After The Fall

After The Fall combines alien invasion, buddy comedy, and workplace satire to explore whether humans would make suitable pets. Humans must be silent, obedient, and good. John has lived by these rules for 120 years since The Fall, when the grays arrived to collect humanity's survivors from a ruined world. He is bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, a gray who treats him more like a person than most humans experience. Though Martok is broke, homeless, and unstable, their relationship represents a better arrangement than most. When Martok uses John's bond as collateral for an abandoned house he wants to develop into a retreat for wealthy grays, John discovers the limits of their friendship. He becomes entangled with an underworld boss, a girl raised by feral humans who despises domesticated pets like John, and Martok himself, whose ambitions are unraveling. A killer also stalks the woods. John has sixty days before Martok's loan is due to solve how humans became the domesticated species, make Martok's plans profitable enough to reclaim his freedom, and survive threats from feral humans and angry grays.