The Zapheads quit their pacing, and Campbell wondered if they had somehow heard and comprehended, even though he was talking quietly.
“They sense a threat,” the professor said. “They’re quite intuitive. That’s why they react to our actions.”
“Like when they were ripping your friends to shreds? Arnoff and Pamela and Donnie might disagree with your analysis.”
“They weren’t my friends. We were just traveling together.”
“We’re all just traveling together. On one great big Starship Earth—”
The professor put his hand on Campbell’s shoulder. The outburst had caused the Zapheads to encircle them. Although they were not yet agitated, the tension in the air was electric, almost humming. Rachel moaned and stirred in her sleep.
“They won’t let you leave,” whispered the professor.
“I am not asking permission.”
“What if I won’t let you leave?”
“Just because you’ve been stuck here longer than me doesn’t make you the expert. I don’t think anyone knows anything about what’s happening.”
“You won’t leave.”
Campbell stood in the dark, and the Zapheads circled him.
“And you can’t take Rachel,” the professor said. “She is one of them now.”
Campbell could just make out her pale face. Her eyelids were twitching. Was she dreaming of Before? Or were new images and concepts forming due to the influence of the Zapheads’ healing?
The professor is a lost cause. But Rachel…if we can get away, maybe she won’t become one of them.
But Campbell was forced to admit to himself that he wouldn’t make it Milepost 291 without her. Even though she’d said she didn’t know the exact location of her grandfather’s compound, she knew the general area far better than he did. And he didn’t want to be alone for even a minute.
He’d have to wait for Rachel to fully recover. Making a reckless break now might throw the Zapheads into a frenzy, and the professor would thwart them however he could.
“Okay,” Campbell said, sitting back down. “You’re right.”
“I still think we can teach them,” the professor said. “We can build a better world, without all the mistakes of the past.”
“But who is going to judge the mistakes?”
“Evil men throughout history always seem to emerge when the conditions are ripe. But so do good men.”
Campbell nodded toward the dark silhouettes that milled restlessly around the living room. “What about these things? Do we call them ‘men’ now? And what about the women? They don’t have sex, so they won’t be breeding. They barely eat, yet they seem to maintain their vigor. If this is the top of the evolutionary food chain, I guess we’re going to end up sausage one way or another.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Natives are getting restless, huh? I thought you could control them with one wave of your hand. Or a word of prayer.”
The Zapheads were muttering now, not repeating full words but rather fragments of syllables and sounds. Their feet thundered on the floor above, as if the ones upstairs could sense the agitation of their brethren below. Campbell no longer wanted to wait for a chance to escape. He was ready to get out of this sci-fi lunatic asylum.
“You are upsetting them,” the professor said. “Maybe they’re all connected somehow. Not telepathically, but empathically. That could explain their universal rage in the wake of the solar storms, when their human brains were wiped clean and a raw, primitive neural network was all that remained.”
“Whatever,” Campbell said, tugging Rachel’s hand. She blinked and the tiny luminous specks still swam in her eyes. “Wake up, Rachel, we’re getting out of here.”
“Whu…where are we?” she said.
At least she can speak in complete sentences. She hasn’t been completely zapped.
He wasn’t sure what he would have done if she’d repeated his words. He might have left her there and fled into the night.
“Can you stand?” he whispered to her. She nodded, still groggy.
“Stop this,” the professor said. “You can’t take her from them now.”
“They don’t own her. They don’t own me, either. You can stay if you want, but we’re out of here, one way or another.”
Kneeling, Campbell helped Rachel sit up. The professor loomed over them, calling out, “Campbell, don’t be like this. Think of the family.”
The man’s tone reminded Campbell of the infamous cult leader Jim Jones, who’d seduced hundreds of his People’s Temple members into drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Campbell had watched a documentary on the tragedy, and Jones used the same imploring, nearly whining voice to hurry along the mass suicide.
“Think of what we can do if we stay and teach them,” the professor said.
“Can you stand?” Campbell whispered to Rachel. He was going to get her out of there even if he had to drag her.
She didn’t answer but instead gripped his shoulder and swung her legs off the sofa. The room seemed to fill with Zapheads. Their breath was like a rising wind, and broken bits of guttural sound rose from the depths of their throats. Campbell glanced around and saw at least two dozen, their strange lambent eyes pointed in his direction.
“Where are we going?” she asked, still drowsy but putting weight on her legs.
Campbell wrapped his arms around her waist and helped her stand. “Milepost 291.”
“Don’t betray us, brother,” the professor said.
“Why don’t you just stay cool? We’ll be out of here, and you can stay and play with your little cult until the end of time?”
Campbell flung one of her arms around his neck so she could support herself. “Don’t look at them,” Campbell said. “Just walk with me.”
He wasn’t sure the Zapheads would just let them leave. Their violent impulses had subsided, but they’d been acting with bizarrely possessive intentions. Rachel had literally been herded to the farmhouse, and the Zaps followed Campbell’s every move.
The first phalanx of Zapheads was only three feet in front of them, standing shoulder to shoulder. Their surreal eyes glinted like small pockets of alien hell.
Campbell ducked a little and pushed his way through them, supporting the groggy Rachel. He expected the Zapheads to block his way, or maybe even attack him. But he wasn’t afraid, not now, and he wondered if the professor was right about their empathy—maybe they reacted to rage or anger, but this new emotion of determination and defiance might be new to them. They hadn’t had any opportunities to learn a defense against it.
The first line of Zapheads grudgingly parted, and now he and Rachel were completely encircled by them. They pressed close, but they were more restless than frenzied. Rachel was likely not alert enough to register their presence, which Campbell took as a good sign. That meant she wouldn’t show fear.
“No,” the professor shouted.
The Zapheads immediately started repeating the word, which rippled like a mad mantra up the stairs and across the whole house, even outside. In the cacophony, Campbell scooted toward the hall, where more Zapheads paced back and forth.
“Campbell,” the professor said.
Campbell looked back over Rachel’s shoulder and saw a reflection of the candle off silver. The knife.
The professor waved the blade in the air, threatening him. “Put her down, or I’ll cut you.”
The phalanx of Zapheads closed ranks, creating a wall of living flesh between Campbell and the professor.
As the Zapheads endlessly echoed “No no no no no,” the professor shoved at them to reach Campbell and Rachel. Campbell turned and walked backwards, with Rachel leaning her weight on his shoulder. She was moving her legs now, regaining her balance, but they wouldn’t be able to outrun the professor.
“You’re upsetting them,” Campbell said, trying to use the professor’s own logic against him. But the professor was wide-eyed and open-mouthed, face contorted with rage, focused only on preserving h
is unnatural cult.
As he fought his way toward Campbell, the knife swept down and sliced into the biceps of a female Zaphead. The mutant didn’t utter a sound, but the repetitive voices all died away at once, throwing the house into an eerie silence broken only by the slight groaning of wood as the wind blew against the siding.
Then the injured Zaphead grabbed the professor’s arm, pulling him forward and causing him to lose his balance. Another grabbed at the knife, cutting his hand in several places before finally wrestling the weapon away from the professor. The smell of blood was rich in the air, along with that electrical burning odor, and more Zapheads pushed into the living room.
Campbell took advantage of the opening to lead Rachel down the hallway toward the kitchen. The professor’s scream was high and brittle, and with one last look, Campbell saw one of the Zapheads drive the knife into the professor’s back as others tore away his sheet and pawed at his naked body.
Thank God Rachel can’t understand what’s happening.
They passed a couple of Zapheads in the hall who staggered toward the living room as if animated by the violence. The back door was open in the kitchen, and Campbell made for it. He didn’t care about food or supplies. They could worry about that once they fled the farm.
And if they didn’t make it off the farm, food was the least of their worries.
The professor screamed again, and this time it actually rose into a shrill cackle of disturbed glee.
“Kill your messiah,” he wailed. “So it is written, and so—arggggh…GODDMAN IT…so it shall be.”
“So shall it be,” rang out a high female voice, almost blissful. The phrase was taken up by others, a deep bass here, an alto, and then rising into a repetitive chant.
Dude got exactly what he wanted. Finally found his true calling. Well, rest in pieces, you nutty piece of shit.
Outside, the grass was moist with dew and soon they were both soaked to the knees. Dark shapes moved past them in the night, all headed toward the farmhouse, ignoring the two staggering humans. Once, Rachel fell against him, nearly knocking them both to the ground, but he caught her and held her upright.
Their faces were close enough that he could look deep into the flickering furnaces of her eyes. He wondered what was happening behind them, and what Rachel would become by the time they reached Milepost 291.
He didn’t care at the moment. As their bare feet tracked across the high pastures, all he could think about was the looming concealment of the ebony forest and enough distance to drown out the professor’s agonized shrieks.
CHAPTER TWENTY
At first, DeVontay thought only a few children were lurking back in the dark pens.
But more and more small faces appeared, pressing against the wire and looking out.
“These are my friends,” Stephen said. “I guess you call them that. Rooster calls them something else.”
“Rooster?”
“The man who runs this camp,” came a female voice from the shadows.
She stepped out into the dim circle of light cast by the kerosene lamp. She was vaguely Asian-looking, although she could have been a Pacific Islander of some sort, with exotic almond-shaped eyes and straight dark hair. She was as filthy as any Zaphead, and she nervously glanced at the door.
“Hello. I’m DeVontay.”
“So you know Stephen?”
“We’re traveling buddies. We got separated two weeks back.”
“We thought you were dead,” Stephen whispered.
“I thought…” DeVontay forced a smile and rubbed Stephen’s frowsy head. “I thought you guys would already be at Milepost 291 waiting for me with a big cake and silly party hats. So where did you lose Rachel?”
“The other night. We were out in the woods and…” Stephen’s head tilted in shame and his shoulders shook with a sob. “I got scared and ran. I tried to be a little man like you told me.”
DeVontay knelt and gave him a hug. “Hey, hey, my man. We’re all scared these days. It’s okay.”
He wanted to know more but until he made sense of their current situation, he didn’t see any way he could find her or help her. He looked at the woman, who now clutched a kid at each hip. They were about eight or nine years old, with runny noses and dirty faces, and had slipped out of the darkness without a sound.
“Why is everybody hiding back in the dark?”
“When we hear the doors open, we hide.”
DeVontay let that sink in for a moment. “How many are in here?”
“Fourteen. Three of us are women, the rest are kids.”
The little boy at her left flank looked up with anger. “I’m not no kid.”
She patted his shoulder. “You’re right, James, we’ve all had to grow up fast.”
Apparently sensing the two armed men had gone and the door locked and bolted from the outside, others began to emerge into the light. They were all unkempt and sallow, as if suffering from lack of sunshine and poor nutrition. “How long have you been in here?” DeVontay asked the woman.
“Some of us have been here since the beginning,” she replied. “Rooster’s gang picked me up the day after the Zap. West Jefferson was packed with Zapheads so I got out of there. I was so relieved when I finally found some humans…”
“I was hiding in a sewer pipe,” James said, proud of his ingenuity. “When I saw men with guns, I thought they were the Homeland Security.”
Her face darkened and she bit her lip. “They’ve been collecting us.”
“They ain’t Homeland Security,” DeVontay said. “I don’t know what they are, but they shouldn’t be locking you up in here.”
The woman put a finger to her lips. “No need to scare the children.”
DeVontay nodded. “Okay,” he said to Stephen. “Why don’t you show me around, and then we’ll figure out what to do next?”
Stephen took DeVontay’s hand, and then James ran forward and took his other hand. The woman collected the kerosene lamp.
“They make us keep the lamps hanging by the door, in case they need to come inside,” she said. “They get really mad and don’t feed us if we take them. But I don’t think they’ll be back tonight.”
DeVontay’s anger rose but he suppressed it. The door was far too thick for him to break through, and the only windows appeared to be high narrow slits that were covered in wire mesh.
“What’s your name?” he asked the woman.
“Keikilani.”
“You ain’t from around here, are you?”
“Are you? Just call me ‘Kiki.’”
“Zappers would love that name, they way they repeat everything.”
“She’s nice,” Stephen said. “She takes care of us.”
“That makes her an angel in my book.” DeVontay’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior and he could make out the big pens with open doors. Hay was strewn around on the floors and pushed into piles, with blankets spread on top of it. An older woman, maybe fifty, sat cross-legged on one with three toddlers sleeping around her. A feeding trough had been turned upside down to serve as a makeshift table, and plastic wrappers and Styrofoam containers littered the dusty floor around it. A plastic jug of water hung from a wire on one wall.
“This is the dining hall,” Kiki said. “No need to put on airs, we’re casual here.”
“Good to know,” DeVontay said.
“That’s Carole McLaughlin, totally Irish,” Kiki said, and the blue-eyed older woman gave a wave. Despite the trying conditions, she appeared tireless and young at heart. “You can meet all the kids later. It may take a few days for you to get everybody’s names straight.”
“I ain’t staying here a few days,” DeVontay said.
“That’s what the last guy said, too.” Kiki carried the lantern down the concourse to reveal other pens. The next resembled the first, except a young woman barely out of her teens waited by the opening. She was clad only in a bra and panties. DeVontay figured false modesty was the first thing to go when you were imprisoned a
nd there were no men around.
“Your turn?” the woman said. She smelled of liquor.
“He’s not one of them,” Kiki said. “Not yet.”
She rolled her eyes up and down his body. “Too bad.” She turned and sauntered into the darkness and whatever comforts she may have had stowed away there.
“What’s that all about?” DeVontay asked Kiki, keeping his voice down so Stephen and James couldn’t hear.
“Guess.” She moved on to illuminate another pen. Two children slept on a bare mattress, curled against one another for warmth. They were covered with only a thin blanket despite the chill in the big unheated building. More kids slept on another mattress nearby.
“They’re keeping you guys here like animals,” DeVontay said. “Why?”
“You’ll have to ask Rooster, but I’ve got a good idea. You’re the third to come along. The first man refused to play their game, and they took him away.”
“Took him away?”
“I can’t say for sure what happened, but I heard a single gunshot.”
DeVontay wished Stephen hadn’t heard that. Bad enough to watch the world go to hell and mutant Zappers tear people from limb to limb, but to see humans reveal their worst natures when they should be working together—
He dug in his pocket and pulled out a couple of the Slim Jims he’d pillaged from the store. They were still dry inside their wrappers, or at least wet with only pork grease. “Stephen, why don’t you and James go round me up something to eat? I’ll be up front in a minute.”
“Don’t go back there,” Stephen said, staring bug-eyed at the darkness behind Kiki.
“I promise I won’t leave the light,” he said, giving the boys the Slim Jims.
“Race you!” James said, grabbing his treat and sprinting down the midway. Stephen bolted after him, momentarily just a boy again instead of a witness to the world’s horrible ending. After they were out of sight, DeVontay said to Kiki, “Look, I don’t know why they’re holding you guys prisoner, but we’re getting out of here. One way or another.”
“Don’t you think we haven’t tried? The second guy they put in here jumped them when they brought us dinner. They beat him to a pulp and we didn’t eat for two days.”
After (Book 3): Milepost 291 Page 11
