After: The Shock (15 page)

“Do
not cross this line,” The Captain said to the Zaphead.

He
thinks he can communicate with it. He’s even crazier than I thought
.

Budget
Bieber looked at the gun as if harboring some dim memory of its capacity for
harm, then snarled and jumped with outstretched arms. The gunshot roared and
echoed down the hall, cordite filling the air. The Zaphead’s skull exploded
like a bloated melon, spraying the study with flecks of red and gray.

“I
told you to halt,” The Captain said, his voice just as steady as before.

Rachel
looked from the Zaphead to The Captain, assimilating this new discovery of
After. “Did you expect that thing to listen to you?”

“They
must learn that violence is not the answer,” The Captain said, plucking the screwdriver
from her hand. “A lesson you apparently need to learn as well.”

“But
you and your goons jumped me and tied me to a chair. Doesn’t that count as
violence?”

“You
are worthy,” he responded. “He didn’t kill you.”

The
Bieber Zaphead trembled in the center of the room, as if destruction was the
source of his passion and grace. Without the raging intent to kill, he was just
a teen. Harmless and lost, abandoned in a world that had changed for all of
them.
All
of them.

“Great,
so I’m worthy,” she said. “What about Stephen?”

“Who
is that? Your dark-skinned friend?”

“No.
The little boy who was out in the street.”

“Oh,
him. I’m afraid…I’m afraid he
isn’t
worthy.”

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

We
would have ridden the horses right past it and never noticed.

Jorge
cradled Marina against his chest and pushed through the thick rhododendron
branches. The trail was little more than an animal path winding through the
dense vegetation, but the man in the green jumpsuit navigated it as
sure-footedly as a goat. The man paused once in a while to look back and make
sure they were following, although he hadn’t removed his cloth mask.

Rosa
held back the branches as best she could so they wouldn’t scratch Marina. Jorge had cuts on his cheeks and the backs of his hands, but he’d been able to
shield his daughter from the worst punishment.

She
is so light. Like a dream.

Jorge
didn’t like that idea because it made her seem even more fragile and
vulnerable, so he shifted his thoughts to the man in the jumpsuit. Why was he
helping them? If he was truly afraid of catching a sickness, he would have
watched them pass by on the logging road and gone about his business.

The
man had even let Jorge keep his rifle, although he insisted they leave the
horses tethered on the road. Jorge wasn’t sure why, but he suspected the man
was afraid they harbored some kind of disease.

“How
is she?” Rosa asked, wrinkles appearing around her frown. He’d never seen
wrinkles on her before, and he wondered if perhaps the sun had changed them
all.

Some
changed more than others. Yes, Willard would gladly trade a few more wrinkles
in exchange for his hand, and Mr. Wilcox would have given up his “hunnert
acres” for another day above ground.

“She
is well,” Jorge said. Lying came more easily when one was trying to comfort others.
But Jorge wasn’t far enough along in his new morality to believe his own lies. Marina was pale and sweaty, even though her skin was cool to the touch when he pressed his
cheek against it.

The
trail opened up onto a twin set of ruts that marked another logging road. Or it
could have been the same road they had just left. Jorge had been so obsessed
with protecting Marina that he hadn’t paid attention to their route, although
he suspected they’d been trudging through the dense vegetation for at least twenty
minutes.

“Watch
your step,” said the man in the green jumpsuit, pointing to the ground near Rosa’s feet. A thin metal wire stretched six inches off the ground. Jorge thought of the
American movies he’d seen where the tripwire sprung a trap of sharpened spikes
that punctured anyone in its path or detonated a crude explosive device.

The
man must have read Jorge’s face, because he said, “Don’t worry none. It’s just
a signal wire, not a booby trap. I don’t kill unless I got no choice.”

Jorge
thought of the bodies back at the farm. Most people never knew the line they
would cross before they could kill, but it was thin and almost invisible. Most
horrifying of all, it could be triggered completely by accident.

The
sun was no accident. It was simply there, doing sun things, with no
consideration of the men beneath it.

Rosa
stepped carefully over
the wire and watched with dread as Jorge also crossed it. The man in the
jumpsuit dug his gloved hands into a thick tangle of red vines—“Poison oak,” he
said—and retrieved a hidden strand of rope that descended from somewhere in the
trees above.  He threw his weight against it and with the squeal of a
pulley overhead, the vegetation blocking the logging road parted. The metal gate
had been so cleverly concealed that, if Jorge turned his head for a few
seconds, he wouldn’t have been able to locate it if the gate were closed again.

The
man ushered them through the gate, gave a slow scan of the road and surrounding
forest, and entered behind them before closing it. They were in a compound that
blended with the trees and boulders and was constructed with such genius that
Jorge doubted it could be detected by a low-flying airplane. If airplanes still
flew, that was. He hadn’t seen one since the solar storms.

Rosa
gripped his arm, and then felt Marina’s forehead. “Her fever is worse.”

“Get
her in the house,” said the man in the green jumpsuit, motioning to a massive
maple tree with low-hanging branches. A structure was built into it, sided with
sheaves of bark so that it blended with the tree. Narrow slits of windows
glinted here and there. A couple of smaller sheds, roofed with rusted tin,
stood in a cleared area that featured a garden and a pen where goats and
chickens scratched at the ground.

The
man led the way up a series of wooden rungs that were nailed between two
branches. The thick wooden door was eight feet off the ground, and he opened it
and motioned to Jorge. “Can you carry her? Hand her here if you can’t.”

Jorge
didn’t want those gloved hands touching his daughter. “I can do it.”

“Suit
yourself,” he said, entering the tree house.

Rosa
whispered, “Can we
trust him?”

“He
could have killed us on the trail, or just let us pass,” Jorge said. “Besides,
he let me keep the gun.”

“Why
would this strange gringo help us? “

“Not
all gringos are like Mr. Wilcox. Some of them are human beings.”

“I
don’t like this.”

“What
choice do we have? We have to let Marina rest and recover. And if she has the
sun sickness…”

Neither
of them wanted to contemplate the thought. Before Rosa could respond, the man
stuck his head out the door. He’d removed his mask, but his mouth was still
disguised by his bushy beard and mustache. “You folks coming or not?”

Jorge
gave Rosa his backpack and the rifle, balanced Marina on his left shoulder, and
ascended the rungs. The interior of the tree house was surprisingly spacious
and bright, with the windows placed for maximum sunlight. The man removed his
gloves and placed them on a shelf which also contained an assortment of hand
tools, two pistols, a pair of binoculars, and an oil lantern.

“Put
her down over there,” the man said, motioning to a bundle of blankets on the
floor. Jorge thought for a moment the man was going to extend his hand, and
Jorge wondered if he would shake it. But the man turned his attention to an old
radio on a hand-hewn table, fidgeting with the dials.

Rosa
smoothed the blankets, giving them a suspicious sniff, and Jorge laid Marina among them. Her eyelids fluttered and parted, and Jorge tried his best to smile at
her, but his face felt as if it were carved from wood. “
Hola, tomatilla
,
how are you feeling?”

“Where
are we?” the girl said, her voice so small that Jorge had to lean forward to
make out the words.

“Somewhere
safe,” Rosa said, immediately taking the caregiver’s role.

“Will
you have to shoot anybody else?”

“No,
there are no sick men here. They were all back at Mr. Wilcox’s farm.”

“But
I’m sick, too. Will I be like them?”

Rosa
looked at Jorge, who
bent forward and kissed her forehead. “No, you just have a small fever. We will
rest and then be on our way.”

“Our
way where?”

“Hush,
pequeña tomatilla
, you don’t have to think about that.”

“Where’s
my pony?”

“Eating
sweet grass. He’s resting, too, while he waits for you to get better.”

“There’s
water in that pantry,” the man in the jumpsuit said, and Jorge walked over to a
wool blanket suspended on a wire. He pushed the blanket to the side, revealing
a small closet sporting shelves packed with food, some in cans, some in glass
jars, with bulging burlap sacks on the top shelves. The pantry was cool and
moist, with a sink at the far end, clear water streaming into it from a pipe.

Jorge
found a clean glass jar by the sink and filled it with the frigid water.
Looking out a window above the sink, he saw the metal pipe angled up into the
rocks on the slope above the tree house, allowing gravity to carry the water
from a spring.

This
man has been planning for something like the sun storm
.

After
taking the water back to Rosa, he joined the man at the table. The man barely
looked at him, intent on calibrating the radio, which was a jumble of glass
tubes, wires, and plastic knobs connected to a series of car batteries.

“I
want to thank you,” Jorge said.

“I
should have let you go on about your business,” the man said. “I hate
meddlers.”

“My
daughter—”

“Better
keep an eye on her. These solar shenanigans might not be over yet. These things
tend to come in spurts.”

Jorge
hadn’t even considered that the worst wasn’t yet over, that even now they might
be exposed to whatever strange radiation had killed most of the people around
them and turned others into mindless killers. What would he do if Marina showed a violent streak, if she became like Willard or a lame horse and needed to
be put down?

There
is no such thing as a mercy killing. Only killing.

Rosa
gave Marina some of the water and Jorge was comforted to see his daughter
sipping it. The sweat on her forehead had dried, and her complexion had
returned somewhat to its usual almond color.

“Were
there many of the solar storms?” Jorge said. He had little understanding of
science, having attended vocational school to learn welding, a craft that
hadn’t led to a job back home.

“Hard
to tell without any astronomy gear,” the old man said. “O’ course, all that
went out with the first big pulse, when the magnetic fields got all scrambled.
But if what they were saying is true, then we might have been hit with storms
for a solid week, wave after wave of radiation. Might still be going on now,
for all we know. It’s not like you can really see them.”

Jorge
thought of all the time he’d spent in the fields over the past few weeks and
wondered about the invisible rays and currents that might have washed over him.
Worse, in his ignorance, he’d exposed this family to danger. He glanced at his
daughter huddled in a coarse blanket.

“You
were prepared for this disaster?” Jorge asked.

The
man waved a hand, still fiddling with the radio. “This, or something else. It
was bound to happen sooner or later. Personally, my money was on nuclear war,
considering all the idiots in Washington.”

Jorge
had heard of survivalists, who were often painted as well-armed crackpots who
barricaded themselves in bunkers and dared federal agents to come and get them.
But this man didn’t seem angry or confrontational. No, he almost seemed
happy
that the world had taken a turn for the worse.

“My
name is Jorge, and that’s my wife, Rosa, and daughter, Marina.” Jorge opened
his palm in case the man wanted to shake hands, but the man kept his attention
on the radio.

“You
can call me Franklin.”

“This
is national park land,” Jorge said cautiously. “I thought no one could live on
it.”

“Means
the people own it, right?” Franklin said. “I paid taxes. At least for a while,
‘til I wised up and saw every single dime I mailed to the I.R.S. was going into
killing us all one way or another. The government was bound to either starve us
to death or drop bombs on our heads.”

A
low whine issued from the radio’s speakers, and the man fidgeted with the thick
copper wires attached to the slender antenna. He plugged in a handset
microphone and keyed it with click. “Do you read?” the man asked.

Jorge
thought this was odd. If someone was listening on another radio, that person
likely wasn’t reading. The man turned the knob, yielding a scruffy burst of
static, much like Mr. Wilcox’s TV. He spoke into the microphone several more
times before giving up.

“Too
much atmospheric interference,” Franklin said.

“Do
you think others are out there?”

The
man scrunched his bushy eyebrows. “Others like us, you mean?”

Jorge
nodded and glanced at Rosa. This man apparently didn’t care that they were
Hispanic, only that they weren’t crazed killers. “Like us.”

“Oh,
hard to figure,” the man said. “But you can bet bear against cornmeal that the U.S. government got itself a dozen little hidey holes around D.C.”

“The
capital,” Jorge said, to assure the man that he knew his U.S. civics lessons.

“I
wouldn’t be surprised if the bastards had months of advance warning and took the
time to make sure they were safe and living in luxury. Probably got a new
bureaucracy running already, figuring out how to tax the hell out of the
survivors.”

“Did
you hear that on your radio?”

Franklin
didn’t answer,
concentrating instead on turning the knobs and listening intently to the
whining pitch emanating from the speakers. Rosa came over and took Jorge’s
hand, squeezing it as they watched their sleeping daughter.

“Her
fever is passing,” Rosa said.