“What’s all this?” Franklin asked.
“You know they collect bodies, right?” Sierra said.
“Sure.” Franklin hoped they weren’t going to use him as bait.
“They filled up the football stadium at the high school with them,” Brock said. “Propped them up like spectators, as if the Zapheads had some kind of crowd memory.”
Franklin supposed there would be plenty more dead folks around before it was all over. They could fill the schools, the churches, and the shopping malls, everybody posed like they were going about their business as usual. In a way, nothing would change—zombies watching zombies rot away.
“What do you think they’re going to do with all of them?” Sierra asked. He wondered if she knew what “rhetorical” meant.
“Just guessing,” Franklin said, “I’d say they want their own Super Bowl. After all, that game, or maybe just the commercials, was the peak of Western civilization.”
Brock sat on a fence post and propped his gun in the crook of his elbow, barrel up, as if he were posing for the cover of Soldier of Fortune magazine. “One of our people was captured by the Zaps. She escaped and made it back to camp. Said it was the babies that are running things. The fucking little rug rats.”
Franklin recalled Cathy’s mutant baby and how he’d considered killing it while they were at his mountain compound. In the end, the thing had looked innocent, a victim of circumstance as much as any of them. And when its eyes were closed, you could hardly tell it from a human baby. Cathy’s motherly love had blinded her to the infant’s strangeness.
But nothing about the infant had suggested intelligence or power.
Of course, Rachel was in the same boat. She’d sought out the Zapheads because of her own mutation, driven by misguided compassion and a belief that she could help resolve the conflict between the two tribes. And, like a fool, Franklin had just let her walk right out.
“I don’t get it,” Franklin said. “The Zapheads I’ve seen will kill and maim and destroy, but if you leave them alone, they practically slip into hibernation. It almost seems like we’d be better off ignoring them and just building a new society, relearning how to generate electricity and grow food and set up fair rules we can all live by.”
“The babies are evolving much faster than the others,” Sierra said. “The theory is the wiring in their brains is agile and still forming connections, so the mutation is exponentially affecting them. Our source said there were maybe two dozen of them, and the Zaps captured a group of humans to teach them.”
“That’s creepy as hell,” Franklin said. For the first time since Doomsday, he ached for a drink of liquor.
A drink, hell. A quart bottle might do the job.
“They’re using the high school as their base,” Brock said. “And from what she told us, the babies don’t want to kill us.”
“Well, that’s mighty comforting,” Franklin said, glancing at the deepening bruise of sundown. “Guess we can all head back to our homes and warm beds now. Party’s over.”
A spatter of gunfire came from up the road, maybe half a mile away. If Shipley’s soldiers were in retreat, they could be headed this way. Franklin didn’t want to be anywhere within bullet range of those psycho cowboys.
“They don’t want to kill us,” Sierra repeated, leaning against a tree and resting Franklin’s rifle butt-down beside her. “They want to heal us. Turn us into them, make us new, and get rid of our chaotic, murderous thoughts.”
“These little shitters said that? They can talk?”
“Maybe that has something to do with all the bodies in the football stadium,” Brock said. “Sort of like science projects, the way we had to cut open frogs in biology class.”
“Well, they did something to my granddaughter when she was hurt,” Franklin said. “An infected wound from a dog bite. They fixed her, but they changed her in the process. That’s why I’m here. To find her.”
“She turned Zap?” Sierra said.
Hearing it that bluntly was like an icy spear driven into Franklin’s temple. His fear made him angry. “No, she’s not one of them. She’s something in between. She thought she could serve as an ambassador of some kind. But I’m thinking the other way now. She can help us. Figure them out, and figure out how to beat them.”
“We’ve seen them heal each other,” Brock said, more effusive now, as if he trusted Franklin a little more. “If one of them is injured, the other Zapheads lay their hands on them. And the wounds vanish in minutes.”
“Sound like faith healers in the charismatic churches,” Franklin said. “They’re passing on some form of chi or vital energy, like ancient Chinese shit gone nanotech. But patching up a paper cut is a little different than bringing somebody back from the dead.”
“The escapee told us the babies were better at healing than the adults. In some ways, the adults are like the extension of the tribe, worker bees serving the queen and the hive. You’ve observed how they can act as one without any evident form of communication?”
“Sure. The worker bee thing works for me,” Franklin said. “Like they all have one mind but not all of them have access to the same thoughts.”
Franklin didn’t like where this was headed. He’d come to accept a rampaging horde of mutants whose purpose was to wipe the human race off the planet. Hell, he’d even accept a divine hand dispensing punishment for the world’s sins. God only knew humans had committed enough of them.
But a massive army of missionaries determined to save mankind from itself—well, that was Franklin’s worst nightmare.
“Assimilation or extinction,” Brock said. “That’s their future for us. We’re so inferior that any service or labor we supply won’t outweigh the resource drain.”
“A planet this big, population trimmed to a tenth of a percent of its former size, and still no room for everybody?” Franklin said.
“We’ve been working this out for weeks, while you’ve been up there on your mountain playing Zen Buddhist monk,” Sierra said. “What’s the sound of one hand clapping when it’s bitch-slapping you in the face?”
Franklin bristled at the stereotype he’d become, although he harbored a yin-yangish bit of pride that his legend had spread among the survivors. No doubt some saw him as a kind of mystical messiah whose prophecies had come to fruition.
If he gave more of a damn, he could use that charade to his advantage. But he was well aware that anyone who became a messiah was eventually plagued by followers, and every last Christ ended up getting nailed to a fucking piece of wood by the very folks he tried to save.
Franklin was at peace with the idea that sometimes a cockroach needed smashing.
“So what’s your plan to outsmart them?” Franklin asked.
“Those vehicles there? We’ve created our own little piece of performance art,” Brock said. His face was barely visible in the fading light of day, but Franklin didn’t like the sinister smirk on the guy’s face. He was enjoying After way too much.
“Our bait,” Sierra said.
The wind shifted, and Franklin smelled it, scarcely evident over the smoke: rot, corruption, and death.
“We did some collecting of our own,” Brock said. “While Sgt. Shipley was busy killing them, we gathered them and brought them here and piled them in the vehicles.”
“And when the Zapheads show up to retrieve them, we add to the pile,” Franklin said.
Sierra swept her arm in an arc to indicate the surrounding houses. “A little army of our own. Forty-two in all, most of them well-armed and relatively functional adults.”
“One or two psychos, but variety is the spice, am I right? It’s going to be a hell of a night.” Brock was back in business mode, like a frat boy gearing up for a keg party. “But we want you on the team. Good for morale to have a folk hero such as yourself on board.”
“I’m in,” Franklin said. “But nobody kills Rachel.”
“We’ll pass out her description,” Sierra said. “I doubt she’s changed cl
othes if she’s gone Zap.”
“She’s not a mutant, goddamnit,” Franklin said, surprised at his annoyance. “She’s just a little confused.”
Brock chuckled. “Sounds like half my exes.”
“One more thing,” Franklin said.
“Yeah?” Sierra didn’t look as girlish and vulnerable as she had earlier, as if that had been an act for Brock’s sake.
“Can I have my rifle back?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Another one of us just died,” the baby said.
Jorge stared at the mutant infant in Rosa’s arms. The baby expressed neither alarm nor sorrow at the announcement, but Rosa looked horrified. The candles they’d found in the stockroom cast an illusion of warmth but also stretched flickering shadows along the walls that did little to calm the group’s nerves.
“How do you know?” Rosa asked.
“I felt it. They want to kill us all.”
Yes. Because we’ve figured out what you are and what you plan to do.
“I won’t let them hurt you, Bryan,” Rosa said.
“That’s not Bryan,” Marina said. “That woman at the stadium took Bryan.”
Rosa addressed the baby rather than her own daughter. “You’ll be Bryan for me, won’t you, muchachito?”
“He’s not a little boy,” Jorge said. “He’s a little monster.”
Bryan giggled and patted his chubby hands together. “A little monster! Can I be a vampire?”
“Don’t joke about such a thing, Bryan,” Rosa said. “We have to set a good example for others.”
Many men in Jorge’s culture saw putting hands on their women as a duty, hiding behind machismo because they lacked the passion and patience required to communicate. Jorge had never raised his hand against his wife or child, but now he was filled with an urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her to her senses.
But Marina was watching, and Rosa was right. We have to set a good example for others.
If Jorge flew into a rage, the delicate balance of the mood would break apart.
The others sat at booths near the front window, except for Wanda, who had taken up residence behind the bar and sampled exotic liquors. The other two Zaphead babies rested on the floor at Father Casey’s feet. They both appeared to be sleeping, although Jorge had a sneaking suspicion they were pretending, while actually listening intently—or maybe psychically communicating with the Zapheads scattered over Newton.
The skinny woman, whose name was Yvonne, stood guard at the door, as if she could magically summon up a defense if the Zapheads detected their presence.
As darkness crept over town and the sounds of the military attack faded, they debated whether to find a more secure hideout, but the swarming tides of Zapheads showed no sign of dwindling. The wind had shifted to the southwest, and the conflagration on the outskirts of town followed, the threat of fire pushed away from them for the moment. In the end, they could think of no better plan, at least one they could all agree on, than to hold out and wait.
“Bryan,” Jorge said to the infant, forcing himself not to mock the name. He ignored Rosa’s hostile glare. “You know when one of you has died. So the other babies like you know you’re here, correct?”
“The newest New People do.” Bryan seemed pleased at Jorge’s curiosity, as if their social structure was so brilliant he was proud to share the architecture of it. “But some of us died in the attack. Eleven of us are left.”
“So, if you are all connected, why don’t the other New People gather in a group and rescue you? They’re walking around without purpose, and you’ve been telling us all about how efficient and organized the New People will be once your order is established.”
“Mussolini made the trains run on time,” Wanda slurred from her perch on a barstool. “At least until they hung his fat Italian ass upside down from a pole.”
Jorge ignored her and continued. “So why does one minor attack from a weak threat leave you so vulnerable?”
The baby’s forehead furrowed as if not understanding the question. “E pluribus unum. From your Latin, ‘Out of many, one.’ Even you Old People understood the concept of unity as strength, despite your American ideal of individualism.”
Jorge, although pleased that the baby considered him an American rather than a Mexican immigrant, said, “That motto was rejected because it celebrated a socialistic mindset.”
“To your detriment,” Bryan said. “According to the textbooks we read, Congress adopted ‘In God we trust’ as your official motto more than half a century ago.”
Father Casey interjected, “Because we realized faith was better placed in Him than in ourselves, especially as we were busy arming enough nuclear weapons to commit suicide a thousand times over.”
“We have no conflict with the concept of God. Unity can go by any name, and ‘God’ is easier to spell than ‘communism.’”
Bryan giggled as if discovering wry humor for the first time. Jorge wondered if he’d learned that from textbooks as well. Although he was chilled by the notion that the Zaphead babies instantly shared all knowledge that one of them acquired.
Maybe we can use that to our advantage.
“So how do we let the others know you’re in danger?” Jorge asked.
“Jorge!” Rosa pulled the infant tighter into her embrace. Marina edged over in the booth to be closer to her mother, as if both of them were afraid Jorge’s temper would boil over.
“We don’t understand danger,” Bryan said, expression unchanging.
“If only eleven of you are left, and we kill three of you, won’t it be more difficult to organize your tribe?”
Bryan’s tiny eyes narrowed until the fiery glitter was almost hidden, and then he said, “I can see the value we possess. I have no information on the benefits and punishments of death, as no textbooks”—he glared up at Rosa with fervid eyes—“or none of our teachers provided insight.”
“The wages of sin is death,” Father Casey said.
“But we haven’t sinned. So why should we die?”
“Because you’re a starry-eyed little shitstorm,” Wanda bellowed from across the room. “Sure, we had our problems before you come along, and we probably would have wiped ourselves out sooner or later, but at least then it would have been our choice and our responsibility.”
Bryan looked around at the adults and then settled his gaze on Marina. “We didn’t ask to be born. Maybe that’s something Father Casey should ask his god.”
Jorge loomed menacingly over the baby, even though Rosa clutched him ever closer to her chest. “Even if you’re not afraid of dying, your tribe can’t afford to lose you. So you need to let them know what we’re about to do to you.” He nudged one of the sleeping mutant babies with his foot. “That goes for these two as well.”
Their eyes sprang open simultaneously, casting a glow brighter than the candles. “They already know,” they said in unison with Bryan.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rachel sensed the person before she saw him descending the stairs.
The luminance cast by her eyes and those of the other four Zapheads imbued the cluttered basement with a soft, golden glow. Brightest of all were the child’s eyes—“Bryan,” he’d named himself—and Rachel’s head was filled with his presence. Not his thoughts, exactly, but some sort of pulsing energy. She understood him in a way she could never even know her own self, and through Bryan, she was part of this wonderful new world. These New People.
But this intruder—this dark-skinned human—was like a storm in the calm sky of her thoughts. Worse, it spoke.
“Rachel?” the man said. He carried a rifle, but it was pointed at the floor.
“Go away.” She defensively pulled Bryan closer to her chest. Why didn’t the other New People attack?
“Rachel, it’s me. DeVontay.”
His voice was painful, like a steak knife chewing her brain into ragged slices. The words formed no coherent whole, and she fought them with all her power. The Zapheads s
tirred around her, restless.
The man spoke again, waiting at the foot of the stairs. “Come with me, Rachel. You don’t belong here.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Bryan demanded in his tiny voice.
“Do you want to stay here and die?” DeVontay said. “The town is burning, and the Army’s shooting everything that moves.”
Rachel hesitated. Bryan wriggled in her embrace, agitated. Maybe he sensed the psychic disturbance as well. Or a different kind of threat—one of extinction.
“DeVontay?” she said. Although she still didn’t grasp the significance of the name, it felt familiar on her lips.
“Yes,” he said, taking another step forward. “I came for you. I want to take you back to your grandfather. Do you remember Franklin Wheeler? Stephen, our Little Man? Lt. Hilyard?”
Fragments of images floated in her mind, like puzzle pieces of unorthodox shapes. Some of the pieces locked together and she pictured Franklin’s bearded, wrinkled face. Then she saw a little boy, pale with fright as she and DeVontay rescued him from a hotel room where his mother lay dead. Other memories followed: the Wheelerville compound, their trip to the mountains, losing Stephen one dark night in the mountains, the chaos of the immediate aftermath of the solar storms.
DeVontay must have realized he was forming a connection with her, one that pulled her farther away from the New People and deeper into his world. He took another step forward, and two of the Zapheads moved toward him. DeVontay kept his gun lowered.
She studied his face, which was imbued with the radiance of their glares. His lone eye didn’t waver from her face, despite the New People around him who could break him down.
Tear his arms off at the shoulders.
Stomp him into a red rag.
Pluck out that gleaming eye and jam it between his teeth—
Eye?
She touched her pocket and the round object inside.
“DeVontay Jones,” she said, more coming back to her. The way he’d sacrificed himself to lure away the New People—no, they were ‘Zapheads” then—and allow she and Stephen to escape. She recalled the agony as a vicious, mutant dog tore into the flesh of her leg. Being captured by the Zapheads and enduring their bizarre hands-on healing, ultimately escaping with Campbell and heading toward Milepost 291.
After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) Page 6