After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) (20 page)

That’s when Jorge saw the men on each side of the trail, aiming semiautomatic weapons at them.

Jorge considered going for his rifle, and then realized if Franklin hadn’t bothered to resist, their situation was indeed grim.

“Well, well, well,” one of the soldiers said, stepping out of the concealment of the bushes. His khaki sleeves were rolled up to the three stripes displayed at his biceps. A half-smoked dead cigar was jammed in one corner of his mouth, and he spoke around it. “You must be the notorious Franklin Wheeler.”

Franklin kept his arms raised. “I didn’t know I was notorious. I would prefer ‘legendary’ or maybe ‘visionary.’”

“You can’t become a legend until you’re dead. But maybe I can help you with that.”

Jorge mimicked Franklin by lifting his arms in the air, careful not to make any rapid movements. The two young soldiers behind the sergeant were nervous and wide-eyed, the tips of their weapons shaking as they pointed them at their new prisoners.

The sergeant nodded at one of them, and the soldier stepped forward and seized Franklin’s rifle first, and then Jorge’s.

“Who’s your buddy?” the sergeant asked Franklin. “One of your prepper militia?”

“I got out of the militia business,” Franklin said. “They tended to get their asses torched by the government.”

“Now, Mr. Wheeler, I’d say we’re past all that, wouldn’t you?”

Franklin grumbled as the soldier took his backpack and searched him for weapons. “You at war with the Zaps now?”

“He’s clean, Sarge,” the soldier said to the sergeant. Jorge didn’t think the kid was any older than nineteen.

“Check the Mexican,” the sergeant commanded.

“I’m an
American
,” Jorge said, drawing a yellowed grin from Franklin. The soldier removed his pack and patted his sides and down his legs before stepping away and lowering his weapon again.

“So, where are you fellows off to?” Sarge said, striking a wooden match against his belt and lighting his cigar. “Deer hunting?”

“We’re looking for my wife and daughter,” Jorge said.

“Are they Zaps?”

“No, they’re Americans, too.”

One of the soldiers laughed, and Sarge shot him a menacing scowl. “Okay, smartass. You’re trespassing in a militarized zone. Under the Patriot Act, you can be confined without trial on suspicion of terrorist activity.”

“This ain’t no military zone,” Franklin said. “It’s a national park.”

“It’s the birth of a new nation, Mr. Wheeler. New laws, new boundaries. You citizens don’t know it yet, but as soon as the war’s over, we’ll set things right.”

“Christ,” Franklin said. “It’s only been six weeks since Doomsday and already the dictators and tyrants have climbed on the top of the heap like cockroaches at a garbage dump.”

Jorge didn’t care about old or new laws. He was desperate to find Rosa and Marina, and every second wasted might lower the chances of finding them. “Have you seen three women and a baby?”

The second soldier, a thin, Asian-looking man with his khaki cap turned around backwards, said in an accented voice, “I
wish
we’d have seen three women. I haven’t been laid since June.”

“You’re a liar, Huynh,” Sarge said. “Unless you don’t count your hand.”

“What do you want with us?” Franklin said. “We’re not any threat to you.”

“That remains to be seen,” Sarge said, stepping up to Franklin and exhaling cigar smoke into his face. “Somebody was shooting out in the woods yesterday, and it wasn’t military-grade weapons. In fact, it sounded a lot like those little peashooters you two are carrying.
Pop pop pop
.”

Franklin blinked away the smoke but didn’t draw back from the sergeant’s aggressive stance. “So I shot a few Zapheads. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Well, maybe I’ll put you in for the Bronze Star. But I’m more concerned about a couple of my boys that went missing.”

The sergeant moved until he was in Jorge’s face. The officer smelled of old sweat, booze, and gunpowder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No, sir.” This was no harder than ignoring the stares and taunts of the rednecks down at the feed store. Jorge had long ago learned how to hide his true feelings.

The sergeant relaxed a little at the “sir,” obviously feeling that Jorge was beneath serious consideration. But he mistook compliance for weakness, as did many of the
gringos
Jorge had endured—and survived—in the last few years.

“Really, Sergeant,” Franklin said. “Don’t you think we have bigger problems than whether some of your boys turned tail and ran?”

Sarge moved with such sudden ferocity that even his own men gasped and drew back. He slapped Franklin on the side of the head, driving the old man to his knees. “You didn’t respect the old laws, but you’re sure as hell going to respect the new ones!”

Jorge rushed forward to help Franklin but the sergeant put an elbow in his chest and shoved him away. The Asian soldier jammed the muzzle of his gun into Jorge’s back.

Franklin spat blood. “Let freedom ring.”

Sarge tossed away his cigar and pulled his sidearm from its holster. Jorge feared he was going to shoot Franklin, but the man twirled it by the trigger guard, gripped it by the barrel, and whipped the butt onto the crown of Franklin’s head with a loud
crack
.

Franklin dropped like a rock. Sarge motioned to the two soldiers. “Grab him and bring him back to the bunker.”

“Damn it, Sarge,” the Asian said. “Why couldn’t you have beaten the hell of him
after
we got him back to the bunker?”

“You want to be next?” Sarge’s cruel sneer was enough to spur the soldiers into action.

Apparently the new law is whatever this man says it is.

Sarge waved his pistol at Jorge, motioning him along the trail. “I got a feeling you’re not as hardheaded as Wheeler. So I suggest you get moving.”

“But my wife and daughter—”

“They’re Zaphead bait by now.”

“I can tell you where McCrone is.”

Sarge got interested in a hurry. “McCrone? How did you know his name?”

“He begged us to help him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I know better than to take on the U.S. Army.”

“Damn straight. At least somebody here remembers the Alamo.”

The army of Santa Anna had actually besieged the Alamo to suppress a revolution by unwelcome illegal immigrants from the United States, but Jorge didn’t think Sarge would appreciate the history lesson. “He said he was running away.”

“Where he is?”

Jorge looked the man in the eyes, which were smoky gray and flecked with ice blue. “I killed him.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes, studying Jorge. Then he slapped his own thigh and gurgled out a laugh. “Goddamn it, Mex, I almost believe you.”

“The other one is dead, too, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Damn.” Sarge wiped his mouth with his sleeve, annoyed and impatient. “Zapheads must have got him.”

The soldiers helped Franklin to his feet. A large red knot appeared on his skull, a trickle of blood trailing down to his ear. He was barely conscious and clearly suffering a concussion, but the soldiers propped him up and hauled him down the trail.

Sarge pushed Jorge after them. “Get moving.”

“Why don’t you let me go? I’m no use to you.”

“You’re guilty of crimes against the state. We’ve already had one breakdown, but things are different now. This time around, we’re doing it the
right
way.”

Jorge wondered why the sergeant didn’t kill them both on the spot. But he also believed if he resisted, he would be killed, and then he would have no hope at all of finding Rosa and Marina again.

Even a slim hope was better than none.

So he marched.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The bedroom allowed enough daylight that Campbell could see the blank faces of those gathered around him.

He was exhausted and defeated, lacking the energy to even despair. The horrors of Wilma’s death in the night were still fresh in his mind, her screams resonating off the inside of his skull.

And that can be you, too. All you have to do is stand and walk
.

Campbell sat on the bed, the professor beside him. On a small bedside table were two plates of food for them, laid out much like the place settings on the obscene dining-room table. Fortunately, the food was not human flesh, but instead canned peas, raw dough piled in a sticky white lump, and a wilted carrot.

At least this bedroom was mercifully free of both the dead and the maimed. In the bedroom next door, Donnie emitted an occasional grunt of pain.

“We get a window,” the professor said. “And we get food. And we get to live. All in all, it could be a lot worse.”

Donnie’s muffled scream punctuated the statement.

Campbell ignored the fifteen or so Zapheads sitting cross-legged on the floor before them, their palms clasped. They stared up at a framed painting on the wall above the headboard. In it, Jesus held his own hands clasped in prayer, a globe of radiance around his long hair and beard. Jesus looked up to the heavens in much the same way the Zapheads gazed up at the painting—with intense adoration and solemnity.

“How did you end up here?” Campbell asked the professor.

“Just like you did, I imagine. We met Wilma on the road and she said she had food. Arnoff wanted to push on to Milepost 291, but Pamela bitched and then Donnie found out there were Zah—”

The professor caught himself and glanced at the assembly, but the Zapheads were intent on their sacred mimicry. “Donnie wanted to shoot some. For sport. He said he hadn’t had any target practice in days. I was ambivalent, and I thought Wilma was a little too eager, but I went along when Arnoff relented.”

Campbell used his fork to spear a couple of peas and shovel them into his mouth. One of the Zapheads nearest him, a granny with wispy white hair, imitated his motion and chewed air, although she must have lost her dentures long before. Campbell was no longer hungry but he forced himself to eat, knowing he’d need his strength.

At some point you’re going to run or you’re going to kill yourself.

“I got suckered by my own curiosity,” Campbell said. “When I saw the way she lived, I thought, ‘If this is what we’ve come to, then it’s stupid to even try. The human race is beat.’”

“That mangy dog of hers. Peanut.”

“It’s locked in the camper, but there’s enough food in there for weeks.”

“So how did she get you guys out here to the house?” Campbell asked. Through the window, he could see Zapheads out in the meadow. They had somehow surrounded a chicken and flapped their arms like children in imitation of its frantic wings.

“She said there were lots of supplies here. Guns and canned food and a survival shelter in the basement. That got Arnoff hooked. Just like with you, she brought us here just as it was getting dark. They were on us before we knew it.”

It felt weird to be here among them and talk about their deadly behavior while they sat as meekly as sheep. But everything since the solar storms had been weird. None of the fictional scenarios of Doomsday or any of his video games had prepared him for the reality of an extinct civilization.

Not just an extinct civilization, but a profane imitation of society rising to take its place.

“They took Arnoff’s tongue just to see how it worked,” the professor said, with a resigned equanimity. “All that yelling he did, I guess it drew their attention. They took turns playing with Donnie’s fingers, bending them and snapping them like they didn’t understand what they were for. And Pamela…”

“I don’t understand. If they are learning, where did they learn to tie ropes? Who taught them that?” Campbell bit into his carrot with an audible crunch. One of the Zapheads turned to look at him, and he quietly ground it between his molars.

The professor nodded at the Zapheads and then at the painted posture of Christ they imitated. “I believe they learned from pictures. When they…
surrounded
me…I had run into the other bedroom, and there were magazines and photographs all over the floor. It must have been a teenager’s rooms, because it had a lot of books. And some...uh…”

The professor lowered his voice. “Bondage porn.”

Campbell’s stomach curdled around its fresh contents. “Pamela?”

The professor removed his glasses and wiped the lenses. “I suppose.”

Campbell was glad he hadn’t gotten a good look at what had happened to her. Outside, the chicken had gotten away and now the Zapheads drifted aimlessly in the meadow.

“How did you figure out what they wanted from you?” Campbell asked.

“Same way you found out last night. When I yelled at them, they yelled some of my words right back to me. And I realized if I didn’t fight and struggle like the others had, they calmed down.”

“It’s creepy as hell when they’re standing all around you like that. I almost liked them better when they were trying to kill me. At least
that
, I could understand. But this…” Campbell waved at the Zapheads. Two of them in the middle waved back.

“In a strange way, I’ve come to accept it,” the professor said. “Even embrace it. I’ve always been a teacher and that’s all I really know how to do. Now here I am after the end of the world, still teaching.”

“But where does it end? Do we teach these things peace, love, and all that happy hippie horseshit? Look at them out there in the field. Like a bunch of flower children on drugs.”

“So far, all we’ve taught them is violence.”

“Because we’re afraid.”

“No wonder. I’ve seen them tear people apart with their bare hands. And
enjoy
it.”

The professor looked at the painting of Jesus, whose sad brown eyes seemed to reflect an understanding of the martyrdom that awaited Him. “I’ve never been a religious man, but maybe there’s a reason for all this.”

Campbell stood and stamped his foot. “No!”

Half of the Zapheads broke out of their reverie at the commotion.

“Easy, Campbell,” the professor said. “Don’t rile them up.”

“How long have you been their bitch? A week? Teaching them to eat, pray, love, and wipe after they crap, like they’re a bunch of senile patients in an old folk’s home? Excuse me if I don’t want to sign on for that.”