After: The Shock (26 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

“Saw
you running down the street and figured you’d lead me to your buddies,” Arnoff
said.

“What
buddies?” Campbell didn’t like the way Arnoff had his semiautomatic rifle
cocked on his hip, a macho posture that would have been cartoonish under other
circumstances.

“Your
Army buddies.”

“Wouldn’t
mess with ‘em,” Pete said, pouring himself another drink without offering
Arnoff one.

“I
don’t want to mess,” Arnoff said. “I want to join up. Enlist in Team Human.”

“I
get the impression they’re not looking for recruits,” Campbell said. He glanced
at the tavern door, hoping Arnoff had cleared the street before following him
inside. If the Zapheads were gathering into groups, even a semiautomatic might
not be enough.

“Their
commander will listen to reason,” Arnoff said. “Donnie and the professor can
shoot a little, and Pam…hell, she can cook or something, or keep the men happy.
Safety in numbers.”

“I’m
telling you,” Pete said, his drunkenness taking a belligerent turn. “He’s stars
and stripes forever. And he doesn’t need numbers like us.”

Arnoff
glanced around the dim room as if noticing the corpses for the first time.
“What do you know about it?”

Campbell
moved away from the
bar, expecting Arnoff to stop him, but the man was more interested in what Pete
had to say. Pete muttered something incoherent, but Campbell made out a
personal invitation for Arnoff to commit a depraved and self-inflicted sexual
act.

He
glanced through a grimy window, at the silent cars and still bodies, at a baby
carriage tipped on its side near a fire hydrant. A pigeon with a broken wing
skipped along the sidewalk, the only sign of life.

“You
were with them,” Arnoff said. “They grabbed you on the highway.”

“They
wanted me for Zaphead bait,” Pete answered. “Just like you did.”

“We
all have a part in the plan,” Arnoff said. “Some parts are bigger than others.”

“What’s
your plan, then?” Campbell asked. “Assuming The Captain lets you join the
A-Team? You’re going to start a genocide sweep? Gun down all the Zapheads? And
kill anybody else that’s not your type while you’re at it?”

“Hold
on with the Commie talk. This is about survival of the human race. Survival of
the fittest. I don’t know what them things are, or why they want to bash our
brains in, but I don’t need the professor to know when something needs
killing.”

“They’re
changing,” Campbell said, trying to formulate ideas he’d only just begun
considering. “I don’t think they’re attacking us…us
normal
people…just
because they want us out of the way. I think they’re as scared and confused as
we are.”

“To
hell with your Commie talk.” Arnoff waved his arm at the dead bodies, the gray,
dreary bar that once had teemed with music and laughter and the communal clink
of glass. “They’re a danger to not just our life, but to our way of life. If we
want all this back, we’ve got to win today. Then we can fight for tomorrow.”

“I’m
done fighting,” Pete said. “I’m ready to drink instead. But you’d be happy with
The Captain and his happy little troop. They’re heading for a base up north.”

“A
base?”

Pete
took a sip from his glass, enjoying Arnoff’s anxiety. “Yeah. Said there was a
secret military base up there, underground, total doomsday prep. Built for
nuclear war, he said, but outfitted for pretty much anything. And I guess the
Big Zap counts as ‘anything.’”

“How
far north?”

“Off
to see the wizard,” Pete said, voice slurring. Even for someone with Pete’s
tolerance levels, the prodigious amounts of whiskey were taking their toll.
“Wonderful Wizard of Ozzzzz.”

Arnoff
swung the barrel of his rifle forward and shattered Pete’s bottle. The strong,
sweet odor of the whiskey briefly overwhelmed the fermenting of the dead.

Pete
snarled and reached from behind the bar to swipe at Arnoff. “You goddamned
animal.”

“How
far north?” Arnoff repeated. Even in the bad light, his eyes and teeth gleamed
with a fierce menace that briefly sobered Pete.

Pete
gave a weak wave of surrender and disgust. “To the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

“I
need more than that. The parkway’s nearly five hundred miles long.”

“Milepost
291, he called it. Don’t know what that means.”

“You
better not be shitting me, or I’ll track you down and leave you hanging on a
lamppost so the Zappers can eat your liver.”

Pete
snorted in disgust and reached for another bottle in the row behind him. Campbell watched the tableau in the dusty bar mirror and was startled by the person
standing to the left of Arnoff. Campbell tilted his head to the side to be sure
the reflection belonged to him. Gaunt and stubbled cheeks, windswept hanks of
greasy hair, deep purple wedges under each eye.

I
don’t know about zombies, but we’re becoming the living dead
.

Arnoff
rested his rifle against a bar stool and fished a map and flashlight from his pocket.
He wiped away the pool of liquor with one elbow, and then spread the map on the
pitted wooden surface. Campbell couldn’t help bending over and looking when
Arnoff switched on the light.

“What
town is that near?” Arnoff asked Pete.

“Who
do I look like, Ranger Rick? I heard him mention ‘Boone.’”

Arnoff
ran a stubby forefinger along the map of North Carolina, outward from the red
circles he’d drawn to mark their current location and his route since leaving Charlotte. “About a hundred miles. Should be able to get there in a week to ten days of
hard walking.”

Pete
laughed again. He no longer bothered with a glass, sipping straight from the
bottle of Knob Creek and wincing at the taste. Campbell studied the map, noting
the small towns that dotted the highway to Boone. Arnoff scowled at him and
folded the map with crisp efficiency.

Taking
up his rifle, he headed for the door. “You guys coming, or you going to wait
here for the Zappers?”

Campbell
shouldered his pack and
followed. Pete, however, didn’t move from his position behind the bar. He
stared past them as if lost in a Happy Hour from long ago, where the beer
flowed and the Stones kicked from the speakers and the neon lights winked their
green and red seductions.

“Come
on, Pete,” Campbell said, waiting at the door. Arnoff, after making sure the
street was clear, headed across.

“You’re
getting to be as much of a bossy asshole as Arnoff,” Pete said, although he
came around the bar, nearly tripping on a dead biker whose leather vest was
splotched with the excrescence of death.

Arnoff
was already down the block, about to turn the corner. Campbell was afraid the
man would leave them behind. And as bad as the Arnoff option was, Campbell imagined it would be far worse to spend another night alone in a church steeple.
He dodged between vehicles, ducking low in case any Zapheads were around.

When
Campbell reached the corner, Arnoff was barely in sight. The man had
forgotten all about them.

Campbell
turned and motioned for
Pete to hurry. Pete had just exited the bar and squinted against the glare of
sunset. He dragged his backpack with one hand, and the other gripped a quart
bottle of liquor by the neck. As he staggered forward, slumped and skulking and
jerky, Campbell fought a wave of irritation.

What
a loser. He looks just like a Zaphead, the way he’s
—

The
distant volley echoed off the canyons of the building facades. Pete’s head
lifted, mouth open in shock. The sudden blossom of crimson on his shirt spread
across his chest. Then his legs folded and he dropped, the liquor bottle
smashing on the sidewalk.

Campbell
ran toward him, keeping
low. “Hold your fire!” he screamed, not sure it would do any good.

The
soldiers clearly didn’t care. Anyone not in uniform was a target. The Captain’s
words came back to him: “
We’re the government. You’re either with us or
against us
.”

Campbell
expected the next
bullet to pierce his own flesh, and he almost welcomed it. But all was silent
as he knelt in the dead town beside Pete, whose blood mixed with the tequila in
a sick and final concoction. Campbell knelt, muttering to his dead friend, as
dusk fell around him.

It
was After.

And
he was alone.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Jorge
helped Franklin barricade the compound after their return. The sun was sinking,
sending long fingers of shadows across the leaves and grass. The surrounding
mountains were striated in bands of black and reddish brown, the thick haze
wreathing the horizon. The first flickers of aurora borealis were visible in
the far northern sky, lime green and magenta tufts hanging like a shaman’s
psychedelic vision.

“Think
they will come for us?” Jorge asked Franklin.

“Hard
to figure. They weren’t acting right.”

“They
weren’t attacking. But they were attracted to the woman.”

“Maybe
they wanted her baby.”

Jorge
thought of Marina and what he would do if Zapheads took her. The
near-hysterical woman was inside, being comforted by Rosa. Her baby was safe,
and Jorge vowed to help Franklin defend the compound to the death. This was
their homeland now.

Franklin
ran a hoe handle through
a metal spool of barbed wire as Jorge slipped on a pair of thick leather
gloves. He climbed a short ladder and pulled a strand of the wire across the
top of the wooden gate as Franklin clipped the wire with cutters. He wound it
among the planks in big, loose loops so that anyone who tried to climb the gate
would become entangled in the barbs.

Franklin
had placed a series of
spotlights in the trees on the perimeter of the compound. He’d told Jorge they
wouldn’t burn long off the battery system due to their high wattage, but the
light was an additional security measure if they needed it.

“You
were prepared for defense, not just survival?” Jorge asked as they gathered the
tools.

“A
lot more going on up here than just me,” Franklin said as they headed for the
faint reddish glow from inside the cabin.

Jorge
found himself looking forward to sitting around the cozy, candlelit interior
with more people to care for. He’d agreed to take the first watch tonight, even
though Franklin had declared his alarm systems up to the task. “What do you
mean?”

“The
parkway. That’s one hell of a road. Government pitched it as a scenic route for
the tourists, but it was built to hold up to heavy truck traffic.
Real
heavy traffic.”

“I
don’t understand.”

“I’m
not the only one who thought this was a good place to hole up. Some in the
Preparedness Network believed there’s a secret military bunker up here. Makes
sense. You’ve got a road built to withstand aerial bombing in an area with no
real industrial value.”

“Is
that why you brought me and my family to your compound, and why you’re willing
to bring others?”

Franklin
stopped just outside
the cabin. From inside came the low murmur of women talking.

“A
real survivalist knows it’s not just about surviving,” Franklin said, squinting
up at the aurora that was almost bright enough to read a book by, if not for
the muting effects of the haze. “It’s about
living
. Just having food,
supplies, and ammunition won’t do you any good in the long run, because what
kind of life is that? You hide in a bunker for twenty years, all alone?”

Jorge
hadn’t considered survival as anything beyond the next breath. Each day since
the solar storms had been a challenge, but he had to admit that he felt more
vibrant and his senses –all his senses—were keener and more vivid than they had
been since childhood. Perhaps the prospect of losing the world had imbued it
with a deeper mystery and richness.

“It’s
about community,” Franklin continued. “Getting along and building something better
from the ruins.”

“You
said others would be coming.”

“I
hope so, son.”

Jorge
didn’t know how to respond to the term of familiarity. Thus, he ignored it. “We
better see how the woman and her baby are.”

Franklin
set the tools beside
the cabin door, although he kept his rifle slung over his shoulder. They
entered to cheerful warmth, with a small fire crackling in the woodstove and
several candles ringing the room. Jorge smiled at Marina. She seemed to have
grown up in the past week, fully healthy, and now was on the verge of womanhood
herself. But Marina didn’t smile back. Her face was grave, lines creasing her
forehead and the sides of her mouth.

She
and Rosa were flanking the woman, who was nursing her baby.

The
woman looked up. “Thank you,” she said, beaming with a mother’s wistful glow.
“Thank you for saving us. For saving
him
.”

She
pulled the child away from her breast and turned it toward them. Franklin sucked in a hard chuff of air. Jorge’s chest grew icy and numb.

The
child was perfectly formed, its little hands balled into fists, a tuft of wispy
hair on the large skull. It was a beautiful little boy.

Except
the eyes.

They
sparkled with a strange, unnatural glitter, reflecting the candlelight like
broken mirrors.

Jorge
had seen those eyes before. On the men who had tried to kill him, and on the
parkway down by the RV.

The
child was a Zaphead.