly a dozen long quonset greenhouses, the covering ripped, torn, and mostly blown away.
That family’s been gone for about nine months. They left not long after the OPP abandoned the north, when Toronto was deemed more essential than a bunch of little mining and lumber towns in the middle of nowhere.
It comes as a shock to almost everyone when you realize that the police aren’t required to protect you. They are well within their rights to prioritize, and places like Cochrane and Iroquois Falls ended up a few lines below the bottom of the list.
That family left not just because the cops had gone, but because the cops being gone had made them the first targets of the very first marauders. The day after the OPP detachment got its Back in 50,000 Minutes
sign put up in the front window, four men in black masks showed up at the greenhouse and started taking anything that was still growing.
I’m not even sure what they had to steal in the middle of September; I guess they keep some stuff alive through the winter months, maybe?
All I know is that the family felt lucky to be alive, and they packed up and left the next day, bound for that familiar fantasyland, Temiskaming.
Everyone thinks Temiskaming is safe from the bad stuff.
I’m not sure which idiot came up with that notion.
We toured the remains of the greenhouse, not because we expected to find anything left over, but because there’s some perverse pleasure in getting all down in the dumps about a place that’s fallen apart.
Like how they used to have those photo albums from Detroit, before the Motown Revival we learned about in eighth grade history. Abandoned schools with papers and books all over the floors, that beautiful old theatre where these crazy ornate fixtures were cracking and falling down, because no one could be bothered to try and save them.
I bet those city fathers and mothers feel pretty stupid that they let things get that bad. What a fucking waste.
I feel a little like that now, looking at how these growing quonsets are practically ruined. I guess we could recover them, clean them up, repair any little twists and flaws in the structure.
I could run the whole thing myself. Plant vegetables and a few fruit trees in most of the quonsets, while reserving one for my recreational crops and another as my supervillain and/or mad scientist lair. You knew I’d come back to that yet again. You knew it.
Maybe Natalie would want to help…
That right there is how I’m going to get myself in shit. My mind always goes to Natalie first. I always see her first when I come into a room. I always mention her first out of everyone.
If I was Charlotte, I’d kick my ass.
-Natalie knew what I was thinking about. She’d seen the way I