The snake whipped its tail around, cracking the glass display case beneath the counter. A silvery shard protruded from the python, blood pulsing from the wound.
Stephen jerked the snake’s head to the floor and whipped the muzzle against the case. The glass broke into several large wedges, a couple of them falling to the concrete. The flailing tail swept some of the trophies to the floor. One was mounted with a brass hound dog with its nose in the air and a plaque reading “BEST IN SHOW.”
Stephen grabbed the trophy as the snake wriggled amid the broken glass. He grabbed the statue’s head and swung it down like a hammer, pounding on the snake’s neck. Something crunched beneath his blows, and the snake twisted all the harder.
Stephen pushed the snake’s neck to the ground, holding it in place with his knees, ignoring the tail whipping around him. He set the trophy on the floor, grabbed it by the base, and then drove the statue end directly between the snake’s eyes. The brass hound penetrated from nose to neck, and the python flopped against the floor like a dying fish.
Stephen scrambled past the reptile and raced to the door, collecting his walking stick on the way. The snake still wriggled, but the muzzle and trophy were still in place.
Stephen pushed his way outside, took a deep breath, and vomited. After he recovered, he spat a few times and blew the vomit-snot out of his nose. He peered through the front window and saw the snake’s struggles had eased a little, but it still looked lethal.
The parrot sat atop the cages, looking out at him through the window.
You saved my life. I owe you the same.
Keeping one eye on the snake, his stick at the ready in case he needed a weapon, he opened the door and held it wide.
“Purty birdie,” he called. “Here, purty birdie.”
The parrot ruffled its feathers a moment, looking around, and then flew straight out the door and landed in the parking lot. Stephen dragged a newspaper rack in front of the door to block it, his arms and legs still shaking from panic and exertion.
He was eager to put some distance between him and the snake, whether it was dying or not. Since it was a mutant, he had no way to know its powers.
The parrot flew into the air and circled him, as if uneasy about having so much sky overhead.
Stephen laughed, almost giddy with the sheer joy of being alive.
Plus he had a new friend.
“Purty birdie,” he said.
The parrot flapped its wings and headed south, but not before squawking a final “Stay high if you don’t want to die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jorge jerked awake, not knowing where he was, his ear throbbing.
He looked up at the sky, numb from cold, his breath building a cloud. The sun was big and low, a bloody yolk scarred with smoke. The coat he’d wrapped himself in was ragged and torn, spattered with dark spots, the hood drawn tight around his face and narrowing his vision. The swatch of cloth he’d clamped to the bloody nub of his ear was stiff with dried blood. In the distance came a muffled, isolated gunshot that echoed across the valley like a message from a foreign land.
And the message was: This is a time of killing.
He rolled to his feet, muscles screaming with cramps, and found himself alone. After searching most of the night for Rosa and Marina, he’d taken refuge atop the tallest structure in Newton, a four-story office building whose modern steel-and-glass architecture didn’t blend with the brick construction of the town’s manufacturing past. The array of cellular towers, air handling units, and mechanical systems required regular maintenance, and a service ladder leading up from the fourth floor provided roof access—a feature unlikely to be noticed or understood by Zapheads.
The last thing Jorge remembered was looking over the town for any groups that might be Rosa and the others. The only movement was Zapheads collecting bodies and hauling them to a long, squat building that must be the hospital, judging by the parking deck and helicopter pad. He’d fallen asleep without adequately bundling up, and he was fortunate the night had not been colder or he might not have awoken.
Jorge slapped and rubbed his hands together to get blood circulating, then crawled to the nearest parapet and peered over, careful to keep his head low. The Zapheads were going about their work, moving with more coordination and purpose than the day before. They had recovered from the attack already, and Shipley’s attempts to burn them out had already dwindled to nothing more than some scattered conflagrations along a river that marked the town’s southern border.
Jorge pulled his rifle into position and sighted down the barrel. He could take down dozens of Zapheads from this vantage point, knocking them down one at a time until he ran out of ammunition. He’d latched the access door behind him so nobody could reach him, but that didn’t mean he was safe. Even if the Zapheads ignored him, he wouldn’t hold out more than a few days before thirst and hunger claimed him.
If hypothermia didn’t get him first.
No, you don’t want to go out like Wanda.
Until your family is safe, you’re going to survive.
So he wouldn’t die on this tar-coated rooftop. And he couldn’t fight the mutants alone. But maybe he could learn more about the town that would help others.
The courthouse lay in ruins on the hill in the center of town, at an elevation slightly above Jorge. At least the military strike had inflicted some visible damage, although the courthouse had been more symbolic of human civilization than the mutant takeover. The high school was likewise destroyed, which pleased Jorge, but the football stadium stood intact, more bodies packed into the stands.
Most of the roads leading into town were devoid of movement, dotted with vehicles that sat where their engines had died five months ago. Here and there Zapheads picked through houses for more bodies, continuing their gruesome mission. If there was any organized defense against future attacks, Jorge saw no sign of it.
He didn’t spot any figures he could identify as humans. Anyone who had escaped yesterday was now either dead or gone to ground, hiding in any of the numerous buildings or houses. Staying in Newton instead of heading for the surrounding hills was risky, but perhaps like Jorge they thought it safer to stay out of sight.
He was just about to retreat into the building and scrounge for food when he detected several threads of smoke to the northwest. They were too far away to have been collateral damage from the attack and were much smaller and thinner than the ones immediately around town.
Campfires.
Since Zapheads were impervious to cold, that meant humans.
The sight cheered Jorge and drove away the sense of solitude and despair. Perhaps some of the survivors from the school made it to the forest, or Shipley’s troops were still in the area, maybe planning a follow-up attack.
Jorge studied the roads, landmarks, and terrain and resolved to head in that direction rather than waiting here and hoping to catch some sign of Rosa and Marina. He had no doubt the Zaphead infants orchestrated their disappearance. Rosa wasn’t strong enough to resist them, and Marina would go along like a dutiful daughter. Father Casey had fallen under their influence as well, and Cathy was so devoted to her child that she was incapable of questioning the Zapheads’ ambitions of domination.
Jorge shouldered his rifle and descended from the roof, moving through the dark building without checking any of the office suites that lined the halls. Any Zapheads would make themselves known because they had no reason for stealth, and the dead would stay dead whether acknowledged or not.
Kuh-hik.
The soft click of a door latch behind him.
Jorge backtracked, placing each foot with care, until he reached the origin of the noise. He peeled back his jacket hood and put his good ear against the door.
All the doors and half the walls were of glass, although many of them sported blinds or shades to allow privacy. This particular door had nothing to shield his view inside.
Someone was huddled behind a desk, doing a poor job of hiding.
<
br /> A survivor? Must be.
Who else would bother hiding?
He opened the door a crack. “Hello?”
A bright orb of light exploded, blinding Jorge. The only working flashlights he’d seen in After belonged to Shipley’s unit, shielded from electromagnetic-pulse damage by the underground bunker.
“You’re that Mexican.” The male voice sounded young and full of forced bluster.
“Do I know you?” Jorge wasn’t sure whether he was relieved to have human company or not. The introduction wasn’t very promising.
“Where’s your buddy with the possum-colored beard?”
“I have no buddies here.”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’m talking about Wheeler. The one you went AWOL with.”
Jorge held up his arm to block the light, squinting at the shape behind it. He wondered if a gun was pointed at him along with the light. “Are you with Sgt. Shipley’s unit?”
“Yeah.” The light abruptly swept downward. “I was out on patrol with you the day Hayes and Patterson bought it. Found them full of bullets in a house up on the mountain.”
Bullets we put in them, because they were trying to rape a young girl.
But Jorge couldn’t say that. Shipley’s fascist influence had infected his soldiers, adding to their natural paranoia and fear in the wake of the apocalypse. If this young man was nervous, he might react without thinking.
“We were attacked,” Jorge lied. “By a civilian group.”
“Then how come you survived?”
“Because we weren’t in uniform. They’d heard of your bunker and planned to seize it by force. Franklin and I refused to join them.”
“Huh. Guess they chickened out, because we haven’t been attacked. Zaps probably got ‘em first. So why didn’t you come back? Sarge needs some numbers since we’ve had a few casualties.”
The light switched off, and as Jorge’s vision adjusted to the scant daylight penetrating the room, he was able to recognize the soldier. Jorge didn’t know his name, and his crewcut had grown shaggy to match a robust growth of beard, but conditions had evidently deteriorated at the bunker, given the shabby state of his uniform and lean, haggard face. His gun was at ease but in such a position that he could bring it to bear quickly if necessary.
“I told Sgt. Shipley my first duty was to my family,” Jorge said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“What about Wheeler?”
“I haven’t seen him in weeks. I assume he’s dead.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Have you seen that mountain of bodies they piled up at the football field? Isn’t that some shit?”
“That’s not the worst of it.” Jorge told him about being captured by the Zapheads and how the mutants used the school as a base of operations. He recounted how he’d used Shipley’s attack as an opportunity to burn the school and escape. He was careful to color the tale as an uprising that wouldn’t have been possible without the military, appealing to the soldier’s sense of pride and duty.
Silently, Jorge agreed with Franklin’s assessment that words like “duty, “honor,” and “courage” were used to manipulate egotistical young fools into doing the bidding of control freaks. But in a sense they were all on the same side now, allies in the act of survival. Even if those very same soldiers—and maybe even this one—had killed some innocent people through their recklessness.
Jorge ended his story by telling the soldier about the babies’ intelligence and their bizarre plans to assimilate the remaining survivors and eventually resurrecting the dead.
“That’s some freaky shit,” the soldier said. “What happened to your ear?”
“A Zaphead thought it was candy.”
The soldier pulled a cigarette from a pocket of his tunic and lit it. The lighter flame illuminated his face.
He couldn’t have been much more than twenty, far too young to understand why he should kill foreigners for a government that did nothing to provide for his individual future. But perhaps, if the solar storms hadn’t struck, the United States wouldn’t have required him to kill. Maybe his job was to die.
“I’m going to find them,” Jorge said. “My plan was to use the babies as hostages and negotiate some kind of truce, but that’s impossible now.”
“One of our guys had the same idea,” the soldier said. “Not about the babies, we didn’t know they were running the show here. This guy wanted to waltz in waving a white flag and divide up the territory. Give the Zaps the valleys and leave us with the mountains.”
“I don’t see how that would have worked.”
“Neither did Sarge. He had the guy executed by firing squad for treason.”
If Shipley wins this war, that will be our future. Anyone who says something he disagrees with is erased.
Jorge once listened to an NPR show—out of earshot of his fellow farmhands, of course, who considered NPR a liberal snow job funded by the very same hard-working taxpayers they constantly ridiculed—that discussed the emergence of bloodthirsty totalitarian leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. The prevailing theory held that the seeds of evil were always lying dormant and only needed the right conditions to blossom.
Shipley’s vine had taken root in rich soil, with no one daring to question him.
“Are you here on a scouting mission?” Jorge asked, eager to continue with his own mission.
“No, I got cut off. Been holed up here since yesterday. I heard somebody walking around out here last night but I was afraid to—I mean, I figured it was smarter to lay low until morning.” The soldier looked away in shame at his slip.
Jorge let it pass without comment. If the young man was still capable of fear, perhaps he wasn’t completely corrupted by Shipley’s ideals. “Is anyone else from your unit around?”
“Don’t know. He only sent in six of us. My job was to lay down some cover fire while one guy splashed some accelerant and started fires and another knocked some holes with a grenade launcher. I think they’re both dead.”
“They died as heroes,” Jorge said, and the words didn’t even taste terrible in his mouth. No reason to let this man feel any worse. Besides, Jorge could use his help.
“Well, hero or not, I don’t want to die,” the soldier said.
“I don’t blame you.” Jorge strolled between the desk and a row of filing cabinets to peek out the window, turning his back mostly to reassure the soldier that he was in no danger. “It looks pretty quiet in the area. I’m heading north toward those campfires I spotted.”
“My unit’s probably there. Can I come with you?”
“For a while.” By the time Jorge turned from the window, the soldier was on his feet and waiting by the door. “This grenade launcher? What happened to it?”
“Still there, as far as I know. Cardenelli dropped it when the Zaps closed in.”
“I don’t think he’ll mind, since he won’t be using it. Is it on the way?”
“It can be.”
Jorge rested a comforting hand on the private’s shoulder. “It will be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Franklin wasn’t much impressed with Brock’s management style.
For one thing, he wasn’t exactly leadership material. Oh, maybe he could have led a sales team back in Before, when just being a tall white male who talked louder than anyone else was enough. Brock even had the wardrobe down: khaki trousers, hiking boots, plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark blue vest as if he’d just ordered out of a Land’s End catalog rather than raiding some dead man’s closet. Today he was wearing a floppy leather cowboy hat, and he tugged the brim to secure it every time he gave a command.
“Hilyard could teach this guy a thing or two,” DeVontay said.
“Hell, he even makes Shipley look like Robert E. Lee,” Franklin agreed.
They were in the park, going through some basic maneuvers. Brock had obviously read a military strategy book somewhere, or else—which Franklin considered more likely—he’d played a video game involv
ing armies and shooting. Franklin couldn’t figure out how Brock had risen through the ranks to the top spot of this little outfit. Judging by the two dozen on hand, they’d all been sitting around a country club when the solar storms struck, because not many of them knew their way around a rifle.
“We can’t have target practice,” Brock shouted to the assembly. “That would give away our position. But we need to know how to work together without shooting each other in the back.”
Sierra, who appeared to be Brock’s second-in-command, added, “Those of you who came here with me from Stonewall know the capabilities of your weapons. The rest of you, I hope you’ve had a chance to shoot.”
Franklin stood at the edge of the field, a firm sign that he wasn’t joining their militia. Not as a foot soldier, anyway. He was happy to play a hired mercenary for the moment, even though he’d already accomplished his mission of reuniting with Rachel.
DeVontay did that for you, so don’t take too much of the credit.
Rachel watched alongside DeVontay, occasionally comparing the group’s tactics to those of the Zapheads. She also observed that Brock seemed to be drilling for open-field battles, as if they would be fighting on Confederate farmland rather than the streets of a small town.
When Franklin couldn’t take it anymore, he shouted, “What do we do about the tanks and helicopters?”
Brock scowled as a few of the women giggled. “If you think you can do it any better, you can be an officer. After all, you’re the legendary Franklin Wheeler.”
“I didn’t make up the legends. I just minded my own business and the Internet did its bullshit thing where the truth gets all twisted around.”
“Come on, dude. You were part of the militia movement way before it was mainstream. This can’t be much different than smoking out a bunch of federal agents. Tell us how they did old-school.”
After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) Page 12