After: The Shock (7 page)

“I
like to deal with facts, Pamela,” the professor said, lips pursing into a pout.
“Eventually, we’re going to be living with four hundred Chernobyls. No one
knows the effects of that kind of radiation exposure from multiple sources. You
can’t really model that on a computer.”

“Sorry,
I left my iPad in my other pants,” Pamela said, causing Pete to snort into his
beer.

Campbell
vaguely understood the
danger of radiation, but it seemed as distant a threat as secondhand smoke or
preservatives in Twinkies. Pamela was flaunting her charisma, which made the
professor squirm a little on his fireside stump.

The
professor fumbled for cigarette. “All I’m saying is—”

They
were spared a lecture by the booming report of a gun somewhere off in the
night. Pete flopped backward in surprise, dropping his beer, and the professor
grabbed for the rifle leaning beside him.

“Donnie!”
Pamela shouted, heading in the direction of the shot.

“Stay
here,” the professor ordered, not that Campbell had any intention of wandering
off into the dark, especially with Arnoff out there, armed and dangerous.

After
the professor and Pamela had both disappeared in the shadows, Pete said, “Man,
what if the Zapheads come while everybody’s gone?”

“Maybe
we ought to split. We can get back to the road and find our bikes and be out of
here before they get back.”

“And
then what? These people might be our best bet. At least they got some
weaponry.”

Campbell
couldn’t offer a better
alternative. Arnoff made him uneasy, but at least the group had established
some basic order. And Campbell found that he missed order. He liked clocks and
homework and responsibility and a schedule. Maybe such things were useless in
the new world, but he could find substitutes by belonging to a group with a
common purpose.

And
no common purpose was as compelling as survival.

“Okay,”
Campbell said. “Let’s give it a couple of days.”

Pete
opened another beer, and this time, Campbell joined him. Minutes later, Arnoff,
the professor, and Pamela came back. Donnie had apparently been freaked out by
a stray dog and shot it. Pamela found blankets for Pete and Campbell, who
sacked out beside the fire. Campbell was just drowsing off when he saw Arnoff
enter Pamela’s tent.

He
hoped Donnie wasn’t the jealous type. He didn’t want to wake up to the sound of
more gunfire.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

When
Rachel awoke, she thought she was in her grandmother’s house on Puget Sound. As a young child, she’d slept in a guest room facing the sea. In winter and
spring, the Pacific sky was often gauzed with gray that penetrated every
opening. No amount of electric light could push back the dismal gray.

Rachel
fought through the pillows to reach for the bedside lamp, but the table was in
the wrong place. The only break in the darkness was a fat line of gray that
appeared to be shrinking. She couldn’t shrug off the gravity fast enough to
crawl toward it, and she was sure that the gap would close before she could
climb through. Then she’d be trapped inside the darkness, and Grandma would
never hear her screams.

A
hand gripped her elbow and she fought against it.

“Easy
there, Blondie,” said the man whose voice sounded like sand in honey.

And
she saw one wet eye catching the light, a miniature mirror of that vanishing
grayness. It all came back—the solar flares, the ensuing chaos, the sudden deaths
of billions of people, and a world in which Grandma would never again pile
stuffed animals around her for comfort.

“Is
it tomorrow?” she asked.

“It’s
now, is all I know,” DeVontay said. “You talk in your sleep, did you know
that?”

Her
mother had said something about it once, but when one slept alone, it was
hardly the kind of thing to worry about. “What was I saying?”

“Mostly
gibberish, but you were saying a name. ‘Chelsea.’ Friend of yours? A sister?”

She
sat up, aware that she’d slept in her clothes. DeVontay eased back over to the
far side of the bed, his eye now swallowed by the black. A moment later she
heard the
snick
of his lighter and one of the candles burst to life. It
had a faint lilac smell.

When
she knelt by the bed to say her morning prayers, he didn’t comment.

“Has
our little friend come back?” she asked, sitting up and smoothing some of the
wrinkles from her clothes before realizing how absurd that was.

“Brother’s
been making the rounds. Door to door, all night long.”

She
tried to read his face in the candlelight, to see if he’d stayed awake all
night watching over her like a creepy Robert Pattinson in a
Twilight
movie.
She forced herself not to whine, although after nearly two weeks in After, she
feared numbness more than distress. “What do you think he wants?”

DeVontay,
carrying his pistol, crossed the room to the thick line of gray, which had now
brightened to a shade of mustard between the curtains. He peeked outside. “Who
knows? Mighta been a guest who was checked in when the Big Zap hit and never
checked out.”

“Or
maybe his wife’s behind one of these doors? Lying in bed and rotting?” The
notion reminded her they were surrounded by dead people, not just in the Motel
6 but all around the Charlotte metro area and probably the world. The faint but
putrid odor of decomposition assailed her and she crawled across the bed to the
little bottle of hand sanitizer on the table beside DeVontay’s midnight snacks.
The bottle was half empty, surrounded by Slim Jim wrappers, crumpled
cellophane, an empty bottle of Sprite, and a pack of Goody’s headache powder.

That’s
what happens when you leave the grocery shopping to a man.

“Don’t
see nothing outside.” DeVontay parted the curtains to let more light into the
room.

“So?”

“We
can’t stay here.”

“It’s
safe.”

“And
what’s your plan? Just stay here until room service decides to bring us
breakfast?”

“Where
were you going before?” She had to pee but was too embarrassed to say anything.

“Out
of the city, away from them things.”

“I
meant before that. You know…
before
.”

“Wasn’t
going nowhere. I was already there. Had me a good job with a roofing company.
When you got a job, no reason to go nowhere else.”

His
silhouette filled the window, his shoulders broad but thin, graceful like an
athlete’s. His hair was cropped close, with narrow stripes of sideburns on each
cheek. That fixed, hooded eye gave him a menacing aspect. Rachel wondered if
she would ever have voluntarily take a seat next to him on a bus. “I guess we
have a new job,” she said.

“What’s
this ‘we’ stuff? We need to talk about that.”

The
words shocked her. She had survived alone, for days and days, running, hiding,
learning the rules of After, but she could feel herself wearing down, her
options narrowing. “We’re alive. We’re human. And we can’t let them win.”

He
looked out the window and spoke with his back to her. “What if I decide you’re
slowing me down? And what else you got to offer besides an extra set of eyes?
You don’t even got a gun.”

“I
can find one,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice.

He
went to the kitchenette and opened the mini-fridge. “Damn. Looks like it’s junk
food again.”

She
really had to pee now, and she felt herself squirming. The bathroom door was
closed, and she hadn’t remembered them checking it. What if one of the Zapheads
was inside? Or a dead body?

“Okay,
then,” Rachel said. “Go on. Pack up your shit and get out.”

He
faced her, his good eye widening with surprise. “What you doing cussing? I
thought you were one of them goody-goody girls.”

“‘Shit’
is not taking the Lord’s name in vain. You’re thinking of ‘goddamn,’ and I’m
not calling you a goddamn asshole, even if you are one.”

His
lips pursed into a frown of contemplation and the silence was thick between
them. Somewhere on the floor above, they heard the resident Zaphead banging on
a door. DeVontay grinned, showing broad teeth. “All right, so you got a little
fire after all. Maybe we can make this thing work as a team until we find
something better.”

She
hadn’t even imagined a “better.” It was nearly impossible to imagine “good.”

“So,
since that’s settled, what now?” she asked.

“Maybe
I ought to go up on the roof and take a look around.”

“What
if that guy gets you?”

DeVontay
waved the gun. “I got an answer.”

Rachel
didn’t want to be left alone. But she wasn’t about to let DeVontay know that.
“Let’s just pack up and get out of here. We can go up on the highway and get a
better look. I don’t want to risk getting caught in the stairwell. Plus, we
don’t know how many more of those things are around. The others might not be as
noisy as our little friend.”

He
nodded, apparently taking their partnership seriously. “Yeah, if it’s all clear
on the road, I’d just as soon head north.”

“Okay,
you pack up and I…uh, have some personal business.” She didn’t want to ask him
to check the bathroom. She was embarrassed enough as it was.

Funny,
it’s the end of the world and I still have something to be shy about.

Rachel
felt his one eye tracking her across the room. He chuckled. “What, you going to
put on some make-up?”

She
frowned at him, gave the doorknob a vigorous twist, and peeked inside. It was
dark, but at least no one jumped her.

“Want
a light?” DeVontay said.

“No,
I’ll just leave the door cracked a little.”

“I
already used it, so don’t mind the smell. I saved the flush for you.”

“Thanks
for sharing.” Inside, as her eyes adjusted, she poked with her foot to find the
porcelain bowl. As she peeled her jeans down, she listened to the brooding
hotel. The banging was several floors above, fixed in one place now, and she
was relieved the Zaphead had stopped making the rounds. Maybe the guy had found
his room.

Then
she heard something below that sound, thin, reedy, and barely piercing the
unnatural silence. At first she thought DeVontay was whistling, but it was
coming from her left—the room to the other side of their suite.

“Do
you hear that?” she whispered, startled by the echo in the tile-covered
bathroom.

“You
say something?”

“It’s
music.”

“Can’t
be no music. The pulse blew out all electronics. Didn’t you hear the news?”

She
didn’t point out the contradiction. Instead, she listened more carefully as she
wiped. The notes plinked with a metallic coldness, yet they varied in tone and
rhythm. After she fastened her jeans, she felt along the sink counter until she
found one of the plastic sanitary cups. She shucked the cellophane sheath and
placed the mouth of the cup against the wall, then placed her ear against the
cup’s bottom.

She
didn’t turn when the door swung open behind her and DeVontay called. “What you
doing?”

“Shhh.”
When Rachel was nine, before the divorce, her father had given her a little
music box with Walt Disney’s Barbie-fied version of Cinderella on top. By
twisting the little brass key, she could make Cinderella spin around and
around, never losing a slipper. The music box had issued the same sort of
brassy tonality she now heard.

“Somebody’s
over there,” she said.

“Ain’t
nobody over there. They would have heard us and said something.”

“Maybe
they’re scared.”

“And
maybe it’s a Zaphead.”

Rachel
thought about banging on the wall and yelling, but if the person
was
scared, that wouldn’t help. “We need to open that door and check.”

“The
hell we do,” DeVontay said, his good eye narrowing in annoyance. “We already
got a plan, and it don’t include saving the world.”

“All
right, then,” she said, pushing past him, not bothering to flush the toilet.
“Give me the gun and you can wait here like a sissy.”

“A
sissy? Nobody calls nobody a ‘sissy’ anymore.”

“Well,
sorry I’m not up on my hood lingo, dude. Or homey. Or whatever gangsta thing
you want to be called. But I’m not going anywhere until I see who’s in that
room.”

Rachel
was surprised by her own anger, but she understood it. She’d felt so helpless
watching everyone die from the pulse, or turn into Zapheads, or commit suicide,
and finally, she had a chance to be useful.

DeVontay
exhaled a long sigh. “Okay, damnit. We get packed, check the room, and then
we’re outta here.”

She
met his gaze and they stared at each other for a full ten seconds, neither
willing to flinch. “Deal.”

As
he packed, he cussed under his breath. Rachel collected her backpack, checking
the vial of Nembutal the druggist had given her. No, she wouldn’t surrender,
not while someone else might need help.

DeVontay
drew his gun before flipping back the security bolt and opening the door.
Rachel pressed close behind. Once in the hall, they could clearly hear the
Zaphead banging away above them.

The
room next door was 202, and judging from the spacing of the doorways, it
appeared to be a suite as well. They paused before the laminated door,
listening, but the music had stopped. Rachel nudged DeVontay, and he slipped
the master key in the lock.

The
tumblers clattered in their own loud music, and the banging upstairs stopped.

“Shit,”
DeVontay hissed.

Rachel
pushed him into the room. The curtains were parted, throwing a wash of gray
light across the carpet. Blankets were wadded over a hump on one of the beds,
and the air was rank with decay. A boy of about ten knelt on the floor, a doll
clutched to his chest. The doll was undressed, and the boy was twisting a knob
back and forth that protruded from the doll’s back.

He
looked up at them with wide brown eyes, his face stricken with guilt. “It
broke.”

Rachel
knelt and put her hands on his shoulders, trying not to weep. DeVontay peeled
back the blanket to verify what their noses had already told them.

“Is
that your mother?” Rachel asked gently, afraid the boy might see her tears and
have his own breakdown.

“She
didn’t wake up,” the boy said.

“We
better get out of here,” DeVontay said. “I don’t think the guy upstairs is
going to wait for the elevator.”

“Come
on,” Rachel said, taking the boy’s hand and pulling him toward the hall.

The
boy gave one last look back at the figure on the bed, at a past that no longer
made sense to any of them, and allowed her to lead him into After.