After: Dying Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 6)

by Nicholson, Scott

  Jorge pushed back his hair and said, “I didn’t see any of that. I became separated from the others. I was fortunate to make it back here at all.”

  “You missed all the fun,” Franklin said, carefully watching Hilyard for a reaction. “Things got crazy when Shipley showed up out of nowhere.”

  One of Hilyard’s eyebrow s might have twitched, but other than that, business as usual. Brock smirked and snorted, but then realized that probably wasn’t the proper comportment.

  “Shipley’s bunch gunned some of them down, but the baby brought them right back. Kind of like a no-win situation, if you need a cliché. When the Zappers attacked Shipley, they all scattered. I have no idea where they are now—Shipley or the Zaps.”

  “The other squads returned before midnight,” Hilyard said. “None of them engaged the enemy. So we can assume they are massed in that sector.”

  “They’re likely on the move. Seems to me like they were a lot more aggressive. Not like the early days, but with some brains behind it. And like they knew if they died, no problem, they’d be back on the front lines tomorrow.”

  “Not ideal,” Hilyard said. “Combines the mindset of the Japanese kamikaze with the sheer endless waves of Red Chinese. A most formidable enemy.”

  “We’ve got ammo and the grenade launcher,” Brock said. “As long as they don’t hit us the same time as Shipley does, we can handle them.”

  “I saw Shipley’s troops headed out of town, toward the north,” Jorge said. “Back toward the mountains.”

  “Retreating, huh?” Hilyard said. “I’m not surprised. ‘Hit-and-run’ is the only tactic he knows.”

  “Let me take a squad out after him, sir,” Brock said. “With a couple of your men along, we can head him off before he makes it back to his rat-hole.”

  Hilyard waved a hand of dismissal without bothering to turn around. “He’s not the primary threat right now.”

  No, because you’ve got your little kingdom sewn up, don’t you? With Shipley out of the way, there’s nobody to challenge your throne.

  “The Zapheads may take care of the problem,” Jorge said. “There are many of them.”

  “And your one-eyed friend DeVontay?” Hilyard asked. “Missing in action or casualty of war?”

  “Missing,” Franklin said. “Guess we lost a resource. Wouldn’t be surprised if he turned up sometime today, but I’m going out looking for him after I get a snooze in.”

  “No one leaves the fortifications without permission,” Hilyard said. “If the Zapheads are massing for an attack, we’ll need every warm body we can get. Too bad you didn’t kill the baby.”

  “Speaking of which, what happened to the other eight babies? If this ninth baby can bring them back to life, that’s a whole lot of faith healers running out building a Zap army of the dead.”

  “They’re in the hospital with the rest of the corpses,” Hilyard said.

  “We’re gonna burn that shit down,” Brock said with a disturbing amount of glee. “Hitler’s ovens won’t hold a candle to the great Newton Zap Extermination.”

  Jorge stood and headed for the door. “If you amigos will excuse me, I should rest.”

  Hilyard frowned as the Mexican exited, as if the man had violated protocol by not only waiting for his dismissal but in failing to salute. Franklin bit back a smile, but he was grinning like a poached possum on the inside. Joys were few and far between in these dark days, and he didn’t mind seeing a government weasel choke on his own sense of formality.

  “One thing that’s got me bothered,” Hilyard said.

  “What’s that?” Franklin deliberately avoided adding the expected “sir.”

  “You two civilians made it back alive, along with Stephen, who just happens to turn up in Newton.”

  “You know the boy is tougher than buffalo jerky. He’s a fast learner.”

  “Yeah. He walks thirty miles through Zapheads and Shipley’s unit, not a scratch. But one of my highly trained corporals doesn’t pull through. And you show up with her goggles and rifle.”

  “She died honorably, doing her duty,” Franklin said. Feed the man a heap of his own cow flop and see how it tastes.

  “Overcome by events,” Hilyard said. “I expected better of Volker.”

  Disappointed in one of your “resources”? I think whatever the military stored in that bunker has boiled your brains, because you’re almost as bad as Shipley.

  Franklin forced himself to consider that the dying soldier’s final words might have been a lie. Maybe the soldier had seen it as a duty to feed false information about Hilyard and Shipley, one last personal badge of honor to flash at whatever afterlife club he tried to enter. Franklin didn’t need much to push him over into conspiracy theories and shadow motives. But these little Mussolini wannabes were playing low-stakes poker while their race faced extinction, and that’s what really jammed sand in Franklin’s craw.

  If he was willing to go “All for one and one for all,” then so should the rest of the survivors.

  But he didn’t want to sit here all morning. He was pretty sure DeVontay had returned with the baby, and that Rachel was alive again. When it came to resources, his granddaughter was one he valued most highly. She was better than buried backyard gold.

  “Well, Lieutenant, looks like you have things organized pretty well around here,” he said, standing on weary legs. “The Zappers won’t have a chance.”

  “We got enough food and ammo to hold out until spring,” Brock said. “We’re good to go.”

  “We set up a barracks across the street in that clothing boutique. Smells like incense and hippies in there, but otherwise it’s dry and comfortable. See Page, she’ll set you up. There’s breakfast if you want it, over at the drug store.”

  Franklin gave the man a salute just for kicks. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  As he left, he was thinking: Screw the barracks. I’m going to see Rachel.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Stephen hadn’t felt this safe in a long time.

  There weren’t many soldiers around, just enough of them to make him feel safe. And these troops didn’t seem to be psychos, although he wasn’t sure how anybody could tell the difference until they started doing psycho things. But a lot of normal people were around, too, even though most of them had guns. And kids—there were even kids here.

  The nice woman, Sierra, gave him a bowl of soup that tasted of tin cans, but at least it had lots of ingredients, unlike the plain cans of green beans and pinto beans he’d been eating for weeks. Sure, he’d rather have some Slim Jims and candy bars, but a little nutrition wouldn’t kill him.

  “Is it warm enough?” Sierra asked, giving him a smile that reminded him of Rachel’s. She wore her blonde hair pulled in a ponytail, and it shone in the sunlight through the window as if she’d recently washed it.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “It’s yummers.”

  The little girl with them, who was a year or two younger than Stephen, looked at him for the first time since they’d been introduced. Her eyes were red and sad, hollowed out like she’d seen something bad and couldn’t forget it. Well, Stephen could relate to that.

  “What does ‘yummers’ mean?” She pushed her spoon around in her soup, not eating anything.

  “Good,” he said, giving an exaggerated rub of his belly. “You know. Yummy.”

  “Oh.” She looked out the window and far away.

  Sierra, sitting beside her, put an arm around her. “You need to keep your strength up, Marina. Just try to get down a few bites, okay?”

  Stephen made a show of really chowing down, slurping and lapping and shoveling his food into his mouth, juice leaking down his chin. He even tilted back his head and let out a huge belch, which caused her to smile. He didn’t really care much for girls, but since the solar storms he’d not met many kids besides those at the compound in Stonewall, and that hadn’t turned out so well.

  They sat in the front-window booth of a drug store, which was warm because the stove bur
ned propane gas, and Sierra said the tank was full so they left all the burners on. An old man with a white apron tended some pots at the stove, and he had some kind of meat sizzling on the steel griddle. Even with the vents open, the air was smoky and greasy.

  People had been coming in and out all morning, some of them sitting on round stools at the counter, others taking booths and chatting. Sierra and others drank from ceramic mugs of coffee, which smelled kind of stale and bitter but that didn’t stop anybody.

  This is a solid set-up, except for the Zaphead army roaming the town. Franklin’s compound is pretty cool, especially the goats, but it’s good to be around people for a change.

  The only problem was that no one would tell him where Rachel was. Franklin wouldn’t answer him and just said they’d catch up with her later, which was weird, because Franklin usually didn’t beat around the bush.

  “You walked a long way on your own,” Sierra said to him.

  “Yes, ma’am, I came to find Rachel Wheeler.”

  Sierra glanced away, ignoring him, and said to Marina, “He’s very brave, just like you are.”

  Stephen wondered what the girl’s story was, and then decided it didn’t matter. Everyone had stories these days. Everybody had lost somebody. And what you did when that happened was find new people. It was natural.

  Now the girl had found Sierra, and at least she still had her dad. Although her dad looked a little hollow-eyed himself. He’d come into the store, talked to her for a moment, drank a bottle of orange juice, and left again, restless and quiet. Franklin had talked about the Jiminez family, but the wife was nowhere around. Stephen figured that was the cause of their shared misery.

  “Did you see any Zapheads?” the girl asked Stephen, finally meeting his eyes again.

  He wanted to brag and tell about how he’d been surrounded by a whole pack of them, and how the baby had brought them back to life while he held her, but that would probably scare her. In truth, he was still scared himself. He didn’t know how many people knew about this resurrection business, but a thing like that could cause a panic. The peace wouldn’t last, so why upset people for no good reason? Let them eat their fried canned ham and pretend for a while longer that they were in a normal small town, going about their day.

  “I saw some Zappers,” Stephen said. “But I ran like crazy.”

  “That’s smart,” Sierra said. “You must have—”

  “My momma wanted me to be a Zaphead,” Marina cut in. “She killed all the babies.”

  “Bummer,” Stephen said. She was kind of breaking the rules. You didn’t talk about real stuff. That destroyed the illusion. They were all sitting here having some chow before school and work and all that, whatever people did in Newton, and she had to blow it.

  She’s only a kid. Give her a break.

  Stephen figured it was a good idea to change the subject. “Do you like comic books?”

  “No,” she said, looking down at her cold soup. “I like to draw.”

  “Well!” Sierra said brightly. “I’ll see if I can find some paper and crayons.”

  After she left to prowl the stationary section, Stephen said, “Grown-ups never tell you the full truth. That’s what I like about Rachel. She was a school counselor, so she’s real good with kids. Maybe you can talk to her?”

  Marina shook her head. “No.”

  “It might help. I promise, she doesn’t just mouth a bunch of mumbo jumbo. She actually listens.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s hard at first—”

  Marina flung out an arm, swept her bowl of soup to the floor with a crash, and stood with a sudden force that startled Stephen. The conversation at the lunch counter died, and the popping of griddle grease was the only sound. That made Marina’s words pound even more like a rain of blows: “I can’t talk to her because MY MOMMA KILLED HER!”

  Stephen sat back, staring at the black-haired girl, not understanding. The girl had cracked. Sierra ran from the back of the store, dropping the items she’d gathered. While she wrapped her arms around Marina, Stephen watched the girl’s face go from contorted to blank again, skin stretching like Mister Fantastic’s in the comic books.

  Rachel’s here. DeVontay and Franklin both told me she was waiting.

  But the way Sierra was looking at him—that pathetic, half-truth gaze as if she pitied a sick puppy—told him all he needed to know.

  Several sensations hit him at once. A coldness crept up from his fingers and toes. His head burned with a sudden fever. The soup roiled in his stomach and roped several acidic inches up his esophagus. Voices picked up their conversations again, just more coffee chatter on a perfectly normal day in Newton. The store blurred, and then the tears broke and spilled down his cheeks.

  “I was supposed to…” He wasn’t even aware he was talking. “She…”

  The seat squeaked beside him and a hand touched his shoulder. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  He nodded. Why blame her? She was just a kid.

  The sorrow was so big all he could do was focus on a small thing: the soup spattered on the floor, like watery blood, gleaming white shards of ceramic accenting the pattern. She could draw, all right, even when she didn’t have crayons.

  But as he danced around the truth of it, anger sliced through the numbness.

  DeVontay lied to me. Franklin lied to me.

  A thin arm snaked around his shoulders and her head rested on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  And he understood she was sorry not for saying it, but because it happened. He let her keep her head there for a minute. He didn’t sob, at least he managed that much, because he didn’t want Marina to feel him shake. He was brave, a Little Man, and Rachel would want him to set a good example.

  And he knew exactly what Rachel would want him to say. “I’m sorry about your momma,” he said, managing to keep his voice from cracking while still being audible.

  When her hand found his, her fingers were so frail, he was afraid to squeeze back, so he just let his hand lay there like a fish. He’d never held hands with a girl before. It wasn’t as gross as he always thought it would be. Then she trembled, and his shoulder was wet beneath his shirt, and she snuffled a good, juicy double-load of wet snot.

  They held each other and shared a cry, his silent and stern, hers gooey and loud. The others went about their business, Sierra went to warm up her coffee or something, and Stephen let the emptiness grow inside him.

  When he was full of it, he just closed his eyes and listened to Marina’s breath.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Franklin was headed for the funeral home, under the pretense of preparing his granddaughter for her burial, when DeVontay came out of the building and stood under the shade of the portico.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” DeVontay said, but there was something wrong with his face. As if he was staring into dark water at the bottom of a well and his reflection was missing. “I couldn’t leave Rachel alone.”

  “Me and Stephen got cut off by Zappers.”

  DeVontay nodded. “So he made it, too. That’s good.”

  That was when Franklin realized something was very wrong. Where was Kokona? Had DeVontay already done it? Why hadn’t he waited? “Did it work?”

  DeVontay nodded again, a wooden gesture, like a ventriloquist’s dummy repeating a rehearsed move.

  Franklin strode toward the door, heart jumping in an uneven rhythm. He was half afraid, half ecstatic. He’d accepted that he would take Rachel any way he could get her, as long as she was alive. Glittery eyes, killer impulse, even vegetative coma.

  But when he pushed the door open, he saw the casket angled off the bier, the bottom resting on the floor and the lid flung open. It was empty.

  Franklin turned, the question already forming on his lips.

  “Rachel took the baby and ran,” DeVontay said. “I couldn’t catch her. She was…fast.”

  So she could walk. She came back from the dead. We really did it. W
e played God, and God help us.

  Somehow the miracle lost its power because he hadn’t witnessed it. Intellectually he accepted it because he’d seen the revival of the Zapheads. Even now, he couldn’t think of her as a Zaphead. Until he saw it for himself, she was Rachel.

  Back from the dead. A hell of a thing.

  “Was she all there?” he asked, glancing up and down the street as if expecting her to come walking up. “Like, able to think and talk?”

  “Sort of,” DeVontay said.

  “Damn it, man, talk straight. Is she Rachel again or not?”

  “Yeah. But she’s gone. She’s not one of us anymore.”

  “Worse than before?”

  “She acted like she didn’t know me.”

  Seeing her as a half-mutant had been horrible enough, but at least she’d known the people around her. But even then, the pull of the Zapheads was stronger than anything the human world offered her. And her new tribe no longer had any interest in peaceful coexistence. If she was fully changed now, wouldn’t she be eager to exterminate all humans, even those she once loved?

  “You should have waited for me,” Franklin said, although he wasn’t sure what he would have done. Sealed her in the casket? Killed her again?

  “I was afraid of brain damage if it didn’t happen soon. But I should have known better. Kokona was so eager to help.”

  “Why did Rachel take the baby?” Franklin twisted his beard so tightly that several wiry hairs broke loose between his fingers.

  “The baby—she controls whoever carries her. I thought I was getting her to help because she didn’t want to die. But she’s the one who got what she wanted.”

  Franklin wanted to slap the man out of his stupor. Just because he was moony-eyed in love didn’t mean he had to lose his senses. “Where are they going?”

  DeVontay looked past the square to the big building beyond the jail. Only the top floors of the hospital were visible from here, windows gray and silver in the sun. “The other babies.”

  “Why? The other babies are dead—holy shit. No.”