After: The Shock (19 page)

Welcome
to the new normal
.

“Where’s
that house?” Campbell asked him.

“Ruh-round
the corner, I think.”

“Okay,
we’d better stay away from the street.”

By
the time they’d crawled back into the relative seclusion of the back yards, the
soldier had recovered and collected her rifle. Campbell didn’t want to be
around when the Zapheads came out and the bullets started flying.

He
was just about to start jogging when a female voice called out: “
Stephen
!”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Rachel
hugged Stephen, hardly believing he was alive.

Guess
I owe you for another answered prayer, Lord
.

They’d
ducked into the nearest house after finding the door unlocked. A sweep had
revealed that it was empty, the former occupants apparently packing hastily and
heading off somewhere after hearing the news of strange phenomena. Pete checked
the fridge, finding only molded food and half a bottle of Sprite that had long
since gone flat, while Rachel discovered a hand-operated can opener and served
Stephen a cold can of chicken soup. They gathered in the darkening kitchen,
Pete creating a stink with a tin of sardines that he ate with his fingers.

“You
must be Rachel,” said the man who had apparently rescued the boy.

“Yeah,”
she said. “Who are you?”

“This
is my home boy, Campbell,” Pete said. He punched Campbell on the arm. “Guess
you can’t get rid of me so easy after all. Where’s Arnoff and the gang?”

“Back
on the highway, looking for World War Three.”

“They’re
in luck, then. Apparently there are rogue Marines or some shit around here.
They jumped me on the highway and took me prisoner and…hell, I have no idea
why.”

Rachel
looked past Stephen’s shoulder and said, “Zaphead bait.”

Campbell
glared at her. “What’s
the big idea, abandoning this kid? Don’t you have any sense?”

Rachel’s
grip tightened on the pruning shear and she held it up, letting Campbell see the blood on the metal tip. She forced herself to breathe evenly or anger
would overwhelm her. “We got along just fine before you rode in on your white
horse like a one-man cavalry.”

Pete
gave an uneasy laugh. “Hey, guys, we’re on the same team here, right?”

Campbell
shrugged and looked
down at the floor. “Sorry. Guess we’ll all wound a little tight right now.”

“She
saved me,” Pete said to Campbell. “I’d be lying dead out there in the street if
it wasn’t for her.”

Rachel
ignored the praise, busy adjusting Miss Molly’s outfit. She gave the doll back
to Stephen, who cradled it like a football.

“Did
you hurt somebody?” Stephen asked, pointing to the bloody pruning shear.

“No,”
she said. “Just a Zaphead.”

So,
you’ve made the final leap. Not all living creatures are equal in God’s sight,
and it turns out Jesus didn’t die for everyone’s sins.

“She’s
pretty wicked with that thing,” Pete said, imitating her swing and giving it a
home-run exaggeration.

“I’ll
keep that in mind next time I need to chop off somebody’s head.” Campbell looked through the curtains at the surrounding houses. “Is this neighborhood as
dead as it looks?”

“Yeah,”
Rachel said. “We saw a few Zapheads when we came through.” She pointed to the
rising thread of smoke that hovered over the rooftops and trees. “Something’s
on fire.”

“I
played arsonist to create a distraction,” Campbell said.

“Looks
like you did too good of a job. The smoke is getting thick.”

“Let’s
roll,” Pete said. “There’s not any beer in this place.”

“Sounds
good to me,” Campbell said. “I’ll bet we can borrow bicycles from some of these
fine, upstanding citizens around here.”

Rachel
wasn’t sure she should trust her instinct, because it was clouded with guilt.
She should take Stephen and head north and find Grandpa’s legendary compound on
the Blue Ridge Parkway, even if it meant these guys tagging along. DeVontay was
probably already dead, thrown to the Zapheads like some perverted version of
the ancient Romans throwing Christians to the lions. She could picture The
Captain curling his lips in a sour sneer and giving the thumb’s down.

“I’m
not leaving without DeVontay,” Rachel said.

“He
promised he’d take me to my dad,” Stephen said.

“People
just throw around promises like they’re water,” Campbell said.

“We
can take care of it,” Rachel said, annoyed with Campbell’s holier-than-thou
attitude. “You guys go on with…whatever it is you were doing.”

“We’re
just standing around waiting for Zapheads to tear us limb from limb,” Pete
said. “Yep. Just killing time.”

“Okay,”
Campbell said. “I’d hate to let that white horse go to waste. What do we do?”

Rachel
wasn’t sure whether she welcomed the help. Her plan had been to return to the
house, wait until nightfall, and then sneak in and free DeVontay. She had to
admit it wasn’t much of a plan, because she wasn’t sure where Stephen fit in.

“They’ve
got guns and we don’t,” Rachel said.

“Damn,”
Pete said. “You don’t think they’d actually shoot us, do you?”

“Their
leader is a little unstable, to say the least. Apparently, they were holed up
in a military bunker when most of the troop turned into Zapheads.”

“Can’t
blame him for going a little nuts,” Campbell said. “I think the flares affected
us all more than we realize. I was talking to a scientist and—”

“Jeez,
Campbell,” Pete cut in. “That guy couldn’t even hit tenure track, so I
wouldn’t put a lot of stock in his babbling.”

“How
many people were with this Arnoff guy?” Rachel wondered if more survivors than
she realized were around. Maybe most of them were hiding, looking out of the
cracks of basement windows and waiting for the Second Coming.

“Four
others,” Campbell said. “They may be headed this way, but I don’t think I’d
wait on them.”

“Well,
we can’t just sit here and wait for the Zapheads to mutate into whatever it is
they’re becoming.”

“Or
for
us
to change,” Campbell said.

“I
don’t like the sound of that,” Pete said.

“Change
into what?” Stephen asked. Rachel wanted to cover his ears. And his eyes. And
to spare his nose the scent of burning houses and rotted flesh.

“So,”
Pete said, “full frontal assault in a suicide mission. I’m game. Hell, we’re
going to buy it one way or another.”

“I’ve
got an idea, but it’s a little risky,” Campbell said.

“I
hope it involves heavy drinking,” Pete said. “I’m starting to sober up and I
don’t like reality.”

Rachel
stroked her fingers through Stephen’s hair. It was thick like Chelsea’s, with
little curls. She wasn’t going to lose anyone else in this life if she could
help it.

“Okay,”
Rachel said. “Let’s hear it.”

“Well,
it’s pretty easy to start a fire,” Campbell said. “Right, Stephen?”

The
boy nodded. “And the Zapheads like it.”

“And
the Zapheads like it. So, we create a diversion like they do in the war movies,
then when everybody’s running around confused, we go in and get your friend.”

“What
if we scorch DeVontay in the process?” Rachel asked.

“I
didn’t say it was a
good
plan. You got anything better?”

Rachel
studied Campbell’s eyes behind his thick, black-rimmed spectacles. His pupils
were large with excitement, rimmed with a gray-blue the color of Puget Sound in the winter. His hair was mussed and dirty, his chin a little too small for
his brow, and his shoulders suggested he lifted more cellphones than weights.
He was the kind of guy to whom she wouldn’t give a second glance in a coffee
shop or bookstore, but out here, in After, he gained an awkward masculinity and
nobility.

Or
maybe he was changing from what he had been before, a victim of the sun’s
subtle workings.

Maybe
YOU’RE the one who is changing.

No.
She was pretty sure she was still a good Christian. That little display of
violence against the Zaphead had been justified. Hadn’t God of the Old
Testament been a vindictive warmonger before Jesus brought peace into the
world? If you turned the other cheek in this sad new world, you were liable to
get it bitten off.

“I
guess we can’t wait for more white knights to ride over the hill,” Rachel
finally said. “If this is what the Army becomes when the puppet strings break,
maybe my grandfather was right.”

“Right
about what?” Campbell asked.

“One
of his sayings is, ‘When the walls fall down, all we have left is the enemy
within.’”

Pete
shook his head. “That’s some heavy shit. I hope he’s not out there walking
around with a hatchet.”

“I’m
pretty sure he’s one of the ones who survived, assuming he didn’t transform,”
Rachel said. “He was planning for this.”

“Planning
for this?” Campbell said. “Even the scientists were caught with their pants
down. They pretty much figured we had a good five billion years before the sun
became a red gas giant and gobbled us up.”

Pete
bent over, stuck out his rear, and let out a loud, flapping fart. “There’s a
gas giant for you,” he said.

Stephen
snickered, and even though Rachel didn’t approve of the sophomoric humor, she
was relieved that the boy seemed to be recovering from the latest trauma.

“Okay,”
Campbell said. “Sun’s going down. We’re better off doing this right when it
gets dark.”

“Follow
me,” Rachel said, taking Stephen’s hand. She checked through the front window
to make sure all was clear, although she intended to use the back door.

Oh,
sweet Lord. Are you serious?

“Guys,”
she said. “I think you need to see this.”

They
crowded around behind her, Pete’s fishy breath fouling the air. Outside, the
sunset was dusky and smoky, a hint of autumn in the surrounding maples and
oaks. Faint ribbons of aurora borealis wended across the atmosphere like giant
lime-green specters. Night shadows crept along the yards and across the windows
of the houses, giving them a sinister aspect that suggested terrible secrets
inside. But it was the activity in the street that drew their attention.

Two
people were tending to one of the fallen Zapheads. Rachel couldn’t be sure, but
she believed the corpse was the one she had struck with her pruning shear.

“Soldiers,”
Pete said. “What the hell do they want with a dead Zaphead? I can’t see them
wasting time giving one a proper burial.”

“It’s
not soldiers,” Rachel said. Even in the poor light, she could see that one of
the figures was wearing a light-colored T-shirt, not camouflage, and what
looked like khaki cargo shorts and sandals. The other wore what looked like a
bathrobe, the belt dangling, and the mop of hair above it could have belonged
to either gender. The two stooped down and lifted the corpse to a sitting
position.

“Oh,
hell, they’re not going to
eat
him, are they? Don’t tell me these
glittery-eyed bastards are turning into zombies?”

“Shhh.”
Rachel cast him a hard look and nodded at Stephen, whose eyes widened as his
grip on the doll tightened.

“He’s
just kidding,” Campbell said to the boy. “He’s read too many comic books.”

“I
like comic books,” Stephen said. “Spiderman is my favorite.”

“Cool,”
Pete said, trying to cover his goof. “I had some issues in my backpack, but I
lost it when the soldiers jumped me.”

“You’re
in luck,” Campbell said, motioning toward his own backpack on the couch. “I
figured you’d want them if I ever caught up with you. I rescued them for you.”

Pete
caught on that they were trying to distract Stephen from what might be a
gruesome discovery. He patted Stephen on the shoulder and said, “First appearance
of the Green Goblin, little man. And in near-mint condition.”

“Not
so near-mint anymore,” Campbell said. “But you can read it with the flashlight.
Just keep the beam hooded so nobody can see it from the street.”

“Sweet!”
Stephen said, just like any normal boy would, not one who had endured the
wholesale destruction of his race and seen the world change into a hostile
wasteland. Rachel’s heart clenched just a tiny bit, but she wouldn’t allow any
tears of sympathy. She’d cried herself out after Chelsea’s death, and any
future breakdowns would have to tap an entirely new and undiscovered reservoir.

Rachel
and Campbell put their noses to the window, shoulders touching, their breath
fogging the glass. The two figures attending the Zaphead now lifted it and held
it sagging limply between them, much like a couple of sailors might drag home a
drunken mate.

“You
think they’re going to bury it?” Rachel asked.

“It
would be the first time that I’ve seen. But I have to admit, I’ve spent more
time running and hiding from them than watching them.”

“They’re
moving like humans. Good balance and posture, their motions focused on
something besides destroying.”

“Yeah.
But if they’re survivors, what do they want with a dead Zaphead?”

Rachel
could think of a few possibilities, including Pete’s imaginative leap of
cannibalism, but that didn’t make sense, because there was still plenty of food
around. Scientific experimentation was unlikely, given the utter breakdown of
all academic systems, and she couldn’t come up with any use for a dead body
otherwise. “Maybe they’re cleaning the streets.”