by J. Thorn
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rachel worked the shadows and shrubs, keeping low as she searched for Stephen. She was reluctant to leave the house where DeVontay was held captive, but she didn’t see how a frontal assault would do much good, since she was without a weapon and vastly outnumbered. Instead, she decided to check on the shed where she’d left Stephen. She found the door open and Stephen’s can of Raid lying on the floor.
The Captain’s goons had left her backpack, and she slung it over her shoulder. The garden tools taunted her as if to say, “So, violence isn’t the answer, huh? Then what’s the question?”
Faith into action.
Even if there’s hell to pay.
Rachel picked up the pruning shear. The bolt connecting the two handles had broken, so she gave the single handle a test swing. She liked the balance of it, as well as the short metal hook at the end. It wasn’t too heavy to carry, and she liked its prospects better than those of the double-headed ax and the flimsier hand scythe.
A gunshot sounded somewhere down the street, a couple of hundred yards away. Maybe the goons were hunting Zapheads for sport, although they might be shooting stray dogs, car windows, or even other survivors. Rachel had a feeling that The Captain had imposed a quasi-military protocol in an attempt to control his creepy little platoon.
Slinking back to the street where she had a better line of sight, Rachel crouched behind a Volvo and considered her options. If Stephen was on the loose, he probably hadn’t traveled far.
Assuming he’s still alive.
Rachel was about to take her chances and sprint across the street when she heard shouting and cursing. She peered over the Volvo’s hood and saw two people in camouflage coveralls dragging a young, dark-haired man who struggled in their grip.
“Goddamnit, I’m one of the good guys,” the man said. He was in his early twenties, hair slick with sweat, wearing a grimy T-shirt.
The goon on the left, a gaunt-faced woman whose mouth was twisted into a bitchy snarl, put a spidery hand on the hilt of a knife at her belt and said, “Shut up, or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
The man sagged so that the goon on the right had to grab his arm with both hands and hold him upright. The pair was half-dragging him toward the ranch house where The Captain apparently had set up headquarters and where DeVontay was still confined. Through the Japanese maples on the front lawn, Rachel could see the shattered window and the legs of Miss Daisy’s corpse dangling from the glass-strewn windowsill.
“You got any beer?” the captive man said. The gaunt woman jabbed him in the ribs with her knuckles, eliciting a hiss of pain.
The man jerked his elbows out, causing the goon on his right to lose his grip. The man seized the opening and started to break free, but the woman slid her leg forward with practiced grace, tripping him and sending him skidding across the asphalt.
She chuckled as she bent to pull the man from the road. “We’re trained in the art of pain.”
The other soldier drove the bottom of his boot against the fallen man’s thigh, causing Rachel to flinch. They were beating him like two television wrestlers who’d caught their quarry in a corner with the referee’s back turned. Rachel gripped the handle of the pruning shear, knotted with anger but helpless. After all, the soldiers had semi-automatic weapons slung across their backs.
The two goons were so intent on inflicting punishment that they didn’t notice movement along the side of the street. A withered vegetable garden stood at the corner of a lot, fenced with two rows of sagging white clothesline strung between wooden posts. The tasseled corn rattled and swayed, and a hunched figure emerged from between the rows. At first Rachel thought it was another soldier, given the swiftness of the movement, but the figure wore a soiled windbreaker and jogging pants, not camouflage gear.
Zaphead.
But she barely had time to consider whether to shout a warning when another Zaphead came out of the garden, a middle-aged woman in a business suit, pantyhose pocked with holes and trendy haircut now in tangles. Rachel unconsciously dubbed her “Bridget Jones,” except this particular career gal was carrying a sharp, heavy stick instead of a diary. The corn rattled behind her, with yet another Zaphead following, a squat, Asian-looking man with no shirt.
What struck Rachel most forcefully was the way they seemed to move in concert, stealthy and intent. In the city, the Zapheads were brainless and shambling, almost like the zombies depicted in film and books but without the taste for flesh. But these were like cunning predators, lurking in the shadows and then sneaking up to deliver their brand of destruction.
The man on the ground saw the Zapheads and pushed himself along the pavement on his back, trying to get his feet beneath him. The soldiers didn’t allow him to escape, though. The woman jumped knee-first on his chest while the other soldier urged her on. “Captain will love this one,” he said.
Rachel circled around the Volvo to get closer. The closest Zaphead rushed across the narrow grass border to the street. Three weeks ago, it might have been an insurance salesman out for a morning jog, but now it was a killing machine instead of a workout warrior.
“Get off me, you assholes,” the struggling young man on the asphalt said. “Here come some Zappers.”
The sadistic woman soldier chuckled again, and Rachel wondered if somehow she had been affected, too—that maybe the Zapheads were evolving and the surviving humans were degrading until they all would meet in a wordless, violent misunderstanding.
The jogger Zaphead closed the distance in the blink of an eye, leaping onto the male soldier’s back and driving a grunt from his lungs. They fell forward, the four of them tangled in a pile as the other two Zapheads moved in.
The female soldier rolled away and tried to free her weapon from her shoulder, but Bridget Jones was on her like a shark after a baby seal. Bridget Jones swung her garden stake and caught the soldier under the chin, the bone-shattering thwack audible to Rachel.
The shirtless Zaphead joined the first in assaulting the male soldier, while the captive scrambled free of the pile. Rachel could see the fear and determination in his eyes.
He’s a survivor.
Rachel stepped from behind the Volvo and raised her makeshift weapon. The guy must have thought she was a Zaphead, too, because he scrambled to his feet and started down the street before Rachel yelled, “This way!”
The guy ran toward her and Rachel passed him, heading for the Zapheads. Even though the soldiers were part of the group that had tried to kill her, Rachel couldn’t let them get mauled.
When it comes down to it, we’re still on the same side. Barely.
The female soldier had recovered enough to pull her knife from its hilt. The blade glistened in the sun for only a moment, and then she drove it into Bridget Jones’s abdomen. The Zaphead mouthed a wet uurk but continued to attack, even as a blossom of red spread across her formal white blouse.
Rachel struck the asphalt with the curved metal tip of her pruning shear. “Come and get it,” she yelled.
The two Zapheads clawing at the male soldier turned to Rachel, snarling, their eyes burning cold with some hidden hate.
Then they did something odd.
They looked at one another as if in telepathic communication, and the shirtless Zaphead tightened his grip on the soldier’s throat as the soldier flailed helplessly to reach his rifle. The other, the jogger Zaphead, shoved away from them and ran toward Rachel.
She barely had time to register the sudden change in tactics when the Zaphead was upon her. She swung the shear handle from its position near her hip, tentative and afraid to draw blood. The wooden part of the handle bounced off the Zaphead’s arm as if striking rubber, then the Zaphead grabbed her.
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 brown Ford van with the wheels removed. The top of the van 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.”
“If 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-lik
e, 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.”