His breath stank like molded cheese as he closed rough hands around her throat. Up close, his eyes burned with a liquid malevolence, the roiling lava of a hidden volcano. She kicked at his shin, but he didn’t react to pain.
Rachel had never had any self-defense training. Aside from playing tackle football with the neighborhood boys in Seattle, she’d learned most of her moves from movies. But she discovered that it wasn’t as easy when your would-be killer wasn’t following the script.
Her throat was tight and sore, the pressure of his fingers constricting the blood to her head. Her vision swam as the Zaphead lifted her from the pavement, pulling her against him. Her arms were heavy and her grip loosened on the shear.
She heard a man yell “Back down, bitch,” and then the Zaphead shuddered from a blow to the head. The deathly clutch eased enough for Rachel to suck in a lungful of air and regain her balance.
The man who’d escaped the soldiers swung a fist at the Zaphead, but the Zaphead flinched away, apparently learning to dodge. But while its attention was diverted, Rachel whispered a prayer of apology and swung the handle of the pruning shear.
The metal tip gouged deep into the base of the Zaphead’s skull, opening a gap in the flesh and revealing a red weal of raw muscle and gristle. Blood spurted from the wound.
So they bleed just like we do.
“Hit him again,” the man said, dancing just beyond the outstretched arms of the Zaphead.
Rachel thought of the bruises she’d be wearing as a necklace for the next week, then swung the wooden handle overhead in a two-handed grip and brought the blunt end flush upon the top of the Zaphead’s skull, like the Biblical Samson standing knee-deep in Philistines swinging the bloodied jawbone of an ass.
The sickening crack pierced the sounds of grunts and screams as the other two Zapheads pummeled the soldiers. The concussed Zaphead staggered for a moment, then wheeled and looked at Rachel. The fire in its eyes gave way to a look of hurt confusion, and Rachel wondered whether she’d knocked some wiring loose in his brain—as if maybe she’d pounded some humanity back into him.
“Better hit him again,” the man said. “Don’t play around with these monsters.”
“Thou shalt not kill,” Rachel said.
The man looked at her and shook his head. Behind him, the female soldier drove her knife into the Bridget Jones Zaphead a second time, opening another bright gash in her torso. A bit of pink intestine bulged out of the cotton blouse, but the Zaphead didn’t seem to notice. She drove her small fist into the woman soldier’s face, shattering her nose and sending a tooth flying.
“Let’s get out of here,” the man said, grabbing Rachel’s hand and pulling her toward the yard of a nearby house. The gesture reminded her too much of DeVontay, and she pulled free.
“I have to stay,” she said. “I have friends here.”
The man’s face curdled in resentment, then he grabbed her weapon and shoved her back. “Thou shall not kill, maybe, but I, for sure, goddamned shall.”
The man swung the blade against the Zaphead’s temple, and this time, the guy went down like a jogger after a marathon. A shot rang out, and the shirtless Zaphead’s shoulder erupted in a glut of blood and gore, but still, it kept attacking.
“I don’t see any friends around here,” the man said to Rachel. “Come on.”
“This way,” Rachel said, pointing to the house where DeVontay was still being held.
“Fine,” he said. The rancid odor of old beer hung about him and his bloodshot eyes suggested either a lack of sleep or an abundance of alcohol.
Rachel broke into a run, the man right behind her, hanging onto the grisly, blood-coated pruning shear. When they reached the landscaped shrubbery, Rachel burst through and headed for the side yard, where a high wooden fence offered concealment. They ducked behind it just as another gunshot erupted, then another one.
“New around here?” the man said, wiping sweat from his greasy brow.
“Only since After,” she said.
“After?”
She shrugged, lifted her hands to indicate the world. “This end-of-the-world thing. Thanks for saving me back there. I’m Rachel.”
“Name’s Pete,” he said, between gasps of exhilaration. “Just a suggestion, but I’d ditch the Ten Commandments. At least five of them no longer apply.”
“That’s how I was raised. It’s not something you can turn on and off like a light switch.”
“Guess so. I wouldn’t know anything about that. One Sunday morning in the Catholic church gave me enough horrors of hell to last a lifetime.”
“How did they find you?”
“I was bicycling on the highway, stopped to check out a car, and then those unsung heroes jumped me and said The Captain wanted to see me.”
“The Captain? Yeah, I’ve met him.” So, The Captain had a rank. She dug into her backpack and found the small bottle of Nembutal the pharmacist had given her. Her fingers slid away until they hit a water bottle, and she pulled it out and passed it to Pete.
He twisted the cap and tossed it into the weeds, then took a grateful gulp. “What’s up with these guys?”
“I can’t say for sure,” she said. “But I think they were stuck in the bunker a little too long and started getting funny ideas. The Captain thinks he can control the Zapheads if only he can get them to appreciate chain of command.”
“Well, I’m civilian all the way. So, what’s the plan?”
“Did you happen to see a little boy anywhere? About ten, wild hair, maybe carrying a baby doll?”
“Afraid not.”
“Well, that’s my plan.”
“Not much better than mine. I was going to find a bar and plug some quarters into the karaoke machine and sing ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ ‘til closing time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Turnips,” Franklin said.
Jorge almost responded in Spanish, but remembered his promise. “What?”
Franklin pulled a dark clump of leafy stalks from the ground, revealing the rounded golden root. “Turnips are the perfect survival food. They grow almost year round, the roots store through the winter, and they have just about every vitamin you need.”
They were in the vegetable garden at one corner of the compound. From working on the Wilcox farm, Jorge had an understanding of the shorter growing seasons of the Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as the humid, wet climate. Therefore, he admired the garden’s placement, which allowed nearly a full day’s sunlight while much of Franklin’s camp remained concealed by trees.
“You plan well,” Jorge said.
“No, I’ve just been around so long I’ve figured out a thing or two.” He twisted the yellowing outer leaves from the stalk and tossed them into the goat pen, where the short-horned nanny sucked them between her jaws.
Broad leaves of autumn squash and pumpkins covered one end of the garden, and bean vines twisted along a lattice of sticks. The corn was already making ears, and bees hovered around the golden tassels. A dense orchard of short but bountiful apple and pear trees stood on the other side of the small house, nearly shading a small, rough-hewn shed. The top of the shed was covered with solar panels, and Franklin had opened the rear door to show Jorge the rows of batteries that stored the collected energy.
“Something like this takes…,” Jorge searched for the right word, dragging the hoe between the rows to pile fresh soil around the turnip roots. “Vision.”
“Nah,” Franklin said. “Anybody could see it coming that didn’t have blinders on. I was part of the Preparation Network, teaching people how to get ready, but it didn’t do much good. Humans are a funny breed, Jorge. I reckon they’re as funny down in Mexico as they are up here.”
Jorge had given little thought to his brothers and sisters in the Baja, or his mother in their little crowded house. He wasn’t sure whether he wished them a swift and merciful death or if they were even now on the run from the people that Franklin had called the “Zapheads.”
“I
f this happened all over the world, like your man on the radio said, then I suppose it’s not so funny,” Jorge said, leaning on the hoe and looking out across the mountain ridges in the distance. The nearer peaks were flush with the deep green of summer’s end, but the horizon was draped with wraith-like, ragged clouds.
“That’s the look of cities burning,” Franklin said. “Enjoy this fresh air while you can.”
“Do these Zapheads burn things?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know if that’s the Zapheads or the government. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were ready for whatever opportunity came along. Giant asteroid hitting the earth, nuclear terrorist attack, shift of the earth’s geomagnetic fields. Every ill wind blows somebody some good.”
Although Jorge had little interest in any kind of politics, he didn’t see what the U.S. government would gain by destroying its own territory. Not for the first time, he wondered if Franklin had spent too many years alone, with nothing but his mad dreams, paranoia, and obsessive vision.
Rosa called to them from the doorway of the house. Marina stood beside her, wrapped in a blanket. She still looked pale and her hair was moist with sweat, but she managed a feeble wave before Rosa led her back into the shade.
Jorge decided to ask the thing that had been bothering him. “Mr. Wheeler, you are clearly a man who likes to be alone and to depend on no one. If this is so, then why do you help us?”
Franklin put the turnips into a wooden basket atop some tomatoes and small purple cabbages. “I lived out there once,” Franklin said, waving vaguely off the mountain. “Just about like anybody else. I had a job in industrial design making rich folks richer, found a sweet little woman and settled down. I never did trust the government, and I got in a little trouble because of things I was writing on the Internet. Whatever they say about ‘the land of the free,’ that’s complete bullshit. You’re only as free as they want you to be.”
Then why isn’t your own family here? Why take in mine? But Jorge thought it best to only listen, so he turned his attention back to the weeds that skirted the bed of tufted carrot greens. Besides, it seemed like Franklin was warming up for a rant.
“Government had me under surveillance,” Franklin said, no longer working now, just kneeling in the dark dirt and gazing off where the past remained just out of sight. “Just because I was warning people that the shit was about to hit the fan. After 9/11, Homeland Security became just about the most powerful force in Washington, because its slimy fingers reached into every pocket and every campaign fund and every Congressional bill. The last thing any government ever wants is for the truth to get out. At different times, I was considered a white supremacist, a radical Muslim, a neo-Nazi, a Communist, even a Swedish spy—if you can imagine any reason in hell that Sweden needs our secrets.”
“Were you arrested?”
“They just wanted me to go dark. Even with all these new laws that let them throw anybody in jail forever without a trial, they knew that arresting me would draw publicity, and then more people would find my websites. So in a way, me going into hiding like this was the best thing for both of us. I’m fine with being a martyr, but I want it to be for the right reason, and the right reason hadn’t come along yet.” Franklin swept his gnarled, calloused fingers to the world beyond. “And now, the right cause came along, but there ain’t no Internet left.”
Jorge remained cautious. “So you want us to help you spread the word about your survival camp? If you help us, we can help others?”
“Hell, no,” Franklin said. “It’s too late for all that. I’m not even helping you. I just couldn’t let that little girl die.”
Jorge realized the old man did have a compassionate streak beneath his wary, antisocial façade. “We are grateful and we promise to work hard while we are here, and to leave whenever you ask.”
Franklin appeared not to hear. “My granddaughter, Chelsea, was Marina’s age when she drowned.”
Jorge had a good idea of the man’s pain because of his own worries. “I am truly sorry to hear that.”
“I was working on the camp even back then, using a network of dealers to get all these solar panels, wind turbines, water tanks, and such as that. I suspect the government had their eyes on me. Hell, I didn’t know which of those things flying overhead were hawks and crows and which were surveillance drones. They got ‘em the size of insects now…well, they did, I mean.”
Jorge picked a lime-green caterpillar from a collard leaf and studied it a moment before squishing it between his fingers. “Why did they let you come here if they knew?”
“Like I said, it got me out of the spotlight. I planned to bring my family up here, but by then my wife had left me and my kids and grandkids had pretty much written me off as a crazy old coot. The ones who didn’t were my granddaughters, Rachel and Chelsea. Rachel, she’s a real Christian, acting the way Christ taught instead of the way these idiot preacher politicians are telling people they ought to behave. You a religious man?”
Jorge had learned in the United States to always say he was a Baptist, especially in the South, but he saw little reason to lie to Franklin. “I was raised Catholic, but we haven’t gone to church much lately.”
“Never hurts to believe in something bigger than you. Just make sure it’s a thing of the sky and not a thing of mankind. Because mankind isn’t bigger than any of us. Mankind is not bigger than life. It’s exactly life-sized and hates to admit it.”
Jorge was trying to figure out what that meant when Franklin went back to his story, apparently used to coming out with random musings but just as quickly, discarding them. “Rachel was the only one who didn’t think I was a survivalist wacko. She said God needed the world to end in order to renew itself as a better place, just like Jesus had to die on the cross in order to save everybody’s soul. I guess there’s some comfort in that, since all the doomsday preachers use fear as a fundraising tool. She’d even been reviving some of my old websites, putting them under different names.”
“Did she get in trouble, too?” The sun was lower in the sky now, pushing shadows across the compound.
“She’d barely got started when Chelsea died.” Franklin swallowed with the bitterness of the memory. “They were out at the lake, the two of them, and Rachel turned away just for a second—had to go use the bushes. And she came back to find Chelsea face down in the water.”
Jorge wanted to offer condolences but decided silence was more respectful and appropriate. Customs were different in the United States, but shutting up worked in any language.
“In three feet of water. But she was a good swimmer. They did it to send a message.”
“They”? Does this man really think the government would drown his granddaughter?
Franklin spat in the dirt and stood, wiping his hands and picking up the basket. “Well, that’s when I came up here. Is your wife a good cook? I’m passable, but I keep it simple.”
“She cooked for Mr. Wilcox on weekends.”
“Well, this ain’t no fancy rich-people’s food, but it’s clean and free of poison and you can really taste it. So, let’s treat it like it’s The Last Supper.”
Jorge followed Franklin back to the house, wondering if they should leave far sooner than their host might wish.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Holy crap!”
Campbell swerved his bike, narrowly missing the little kid. The front tire hit the curb and the bike flipped, pitching Campbell across the sidewalk and into the weeds along the side of the street.
Campbell had pedaled in the direction of the gunshots, figuring it was the most likely place to find Pete, and the first exit off the highway had led right past a gas station into a middle-class neighborhood. He had slowed, hoping not to get shot or attacked, but he had mentally prepared for any possibility except the one that had occurred.
His elbow throbbed and his knees were skinned, but no bones appeared to be broken. His first thought was that the kid might be a Zaphead, which would expla
in why he’d run out into the street toward the bike.
But the boy simply stood there, staring at Campbell, a baby doll dangling limply from one hand.
Definitely not a Zaphead, or he’d be on me while I’m down.
Campbell sat up, his shirt wet from a broken water bottle in his backpack. “Hi there,” Campbell said, in his friendliest voice, as if they were crossing paths on a playground instead of in the middle of the apocalypse.
The kid said nothing, merely hugged his doll. He looked about ten, an age when most kids were carrying baseball gloves and iPods and Gameboys instead of dolls. But he’d likely seen horrors that even the most violent video games had not displayed.
“Live around here?” Campbell asked, even though the street looked as dead as all the others he’d traveled over the last few weeks.
Had it only been a few weeks since the solar flares? The world felt as if it were covered in a great layer of dust already.
The boy’s head twitched just a little, which Campbell took for a negative shake. Campbell scanned the houses that bordered both sides of the street, vacant cars parked here and there along the curb and in the driveways, another neighborhood caught unaware when the catastrophe had struck. Human flesh was moldering and decaying behind those closed doors.
Campbell dug in his backpack and pulled out a granola bar. He unwrapped it and stood, holding it out to the boy. He felt like a parody of the stereotypical pervert, gaining a kid’s trust with a treat. “You hungry?”
The head twitched again, eyes peering warily from beneath the bill of the Carolina Panthers ball cap.
“What do you say we get away from the street?” Campbell said. “Might be some bad guys around.”
The boy’s lower lip trembled. “B-bad guys?”
Ah. So you know about the Zapheads. And yet somehow you’re still alive.
“Come over here, out of the street,” Campbell said. “Maybe you can help me fix my bike.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 87