After: The Shock

by Nicholson, Scott

  “There are lots of ways to die,” she said. “He was old. Maybe he had a heart attack. Or couldn’t get his medicine.”

  “Don’t nobody die from natural causes anymore.”

  “Okay, then. Maybe he had a bullet hole in his back. Shot by the military.”

  “No puddle of blood around him.”

  Annoyed, Rachel checked the reflection in the storefront glass and saw Stephen walking into the street. She called to him, but he kept going, dragging Miss Molly by the hair as if he’d forgotten he was carrying a doll. DeVontay took off running after him, and Rachel broke free of her paralysis and followed.

  When they caught up with Stephen, they were able to see the town square, a fifty-foot courthouse with a cracked concrete façade and a dome top surrounded by oak trees whose leaves were darkening with autumn. The courthouse lawn was a wide public commons crisscrossed with walkways, punctuated with a bronze statue of some Revolutionary War hero gone green with patina and pigeon poop. The idyllic small-town postcard was marred by wrought-iron benches that bore a tableau of corpses. More corpses were slumped on the courthouse steps, which was as crowded as if district court was holding a brief recess to allow a smoke break for the accused.

  “Lots of them,” Stephen said, enthralled and not at all horrified.

  There had to be a few dozen, including some children, although they didn’t seem to be grouped as family units. Indeed, at first, Rachel thought they might have been arranged that way, like a photo shoot for a modern auteur of the grotesque.

  “More fresh ones,” DeVontay said, and Rachel realized what had been disturbing her more than the sheer number of dead: they, like the old man leaning against the brick wall, were not yet in advanced stages of decomposition.

  “Do you think…?” She didn’t want to continue while Stephen was within earshot, but DeVontay filled in the blanks for her.

  “Yeah,” he said. “These are Zapheads. They’re dying.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure whether she should be cheered by the news. The Zapheads had been trying to kill her for weeks, sure. But they’d just been following their instincts. And if all Zapheads died, then the world would become that much lonelier. Even more devoid of what had once walked the Earth as a collective humanity.

  They followed Stephen to the closest bench, where a girl of about six lay curled on her side. Her pink dress was mussed and her stockings torn, but otherwise, she might have been sleeping.

  “She was put there like that,” DeVontay said. “She didn’t die in that position.”

  Stephen knelt and spoke to her. “Hey, are you okay?”

  Rachel stood behind Stephen and put a hand on each of his shoulders. “She’s with the Lord now, Stephen.”

  Stephen looked around the commons. “Which one of them is the Lord?”

  “The one up in heaven,” Rachel said, although she looked around to make sure Jesus Christ wasn’t among them at that very minute. After all, if He was planning a return trip to Earth, then Taylorsville, North Carolina, was just a good a spot as any.

  Of course, she was also aware that such thoughts could well be the beginning of madness. The great visionaries and prophets of the Old Testament were on the borderline of textbook schizophrenia, with their burning bushes, wheels of fire in the sky, and voices telling them to kill their own children.

  “This is creepy as hell,” DeVontay said. “You think these are Zapheads?”

  “They understand,” she said, keeping her voice down. If any of them were merely sleeping, she didn’t want to wake them.

  “Understand what? Did you get into some happy juice somewhere? Popped into the liquor store while I wasn’t looking?”

  “They understand that the world has changed,” she said. “They’re aware.”

  “You talking about these same Zapheads that have been trying to kills us for the last two weeks?”

  “They’re taking care of their dead,” she said. “It’s the last shred and act of humanity, to honor the dead.” She had the sudden horrifying thought that perhaps these were all victims of a mass suicide, that a group of Zapheads realized something had gone wrong in their heads and they’d chugged the cyanide Kool-Aid, rather than surrender to their baser natures, their killer instincts.

  Such an action would have taken higher-order functioning, communication, and socialization, none of which were traits that the Zapheads had displayed so far.

  But what do you really know about them? You’ve been too busy running and hiding—and surviving—to really pay attention.

  “They don’t look so scary now,” Stephen said.

  “Their troubles are over.” Rachel almost added, They’re the lucky ones, but the journey wasn’t over yet. If there was one thing she still believed, it was that God had put here her for a reason.

  Even if God was now the architect of greatest mass murder in history, she still believed. Still.

  “Let’s get out of here before somebody comes to add to the pile,” DeVontay said.

  “Come on, Stephen,” Rachel said.

  “Just a second.” The boy went over the bench where the little girl was sleeping. Without touching her, he gently laid Miss Molly in the crook of her arm. Stephen practically skipped back over to Rachel’s side, taking her hand.

  “Now she won’t get lonely,” he said, smiling up at her.

  Rachel thought of her sister decomposing inside a fiberglass casket in a Seattle cemetery. Beside her pale corpse, Rachel had placed under one stiff, cool arm her sister’s stuffed panda, Farley, a copy of her favorite book, The Princess Bride, and a photograph of the Earth taken by the Hubble telescope. Rachel had prayed her sister wasn’t lonely, either. In whatever After she now knew.

  DeVontay led them back to the street, the pistol still dangling near his hip. A few gunshots popped in the distance, and the breeze carried the acrid brusque of smoke, but otherwise, the place was as peaceful as any small-town Sunday afternoon.

  As they passed the bridal shop again, Rachel thought she saw movement inside. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t look too closely, either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As Campbell burst into the sunlight, he raised the heavy candlestick, expecting a fight.

  Instead, he found that the side door opened onto a little cemetery, with unkempt grass, faded plastic bouquets of flowers, and low marble markers in uneven rows. The graveyard was bounded by a fence about two feet high, designed more as a boundary than to actually keep out vandals and stray dogs. Making sure no Zapheads were on that side of the church, he oriented himself with the view he’d mapped out while in the belfry.

  A copse of maple trees offered enough concealment top get him to the street. But he was stunned to see no Zapheads around the church.

  Were they all inside?

  He imagined the Zapheads closing in on the deranged reverend, reaching for him even as he delivered the Word in an attempt to reach their hearts and save their souls from the eternal flames of hell.

  But he was grateful for the martyr act, because it allowed him to slip between an Irish-themed restaurant and an antique store, angling down a side alley flanked with overflowing trash cans, propane tanks, and heating units. A body was splayed out atop a busted garbage bag as if it fallen from above. Campbell didn’t look too closely, but the exposed hands and face were dark and swollen with rot.

  Now two blocks from the church, he exited warily onto the street, which was Hardin Boulevard, according to the sign. He recognized the angle of the architecture, with the skyline featuring one five-story building featuring an old-fashioned clock with rusty metal hands standing tall against the smoky horizon. The other buildings on the block were two-story, cars and trucks parked along both sides of the street and only a few vehicles slanted at angles across the median strip.

  Looks pretty dead.

  Campbell decided to just sprint up the street rather than sticking to the shadows. If he was spotted, he’d have enough lead time to make a decision out in the open rath
er than risk being jumped from one of the doorways. Besides that, the big brass candlestick was feeling better and better in his hands.

  The bar where Pete had entered stood on the corner, with metal tables under an awning. A red vinyl banner ran down the edge of the upper story, sporting the name Fat Freddy’s, with “Pub & Grill” in smaller letters beneath it. Campbell and Pete had passed more than a few Friday nights in such establishments, eating wings and eyeing girls, but mostly drinking whatever cheap domestic beer was on tap.

  Campbell wondered if all the Zapheads in the vicinity had been drawn to the church. He’d seen them responding to noise, violence, and fire, but the church had offered none of those attractions. Just when Campbell had become used to—certainly not comfortable or at ease with, but used to—things as they now stood, the rules changed.

  Not that Campbell had ever made much sense of the world even before it had figuratively tilted on its axis. Grade school had been an indoctrination of sorts—“Go here when the bell rings, do this and this and this”—but Campbell had been bewildered by the anxiety of sitting in a room with twenty-five other kids. High school had been just as surreal, mostly because he’d seen those roles that adults were forced to adopt, and he didn’t see any role he’d be able to successfully fake. Because he was pretty sure everyone was pulling a mask, all characters straight out of Central Casting: the chisel-faced military recruiting officer, the tow-truck driver with the Popeye forearms, the gum-chewing waitress at the Waffle House, the I.T. nerd with the Batman fixation.

  So, a world populated by Zapheads wasn’t really too much of a leap, was it?

  Regardless, he was grateful that none of them were around. If the church offered what they needed, that was just fine with him, and God bless.

  Campbell dashed between a Mitsubishi boiling with blue bottle flies and a Honda sedan with all four doors flung open and spilling the stench of corpses. He vaulted over a motorcycle lying on its side, nearly losing his balance, then came to Fat Freddy’s entrance. He peered through the oval glass set in the wooden door but couldn’t see much. He pushed his way in, squeezing the candlestick.

  “Bro! Just in time for Happy Hour!” Pete’s voice came from the darkness somewhere near the back of the establishment.

  As Campbell’s eyes adjusted, he made out the dim rows of tables, some of them occupied by dead people fallen face first into their moldering food. A few candles flickered, reflected in the bar mirror along with rows and rows of gleaming bottles. Campbell wiped his nose against the rot, still not accustomed to the sweetly corrupt odor.

  But the smell of candle wax and alcohol were strong as well, creating a lurid mixture. Pete stood behind the bar, a half-full bottle of brown liquor before him, along with a water glass. At first, Campbell thought that Pete had somehow found some drinking buddies, because four other people sat at the bar, perched on high wooden stools with glasses in front of them.

  “Pete, who are these guys?” Campbell’s heart turned into a frozen stone in his chest.

  Pete merely grinned, tossed back a couple of ounces of whiskey, and slammed the glass back down with a brittle thunk. “Drinks on the house,” he said, slurring his words just a little.

  Campbell navigated the tables, holding the candlestick before him as if it was a cattle prod and he might need to jolt some of these corpses out of the way. “Coast is clear, man. We can get out of town with no hassle.”

  Pete waved to the row of bottles, his grinning eyes flashing in the candlelight. “Leave? I died and went to heaven. Beer’s warm, and there’s not any ice, but can’t complain. Nosirree.”

  Campbell glanced at the bodies leaning against the bar. They were in stilted, swollen poses, the stools jammed under them to keep them erect. One, a biker wearing a sleeveless jeans jacket and a watchman’s cap, had maggots roiling in his eye sockets.

  “Pete,” Campbell said warily. “Why don’t you just grab a bottle and come with me? You can drink it on the road.”

  “No way,” he responded, sloshing some whiskey into the biker’s full glass so that the liquid ran along the length of the bar. The glasses in front of the other corpses were full as well.

  “You…” Campbell didn’t know how to process the tableau. His best friend had lost it, finally cracked under the strain. And Campbell felt a chill deeper than fear: the deep, icy well of loneliness into which he was dropping.

  “Party’s just started!” Pete bellowed to his patrons before tossing down another few ounces of straight whiskey. Pete wiped his mouth and beamed, the candles making his face look sinister and red, like a demon in a B horror movie.

  Campbell ignored the stench of the desecrated corpses, which Pete had obviously dragged from the dining tables to create his impromptu drinking session. He leaned against the bar as Pete slammed a glass down on the wood.

  “What’ll ya have, pardner?” Pete said. Then his face took on a sodden solemnity. “You know what really gets to me about all this? I just can’t wrap head my around a world without celebrities. Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Lindsay Lohan. I mean, inquiring minds want to know.”

  “In Lindsay Lohan’s case, I don’t think it would make much difference.”

  “LeBron James. Depp, man. A world without the Deppster.”

  “You’re drunk,” Campbell said, preferring that diagnosis to the prospect of madness.

  “Seriously. Did they turn into Zapheads? Is there a Brad Pitt Zaphead out there somewhere be-bopping along with a little soul patch?”

  “Don’t dwell on it. Deal with what’s in front of you.”

  Pete looked at his glass and grinned. But he quickly turned maudlin again and groaned with dramatic flair. “Taylor Swift. Not Taylor? She’s so cute and sweet and I got a Jodie Foster-level crush on her.”

  “You can’t just sit here and wait for them to find you,” Campbell said, eyeing the front door. He wondered if any Zapheads were deeper in the building, maybe down in the basement or in the bathrooms. Pete didn’t have a weapon of any kind, and his backpack was tossed carelessly by the cash register.

  “The more, the merrier,” Pete said, waving at the impressive array of bottles. “We got plenty for everybody. Zappers, survivors, and”—Pete gave a benevolent sweep of his non-drinking arm to indicate the corpses—“the stinking silent majority.”

  Pete started to take another big gulp from his glass but Campbell caught his wrist, sloshing liquor onto both their arms. “Remember you told me to let you know if you ever hit bottom with your drinking?”

  “I was probably drunk when I said that,” Pete said, bloodshot eyes narrowing. “You can’t hold people to stuff they say when they’re drunk. Otherwise, I’d have been married six times already.”

  Pete laughed at his own miserable joke, but the sound was swallowed by the still, dusty space. Any mirth and merriment that might have soaked into the walls had long since evaporated, although the smell of booze, corrupted food, and bloated corpses did plenty to crowd the air.

  Glass shattered somewhere near the front door, and Campbell swung around with the candlestick raised. “They found us.”

  Pete didn’t seem to care. He drank straight from the bottle of Knob Creek, then wiped some of the liquor under his nose like a mortician applying menthol before digging in on the day shift.

  “Get down,” Campbell said, snuffing the nearest candle. He crouched in the dark, discomfortingly near the legs of one of Pete’s dead clientele.

  The front door swung open, flooding light into the bar. A figure was framed in silhouette, and Campbell wondered if Zapheads could see in the dark. Not that it mattered. Pete stood near the other candle, his face bright in the yellow circle of the flame.

  Campbell tensed, waiting for the Zaphead to attack. Instead, the silhouette said, “Thought you might be in here.”

  Arnoff!

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  From the camouflaged platform built into the branches of an oak tree, Jorge had a nearly panoramic view of the surrounding ridges and valleys. “Wheelerv
ille,” as Franklin Wheeler called his tiny compound, wasn’t the highest point in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it stood apart from the towering canopy of Mount Rogers and smaller mountains that bore craggy granite faces topped with pine stubble. A hawk flew over the gray belt of haze that wreathed the valley, and Jorge wondered if it was the same one that killed the chicken.

  In the distance, the threads of smoke from the cities blended into a charcoal smudge on the horizon. The air carried only the faintest tinge of the acrid odor, though, as if the mountains scrubbed the prevailing wind clean as it pushed from the northwest. He didn’t know anyone in those cities, but he felt a loss, nonetheless. Marina might have gone to college there, or he and Rosa might have found some better type of work.

  Tightening the focus on the binoculars, he swept his view to the parkway that threaded through the trees below. The same abandoned vehicles dotted the road, some of them plowing into the grassy shoulders as their drivers had died instantly. One wooden guardrail was uprooted and splintered where a truck had barreled through and gone off the edge. A camper lay on its side, coolers, mattresses and a rotted corpse spilled from its rear.

  He was about to climb down when he saw movement on the road.

  Probably a deer. With nothing to scare them, they can reclaim the land.

  He sighted through the binoculars and saw a woman running up the slope of the road. She wasn’t moving very fast, and her cheeks were streaked with filth, hair tangled. She looked exhausted, like a horse that had been ridden across a desert. She carried a cloth bundle clasped to her chest.

  She doesn’t move like one of them.

  “Franklin?” he called.

  Franklin came out of the house, where he’d been fidgeting with the radio. After lunch, Franklin said he “needed some bad news,” so he went to his desk while Rosa cleaned the dishes from the meal. Franklin squinted against the sun as he looked up at Jorge. “What’s up, besides you?”