After (Book 3): Milepost 291

by Nicholson, Scott

  She shook him off with surprising strength and assaulted the door again. It rattled and a large shard of glass fell free. Campbell was afraid she’d cut herself to pieces and shatter her bones if she continued slamming against the door.

  He called her name but she was oblivious. He could see her eyes reflected in the window, six billion stars winking and dying over and over again.

  I can let her destroy herself or let her go.

  He wedged his hand between her and the wood and grabbed the door handle. He twisted and yanked it backward, allowing fresh, cold air to pour in. But Rachel hurled herself again and the door slammed shut, the noise reverberating through the house. As she drew back once more, he tried again and this time managed to swing the door open while simultaneously lowering his shoulder and driving it into Rachel’s abdomen.

  She was knocked off-balance but kept her feet, bumping into him so hard that he dropped to his knees. She shoved him aside and exited the house, fleeing into the night.

  “Rachel!” he called after her, clasping his injured arm against his chest.

  He heard her repeat “Rachel Rachel Rachel,” the sounds growing fainter with each second as she vanished into the forest.

  Maybe her radiant eyes imparted night vision, but Campbell had no such characteristic. However, if he let her go now, he’d never see her again. And this might be his only chance to discover what strange force drew her into the night.

  If I want to learn what makes Zapheads tick, I’d better roll with it.

  He didn’t delude himself that he would be able to make any use of the knowledge. He didn’t anticipate sharing it with anyone. Even if he continued on to Milepost 291, the Zapheads were likely to keep changing as they had since the solar storms struck two months ago.

  And what if he was one of the last survivors? What good would it do him to just keep living until his time ran out?

  He grabbed the backpack he and Rachel had jammed with food and supplies, took a last look around the house and the warming glow of the fireplace, and then headed outside. The night wasn’t fully dark, since the moonlight painted a chrome swathe overhead.

  A gap in the trees revealed mist in the valley below, like a thick, gray ocean that almost seemed solid enough to walk across. A mile or so away, a frothy red and orange swirl boiled underneath the fog, suggesting a distant fire.

  Are the Zapheads destroying buildings again, like they did in the cities?

  He moved as fast as he could in the direction Rachel had gone, adjusting the pack so the straps didn’t dig into his shoulders. Every thirty seconds, he would call Rachel’s name, and she would echo it. He tracked her using a clumsy game of “Marco Polo,” only instead of swimming in water, he clawed his way through the forest.

  Rachel slowed enough for him to track her by her movements. She emerged from the forest onto a moonlit gravel road, heading downhill into the valley. He occasionally called to her, but she didn’t change pace or direction. A faint haze in the east suggested a hidden sun that would soon dawn on a world it had forever altered.

  Campbell struggled to keep Rachel in sight. She walked with relentless precision, her feet skating over the gravel and mud and weeds as if powered by something outside her body. They passed more houses along the way, but Rachel took no notice of them, and Campbell only had the opportunity to give them cursory glances. No sign of life showed itself, and Campbell was sure he was the last soul in a Zaphead world.

  But he hadn’t yet given up hope on Rachel. Perhaps this was a phase and she would soon burn through it like a fever destroying a virus, and he planned to be there when she returned to her senses. He could only imagine her gratitude toward him—that kind of loyalty was rare enough in Before, and nearly unfathomable in After, where humans practiced survival of the fittest even as they surrendered the top of the evolutionary chain.

  The terrain leveled out somewhat and the mist burned away under the dawn, and they came to a paved road that ran along a river. The water was silver and green in the morning light, frothing where it tumbled over stones. The trees thinned as the land gave way to open pasture and meadow, farms and houses lining the waterway, vehicles stalled in the road or axle-deep in ditches, seat-belted corpses rotting inside them.

  Invigorated with the false hope of a new day, Campbell burst into a jog until he caught up with Rachel. He spoke to her but she stared past him with wildly glittering eyes, focused on something outside his perception.

  And then he saw the line of figures trailing out of the trees a few hundred yards down the road.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The screams rang in DeVontay’s head hours after the horrible sounds were swallowed by the mist.

  So much for my goddamned magic eye. Never saw that coming.

  The horrors had merged into one slow-motion nightmare: the children lying bloody and still on the ground, Angelique shooting Kiki in the head, Zapheads swarming out of the darkness on all sides as Rooster’s men desperately tried to fight them off.

  DeVontay broke from his paralysis long enough to grab Stephen, yank him to the ground, and cover him until the bullets stopped flying. Angelique shot two Zapheads at point-blank range and then she was buried under a squirming army of them, kicking and cussing and finally squealing. The Zapheads imitated her words until her shrieks gave way to the nasty wet sounds of violence. DeVontay could have sworn her tendons and bones popped as they ripped at her body.

  He covered Stephen’s mouth so the boy wouldn’t cry out. He hoped the Zapheads were too busy with their hostile prey to notice the two of them, but he couldn’t count on the fog to conceal them all night. So he whispered in Stephen’s ear, instructing him to crawl slowly toward the woods. “Whatever you do, don’t look up, and don’t look at any of the dead people.”

  And so they had wriggled through the carnage around them, at one point crossing over the body of a young girl who lay on her belly, a large red hole in the back of her white sweater. Stephen whimpered and went rigid, but DeVontay coaxed him forward until the violence was lost in the fog and darkness behind them. But they didn’t move fast enough to escape the sounds and smells.

  They reached the trees and DeVontay wanted nothing more than to break into a crazed run. But he could hear footsteps churning the damp leaves of the forest floor and realized more Zapheads had responded to the sound of gunfire, pilgrims trudging the sacred path to a temple of gore.

  The best—and worst—thing to do was to wait in hiding, pressed low in the filthy weeds and rotted logs and fragrant evergreens. Stephen appeared to be in shock, and DeVontay whispered to him to keep him calm. But the words of encouragement were so hollow he almost laughed out loud. The boy had witnessed the true condition of the world, and no words would ever erase the wide-eyed confusion of the children as they were gunned down.

  “My fault,” Stephen whispered.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I ran back to them. I shoulda—“

  “No, Little Man. If you feel guilty, then I have to feel guilty. Because I brought Rooster to the group. He promised to take care of you all.”

  And I guess he did, in his way.

  “Do you think anybody got away?” Stephen whispered, with a heartbreaking hint of hope.

  DeVontay fed the lie for both of them. “Maybe. James ran pretty fast, and I couldn’t see everything.”

  “How long do we wait here?”

  “Until they’re done.”

  The actual slaughter and subsequent battle had lasted maybe three minutes, but the Zapheads continued to march through the trees. At one point, with dawn approaching, DeVontay risked lifting his head to look out at the meadow. Figures moved in the cold steam of morning, like field medics gathering the casualties of war after an assault.

  He saw bodies lifted and carried away, the Zapheads that had gleefully shouted “Die” now mute in mock solemnity. Or maybe the Zapheads had no sound to trigger them and thus derived no inspiration from the dead all around them. Most disturbing, several of th
e Zapheads were children themselves, in soiled and tattered clothes.

  They carried the bodies downhill, past the farmhouse and across the road. As the mist evaporated under the yellow glare of dawn, DeVontay could see a mile’s worth of valley rolling up to mountain ridges on all sides, the river cutting through its heart like a twisted steel knife. Pastoral farms were scattered across the pastures and glades, fence lines dotted with old apple trees and towering red oaks, brown rectangles of gardens falling fallow with the first breaths of winter.

  The beauty and peace of the landscape stood in stark contrast to the nightmarish shapes that marched across it. Dozens of Zapheads conveyed their grisly cargo across a bridge, forming a long parade that would march across DeVontay’s sleep for as long as he lived.

  He recognized the clothing of some of the children, their frailer bodies supported by only two or three Zapheads each. But some of the dead were clearly Zapheads, victims of Rooster’s bullets who were carried with the same seeming indifference. His heart squeezed in anguish when he recognized Kiki borne aloft on the shoulders of four Zapheads, her head lolling and her long black hair waving gently back and forth.

  “DeVontay!” Stephen called, louder than he should have.

  One of the Zapheads turned and looked toward the woods.

  DeVontay eased back into the foliage. The Zaphead took two steps toward him and then hesitated. It was a male, wearing the remains of a priest’s dark jacket and Roman collar, hair white and tufted, leather shoes scuffed. The face was wrinkled and splotchy, but the eyes didn’t exhibit the characteristic sparks of a Zaphead. It took DeVontay a moment to realize the priest must have been blind, the milky orbs containing no pupils.

  But he was convinced the Zapheads had preternatural senses that allowed them to detect sound and motion at great distances, as well as a subtler perception that extended into the psychic. The professor had suggested they interpreted pulse rate, skin temperature, and adrenaline levels to determine threats and believed training them into pacifism was the best chance for the human race. But this priest had blood on his clothes and the professor’s disciples had turned on him like a pack of rabid Judases, so DeVontay took no chances.

  He shushed Stephen and crawled backward, maintaining surveillance of the meadow while listening for footsteps in the forest. Only a few bodies remained, and a group of Zapheads lifted one of them. An orange baseball cap tumbled free and sat upturned in the dew-soaked weeds.

  When he returned to Stephen, he whispered, “We’re leaving now.”

  “Won’t they see us?” the boy said, still pale and shaken from the massacre.

  “They don’t have to see us to find us. But you have to be calm, okay?”

  Stephen nodded, not really listening.

  “And be brave.” DeVontay gripped the boy’s shoulder and met his eyes. “You can do it, Little Man.”

  They crawled for maybe fifty yards, moving away from the meadow. DeVontay didn’t want to head back toward the compound, which still spewed a plume of oily smoke, but he also didn’t want to veer too far away from the road. From his memory of the map, the road and the river both pointed toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Milepost 291 offered the last vestige of sanctuary and hope.

  Once they’d left the Zapheads behind, they rose to their feet and crept silently along, although their passage disturbed birds that burst from the treetops in sudden flurries of cries and flapping wings. One of them flew directly into a tree trunk and fell dead. DeVontay wondered how many of the animals had been altered by the solar storms and whether their behaviors had been forever changed.

  “I see some people,” Stephen said.

  DeVontay realized his mind had been wandering, thinking about the larger world rather than the immediate problem before him. Such foolishness would get them both killed.

  Through the trees, he could see the black, crumbling road and the foaming rapids of the river, as well as several stalled vehicles that looked like abandoned toys on a playground. Then he saw them, two figures on the asphalt, their shadows trailing behind them as they walked into the morning sun.

  “Looks like more Zapheads,” DeVontay said. “Heading toward the others.”

  “Then what are they doing alone? All the other Zapheads are together.”

  “Maybe they’re late to the party.”

  “But that one with the backpack doesn’t walk like a Zaphead. And why would a Zaphead carry a backpack, anyway?”

  Good question. DeVontay wished he had a pair of binoculars. One appeared to be female, the other male, and their clothes were in too good of a condition to have been worn for two months.

  Then the male, who tugged at the Zaphead as if to turn her around, lifted his head and DeVontay saw the flash of his eyeglasses. No Zaphead could have kept a pair of glasses for that long. What would a survivor being doing with a Zaphead?

  “We need to help them,” Stephen said, with anxious urgency, grabbing DeVontay’s hand.

  “It didn’t work out so well the last time we tried to help.”

  Stephen squeezed his hand as hard as his slender fingers could, and he turned his tear-soaked face to DeVontay’s. “You told me to be brave. Don’t you have to be brave, too?”

  One day I’ll learn to keep my damn mouth shut. Probably the day the Zaps are hauling me off to their graveyard paradise.

  “Okay, we’ll check it out, but stay close to me, right?”

  Stephen nodded and they headed to the edge of the forest. The adjoining stretch of pasture contained a herd of cattle and several horses, which looked sleek in the sun and had been turned out with bridles and reins, as if their riders were merely taking a break and had gotten fried before they could remove the harnessing. Life had changed little for the animals, and may have improved vastly, since their human owners had vanished.

  “If they’re not Zapheads, what are they doing out in the open?” Stephen asked.

  “Good question. Maybe we’ll ask them.”

  They were close enough to call out to them, and DeVontay could hear the man’s voice, although he couldn’t make out the words. The syntax was in full sentences, though, unlike the clipped repetition of the Zapheads.

  “He’s a human,” Stephen said, almost bolting across the pasture in his excitement.

  “Sounds like it. Not sure about the other one.” DeVontay was relieved to see the man carried no weapon. The last thing he wanted was to get shot by someone he was trying to help. But if they kept walking, they would soon be discovered by the Zapheads.

  “That woman…” Stephen said.

  “She’s not saying anything.” DeVontay believed she was a Zaphead because of her behavior, but her appearance didn’t match. Had the man changed her clothes, maybe kept her as a pet of some kind? As a sex slave or walking Barbie doll?

  No, she would have torn him to shreds. Zapheads would likely respond to sexual aggression in the same way they would other physical aggression.

  “It’s Rachel!” Stephen said.

  Her long, brown hair, too clean for a Doomsday world. Same build. The clothes didn’t match what she’d been wearing two weeks ago, but she would have had many opportunities to change.

  “Can’t be,” he said, although he knew Stephen was right. His heart tugged in two directions at once: overjoyed to see her, but sickened that she had turned.

  But how HAD she turned? The Zap wasn’t contagious, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  Stephen grinned. “She’s just walking funny because of her hurt leg. The dog bite I told you about.”

  Before DeVontay could stop him, Stephen slid under the barbed wire fence and darted across the pasture. The cows and horses turned to watch him, and DeVontay hoped those animals were the only witnesses.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Rachel heard the boy before she saw him.

  He was running across a pasture toward them, waving his arm and shouting “Rachel! Rachel!”

  She didn’t understand the word but was compelled to respond
to its sound, and she repeated it softly. The boy’s movement captured her attention, his footfalls almost like thunder, grass swishing around his ankles as loud as crashing tidal waves. She became agitated.

  A threat.

  “Damn,” said the man beside her, the one who’d been following her forever. “It’s your friend. The boy you were looking for.”

  Rachel didn’t comprehend the sentence, but then the man also repeated the “Rachel, Rachel, Rachel” until it filled her head and drove out the distant signal that pulsed like a beacon. She was supposed to go somewhere, but now she couldn’t remember, and she was confused.

  “Rachel?” she said.

  “Yes,” the man with her said, and she wished she’d destroyed him. Because now her head hurt and her serenity was shattered, and the single purpose had been disrupted. She couldn’t articulate these thoughts, but the sensation was of being yanked back from a sheer cliff, hanging out over dizzying heights with the wind rushing across her face and excoriating her ears.

  But something about the boy tugged at her…a memory of him running toward her in that same fashion, only waving a sheaf of colorful papers in the air rather than his hand.

  “Rachel, it’s me!” he said.

  The word came to her, interrupting the echolalia of her own name: Stephen.

  She didn’t know what the new word meant, but she involuntarily moved toward him, the sun stinging her eyes, the beacon signal fading.

  Then the boy was close enough that she could see his face, round and red-cheeked, with dark brown, uneven bangs and a missing tooth. “Stephen?”

  “Careful,” the man with her said, but Stephen didn’t hesitate. He scrambled through the fence onto the road and hugged her so hard she almost fell over.

  After a moment, she returned the hug. His smell was familiar, and her serenity returned, but it was different than before, less focused and more resplendent with the smell of the river and the grass and the air and herds of clouds sliding across the blue curves of the sky’s high domed cathedral.