After: The Shock (11 page)

“No
wicked people are going to get you while we’re around, okay, little man?”

“Okay.”

Rachel
peeled away Stephen’s backpack to help lighten DeVontay’s load. The act caused
the doll to fall to the ground, and Stephen gave a bleat of alarm. She
hurriedly collected it before he could scream and alert the Zapheads. They
continued through the vegetation, which had thinned considerably and
occasionally allowed them a view of the cluttered highway.

After
a few minutes, Stephen was asleep and DeVontay slowed to reduce the bouncing of
his gait.

“Did
you see what I saw?” Rachel asked.

“’fraid
so. But tell me anyway, so it’s not my imagination.”

“The
Zapheads were moving in a group. They weren’t doing that before.”

“Maybe
it was random. They just happened to bump into each other and said, ‘Yo,
muthas, let’s break some shit together, whaddya say?’”

“Either
way, I don’t like it.”

“I
don’t like any of this. Things were bad enough without no wicked-ass gangbanger
shit.”

He’d
reverted back to his street persona. She didn’t blame him. Maybe it was a
useful survival mechanism, and they might need all such mechanisms they could
find.

“You
were good back there,” she said. “With Stephen.”

“So,
I’m one of the good people for a change,” he said. “Don’t be getting used to
it.”

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Campbell
was dreaming of Gina
Bellinari, the first girl he’d ever kissed. In the dream, they were behind the bleachers
at the Idlewild High School football stadium, and it must have been a school
day, because he could hear kids running and laughing on the practice fields.
Gina was saying people would notice they were missing, and she couldn’t afford
to get sent to the office again, and Campbell knew her reputation and figured
just a kiss was being cheap. But when he went in again, his lips puckered out
like he was about to suck down a sour gummy worm, she kicked him hard on the
shin.

“Fuh,”
he said, knowing he looked uncool, and uncool didn’t cut it when Gina had her
choice of any straight boy in the school, except the artists and the geeky band
students who’d probably be virgins all the way through college.

“We’re
moving out,” Gina said, but her voice was gruff, cracked, and masculine, and
she didn’t look all that happy about being kissed.

Campbell
opened his eyes to find
Arnoff standing over him, dressed in camouflage overalls. The encounter with
Gina had given way to an ROTC nightmare and all the chisel-jawed goons in high
school who’d waved their flags in his face and had strutted around spouting
word like “duty” and “honor.” But this wasn’t some high-school faker, this was
a grown man, although his cheeks were shaven as brightly pink as a teenager’s.

Then
Campbell remembered the camp, and the solar storms, and the world with six
billion dead people. And his back was killing him from sleeping on the ground.
“Hell,” he groaned.

“Yep,
same as yesterday,” Arnoff said, walking away to the fire, where the professor
was tending a blackened coffee pot.

Campbell
peeled back the thick
blanket and the stench of his rumpled clothes crawled over him. He hadn’t
changed since they’d left Chapel Hill, and he’d only bathed once,
half-heartedly swabbing his armpits with creek water. If the Zapheads didn’t
get him, flesh-eating fungus eventually would.

He
glanced over at Pamela’s tent. Donnie was helping Pamela break it down. Donnie
was slender and had bad teeth, like an ex-con who’d been deprived of decent
hygiene. His black, greasy hair was combed straight back over his head, and he
wore a sleeveless denim jacket and his arms were covered with crude tattoos. In
high school, Campbell would have called him a redneck, but never to his face.

“Make
sure you shake the leaves out,” Pamela said to Donnie. At least Pamela had
taken the time to brush her red curls, and Campbell couldn’t be sure, but she
apparently was wearing mascara and foundation. In the firelight, he’d taken her
for thirty-ish, but the harsh morning sun added a good decade to her face.

“A
little bit of dirt never hurt nobody,” Donnie said.

“I
didn’t say it would hurt, I just said I didn’t want them.”

“It’s
my tent, too.”

“Don’t
push your luck.”

“I
push what I want, where I want.”

“Enough
of that, lovebirds,” Arnoff barked. “I’m making a scouting run and I want
everybody ready to roll when I get back.”

Roll?
On what, bicycles? Some armored column you got here, Rambo
.

Campbell
crawled out of the
blanket and looked around the camp. It was shoddier in daylight than it had appeared
last night, with filthy clothes flapping from a sagging piece of twine that was
stretched between two trees. Ten feet behind the professor was a mound of cans,
plastic bags, and coffee grounds. Pete lay bundled up on the edge of the
clearing, apparently having rolled away from the fire during the night.

Campbell
stood and stretched the
stiffness from his spine. Pamela glanced his way with a smirk and said, “Is
this the best Generation Y has to offer?”

Donnie
scowled, not passing up a chance to bicker. “Dead weight. I don’t know what the
hell Arnoff thinks he’s doing.”

“Pissing
you off, Donnie. And just maybe saving your life.”

Campbell
nodded at the
professor, who focused all his attention on making the perfect cup of coffee
under the most trying circumstances, as if the apocalypse was just a crude
chemistry lab. The bespectacled man was perched as if he’d spent the entire
night gazing into the flames. Campbell would never be caught dead in such
company under normal circumstances. But normal was a distant memory.

Two
weeks?
It’s
not even been two weeks?

While
Donnie and Pamela wrestled their tent into a nylon bag, Campbell woke up Pete,
whose bedroll was surrounded by half a dozen crushed beer cans. Pete blinked
his bleary eyes and said, “Ugh. I must have turned into a Zaphead, because it
feels like somebody cracked my skull open like an egg and took a big electric
dump in it.”

“You
don’t have time to enjoy your hangover. Sgt. Rock has ordered us to move out.”

“We
don’t have to stick with these clowns. We were doing pretty well on our own.”

“Really?
Your idea of a Plan A is to go from beer truck to beer truck until we’re in Milwaukee.”

Pete
sat up and wiped the crust from his eyes, then grabbed his wool cap and pulled
it down to his eyebrows. “Give me a break. At least I’m not thinking I’ll crash
my parents’ house and sleep in the basement until I can get back on my feet.”

“Dude,
it’s a thing called ‘hope.’ When the shit hits the fan, you hold on to it.”

Pete
looked around, spied his sodden cardboard case of beer, and fished out a warm
can. It spewed as he popped it. “This is the only thing I’m holding on to.”

“Hey,”
Pamela called to them. “You party boys coming with us?”

“Safety
in numbers,” Campbell said to Pete.

“Not
numbers like these. Look at the professor. You want your life in his hands?”

The
professor poured dark, thick fluid from the coffee pot into a tin cup and blew on
it. “At least he wouldn’t eat your liver if you were snowed in together,” Campbell said. “And Sgt. Rock seems to know his way around a gun. Unlike you.”

“Yeah,
then how come he didn’t give us our guns back? I don’t think this is such a
good time to be a control freak. Because there’s shit out there beyond
everybody’s control.”

Donnie
sauntered over to them, a backpack, a rifle, and the bagged tent slung over his
shoulder. “So, which one of you is the momma’s boy?”

“Excuse
me?” Pete said.

“Come
on, guys like you? You kidding me? You’re doing everything but holding hands. I
need a momma’s boy to carry this tent for me.”

“Screw
you,” Pete said, still sitting with his blanket wadded around him.

With
the ferocity of a wolverine, Donnie slung the tent bag down his arm and hurled
it at Pete. The bag knocked the beer from his hand and forced the wind from his
lungs with an
oomph
.

Pete
rose from the ground and wobbled a moment, still woozy from his hangover, but rage
twisted his face. Campbell had to hold him back, but Donnie was unimpressed.

“Look
at the lover boys hugging,” Donnie said, grinning with black teeth. “Ain’t that
sweet?”

“Knock
it off, Donnie,” Pamela said. “Arnoff won’t like you messing with the guests
after what happened last time.”

Last
time?
Campbell didn’t like the sound of that.

“Look,
Donnie,” Campbell said, taking a chance and calling the guy by his name, not
knowing how he would take it. “We’re basically what’s left of the human race.
If we go fighting each other, we’re no better than the Zapheads.”

“Shit
on them,” Donnie said. “I got enough ammo to take care of all of them.”

“We
don’t know how many are out there,” the professor said, sipping his coffee like
he was kicking around theories at the local barista. It was the first time he
had interacted with anyone that morning. Maybe he needed caffeine before he
could face the horrors of modern life.

“That’s
why Arnoff wants us to stick together,” Pamela said.

“Arnoff
this and Arnoff that,” Donnie said. “We were getting along just fine until you
made him king of the world.”

The
smoky air was ripped by an explosion of gunfire.

Arnoff
emerged from the brush. “Good thing I wasn’t a Zaphead, or you’d all be meat.”

“Come
on, Arnoff, you’ll scare the children,” Pamela said.

“They
ought to be scared. How come you guys aren’t packed?”

Pete
and Donnie glared at each other for a moment, and then Donnie gathered the tent
from the ground. The professor tossed his coffee into the fire and said, “How
was the reconnaissance mission?”

“It’s
clear to the west, so we’ll be heading that way.”

“Yesterday,
you wanted to go east toward the coast,” Donnie said.

“Changed
my mind. People change their minds from time to time.”

“And
sometimes the sun does it for them,” the professor said.

“What
about our bikes?” Campbell asked. He assumed Pete was sticking with the crowd. Campbell certainly was, at least for now.

“We
move as a unit,” Arnoff said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to have fresh legs to do
some advance scouting.”

Donnie
smirked. “Hear that, pretty boys? Fresh legs.”

“Don’t
be an asshole, Donnie,” Pamela said, shouldering her own backpack. Campbell wondered if she had a firearm tucked in one of the bulging pockets of her thin cotton
jacket. Even the professor had a rifle leaning against a tree near his pile of
gear.

“Do
we get our guns now?” Campbell asked Arnoff.

“Get
packed up. Then we’ll see.”

Campbell
helped Pete roll up his
blanket. When Pete reached for a fresh beer, Campbell kicked away the cardboard
box. “You’re going to get us killed.”

“If
these creeps don’t kill us first. Don’t you think they’re a little unhinged?”

“We’re
all a little unhinged. We just got hit with the apocalypse. What do you
expect?”

“Yeah,
but you’d think they’d be banding together. Instead, they’re ripping each other
to pieces.”

“Stress.
We’re in a war zone now.”

“We’ll
play it your way for a day or two. But if this is the best they have to offer,
I’m taking my bike and flying solo.” Pete shouldered his backpack and headed
out of the clearing.

“What
do you think you’re doing?” Arnoff shouted.

“Getting
my bike.”

Arnoff
pointed his rifle ninety degrees to Pete’s left. “You might want to head in the
proper direction.”

Pete
gave an insolent wave and slipped into the woods, Campbell following. When they
came to the place where Arnoff had shot the Zaphead, the corpse was gone. Only
a crushed section of grass and a rusty brown stain remained.

“What
do you think happened to it?” Pete asked.

“Maybe
somebody buried it.”

“You
serious? You think Arnoff would pass up an opportunity to put us on gravedigger
detail? And why would he bother, anyway? They knew they were breaking camp and
leaving. So what’s one more corpse?”

“Or
maybe he wasn’t dead, just wounded.”

Pete
peered into the surrounding trees. “I don’t like it.”

“Come
on. Let’s get our bikes before the others catch up.”

As
they emerged from the trees and climbed the rocky slope to the guardrail above,
Pete said, “At least the professor seems to have his shit together. Maybe we
can learn something from him.”

“All
he’s got is theories,” Campbell said.

“Beats
what we got.” Pete began clambering up the rocks but only made it about ten
feet before he stopped.

“What’s
the matter?”

“You
smell that?”

“I
don’t smell anything but your body odor.”

“Seriously.
Smoke.”

“The
campfire.”

“No.
This is like plastic and garbage and stuff instead of wood.”

“Maybe
the professor made them clean up their trash. ‘Leave no trace’ and all that.”

Pete
kept climbing, and by the time they reached the guardrail, Campbell was out of
breath. He could only imagine how Pete felt, with last night’s beer leaking
from his pores. The morning was already muggy.

“Look,”
Pete said, pointing to the east.

Several
massive pillars of smoke boiled in the far distance, shimmering in the heat.
“The hell is that?” Campbell said.

“That
would be Greensboro,” Arnoff said.

They
both turned in surprise to see Arnoff perched in the bed of a pickup truck,
scanning the horizon with binoculars. They hadn’t even heard him come up behind
them.

Damn.
What if he’d been a Zaphead?