Despues de la oscuridad

Dark Angel – After the Dark
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Once again, my frequent collaborator Matthew V Clemens—with whom I've written numerous published short stories—helped me here immeasurably. A knowledgeable Dark Angel fan, Matt co-plotted this tale and created a detailed story treatment from which I could develop After the Dark, which completes the trilogy editor Steve Saffel kindly commissioned me tocreate. Steve again provided consistently strong support, which included not just rounding up materials, but adding his own creative input. I would like to thank the creators of Dark Angel, James Cameron and Charles Eglee, for allowing us to continue and complete key aspects of their continuity. Thanks as well to Dark Angel scribe Moira Kirland Dekker; Debbie Olshan of 20th Century Fox; WendyCheseborough of Lightstorm; and, at Ballantine Books, Gillian Berman, Colette Russen, and Colleen Lindsay. We would like to thank the many Dark Angel fans who have shown us support by way of sales, correspondence, and lively Internet discussion. It is, frankly, intimidating holding the reins of a storytelling franchise so beloved by its fans, who often know so much more about Dark Angel than we do.Matt, Steve, and I hope that Dark Angel enthusiasts will appreciate this resolution to certain salient elements of this epic and—we trust—ongoing saga. "Love sickness needs a love cure." —Chinese proverb "Love hurts." —PHIL AND DON

Chapter One A COLD DAY IN HELL ANDER RIVER, ALBERTA DECEMBER 18. Six months on the run. Six months in small towns, big cities, motels, hotels, campsites, public parks,cohabiting with the riffraff, even the homeless, scrounging, surviving ... What a humiliating tenure this had been, in the post-Pulse ruins that was America, for a man of Ames White's abilities and sensibilities. But White was, if nothing else, a man able to endure difficulties, to overcome hardships, to shrug off adversities that would defeat even above-average specimens of mere humanity. True,he was not particularly blessed with patience—that attribute had always eluded him. Nor was grace in the face of frustration his long suit; forbearance in the presence of mediocrity—not his forte. Nor was compassion a trait he considered worth cultivating. So in his lack of "sensitivity, " he seemed—to the second- and third-rate minds he so often encountered—cruel, even cold. But such (wrongly)perceived cruelty and coldness only bespoke a superiority of mind and spirit, the end result of thousands of years of selective breeding; and, as such, were

part and parcel of his ability to prevail. Anyway, Ames White was free of most of these primitive "human" emotions, though admittedly vestiges remained. He had loved a woman, once; and he loved his son. But that was family. Breeding. Thatwas allowed, even encouraged. And Ames White was possessed with a dark, wicked streak of humor. He could well appreciate the irony of a "cold" character like himself finding refuge in the bitterly frigid Dene Tha town of Meander River, Alberta, Canada. Its population no larger than the Sunday crowd in a Seattle marketplace, Meander River had taken him about as far north as he could manage, short ofrenting a dogsled. The people who lived here were so removed from civilization that White wondered if these subhumans had even heard about the Pulse, let alone felt its repercussions. The Meander River economy was based on barter, and the citizens had very little use for computers, which meant scant had changed here, after what had been a cataclysm to the nearby United States. When terrorists setoff an electromagnetic pulse over the East Coast back in 2009, the USA had lost everything, a superpower instantly reduced to the status of Third World nation. To Meander River, the event was as trivial as an electrical outage in a thunderstorm. Buried under a mound of snow measured in feet, not inches, Meander River was the perfect vacation getaway for the person who didn't want to be found by...