After: The Shock (3 page)

“Family
pictures, man,” Pete whispered.

Campbell
hadn’t thought of his
family all day. Dad Brian, a financial advisor, a guy you could toss a football
and drink beers with, a solid Republican who’d vote “liberal” if he was mad at
the stock market. Mom Mary, like most every Mary in the world, pretty,
pleasant, and Catholic-loyal, although she’d made relief mission trips to eight
different countries. Little brother Ted, or Turdfinger, as Campbell used to
call him, back before Ted hit his growth spurt and could kick his butt.

The
Grimes family lived on Lake James, in the North Carolina foothills, with the
3,000-square-foot Swiss-style house and little speedboat dock that was expected
of people in Dad’s circle. Campbell tried to picture the three of them out on
the lake: Dad at the helm with his sun visor, shades, and tanned face, Mom
perched loyally by the outboard motor and keeping an eye on Ted, who trailed
behind them and cut his skis through the greenish-brown water.

But
that other image—the one with them all slumped and rotting in front of the
widescreen TV, flies dive-bombing their eyes—was the one that burned into his
head.

“We’ll
get there, Pete,” Campbell said, with a conviction he didn’t feel.

Pete
flapped the little photo album. “Yeah, and then what? Don’t you think
her
family is sitting there with dinner on the table, waiting for Mom or Sis or
Wife to walk through the door and bitch about the traffic?”

Pete’s
drinking not only slowed them down and increased the danger of traveling by
bicycle on cluttered roads, but it also made him prone to blubbering. And Campbell did not want any damned blubbering at the moment. The world had already thrown
itself the biggest Pity Party of all time, and the clam dip had definitely gone
bad.

“Let’s
check this out and get moving,” Campbell said, eyeing the smoky horizon. “We
have to find a safe place to crash before dark.”

Campbell
hoped the rear door of
the van was unlocked. He didn’t want to open the cab. Pete dropped the purse
and said, “Hey, don’t you want to—”

–check
it out, Bro?

But
he was already swinging the door open and Marvin the Martian was definitely
very angry indeed, because a blur of bulky movement exploded out of the
shadows.

The
impact stunned Campbell, and breath exploded from his lungs as he landed flat
on the asphalt. The scrabbling creature standing over him smelled like the ozone
of an electrical short, spiced with sour perspiration, urine, and a primal
aroma that didn’t have a name but was known by prey of every species.

He
could dimly hear Pete yelling somewhere far away, and the creature’s long ropes
of hair whipped in his face, blinding him as he tried to roll. A jolt of agony
flared in his shoulder, and he kicked upward. The creature seemed to have eight
arms, and all of them were searching for a hunk of meat.

Campbell
punched upward and hit something soft, and he had the goofy image of his hand
vanishing into the creature’s face, as if it were Marvin the Martian’s black
gap of nothingness. Then it rained, and the rain was warm and heavy, and a
muffled
krunk
repeated itself as someone were beating a damp drum in a
distant jungle.

The
creature slumped on top of him, and then its weight moved to the side, and
there was Pete leaning over him, a massive pipe wrench clenched in his right
fist. The head of the wrench was clotted with hair and gore.

Finally
Pete’s inane shouting coalesced into language. “Crap, man! Oh, crap.”

Campbell
touched his shoulder,
where the Zaphead had exposed his flesh to the air. It wasn’t a deep bite, but
electric fire radiated from it like a herpes sore from hell.

“She
bit me,” he whimpered.

Pete
gave the dead Zaphead a kick. “Man up, dude. You were attacked by a chick.”

Campbell
rose to his hands and
knees and looked at the creature that had attacked him. She was petite, about
the size of his mother, with the same black hair. For one horrible moment, he
thought it
was
his mother—her skull was so caved in that her features
were unrecognizable.

By
the time he’d risen staggering to his feet, Pete had pulled a clean towel and a
roll of duct tape from the back of the van. “You can’t get through an
apocalypse without duct tape,” Pete said, clamping the towel against Campbell’s wound.

He
gripped the protruding tail of the tape with his teeth and reeled off a
foot-long section. Campbell clamped his hand over the towel, holding it in
place as Pete applied the patchwork. Blood had trickled down the front of his
shirt, but most of the flow had been staunched.

“Think
I’ll turn?” Campbell asked.

“These
ain’t zombies,” Pete said. “Although it did get a little close to the throat.
I’m giving you the heads-up now. If I see fangs sprouting out of your mouth,
I’m punching a stake through your chest.”

“Point
taken,” Campbell said, but the weak pun didn’t even elicit a grin. The wound
throbbed but Campbell had full movement of his arm. He gave one last look at
the woman, who appeared to be in her forties. Her lipstick was smeared, and a
flap of Campbell’s skin was stuck between her teeth.

Pete
gave her one final kick, and her body lay there like a sack of mud. “One down,
a million to go.”

Campbell
didn’t like to think
about a million Zapheads crawling across the face of the earth, hiding in
shadowy crevices and waiting for something to kill. Right now, he didn’t want
to think of anything, much less whether his mom was somewhere out there jumping
survivors.

Pete
rummaged in the back of the van and came away with a fat screwdriver. “You
risked your life to find out what’s in the briefcase, so we may as well have a
look.”

He
jimmied open the briefcase, banging it with the bloody wrench for emphasis. The
lid popped open and loose cash fluttered out and settled on the highway. It
looked to be tens and twenties, stacks of it.

“Whoopee,
we’re rich,” Pete said, kicking the briefcase so that more bills lifted in the
wind.

“You
don’t need to save for the future.” Campbell patted the makeshift bandage.
“You’ll have a future in medicine after this is all over.”

“Who
said there was an ‘after’?” Pete said.

Campbell
had no answer as they
collected their bicycles and headed west.

CHAPTER
THREE

Rachel
didn’t want to wait for sundown.

While
the vanishing daylight carried a greater risk of exposure, she couldn’t bear
the thought of one of the Zapheads clutching at her in the dark.

Or
a crowd of them creeping up on her while she dozed.

Chain
Guy was far up the street. Stumpy had fallen from the bench, and Rachel
couldn’t tell if he’d been beaten or not. He didn’t move, and still, the flies
swarmed.

Maybe
he died from the infection, or a heart attack, or sudden pneumonia. Something
sanely senseless. Please, God, let somebody around here die by natural causes.

After
a moment, she added,
Except me.

The
Beard was nowhere in sight, and Rachel decided Chain Guy was chasing him, which
would take them both out of the picture. That sounded like wishful thinking,
but wishful thinking had not changed anything during the past week, so she knew
not to trust it.

The
street was clear, at least as far as she could tell by sticking her head out
the door. The shadows of light poles and trash cans lay long across the
sidewalk, giving her directions. Metal clanged several streets away, like a
body falling on the hood of a car or a boot being driven into a Dumpster. She
wondered if one of the affected had caught a fresh victim. But there was no
scream.

Had
the survivors already adjusted past the point of screaming?

Were
there any survivors left at all?

She
didn’t like the thought of being alone, the last human in the universe, and the
dead pharmacist’s little care package came to mind. But she loathed the pale,
grim surrender that had been painted on his dying face. That was the coward’s
way out, the path of the faithless. If such a time came, she trusted God would
first give her permission.

Until
then…

Rachel
secured the backpack and stepped outside, clinging close to the brick, metal,
and glass walls as she eased down the street. She paid absurd attention to each
footstep, making sure the rubber soles of her sneakers didn’t scuff on the
concrete. She didn’t know whether the Zapheads were driven to prey by
superhuman senses of sight, smell, or hearing, but she figured the apocalypse
was as good a time as any to hedge her bets.

She’d
lived in Charlotte for two years, taking little time to learn the city. Her
world had been largely confined to West Charlotte, where she interned as a
counselor for the Department of Social Services. Rachel knew the beltway and
the exits for the larger shopping malls, the libraries, and the uptown area
where she’d visited the Mint Museum, but little else. The high, gleaming
finance centers were behind her, once busy with moneychangers and loan
officers, but were now just seventy and eighty stories of stacked mausoleum
crypts. The glass glinted red in the sunset, the towers of Babel gone silent,
and small plumes of smoke curling from some of them.

She
picked up her pace a little, more confident now that Chain Guy apparently
hadn’t noticed her
. Charlotte has to end at some point, and then you’ll hit
the woods.

The
block ended, and she glanced into one of the cars slanted across the intersection
in the heart of a traffic jam. A woman’s head was tilted back, ponytail
dangling over the seat. Behind her was a child’s safety seat. Rachel’s heart,
already galloping, jumped a fence and missed a step.

What
if it’s alive?

And
the little devil on her shoulder whispered: It would be crying. Don’t stop.

Maybe
it’s asleep, or scared, or—

Or
dead. Maybe it’s dead, and you walk over there and peer in the glass and see
its cute little blue face and then you scream, and then Chain Guy comes running
with his steel whip, ready to play and play and play until your brains are
sausage.

Shut
the eff up.

I’m
the devil. You can’t tell me what to do. And I see you’re using profanity,
Rachel. That’s good. That’s very good.

Rachel
said a quick prayer and forced herself toward the car, glancing up the street
only once. That was the litmus test: If she saw Chain Guy, it was a sign from
God that she should run for it. Otherwise, she had a moral duty to save a baby
if she could.

As
she reached for the handle of the back door, she wasn’t sure whether it was
morality or loneliness that drove her. With a baby to care for, she had less
reason to think about the poison pills.

But
she didn’t open the door. The safety seat was empty, a rumpled yellow blanket
piled around it.

Rachel
hoped the baby was off with Grandmother, playing patty cake or whining for her
mom’s nipple, somewhere secure and far, far from the carnage of downtown Charlotte. She didn’t allow room for the Chain Guy’s discovery of the infant, or what
those steel links might do to tender flesh. No, such things didn’t happen under
God’s heaven.

And
even if they did, she didn’t need to know about them. She didn’t want to know
about them.

The
sun sank lower, the shadows flattened fatter, and the distant noises clanged
more cacophonous, building like tribal drums, only this tribe had been driven
mad with one big celestial flash.

She
hurried west, figuring the beltway was two miles away, and beyond that, a pine
forest broke up the small satellite communities. For some reason, the forest
was a more appealing option than the maze of alleys, buildings, and vehicles
that could serve up a Zaphead at any second. At least in the woods, the hunt
and the flight would feel more natural.

Two
corpses lay just ahead, with a sodden aspect that suggested they’d been there
since the flash, and she veered closer to the wall, preferring dubious
concealment to the easier passage but a higher exposure of the street. A
shopping cart blocked her way, and it held four bulging trash bags, a pair of
curled and cracked leather shoes on its bottom wire shelf, and a plastic boom
box in the child seat. It was a homeless person’s portable life, a legacy on
crooked wheels.

She
raised her hand, not wanting to smell the corpses, but her palm didn’t reach her
nose.

Instead,
a ring of fiery steel clamped around her forearm.

She
gasped as she was yanked into a mildewed gap in the storefronts. She’d been so
intent on ignoring the corpses  that she hadn’t even noticed the narrow
alley.

And
now you’ll pay, Rachel. Now you’ll play the devil’s game, and dance with a
creature from out of hell.

And
the bitch of it was, she couldn’t even scream. Her ribcage clamped around her
lungs as tightly as the hand locked on her forearm, and one more tug from
it
cost her the remainder of her balance—then she was in its arms, and flailing,
kicking, maybe even spitting, when she heard a grunt of pain.

“Goddamn
it, take it
easy
!” it said.

Could
Zapheads talk? She hadn’t heard one speak yet, but that didn’t mean anything.
Maybe their language of grunts, groans, and odd chuckling had served them
sufficiently well so far.

Rachel
pulled back, but the grip remained, and she saw its dark face, one eye gleaming
wide in the dim light, and then the contrast of its big white teeth, and she
thought maybe she could scream after all, and then—

“You’re
not one of them,” he said. “Or you would have done bit me.”

“Of
course I’m not,” she said. “Any fool can see that.”

“Who
you calling a fool? I ain’t the one walking down the street plain as day.”

“You’re
not…affected?”

“Affected?
Is that what you call it when you want to bust open somebody’s skull and play
piddly-pooh with their brains?”

That
uncanny eye was still fixed and unblinking in the ebony face, staring deep into
her soul as if exposing every sick secret she’d ever harbored, every bad thing
she’d ever done. Then she looked at his other eye, which blinked.

“You
think I’m one of them freaks?” he said, and she noticed for the first time that
he held a pistol in his right hand, barrel tilted up by his shoulder as if he
were ready to level and fire at any moment, in any direction.

“I
guess not, or I’d be dead.”

“Damn
right, you’d be dead. You might be dead anyway.”

She
glanced longingly at the street and the sunset that washed the pavement like
the surface of a river, the cars like so many storm-swept boats, the corpses
and trash like flotsam headed for a distant gray sea. “I think we’re all dead,”
she said.

“Don’t
you got no gun?”

She
realized how vulnerable she was, to him and to the rest of the world. “I’m
scared of guns.”

“Well,
I’m scared of
those
things more.”

She
studied his face, trying to read his expression, but the glass eye kept
throwing her off. It gave the impression of coldness, which belied the rest of
his expression. The mouth said “mean,” the slight pinch of forehead said
“worried,” and the lifted eyebrows said “easy meat,” but his good eye confused
the whole picture, because it was dark brown and teeming with so many human
things.

He
gave a twisted smile. “What? You think I’m going to rape you?”

“No,
just—”

“Kill
you for whatever’s in your backpack?”

She
shrugged it off her shoulder a little. “You can have it.”

“I
don’t want your shit.”

“What
do
you want? Prove how tough you are? Show your manly power? Why didn’t you
just let me go on down the street?”

He
eased his grip on her forearm, but only a little. It was the below the point of
inflicting pain, but still too tight for her to pull away. “I…just wanted to
see if you was real.”

“I
assure you, I am quite real. I may be the only real thing left in Charlotte.”

His
good eye blinked. “You talk funny.”

“What?
Now I have to apologize for being a middle-class white woman with an
education?”

His
good eye grew as cold as his fake one. “Don’t pull that shit with me.”

“Well,
you’re trying to play some sort of half-assed stereotype, the bro’ from the
‘hood jumping the white bitch.” The cussing was foreign to her, and she hated
herself for it, but she used anger as an excuse.

He
released her, and she shook the circulation back into her arm. “Go on,” he
said, subdued, waving his gun back toward the street. “Git.”

“Excuse
me?”

“You’d
rather be out there with them murdering freaks than hanging with a nigga,” he
said.

“It’s
not—”

“It’s
the eye, ain’t it?”

His
accusation caused her to inadvertently stare at it. She’d been glancing, she
couldn’t help it, that shiny glass orb was a magnet. She’d heard of the “evil
eye,” a belief in many cultures that an ill-intended gaze could bring malady or
misfortune. Although she had a hard time attributing such qualities to an inert
prosthetic, it seemed to radiate an unsettling power.

A
miniature sun casting its own solar flare…

“No,
it’s not—”

“Just
call a spade a spade and get done with it. We don’t got time for games.”

“I…”
She looked back at the street as the insane chuckling echoed down the concrete
canyons.

“Bastard
Zappers give me the creeps,” he said, his finger tightening ever so slightly on
the trigger. He didn’t seem to be aware of it.

“It’s
getting dark.”

“What
you going to do? You got a plan?”

She
shrugged. “Go west to the mountains.”

“That’s
not a plan, that’s a beer commercial.”

“You
have anything better?”

He
angled his head across the street, to what looked like apartments above a wig
shop. “Hole up and lock down for the night, then figure it out. Like I been
doing for a week.”

“That’s
not a plan, that’s making crap up as you go along.”

He
grinned for the first time, and it warmed his entire face. Even the glass eye
took on a sparkle. “So far, so good.”

“Okay,”
she said. “I have some food, a flashlight, and stuff like that.”

“You
got it together,” he said. “I been faking that part, too.”

She
held out her hand, the fingers still tingling from the blood returning to her
extremities. “Rachel Wheeler,” she said, realizing the use of her last name was
awkward under the circumstances, as if they were business associates.

He
took her hand, gentle this time. “DeVontay. DeVontay Jones.”

Then
he grew solemn again, edging to the corner and peering out of the alley. He was
tall, a few inches over six feet, and a little gangly. In the sunlight, she saw
that he wore leather pants and a leather jacket, both of which bulged
uncomfortably as if he wore several layers of clothing.