After (Book 3): Milepost 291

by Nicholson, Scott

  Burn in hell, shitface. Campbell thought about shouting the insult at the top of his lungs, but he might start giggling, and then he would go mad during the Zaphead laugh track. But wasn’t madness preferable to acceptance of this new normal?

  “So what’s your exit strategy?” Campbell asked as the professor swallowed the last of his beans.

  “There’s no exit. I’m making the best of it. I’ve been here nearly three weeks and they haven’t killed me yet.”

  Campbell couldn’t believe the man was serious. “You’re doing a good job of making them think you’re Jesus, but that didn’t end so well for him, if you’ll recall.”

  “They’re learning, and if we can teach them not to make the same mistakes as the human race, then maybe we really can achieve those crazy ideals of peace, love, and

  harmony.”

  And here I was thinking I’d feathered the cuckoo’s nest. But you’ve definitely been cracking some eggs. This is your brain, this is your brain on Zapheads. Any questions?

  “Don’t you think maybe it’s a little arrogant to presume we know what’s best?” Campbell said. “There’s no blueprint for this.”

  The professor grinned, bean sauce shiny on his chin. “Then we get to draw our own blueprint.” He nodded at one of the Zapheads, a twentyish woman with the ragged dark bangs of a Goth hairstyle and full lips, a small silver skull dangling by a chain from one ear lobe. “I think she likes me.”

  Campbell shoved his plate away. The rotted corpses of the farmhouse’s original occupants said nothing. In some ways, they were the most stable and tangible facts of this new world. All else was postmodern surrealism.

  And a new history waiting to be written.

  “They’re all yours,” Campbell said, spreading his arms. “All God’s children.”

  “God’s children!” said a grimy-faced woman and the Zap Goth in unison.

  “God’s children!” shouted another Zaphead, and soon the room—and then the farmhouse—was filled with their shouts.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You really trust these guys, Sarge?” said the unshaven soldier.

  Franklin Wheeler didn’t like the beady-eyed little bastard, but he kept his mouth shut and his face impassive. They’d outfitted him with a camouflage combat uniform, but he’d kept his boots. Jorge looked uncomfortable in his own gear, constantly fidgeting with the top button of his shirt as if not sure whether to undo it. Neither of them would have passed muster in the old days, but Sarge was apparently eager to take what he could get in order to expand his empire.

  “I trust them about as far as a bullet can reach,” Sarge said. “But they’re you’re problem now, Hayes.”

  Hayes, the unshaven soldier, muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that, soldier?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hayes responded, none too crisply.

  Franklin smirked. The chain of command has got a few weak links.

  “Check out Sector 12, where they spotted the enemy yesterday. Report back here at twelve-hundred hours,” Sarge said. “No prisoners, no casualties.”

  Franklin and Jorge were part of a reconnaissance patrol led by Hayes. The other three soldiers in the patrol were as sullen as Hayes, smoking cigarettes and eyeing Franklin warily. One, sporting a dark complexion and wearing a soiled red bandana around his neck, cleared his throat and spat, the wet wad landing inches from Franklin’s boot. Franklin gave him a smirking salute.

  “I don’t like this,” Jorge whispered.

  “I don’t, either, but it’s your best chance of finding your family again.”

  “Don’t be acting sneaky,” Bandana Boy said, patting his rifle. “I got no problem at all killing a couple of civilians.”

  “Move out,” Hayes bellowed, waving the soldiers out of the camp. By Franklin’s estimation, Sarge had about fifty soldiers under his command, and there might have been others out on patrol. Sarge was right: he might be one of the most powerful men left in the world.

  “What are we looking for?” Franklin asked Hayes, falling in behind the patrol leader as they headed into the morning forest.

  “Zaps.”

  “Yeah, but what are we going to do when we find them?”

  Hayes made a pointing motion with his finger, as if it were a pistol. “Bang.”

  “Why don’t me and Jorge get guns?”

  “Sarge says you have to prove yourselves. Just because you helped kill some Zaps doesn’t mean we can trust you. I hear you’re a big anti-government type.”

  “Ain’t a government left to stand against,” Franklin said. “The way I look at, we’re all free men. Death is the ultimate democracy.”

  “Sarge has other ideas.”

  Franklin sensed resentment in the man and decided to feed it a little. “How many bunkers you think are out there? How many men like Sarge have some troops to boss around?”

  “That’s classified information.”

  “That means you’re either too dumb to know or nobody trusts you enough to tell you.” Ignoring Hayes’s dismissive grunt, Franklin added, “My guess is maybe thirty or forty at most. Probably a few here in the Blue Ridge, the Unegama Wilderness Area, most of the national parks, and whatever luxury hideaways Congress built for itself. And I’ll bet every one of them has a Sarge, a little Hitler type who’s going to run things his way.”

  “Sarge is watching out for us,” Hayes said.

  Somebody better be, because you sure as hell ain’t.

  Hayes was barely paying attention to their surroundings, even though they were heading downhill where the forest was thinning out. They came to a logging road, and Hayes slowed to allow the other stragglers to catch up. Jorge had walked solemnly, staying alert, obviously looking for any sign that his wife and daughter might have passed this way. Franklin was pretty sure they’d never see them alive again, but he didn’t see any reason to express that opinion to Jorge.

  “We’re coming up on the development,” Hayes called back from the point. He slid his semi-automatic rifle strap down his shoulder until he was cradling the weapon across his waist. “One of our scouts reported some funny noises down here yesterday.”

  Below the road, the morning sun caught the metal rooftops of half a dozen houses. They were obscenely large, with timber construction made to resemble log cabins, with lots of glass. No smoke came from the chimneys, despite the cold. Franklin figured them for second homes, the kind rich folks from Florida might visit twice between Memorial Day and Labor Day while writing the vacations off on their taxes. He hoped every one of those assholes had been blasted to hell and their bodies were rotting away on their silk sheets.

  Hayes waved Bandana Boy over and told the other two soldiers to sneak down and approach from the west. Bandana Boy looked a little too eager for action, but Franklin figured if Zapheads attacked, at least he and Jorge wouldn’t draw much attention. These cowboys would blow away anything that moved, human or not.

  The first house had a new SUV parked out front, although tree sap had spotted its silver finish. A riding lawn mower was parked beneath the porch, and a blue vinyl tarp covered a stack of firewood. The curtains were drawn in the windows.

  “Okay, Jimbo, you take point,” Hayes said, motioning Bandana Boy up the porch steps. Franklin and Jorge followed while Hayes waited with his weapon ready.

  Bandana Boy tried the door handle. Finding it locked, he reared back and drove the bottom of his foot into the glass. The sudden shattering was bright and loud in the morning silence. “That’ll wake ‘em up,” Bandana Boy said.

  “And let every goddamned Zaphead within thirty miles know where we are, genius.”

  “What, you wanted me to look for a key?”

  Hayes waved him inside. “Shut up and get.”

  Bandana Boy stepped inside the house, crunching glass underneath his boots. Franklin ducked inside after him, looking around for the kitchen. At the very least, he wanted a butcher knife. While Bandana Boy did a quick check of the downstairs rooms, Jorge collec
ted a fireplace poker and gave it a test swing. Hayes stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. “Anybody home?” he shouted.

  The house featured a musty odor, as if it had been shut up for months, but rank fecal rot dominated the air.

  Bandana Boy returned to the hall and motioned to Hayes, who followed him through a door. Franklin’s curiosity got the best of him and he had to see. What he discovered was Bandana Boy pointing into the toilet, and the aroma gave away its contents.

  “Somebody’s been here,” whispered Hayes.

  “Or maybe they were just caught with their pants down when the Big Zap came,” Franklin said. “Maybe a Zapper out there who forgot to wipe.”

  “No,” Hayes said. “Too fresh. If it was that old, you wouldn’t be able to smell it.”

  Bandana Boy pointed to the second floor above and Hayes nodded. “You guys stay close behind us,” Hayes said to Franklin. “Not that I give a damn, but Sarge has taken a liking to you.”

  “Yeah, I’m a regular poster child of the apocalypse,” Franklin said.

  Hayes didn’t remark on Jorge’s metal fireplace poker, but Bandana Boy stood erect and alert, eager to pull the trigger. “Okay,” Hayes said, waving them up the stairs. “Be ready for anything.”

  Upstairs, Bandana Boy opened the first door on the right. There he found the “anything” of which Hayes had just spoken. He whistled and uttered a low, “Holy hell.”

  Franklin couldn’t resist closing in behind Hayes for a look. The room was littered with cellophane food wrappers, tin cans, crushed plastic bottles, and a stench that made the downstairs bathroom refreshing. A bed pushed near the window was heaped with blankets. On the dresser beside it was a makeshift kitchen, with a Sterno burner, a blackened metal coffee pot, and an Igloo cooler.

  Bandana Boy waded through the trash and looked around. “Got us a squatter.”

  “No Zapper did this, that’s for sure,” Hayes said.

  “Must have heard us coming and hid somewhere.”

  Hayes poked the bundle of blankets with the tip of his rifle. “As much noise as you were making, no wonder.” He waved Bandana Boy out of the room. “Search it.”

  “Why don’t you leave them be?” Franklin said. “They ain’t a threat to you.”

  Hayes narrowed his eyes. “You heard Sarge. No prisoners.”

  Bandana Boy pushed out the door between Franklin and Jorge, heading down the hall. He kicked open doors one by one, each time crouching and sweeping the barrel of his rifle in front of him. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he called like a child.

  If this is the best of the best, it’s a wonder the U.S. military didn’t go to shit a decade ago.

  Franklin turned to go downstairs, but Hayes blocked his way. “You’re on duty, Wheeler.”

  Bandana Boy slammed open the last door at the end of the hall, pointed his rifle into the room, and said to Hayes, “Jackpot.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  They hadn’t hurt Rachel, but she didn’t dare risk provoking them.

  The Zapheads had closed around her in the darkness, grabbing at her hair, pulling and squeezing her flesh. One of them touched the pulsing bite wound on her thigh and she yelped in pain, causing an eruption of mimicked yelps that sound like a pack of wolves. She couldn’t count them in the dark, but they numbered at least half a dozen. Their eyes swam like glints of fire thrown off a grinding wheel.

  At full strength, she would have made a run for it. But she doubted she would have made it ten steps before they dragged her down and—then what?

  The ones behind her nudged her forward, gently bumping her with their bodies. They were herding her. She soon realized they were guiding her downhill, ninety degrees from the way she’d come, although she couldn’t be sure in the darkness. She’d long since lost her way.

  They fanned out around her, leaving her only one direction. She stepped, staggered, slid, and limped down the slope, all the while nearly surrounded by the Zapheads. Their eerie silence was broken only by the times they echoed her panting and gasping as exhaustion set in. She’d lost all sense of time as well, and when the blackness eased to gray, she saw that the forest had thinned to scrub vegetation.

  Once she edged to one side, too weak and hurting to make a serious run for it, but the Zapheads closed ranks, their grim, blank faces made all the more horrible by the bright, animated forges of their eyes. She wondered what they would do if she stopped to retrieve the revolver from her backpack, but even if she succeeded in securing the weapon, she only had six shots, and now with the dawn light she could count eleven of them.

  They were all ages, a cross-culture of former humans: a couple of teens like the girl who’d mimicked Stephen, three middle-aged women, a fierce-looking man in a ragged delivery uniform, an overweight young man whose balance and grace seemed almost uncanny, and a wiry old woman who looked like she could walk a thousand miles with neither bread nor water. A nude, dark-skinned man hovered close behind her, muscular as an athlete, his presence like obsidian tar. The others, besides their filthy and ragged clothing and their dancing eyes, were as ordinary as any customers she might have once found in a supermarket line.

  Throughout the seemingly endless night, she worried about Stephen. Without his backpack, he had no basic supplies, charcoal-filtered water pump, or food. Was he out in the woods, lost and frantic in his solitude? Had Zapheads found him and taken him captive as well? Or had he met some other horrible fate in the wilderness?

  As the sun burned away the lingering morning mist, the strange group emerged onto a mountain valley. The scrub gave way to a barbed-wire fence, and beyond that was knee-high golden grass that would have been cut and baled as hay weeks ago if the world hadn’t ended. Lower in the valley, a two-story white farmhouse and a tin-roofed barn stood among other small structures and a rectangle of dirt that had once been a garden. Small figures moved in the driveway and yard—people!—and she nearly called out for help.

  But Rachel’s heart sank as she realized they moved with the same stilted yet oddly balletic movements as her escorts. Zapheads, dozens of them, milled around the house and barn. The Zapheads closed around her, forcing her against the fence. If she didn’t cross, they would crush her against the strands of barbed steel. She lifted the top strand and stretched her wounded leg in the gap above the middle strand, afraid to put any weight on it. Something broke loose beneath the bandage and a smelly, dark juice leaked from beneath the cloth.

  She groaned in pain and revulsion. The Zaps around her immediately began groaning as well, their calls like the mooing of cattle in a slaughterhouse. Rachel forced herself through the opening and rolled to the ground, flattening the brittle, damp grass.

  The Zapheads were on the other side of the fence. This was her chance.

  Rachel bolted to the left, following the fence line even though the route was uphill, because the forest was nearer on that side. She didn’t have any plan besides putting distance between herself and the odd mutants. Her leg throbbed with each jarring step, and her heart hammered against the inside of her rib cage. The dewy grass soaked her jeans in seconds. She thought about peeling her backpack to shed weight, but if she reached the woods—when she escaped—she would need the food, blanket, first aid kit, tools, and weapon to survive.

  At first the sound in her ears thundered in sync with her racing heartbeat, but then she realized the noise wasn’t in her head. She glanced to the left and the nude black Zaphead was running beside her, keeping pace on the other side of the fence. While Rachel was slowed by having to wade through tall grass, the Zaphead was totally oblivious to the branches and thorns on his side of the fence. The others trailed behind him, the sound of snapping vegetation reveling that they trailed them both by thirty or forty feet.

  Unable to endure the Zaphead beside her, Rachel veered down the slope of the pasture even though that path brought her nearer to the farmhouse and the Zaps below. One of them must have seen her, because a small, dark figure headed up the hill toward her
. As if all the Zapheads below were of one mind, they turned in her direction and closed in. Rachel spun to try another direction, but no avenues remained—the Zapheads behind her had crossed the fence and approached in a line, fanning out to enclose her again.

  Frustrated, on the verge of tears, Rachel dropped to her knees in the damp grass and slung her backpack from her shoulder. With the gun, at least she’d buy a little more time. Or end her time on this planet if the madness became too unbearable.

  She dug into the backpack’s main compartment, sure she’d laid the gun on top, along with the medicine for her wound. But it wasn’t there. Whimpering, she turned the backpack upside down and shook it. She clawed through its contents, hearing the moist swish switch of approaching legs.

  No gun. But where would it—

  Stephen.

  She wasn’t sure why he would have taken it, but she was glad he had a means of protection. She and DeVontay had let him fire both the pistol and rifle, to introduce him to the weapons with the intention of training him as they progressed in their journey. But right now she craved its ability to kill from afar.

  The only other weapon was a pocketknife. She dug her thumbnail into the groove of the blade to flip it open, aware of the Zapheads looming all around her. She crawled with the blade open, the knife in one fist, mud soaking into her clothes, bits of grass seed and chaff in her teeth, hoping that if she stayed low they wouldn’t see her.

  Without warning a hand grabbed her shoulder and she swept the knife up in an arc.

  “Rachel,” the man said, stepping back.

  She held the knife before her, ready to jab, confused. Had this Zaphead heard her name, too?

  Then she recognized him.

  The guy from Taylorsville.

  And his eyes didn’t spark.

  CHAPTER SEVEN