The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

by Michael R. Hicks

  “The king of nowhere,” the man said.

  “Shit.” Pete looked at Campbell, letting his aim waver. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Campbell nodded, a little embarrassed. He collected his revolver and looked at the man standing over the corpse. The man was bald, a little over six feet, and dressed in a matching gym suit, a khaki hunter’s vest over it. Although the suit was dirty, the man appeared well-groomed and fit, despite his age.

  “Who is that?” Campbell managed to ask, pointing his revolver at the corpse.

  “What,” the man said. “What is that? These things don’t deserve to be called a ‘who.’”

  Campbell couldn’t tell by looking whether the corpse was once a Zaphead. All he knew was, it had once been human. Yet, Campbell had not heard it approaching, and Zapheads weren’t known for stealth and subtlety.

  “You sure it’s a Zaphead?” Campbell asked the man.

  “It’s not the first one I’ve killed.”

  “It was stalking me,” Campbell said. “They’re supposed to charge.”

  “It was creeping up, all right. But not on you. It was watching us.”

  “Wait a sec,” Pete said. “How come you could see in the dark?”

  The man fished around in the hip pocket of his coveralls, eliciting a threatening wave of the Glock from Pete. The man ignored the gesture and pulled out some tinted goggles on a thick strap. “Infrared,” the man said. “Nothing but the best in survival gear if you want to survive, right?”

  How come WE didn’t think of that? Oh, yeah. Because Pete’s drunk off his ass and my survivalist training ended in the sixth grade when Mom made me quit the Boy Scouts.

  “Is it just you two fellas?” the man asked, tracking his flashlight along the scrub.

  “Yeah,” Campbell grunted. “How come this one was sneaking? I’ve never seen any of them sneak.”

  “They’re changing.”

  “Changing?” Pete said. “Like what, growing a third eye or something?”

  “The way they act. Come on, you can ask the professor about it.” The man turned and headed into the forest.

  “Damn, man.” Pete said to Campbell. “Hardcore.”

  The man stopped ten feet ahead and turned. “You boys ain’t dangerous, are you? With them guns?”

  “No, sir,” Campbell said.

  “Didn’t think so. I bet you’re too scared to shoot if you had to.” He continued toward the flickering fire.

  Campbell switched on his flashlight and pointed it down at the corpse. He imagined he heard a low chuckling but decided it was the thing’s stomach gases. But it didn’t look like a thing, or a veggie, or a Zaphead. It looked like somebody’s chubby uncle, a bus driver or brake mechanic or off-duty cop. The corpse wore a dark short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and scuffed leather shoes without socks.

  Campbell wondered where the man had been when the solar flare erupted. Zapheads rarely moved with any sort of real intention besides venting rage on anything that breathed. If they were changing, evolving, and adapting, he hadn’t seen such behavior manifested. But hadn’t the woman in the plumbing van pounced with a glimmer of intelligence?

  “I don’t want these things to change,” Campbell said. “I was just starting to get used to the idea of a planet full of mindless killers. I don’t know if I can handle any more surprises.”

  “Well, we better catch up with Mister Happy up there.”

  “And his friends, apparently.”

  “Wonder if they got any beer?”

  Campbell led the way, giving the corpse a wide berth. He wondered how many more Zapheads might be lurking in the bushes, watching the campfire and waiting for an opportunity.

  Pete staggered by him, wobbling and cussing, hacking at the saplings with his free hand. “Dude could have let us borrow his goggles.”

  “I have the feeling he’s not the sharing kind. He’d probably say some jock bullshit like ‘Only survivalists survive.’”

  As they neared the forest, the air became moister and cooler. The creek lay beyond them in the dark, gurgling in oblivious merriment. The clouds had spread out in great purple skeins above, backlit by the psychedelic auroras that came in the wake of the solar storms. Somewhere above them, the moon continued its track across the sky. The world continued to turn, all the great cogs of the universe appeared to fit into their proper slots, and the machineries of time functioned in perfect precision, but the one big piece of it was broken.

  Campbell looked back toward the road once, wondering about their bicycles, but the night had swallowed all their travels. Now there was only the bobbing fire, and that pungent, tantalizing smoke, and a future where former humans crouched in a depraved hunger for violence.

  “Do you see any of them?” Pete said as they entered the silent corridor of trees.

  “Shh.” Pete squinted at the crackling fire, playing his flashlight around, wondering where their rescuer was. They stepped into a clearing that contained a couple of tents, a blanket hanging from a wire strung between two trees, and some gray cookware stacked on a sodden stump.

  No one was in sight.

  Then a deep voice erupted from the surrounding shadows: “Drop your guns and move real slow.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They’d decided on a room in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of the city, just below the interstate but away from any commercial developments or residential neighborhoods. A convenience store and a Taco Bell were the only other buildings in the little off-road cluster designed to bleed money from travelers on the way south to Columbia or north to Raleigh. In the murky light of sundown, Rachel couldn’t make out any of the vehicles she knew were scattered along the road.

  There were fewer cars in front of the convenience store, so they chose that one to explore instead of the Taco Bell. The fast-food restaurant with its darkened glass seemed absurdly like an abandoned temple, a religion whose comforts no longer served the masses. Rachel could smell the spoiled cheese emanating from the place. At least, she hoped it was cheese.

  She kept watch out front while DeVontay prowled the convenience store for food and supplies. She clutched the flashlight, afraid to turn it on, figuring that invisibility was the best defense. The world’s silence was oppressive and weighty—a new sort of gravity enveloped her in an alien skin. The only sounds were the occasional crashes as DeVontay pillaged the store.

  He soon emerged with his backpack bulging, a bag of Doritos ripped open in his hand. He crunched the corn chips as he said, “Got us enough to get through the night.”

  “See anybody?”

  “Just a couple dead folks.”

  “Were they Zapheads?”

  “Why you call ‘em that?”

  “That’s what the media was calling them, before the power went out.”

  DeVontay headed for the motel and she followed, glancing at the Taco Bell. No more running for the border.

  “The solar flares,” Rachel said. “Astronomers knew they were coming. They just didn’t know what would happen.”

  “I never was no good at science.” DeVontay held the bag of chips out to her.

  “You shouldn’t be eating that junk food.”

  “What, it will rot my brain?” He snorted in laughter.

  “That stuff’s full of preservatives.”

  “I might need me some preserving, if things get any worse.” He pulled his pistol from his belt as they approached the drop-off circle by the motel’s main entrance.

  A red Fiat was pulled up to the curb, its front doors open. Rachel gave the car a wide berth but DeVontay peered through the window. “Bad ride.”

  “It’s dead, like every other car we tried in the last half hour.”

  “Why you got to be so negative all the time?”

  “Maybe because everybody I know and love is either dead or trying to crack open my skull,” she said.

  “Well, that’s what you get for lovin’ people,” DeVontay said. “I never had that problem.”

  He left th
e Fiat and joined her outside the sliding-glass doors, where she peered into the shadowed lobby. The front desk was unattended. A dark form slumped in one of those stiff, formal chairs that were designed for decoration, not for sitting.

  “Somebody’s in there,” Rachel said. “Should we knock?”

  DeVontay tugged his pistol from his belt. “Are they moving?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  DeVontay pushed at narrow gap where the two sliding doors stood a few inches from meeting. “No electricity. This bitch won’t open.”

  “Maybe if you yell a little louder, we can get some Zapheads to bust it open for us.”

  “Ain’t nobody here. Not alive, no ways.”

  Rachel didn’t want to think about all the bodies spread throughout the motel. There were at least 30 cars in the parking lot, which meant a big slice of America: business travelers, families on vacation, retired people headed to see the grandkids.

  “We could break the glass,” Rachel said.

  “Like that wouldn’t draw attention?”

  “I don’t know how well those things can hear. We still don’t much about them.”

  “Wait here.” DeVontay gave her the bag of Doritos headed back to the Fiat, then he stooped through the driver’s-side door. A moment later, the trunk popped open. DeVontay returned with a scissors jack and handle.

  “Lucky it had a manual latch, or I woulda had to bust into it,” DeVontay said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “So, we can add ‘car thief’ to your list of survival skills. Great.” She put a Dorito in her mouth and the crunch filled her ears from the inside.

  “Says the lady eating a stolen Dorito.”

  She glanced down at the bag and realized the moral compass, even hers, had shifted with the arrival of the solar flares. Perhaps God’s commandments needed a revision.

  She might have thought that the catastrophe had been a punishment for the wicked, except that the apocalypse had punished everyone, good or bad, white or black, believer or infidel. But she couldn’t worry about the big picture right now. First, she had to survive the night.

  DeVontay wedged the jack between the bottoms of the motel doors and cranked the handle until it was tight. At first, the doors held, and then they groaned in protest before yielding. The jack handle quivered under the stress, and Rachel wondered if the glass would shatter after all. Then the doors gave a grudging inch, and then another.

  When DeVontay had widened the gap to more than a foot, he stepped aside and retrieved his pistol. “Ladies first.”

  “You’re a real gentleman.”

  “I told you, I ain’t no gentleman. Just a man. Now get in there and just scream if you see any Zapheads.”

  She stared into his face, which was getting harder to see as night encroached. His glass eye was lost in shadow, but his real one burned with impatience. She pushed her backpack through the opening, and switched on her flashlight, keeping the beam directed on the lobby floor.

  Rachel stepped inside, immediately hit by the corrupt air of the three-story mausoleum. She played the flashlight beam over the figure in the chair and wished she hadn’t. She had been a maid with a Spanish complexion and dark hair knotted into a bun, perhaps taking a final break without realizing her shift was about to be punched out by the Big Time Clock in the Sky. Beside her was a cart filled with folded towels, linens, and cleaning supplies.

  “Grab this,” DeVontay said, shoving his own backpack through the opening. She had to wiggle it to get it through, but was uneasy about turning her back on the dark lobby. Once she got it through, DeVontay followed, and she drew comfort from the pistol he now pointed before him into the darkness.

  “Smell that?” she said.

  He took her flashlight and walked over to the maid’s cart, ignoring the body. He came back with a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer. He squirted some on his fingers and rubbed the goo above his upper lip, into the faint stubble of his mustache. He gave an exaggerated sniff and passed her the bottle.

  She understood and aped his actions. The perfumed aroma immediately filled her nostrils and masked the smell of death.

  “You’re pretty resourceful,” she said.

  “Saw it on a TV show,” he said.

  “Wow.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. We got TV in Philly, too. Before it fried out, I mean.”

  Outside, a faint dusting of stars stuck to the deep ceiling of the sky, the rippling green bands of aurora borealis painting the darkness.

  “Let’s get a room,” she said.

  “I could make a joke here, but it’s the end of the world,” he said. He crossed the lobby to the front desk, flicking the flashlight down each wing to make sure they were empty. He went behind the desk and into the open office while Rachel shouldered her backpack and waited. A moment later, he came out holding up a key ring.

  “Key cards won’t work, but one of these gotta be the master key,” he said.

  “Hurry. I’m getting the creeps out here.”

  “Let’s take the first one we come to,” he said. “The nicest rooms are usually closest to the front desk. Might even get a Jacuzzi, for all the good it will do us.”

  “Pass the apocalypse in pampered luxury,” she said. “I can see the television commercial already.”

  “Except the part where there ain’t no TV anymore.” He gave her the flashlight and she illuminated the hallway so he could try the first door.

  “What if there’s somebody in it?” She meant “somebody dead” but she didn’t have to say it.

  He raised his hand to knock, and then grinned sheepishly at her, squinting against the light. The eyelid covering his glass eye didn’t fully close. “We can stand out here all night if you like.”

  She peered past him down the hall, into the blackness beyond the flashlight’s reach. “You hear that?”

  He turned toward the end of the hall, where a scuffling noise echoed down the concrete stairwell. “Hear what?”

  “That,” she whispered.

  “Probably just the air conditioning,” he said.

  “Power’s off, remember?”

  DeVontay didn’t say anything, but his face said, “Oh, yeah,” and he selected one of the keys on the ring and tried to jam it in the door lock. It slid in halfway and stuck. He jiggled it three times before he was able to yank it free. The noise was louder now, and clearly sounded like feet shuffling on concrete steps.

  “What if it’s one of us?” Rachel whispered.

  DeVontay pushed a different key into the lock, but it didn’t even penetrate. His hands were shaking, causing the keys to jingle.

  “Give me the gun, you can go faster,” she whispered.

  “You know how to shoot?” he whispered back, shoving a fourth key toward the slot.

  “No, but I’ll feel safer,” she whispered.

  Before he could answer, the key slid in and he turned it with a loud click. He depressed the door handle as Rachel swerved the beam down the hall. A bulky shape filled the opening of the stairwell, moving toward them.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Rachel implored DeVontay, pounding on his back. “He’s coming.”

  DeVontay swung the door open, pointing the gun down the hall as she pushed past him into the room. The air was stale but didn’t smell of corpses.

  Thank you, God, for small blessings.

  “Who are you?” DeVontay yelled down the hall, but he waited only one second before stepping inside and slamming the door closed, quickly throwing the deadbolt in place.

  “You know how to shoot?” Rachel mocked, aiming the flashlight at the pistol by his side.

  “Smartass. I wasn’t the one squealing”—he raised his voice to a thin falsetto—”Ooooh, help, help.”

  “Shush,” she said. “Maybe he won’t figure out which room we’re in.”

  They heard him banging on doors, coming closer. Rachel didn’t know how smart Zapheads were, but in her observation, they seemed to have varying degrees of cunning. Perh
aps the solar flares had short-circuited different people’s brains in varying degrees. Most died, some fried, and a few lucky souls were left to sort out the mess.

  DeVontay drew back from the door, joining her in the middle of the room. She flicked the light around to make sure the room was empty. It was a suite, with a little kitchenette and a Jacuzzi. DeVontay had gotten lucky after all.

  Then the Zaphead was pounding on the door, giving three hard blows with the bottoms of his fists. Rachel instinctively clutched DeVontay and switched off the flashlight, not wanting the beam to attract attention. She could hear DeVontay panting in the dark.

  Then the Zaphead was off across the hall to the next door, repeating the pounding as he worked his way down the hall. Soon the banging was muffled, as if he had reached the far wing. Rachel exhaled, not realizing her lungs were burning with held breath and tension.

  “Close one,” she said, flicking on the flashlight again.

  “You got your Jacuzzi after all,” he said.

  Without thinking, she turned the water tap, but nothing came out. “I haven’t had a bath in ages,” she said.

  “You gonna be smelling worse than these corpses soon.”

  “Well, just keep squirting that sanitizer up your nose and you’ll be fine.”

  He chuckled, mostly with relief, and wiped sweat from his head. He plopped his backpack onto the bedside table and dug into it. He pulled out a few tins and cellophane bags of food, then a pack of white candles and a Bic. “Save your batteries,” he said, lighting a candle and jamming its base into the wrought-iron lamp.

  He lit another, and then checked to make sure the curtains were drawn tight. “Guess we’re as safe here as anywhere,” he said.

  “Would you have shot him?” she said. “If you had to?”

  He turned, the candlelight soft on his face. He looked young, barely a teen. “Wouldn’t be the first.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was just talking tough or trying to reassure her. She didn’t press. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to shoot. Even though they were Zapheads, they were still God’s creatures.

  Do you really believe that, Rachel? Why can’t they be Satan’s army? Or are you one of those who only believe the convenient parts of the Bible?