After (Book 3): Milepost 291 (21 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

At
least we’re all together again.

DeVontay
could barely make out the dark jacket of the man in front of him, the one who’d
spoken to Kiki, Carole, and the group of children. Rooster was at his back,
still whispering the way he had as they’d followed Stephen up the meadow.
Rooster had promised a new society they’d build in the shadow of the Zapheads,
even bragged about taking back the compound, but he’d also veered from
delusions of grandeur into sudden bouts of paranoid rage.

“Who’s
there?” Kiki asked.

Rooster
whispered in DeVontay’s ear. “Be cool. We don’t want to scare them.”

“It’s
me,” DeVontay called out. “I met some people down there.”

“What
kind of people?”

“One
of them shot at me,” Stephen said.

“No,”
Rooster said. “One of my men thought you were a Zap. Sneaking around in the
weeds like that.”

Rooster
pushed DeVontay toward the group and the mist parted a little. The kids looked
miserable, shivering with the damp chill. They huddled against one another,
Kiki covering them as best she could. Carole cradled the smallest toddler, who
was mercifully asleep. Stephen stood apart from the group, his head down as if
he expected DeVontay to yell at him.

Shapes
moved in the mist, but DeVontay had only a vague sense of them. The wet, gray
smoke around them had thickened until the visible world was barely thirty feet in
diameter. The hidden moon suffused the ceiling of the sky with a lurid silver
glow.

“Zaps
are on the move,” Rooster said. “You should have stayed in the compound.”

“You
abandoned us,” Kiki snapped. “All of you.”

“We
could have counterattacked. But we got scattered around out here along the
river road. I don’t know where the horseback riders are. So we need to find a
safe place to regroup.”

“What
about the house?” Kiki asked DeVontay.

“Rooster’s
right,” DeVontay said. “We need to get out of the area.”

He wondered
if Rooster planned to assume command of the group. If Rooster had a vision of a
utopian society, with himself in the role of benevolent dictator, then the man
had little to offer outside of the compound. Inside, he’d been able to impose
martial law, but out here, even a few guns seemed futile against the new rulers
of the planet.

But
at least they could buy a little time and figure out their next move while
appeasing Rooster.

“Sorry
I yelled out,” Stephen said to him.

“It’s
okay, Little Man. You did a good job getting back to the group.”

That
drew a shy smile from the boy. Kiki seemed wary of Rooster, not trusting him
after his treatment of them in the compound. But DeVontay urged her to gather
the kids and get them moving. He collected the remaining rations, and then
dumped the trash off the blanket. Carole calmed a little girl who was scared of
the “men with guns.”

“I
hear something, Rooster,” one of the fog-shrouded men said.

“Don’t
shoot unless you
see
something,” Rooster replied. “Else we’ll be mowing
each other down in the dark.”

“We
need to get these kids to shelter soon,” Kiki said to him. “If that house is no
good, we better find another one. They’ll all be sick.”

“Good
news,” Rooster said to one of the kids. “We’re going to Milepost 291. All the
candy you can eat, a swimming pool, and boxes and boxes of toys.”

The
exhausted kid clapped her small hands in delight, but Stephen’s eyes narrowed.
“There’s not any toys at Milepost 291.”

“Shh,
Little Man,” DeVontay said. “Let’s just get there, and then we can worry about
it.”

“Little
Man.” Rooster chuckled. “Guess you two are real buddies, huh? Can I be your
buddy, too? Since we’re all in it together now?”

Rooster
reached out to high-five Stephen, but the boy stepped back, wary. Kiki and
Carole had the children up and herded together, half-dragging a couple who were
almost sleepwalking.

“Mind
giving us a hand?” Kiki asked Angelique in a stern voice.

“Who
made you Queen Bitch?”

“We’ll
get out of here faster if you help, and that will give you more time to paint
your nails.”

“Now,
now, ladies,” Rooster said. “No fighting. Unless it’s Zapheads.”

DeVontay
piled the remaining food back in the blanket and hoisted the bundle again,
eager to get out of there. Despite the fog, he felt exposed and vulnerable. And
he was convinced Zapheads didn’t rely solely on sight to track humans. They
might be “watching” right now from just inside the veil of fog.

“Okay,
Little Man, why don’t you and DeVontay go on ahead, and we’ll follow? I’ll have
my men bring up the rear so the Zaps don’t sneak up on us.”

Stephen
glanced at DeVontay, who nodded. Stephen had taken only three steps when
Rooster reached out and snatched him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him
close.

“What
the hell?” DeVontay said, dropping the bundle.

“We
have to move fast,” Rooster said. “That means leave the baggage behind.” He
called out to his men. “Take care of them like I promised.”

The
first shot blew open the skull of a young girl, followed immediately by several
shrill screams. DeVontay spun around, searching for the killer in the dark, and
several more shots rang out. A dark blotch erupted on Carole’s chest and she
collapsed, and a couple more children fell.

DeVontay
felt as if he were clawing his way up from a tar pit. Two more children had dropped
before he realized what was happening, and his shout mixed with the screams and
the gunfire. When he turned back to Stephen, Rooster had his gun pressed
against Stephen’s head. “This ain’t no time to play hero,” Rooster said, his
voice as cold as the deepest crack in space.

Kiki
shrieked and tried to shield the few remaining children, and DeVontay watched
in horror as a series of red holes appeared along her thighs. James took off
running toward the forest, rapidly vanishing into the fog, but the other kids
lay in a bloody, quivering, moaning pile of carnage.

DeVontay
could barely breathe, and he briefly wondered if he’d been shot himself. But
his wound was internal, in a place that would never heal and wasn’t merciful
enough to kill him.

Kiki
was still alive, rolled onto her side, reaching out to aid one of the mortally
wounded children despite her own injuries. DeVontay took a step toward her but
Rooster shook his head and said, “Not if you want Little Man to keep his
skull.”

Angelique
walked over to Rooster and slid a semiautomatic pistol from his holster, then
stood over Kiki.

Kiki
looked up with defiance flashing in her brown eyes, although her face twisted
with pain. “Burn…in…hell.”

“I’ve
wanted to do this for a while.” Angelique pointed the pistol at Kiki’s
forehead. Kiki kept her eyes open, staring at her killer.

“No,
please,” DeVontay begged, more to Rooster than Angelique.

Rooster
laughed. “We could have left them alive, but you know how Zapheads are.
Carrying off these bodies will slow them down. They like them better dead than
alive, and it’s the neighborly thing to do.”

Angelique
knelt over Kiki, her pretty features now sinister and ugly, like a demonic mask
had been slipped over her head. She was clearly enjoying her power. But Kiki
didn’t falter.

“Die,”
Angelique said. “Die.”

“You
hear that?” whispered the man who’d shot at Stephen from the house.

“All
I hear is you flapping your jaws,” Rooster said.

Then
DeVontay heard it, too, a repetitive sound that melded with the noise of the
night crickets and the riverbank frogs, becoming steadily louder. At first it
was like a low drumbeat, but then the rhythm took on distinct phonetic.

“
Die
die die die die DIE DIE DIE…
”

The
Zapheads came out of the mist from all sides.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE

“Die,”
Rachel said.

“Huh?”
Campbell had been asleep, and she repeated the word several more times before
his drowsiness leaked away. He thought he heard a distant percussive sound,
like popcorn popping, but it was drowned out by Rachel’s voice.

She
rose from the bed and walked around the living room in the dim light of the
embers. “Die die die die…”

“This
isn’t good,” Campbell said, hurrying after her. She’d become increasingly
detached, almost catatonic, since they’d fled the farmhouse. He’d hoped the symptoms
were temporary, that whatever strange quantum-level healing the Zapheads had
imparted would soon fade, but he could no longer lie to himself.

She
was turning Zap.

He
wondered if he should startle her back to awareness. He’d read that
sleepwalkers were not supposed to be awakened. But there was no handbook for
this sort of thing. So he simply followed in her wake as she paced around the
room, repeating that horrible word over and over.

Once,
he stepped in front of her, hoping she would recognize him and respond. But she
only stared at him with eyes that glittered like the forge of the universe, two
seething holes that spat the birth of stars or maybe struck the flint and steel
of hell over and over.

And
what scared Campbell even more than her condition was the idea that he’d lost
her—that they could have grown together over time, become friends and
eventually lovers. The two of them building a family and a new society.

Adam
and Eve in the Garden of the Zapheads. Yeah, right. What a goddamned fool.

“Rachel,”
he said, and she paused, the sparks dulling in her eyes.

“Die,”
she said.

For
a moment, he was frightened, because her face was as placid and emotionless as
a robot’s, as if she could will him to die with the power of her mind. And that
she wouldn’t suffer so much as a tinge of remorse.

He
was afraid to restrain her, lest she launch into another violent rage. He
repeated her name, hoping it would trigger some sort of memory of her former
self. She cocked her head as if listening to something outside his range of
hearing.

What
if they’re calling her?

And
what can I do about it?

Campbell
believed they could use Rachel’s symptoms as a means
to understanding the Zapheads, but that idea had been foolish as well. There
was no inner struggle here, no rational human glibly controlling and conquering
an unnatural mutation. The Zaphead won. Just like in the real world.

He
wondered about the Zaphead sleeping inside him, and how it was some cosmic
stroke of luck or maybe a simple genetic fluke that had prevented him from
being affected by the radiation. What if he was the last surviving human in the
world? His existential doubt would be God’s greatest private joke.

Rachel,
now silent, stepped past him and walked toward the door with sliding, shuffling
steps. She stopped before it and stared out through the black glass at the
world beyond.

At
the farmhouse while a captive of the Zapheads, Campbell had observed that
Zapheads rarely used doors. Most of the time, doors were left open as the
Zapheads traveled freely in and out. But apparently the professor had taught
them how to work doorknobs, even though they had difficulty retaining the
memory. They were like severe Alzheimer’s sufferers who had to rebuild their
memories anew with each moment.

“Rachel,
don’t do this,” Campbell said, standing behind her. Even her scent had changed,
from a faintly attractive aroma of soap and clean, outdoorsy sweat to a bright,
metallic odor.

She
leaped forward and banged into the door. Her forehead bounced against the glass
and she staggered back but didn’t fall. She flung herself forward again. This
time the glass cracked but held in its frame. Rachel drew back to launch
herself at it again, but this time Campbell grabbed her by the shoulders.

She
shook him off with surprising strength and assaulted the door again. It rattled
and a large shard of glass fell free. Campbell was afraid she’d cut herself to
pieces and shatter her bones if she continued slamming against the door.

He
called her name but she was oblivious. He could see her eyes reflected in the
window, six billion stars winking and dying over and over again.

I
can let her destroy herself or let her go.

He
wedged his hand between her and the wood and grabbed the door handle. He
twisted and yanked it backward, allowing fresh, cold air to pour in. But Rachel
hurled herself again and the door slammed shut, the noise reverberating through
the house. As she drew back once more, he tried again and this time managed to
swing the door open while simultaneously lowering his shoulder and driving it
into Rachel’s abdomen.

She
was knocked off-balance but kept her feet, bumping into him so hard that he
dropped to his knees. She shoved him aside and exited the house, fleeing into
the night.

“Rachel!”
he called after her, clasping his injured arm against his chest.

He
heard her repeat “
Rachel Rachel Rachel
,” the sounds growing fainter with
each second as she vanished into the forest.

Maybe
her radiant eyes imparted night vision, but Campbell had no such
characteristic. However, if he let her go now, he’d never see her again. And
this might be his only chance to discover what strange force drew her into the
night.

If
I want to learn what makes Zapheads tick, I’d better roll with it.

He
didn’t delude himself that he would be able to make any use of the knowledge.
He didn’t anticipate sharing it with anyone. Even if he continued on to
Milepost 291, the Zapheads were likely to keep changing as they had since the solar
storms struck two months ago.

And
what if he was one of the last survivors? What good would it do him to just
keep living until his time ran out?

He
grabbed the backpack he and Rachel had jammed with food and supplies, took a
last look around the house and the warming glow of the fireplace, and then
headed outside. The night wasn’t fully dark, since the moonlight painted a
chrome swathe overhead.

A
gap in the trees revealed mist in the valley below, like a thick, gray ocean
that almost seemed solid enough to walk across. A mile or so away, a frothy red
and orange swirl boiled underneath the fog, suggesting a distant fire.

Are
the Zapheads destroying buildings again, like they did in the cities?

He moved
as fast as he could in the direction Rachel had gone, adjusting the pack so the
straps didn’t dig into his shoulders. Every thirty seconds, he would call
Rachel’s name, and she would echo it. He tracked her using a clumsy game of
“Marco Polo,” only instead of swimming in water, he clawed his way through the
forest.

Rachel
slowed enough for him to track her by her movements. She emerged from the
forest onto a moonlit gravel road, heading downhill into the valley. He
occasionally called to her, but she didn’t change pace or direction. A faint
haze in the east suggested a hidden sun that would soon dawn on a world it had
forever altered.

Campbell
struggled to keep Rachel in sight. She walked with
relentless precision, her feet skating over the gravel and mud and weeds as if
powered by something outside her body. They passed more houses along the way,
but Rachel took no notice of them, and Campbell only had the opportunity to
give them cursory glances. No sign of life showed itself, and Campbell was sure
he was the last soul in a Zaphead world.

But
he hadn’t yet given up hope on Rachel. Perhaps this was a phase and she would
soon burn through it like a fever destroying a virus, and he planned to be
there when she returned to her senses. He could only imagine her gratitude
toward him—that kind of loyalty was rare enough in Before, and nearly
unfathomable in After, where humans practiced survival of the fittest even as
they surrendered the top of the evolutionary chain.

The
terrain leveled out somewhat and the mist burned away under the dawn, and they
came to a paved road that ran along a river. The water was silver and green in
the morning light, frothing where it tumbled over stones. The trees thinned as
the land gave way to open pasture and meadow, farms and houses lining the
waterway, vehicles stalled in the road or axle-deep in ditches, seat-belted
corpses rotting inside them.

Invigorated
with the false hope of a new day, Campbell burst into a jog until he caught up
with Rachel. He spoke to her but she stared past him with wildly glittering
eyes, focused on something outside his perception.

And
then he saw the line of figures trailing out of the trees a few hundred yards
down the road.