I'm Robert Evans. You probably know me from my podcast Behind the Bastards in my 2019 series.

It Could Happen Here, which was a rather unsparing look at the possibility of a second American Civil War.

Well, that's actually an idea I've been playing around with for a long time, ever since I was a young man traveling throughout the American Southwest and watching

the opening fractures of the culture war that currently grips our country. Starting in the mid-aughts, I

began traveling to actual war zones in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria. That further informed my thinking

on the matter, and I started working on a novel called After the Revolution,

which you're about to have a chance to listen to soon. After the Revolution is set in a future

United States shattered by civil war. Most of the book takes place in what was once Texas and is now

an independent republic in the American South. It follows three characters, which I'm about

to introduce you to now. First is Manney, a fixer who lives in the independent city of Austin.

Mani smiled the way the British journalists face blanched as the old Toyota hit the pothole.

Reggie wasn't used to bad roads, cars driven by actual

humans, or the way the heavy metal of the gun mount in the truck bed made the aluminum frame grown.

That was all familiar to Mani. He'd grown up in Ciad de Muerta, back before the lake would blast,

back when people had still called it Dallas. The truck's driver veered around the bloated corpse of a large dog lying in the middle

of the road. Reggie gripped the truck bed with white knuckles and eyed the swaying

ammo belt of the 20-millimeter cannon like it was a coiled snake.

The gunner, Mani's cousin Alejandro, grinned down at the journalist.

The suspension's a little fucked, yeah?'

The Brit nodded and turned greener when the technical hit another pothole.

Mani supposed he should offer a comforting word to the man.

That would be good business.

...