by J. Thorn
“Your friend ran off again?” Arnoff said. “Maybe he’s not much a friend after all.”
“It wasn’t his fault he got taken as a prisoner of war,” Campbell responded.
“We’d best get away from this house before the Zapheads come out to party,” Arnoff said.
Rachel pulled Stephen to her side. “We’re grateful for your help, sir, but we have other plans.”
Arnoff propped the butt of his rifle against his hip and angled it outward at forty-five degrees. “Little lady, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking these last few weeks, but like Campbell here said, better stick with the winners.”
“Sorry, man,” DeVontay said. “We promised the boy we’d get to Mi’sippi. And maybe our chances are better if we ain’t trucking around with some trigger-happy cowboy.”
Before Campbell could move between the two men, Arnoff took an aggressive step forward. “Watch it, boy,” Arnoff said. “You’re starting to look a lot like a Zaphead in this bad light. Somebody might make a little mistake.”
“Come on, Arnoff,” Campbell said, about to put a hand on the man’s shoulder before deciding against it. Arnoff tensed like a cobra, and his dark eyes seemed cold and reptilian. “Let’s find Donnie and the others.”
Arnoff scowled and then spat in the grass. “At least one of you has got a little sense.”
Campbell wasn’t sure of his loyalties anymore. Pete was his buddy, and they’d been through plenty together, but Pete was likely to get them both killed. Arnoff, Donnie, and the others had firepower on their side, as well as an established social structure that provided the illusion of civilization. Rachel, DeVontay, and Stephen seemed more like a family unit than a pack of mutual survivors.
Rachel’s face, although streaked with black soot, shone with a benevolent radiance as bright as the fires that surrounded them. Campbell knew most of it was projection, his own hope that he’d find something more in After than just the next breath. He needed a reason to live. And she was the first female he’d encountered that was anywhere close to his age.
Somebody’s got to breed, right?
“Watch out for the soldiers,” Rachel said. “They’re well-trained, heavily armed, and mildly psychotic.”
She limped toward the street, DeVontay supporting her, Stephen trailing just behind them. The house crumbled into a pile of charred lumber, hissing from its blue heart, a mild mockery of the malevolence delivered by the distant sun.
“Maybe we should give them a gun,” Campbell said to Arnoff.
“Don’t go trying to save the world,” Arnoff said. “There’s no future in it.”
“Well, what’s the plan, then? Walk around shooting Zapheads until you run out of ammo?”
Arnoff checked the chamber of the Marlin, pulling a few cartridges from a vest pocket and sliding them into the tube. “Going from house to house, you’d probably find enough ammo to kill every Zapper on the planet, a hundred times over. Thank God for the Second Amendment.”
“I’m not sure the Bill of Rights applies anymore,” Campbell said.
“Maybe not. I can just see a bunch of Zapheads sitting on the Supreme Court right now. Wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference, if you ask me.” Arnoff scanned the rooftops and the perimeter of the surrounding yards. Now that the fire had banked itself and burned low, the neighborhood had fallen quiet again, although the holocaust to the east was spreading.
They heard Donnie in the distance, giving his redneck rebel yell followed by a series of semiautomatic rounds. Arnoff grinned. “Hunting season,” he said, heading in the direction of the volley.
“I’ll catch up in a minute,” Campbell said. “After I find Pete.”
Arnoff didn’t even turn around. “Compassion was a game for the old days, son. Brownie points don’t add up to shit in the afterburn.”
Campbell clenched his fists in rage. He could hear the echo of his overbearing dad’s, “Get with the program!” in those words. Was it any wonder that Campbell always shrank from responsibility and rejected authority? Assholes had always run the world and set the rules. Maybe it wasn’t so bad that their power had been wiped away by a few massive spasms of the sun.
Campbell left the dying red glow of the house fire and entered the shrubbery where he’d last seen Pete, digging in his backpack for his flashlight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Got any Slim Jims?” Rachel asked DeVontay.
He grinned, his teeth and eyes the only part of his face visible in the gloom. “I knew you’d come around to good eatin’.”
They’d spent the night in a strip motel, walking just far enough to be reasonably sure the expanding blaze wouldn’t reach them before dawn. The motel’s small windows were set high in the wall, situated to allow neither easy access nor sunlight. The check-in counter had been abandoned, although the cars parked outside many of the rooms gave the illusion that it was business as usual at the Parkview Travel Plaza.
Although dawn was still probably an hour away, Rachel felt a little better from her brief sleep. DeVontay had dozed with his back against the door, his pistol resting between his legs on the dusty carpet. Stephen had climbed up on the lone twin bed with Rachel and had fallen asleep instantly, and was still snoring like a buzz saw.
Rachel stroked a tendril of hair away from his soft cheek. “Poor little guy. He’s had a rough time of it.”
DeVontay passed her some Slim Jims and a bottle of water from his backpack, as well as a pack of cheese crackers. She’d always had a pet peeve about eating in bed. She considered it a sign of sloth and personal failing. Now, in retrospect, her admittedly uptight view of morality seemed foolish.
She wondered what other views might change in the days and weeks ahead. She bowed her head and said, “Dear Lord, thank you for the food we are about to receive for the nourishment of our bodies, that we may have strength in Your service. Amen.”
The prayer was so automatic she hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud until DeVontay added, “Amen.” After a moment, he said, “You’re really a holy roller, ain’t you?”
“No rolling going on here,” she said, tearing into one of the salted meat snacks with her teeth. “I just need all the help I can get.”
“That’s cool. My momma was in the church choir. She was Mennonite. I had to go when I was little, but I never got into it. Too many rules for my blood.”
“Doesn’t all this…this After…make you want to find peace in the Lord?”
“Well, depends on how you look at it. Maybe God is going to save us, or maybe God caused all this in the first place.”
“My faith hasn’t wavered,” Rachel said, a little too forcefully. Pride was a sin, but failing to testify was a different kind of arrogance. Or maybe she was just trying to convince herself.
“Okay, fine,” DeVontay said, pulling more snacks from his backpack and ripping into the cellophane. “Do you think this is the Revelations coming true? The seven-horned beast and all that shit?”
“I don’t take the Book of Revelations literally,” she said. “I don’t think the final battle is going to take place in the Holy Land, or that the Antichrist is walking among us.”
“But there’s something in there about the world ending in fire from the sky, right?”
“After the seventh seal is opened, a great star falls from heaven and a third of the sea turns to blood. But there are also earthquakes, locusts, and foul waters. I don’t see any of that, do you?”
“So, it’s possible this isn’t really the end of the world? Just a warm-up act.”
She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not. The first blush of dawn took some of the darkness from the window, and Rachel became aware of the shabby furniture in the room. The bed linens seemed clean enough, though, and she was in no position to complain. The toilet didn’t stink, so at least those particular waters hadn’t been fouled by the great whore of Babylon.
She patted Stephen’s arm, which was curled around Miss Molly. “All I know is it�
��s not over as long as there’s a single human left,” she said. “We’re here to care for each other as best we can, do the next right thing, and stay in service to the Lord’s will for us. We don’t have to understand it. Our job is to just keep showing up.”
“So, you don’t see all this as a showdown of Good versus Evil?”
“Are the Zapheads evil just because they have destructive natures? Maybe they’re serving the Lord’s will just as we are.”
“Everything happens for a reason, huh? Sounds like the excuse people use for some sucky choice they made.”
“And God gives us free will, so we have the chance to choose goodness and grace and salvation.”
DeVontay stood, clutching the pistol, and peeked out of the high window. Satisfied, he turned back to her, his face now plainly visible in the dawn. He seemed angry, his skin stretched taut over his jawbones, his forehead furrowed. “Except, we didn’t get no choice, did we? We wake up one day and we’re in hell.”
“No,” she said. “We’re alive.” She touched Stephen’s shoulder. “We still have something to live for.”
“Oh, yeah? Come take a look at this.”
Careful not to rouse Stephen, whose snores had quieted, she slipped out of bed and joined DeVontay at the window. Outside, she could see the surroundings that had been hidden the night before. They were in a mixed-use commercial area, a few apartment buildings separated by retail and light industrial uses—a plumbing supply shop, a fenced lot with stacks of wooden beams and piles of sawdust, and a thrift shop with toddler clothes in the window.
But it was the activity in the street that drew her attention. People—Zapheads—were walking up the street. Although they appeared nearly unaware of each other, all of them at least fifty feet apart, they were headed in the same direction. They moved with none of the uncoordinated sluggishness of a few days before, nor did they seem particularly intent on destroying anything.
“Weird,” she said. The scene was rendered even more surreal by their utter silence. If not for their transfixed, unblinking eyes, she would have thought they were fellow survivors. Even now, she wondered if maybe Zapheads and survivors were sharing the same street in relative harmony, perhaps coming to accept one another.
“Creepy as hell.Where they going?”
Rachel looked at the angle of the shadows that stretched from the sides of the buildings and the few cars in the street. “They’re heading east. Back toward the big fire.”
“So, maybe they’re not in hell, just heading for it.”
“It seems like there are more of them.”
“These sons of bitches ain’t coming back from the dead, are they?”
Rachel almost made a joke, but DeVontay clearly was simmering on the verge of exploding. “Whatever instinct is driving them, it’s brought them out in the open. Maybe a lot of them were inside before.”
“Inside killing people, maybe. Don’t forget what they done.”
“Well, maybe they’ve changed.”
“Yeah, right. Praise the Lord, they saw the light. Maybe they’re not even mindless killers anymore. Let’s run outside and start singing Dancin’ in the Street and see what happens.”
DeVontay had raised his voice so much that Stephen let out a plaintive, confused cry. “Mommy?”
Rachel shot DeVontay a venomous glare and hurried to the bed. She swept the boy up in her arms and held him tightly, the sheet swaddling his shoulders. Rocking back and forth, she whispered, “Shhh, honey. It’s okay.”
DeVontay began stuffing his things into his backpack as if preparing to leave. Stephen finally became aware of his surroundings. “Whu-where are we?”
“North of Charlotte,” she said.
He wiped at his eyes with a grimy fist. “Is that close to Mi’sippi?”
“Closer than yesterday,” she said.
“I think we better wait it out,” DeVontay said, again monitoring the street through the beige curtains.
“It’s not any safer traveling at night,” Rachel said. “They don’t seem to sleep.”
“They don’t eat nothing, either. You’d think they’d wear down after a while.”
Rachel didn’t like having this conversation in front of Stephen, but she didn’t see any way around it. “Well, let’s face it. We just don’t know anything. Right after the Big Zap, they were killing every living thing in sight, random destruction, acting mindlessly. Now they’re moving with more purpose, like they’re getting settled into their new lives.”
DeVontay pulled one of the curtains wide. “You call that shit ‘life’? It’s like somebody opened up their heads like a jack-o’-lantern and stuffed them full of poisoned cotton candy.”
“Cotton candy?” Stephen said, standing up on the bed and trying to see out the window.
Rachel pulled him back down into the bed and gave him a pack of crackers. “You better keep your strength up. We’ve got a long walk ahead.”
“Why is walking better than staying right here?” DeVontay said. “We can hole up, make a run to a store now and then, wait this thing out.”
“We have no idea what we’d be waiting for. You think the Army’s going to roll in and save us? We’ve already seen how that plays out.”
“Then we ought to find those guys from last night—Campbell and them—and band together so we have a better chance of fighting them off.”
“The Zapheads outnumber us. I don’t think we’ve gotten a good idea of their population. They’ve gone from random, individual acts of violence, where you might only see one or two at a time, to a more open, communal behavior.”
“This ain’t psychology class. This is war. Plus, you don’t even know what those things are thinking about. They might as well be puppets hanging on invisible strings.”
“I like puppets,” Stephen said with enthusiasm, spraying cracker crumbs from his mouth. Then, his face darkened. “But I don’t like Zapheads.”
Rachel again glared at DeVontay, who ignored her anger. “But Zapheads may not be our only problem. Look at The Captain and his storm troopers. What if they’re not an isolated case? What if there are pockets of military forces out there, armed to the teeth and making their own rules? They’re as likely to slaughter us as the Zapheads are.”
“That’s an even better reason to stay here, then. Those idiots might be shooting everything that moves.”
“No,” Rachel said, not knowing how to put it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Stephen even more. But perhaps the fantasy of reaching his father was enough to sustain him for now. “The fires are spreading. Imagine all those toxins in Charlotte. When that city burns, the smoke is going to be a killer.”
“So, our choices are choking to death, getting shot, or getting our brains bashed in by Zapheads,” DeVontay said.
“The one thing we can’t do is just sit here and pray,” Rachel said.
“Oh, is the holy roller losing faith?”
“Faith without works is dead,” Rachel responded, hating herself for reducing a complex passage from the Book of James into a catch phrase. “That means fighting the good fight.”
“Like chopping up Zapheads with that sling blade?”
“I plead self-defense,” she said.
Stephen scooted off the bed, tossing his cracker wrapper on the floor.
“Stephen?” Rachel said. “Did you forget something?”
“No. I got Miss Molly right here,” he said, turning the doll to face her.
She scowled and looked down at the wrapper. “Trash goes in the trash can.”
As Stephen bent to pick up the wrapper, DeVontay said to her, “You make the apocalypse so much fun.”
“Okay,” Rachel said. “Time to go.”
“Go where?” DeVontay said, sitting on the bed.
“Mi’sippi!” Stephen said.
“Stevie, you’re a little too eager to go out there,” DeVontay said to him. “Lots of stray bullets flying around.”
“We’ll be better off once we get away from the city,�
� Rachel said. “Fewer people, fewer Zapheads, fewer fires.”
“Back to nature, huh?”
Rachel was serving as sentinel at the window. The streets outside the motel were quiet. She hadn’t seen any Zapheads for the last hour or so. Distant bursts of gunfire had erupted intermittently, but Rachel didn’t believe that Captain America and his troops were on this side of town. For the one thing, the hunting wasn’t as good.
“We’re heading for Mount Rogers.” Rachel smiled at Stephen. “It’s on the way.”
“What’s up there?” DeVontay asked.
“Somebody who was ready for this.”
“What, you got ESP all of a sudden?” DeVontay asked. “The sun heated you up some new superpowers?”
“My grandfather has a compound there. He’s what you might call a ‘survivalist wacko.’ He got interested in self-reliant living back during Y2K fever, when some people thought the computers would go berserk and throw civilization back to the Stone Age.”
DeVontay scowled. “Well, we all saw how that one turned out.”
“Yes, but Grandpa Wheeler figured civilization had gotten too complex, that modern systems would inevitably break down for one reason or another. Like a motor that had too many moving parts and not enough oil. He also believes the world’s governments were serving the will of the very wealthy. At some point we’d have to learn to live outside the structure.”
“He got that right.” DeVontay nudged Stephen. “Get your stuff together, Little Man. We got some walking to do.”
Rachel stuffed her supplies in the backpack, rediscovering the bottle of suicide pills the pharmacist had given her. Why hadn’t she already gotten rid of them?
DeVontay pulled out his pistol, opened the door a crack, and surveyed the street. “This is as good a time as any. Unless you want to make the bed first?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jorge dreamed of great dragons, their green scales glittering in the sun as they soared over a burning land. Dozens of them poured their flames upon the earth from above. Their gaping, lipless mouths spat sparks and steam, and their brittle cries were like thick sheets of glass sliding across gritty metal.