After: The Shock

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Plenty of canned meat and jerky still around,” Campbell said. “Years and years of it.”

  The wire basket of his bicycle held cans of tuna, sardines, corned beef, and pink salmon. Aside from the one stop at the “gypsy camp,” they’d eaten their food cold. But the smoke didn’t make him hungry. It was oily and tainted.

  A bird chirruped high in the trees. The Big Zap had wiped out a lot of animals, but the survivors among them seemed to behave as they always had. It was only humans that seemed to have been affected on a neurological level. So far, anyway. All their homing instincts, territorial boundaries, and migration patterns could have altered in uncertain ways.

  A branch snapped behind them, maybe twenty feet away. Pete swung around, bumping Campbell in the arm with his pistol.

  At least the dumbass didn’t shoot me. But the night is young.

  The rustling came closer, swick swick swick through the dry brush. Then a pause, as if whomever—or whatever—it was had stopped to listen for its prey.

  Campbell strained to hear, holding his breath, but Pete was rasping away, the smoker’s rattle rising from deep in his lungs. He wondered if Pete was thinking the same thing he was: Who shoots first?

  But what if it was a person? A fellow survivor? Maybe there were more, enough to form a group and—

  Campbell beat back the faint flutter of hope. In the week since the event, they’d met only four survivors, and one of those had turned and fled when Campbell had called her. The other three were in the makeshift gypsy camp, and Campbell hoped to God that wasn’t a sample representation of mankind’s future.

  Swiiick. One cautious footstep through the weeds.

  Pete nudged him. Campbell turned, but Pete was just an onyx bulk against the lesser black of night. Then Pete’s mouth was at his ear, spraying saliva as he whispered: “Go left, and I’ll go right.”

  Campbell nodded, trying not to tremble. A Zaphead wouldn’t be subtle. It would charge like a rhino through the veldt, using whatever it had in its hands as a weapon. Such a mad, predictable danger was reassuring in an odd way. This, however…

  He edged to his left, pushing the barren flashlight before him to test the foliage. The susurration of Pete’s passage let him know the gap between them was widening. Campbell was on his own.

  Swiiick. Another step forward.

  Or had that been Pete’s footstep?

  Campbell turned again, and he was disoriented. He could no longer see the thin licks of fire in the near distance and the night had blended with the canopy until he was unsure of the location of the highway, the forest, or the creek. He nearly surrendered to the impulse to switch on the flashlight, but he pinched his fingers together until the pain cleared the panic.

  It’s not a Zaphead. And a survivor has no reason to hurt you.

  But the smoke told a different story. The smoke said, “Mmm, tastes like chicken,” and “I’ll bet you’re just dying to join us for dinner” and “We’re pleased to serve you.”

  Screw it. You watched too many horror movies back in the Old Days.

  Never mind that the Old Days were July or so.

  He looked up at the dim stars and mist-hidden wedge of moon, trying to get his bearings. The constellations themselves seemed alien and strange, as if the massive solar flare had tilted the planet’s axis. Maybe the world was all shook up, both literally and figuratively.

  Swick swick swick, the steps were fast and close, and he raised the pistol, its sodden weight tugged by gravity until the act was like bringing to bear a field cannon.

  And he heard the signature insane chuckling—not in the direction of the steps, but behind him, right behind him—and then the night erupted with a flash and roar. Campbell’s ears rang with sudden pain as he dropped his pistol and fell to his knees.

  “You okay?” said a gruff voice above him.

  “Yuh-yeah.” Campbell gripped the flashlight before him as if it was a dagger he could use to impale himself.

  “What the hell?” Pete said, some distance away, crashing through the scrub toward them.

  “Don’t shoot,” the gruff voice said. “Your friend’s okay.”

  The man flicked a switch and a bluish Maglite blinded Campbell, although the beam was directed to the side. The light bounced past him and settled on a limp figure pressed face-first into the grass. A dark, wet bloom covered its back and ragged bits of flesh clung to a gaping hole in the back of the shirt. Campbell had the impression of graceful bulk as the man swept past him and stood over the corpse just as Pete burst into the circle of light.

  “A Zaphead,” the man said.

  “Who the hell are you?” Pete said. His Glock was pointed at the man, who gave it an amused glance.

  “The king of nowhere,” the man said.

  “Shit.” Pete looked at Campbell, letting his aim waver. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Campbell nodded, a little embarrassed. He collected his revolver and looked at the man standing over the corpse. The man was bald, a little over six feet, and dressed in a matching gym suit, a khaki hunter’s vest over it. Although the suit was dirty, the man appeared well-groomed and fit, despite his age.

  “Who is that?” Campbell managed to ask, pointing his revolver at the corpse.

  “What,” the man said. “What is that? These things don’t deserve to be called a ‘who.’”

  Campbell couldn’t tell by looking whether the corpse was once a Zaphead. All he knew was, it had once been human. Yet, Campbell had not heard it approaching, and Zapheads weren’t known for stealth and subtlety.

  “You sure it’s a Zaphead?” Campbell asked.

  “Zaphead? That’s a funny name for them, but it’s a good as any, I guess. We’ve been calling them ‘veggies.’”

  “It was stalking me,” Campbell said. “They’re supposed to charge.”

  “It was creeping up, all right. But not on you. It was watching us.”

  “Wait a sec,” Pete said. “How come you could see in the dark?”

  The man fished around in the hip pocket of his coveralls, eliciting a threatening wave of the Glock from Pete. The man ignored the gesture and pulled out some tinted goggles on a thick strap. “Infrared,” the man said. “Nothing but the best in survival gear if you want to survive, right?”

  How come WE didn’t think of that? Oh, yeah. Because Pete’s drunk off his ass and my survivalist training ended in the sixth grade when Mom made me quit the Boy Scouts.

  “Is it just you two fellas?” the man asked, tracking his flashlight along the scrub.

  “Yeah,” Campbell grunted. “How come this one was sneaking? I’ve never seen any of them sneak.”

  “They’re changing.”

  “Changing?” Pete said. “Like what, growing a third eye or something?”

  “The way they act. Come on, you can ask the professor about it.” The man turned and headed into the forest.

  “Damn, man.” Pete said to Campbell. “Hardcore.”

  The man stopped ten feet ahead and turned. “You boys ain’t dangerous, are you? With them guns?”

  “No, sir,” Campbell said.

  “Didn’t think so. I bet you’re too scared to shoot if you had to.” He continued toward the flickering fire.

  Campbell switched on his flashlight and pointed it down at the corpse. He imagined he heard a low chuckling but decided it was the thing’s stomach gases. But it didn’t look like a thing, or a veggie, or a Zaphead. It looked like somebody’s chubby uncle, a bus driver or brake mechanic or off-duty cop. The corpse wore a dark short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and scuffed leather shoes without socks.

  Campbell wondered where the man had been when the solar flare erupted. Zapheads rarely moved with any sort of real intention besides venting rage on anything that breathed. If they were changing, evolving, and adapting, he hadn’t seen such behavior manifested. But hadn’t the woman in the plumbing van pounced with a glimmer of intelligence?

  “I don’t want these things to change,” Campbell
said. “I was just starting to get used to the idea of a planet full of mindless killers. I don’t know if I can handle any more surprises.”

  “Well, we better catch up with Mister Happy up there.”

  “And his friends, apparently.”

  “Wonder if they got any beer?”

  Campbell led the way, giving the corpse a wide berth. He wondered how many more Zapheads might be lurking in the bushes, watching the campfire and waiting for an opportunity.

  Pete staggered by him, wobbling and cussing, hacking at the saplings with his free hand. “Dude could have let us borrow his goggles.”

  “I have the feeling he’s not the sharing kind. He’d probably say some jock bullshit like ‘Only survivalists survive.’”

  As they neared the forest, the air became moister and cooler. The creek lay beyond them in the dark, gurgling in oblivious merriment. The clouds had spread out in great purple skeins above, backlit by the psychedelic auroras that came in the wake of the solar storms. Somewhere above them, the moon continued its track across the sky. The world continued to turn, all the great cogs of the universe appeared to fit into their proper slots, and the machineries of time functioned in perfect precision, but the one big piece of it was broken.

  Campbell looked back toward the road once, wondering about their bicycles, but the night had swallowed all their travels. Now there was only the bobbing fire, and that pungent, tantalizing smoke, and a future where former humans crouched in a depraved hunger for violence.

  “Do you see any of them?” Pete said as they entered the silent corridor of trees.

  “Shh.” Pete squinted at the crackling fire, playing his flashlight around, wondering where their rescuer was. They stepped into a clearing that contained a couple of tents, a blanket hanging from a wire strung between two trees, and some gray cookware stacked on a sodden stump.

  No one was in sight.

  Then a deep voice erupted from the surrounding shadows: “Drop your guns and move real slow.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They’d decided on a room in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of the city, just below the interstate but away from any commercial developments or residential neighborhoods. A convenience store and a Taco Bell were the only other buildings in the little off-road cluster designed to bleed money from travelers on the way south to Columbia or north to Raleigh. In the murky light of sundown, Rachel couldn’t make out any of the vehicles she knew were scattered along the road.

  There were fewer cars in front of the convenience store, so they chose that one to explore instead of the Taco Bell. The fast-food restaurant with its darkened glass seemed absurdly like an abandoned temple, a religion whose comforts no longer served the masses. Rachel could smell the spoiled cheese emanating from the place. At least, she hoped it was cheese.

  She kept watch out front while DeVontay prowled the convenience store for food and supplies. She clutched the flashlight, afraid to turn it on, figuring that invisibility was the best defense. The world’s silence was oppressive and weighty—a new sort of gravity enveloped her in an alien skin. The only sounds were the occasional crashes as DeVontay pillaged the store.

  He soon emerged with his backpack bulging, a bag of Doritos ripped open in his hand. He crunched the corn chips as he said, “Got us enough to get through the night.”

  “See anybody?”

  “Just a couple dead folks.”

  “Were they Zapheads?”

  “Why you call ‘em that?”

  “That’s what the media was calling them, before the power went out.”

  DeVontay headed for the motel and she followed, glancing at the Taco Bell. No more running for the border.

  “The solar flares,” Rachel said. “Astronomers knew they were coming. They just didn’t know what would happen.”

  “I never was no good at science.” DeVontay held the bag of chips out to her.

  “You shouldn’t be eating that junk food.”

  “What, it will rot my brain?” He snorted in laughter.

  “That stuff’s full of preservatives.”

  “I might need me some preserving, if things get any worse.” He pulled his pistol from his belt as they approached the drop-off circle by the motel’s main entrance.

  A red Fiat was pulled up to the curb, its front doors open. Rachel gave the car a wide berth but DeVontay peered through the window. “Bad ride.”

  “It’s dead, like every other car we tried in the last half hour.”

  “Why you got to be so negative all the time?”

  “Maybe because everybody I know and love is either dead or trying to crack open my skull,” she said.

  “Well, that’s what you get for lovin’ people,” DeVontay said. “I never had that problem.”

  He left the Fiat and joined her outside the sliding-glass doors, where she peered into the shadowed lobby. The front desk was unattended. A dark form slumped in one of those stiff, formal chairs that were designed for decoration, not for sitting.

  “Somebody’s in there,” Rachel said.

  DeVontay tugged his pistol from his belt. “Are they moving?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Should we knock?” Rachel said.

  DeVontay pushed at narrow gap where the two sliding doors stood a few inches from meeting. “No electricity. This bitch won’t open.”

  “Maybe if you yell a little louder, we can get some Zapheads to bust it open for us.”

  “Ain’t nobody here. Not alive, no ways.”

  Rachel didn’t want to think about all the bodies spread throughout the motel. There were at least 30 cars in the parking lot, which meant a big slice of America: business travelers, families on vacation, retired people headed to see the grandkids.

  “We could break the glass,” Rachel said.

  “Like that wouldn’t draw attention?”

  “I don’t know how well those things can hear. We still don’t much about them.”

  “Wait here.” DeVontay gave her the bag of Doritos headed back to the Fiat, then he stooped through the driver’s-side door. A moment, later, the trunk popped open. DeVontay returned with a scissors jack and handle.

  “Lucky it had a manual latch, or I woulda had to bust into it,” DeVontay said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “So, we can add ‘car thief’ to your list of survival skills. Great.” She put a Dorito in her mouth and the crunch filled her ears from the inside.

  “Says the lady eating a stolen Dorito.”

  She glanced down at the bag and realized the moral compass, even hers, had shifted with the arrival of the solar flares. Perhaps God’s commandments needed a revision.

  She might have thought that the catastrophe had been a punishment for the wicked, except that the apocalypse had punished everyone, good or bad, white or black, believer or infidel. But she couldn’t worry about the big picture right now. First, she had to survive the night.

  DeVontay wedged the jack between the bottoms of the motel doors and cranked the handle until it was tight. At first, the doors held, and then they groaned in protest before yielding. The jack handle quivered under the stress, and Rachel wondered if the glass would shatter after all. Then the doors gave a grudging inch, and then another.

  When DeVontay had widened the gap to more than a foot, he stepped aside and retrieved his pistol. “Ladies first.”

  “You’re a real gentleman.”

  “I told you, I ain’t no gentleman. Just a man. Now get in there and just scream if you see any Zapheads.”

  She stared into his face, which was getting harder to see as night encroached. His glass eye was lost in shadow, but his real one burned with impatience. She pushed her backpack through the opening, and switched on her flashlight, keeping the beam directed on the lobby floor.

  Rachel stepped inside, immediately hit by the corrupt air of the three-story mausoleum. She played the flashlight beam over the figure in the chair and wished she hadn’t. She had been a maid with a Spanish complexion and
dark hair knotted into a bun, perhaps taking a final break without realizing her shift was about to be punched out by the Big Time Clock in the Sky. Beside her was a cart filled with folded towels, linens, and cleaning supplies.

  “Grab this,” DeVontay said, shoving his own backpack through the opening. She had to wiggle it to get it through, but was uneasy about turning her back on the dark lobby. Once she got it through, DeVontay followed, and she drew comfort from the pistol he now pointed before him into the darkness.

  “Smell that?” she said.

  He took her flashlight and walked over to the maid’s cart, ignoring the body. He came back with a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer. He squirted some on his fingers and rubbed the goo above his upper lip, into the faint stubble of his mustache. He gave an exaggerated sniff and passed her the bottle.

  She understood and aped his actions. The perfumed aroma immediately filled her nostrils and masked the smell of death.

  “You’re pretty resourceful,” she said.

  “Saw it on a TV show,” he said.

  “Wow.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. We got TV in Philly, too. Before it fried out, I mean.”

  Outside, a faint dusting of stars stuck to the deep ceiling of the sky, the rippling green bands of aurora borealis painting the darkness.

  “Let’s get a room,” she said.

  “I could make a joke here, but it’s the end of the world,” he said. He crossed the lobby to the front desk, flicking the flashlight down each wing to make sure they were empty. He went behind the desk and into the open office while Rachel shouldered her backpack and waited. A moment later, he came out holding up a key ring.

  “Key cards won’t work, but one of these gotta be the master key,” he said.

  “Hurry. I’m getting the creeps out here.”

  “Let’s take the first one we come to,” he said. “The nicest rooms are usually closest to the front desk. Might even get a Jacuzzi, for all the good it will do us.”

  “Pass the apocalypse in pampered luxury,” she said. “I can see the television commercial already.”