After: The Shock (24 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY

From
the camouflaged platform built into the branches of an oak tree, Jorge had a
nearly panoramic view of the surrounding ridges and valleys. “Wheelerville,” as
Franklin Wheeler called his tiny compound, wasn’t the highest point in the Blue
Ridge Mountains, but it stood apart from the towering canopy of Mount Rogers and smaller mountains that bore craggy granite faces topped with pine stubble.
A hawk flew over the gray belt of haze that wreathed the valley, and Jorge
wondered if it was the same one that killed the chicken.

In
the distance, the threads of smoke from the cities blended into a charcoal
smudge on the horizon. The air carried only the faintest tinge of the acrid
odor, though, as if the mountains scrubbed the prevailing wind clean as it
pushed from the northwest. He didn’t know anyone in those cities, but he felt a
loss, nonetheless. Marina might have gone to college there, or he and Rosa might have found some better type of work.

Tightening
the focus on the binoculars, he swept his view to the parkway that threaded
through the trees below. The same abandoned vehicles dotted the road, some of
them plowing into the grassy shoulders as their drivers had died instantly. One
wooden guardrail was uprooted and splintered where a truck had barreled through
and gone off the edge. A camper lay on its side, coolers, mattresses and a
rotted corpse spilled from its rear.

He
was about to climb down when he saw movement on the road.

Probably
a deer. With nothing to scare them, they can reclaim the land
.

He
sighted through the binoculars and saw a woman running up the slope of the
road. She wasn’t moving very fast, and her cheeks were streaked with filth,
hair tangled. She looked exhausted, like a horse that had been ridden across a
desert. She carried a cloth bundle clasped to her chest.

She
doesn’t move like one of them
.

“Franklin?” he called.

Franklin
came out of the house,
where he’d been fidgeting with the radio. After lunch, Franklin said he “needed
some bad news,” so he went to his desk while Rosa cleaned the dishes from the
meal. Franklin squinted against the sun as he looked up at Jorge. “What’s up,
besides you?”

“Someone
on the road,” Jorge said. “A woman.”

“Hell
fire,” Franklin said, scurrying to the tree and scaling the makeshift wooden
handholds that were nailed to the tree. He moved with a swift grace that belied
his age, scurrying up like an old mountain goat. He took the binoculars from
Jorge and Jorge pointed out the direction.

“Huh,”
Franklin said. “Looks like she’s alone.”

“She
isn’t a…what do you call it?”

“Nah,
she’s not a Zaphead. Just a scared woman.” He gave the binoculars back to Jorge
and turned to climb back down.

“Shouldn’t
we go get her?”

Franklin
looked around the
compound. “I set up Wheelerville for a dozen people to survive whatever came
our way, short of nuclear holocaust. And you punched three of the tickets when
you wandered through the woods with a sick girl. I’m expecting more company,
and I don’t think we’ve got room to spare.”

“You
can’t just leave her out there.”

Franklin
squinted. “What are
you? Some kind of Communist? That what they teach you south of the border?”

“She’s
young and alone—”

“She’s
survived this long, so she’s not made out of cardboard. I ain’t in the business
of saving the world.”

Jorge
tried to make sense of the contradiction. Franklin had helped his family, yet
now was denying someone else in need. Jorge gazed through the binoculars,
tracking the woman’s progress. Her jeans were worn at the knees, her brown
hooded sweatshirt matted and grimy. She twisted her head, wild blonde hair
whipping out as she glanced over her shoulder.

Something’s
after her?

Jorge
swiveled the binoculars down the road, where the pavement disappeared amid the
shadow of massive trees. Three of them burst from the woods, and Jorge had no
doubt of their intentions.

“Them!”
Jorge said, pointing. “Those Z things. Chasing her.”

Franklin
snatched the binoculars
away and peered through them for a moment. “Damn. She might be carrying a
baby.”

Then
he lowered them and started scrambling down the tree. Halfway down, he looked
up at Jorge and said, “You wanted to play hero, here’s your chance.”

By
the time Jorge reached the ground, Franklin had already grabbed a rifle and
backpack, tossing Jorge a belt that held his machete. Rosa called to them from
the door of the house. “What is happening?”

“Lock
the gate behind us,” Franklin ordered, with a calmness that contradicted his haste.
“There’s a gun on the wall if you need it. We ought to be back in twenty
minutes.”

“Jorge?”
Rosa said, eyes wide.

“Lock
the gate,” he said. “Keep Marina inside.”

Jorge
followed Franklin out of the compound, ignoring Rosa’s calls. Soon, they were
winding down a forest path that Jorge never would have noticed, much less been
willing to navigate. Franklin trotted with a sure-footed gait, and Jorge had
difficulty keeping up, even though he was three decades younger. He measured
time not in minutes, but in the huge granite slabs that jutted from the ground,
the rotted stumps and silvery creeks they hurdled, and the streaks of golden
sunlight that broke through the branches to dapple the ground.

Jorge
had become disoriented, losing any sense of the locations of both the compound
and the road. He focused on Franklin’s back, the odors of mud, rotten leaves,
and pine sap assailing him with each gasp of air. Then the trail widened and
became a stretch of scrubby meadow, a couple of abandoned cars visible beyond a
low stone fence.

“Keep
low,” Franklin said, motioning down with one hand while steadying his rifle
with the other.

“How
much farther?” Jorge said, sliding his machete from its sheath.

Franklin
crouched and lifted the
butt of the rifle to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel. “About a million
miles.”

Then
Jorge parted the scrub with his blade and saw the RV. The woman was about
thirty feet from it, her pace slower than before, mouth parted as she sucked
for air. Her bundle was tucked against her chest, one arm squeezing it even as
she reached out for the door on the side of the RV.

Behind
her, the Zapheads were gaining ground, maybe fifty feet to close the distance.
She made it to the door and tugged on the handle, but it didn’t yield. Jorge
realized he and his family might have been in the same position if they’d
pursued his plan to camp in it.

The
three Zapheads Jorge had seen from the lookout in the compound had been joined
by two others. They could have been parishioners of one of the little churches that
dotted the mountains, or customers of a barbecue restaurant, or the office
staff at Marina’s school. Their clothes were filthy, and three of them were
female. The one closest to the RV was a teenaged boy in a sleeveless T-shirt,
knees pumping as he moved in for the kill.

The
rifle roared and the teenager’s chest blossomed with red spray. He pitched
forward and tumbled twice on the pavement and laid still, legs tangled beneath
his body, one arm poking upward at an awkward angle.

The
other Zapheads froze, looking in the direction of the sudden noise. Jorge
wasn’t sure they were visible, but the woman hadn’t hesitated. She hammered on
the door of the RV, shrieking in a broken voice. “Let me in! Let me in!”

As
the kneeling Franklin leveled the rifle for another shot, the brush parted
beside them. A dark face stared out, eyes wide, mouth gaping to reveal
yellowing teeth.

“¿
Hola
?”
Jorge said, startled, thinking it was one of Franklin’s friends. Then he
remembered that Franklin had no friends.

The
woman pushed through the scrub pines and high weeds, moving fast. Franklin, getting ready to fire again, must not have noticed her. She was barely three
steps from him. Jorge lifted his machete, hesitating.

What
if it’s not one of them?

She
spat a rasping hiss, lifting her right arm. Her hand clutched a jagged, mossy
stone. Jorge shouted a warning.

Franklin
turned, knocking the
rifle barrel against her. She was heavy and solid, the metal
thwacking
off her flank. She swatted the gun away with ease and she lifted the rock
again. Its weight caused her arm to tremble.

“Cut
her down,’ Franklin said, his voice even.

“I…”
Jorge looked at her, wondering if she had kids.

“It’s
not human,” Franklin said. “
Cut her
!”

The
rock descended and Franklin raised one forearm to block the blow. Jorge jumped
forward and slung the machete at her wrist. The swing was high and the blade
skidded off the stone with a metallic ping. One of her fingers popped into the
air, streaming blood. She didn’t utter a sound.

She
jammed the stone toward Franklin’s head. Franklin rolled away and Jorge gripped
the machete handle with both hands and gave a roundhouse swing.

The
blade bit into the back of the woman’s neck and the stone flew from her grasp,
grazing Franklin’s cheek and thudding off his shoulder. Sickened, Jorge pulled
the machete free of her flesh. The wound yawned open, showing white tendons and
a chalky stitch of skull bone.

She
emitted a red
urk
and collapsed. Franklin pawed at her, shoving at her
round body, and Jorge realized the rifle was under her. He glanced back at the
RV.

The
woman was climbing a little access ladder on the back of the vehicle,
struggling to keep her balance with one arm wrapped around her bundle. The four
remaining Zapheads gathered around the RV, swatting at the air below her feet
as if confused by the ladder.

“Go
get her,” Franklin said, shoving at the dead Zaphead. “She
is
human. So
is the baby.”

Jorge
broke into a run, sweat beading his skin. He held the machete before him like Antonio
Banderas as Zorro, although he hated Banderas because Rosa had called the actor
“
muy
sexy.” Blood from the blade blew back against his cheek. A
high-pitched, electric keening sang in his eardrums.

He
leaped over the low stone wall, which was little more than a decorative border.
The woman was now atop the RV, sitting and pushing herself backwards with her
feet. A Zaphead dressed like a fisherman, right down to the knee-high rubber
wading boots, put an experimental hand on the ladder, as if trying to divine
its magic.

The
nearest Zaphead turned when Jorge reached the shoulder of the road, and Jorge
almost dropped his machete. He recognized the woman. She was the cashier at the
farm supply store, a buxom, chain-smoking woman who always wore a field-green
John Deere jacket. She had no jacket now, nor a shirt, and her breasts swung
like sodden melons in the cups of her dirty bra.

Whenever
Jorge bought a load of cracked corn, hay, or fertilizer for the Wilcox place,
she’d averted her eyes as he filled out the bill of sale, careful to never make
contact with the skin of his fingers. Now she had no problem looking at him:
her eyes were like electric-blue drill bits boring into his skull.

“¿
Señora
?”
He faltered but kept stumbling forward, hoping she would say something familiar
so he wouldn’t have to cut her. Anything would do, even her side-of-the-mouth,
“Back yer truck to the dock and the boys’ll load ‘er.”

But
all she could do was hiss, and Jorge realized that was the source of his
ringing ears. The others were hissing, too, like the chirrup of crickets in an
endless night. But still, Jorge couldn’t strike her. She was a racist, one who
almost certainly wished his kind would never cross the border, but she was a
human being.

Wasn’t
she?

But
before he could decide, the top of her head exploded in a thunderclap of
gunfire. Her head flew back, her breasts wobbled, and her knees folded as she
collapsed on the pavement.

“Move,
you jackass!” Franklin hollered. “They’re Zapheads, for Christ’s sake.”

The
other Zapheads turned in his direction, although the fisherman had finally
figured out how to lift his leg and place it on the bottom rung.

Four
to go.

But
Jorge realized he didn’t have to kill them. They weren’t acting aggressively,
not like the ones back at the Wilcox place. Instead, they were eyeing him with
wary interest, much like they had the ladder: as if he was something new and
beyond their understanding. He didn’t want to risk it, though, so he chopped
low and nicked a hefty wedge out of the calf of a young man in shorts and
sandals. The man collapsed, the hiss from the back of his throat rising in
pitch and volume.

Pain.
So they feel it, despite what Franklin says.