After (Book 3): Milepost 291

by Nicholson, Scott

  Who were they shooting at? Zapheads?

  He couldn’t see Kiki and James and the rest of the group. All he saw was the fog and the wet grass right in front of him. He might be surrounded by Zapheads right now and not even know it.

  All he could do was head back in the direction where the group might be. The moonlight made a big haze overhead, so he could see just well enough to keep running. He was afraid to call out for Kiki because then the Zapheads might hear him.

  If only DeVontay could tell him what to do. There must be a reason DeVontay couldn’t call out. He thought he heard people talking, so maybe others had been hiding in the house. Maybe they were scared of Zapheads.

  His clothes were wet and he shivered, even though now he was sweating. He heard somebody yelling behind him. Maybe he should slow down and just duck into the grass until they passed. But if Zapheads were all around, they’d get him. He couldn’t stand to be alone. He’d barely made it after getting separated from Rachel—all because he was afraid of a stupid snake—and if he screwed up again because he was scared, DeVontay would probably call him Little Baby instead of Little Man.

  “Do you see anything?” a man yelled. It wasn’t DeVontay. That meant DeVontay wasn’t alone right now, which was good news if there were Zapheads around, because DeVontay didn’t carry a gun.

  But some of the men at the compound were bad. They were mean to the women and children, and the ones that had found Stephen wandering around in the woods made fun of him and wouldn’t let him eat until they stuck him in that stinky building with the other kids. He’d told Rooster about Milepost 291 because he wanted Rooster to think he was important, not just some stupid kid.

  Stephen had to slow down because he couldn’t see well enough to run anymore. He wasn’t even sure he was heading back to the group. Maybe he was walking toward the road that ran alongside the river. DeVontay said Zapheads were more likely to see you if you were out in the open like that, which is why it was better to stick to the woods or else hide inside houses.

  But most of the houses had dead people inside them that smelled like rotten old fruit. That was one reason DeVontay wanted to check out the house himself, even though he didn’t say so. DeVontay was trying to protect him.

  Stephen remembered being trapped in the hotel room with his dead mom and what it was like to see her turn all pale and bloated and hear creepy gurgling noises come out of her throat. He loved her but was afraid to touch her or even look at her, and he felt ashamed of that. It was his mom, after all.

  But DeVontay and Rachel had rescued him, and they’d been good to him. Almost like family. Maybe even better than family. Stephen told them he wanted to go to Mi’ssippi to find his dad, but in truth, he didn’t really want to see his dad. It just seemed like the thing you were supposed to do. Rachel and DeVontay talked about getting to their families, too, and that’s why they were headed to Milepost 291 in the first place.

  Right now, both Milepost 291 and Mi’ssippi might as well be a million miles away, because he couldn’t even find Kiki and the others, and they were probably not even a mile away. He didn’t know how far a mile was. Probably as far as he could walk. But the mist sure made a mile seem a lot longer.

  “I heard something,” a man hollered from the far end of the mist. “Over here.”

  Stephen was almost glad because the man was moving farther away from him. That proved Stephen’s idea of running was better than just ducking down in the weeds and hiding, because they would have found him by now. If he could outsmart them, then DeVontay might not be as mad at him.

  So he kept running, or at least jogging, even though he was breathing hard and his side hurt. He headed uphill, where the mist seemed way darker. He guessed the woods were beyond it, with the mist weaving in and out of the trees to make a wall. He could hide there until he figured out what to do. But being alone was too scary. And the group couldn’t be much farther away unless they were already in the woods.

  Then he heard James nearby: “I can’t see anything!”

  James was too dumb to stay quiet like he was supposed to. A couple of kids were crying. Little babies. They didn’t know that being afraid only made things worse. Kiki and Carole were telling them to hush and stick together, but they sounded scared, too.

  Stephen wanted to yell at them. Why didn’t they hide in the woods like DeVontay told them? Didn’t anybody listen anymore? Did they get scared and do stupid stuff like Stephen did?

  If only Rachel was here, Stephen would feel better. Kiki was smart and nice, and she did a good job caring for the kids, but she wasn’t tough like Rachel.

  And why is Rachel not here? Because you got scared and did stupid stuff!

  He changed his plans and headed toward the voices. The least Stephen could do to make up for his mistake would be to lead them all into the woods to safety. Then, when DeVontay got away from the rest of the men and found them, he’d tell Stephen what a good job he’d done. He’d call him a Brave Little Man. Something like that was worth the risk.

  Some kid was bawling and sniffling, giving away their position even in the thick fog. Couldn’t Kiki slap a hand over the kid’s mouth? It was probably Jeremiah, that kid who kept farting because he needed a special diet. Between the farts and the whimpers, Jeremiah was a real downer. If Stephen had his choice, he’d have left Jeremiah in the big building.

  But DeVontay said they were all in it together. Maybe DeVontay was just doing it so that Kiki would kiss him, but DeVontay was brave, so he probably really meant it.

  Then he heard James almost right in front of him saying “I see somebody.” James wasn’t even smart enough to keep his voice down. James was almost Stephen’s age but no way would DeVontay ever call him Little Man.

  “Shush, James, it’s me,” Stephen whispered.

  Kiki called to him.

  He pushed through the grass and there they were, the kids all whining and bawling and sniffling like scared brats, the blanket all tramped down and soggy, half the food gone. Kiki gave him a hug and asked him where DeVontay was, and he was ashamed to admit he didn’t know. But DeVontay would want him to lead the group now, not sit around feeling sorry for himself.

  “Why didn’t you leave when you heard the shot?” Stephen asked.

  “We thought it might be DeVontay,” Kiki said.

  Stephen didn’t want to confess that he’d messed up. “He’s down there somewhere. He told me to come back and get everyone to hide in the woods.”

  But that strange man’s voice came again, this time real, real close, and it said, “The woods ain’t safe for children.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  At least we’re all together again.

  DeVontay could barely make out the dark jacket of the man in front of him, the one who’d spoken to Kiki, Carole, and the group of children. Rooster was at his back, still whispering the way he had as they’d followed Stephen up the meadow. Rooster had promised a new society they’d build in the shadow of the Zapheads, even bragged about taking back the compound, but he’d also veered from delusions of grandeur into sudden bouts of paranoid rage.

  “Who’s there?” Kiki asked.

  Rooster whispered in DeVontay’s ear. “Be cool. We don’t want to scare them.”

  “It’s me,” DeVontay called out. “I met some people down there.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “One of them shot at me,” Stephen said.

  “No,” Rooster said. “One of my men thought you were a Zap. Sneaking around in the weeds like that.”

  Rooster pushed DeVontay toward the group and the mist parted a little. The kids looked miserable, shivering with the damp chill. They huddled against one another, Kiki covering them as best she could. Carole cradled the smallest toddler, who was mercifully asleep. Stephen stood apart from the group, his head down as if he expected DeVontay to yell at him.

  Shapes moved in the mist, but DeVontay had only a vague sense of them. The wet, gray smoke around them had thickened until the
visible world was barely thirty feet in diameter. The hidden moon suffused the ceiling of the sky with a lurid silver glow.

  “Zaps are on the move,” Rooster said. “You should have stayed in the compound.”

  “You abandoned us,” Kiki snapped. “All of you.”

  “We could have counterattacked. But we got scattered around out here along the river road. I don’t know where the horseback riders are. So we need to find a safe place to regroup.”

  “What about the house?” Kiki asked DeVontay.

  “Rooster’s right,” DeVontay said. “We need to get out of the area.”

  He wondered if Rooster planned to assume command of the group. If Rooster had a vision of a utopian society, with himself in the role of benevolent dictator, then the man had little to offer outside of the compound. Inside, he’d been able to impose martial law, but out here, even a few guns seemed futile against the new rulers of the planet.

  But at least they could buy a little time and figure out their next move while appeasing Rooster.

  “Sorry I yelled out,” Stephen said to him.

  “It’s okay, Little Man. You did a good job getting back to the group.”

  That drew a shy smile from the boy. Kiki seemed wary of Rooster, not trusting him after his treatment of them in the compound. But DeVontay urged her to gather the kids and get them moving. He collected the remaining rations, and then dumped the trash off the blanket. Carole calmed a little girl who was scared of the “men with guns.”

  “I hear something, Rooster,” one of the fog-shrouded men said.

  “Don’t shoot unless you see something,” Rooster replied. “Else we’ll be mowing each other down in the dark.”

  “We need to get these kids to shelter soon,” Kiki said to him. “If that house is no good, we better find another one. They’ll all be sick.”

  “Good news,” Rooster said to one of the kids. “We’re going to Milepost 291. All the candy you can eat, a swimming pool, and boxes and boxes of toys.”

  The exhausted kid clapped her small hands in delight, but Stephen’s eyes narrowed. “There’s not any toys at Milepost 291.”

  “Shh, Little Man,” DeVontay said. “Let’s just get there, and then we can worry about it.”

  “Little Man.” Rooster chuckled. “Guess you two are real buddies, huh? Can I be your buddy, too? Since we’re all in it together now?”

  Rooster reached out to high-five Stephen, but the boy stepped back, wary. Kiki and Carole had the children up and herded together, half-dragging a couple who were almost sleepwalking.

  “Mind giving us a hand?” Kiki asked Angelique in a stern voice.

  “Who made you Queen Bitch?”

  “We’ll get out of here faster if you help, and that will give you more time to paint your nails.”

  “Now, now, ladies,” Rooster said. “No fighting. Unless it’s Zapheads.”

  DeVontay piled the remaining food back in the blanket and hoisted the bundle again, eager to get out of there. Despite the fog, he felt exposed and vulnerable. And he was convinced Zapheads didn’t rely solely on sight to track humans. They might be “watching” right now from just inside the veil of fog.

  “Okay, Little Man, why don’t you and DeVontay go on ahead, and we’ll follow? I’ll have my men bring up the rear so the Zaps don’t sneak up on us.”

  Stephen glanced at DeVontay, who nodded. Stephen had taken only three steps when Rooster reached out and snatched him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him close.

  “What the hell?” DeVontay said, dropping the bundle.

  “We have to move fast,” Rooster said. “That means leave the baggage behind.” He called out to his men. “Take care of them like I promised.”

  The first shot blew open the skull of a young girl, followed immediately by several shrill screams. DeVontay spun around, searching for the killer in the dark, and several more shots rang out. A dark blotch erupted on Carole’s chest and she collapsed, and a couple more children fell.

  DeVontay felt as if he were clawing his way up from a tar pit. Two more children had dropped before he realized what was happening, and his shout mixed with the screams and the gunfire. When he turned back to Stephen, Rooster had his gun pressed against Stephen’s head. “This ain’t no time to play hero,” Rooster said, his voice as cold as the deepest crack in space.

  Kiki shrieked and tried to shield the few remaining children, and DeVontay watched in horror as a series of red holes appeared along her thighs. James took off running toward the forest, rapidly vanishing into the fog, but the other kids lay in a bloody, quivering, moaning pile of carnage.

  DeVontay could barely breathe, and he briefly wondered if he’d been shot himself. But his wound was internal, in a place that would never heal and wasn’t merciful enough to kill him.

  Kiki was still alive, rolled onto her side, reaching out to aid one of the mortally wounded children despite her own injuries. DeVontay took a step toward her but Rooster shook his head and said, “Not if you want Little Man to keep his skull.”

  Angelique walked over to Rooster and slid a semiautomatic pistol from his holster, then stood over Kiki.

  Kiki looked up with defiance flashing in her brown eyes, although her face twisted with pain. “Burn…in…hell.”

  “I’ve wanted to do this for a while.” Angelique pointed the pistol at Kiki’s forehead. Kiki kept her eyes open, staring at her killer.

  “No, please,” DeVontay begged, more to Rooster than Angelique.

  Rooster laughed. “We could have left them alive, but you know how Zapheads are. Carrying off these bodies will slow them down. They like them better dead than alive, and it’s the neighborly thing to do.”

  Angelique knelt over Kiki, her pretty features now sinister and ugly, like a demonic mask had been slipped over her head. She was clearly enjoying her power. But Kiki didn’t falter.

  “Die,” Angelique said. “Die.”

  “You hear that?” whispered the man who’d shot at Stephen from the house.

  “All I hear is you flapping your jaws,” Rooster said.

  Then DeVontay heard it, too, a repetitive sound that melded with the noise of the night crickets and the riverbank frogs, becoming steadily louder. At first it was like a low drumbeat, but then the rhythm took on distinct phonetic.

  “Die die die die die DIE DIE DIE…”

  The Zapheads came out of the mist from all sides.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “Die,” Rachel said.

  “Huh?” Campbell had been asleep, and she repeated the word several more times before his drowsiness leaked away. He thought he heard a distant percussive sound, like popcorn popping, but it was drowned out by Rachel’s voice.

  She rose from the bed and walked around the living room in the dim light of the embers. “Die die die die…”

  “This isn’t good,” Campbell said, hurrying after her. She’d become increasingly detached, almost catatonic, since they’d fled the farmhouse. He’d hoped the symptoms were temporary, that whatever strange quantum-level healing the Zapheads had imparted would soon fade, but he could no longer lie to himself.

  She was turning Zap.

  He wondered if he should startle her back to awareness. He’d read that sleepwalkers were not supposed to be awakened. But there was no handbook for this sort of thing. So he simply followed in her wake as she paced around the room, repeating that horrible word over and over.

  Once, he stepped in front of her, hoping she would recognize him and respond. But she only stared at him with eyes that glittered like the forge of the universe, two seething holes that spat the birth of stars or maybe struck the flint and steel of hell over and over.

  And what scared Campbell even more than her condition was the idea that he’d lost her—that they could have grown together over time, become friends and eventually lovers. The two of them building a family and a new society.

  Adam and Eve in the Garden of the Zapheads. Yeah, right. What a goddamned fool. />
  “Rachel,” he said, and she paused, the sparks dulling in her eyes.

  “Die,” she said.

  For a moment, he was frightened, because her face was as placid and emotionless as a robot’s, as if she could will him to die with the power of her mind. And that she wouldn’t suffer so much as a tinge of remorse.

  He was afraid to restrain her, lest she launch into another violent rage. He repeated her name, hoping it would trigger some sort of memory of her former self. She cocked her head as if listening to something outside his range of hearing.

  What if they’re calling her?

  And what can I do about it?

  Campbell believed they could use Rachel’s symptoms as a means to understanding the Zapheads, but that idea had been foolish as well. There was no inner struggle here, no rational human glibly controlling and conquering an unnatural mutation. The Zaphead won. Just like in the real world.

  He wondered about the Zaphead sleeping inside him, and how it was some cosmic stroke of luck or maybe a simple genetic fluke that had prevented him from being affected by the radiation. What if he was the last surviving human in the world? His existential doubt would be God’s greatest private joke.

  Rachel, now silent, stepped past him and walked toward the door with sliding, shuffling steps. She stopped before it and stared out through the black glass at the world beyond.

  At the farmhouse while a captive of the Zapheads, Campbell had observed that Zapheads rarely used doors. Most of the time, doors were left open as the Zapheads traveled freely in and out. But apparently the professor had taught them how to work doorknobs, even though they had difficulty retaining the memory. They were like severe Alzheimer’s sufferers who had to rebuild their memories anew with each moment.

  “Rachel, don’t do this,” Campbell said, standing behind her. Even her scent had changed, from a faintly attractive aroma of soap and clean, outdoorsy sweat to a bright, metallic odor.

  She leaped forward and banged into the door. Her forehead bounced against the glass and she staggered back but didn’t fall. She flung herself forward again. This time the glass cracked but held in its frame. Rachel drew back to launch herself at it again, but this time Campbell grabbed her by the shoulders.