Part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire, After The Fall by Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7, asks an important question: would humans really make great pets?
 
Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.

All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the "good" grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.

But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral for an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon, he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl raised by feral humans who has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him. 

With sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due, John must unravel the mystery of how humans wound up at the wrong end of domestication and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into enough profit to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
EDWARD ASHTON is the author of the novels Three Days in April, The End of Ordinary, Mickey7, Antimatter Blues, Mal Goes to War, and The Fourth Consort, as well as of short stories which have appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an Italian sausage company to Escape Pod, Analog, and Fireside Fiction. He lives in a cabin on the shore of an inland sea, where he enjoys wandering the woods with a neurotic hound, teaching quantum physics to sullen graduate students, and whittling.