After: The Shock (21 page)

“DeVontay,
come on,” she screamed, rushing forward and reaching for him.

The
hand snatched her wrist and yanked her forward, the stench of fetid breath
cutting through the acrid smoke.

“Rachel?”
DeVontay called from somewhere outside.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

“They’re
blowing the hell out of everything that moves,” Pete said.

Campbell
covered Stephen’s ears against
the popcorn staccato of gunfire and the growling blaze. The darkness had given
way to a half-light.

“I
knew Donnie was going to crack sooner or later,” he said. “I was hoping to be
miles away when it happened.”

“She’s
been in there too long,” Pete said. “The whole damned house is about to fall
in.”

Stephen
gave a squeal of dismay at the news. Campbell wished he could elbow Pete in the
gut to shut him up, but Pete was retreating deeper into the shrubbery, as if
the vegetation could ward off stray bullets. Campbell saw a man on the roof of
a nearby house, aiming a rifle into the street. He couldn’t be sure, but he
guessed it was one of the camouflaged soldiers.

“Yee-haw,”
Donnie whooped in his unmistakable Southern drawl.

The
soldier fired a couple of rounds in the direction of Donnie’s voice, triggering
a volley in response. The soldier froze, outlined against the hellish horizon
for a moment, then he flung out his arms and dropped his rifle. He collapsed
and rolled down the slanted roof, disappearing from sight.

“So
much for being on the same team,” Pete said. “We better get out of here.”

“We
told Rachel we’d wait.”

“Raaaay-chel,”
Stephen wailed.

“Shh,”
Campbell said. “We’ll get her.” He turned to the darkness behind him. “Pete?”

But
Pete was gone, vanished in the shadows between the houses. Campbell cursed
under his breath. He didn’t dare leave Stephen alone, not after all the trauma
he’d endured. But he couldn’t just sit there while people died, either—there
weren’t all that many left to spare.

“Come
on, Stevie Boy,” he said, grabbing the child’s arm and dragging him forward.

They
burst from the rhododendron hedge, exposed in the flickering light of the
burning house. It spat and sputtered like a volcano, sucking oxygen from the
wooden shell to feed the wild orange-red fury on the roof. No one could last
long in such an inferno.

Campbell
pulled Stephen along
behind him as he ran toward the house. He saw a man run into the open back door
just as Stephen called, “DeVontay!”

“Is
that your friend?” Campbell asked.

Stephen
nodded, tucking his doll under his chin and squeezing hard. Campbell figured
DeVontay had a better chance of reaching Rachel than he did. But he was spared
any dilemma or guilt when a familiar face stepped into the glow of the fire.

“Well,
well, well,” Arnoff said. “Guess your scouting mission went all to hell.”

Arnoff’s
hunting jacket was blotched with something wet and dark. His rifle pointed up,
the butt riding the inside of one elbow, and his eyes were bright with a
strange fever.

“I
found Pete,” Campbell said.

“Us
against them,” Arnoff said, staring at the boy. “Are you one of us, or one of
them?”

Campbell
nudged the boy behind
him, using himself as a shield against Arnoff’s apparent madness. “I found some
other survivors, too.”

“Some
survivors shoot back.”

“They…they’re
military. They’re doing a Zaphead clean-up.”

“Well,
they’re doing a crappy job of it,” Arnoff said. “We must have seen four dozen
Zappers back there at the big fire. They were drawn like moths. Me and Donnie
took a bunch down, but some of them snuck off into dark.”

“Where’s
Pamela and the professor?”

Arnoff
hooked a casual thumb behind him. “Back there somewhere. They’ll be along
shortly.”

Behind
Arnoff, Campbell saw DeVontay drag Rachel from the house, smoke boiling out after
them as a portion of the roof folded in like sodden cardboard. But they weren’t
alone. Something clung to Rachel, limbs entwined around her as DeVontay flailed
at it.

“Ruh-ray-ray!”
Stephen stuttered.

Arnoff
turned in the direction of the boy’s gaze, watching the struggle fifty feet
away. Without a word, he raised his weapon and peered down the barrel. Campbell leaped toward him, bellowing in rage, but the gun ripped out a percussive clap of
noise and yellow light flashed from the tip of the barrel.

The
three figures rolled off the porch into the landscaping. Campbell dashed across
the lawn, forgetting Stephen in his panic. Someone rose up from beside the
steps, shadow melding with the low trees and flowers. Arnoff fired again and
the figure was flung backward by the force of the bullet.

“Hold
your fire, goddamn it,” Campbell yelled, expecting a bullet in the back for his
trouble.

Arnoff
chuckled loudly, the sound a perfect harmony to the madly swelling fire. Another
form crawled from the landscaping, and Campbell recognized Rachel’s long, dark
hair. His heart gave a leap of relief, and he was sickened by his own longing
and selfish need.

“You
okay?” he asked, kneeling in the dewy weeds and pulling her toward him.

She
looked at him with bloodshot, bleary eyes, coughing and wheezing. “Stephen?”
she managed to gasp.

“Right
over there,” Campbell said, pointing to where the boy stood near Arnoff.

DeVontay
stood up beside the porch, wiping his torn sleeve against his face. His dark
skin glistened with sweat. “Careful who you shooting at,” he said to Arnoff.

“Don’t
worry none. I know a Zaphead when I see one.”

“We
all look alike in the dark.”

“No
comment,” Arnoff said, scanning the nearby rooftops. Stephen ran across the
scraggly lawn as Campbell helped Rachel to her feet, and the boy dropped his
doll in the enthusiasm of giving her a hug. DeVontay joined them and put a
protective arm over Rachel’s shoulder, sending a flare of jealousy burning
across Campbell’s chest.

“You
came back for me,” DeVontay said to her.

“Told
you I would,” she said. “Are you a doubting Thomas?”

“I’m
a doubting DeVontay,” he said. “I’ve been let down before.”

Campbell
glanced down at the
Zaphead, which had a dark red dot in the center of its forehead where the
bullet had struck. In repose, the rounded face looked like that of a math
teacher’s or a financial advisor’s, fortyish, pale, a plump fold of fat under
the chin. The corpse reminded Campbell of Uncle Frederick from D.C., a lobbyist
who told political jokes that were neither funny nor insightful and who always
seemed to end up with the last piece of fried chicken at family reunions. This
Zaphead might once have been somebody’s uncle.

Campbell
turned to Arnoff. “Are
you sure this guy was a Zaphead?”

Arnoff
shrugged. “Odds were better than fifty-fifty.”

Rachel
and DeVontay gave Campbell a dubious look, but he answered, “We’ve made it this
far, so stick with the winners.”

They
moved away from the house as the flames engulfed the core, waves of dry heat
wafting across Campbell’s skin. The fire had tried to spread across the lawn,
but the dew had stifled it, so it contented itself with the wood, plastics, and
fabrics already in its possession.

Campbell
looked around the edge
of the fire’s light. “Pete?”

“Your
friend ran off again?” Arnoff said. “Maybe he’s not much a friend after all.”

“It
wasn’t his fault he got taken as a prisoner of war,” Campbell responded.

“We’d
best get away from this house before the Zapheads come out to party,” Arnoff
said.

Rachel
pulled Stephen to her side. “We’re grateful for your help, sir, but we have
other plans.”

Arnoff
propped the butt of his rifle against his hip and angled it outward at
forty-five degrees. “Little lady, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking these last
few weeks, but like Campbell here said, better stick with the winners.”

“Sorry,
man,” DeVontay said. “We promised the boy we’d get to Mi’sippi. And maybe our
chances are better if we ain’t trucking around with some trigger-happy cowboy.”

Before
Campbell could move between the two men, Arnoff took an aggressive step
forward. “Watch it, boy,” Arnoff said. “You’re starting to look a lot like a
Zaphead in this bad light. Somebody might make a little mistake.”

“Come
on, Arnoff,” Campbell said, about to put a hand on the man’s shoulder before
deciding against it. Arnoff tensed like a cobra, and his dark eyes seemed cold
and reptilian. “Let’s find Donnie and the others.”

Arnoff
scowled and then spat in the grass. “At least one of you has got a little
sense.”

Campbell
wasn’t sure of his
loyalties anymore. Pete was his buddy, and they’d been through plenty together,
but Pete was likely to get them both killed. Arnoff, Donnie, and the others had
firepower on their side, as well as an established social structure that
provided the illusion of civilization. Rachel, DeVontay, and Stephen seemed
more like a family unit than a pack of mutual survivors.

Rachel’s
face, although streaked with black soot, shone with a benevolent radiance as
bright as the fires that surrounded them. Campbell knew most of it was
projection, his own hope that he’d find something more in After than just the
next breath. He needed a reason to live. And she was the first female he’d
encountered that was anywhere close to his age.

Somebody’s
got to breed, right?

“Watch
out for the soldiers,” Rachel said. “They’re well-trained, heavily armed, and
mildly psychotic.”

She
limped toward the street, DeVontay supporting her, Stephen trailing just behind
them. The house crumbled into a pile of charred lumber, hissing from its blue
heart, a mild mockery of the malevolence delivered by the distant sun.

“Maybe
we should give them a gun,” Campbell said to Arnoff.

“Don’t
go trying to save the world,” Arnoff said. “There’s no future in it.”

“Well,
what’s the plan, then? Walk around shooting Zapheads until you run out of
ammo?”

Arnoff
checked the chamber of the Marlin, pulling a few cartridges from a vest pocket
and sliding them into the tube. “Going from house to house, you’d probably find
enough ammo to kill every Zapper on the planet, a hundred times over. Thank God
for the Second Amendment.”

“I’m
not sure the Bill of Rights applies anymore,” Campbell said.

“Maybe
not. I can just see a bunch of Zapheads sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
Wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference, if you ask me.” Arnoff scanned
the rooftops and the perimeter of the surrounding yards. Now that the fire had
banked itself and burned low, the neighborhood had fallen quiet again, although
the holocaust to the east was spreading.

They
heard Donnie in the distance, giving his redneck rebel yell followed by a
series of semiautomatic rounds. Arnoff grinned. “Hunting season,” he said,
heading in the direction of the volley.

“I’ll
catch up in a minute,” Campbell said. “After I find Pete.”

Arnoff
didn’t even turn around. “Compassion was a game for the old days, son. Brownie
points don’t add up to shit in the afterburn.”

Campbell
clenched his fists in
rage. He could hear the echo of his overbearing dad’s, “
Get with the program
!”
in those words. Was it any wonder that Campbell always shrank from
responsibility and rejected authority? Assholes had always run the world and
set the rules. Maybe it wasn’t so bad that their power had been wiped away by a
few massive spasms of the sun.

Campbell
left the dying red glow
of the house fire and entered the shrubbery where he’d last seen Pete, digging
in his backpack for his flashlight.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

“Got
any Slim Jims?” Rachel asked DeVontay.

He
grinned, his teeth and eyes the only part of his face visible in the gloom. “I
knew you’d come around to good eatin’.”

They’d
spent the night in a strip motel, walking just far enough to be reasonably sure
the expanding blaze wouldn’t reach them before dawn. The motel’s small windows
were set high in the wall, situated to allow neither easy access nor sunlight.
The check-in counter had been abandoned, although the cars parked outside many
of the rooms gave the illusion that it was business as usual at the Parkview Travel Plaza.

Although
dawn was still probably an hour away, Rachel felt a little better from her
brief sleep. DeVontay had dozed with his back against the door, his pistol
resting between his legs on the dusty carpet. Stephen had climbed up on the
lone twin bed with Rachel and had fallen asleep instantly, and was still
snoring like a buzz saw.

Rachel
stroked a tendril of hair away from his soft cheek. “Poor little guy. He’s had
a rough time of it.”

DeVontay
passed her some Slim Jims and a bottle of water from his backpack, as well as a
pack of cheese crackers. She’d always had a pet peeve about eating in bed. She
considered it a sign of sloth and personal failing. Now, in retrospect, her
admittedly uptight view of morality seemed foolish.

She wondered what
other views might change in the days and weeks ahead. She bowed her head and
said, “Dear Lord, thank you for the food we are about to receive for the
nourishment of our bodies, that we may have strength in Your service. Amen.”

The
prayer was so automatic she hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud until DeVontay
added, “Amen.” After a moment, he said, “You’re really a holy roller, ain’t
you?”

“No
rolling going on here,” she said, tearing into one of the salted meat snacks
with her teeth. “I just need all the help I can get.”

“That’s
cool. My momma was in the church choir. She was Mennonite. I had to go when I
was little, but I never got it into much, Too many rules for my blood.”

“Doesn’t
all this…this
After
…make you want to find peace in the Lord?”

“Well,
depends on how you look at it. Maybe God is going to save us, or maybe God
caused all this in the first place.”

“My
faith hasn’t wavered,” Rachel said, a little too forcefully. Pride was a sin,
but failing to testify was a different kind of arrogance. Or maybe she was just
trying to convince herself.

“Okay,
fine,” DeVontay said, pulling more snacks from his backpack and ripping into
the cellophane. “Do you think this is the Revelations coming true? The
seven-horned beast and all that shit?”

“I
don’t take the Book of Revelations literally,” she said. “I don’t think the
final battle is going to take place in the Holy Land, or that the Antichrist is
walking among us.”

“But
there’s something in there about the world ending in fire from the sky, right?”

“After
the seventh seal is opened, a great star falls from heaven and a third of the
sea turns to blood. But there are also earthquakes, locusts, and foul waters. I
don’t see any of that, do you?”

“So,
it’s possible this isn’t really the end of the world? Just a warm-up act.”

She
couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not. The first blush of dawn took some
of the darkness from the window, and Rachel became aware of the shabby
furniture in the room. The bed linens seemed clean enough, though, and she was
in no position to complain. The toilet didn’t stink, so at least those
particular waters hadn’t been fouled by the great whore of Babylon.

She
patted Stephen’s arm, which was curled around Miss Molly. “All I know is it’s
not over as long as there’s a single human left,” she said. “We’re here to care
for each other as best we can, do the next right thing, and stay in service to
the Lord’s will for us. We don’t have to understand it. Our job is to just keep
showing up.”

“So,
you don’t see all this as a showdown of Good versus Evil?”

“Are
the Zapheads evil just because they have destructive natures? Maybe they’re
serving the Lord’s will just as we are.”

“Everything
happens for a reason, huh? Sounds like the excuse people use for some sucky
choice they made.”

“And
God gives us free will, so we have the chance to choose goodness and grace and
salvation.”

DeVontay
stood, clutching the pistol, and peeked out of the high window. Satisfied, he
turned back to her, his face now plainly visible in the dawn. He seemed angry,
his skin stretched taut over his jawbones, his forehead furrowed. “Except, we
didn’t get no choice, did we? We wake up one day and we’re in hell.”

“No,”
she said. “We’re alive.” She touched Stephen’s shoulder. “We still have
something to live for.”

“Oh,
yeah? Come take a look at this.”

Careful
not to rouse Stephen, whose snores had quieted, she slipped out of bed and
joined DeVontay at the window. Outside, she could see the surroundings that had
been hidden the night before. They were in a mixed-use commercial area, a few
apartment buildings separated by retail and light industrial uses—a plumbing
supply shop, a fenced lot with stacks of wooden beams and piles of sawdust, and
a thrift shop with toddler clothes in the window.

But
it was the activity in the street that drew her attention. People—
Zapheads
—were
walking up the street. Although they appeared nearly unaware of each other, all
of them at least fifty feet apart, they were headed in the same direction. They
moved with none of the uncoordinated sluggishness of a few days before, nor did
they seem particularly intent on destroying anything.

“Weird,”
she said. The scene was rendered even more surreal by their utter silence. If
not for their transfixed, unblinking eyes, she would have thought they were
fellow survivors. Even now, she wondered if maybe Zapheads and survivors were
sharing the same street in relative harmony, perhaps coming to accept one
another.

“Creepy
as hell. Where they going?”

Rachel
looked at the angle of the shadows that stretched from the sides of the
buildings and the few cars in the street. “They’re heading east. Back toward
the big fire.”

“So,
maybe they’re not in hell, just
heading
for it.”

“It
seems like there are more of them.”

“These
sons of bitches ain’t coming back from the dead, are they?”

Rachel
almost made a joke, but DeVontay clearly was simmering on the verge of
exploding. “Whatever instinct is driving them, it’s brought them out in the
open. Maybe a lot of them were inside before.”

“Inside
killing people, maybe. Don’t forget what they done.”

“Well,
maybe they’ve changed.”

“Yeah,
right. Praise the Lord, they saw the light. Maybe they’re not even mindless
killers anymore. Let’s run outside and start singing
Dancin’ in the Street
and see what happens.”

DeVontay
had raised his voice so much that Stephen let out a plaintive, confused cry.
“Mommy?”

Rachel
shot DeVontay a venomous glare and hurried to the bed. She swept the boy up in
her arms and held him tightly, the sheet swaddling his shoulders. Rocking back
and forth, she whispered, “Shhh, honey. It’s okay.”

DeVontay
began stuffing his things into his backpack as if preparing to leave. Stephen
finally became aware of his surroundings. “Whu-where are we?”

“North
of Charlotte,” she said.

He
wiped at his eyes with a grimy fist. “Is that close to Mi’sippi?”

“Closer
than yesterday,” she said.

“I
think we better wait it out,” DeVontay said, again monitoring the street
through the beige curtains.

“It’s
not any safer traveling at night,” Rachel said. “They don’t seem to sleep.”

“They
don’t eat nothing, either. You’d think they’d wear down after a while.”

Rachel
didn’t like having this conversation in front of Stephen, but she didn’t see
any way around it. “Well, let’s face it. We just don’t know anything. Right
after the Big Zap, they were killing every living thing in sight, random
destruction, acting mindlessly. Now they’re moving with more purpose, like
they’re getting settled into their new lives.”

DeVontay
pulled one of the curtains wide. “You call that shit ‘
life
’? It’s like
somebody opened up their heads like a jack-o’-lantern and stuffed them full of
poisoned cotton candy.”

“Cotton
candy?” Stephen said, standing up on the bed and trying to see out the window.

Rachel
pulled him back down into the bed and gave him a pack of crackers. “You better
keep your strength up. We’ve got a long walk ahead.”

“Why
is walking better than staying right here?” DeVontay said. “We can hole up,
make a run to a store now and then, wait this thing out.”

“We
have no idea what we’d be waiting for. You think the Army’s going to roll in
and save us? We’ve already seen how that plays out.”

“Then
we ought to find those guys from last night—Campbell and them—and band together
so we have a better chance of fighting them off.”

“The
Zapheads outnumber us. I don’t think we’ve gotten a good idea of their
population. They’ve gone from random, individual acts of violence, where you
might only see one or two at a time, to a more open, communal behavior.”

“This
ain’t psychology class. This is war. Plus, you don’t even know what those
things are thinking about. They might as well be puppets hanging on invisible
strings.”

“I
like puppets,” Stephen said with enthusiasm, spraying cracker crumbs from his
mouth. Then, his face darkened. “But I don’t like Zapheads.”

Rachel
again glared at DeVontay, who ignored her anger. “But Zapheads may not be our
only problem. Look at The Captain and his storm troopers. What if they’re not
an isolated case? What if there are pockets of military forces out there, armed
to the teeth and making their own rules? They’re as likely to slaughter us as
the Zapheads are.”

“That’s
an even better reason to stay here, then. Those idiots might be shooting
everything that moves.”

“No,”
Rachel said, not knowing how to put it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Stephen
even more. But perhaps the fantasy of reaching his father was enough to sustain
him for now. “The fires are spreading. Imagine all those toxins in Charlotte. When that city burns, the smoke is going to be a killer.”

“So,
our choices are choking to death, getting shot, or getting our brains bashed in
by Zapheads,” DeVontay said.

“The
one thing we can’t do is just sit here and pray,” Rachel said.

“Oh,
is the holy roller losing faith?”

“Faith
without works is dead,” Rachel responded, hating herself for reducing a complex
passage from the Book of James into a catch phrase. “That means fighting the
good fight.”

“Like
chopping up Zapheads with that sling blade?”

“I
plead self-defense,” she said.

Stephen
scooted off the bed, tossing his cracker wrapper on the floor.

“Stephen?”
Rachel said. “Did you forget something?”

“No.
I got Miss Molly right here,” he said, turning the doll to face her.

She
scowled and looked down at the wrapper. “Trash goes in the trash can.”

As
Stephen bent to pick up the wrapper, DeVontay said to her, “You make the
apocalypse so much fun.”

“Okay,”
Rachel said. “Time to go.”

“Go
where?” DeVontay said, sitting on the bed.

“Mi’sippi!”
Stephen said.

“Stevie,
you’re a little too eager to go out there,” DeVontay said to him. “Lots of
stray bullets flying around.”

“We’ll
be better off once we get away from the city,” Rachel said. “Fewer people,
fewer Zapheads, fewer fires.”

“Back
to nature, huh?”

Rachel
was serving as sentinel at the window. The streets outside the motel were
quiet. She hadn’t seen any Zapheads for the last hour or so. Distant bursts of
gunfire had erupted intermittently, but Rachel didn’t believe that Captain
America and his troops were on this side of town. For the one thing, the
hunting wasn’t as good.

“We’re
heading for Mount Rogers.” Rachel smiled at Stephen. “It’s on the way.”

“What’s
up there?” DeVontay asked.

“Somebody
who was ready for this.”

“What,
you got ESP all of a sudden?” DeVontay asked. “The sun heated you up some new
superpowers?”

“My
grandfather has a compound there. He’s what you might call a ‘survivalist
wacko.’ He got interested in self-reliant living back during Y2K fever, when some
people thought the computers would go berserk and throw civilization back to
the Stone Age.”