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I&039;d like to thank a number of people for their help and support

First, and perhaps most obviously, to John Schoenfelder at Thomas Dunne Books in New York and Jo Fletcher at Gollancz in London; thank you both for your tireless enthusiasestions

To my family and friends, thank you for your patience, tolerance, and unwavering belief and support over the last few years as I&039;ve negotiated this particularly crazy section of ely i-suffering wife, Lisa, who never questions why she regularly catches erround bunkers, torture techniques, and countless other topics!

Finally, and most important, to those of you who&039;ve read and enjoyedback for more! Particular thanks to those readers who&039;ve been withaway thousands of free downloads of Autumn and all my subsequent adventures with "Infected Books" Some of you read Hater when it was self-published in the su since then for this sequel to arrive It&039;s finally here and I hope you enjoy it I pro for the conclusion to the trilogy!

To everyone I&039;ve listed above and to anyone else I should have mentioned but didn&039;t, thank you

i

THE CAUSE OF THE Hate (as it had come to be known on both sides of the uneven divide) was irrelevant At the very beginning, when the doubters had been forced to accept that so and that the troubles weren&039;t just the result of media-fueled, copycat mob violence, the usual raft of baseless explanations were proposed; scientists had screwed up in a lab somewhere, it was an evolutionary quirk, it was a virus, a terrorist attack, aliens, or worse Thing was, people were quickly forced to realize, it didn&039;t matter You could bullshit and postulate and hypothesize all you wanted-it wouldn&039;t do you any harood either Within days of the belligerent population finally beginning to accept that the shit had indeed hit the fan with alhty force, no one talked about the cause of the Hate any about it The only thing of any importance to the non-Hater section of the populace noas survival And the so-called Haters? The one-third of society who had changed? Those previously "nore, brutal, and re thatevery last one of the Unchanged (as they labeled their enemy) until none remained alive

Before it had actually happened, the popular assumption in most apocalyptic films and books was that the population as a whole would iainst their coht back or take cover and hunker dohen it becaeddon-like proportions was loo on the horizon They didn&039;t Whether it was because many of theh fear or denial until it was too late, or whether it was instead just their stubborn refusal to abandon their homes, material possessions, and daily routines, no one knew No one cared A cynic ed by an inherently bad-tereed-driven society, but the exact reasons for society&039;s lack of reaction were neither clear nor important The bottom line was that the extent and i weren&039;t fully appreciated until it was far too late, and the repercussions were devastating This, it was painfully apparent, was no ordinary war

Inwas indefensible This conflict wasn&039;t faction versus faction or arainst army; it was individual versus individual, more than six billion armies of one Beyond that, the Hate didn&039;t care who you were, where you were, or what you were You were simply on one side or the other, your position in this neisted, fucked-up world decided without your involvement by unknown variables and fate Within weeks coanizations fell apart Families crumbled The Haters were everywhere and everyone, the whole world beaten up froed to Haters was generally thought to have settled somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1 In spite of their enemy&039;s ferocity and apparently insatiable bloodlust, their greater nue that was quickly squandered With no time or inclination to look for a cure (could the condition even be reversed?), separation and eradication soon beca lessons learned through history and any uments, a halfhearted atteht the Unchanged plan of attack was forced to become a plan of defense, and their first priority was to ether,swollen, overcrowded, undersupplied, understaffed refugee camps Once they&039;d successfully separated "us" froed theory went, they&039;d head back out into the wastelands and hunt the fuckers out

Less than four o, when the last frosts of winter had finally thawed and the first green buds of the year&039;s neth had tentatively started to appear, this public park had been a frequently ereenery buried deep within the drab gray concrete heart of the city It was a place office workers used to escape to during lunch breaks or take a shortcut through on their way to or fro hooky froarettes and carve their names on wooden benches and tree trunks A place where elderly shoppers with too much time and too many memories would sit and talk to anyone who&039;d listen about how the country had gone to ruin and how things used to be so much better back in their day and it had to be said, they were right

Tucked away in the long shadows of office buildings, shopping malls, convention centers, and multiplex cinerass was now covered in craee-filled tents Two soccer fields had beco pads, constantly in use The patch of soft asphalt where children&039;s swings, o-rounds, and slides used to be had been co stockpiles ofrooms on the far side of the park were now a hopelessly inadequate field hospital Next to the s, a tall wooden fence had been erected all the way around the park&039;s four concrete tennis courts They had, until three weeks ago, been used as a ue, but by then the nu removal had reached such a level that the cordoned-off area had becoer any other way of hygienically disposing of the dead

Before his ed screa into the war he&039;d desperately tried to isolate himself from, Mark Tillotsen had sold insurance in a call center He&039;d worked hard and had enjoyed (asinsurance in a call center) the job He&039;d liked the anonymity of the role, and he&039;d taken comfort froulations he hid behind, and the targets he worked toward In his last developer had told hied slowly through the afternoon heat toward a convoy of three battered trucks bookended by heavily armed military vehicles, he wondered whether he, or anyone else for that matter, had any kind of future left to look forward to

Mark hauled hied the driver His naether several times in recent weeks Marshall was a stereotypical trucker,than anywhere else His ar tattoos hidden beneath a thick covering of gray hair He gripped the steering wheel tight in his leather-gloved hands even though they weren&039;tforward, his expression sullen and serious To show no e Mark see how nervous he really was This wasn&039;t getting any easier

"All right?"

"Fine," Mark replied quickly "You?"

Marshall nodded "People today, not supplies"

"How come?"

"Helicopter spotted them on infrared, about three miles outside the zone"

"Many?"

"Don&039;t know till we get there"

That was the end of their brief, staccato exchange Nothing h it idely believed that the Change was over and by now you&039;d knohether the person standing next to you was going to rip your fucking head off or not, conversations between strangers remained brief and uncomfortable and only happened when necessary You constantly trod a fine line; to ignore soerous, to overreact orse You didn&039;t want to give anyone reason to believe you ht be one of them All that Mark knew about Marshall was his name, and that was hoanted to keep it

Tiine of the truck, the sudden rattle, noise, and vibrationMark feel even more nauseous and nervous than he already was Re this, he repeatedly told hi outside the so-called secure zone allowed him to escape the confines of the shitty, crairlfriend, and several other fa militia volunteers like him were paid with extra rations-a slender additional cut of whatever they brought back More i those evil bastards being hunted down and executed was as close to revenge as he was ever going to get And Christ, he needed soh no fault of his own his life had been turned upside down and torn apart Like just about everyone else, he&039;d lost al and he wanted someone to pay for it

The truck lurched forward, stopping just inches short of the back of the vehicle in front, then lurched forward again as the convoy began to unship took off fro up position overhead, their escort and their eyes while they were outside the city