After (Book 3): Milepost 291

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Should have what?” Shay asked after a moment.

  He looked at her big blue eyes. She still had enough innocence for all of them, despite what those pig-assed soldiers had tried to do to her. But she would learn.

  “Should have stayed with them,” Franklin finished. No need to tell her about the hard choices that were now necessary. Soon she’d be making choices of her own.

  Then he saw Jorge, coming out of the trees on the far side of the house. He glanced up and down the road and apparently saw Robertson through the glass. He stuck up a thumb in an “all-clear” sign.

  Franklin didn’t trust Jorge’s reconnaissance. The Mexican had handled himself well in their few skirmishes and at Sarge’s bunker, but the worry over his family was making him desperate. And desperate people made mistakes.

  “You guys stay here,” Franklin said. “No use all of us getting shot.”

  “I can sneak up and peek in the windows,” Shay said, her improvised bandolier sliding down her shoulder.

  “No,” Robertson snapped.

  “So I guess we’re not all heroes?” she responded.

  Franklin’s weariness and annoyance brimmed over. “That’s the cheapest goddamned word in the dictionary. It’s one of those words that idiots die over. Same as ‘honor,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘courage.’ If we can get one thing right in After, let’s make sure we clean out some of the bullshit that clogged up the start of the Twenty-First Century.”

  “Well, excuuuse me,” Shay said. “Grampa Grumpypants must not have had enough prunes in his oatmeal this morning.”

  “Shay,” Robertson said, although he sounded like he was about to laugh.

  “You don’t know who’s in there,” Franklin said. “Maybe some more of Sarge’s soldiers, ready to finish what your friends up there started.”

  That shut her up, and Franklin’s rush of triumph quickly faded to shame. In Before, the kid’s biggest concerns were probably girly-haired boy bands, boys, boyfriends, and fake boys on the Internet. Now she walked among wolves in human clothing and Zapheads in human clothing. And it was his duty to protect her as best he could.

  Goddamn it, we’re never going to get rid of those bullshit words.

  “We’ll wait,” Robertson said. “If you need to run, we’ll cover you.”

  Shay pulled the pistol out of its holster. It looked huge in her slender fingers.

  “You know how to aim that thing?”

  “Just like a video game,” she said. “But if I accidentally shoot you in the leg, maybe it’s because I’m just a girl.”

  Franklin grinned. Maybe he’d underestimated her, or she’d toughened up more quickly than he’d acknowledged. Anybody that had survived two months of After deserved a medal.

  Honor. We can’t get rid of honor, either. Shit.

  “Okay,” Franklin said, rising over the hood of the van enough to indicate to Jorge he’d circle the house from the nearest side. Jorge waved in response.

  Franklin felt exposed on the open road. Even if the occupants of the house weren’t watching, Sarge’s patrols could be anywhere. They might even have discovered the bodies of their comrades and connected it to the absence of Franklin and Jorge.

  He gave one glance back at the van. Shay had crawled underneath it and lurked by the back wheel, gripping the pistol with both hands, its butt resting on the rough gravel. Robertson’s shotgun wouldn’t have the range to contribute much firepower, but perhaps the noise would create a distraction.

  Franklin crouched and jogged, keeping one finger locked against the trigger guard of his semi-automatic. Maybe he should have gotten Sarge to train them a little, like real soldiers. Then he’d feel a little braver about charging into the unknown.

  Courage. I’ll be goddamned if that one isn’t going to stick around, too.

  Then all Franklin could think about was the house ahead of him, and strange eyes that might be tracking him even now. The property had no fence, and besides a few scraggly apple trees, the yard offered no concealment. He wondered if they should just yell and see if anyone answered.

  But, as had happened with Robertson and the girl, Jorge’s family could have been captured. They might already have been savaged by Sarge’s psychopaths, in which case Franklin needed to be the first one inside, because Jorge would be useless with rage.

  And if Zapheads were waiting behind the closed door, then Franklin was eager to empty the clip of the AR-15. He figured he had at least twenty rounds left. Unless they were the Zaphead Brady Bunch, he could handle them.

  Jorge closed in on the house in tandem with Franklin. They were maybe forty yards from the front door. With luck, it would be unlocked and they could slip inside owning the element of surprise. Otherwise, they might have to kick the door in and be ready for all hell to break loose.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Franklin said in a loud whisper across the yard.

  “You can wait by the cars,” Jorge replied, leaning against a tree. “This is my battle.”

  “Don’t start that with me. We’re a team now, whether we like it or not.”

  “I thought you were a loner, a survivalist.”

  “It was fun while it lasted, but I’ve given up on peace and quiet.” He lifted the rifle a little. “No wonder these jarheads get addicted to danger.”

  “Me first,” Jorge said. “If Marina and Rosa are in there, I want their lives to be in my hands, and no one else’s.”

  “I thought you were Catholic. Aren’t you going to leave it up to God?”

  Jorge pointed his rifle to the sinking afternoon sun. “We’ve seen God at work, and almost everyone was sent to hell. Now it’s our turn.”

  Without waiting for Franklin’s response, Jorge silently charged the door. Franklin swept his rifle barrel from window to window, expecting a shattering of glass and a hail of gunfire at any moment. But the curtains remained closed, and Jorge reached the porch and pressed himself against the bricks to one side of the door.

  Then he reached out with one brown hand and tried the door knob. He nodded at Franklin, and then it turned, and revealing a wedge of darkness as the door swung open. Jorge stepped inside, and Franklin made his move toward the house.

  But before he could reach the door, Jorge burst back outside and fell to his knees, flinging his rifle away. He retched and coughed, and then vomited the canned food they’d eaten at Robertson’s outpost.

  Evidently seeing there was no immediate danger, Robertson and Shay approached from the van, but Jorge waved them back. “No…for the love of God…”

  Franklin hadn’t loved God for decades, so he had no hesitation. He stepped through the door that Jorge left open. His heart skipped a beat and then crammed three beats into one. He took several steps inside to verify what his mind refused to register.

  The living room was arranged with half a dozen human corpses. Fresh corpses, judging by the wet blood that still coated their nude bodies.

  They were propped in a mockery of a Sunday afternoon family tableau, three of them on a sofa facing the big flat-screen television. An old man sat in an E-Z chair with an open newspaper in his lap, the pages soggy and red. Two hunched-over children sat cross-legged on the floor, a pile of mutilated dolls between them. The hearth held a mound of glowing embers, suggesting the fire had been built sometime that day.

  What kind of sick fuck…

  “Zapheads,” Robertson said from the doorway behind him.

  “I don’t think so,” Franklin said. “Unless Zaps learned how to write.”

  He pointed to the television. Smeared in dark, congealing blood across its black face were the words “Milepost 291.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rachel’s head throbbed like drumbeats in the distant jungle of her mind.

  She opened her eyes to a gauzy and gray world that slowly came into focus. A sheet was pulled up to her chin, and a blanket spread over her lower legs. She was numb, unable to feel her limbs, and she wondered if she had died.

  So much for g
oing toward the light.

  Then a hand squeezed hers, and she realized she was lying on her back. She tried to clench her fingers in return, but she didn’t have enough strength. She sensed movement around her, dim shapes circling like great, lumbering beasts. Every few seconds, one of the shapes blocked the source of the light and threw her in shadows again.

  Her skin was cool, although a little moist and clammy. The fever had broken.

  My leg…did someone say something about an infection…a knife?

  Horror sluiced through her as she recalled images of that guy—Campbell—helping her across the meadow, followed by hordes of Zapheads. She vaguely remembered a two-story farmhouse, which is where she must be now. The window allowed the last of the evening light to suffuse the walls and reveal a deer-head trophy with dark glass eyes that made her think of DeVontay.

  “Welcome back,” said a voice, from the man holding her hand.

  She blinked her watering eyes and squinted at his face. He looked different somehow, and she wondered if the fever had affected her sight.

  “How…” she rasped, realizing her throat was parched and lips cracked. She shivered. The room was chilly.

  “Easy,” Campbell said, releasing her hand. He put a glass to her lips and she sipped at it. The water tasted metallic and stale, but she was thirsty enough to relish it like wine. After several painful swallows, she closed her mouth.

  “Where?” she whispered.

  Campbell was also whispering, which was odd since the shapes still orbited them. She was propped on a couch and could make out bookshelves, an entertainment center, and some hulking pieces of rustic furniture. The room smelled of old cobwebs and sweat, and she realized her own body reeked with sour tension.

  But the sweet, rotted-meat smell that had clung to her for days was gone.

  My leg…did they really cut it off?

  She dug her left hand under the covers and along her body, which felt like an alien landscape. Then she found her bare leg and realized someone had removed her pants. She was relieved to discover she still wore underwear. Her fingers continued their slow crawl downward until she reached the wound.

  “I’m one hell of a doctor,” Campbell said.

  Several voices pitched in by repeating “Doctor!” a few times before falling silent again. Rachel realized the room was full of Zapheads.

  Not just the room—their slow movements continued outside it, a steady pacing like pilgrims with no destination.

  But her dismay at their presence was muted by the shock of discovering her leg had healed. The skin on her calf was flawless, with not even a scab or crease to mark what had been a pustule-ridden volcano in her flesh.

  “My jeans,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t look. Me and the professor have been tending you. And we had a little…help.”

  “How long have I been out?” Rachel felt as if she’d drifted for days, and even with modern health care she doubted the wound would have completely closed up in less than a month.

  “Since noon.”

  “Today?”

  Campbell exhaled a sigh. “Been a long day.”

  The blood now pulsed slowly through her body and feeling returned. She was amazed to be pain free. Even her headache had vanished. Aside from a weakness that enervated her into lethargy, she felt better than she had in weeks.

  Since Taylorsville, before we killed those Zapheads…

  “Who else is here?” she said, trying to lift her head but soon giving up.

  Campbell adjusted a musty throw pillow beneath her neck. She could barely make out his face in the gloom of dusk. His face cheeks bore dark stubble and he sported deep, violet half-moons of flesh beneath his eyes, but he smiled at her. “You and me and the professor. And about fifty Zapheads.”

  “Why haven’t they killed us?”

  “You’ll have to ask them that. But do it quietly, or they’ll be yelling back at you for hours.”

  Rachel was struck by an itching sensation where her infected gash had been. At first she chalked it up to a sign of healing, but then the feeling expanded. The flesh below her knee was trembling, almost like it was being massaged. By many hands.

  “You had a knife,” she said, almost accusing him. “Where is it?”

  “Shh,” he said. “Keep your voice down or it will be like a monkey house asylum in here. The knife is under the couch cushion. You’re lying on it.”

  “You were going to cut me.”

  “No, no…I mean, the professor…we were afraid the gangrene was going to reach your heart. We…he…wanted to amputate.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?!?”

  The room erupted with gleeful shrieks that thundered in the rooms beyond and reverberated on the floor above. “Fucking crazy! Fucking crazy! Fucking crazy!”

  Rachel cupped her hands over her ears, but it was like the words were echoing inside the curved bone of her skull, over and over, becoming a nonsensical round of random syllables.

  “Shh, shh,” Campbell hissed softly, stroking her hair. “It’s okay now.”

  Even after the Zapheads died down, still engaged in their ceaseless patrol, Rachel heard the chorus in her head. Maybe the infection and fever had caused brain damage.

  But brain-damaged people usually don’t contemplate brain damage. They think they’re normal.

  “The professor thinks they’re learning from us,” Campbell said. “Imitating us. You didn’t meet him but he was with us back in Taylorsville. One of Arnoff’s gang.”

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  Campbell couldn’t meet her eyes. “They came here.”

  “And the Zapheads attacked them?”

  “It’s not like you think. The Zapheads have established this farmhouse as some kind of home base. There are more of them every day. They’re gathering into a tribe of sorts.”

  It was almost dark now and all she could see of Campbell was the glint of his eyes behind his glasses. She couldn’t imagine spending the night in this house, not surrounded by all these Zapheads with their sinister motion and sudden outbursts. She was sure she’d go mad in her sleep, assuming she was even able to close her eyes.

  But any nightmare would be more welcome than this disordered, topsy-turvy reality.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. I lost track of the days. But I’d guess two or three weeks.”

  “And you didn’t run? Try to escape?”

  He shook his head, the movement barely visible. “No point. You saw how they herded you. It’s their world now. We’re just…tolerated.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m still going to Milepost 291 and…” She gasped and struggled to sit up, but exhaustion pressed down on her like a stack of sodden blankets. “Stephen!”

  “The boy? When I didn’t see him with you, I assumed he’d—”

  “He’s out there somewhere, and I’ve got to find him.” Her eyes were hot with welling tears, but she was unable to lift herself from the couch.

  “Rachel?”

  She rubbed at her face. For a moment she wondered who Rachel was. The name was familiar, but Before had been so very long ago.

  Campbell shook her gently by the shoulder until she turned to him. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looked away. “Nothing. Better get some rest.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They’d marched maybe two miles, following the road that ran along the river.

  The men escorting DeVontay spoke little, and his attempts to figure out their intentions were met with sullen smirks. DeVontay’s clothes had dried a little, but the October air had turned brisk. Now, with night coming on, the temperature veered toward freezing and the wind rattled the brittle leaves that clung desperately to the swaying trees.

  DeVontay didn’t know the date—such measured slices of civilization now seemed as buried
in history as pharaohs and hourglasses—but Halloween was probably approaching. And the whole world was dressed up as ghosts of the humans who had once ruled this planet.

  They’d passed a number of houses along the way, some of them ransacked, others half burned with only skeletal timbers remaining, but the two men had shown little interesting in scavenging. Nor did they seem overly concerned about being attacked, which led DeVontay to believe their group had established a cordon in which they felt safe.

  At one point, the man in the orange cap waved at one of the houses, and a man with a pair of binoculars strung around his neck leaned out of an upper window and called, “You boys didn’t get zapped while you were out, did you?”

  “I hooked up with your old lady,” Orange Cap yelled back. “But it wasn’t much of a zap.”

  “If you find her, you can have her. Last I saw, she was trying to mash me into the ground. All two hundred and fifty pounds of her.”

  “Jeez, Larson, if you couldn’t outrun that, it’s a wonder you survived this long,” said the man in the sunglasses behind DeVontay.

  “A minute at a time,” Larson responded. “Looks like you got us some fresh meat.”

  “Speaking of old ladies…don’t be getting any ideas.”

  DeVontay wasn’t sure what to make of the exchange, but he decided to keep his mouth shut. They walked past the house and then turned up a narrow gravel driveway that sloped up into the hills. DeVontay wondered how many other lookouts they’d passed along the way that he hadn’t noticed.

  The driveway ran through a copse of pine trees that shielded most of the remaining daylight, and then the road expanded into a great circle of bare dirt, with tractors, rusty trucks on cinder blocks, and farm equipment stacked around in a haphazard array. The perimeter was ringed with chain-link fence, coils of rusted barb wire atop it.

  Several industrial outbuildings stood in the clearing, dim lights flickering behind their glass windows. Flames from a series of torches bobbed and flapped on the compound’s perimeter, spewing oily diesel smoke. The shadow of a man sitting on a truck hood separated from the larger darkness and came toward them, carrying an oil lantern whose light played across DeVontay’s feet.