The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

by Michael R. Hicks

  Perhaps this had been the ultimate act of faith.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Rachel said, and in this, at least she avoided a lie.

  “I want my mother,” Stephen said.

  Rachel hugged him. “I know you do, honey.”

  “And my dolly.”

  “I know. Why don’t we go into the farmhouse? I’ll bet these boys had some toys, and I bet they wouldn’t mind if you played with them.”

  “They’re dead,” he said. He sneezed from the dust, then sniffled.

  Rachel’s eyes were hot with tears, but she wouldn’t allow herself to sob. “Let’s go, honey.”

  This time, Stephen allowed himself to be led from the corrupt air of the barn and back into the sunshine. Rachel glanced up at the high, uncertain clouds.

  How could you do this, God? What possible plan do You have for all this?

  But she couldn’t trust her own faith at the moment, because she was afraid it was slipping away. The one certainty of her life, the power that had given her comfort amid all the sorrow and hardship and added joy to every pleasure, was now as ephemeral as the distant smoke. And without it, who was she?

  DeVontay was waiting on the porch when they reached the house, the rifle angled over one shoulder. “All clear,” he said, almost giddy with relief. “Even some canned food and a gas stove, so we can have us a home-cooked meal.”

  Then he noticed their faces and glanced around warily. “What’s up?”

  Rachel gave a wave back toward the barn. “We can stay in their house. They don’t need it anymore.”

  “Oh. Well, come on in and let’s eat.” He held the door open for them, and Rachel could read the question in his eyes: Was it Zapheads?

  “I think we’re safe here,” Rachel said. Despite her subdued anxiety, she found herself eager to escape in exploring the kitchen. “Why don’t you find a place for Stephen while I cook some dinner?”

  She couldn’t shake the image of the limp, hanging bodies from her mind, nor the widening gap in the center of her abandoned heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Saw you running down the street and figured you’d lead me to your buddies,” Arnoff said.

  “What buddies?” Campbell didn’t like the way Arnoff had his semiautomatic rifle cocked on his hip, a macho posture that would have been cartoonish under other circumstances.

  “Your Army buddies.”

  “Wouldn’t mess with ‘em,” Pete said, pouring himself another drink without offering Arnoff one.

  “I don’t want to mess,” Arnoff said. “I want to join up. Enlist in Team Human.”

  “I get the impression they’re not looking for recruits,” Campbell said. He glanced at the tavern door, hoping Arnoff had cleared the street before following him inside. If the Zapheads were gathering into groups, even a semiautomatic might not be enough.

  “Their commander will listen to reason,” Arnoff said. “Donnie and the professor can shoot a little, and Pam…hell, she can cook or something, or keep the men happy. Safety in numbers.”

  “I’m telling you,” Pete said, his drunkenness taking a belligerent turn. “He’s stars and stripes forever. And he doesn’t need numbers like us.”

  Arnoff glanced around the dim room as if noticing the corpses for the first time. “What do you know about it?”

  Campbell moved away from the bar, expecting Arnoff to stop him, but the man was more interested in what Pete had to say. Pete muttered something incoherent, but Campbell made out a personal invitation for Arnoff to commit a depraved and self-inflicted sexual act.

  He glanced through a grimy window, at the silent cars and still bodies, at a baby carriage tipped on its side near a fire hydrant. A pigeon with a broken wing skipped along the sidewalk, the only sign of life.

  “You were with them,” Arnoff said. “They grabbed you on the highway.”

  “They wanted me for Zaphead bait,” Pete answered. “Just like you did.”

  “We all have a part in the plan,” Arnoff said. “Some parts are bigger than others.”

  “What’s your plan, then?” Campbell asked. “Assuming The Captain lets you join the A-Team? You’re going to start a genocide sweep? Gun down all the Zapheads? And kill anybody else that’s not your type while you’re at it?”

  “Hold on with the Commie talk. This is about survival of the human race. Survival of the fittest. I don’t know what them things are, or why they want to bash our brains in, but I don’t need the professor to know when something needs killing.”

  “They’re changing,” Campbell said, trying to formulate ideas he’d only just begun considering. “I don’t think they’re attacking us…us normal people…just because they want us out of the way. I think they’re as scared and confused as we are.”

  “To hell with your Commie talk.” Arnoff waved his arm at the dead bodies, the gray, dreary bar that once had teemed with music and laughter and the communal clink of glass. “They’re a danger to not just our life, but to our way of life. If we want all this back, we’ve got to win today. Then we can fight for tomorrow.”

  “I’m done fighting,” Pete said. “I’m ready to drink instead. But you’d be happy with The Captain and his happy little troop. They’re heading for a base up north.”

  “A base?”

  Pete took a sip from his glass, enjoying Arnoff’s anxiety. “Yeah. Said there was a secret military base up there, underground, total doomsday prep. Built for nuclear war, he said, but outfitted for pretty much anything. And I guess the Big Zap counts as ‘anything.’”

  “How far north?”

  “Off to see the wizard,” Pete said, voice slurring. Even for someone with Pete’s tolerance levels, the prodigious amounts of whiskey were taking their toll. “Wonderful Wizard of Ozzzzz.”

  Arnoff swung the barrel of his rifle forward and shattered Pete’s bottle. The strong, sweet odor of the whiskey briefly overwhelmed the fermenting of the dead.

  Pete snarled and reached from behind the bar to swipe at Arnoff. “You goddamned animal.”

  “How far north?” Arnoff repeated. Even in the bad light, his eyes and teeth gleamed with a fierce menace that briefly sobered Pete.

  Pete gave a weak wave of surrender and disgust. “To the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

  “I need more than that. The parkway’s nearly five hundred miles long.”

  “Milepost 291, he called it. Don’t know what that means.”

  “You better not be shitting me, or I’ll track you down and leave you hanging on a lamppost so the Zappers can eat your liver.”

  Pete snorted in disgust and reached for another bottle in the row behind him. Campbell watched the tableau in the dusty bar mirror and was startled by the person standing to the left of Arnoff. Campbell tilted his head to the side to be sure the reflection belonged to him. Gaunt and stubbled cheeks, windswept hanks of greasy hair, deep purple wedges under each eye.

  I don’t know about zombies, but we’re becoming the living dead.

  Arnoff rested his rifle against a bar stool and fished a map and flashlight from his pocket. He wiped away the pool of liquor with one elbow, and then spread the map on the pitted wooden surface. Campbell couldn’t help bending over and looking when Arnoff switched on the light.

  “What town is that near?” Arnoff asked Pete.

  “Who do I look like, Ranger Rick? I heard him mention ‘Boone.’”

  Arnoff ran a stubby forefinger along the map of North Carolina, outward from the red circles he’d drawn to mark their current location and his route since leaving Charlotte. “About a hundred miles. Should be able to get there in a week to ten days of hard walking.”

  Pete laughed again. He no longer bothered with a glass, sipping straight from the bottle of Knob Creek and wincing at the taste. Campbell studied the map, noting the small towns that dotted the highway to Boone. Arnoff scowled at him and folded the map with crisp efficiency.

  Taking up his rifle, he headed for the door. “You guys coming, or you goi
ng to wait here for the Zappers?”

  Campbell shouldered his pack and followed. Pete, however, didn’t move from his position behind the bar. He stared past them as if lost in a Happy Hour from long ago, where the beer flowed and the Stones kicked from the speakers and the neon lights winked their green and red seductions.

  “Come on, Pete,” Campbell said, waiting at the door. Arnoff, after making sure the street was clear, headed across.

  “You’re getting to be as much of a bossy asshole as Arnoff,” Pete said, although he came around the bar, nearly tripping on a dead biker whose leather vest was splotched with the excrescence of death.

  Arnoff was already down the block, about to turn the corner. Campbell was afraid the man would leave them behind. And as bad as the Arnoff option was, Campbell imagined it would be far worse to spend another night alone in a church steeple. He dodged between vehicles, ducking low in case any Zapheads were around.

  When Campbell reached the corner, Arnoff was barely in sight. The man had forgotten all about them.

  Campbell turned and motioned for Pete to hurry. Pete had just exited the bar and squinted against the glare of sunset. He dragged his backpack with one hand, and the other gripped a quart bottle of liquor by the neck. As he staggered forward, slumped and skulking and jerky, Campbell fought a wave of irritation.

  What a loser. He looks just like a Zaphead, the way he’s—

  The distant volley echoed off the canyons of the building facades. Pete’s head lifted, mouth open in shock. The sudden blossom of crimson on his shirt spread across his chest. Then his legs folded and he dropped, the liquor bottle smashing on the sidewalk.

  Campbell ran toward him, keeping low. “Hold your fire!” he screamed, not sure it would do any good.

  The soldiers clearly didn’t care. Anyone not in uniform was a target. The Captain’s words came back to him: “We’re the government. You’re either with us or against us.”

  Campbell expected the next bullet to pierce his own flesh, and he almost welcomed it. But all was silent as he knelt in the dead town beside Pete, whose blood mixed with the tequila in a sick and final concoction. Campbell knelt, muttering to his dead friend, as dusk fell around him.

  It was After.

  And he was alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Jorge helped Franklin barricade the compound after their return. The sun was sinking, sending long fingers of shadows across the leaves and grass. The surrounding mountains were striated in bands of black and reddish brown, the thick haze wreathing the horizon. The first flickers of aurora borealis were visible in the far northern sky, lime green and magenta tufts hanging like a shaman’s psychedelic vision.

  “Think they will come for us?” Jorge asked Franklin.

  “Hard to figure. They weren’t acting right.”

  “They weren’t attacking. But they were attracted to the woman.”

  “Maybe they wanted her baby.”

  Jorge thought of Marina and what he would do if Zapheads took her. The near-hysterical woman was inside, being comforted by Rosa. Her baby was safe, and Jorge vowed to help Franklin defend the compound to the death. This was their homeland now.

  Franklin ran a hoe handle through a metal spool of barbed wire as Jorge slipped on a pair of thick leather gloves. He climbed a short ladder and pulled a strand of the wire across the top of the wooden gate as Franklin clipped the wire with cutters. He wound it among the planks in big, loose loops so that anyone who tried to climb the gate would become entangled in the barbs.

  Franklin had placed a series of spotlights in the trees on the perimeter of the compound. He’d told Jorge they wouldn’t burn long off the battery system due to their high wattage, but the light was an additional security measure if they needed it.

  “You were prepared for defense, not just survival?” Jorge asked as they gathered the tools.

  “A lot more going on up here than just me,” Franklin said as they headed for the faint reddish glow from inside the cabin.

  Jorge found himself looking forward to sitting around the cozy, candlelit interior with more people to care for. He’d agreed to take the first watch tonight, even though Franklin had declared his alarm systems up to the task. “What do you mean?”

  “The parkway. That’s one hell of a road. Government pitched it as a scenic route for the tourists, but it was built to hold up to heavy truck traffic. Real heavy traffic.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not the only one who thought this was a good place to hole up. Some in the Preparedness Network believed there’s a secret military bunker up here. Makes sense. You’ve got a road built to withstand aerial bombing in an area with no real industrial value.”

  “Is that why you brought me and my family to your compound, and why you’re willing to bring others?”

  Franklin stopped just outside the cabin. From inside came the low murmur of women talking.

  “A real survivalist knows it’s not just about surviving,” Franklin said, squinting up at the aurora that was almost bright enough to read a book by, if not for the muting effects of the haze. “It’s about living. Just having food, supplies, and ammunition won’t do you any good in the long run, because what kind of life is that? You hide in a bunker for twenty years, all alone?”

  Jorge hadn’t considered survival as anything beyond the next breath. Each day since the solar storms had been a challenge, but he had to admit that he felt more vibrant and his senses –all his senses—were keener and more vivid than they had been since childhood. Perhaps the prospect of losing the world had imbued it with a deeper mystery and richness.

  “It’s about community,” Franklin continued. “Getting along and building something better from the ruins.”

  “You said others would be coming.”

  “I hope so, son.”

  Jorge didn’t know how to respond to the term of familiarity. Thus, he ignored it. “We better see how the woman and her baby are.”

  Franklin set the tools beside the cabin door, although he kept his rifle slung over his shoulder. They entered to cheerful warmth, with a small fire crackling in the woodstove and several candles ringing the room. Jorge smiled at Marina. She seemed to have grown up in the past week, fully healthy, and now was on the verge of womanhood herself. But Marina didn’t smile back. Her face was grave, lines creasing her forehead and the sides of her mouth.

  She and Rosa were flanking the woman, who was nursing her baby.

  The woman looked up. “Thank you,” she said, beaming with a mother’s wistful glow. “Thank you for saving us. For saving him.”

  She pulled the child away from her breast and turned it toward them. Franklin sucked in a hard chuff of air. Jorge’s chest grew icy and numb.

  The child was perfectly formed, its little hands balled into fists, a tuft of wispy hair on the large skull. It was a beautiful little boy.

  Except the eyes.

  They sparkled with a strange, unnatural glitter, reflecting the candlelight like broken mirrors.

  Jorge had seen those eyes before. On the men who had tried to kill him, and on the parkway down by the RV.

  The child was a Zaphead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Stephen coughed again, sending a trickle of unease through Rachel. What if the boy got sick? Really sick?

  DeVontay had dragged a couple of extra mattresses into a top-floor bedroom that had belonged to one of the dead boys. Then he’d gone outside to look for a shovel, saying he wanted to give the family a proper burial in exchange for their hospitality. Stephen didn’t fall for it, and Rachel wondered if DeVontay would simply stack the bodies in one of the barn stalls like so much cordwood.

  Stephen was bundled under blankets in the dead boy’s bed, staring at the ceiling. Rachel had found an oil lamp, and its soft, bobbing glow send spooky shadows along the ceiling.

  “Will the boy’s ghost come back?” Stephen asked. “Will he be mad that I played with his train set?”

 
; Rachel brushed Stephen’s uneven bangs from his forehead, casually testing his temperature. “Of course not. He’s up in heaven, playing with brand-new toys.”

  “Is his family there?”

  “I’m sure they are, honey.”

  “Does he have a doggie?”

  “It wouldn’t be heaven without a dog, would it?” Rachel glanced at the window and the darkness that settled over the forest. DeVontay had left the pistol with her and promised tomorrow they would take some target practice with the rifle.

  They’d silently agreed they would stay at the farmhouse for the time being. Rachel was excited about the prospects of the garden and the meals she could prepare, and DeVontay said the place could be easily defended if necessary. “Good lines of sight,” he’d said, as if that didn’t mean having plenty of time to shoot anyone who tried to approach.

  “I miss Mommy,” Stephen said, staring at the shadows that flickered and danced on the white ceiling. “I hope she’s in heaven, too.”

  “It wouldn’t be heaven without a mommy, either,” Rachel said. She smiled. Stephen coughed again, and something in his chest rattled.

  Just the barn dust.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll gather some apples,” she said. “And maybe play in the creek. I saw a little boat in the closet. Think that will be fun?”

  Stephen nodded and coughed again.

  Rachel thought of the three bodies hanging in the barn. She wondered if the farmer had hung his pigs there, skinned and salted for curing.

  How long had After preyed on the farmer’s mind? How many times did he tell his children everything would be okay? How hard had it been to shoot his wife after she’d changed?

  Stephen coughed again, twice.

  What courage it must have taken. The farmer must have truly believed a better life, a better world, awaited them. Faith into action, love into purpose.