After (Book 3): Milepost 291 (7 page)

CHAPTER
TEN

As Campbell entered the kitchen, three Zapheads followed him like fleshy shadows.

He
slid open the drawer beside the filthy sink and studied the utensils. What sort
of blade was best for performing an amputation? All he had was memories of old
war movies, where the field surgeons performed their grisly work with cleavers
and hacksaws. Would a serrated blade do the job effectively, or should he go
for the finest honed edge for a cleaner cut?

Hoping
to fool the attentive Zapheads, Campbell flung several utensils to the floor.
Then he knelt to gather them, and the Zapheads immediately followed suit. While
they were focused on their mission, Campbell tossed one of the utensils in the
sink. The Zapheads raised a clatter while doing the same.

Campbell
repeated the game, and when they stooped to the floor
a second time, he slipped a long butcher knife out of the drawer and tucked it
inside the waistband of his jeans against his hip, tugging his shirt to cover
the handle.

Don’t
we boil water and gather towels, or is that for births?
Either way, we definitely need antiseptic.

He
hadn’t explored the kitchen much, preferring to let the professor prepare their
simple meals. The professor enjoyed teaching these human mockingbirds, although
they seemed to have little need for nourishment. But now Campbell opened
cabinets, knowing the three Zapheads would imitate him. The first contained tin
cans of pork-and-beans, boxes of dried grain and noodles, and some home-canned
vegetables, as well as a bag of flour that had been ripped open and left amid
piles of white powder.

The
second cabinet contained spices, a can of lard, and some cookware, but it was
the upper shelf that held what Campbell was seeking. He climbed onto the
counter to reach the bottles, but he was satisfied with the Smirnoff vodka, 100
proof and stronger than the sealed bottles of rum and whiskey. The master of
the farmhouse apparently liked a nip now and again, but the relative
inaccessibility of the liquor hinted at a casual drinker rather than a
full-blown alcoholic.

The
bottle made him think of his friend Pete, who’d been killed by a sniper in Taylorsville. At least Pete had left this world in a state of delirious numbness, a
condition that had marked most of his waking days as well. With any luck, the
vodka would dull the agony Rachel would soon be facing, as well as kill a few
of the murderous germs that would be teeming over their brutal operation.

And
if the gore and screams get too intense, I might need some liquid amnesia
myself.

On
impulse, Campbell took the two full bottles of liquor from the cabinet. He
twisted the lid from the whiskey to break the seal, and then tightened it
again. Concealing the tip of the bottle with his fingers, he held it to his
mouth, tilted, and swallowed loudly. Then he deftly removed the cap and passed
the bottle to the nearest Zaphead, a bug-eyed man who looked like he’d lost his
spectacles. The man jammed the bottle into his mouth and drank deeply, spilling
sweet amber liquid from the corners of his mouth.

Campbell
was sure the Zaphead would retch, but it took several
deep tugs from the bottle and then popped the opening free with a damp
sloosh
.
The next Zaphead eagerly took a turn, and Campbell left the room as they fought
over the bottle.

Killing,
sexual torture, boozing. Pretty soon they’ll have all our human sins down pat.

In
the living room, the professor stood over Rachel, who was still semiconscious
on the sofa. The Zapheads knelt around them like some sort of corrupt manger
scene, and Campbell realized for the first time that the professor might be
consciously imitating the Jesus in the picture upstairs—since Taylorsville,
he’d let his beard grow out and his hair had grown long and wavy.

Was
the professor intentionally tricking the Zapheads into subservience, or was he
going as mad as an Old Testament prophet? Whatever the reason, the Zapheads
were all too happy to clasp their hands in silent prayer, creating a creepy
tableau that almost made Campbell erupt in insane laughter. But Rachel’s pale,
clammy face and the corrupted state of her leg wound kept him distressingly
present and focused.

We
might die here, but until then, I’m fighting the good fight. I’ve got to
believe we’re better than this.

He
gave the bottle of vodka to the professor, who nodded in acknowledgement. Campbell eased the knife from its hiding place, shivering at the blade sliding along his
bare skin. He knelt before Rachel, pretending to pray like the other Zapheads, but
then dug the tip of the knife beneath the ripped fabric around the wound.

“No,”
the professor whispered. “Take them off.”

Campbell
tucked the knife between the sofa cushions and
reached for the button of Rachel’s jeans. Although she was incoherent with
fever, Campbell flushed with anxiety and embarrassment. This seemed too
personal of an invasion, even for the purpose of delivering medical care. But
he unsnapped her jeans and loosened the zipper and then began working her jeans
down her legs, grateful that she was wearing underwear. Blue panties.

Careful
not to disturb her wound more than necessary, he peeled her jeans free of her
legs. He reached for the vodka, intending to douse her upper calf with the
liquor. He didn’t see how the professor intended to penetrate the thick gristle
and tendons around her knee, assuming that was where he’d sever the leg. Campbell wiped sweat from his forehead, wondering if the professor was as knowledgeable
about human physiology as he claimed.

The
sheet rose and fell with Rachel’s labored, restless breathing. Campbell was sure she’d go into shock as soon as the blade penetrated. He might go into
shock himself.

“What
about the blood?” Campbell whispered.

“What
about it?”

Campbell
nodded at the assembled Zapheads, who were bowed in
creepy reverence. “What if they…get ideas?”

“We
just have to be quick and clean.”

Campbell
didn’t see how a makeshift surgery with kitchenware
could be either of those things. The professor’s eyes glowed with a confident
serenity that did nothing to soothe Campbell’s anxiety. He wasn’t sure he
wanted to be in the room when the Zapheads witnessed the carnage, but he
couldn’t abandon Rachel. Somebody had to hold her down.

“You
sure we have to do this?” Campbell said. “Can’t we wait and see if it gets
better.”

“She
wouldn’t make it to sunrise tomorrow,” the professor said, totally comfortable
with his nudity as he stood like some cult leader preparing for a ritual
sacrifice.

“Okay,
then. Let’s get this over with.”

Campbell
splashed vodka over the open wound and around the
area where the professor intended to make the first incision. Rachel moaned at
the sting of pain but didn’t fully awaken. He wondered if he should pour a
little in her mouth, and then decided no amount of alcohol could dull the pain ahead.

The
professor massaged the area around the wound, causing glistening, yellowish pus
to break and run. A few of the supplicant Zapheads grew restless and several
pairs of eyes opened, their strange glittering increasing Campbell’s anxiety.

“Hurry,”
Campbell said, although he wasn’t sure how you could rush the nightmare to
come.

“I
need to determine where the flesh is healthy,” the professor said.

“If
you don’t start cutting, you’re soon going to have about twenty eager little
helpers. And unlike you, I don’t think they studied biology in college. They
studied on the dead people upstairs, maybe, but Rachel’s still in one piece.”

“Let’s
do it.” The professor slipped the butcher knife from the couch cushions, still
rubbing the infected area with his left hand. The blade seemed ridiculously
unsuited for the task, and Campbell wondered once again if the professor had
gone absolutely mad from his confinement.

Campbell
had never felt so helpless. He didn’t know enough to
challenge the professor’s decision—hell, he’d barely been a C student in
science—but Rachel undoubtedly was headed for a horrible death if they did
nothing. But before the professor could bring the blade to bear, the nearest
Zaphead unclasped her hands and laid them on Rachel’s injured leg. The Zaphead
beside her followed suit, and the others nearest the sofa shifted forward and
reached out their own hands.

They
rubbed her skin in imitation of the professor’s massaging motion, and Rachel’s
flesh quivered with the attention. More pus ran free, now tinged pink with
blood. The Zapheads were no longer praying, instead gathering closer and closer
to the sofa.

Campbell
felt trapped by the crowd, but he refused to release
Rachel’s wrists. He was atop her torso, applying enough weight to hold her down
without crushing her, and Rachel’s uneven, labored breath whisked past his ear.

“For
God’s sake, put the knife away,” Campbell hissed at the professor.

The
Zapheads crowded in so that the professor had difficulty keeping a hand near
the wound. More Zapheads reached in, rubbing and stroking her bare leg with all
the fervency they’d recently expressed in their mockery of prayer. They
muttered in unison, but those weren’t words issuing from their throats. The
sounds melded and flattened out into a single sonic vibration, almost like the
mantra of meditating monks.

Campbell
pushed at the nearest hands, almost in tears. How
long before they began digging into the wound and tugging bits of rotten meat
away?

“Give
me the knife!” Campbell yelled at the professor, who had backed away from the
bizarre scene. Campbell planned to launch himself into the pack and chop,
slice, and hew his way back to sanity, although he was aware the violence would
be met with a like response.

But
before the professor could react, Campbell saw something even more utterly
remarkable and strangely horrific—the flesh at the edges of Rachel’s wound
turned from greenish-red to bright pink, and the pustules began to dry and
shrink. The fecund, spoiled aroma of the wound dissipated. As the many hands
stroked and smoothed, the wound began to close.

The
Zapheads were healing her with their touch.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Wonder
if this is how runaway slaves felt.

DeVontay
Jones had been on the run for weeks, ever since he’d lured away the Zapheads
that had been closing in on their camp. The ploy allowed Rachel and little
Stephen to escape, but he wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision. Abandoning
them might have left them more vulnerable, and splitting up might have lowered
each of their chances for survival.

But
he hadn’t been thinking much of his own survival, not as he’d raced through the
woods, noisily kicking up dry leaves and snapping branches to draw the
attention of his pursuers. He’d barely been able to make out their forms in the
darkness. If not for the glittering of their eyes, he wouldn’t have known
they’d followed him, because they moved as silently as sharks in the ocean of
the night.

At
times he was sure they would all rush him and tear him to pieces, but only
minutes later he’d just as deeply believed they had given up pursuit. The rifle
had provided little comfort. The pairs of eyes seemed to greatly outnumber his
supply of bullets. So he kept moving, sweaty and breathless in the October
night, until he’d led the Zapheads miles away from Rachel and Stephen.

He’d
wondered if the strange, luminous quality of the Zapheads’ eyes gave them
enhanced night vision. Maybe they’d mutated into highly efficient killing machines,
although their reluctance to attack him didn’t seem to fit the bloodthirsty
behavior they’d exhibited in the immediate aftermath of the solar storms.

When
dawn broke, there’d been no sign of them, although he circled round and found
multiple sets of footprints. Still, he’d been afraid to backtrack to the camp,
in case Rachel had disobeyed his command to flee. In the end, he’d kept moving,
planning to circle around the forest heading northwest until he found a paved
road that would lead him on to Milepost 291.

A
day after parting with Rachel and Stephen, he’d heard a great explosion in the
distance, followed by a plume of black, oily smoke rising over the distant gray
ridges. DeVontay had worked his way toward it, following a creek that soon
swelled into a rushing river, but the passage was slow amid the boulders and
lush vegetation on the stream banks. He’d often had to wade in the icy water,
and once he’d slipped and soaked his clothes and gear. Worse, he’d lost his
grip on the rifle and it had been swept away in the churning rapids.

Defenseless,
he’d made his way to the site of the fire, discovering the scorched shell of a
gas station and a number of desiccated corpses in the ruins. He also saw the
pages from comic books torn out and stuffed under windshield wipers, a message
from Stephen meant to show that he and Rachel had made it this far.

But
his heart sank when he found Rachel’s blackened backpack among the charcoal and
ashes. He was sure they’d both died there, probably fighting off a Zaphead attack.
Rachel might even have deliberately started the fire to save them from whatever
horrible fate the Zapheads would have rendered.

DeVontay
had been savagely dejected—not only had he developed a deep attraction to
Rachel, he’d grown to revel in his role of protector. For the first time in his
life, he’d found a true purpose, one that he’d fully committed himself to and
one which seemed greater than himself. To lose that purpose—even in a world
already hopelessly lost forever—seemed more than any man should have to bear.

As
a child growing up in South Philly, he’d fought his way through his teens. In
the city of Rocky and the Liberty Bell, you didn’t back down. When he wouldn’t
join the neighborhood gang, he endured a set of brass knuckles to the eye, turning
it to jelly. Even after he was fitted with a glass prosthetic, he still refused
to abandon the streets. Most of the kids who had attacked him wound up dead or
in jail.

So
instead of giving up, he worked his way toward the Blue Ridge Parkway and Milepost
291, even though it had become something of a mythical promised land. He walked
days and hid nights, and even when he didn’t see any Zapheads, he sensed their
presence, shapes moving just beyond the perimeter of his vision, soft scurrying
like rodents, and occasional throaty vocalizations that might have been birds
but were too strange to name.

DeVontay
spent three days in the bay of a volunteer fire department, a rotted corpse in
the office, the big red engines and pumpers already losing their shine. He’d
raided the EMT truck and found some hand tools, and he slept in the truck’s cab
at night, one arm around an ax handle. He used the ax to bust into a house, but
it reeked like a mausoleum and he couldn’t bring himself to raid its kitchen or
look for firearms.

After
ten days, the Zapheads had closed in again, no longer bothering to conceal
themselves. He cracked once from the strain, yelling “Bring it on, you fucking
Zappers,” but they maintained their distance, muttering “You fucking Zappers”
back at him from a dozen voices. Once, finding Highway 321 again, he found his
route blocked by a line of Zapheads standing shoulder to shoulder, half of them
naked despite the cool autumn air, old men, children, young women.

He
waved the ax at them, threatening to hack his way past, but in the end, their
placid faces and sparking eyes had frightened him too much and he’d altered his
route. He was no longer heading northwest, but figured he could circle around
once he eluded the Zapheads. It was two weeks before he realized they were
herding him, like a wolf pack culling a sick deer.

He’d
come upon a little community on the banks of a river not far off Highway 321,
with an auto repair shop, a Baptist church, a shabby convenience store with its
gas pumps removed, and an outdoors outfitters featuring fishing gear, kayaks,
and rental bicycles. A narrow, sagging sign by the road said in hand-painted
letters, “WELCOME TO STONEWALL, POPULATION NOT NEAR ENOUGH.”A sodden, fly-blown
body was splayed beneath the hood of a Buick, a mechanic whose brain had been
short-circuited in the middle of changing out spark plugs.

Two
ravaged corpses on the church steps looked to have been victims of violent
assault, and DeVontay figured they’d been killed by Zapheads while seeking
sanctuary. Judging from the stench, more bodies lay behind the arched white
doors. A few Victorian-style houses lined the gravel road, with more of them
barely visible on the wooded hillsides.

Now,
he had to decide whether to hole up in Stonewall for a few days or somehow
outmaneuver the Zapheads, who seemed to have swelled in number. He recognized a
few that had been following him for days, but other faces were new, as if the
Zapheads were swapping out reinforcements. And it finally sunk in that while
he’d seen dozens of Zapheads, he’d yet to encounter another living human since
parting from Rachel and Stephen.

The
door to the convenience store stood open. The body of an old man was propped on
a stool behind the counter, so relaxed and natural that at first glance DeVontay
thought the shopkeeper was alive, patiently waiting for the next customer. Then
he saw the moist fungal splotches on the man’s livid and bloated flesh, and the
rot of decomposition pierced his nostrils. The place had been ransacked, and
much of the damage appeared to be destructive vandalism.

Most
of the snacks and candy were spoiled or stomped into moldering clumps, but he
found a few cans of Vienna sausages, a long pack of stale peanuts, and some
soggy Fruit Roll-Ups. He filled his pockets and then saw a box of Slim Jims.
His chest squeezed in pain at the memory of Stephen’s growing fondness for the
greasy snacks. He jammed a few sticks in his back pocket, figuring they
contained enough preservatives to last until the next apocalypse, and was turning
to leave when he saw the woman standing just inside the door.

She
was a Zaphead, with the trademark speckled eyes and filthy clothes. She’d lost
a shoe somewhere, and her blouse was missing several buttons. She was maybe
thirty, with wild tangles of brown hair, and her mouth was stained with some
sort of dark, gummy substance.

Jesus
Henry Christ, are these things drinking BLOOD now? Or munching down on the
flesh of dead people?

DeVontay
was upset at himself for letting his guard down. The Zapheads had been keeping
their distance, and he’d assumed they had no interest in attacking him. Indeed,
they barely seemed to acknowledge his existence at all, though they clearly
kept track of his movements and cut him off whenever he sought a direction
toward the mountains.

He’d
left the ax leaning against the counter, and he wondered if he would be able to
reach it before the woman…did whatever she was going to do.

In
the dusty street outside he saw more of them approaching, unhurried and almost solemn.
It was their creeping silence that was most unnerving—if only they screeched
and howled, he could have dealt with them, swinging the ax into their skulls
one by one until he dropped from exhaustion.

He
held out one of the snacks for the woman. “Go ahead,” he said. “Snap into a
Slim Jim.”

“Slim
Jim?” she said, then repeated it with a different inflection, like a stoned
hip-hop artist relishing the rhyme. “Slim Jim, Slim Jim, Slimmmm Jimmmm.”

He
made an underhanded toss. She repeated the motion as the snack bounced off her
chest. Several Zapheads crowded the entrance, including an overweight man and a
girl as dark as he was. Even if he reached the ax, he didn’t think he’d hew his
way past them before other Zaps closed in. Beside the shattered glass of the
reach-in drink cooler was a little hallway leading to the rest rooms. The
hallway ended at a back door featuring an emergency bar.

Won’t
have to worry about setting off an alarm, at least. But will it open?

He
had little choice. He scooped up some little hard bricks of chewing gum and
flung them at the woman, and then he fled down the hall. The back door opened
with a kick. More Zapheads watched from the riverbank, but he didn’t wait to
see what they’d do. He sprinted to the outfitter’s, wrestled with the door for
a moment before realizing the weight of a corpse was causing resistance, and
then shoved his way inside.

One
corner of the store held camping gear, and a long glass counter displayed
several rows of hunting knives. He drove a boot into the front of the case,
shattering the thick glass, and selected the largest blade he could find. He
clipped its holster to his belt loop and searched among the merchandise for
other weapons.

Through
the window he saw more Zapheads coming from the forest, closing in on the shop.
He rummaged through the outdoor gear, grabbed a backpack from a peg on the
wall, and stuffed it with a mess kit, first aid supplies, a compass, and some
cans of Sterno. He saw no guns, but he collected a hunting bow from a display
and shoved some arrows in his backpack, then slung the bow and backpack over
one shoulder.

It
was when he spied the rows of kayaks in their skeletal metal berths that he got
an idea.

Pulling
one from its rack, he tossed a paddle in the shell and dragged it to the door.
The Zapheads had resumed their position surrounding him, although now they were
at least a hundred feet away. Just enough distance if he moved fast enough…

DeVontay
dragged the kayak over the corpse in the doorway, tugging it by a short rope
tethered to its helm. He clutched the knife handle in his other hand, although
he left the weapon holstered. The river was barely fifty feet from the
outfitter’s shop, and a timber-framed landing was built into the bank,
featuring a stone-covered incline that led to the rippling water. He shoved the
kayak into the current, nearly lost his balance while scrambling aboard, and
then he worked the paddle toward deeper water.

The
river was maybe fifty yards across and only a few feet deep, but it quickly
narrowed into a boulder-strewn, churning waterway. The water flowed downhill,
of course, and would carry him away from his destination, but he wasn’t so sure
he cared about Milepost 291 anymore. That had been Rachel’s hallowed
destination, not his, and now that she was gone, the objective seemed foolish.

Putting
distance between him and his glittery-eyed stalkers was a more immediate goal.
He propelled the kayak forward with long, powerful strokes, the bottom occasionally
scraping on rocks. Zapheads came closer to the water to watch, and he fought a
deep desire to laugh at them.

“What’s
wrong?” he shouted. “Don’t you know how to swim?”

“Swim,”
one of them said, a little girl who looked about Stephen’s age.

“Swim,”
said an older Zaphead, waving his arms in imitation of the paddle strokes.
Others took up the cry of “Swim” until it resonated like the cries of a crazed
flock of birds. They came from the woods and from around the houses, dozens,
maybe even hundreds.

One
waded into the river, then another, and ahead of him, DeVontay saw more of them
entering the water. He stroked with aching muscles and frantic breath, sure
they would tip over the kayak and pull him under.

He
didn’t want to put down the paddle and try shooting arrows at them. Because he
only had one eye, he had poor depth perception. Rachel hadn’t realized what an
awful shot he was with the rifle, and given the turbulence of the water, he
needed both hands to keep the kayak straight.