After (Book 3): Milepost 291

by Nicholson, Scott

  Campbell didn’t flinch from her hostility. “I have my reasons for asking, Rachel.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just don’t expect me to solve your loneliness for you.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I don’t have time for games. Come on, let’s see if there’s anything here we can use.”

  She was surprised at her hostility. She prided herself on controlling her emotions—as a counselor, she’d cultivated an even temperament. She glanced guiltily at him but he didn’t seem much affected by her criticism.

  They found a well-stocked kitchen, although they didn’t bother opening the fridge. The cupboards held canned vegetables, dried grains, spaghetti noodles, and three vacuum-sealed quarts of milk, and the pantry yielded some raisins and dried apricots as well as bottles of apple juice. It was more food than they could carry and plenty enough to get them to Milepost 291.

  In the hall closet, they found a backpack in which Rachel piled the food after Campbell slung the straps over his shoulders. They rifled through coats, shoes, golf clubs, and plastic bins full of knit caps and gloves. Apparently a family had lived here, because toys were scattered among the recreational gear and clothes.

  “We’ll need this winter gear before long,” Campbell said, pulling a set of skis from the collection.

  Rachel waved the ski pole like a fencing sword. “This might be more useful.”

  Campbell tried on a worn leather jacket that was a little loose in the shoulders but otherwise comfortable. He added a black fedora taken from the top shelf and pushed his glasses up his nose. “How do you like the new me?”

  “You look like a Starbucks barista, which should really boost your career prospects in After.” Rachel appropriated a sporty cotton jacket and found a pair of blue sneakers that looked only a size too large for her feet. “I’ll be checking the bedroom for socks. And don’t even think about those cowboy boots. You couldn’t outrun a turtle in those.”

  “Yeah, they’d really show those coffee stains, too.”

  That drew a smile from Rachel. She didn’t want to be so critical of him, but he seemed so crude and ungainly, so unrefined. So flawed.

  What do you expect? He’s been crapping in the woods for two months. Just like you.

  The door to the master bedroom was open, the queen-sized bed neatly made. Rachel checked a dresser drawer and found jewelry, several hundred dollars in folded cash, and an iPhone, all of which she ignored. The drawer below it held socks and she selected a thick wool pair. She sat on the bed to put them over her battered feet.

  Campbell appeared in the doorway. “Find any guns?”

  “Nothing. Must have been liberals.”

  “Or else they took their guns with them.”

  Rachel flopped back on the bed. “God, after sleeping on the ground for weeks, this feels so nice.”

  Campbell stepped into the room. She looked up sharply. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “I want to show you something.” He went into the master bathroom and yanked apart the curtains, letting light fill the space.

  She followed. “Checking the medicine cabinet for drugs?”

  “Look in the mirror.”

  She did. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and small red scratches stretched across her forehead. Her hair was in wild, dark tangles. She grimaced at her teeth. They were a little yellowish. “Yeah, I could do with a makeover.”

  “Your eyes,” he said.

  She looked at them. They looked okay to her, maybe a little bloodshot. “What?”

  “Those shimmering little flecks. Like a Zaphead.”

  No. It’s just the light playing tricks.

  “When they healed you, something happened. You changed.”

  “Shut up.”

  “That’s why I keep asking if you’re okay.”

  She turned to flee the room but he caught her and held her, forcing her back toward the mirror. She kicked him and caught him in the ribs with a solid elbow, but he swiveled so she faced her reflection.

  My eyes. Dear God, what happened to my eyes?

  She started crying, and then wondered if Zapheads could cry. And then wondered if Zapheads could be aware of being a Zaphead. Campbell held her while she shook with sobs.

  “You’ll be okay,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

  Better than okay, she told herself. A million times better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The slaughterhouse doors squealed open sometime after sunrise, although DeVontay had no idea of the time.

  He’d slept poorly on a bundle of feed sacks stuffed with straw, the whimpers and cries of the children waking him repeatedly. Kiki must have spent most of the night tending and comforting them. Several times DeVontay decided he should get up and help her, but in the end he surrendered to exhaustion instead of guilt.

  But when the sunlight poured through and men shouted in rough voices, he awoke with a start to find Stephen curled against his side. He sat up, blinking, and their words came through the haze of sleep.

  “Boy, get up. Boss wants to see you.”

  “I’m not a boy,” DeVontay said, staring up into the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. It was held by one of the men who had escorted him to the compound, Orange Cap.

  The man kicked his feet. “Move.”

  DeVontay stood and peered into the dusty depths of the shed. A few children came staggering and squinting to the edge of the light. He didn’t see Kiki.

  Orange Cap waved the shotgun to motion him outside. Stephen scrambled up beside him and took his hand, but Orange Cap tugged him from DeVontay’s grip.

  “It’s okay,” DeVontay said, smiling at the boy. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “What if they hurt you?”

  “If the Zapheads couldn’t do it, I don’t think these guys can finish the job. Same goes for you. You’re tough, and don’t you forget it, Little Man.”

  Stephen didn’t smile but his face relaxed in relief. “Okay,” he whispered.

  “Aw, ain’t that touching?” said the man with the shotgun. The other guard, who’d waited by the door, was also armed, wielding a wicked-looking assault rifle.

  As DeVontay entered the blinding sunshine, Orange Cap said, “So how was Angelique?”

  “I guess she was okay, considering I don’t know who that is.”

  “The young one. Unless you went for the old bitch. I had that, it’s like chewing rawhide.”

  “Maybe he went for Island Girl,” said the other guard, spitting a thick brown stream of tobacco juice. “Gotta love them brown coconuts.”

  “Shit,” said Orange Cap. “Ain’t nobody hit that yet. I got a feeling it hits back.”

  DeVontay finally realized they were talking about sex, and he wondered if the slaughterhouse was run like some kind of brothel crossed with an orphanage.

  The community seemed larger and busier than he’d noticed the day before, and the activity carried an undercurrent of anxiety and tension. A teenager groomed three horses that were tethered to a car bumper. A handful of men checked weapons piled in the back of a pickup truck. From somewhere came the smell of frying bacon and DeVontay wondered whether it was vacuum-sealed meat from a store or if the group had slaughtered a pig.

  A man walked out of a shed, a police belt around his waist and a sidearm on his hip. He had wild dark hair, a faded rose tattoo on his neck, and a creased expression, like a rock-n-roller gone to seed. In his right hand, he gripped a carved walking stick. He tossed a cigarette to the ground and said to DeVontay, “So who were you with?”

  DeVontay didn’t understand the question. “You must be Rooster.”

  “Talk to me or I’ll pluck out that glass eye and shove it where you can see your own intestines.”

  “You mean who was I with last night?” he answered.

  “No, I meant your posse. Your tribe.”

  “I’m traveling alone.”

  “Nobody makes it on their own anymore. You would have been dead in the first week, dumb as
you look.”

  That drew a laugh from DeVontay’s escorts. DeVontay said, “I can take care of myself.”

  “Well, I hope so, because we don’t carry any deadweight around here. If you can’t contribute, then you only have two options. Exile or Zaphead bait.”

  “I’ll be happy to go.” He jerked his head toward the slaughterhouse. “Let the boy come with me.”

  Rooster squinted and twisted his jaw. “I thought you traveled alone.”

  “I do…but he’s no good to you. One more mouth to feed.”

  “You must be DeVontay. He kept talking about you. Said you were going to show up soon and kick our asses. Then he said you were headed on to Milepost 291. You sure are a hero to him.”

  Orange Cap shoved DeVontay. “No wonder you didn’t nail the women. You’re a pervert.”

  DeVontay clenched his fists but realized a confrontation wouldn’t end well. He didn’t think the men would shoot him. However, a beating would lower his chances of escape.

  “He was also talking about a ‘Rachel,’” Rooster said. “That your sweetheart?”

  “Man, he’s such a pervert that he does them two at a time,” said the other guard, which drew a snicker from Orange Cap.

  “I met them on the road, but we got separated,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in two weeks.”

  “What about Franklin Wheeler? You ever heard of him?”

  “I heard of him, but that’s about it.”

  Rooster nodded. “That glass eye is fucking with me, but your good eye says you’re telling the truth. I like to keep up with the people in my territory.”

  “I didn’t know this was yours,” DeVontay said. “Did you get elected or something?”

  “I worked here,” Rooster said, waving the walking stick in an arc to indicate the compound. “Lots of cattle, holding pens, storage sheds, feed silos. We had to put up chain-link fences because the hippies would come in with video cameras and post on the Internet about how we were inhumane to the cattle. Same fucking hippies that probably stopped at McDonald’s on their way home. Too bad their cameras didn’t work when the Big Zap went down, or they would have seen plenty of inhumane treatment.

  “I was one of the lucky ones. Only a few of the other workers were around that day. They all died except one, and I took him down pretty fast with a sledgehammer. After I figured out what was what, I saw this was the perfect place to ride it out. When I made some forays into Stonewall, I found other survivors, and they joined up. We’ve got thirty-one able-bodied men now.”

  “And only three women?”

  Rooster shrugged. “‘Survival of the fittest’ is a bitch.”

  “But you’re keeping kids prisoner, too.”

  “I like to think of it as ‘protective custody.’ If we’re going to rebuild this world, we’re eventually going to need a new generation.”

  “That’s why we need breeders,” Orange Cap said.

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” DeVontay challenged. “Can’t get it up?”

  That drew another hard shove from Orange Cap, but Rooster waved him off. “A warrior needs to save his strength and keep his mind focused. We’ve got plenty of enemies that require our energy.”

  “Guess that means I’m not a warrior?”

  “That depends. Is your loyalty with us or with the U.S. government?”

  DeVontay looked around at the compound, where a man was ladling out some type of porridge onto ceramic plates set along the back of a flatbed truck. “I don’t see any government.”

  “You’re not looking hard enough. They’re all over the place. One bunch of them, we already erased. A group that came up from the south.” Rooster pointed to a flapping tunic that was ripped and rippled with rusty blotches, fluttering gently from the exhaust pipe of a tractor. DeVontay noted the captain’s bars on the shoulders and wondered if it was the same officer who had captured him in Taylorsville.

  Getting captured is turning into a real bad habit of mine.

  “But there’s another platoon holed up near the Blue Ridge Parkway, camped on those slopes,” Rooster said. “They’re well-armed and they’ve been dipping down here into the valley more and more. Three days ago, they killed a couple of our men.”

  “Maybe they mistook you for Zapheads,” DeVontay offered.

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re a threat and they need to be cleaned out. Just like Wheeler. I heard rumors he set up a compound on the ridge. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s squirreled away enough explosives to blow us all to hell and gone.”

  “I’d say the Zapheads are a bigger threat. They’re moving in packs now.”

  “Sure, but they’re slow, not as aggressive as they were.” Rooster lit another cigarette. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here. We haven’t lost anybody to Zappers in nearly a month.”

  “And that was only Sam Duggers,” Orange Cap said. “No big loss.”

  “Lots of Zapheads in Stonewall,” DeVontay said. “They nearly got me.”

  “We didn’t see any,” Orange Cap said. “None of our scouts have, either.”

  “None around,” Rooster said. “The army is our biggest threat. But one of our men saw an old man who fits Wheeler’s description. Crotchety old asshole with a beard like a possum. He was with three other people. He’s invading our turf, too.”

  Shouts came from the main gate, and a man on horseback thundered into the compound. The horse galloped up to Rooster and the man swung out of the saddle before the animal had come to a compete stop. The rider was dusty and haggard, a rifle slung over his shoulder that nearly slid off as he regained his balance.

  “Zaps,” the man gasped. “Lots of them. Heading this way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Not looking good,” Franklin said, peering over the edge of the boulder on which he was laying.

  He passed the binoculars to Jorge. They’d moved into the forest to avoid the open road, hoping to identify the source of the car fire. Black oily smoke still threaded into the sky, but it had thinned and the breeze carried the stink to the east. Franklin had seen three men in fatigues—Sarge’s soldiers, probably—cross the road beyond them, but he was more concerned about the silent figures trickling through the forest.

  “What are Zaps doing here?” Robertson asked.

  “Must have smelled the fire or heard the gunshots,” Franklin said. “They’re drawn to activity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the soldiers lured them here.”

  “I can’t believe there’s so many of them,” Robertson said. “We hardly ever saw any before the troops rolled through. Two months of nothing, and now they’re everywhere.”

  “Maybe there are more of them than anyone knew,” Jorge said.

  “Or nobody’s left in the cities for them to kill,” Franklin said.

  “Thanks, Mr. Optimistic,” Shay said, sitting on a rock with an oversize jacket draped around her shoulders.

  “They’re not wandering around aimlessly,” Franklin said. “It’s like they’re searching for something.”

  From the rocky overhang, Franklin counted at least a dozen Zapheads in the woods below them. They were unkempt, some of them half-naked, with tangled, greasy hair. They walked with a slight jerking motion between the trees, but they didn’t stagger. They were all headed in the same direction, toward the road and the burning cars, like penitents on a pilgrimage bound for some sacred shrine.

  “So what do we do?” Robertson asked.

  “Lay those guns on the ground, for one thing,” came a voice above them.

  Franklin rolled onto his back and squinted against the sun. The silhouetted figure included the long barrel of a rifle. Another man stepped from behind a tree, his weapon leveled, and Franklin recognized them as the other two soldiers from their scouting mission.

  “We thought you guys were dead,” Franklin said, with what he hoped was a tone of earnestness. His semiautomatic was laying on the rock beside him, and he just wasn’t skilled enough to sweep it up and cut them down like a mo
vie hero. “We went looking for you.”

  “Where are Jimbo and Hayes?” the silhouette asked. “The guys who were with you?”

  “We…we got separated,” Franklin said.

  “Then how did you end up with their rifles?”

  Franklin couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer to that one. Jorge said, “They were killed by Zapheads.”

  “Is that so?” said the second soldier, edging forward and kicking Jorge’s rifle away from him. Then he swung his barrel toward Robertson. “Don’t even think about going for that shotgun.”

  The silhouette emerged from the sun’s backlighting and scowled down at Franklin. “I’d kill you right here but Sarge is going to want his pound of flesh, and I’m not dragging your fat ass back up the mountain.”

  “What about the other two?” the second soldier asked his companion. “Girl’s pretty cute.”

  “Leave ‘em for the Zaps. She wouldn’t last five minutes back at the bunker. Those assholes would tear her into a hundred pieces.”

  Shay had transformed into the same shell-shocked condition she’d been in when Franklin had first encountered her. Robertson twitched restlessly but he made no move for his weapon. Franklin stood on weary legs. He was tired of all this bullshit. He wouldn’t mind if they just shot him now and saved him the trouble of getting tortured by Sarge.

  Jorge, however, gave no sign of fear or panic. “Zapheads are all around us,” he said in a low voice. “If you shoot, they’ll swarm you.”

  “We’ve got enough bullets for all of you,” the second soldier said. “Saves us the trouble of hunting them down.”

  He leaned over to scoop up Robertson’s shotgun. Three roaring explosions echoed off the stones and tree trunks and smoke rose from the front of Shay’s jacket. Then her hand emerged from the inner folds, brandishing the pistol.

  The second soldier cried out and tumbled off the rock ledge, his weapon clattering down the slope. The first soldier grunted in pain, a raw red breach in the flesh of his shoulder. But he managed to raise his semiautomatic and squeeze the trigger, stitching a line of bullets in front of him.