After: The Shock (10 page)

Jorge
glanced at the farrier’s cooling corpse and the pool of blood that was already
coagulating around it.

And
horses
.

“Get
Marina ready,” Jorge said.

“Ready?”

“Load
some backpacks with food we can eat on the road.”

“So,
we’re not staying here?”

“More
people may come. I don’t want to wait.”

Jorge
felt a surge of strength as he took control of the situation. He was still
masculino
.
But he kept the rifle, even though he sheathed the machete. Locking the front
door behind him, he checked the banker’s progress. The banker was halfway down
the drive, flies already circling him in black clouds.

Soon
the vultures will have him
.

Jorge
studied the sky, wondering whether his family would change, would become like
them
.

But
such worries would make him weak, and Marina and Rosa needed him to be strong.
Plus he had the rifle. He thought again about Mr. Wilcox’s money and all the
useless comforts of his boss’s life. He wasn’t an overly religious man, despite
his Catholic upbringing. But perhaps the meek truly did inherit the Earth.

It
was as good an explanation as any why the three of them had been unaffected by
the sun sickness.

He
went to the barn to saddle the horses.

CHAPTER
TEN

“What
road are we on?” DeVontay said, peering at the crumpled map.

They
sat in the shade of a large oak, careful not to touch the poison sumac that was
already turning fierce red with the end of the summer. The boy had quickly
grown tired and had asked for his mother once. But they kept moving, determined
to get away from the population centers where Zaphead encounters were more
likely.

“That’s
I-77,” Rachel said, pointing to the four-lane highway below them. They’d walked
parallel to the road, staying in the vegetation even though the traveling was
more difficult. Rachel didn’t trust the vehicles, especially since so many of
them had tinted windows. On the crest of the slope, they were able to see
movement in any direction.

DeVontay
squinted through the treetop at the rising sun. “Which way we headed?”

“The
sun rises in the east,” Rachel said. “I learned that in Girl Scouts.”

DeVontay
scowled, the expression almost comical because of his glass eye. “Wish I’d left
you back at the hotel.”

The
boy stiffened and shuddered beside Rachel, and she shot DeVontay an angry
glance and shook her head.

We’re
his parents now. We have to pretend everything’s going to be all right, just
like real parents do.

I
failed Chelsea, but I won’t fail this boy.

The
boy’s blonde hair and freckles suggested a fair complexion that would sunburn
easily. At their morning stop at a convenience store, she’d found him some
sunscreen and made him put on a Carolina Panthers ball cap. She’d also
collected some of the healthiest offerings she could find, including some apple
juice she hoped hadn’t spoiled. DeVontay had collected the map, a pack of
butane lighters, and half a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Rachel
fished a bottle of water from her backpack and held it out to the boy, who
still clutched the naked doll to his chest. “Here, honey. I’ll bet you’re
thirsty.”

The
boy shook his head. He’d barely spoken a dozen words all day. Rachel wondered
if he was in shock. She hadn’t studied much basic health, but she knew shock
tended to kill people before they had a chance to die from more horrible
things.

She
put the water bottle by his sneakers and offered him a granola bar. He shook
his head.

“You
gotta speak the language,” DeVontay said. He opened one of his Reese’s and held
a cup of chocolate and peanut butter out to the boy. The boy’s mouth visibly
watered and he licked his lips.

“It’s
okay.” Rachel gave an encouraging smile, hoping the boy didn’t crash from a
sugar high while they were putting in some miles.

The
boy let the doll fall into his lap. He took the candy, which was soft from the
heat. As he bit into it, DeVontay said, “Melts in your mouth, not in your
hands.”

“That’s
M&M’s,” Rachel said.

“Whatever.
Same principle.”

“No,
it’s not. M&M’s has a hard shell so instead of smeary chocolate, it leaves
artificial food coloring on your fingers.”

“Do
you got to argue about everything?”

“No,
only when you’re wrong. Oh, wait a minute. You’re wrong about everything.”

The
boy’s blue eyes tracked back and forth, from one of them to the other. He had
returned to the world a little, back from whatever private hell inside his
head.

“Here,”
she said, reaching out for the other peanut butter cup. She held it in her palm
until the chocolate ran. Then she popped the candy into her mouth. It was so
sweet that it made her teeth hurt.

She
showed her palm to both of them. “See? A gooey mess.”

“That
looks like poopie,” DeVontay said.

Rachel
made a show of studying her palm as if making a scientific observation. “Hmm.
You’re right, it does.”

She
licked her palm, making sure to smear chocolate all over her lips. “Mmm.
Tastes
like poopie, too!”

DeVontay
laughed, and the boy giggled. “Yuck!” the boy said, in a small, delighted
voice.

“Hey,
watch this,” DeVontay said. He dug his fingers into the skin beneath his left
eye, then touched the glass orb and rolled it a little so that it appeared the
eye was gazing far to the left.

Whoa,
don’t freak the kid out. We’re trying to get him back to normal, not make him
think you’re a Zaphead.

But
the boy gazed with intense interest. DeVontay smiled, then lifted up the skin
just beneath his eyebrow and rolled the glass eye into his fingers. He held it
up like a marble. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“Can
I hold it?” the boy said.

“Sure.
But only if you let me hold the doll for a minute.”

The
boy nodded and made the trade. It was the first time Rachel had seen him
without the doll since they’d rescued him. She decided to bring him all the way
out. “What’s your name?”

“Stephen.”

“That’s
a nice name.”

The
boy shrugged, focused on the glass eye. He turned it so it caught the light.
“How did you lose your eye?” he asked DeVontay, his lips pressed into a solemn
line.

“Messing
around. You know how kids are.”

“Mommy
says if you play with sticks, you’ll poke your eye out.”

“She’s
pretty smart,” DeVontay said.

Rachel
noted he used present tense.
He’s got a good instinct. Maybe he has more
social experience than he lets on.

DeVontay
stroked the doll’s kinky hair. “What’s her name?”

“Miss
Molly.”

“That’s
a pretty name,” Rachel said.

“Does
it hurt?” the boy asked, passing the glass eye back to DeVontay.

“Not
anymore. It’s just something you get used to. But it took a while.”

Rachel
noticed his street grammar had softened, and his former aggressiveness was
buried. “Just like this—this
After
—is something we’ll all have to get
used to,” she said to Stephen.

The
boy touched the bill of his cap. “Like not having football this year.”

“Probably
not,” DeVontay said. “But the Panthers wouldn’t be no good anyway. The Eagles
would have whooped them bad.”

As
DeVontay plopped his glass eye back in place, Rachel scanned the road below.
All
those people rotting in the August heat.

“Mommy
said only the wicked people changed,” Stephen said.

“Lots
of people have died, Stephen,” Rachel said. “None of us are perfect, but most
of us are good.”

“Then
why did my mommy die? Does that mean she is wicked?”

DeVontay
gave Rachel a look like: “I’m not touching this one.” He gave Stephen his doll
back and the boy immediately clutched it to his chest, apparently lapsing back
into his near-catatonic state. Rachel knew this might be their only chance to
pull the boy out again.

“Your
mommy wasn’t wicked,” Rachel said. “God just needed an extra angel in heaven,
to make things ready for when the rest of us arrive.”

Crap.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good direction
.
But they didn’t cover this in Counseling
101
.

“Then
how come some people died and some just walk around being mean? Aren’t they
wicked?”

“We
don’t know that, honey. That’s why we need to stay away from everyone until we
can figure out what is happening.”

“So,
it’s just the three of us forever?”

“We’ll
find others like us.”

“Other
good people?”

Rachel
wasn’t sure why she’d survived. She’d always felt special, but not in an
arrogant way. Even from an early age, she’d always felt God made her for a
reason, and made only one person like her in the whole world, and she was
supposed to be Rachel all her life. She’d felt it even before her mother took
her to Catholic services or her dad gave his grumbling rants that took her
years to understand as atheism.

She
wasn’t even sure if she’d ever accepted his atheism, because she couldn’t
comprehend a world without purpose and order. After Chelsea’s death, Dad had
shut off any pretense of faith, insisting that no merciful God would allow such
a tragedy. She wondered what Dad would make of this apocalypse.

“Yes,”
Rachel said, realizing the silence had stretched too long, filled by the
twitter of birds and the soft flapping of leaves overhead. “Other good people.”

“Do
you know where they are?”

DeVontay,
studying the map again to avoid joining the discussion, pointed to the
northwest and said, “Yeah, little man. They’re that way.”

“Is
that way Mi’sippi?” Stephen asked. “My daddy’s in Mi’sippi.”

Rachel
found herself nodding. Little white lies didn’t make her wicked, did it? “Yes, Mississippi’s that way.”

“I
hope Daddy’s good. I don’t want him to be one of the mean people.”

Stephen’s
eyes welled, and Rachel scooted over to hug him. He sagged into her arms and
she patted his back. “With a boy like you, I’m sure he’s good. We’ll find him
for you.”

She
imagined an older, pudgier version of Stephen, a bloated corpse lying in bed or
on a sidewalk or roasting in a car. Then she saw him staggering along the
street, looking for something to attack. She pushed the vision away.

Please,
God, give me strength. Show me Your purpose and help me be part of Your order
.
Even if I don’t
understand it
.

DeVontay
folded the map backwards, so that it was lumpy and the corners uneven. He
pushed it into his backpack, along with the leftover food. He pulled the pistol
out, making sure Stephen wasn’t watching, and said, “Hey, we better get started
if we got to walk all the way to Mi’sippi, right?”

Rachel
brushed Stephen’s hair back from his freckled face and kissed his forehead.
“You’re a good boy. And I don’t believe wicked people can hurt good people, do
you?”

He
shook his head no, bumping her cheek with the bill of his cap. She smiled and
helped him to his feet. DeVontay had eased back into the shade until he was
behind the tree. He tilted his head toward the highway.

Rachel
saw four of them, coming up the pavement between the jumbled lines of cars. Their
clothes didn’t look ragged, and they didn’t jerk and shake, but she knew they
were Zapheads. Something about them was off. Maybe it was the way they peered
in each vehicle as they passed, as if searching for any movement they could
make still forever.

They
were about three hundred yards away, and it was unlikely they would notice
anyone on the slope above them. From Rachel’s observations, Zapheads had a
suppressed sense of perception, as if they could only process information in
their immediate vicinity. Maybe their focus on destruction was so all-consuming
that they had no larger awareness of the world.

Perhaps
that is the definition of “wicked”: pure selfish destruction.

“I
need you to be very quiet, Stephen,” she said calmly, in her regular voice. “Can
you do that for me?”

He
opened his mouth and caught himself, then nodded. He looked at DeVontay and saw
the gun.

“We’re
going to Mississippi now,” she said.

“I’ll
be good,” Stephen whispered.

“This
way,” DeVontay said, waving them into the scrub vegetation that dotted the top
of the slope. Rachel nudged Stephen toward DeVontay and collected their
backpacks. On the highway below, one of the Zapheads pounded an iron bar
against a car hood. The brutal
thwack
was an intrusion on the pastoral
serenity of a few moments earlier, and Rachel was reminded that After was not
paradise.

It
was a land where the wicked walked.

When
three of the four Zapheads disappeared from view behind a tractor-trailer rig, Rachel
hurried into the bushes to join DeVontay and Stephen. Glass shattered below
them, followed by a strange inhuman cry that might have been glee.

They
hurried without speaking, DeVontay beating back the branches and briars with
the arm that held the gun, Stephen hunched low so that the bill of his cap hid
his face, and Rachel repeatedly glancing behind her. They were still moving
roughly parallel to the interstate, although they’d put more distance and
vegetation between them and it. The morning coolness had given way to an
intense heat that had burned away the dew, and the air held all the promise of
an oven.

After
ten minutes, they could no longer hear the crazed vandalism, and DeVontay
slowed a little, tucked his gun in his belt, and picked up Stephen. He must
have noticed the dark circles of exhaustion under the boy’s eyes.

“I
know you’re big enough to walk, but I want you to rest so you can tell me
bedtime stories,” DeVontay said.

“Are
you going to shoot the wicked people?” Stephen said, letting the doll nestle
between them. It must have been uncomfortable for DeVontay, but he said
nothing.