After: The Shock (18 page)

“The
Captain? Yeah, I’ve met him.” So, The Captain had a rank. She dug into her
backpack and found the small bottle of Nembutal the pharmacist had given her.
Her fingers slid away until they hit a water bottle, and she pulled it out and
passed it to Pete.

He
twisted the cap and tossed it into the weeds, then took a grateful gulp.
“What’s up with these guys?”

“I
can’t say for sure,” she said. “But I think they were stuck in the bunker a
little too long and started getting funny ideas. The Captain thinks he can
control the Zapheads if only he can get them to appreciate chain of command.”

“Well,
I’m civilian all the way. So, what’s the plan?”

“Did
you happen to see a little boy anywhere? About ten, wild hair, maybe carrying a
baby doll?”

“Afraid
not.”

“Well,
that’s my plan.”

“Not
much better than mine. I was going to find a bar and plug some quarters into
the karaoke machine and sing ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ ‘til closing time.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

“Turnips,”
Franklin said.

Jorge
almost responded in Spanish, but remembered his promise. “What?”

Franklin
pulled a dark clump of
leafy stalks from the ground, revealing the rounded golden root. “Turnips are
the perfect survival food. They grow almost year round, the roots store through
the winter, and they have just about every vitamin you need.”

They
were in the vegetable garden at one corner of the compound. From working on the
Wilcox farm, Jorge had an understanding of the shorter growing seasons of the Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as the humid, wet climate. Therefore, he admired the garden’s
placement, which allowed nearly a full day’s sunlight while much of Franklin’s camp remained concealed by trees.

“You
plan well,” Jorge said.

“No,
I’ve just been around so long I’ve figured out a thing or two.” He twisted the
yellowing outer leaves from the stalk and tossed them into the goat pen, where the
short-horned nanny sucked them between her jaws.

Broad
leaves of autumn squash and pumpkins covered one end of the garden, and bean
vines twisted along a lattice of sticks. The corn was already making ears, and
bees hovered around the golden tassels. A dense orchard of short but bountiful
apple and pear trees stood on the other side of the small house, nearly shading
a brown Ford van with the wheels removed. The top of the van was covered with
solar panels, and Franklin had opened the rear door to show Jorge the rows of
batteries that stored the collected energy.

“Something
like this takes…,” Jorge searched for the right word, dragging the hoe between
the rows to pile fresh soil around the turnip roots. “Vision.”

“Nah,”
Franklin said. “Anybody could see it coming that didn’t have blinders on. I
was part of the Preparation Network, teaching people how to get ready, but it
didn’t do much good. Humans are a funny breed, Jorge. I reckon they’re as funny
down in Mexico as they are up here.”

Jorge
had given little thought to his brothers and sisters in the Baja, or his mother
in their little crowded house. He wasn’t sure whether he wished them a swift
and merciful death or if they were even now on the run from the people that Franklin had called the “Zapheads.”

“If
this happened all over the world, like your man on the radio said, then I
suppose it’s not so funny,” Jorge said, leaning on the hoe and looking out
across the mountain ridges in the distance. The nearer peaks were flush with
the deep green of summer’s end, but the horizon was draped with wraith-like,
ragged clouds.

“That’s
the look of cities burning,” Franklin said. “Enjoy this fresh air while you
can.”

“Do
these Zapheads burn things?”

“Tell
you the truth, I don’t know if that’s the Zapheads or the government. I
wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were ready for whatever opportunity came
along. Giant asteroid hitting the earth, nuclear terrorist attack, shift of the
earth’s geomagnetic fields. Every ill wind blows somebody some good.”

Although
Jorge had little interest in any kind of politics, he didn’t see what the U.S. government would gain by destroying its own territory. Not for the first time, he
wondered if Franklin had spent too many years alone, with nothing but his mad
dreams, paranoia, and obsessive vision.

Rosa
called to them from the
doorway of the house. Marina stood beside her, wrapped in a blanket. She still
looked pale and her hair was moist with sweat, but she managed a feeble wave
before Rosa led her back into the shade.

Jorge
decided to ask the thing that had been bothering him. “Mr. Wheeler, you are
clearly a man who likes to be alone and to depend on no one. If this is so,
then why do you help us?”

Franklin
put the turnips into a
wooden basket atop some tomatoes and small purple cabbages. “I lived out there
once,” Franklin said, waving vaguely off the mountain. “Just about like anybody
else. I had a job in industrial design making rich folks richer, found a sweet
little woman and settled down. I never did trust the government, and I got in a
little trouble because of things I was writing on the Internet. Whatever they
say about ‘the land of the free,’ that’s complete bullshit. You’re only as free
as they want you to be.”

Then
why isn’t your own family here? Why take in mine?
But Jorge thought it
best to only listen, so he turned his attention back to the weeds that skirted
the bed of tufted carrot greens. Besides, it seemed like Franklin was warming
up for a rant.

“Government
had me under surveillance,” Franklin said, no longer working now, just kneeling
in the dark dirt and gazing off where the past remained just out of sight.
“Just because I was warning people that the shit was about to hit the fan.
After 9/11, Homeland Security became just about the most powerful force in Washington, because its slimy fingers reached into every pocket and every campaign fund and
every Congressional bill. The last thing any government ever wants is for the
truth to get out. At different times, I was considered a white supremacist, a
radical Muslim, a neo-Nazi, a Communist, even a Swedish spy—if you can imagine
any reason in hell that Sweden needs our secrets.”

“Were
you arrested?”

“They
just wanted me to go dark. Even with all these new laws that let them throw anybody
in jail forever without a trial, they knew that arresting me would draw
publicity, and then more people would find my websites. So in a way, me going
into hiding like this was the best thing for both of us. I’m fine with being a
martyr, but I want it to be for the right reason, and the right reason hadn’t
come along yet.” Franklin swept his gnarled, calloused fingers to the world
beyond. “And now, the right cause came along, but there ain’t no Internet
left.”

Jorge
remained cautious. “So you want us to help you spread the word about your
survival camp? If you help us, we can help others?”

“Hell,
no,” Franklin said. “It’s too late for all that. I’m not even helping you. I
just couldn’t let that little girl die.”

Jorge
realized the old man did have a compassionate streak beneath his wary,
antisocial façade. “We are grateful and we promise to work hard while we are
here, and to leave whenever you ask.”

Franklin
appeared not to hear.
“My granddaughter, Chelsea, was Marina’s age when she drowned.”

Jorge
had a good idea of the man’s pain because of his own worries. “I am truly sorry
to hear that.”

“I
was working on the camp even back then, using a network of dealers to get all
these solar panels, wind turbines, water tanks, and such as that. I suspect the
government had their eyes on me. Hell, I didn’t know which of those things
flying overhead were hawks and crows and which were surveillance drones. They
got ‘em the size of insects now…well, they
did
, I mean.”

Jorge
picked a lime-green caterpillar from a collard leaf and studied it a moment
before squishing it between his fingers. “Why did they let you come here if
they knew?”

“Like
I said, it got me out of the spotlight. I planned to bring my family up here,
but by then my wife had left me and my kids and grandkids had pretty much
written me off as a crazy old coot. The ones who didn’t were my granddaughters,
Rachel and Chelsea. Rachel, she’s a real Christian, acting the way Christ
taught instead of the way these idiot preacher politicians are telling people they
ought to behave. You a religious man?”

Jorge
had learned in the United States to always say he was a Baptist, especially in
the South, but he saw little reason to lie to Franklin. “I was raised Catholic,
but we haven’t gone to church much lately.”

“Never
hurts to believe in something bigger than you. Just make sure it’s a thing of
the sky and not a thing of mankind. Because mankind isn’t bigger than any of
us. Mankind is not bigger than life. It’s exactly life-sized and hates to admit
it.”

Jorge
was trying to figure out what that meant when Franklin went back to his story,
apparently used to coming out with random musings but just as quickly,
discarding them. “Rachel was the only one who didn’t think I was a survivalist
wacko. She said God needed the world to end in order to renew itself as a
better place, just like Jesus had to die on the cross in order to save
everybody’s soul. I guess there’s some comfort in that, since all the doomsday
preachers use fear as a fundraising tool. She’d even been reviving some of my
old websites, putting them under different names.”

“Did
she get in trouble, too?” The sun was lower in the sky now, pushing shadows
across the compound.

“She’d
barely got started when Chelsea died.” Franklin swallowed with the bitterness of
the memory. “They were out at the lake, the two of them, and Rachel turned away
just for a second—had to go use the bushes. And she came back to find Chelsea face down in the water.”

Jorge
wanted to offer condolences but decided silence was more respectful and
appropriate. Customs were different in the United States, but shutting up
worked in any language.

“In
three feet of water. But she was a good swimmer. They did it to send a
message.”

“They”?
Does this man really think the government would drown his granddaughter?

Franklin
spat in the dirt and
stood, wiping his hands and picking up the basket. “Well, that’s when I came up
here. Is your wife a good cook? I’m passable, but I keep it simple.”

“She
cooked for Mr. Wilcox on weekends.”

“Well,
this ain’t no fancy rich-people’s food, but it’s clean and free of poison and
you can really taste it. So, let’s treat it like it’s The Last Supper.”

Jorge
followed Franklin back to the house, wondering if they should leave far sooner
than their host might wish.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

“Holy
crap!”

Campbell
swerved his bike,
narrowly missing the little kid. The front tire hit the curb and the bike
flipped, pitching Campbell across the sidewalk and into the weeds along the
side of the street.

Campbell
had pedaled in the
direction of the gunshots, figuring it was the most likely place to find Pete,
and the first exit off the highway had led right past a gas station into a
middle-class neighborhood. He had slowed, hoping not to get shot or attacked,
but he had mentally prepared for any possibility except the one that had
occurred.

His
elbow throbbed and his knees were skinned, but no bones appeared to be broken.
His first thought was that the kid might be a Zaphead, which would explain why
he’d run out into the street toward the bike.

But
the boy simply stood there, staring at Campbell, a baby doll dangling limply
from one hand.

Definitely
not a Zaphead, or he’d be on me while I’m down
.

Campbell
sat up, his shirt wet
from a broken water bottle in his backpack. “Hi there,” Campbell said, in his
friendliest voice, as if they were crossing paths on a playground instead of in
the middle of the apocalypse.

The
kid said nothing, merely hugged his doll. He looked about ten, an age when most
kids were carrying baseball gloves and iPods and Gameboys instead of dolls. But
he’d likely seen horrors that even the most violent video games had not
displayed.

“Live
around here?” Campbell asked, even though the street looked as dead as all the
others he’d traveled over the last few weeks.

Had
it only been a few weeks since the solar flares? The world felt as if it were
covered in a great layer of dust already.

The
boy’s head twitched just a little, which Campbell took for a negative shake. Campbell scanned the houses that bordered both sides of the street, vacant cars parked
here and there along the curb and in the driveways, another neighborhood caught
unaware when the catastrophe had struck. Human flesh was moldering and decaying
behind those closed doors.

Campbell
dug in his backpack and
pulled out a granola bar. He unwrapped it and stood, holding it out to the boy.
He felt like a parody of the stereotypical pervert, gaining a kid’s trust with
a treat. “You hungry?”

The
head twitched again, eyes peering warily from beneath the bill of the Carolina
Panthers ball cap.

“What
do you say we get away from the street?” Campbell said. “Might be some bad guys
around.”

The
boy’s lower lip trembled. “B-bad guys?”

Ah.
So you know about the Zapheads
.
And yet somehow you’re still alive
.

“Come
over here, out of the street,” Campbell said. “Maybe you can help me fix my
bike.”

The
front rim was hopelessly warped, but Campbell pretended to check the bike’s
condition. The boy eased a few steps closer and Campbell took a bite of the
granola bar, chewing deliberately.

“Dang,
I forgot this was yours,” Campbell said around a mouthful of honey-coated oats.
“You can have the other half. I don’t have cooties or anything.”

The
boy almost smiled. He came closer, loosening his grip on the filthy doll, which
was wrapped in a makeshift bandana with a length of yarn wrapped around the
waist to make a dress. Campbell nodded at it. “That doll’s really rocking that
outfit.”

“She’s
not real.”

“Nice
of you to protect her from the bad guys,” Campbell said, checking both ends of
the street for movement. “You must be a superhero.”

The
boy shook his head more vigorously. “Just a boy.”

“Me,
too. Come on, let’s go over here out of the street.”

“Rachel
made the dress,” the boy said, once Campbell had led him to a covered garage
that at least gave the illusion of protection. A late-90s model Cadillac was
parked inside, the chrome buffed, polished and gleaming like a mirror.

“Rachel?
That your sister?”

“No,
she brought me here after my mom died, but then she left me. We were going to
Mi’sippi to find my dad.”

Jeez,
what a heartless bitch
. “Yeah, I lost a friend, too. I came here looking for him.
His name is Pete.”

“I’m
Stephen.”

“I
like that name. If I ever had a kid, I’d name him that.” Campbell peered into
the Cadillac to make sure it was unoccupied. The keys were in the ignition,
taunting him. “Have you seen anyone else around?”

“After
Rachel left, some guy in an Army suit let me out of the shed where she hid me.
Said I was Zaphead bait and I’d better start running. So, I did. I didn’t stop
until you almost run me over.”

So,
Stephen knows what a Zaphead is. I guess they grow up fast these days or not
all
.
“This guy in the Army suit? He was one of us? I mean, not a Zaphead?”

“I
think there was more of them in a big brick house where DeVontay went.”

“DeVontay?”

“Rachel’s
friend.”

“Can
you show me the house?”

Stephen
shook his head, squeezing the doll. “I don’t want the Zapheads to get me.”

“I
promise I won’t leave you like Rachel did.” Campbell wondered if he was doing
the same thing Arnoff had done to him and Pete, forcing him into servitude.

“Will
you take me to Mi’sippi if I show you?”

“Sure,
Stephen. Anything you say.”

“Okay,
then. But you have to take Miss Molly, too.” Stephen held out the doll, as if
testing Campbell’s commitment.

“Sure,
all of us. Even DeVontay if he’s still there.” Campbell looked around the
garage for a weapon. On the bicycle, he’d felt relatively safe because he could
easily escape a Zaphead, even though they seemed to be faster and better coordinated
now. If he was about to travel on foot, he wanted a way to defend himself.

But
the garage offered nothing in the least bit deadly. The Cadillac’s owner was as
meticulously ordered as the car’s condition suggested. Old issues of
Car
& Driver
were stuck in plastic organizers on a set of metal shelves.
Electric power tools were arrayed in a line along the wooden work bench, their
cords neatly coiled around the handles. Bottles of motor oil, windshield washer
fluid, and antifreeze stood at one end of the shelf, as well as a gasoline can.
Campbell shook the can and it sloshed.

Great.
Now all I have to do is toss this on a Zaphead, light a match, and walk away.
Ridding the world of Zappers, one human torch at a time.

Campbell
put down the gasoline
can, and then remembered what Arnoff had said about the Zapheads loving to
watch stuff burn. Maybe something in their short-circuited brains loved the
simplicity of destruction, or maybe it was some deeply buried desire for
purification that lived in the ghosts of their human selves. Either way, he
might have a way to distract the Zappers until he figured out his next move.

You
guys like to play firebug, let me get it started for you.

He
twisted the lid from the gas can and poured it all along the bench. The fumes
of the gasoline stung his eyes and made his head swim. He flung a trail of
gasoline over to the Cadillac, wondering if it would blow like in the movies.

“You
ever had a weenie roast, Stephen?”

“No,
but my dad likes to barbecue.”

“Okay,
then, think of this as one big backyard barbecue.” Campbell moved a few feet
away, wondering if he’d spilled any gasoline on his clothes. He didn’t think
he’d impress Stephen much if he managed to accidentally immolate himself.

He
pulled one of the issues of
Car & Driver
from its rack. The cover
featured a decked-out muscle car that looked like a ’69 Chevy Camaro. Campbell ripped a few pages from the interior and pulled a lighter from his pocket. He lit
the corner of the twisted, makeshift torch.

“Okay,
let’s roll,” he said to Stephen, tossing the torch onto the wet stream of
gasoline, which had now soaked into the concrete. It immediately swelled into a
thick, bright flame and spread outward in both directions, but they were out of
the garage before it reached the Cadillac.

Campbell
led Stephen across the
backyard of the house, wondering if the Cadillac’s owner was taking the big
sleep inside the house. Perhaps he should have checked. It wouldn’t have been
right to burn another man’s car without asking, even though the big gas-guzzler
was just another dinosaur now.

“We’ll
follow the street from over here, then come around to the house from the back
way,” Campbell said, the bonfire now crackling behind them as thick smoke
roiled into the sky. “Think you’ll be able to find it again?”

“Yeah,”
Stephen said, tugging his hand free from Campbell’s. “I’m not a baby, you
know.”

“Well,
I’m just a little scared.”

“But
you’re a superhero.”

“Yeah,
but I’m in my secret identity right now.”

“See
that big tower? That way.”

Through
the trees, Campbell could see a bulbous water tower framed against the
scattered iron-gray clouds. The town’s name was spelled out in black letters
across the circumference, but the first part was hidden, so Campbell was left
to wonder where in the hell “-iston” was.

They
climbed over a waist-high fence, Campbell boosting Stephen over after first
transporting the baby doll. The rows of houses faced the backs of similar
houses, and the gaps in the landscaping and fencing revealed yet another
street, as if the neighborhood was just another homogenous suburb, with
American flags, lawnmowers, and the occasional corpse lying facedown in the
grass.

Campbell
saw movement behind one
of the sliding-glass doors and wondered if he should check for other human
survivors. But then the glass shattered and a Zaphead staggered outside, a
half-naked man wielding an aluminum baseball bat. Campbell pulled Stephen into
the concealment of a boxwood hedge, covering the boy’s mouth so he wouldn’t
call out. The Zaphead passed within twenty feet of them, headed toward the
burning garage.

“Bad
guy,” Stephen whispered after the Zaphead had vanished from sight.

“Yeah.”

They
continued to pick their way across the yards. They came to a dead dog tied to a
length of chain. Flies buzzed around the bloated body and the stench was
overpowering.

“Why
did Rachel leave you?” Campbell said, drawing Stephen’s attention away from the
grisly scene of death and the blunt reminder of what was waiting for all of
them.

“She
went into the Army-man house to get DeVontay.”

“Why
did DeVontay go in?”

“He
thought there were people like us. You know, good guys.”

Campbell
wondered about the
wisdom of finding other survivors. So far, his luck had been pretty bad, and he
wondered if humans under duress could truly work together for the common good.

Nothing
like a good, old-fashioned apocalypse to blow that peace, love, and
understanding horseshit to the moon.

“There’s
the shed she put me in,” Stephen said after they’d crossed another yard that
featured an unkempt vegetable garden. “She promised she’d be back. But the Army
men came and let me out and told me to run or die.”

The
door to the shed was open, and Campbell warily scanned his surroundings,
wishing he had a gun.

“Somebody’s
been in there since I left,” Stephen said. “They threw tools all over the
ground.”

“Maybe
Rachel came back.”

“Or
maybe the Army men did.”

They
heard a shout to their left, from the direction of the street. Campbell dropped to his belly and crawled along the ground until he saw the fight. A woman
in military garb was fending off a Zaphead, and two bodies were piled around
their feet.

“I’d
better help her,” Campbell said. “You stay here.”

Stephen
grabbed the back of his shirt as he tried to stand. “No. She was one of the
ones who told me the Zapheads were going to get me.”

“But
she’s one of
us
.”

“If
you help her, she might give me to the Zapheads again.”

Before
Campbell could make a decision, the soldier solved the dilemma by plunging a
knife deep into the Zaphead’s abdomen, ripping upward in a flash of silver and
gush of crimson. The soldier’s high-pitched curses were likely to draw the
attention of any other Zapheads in the vicinity.

The
boy stared transfixed as the soldier shoved the dead Zaphead away and wiped her
knife on the leg of her camouflage trousers. His face showed no real shock or
surprise. Campbell wondered if this was how children reacted to warfare, after
the repeated exposure ultimately gave way to numbness.