by J. Thorn
“You’re a real gentleman.”
“I told you, I ain’t no gentleman. Just a man. Now get in there and just scream if you see any Zapheads.”
She stared into his face, which was getting harder to see as night encroached. His glass eye was lost in shadow, but his real one burned with impatience. She pushed her backpack through the opening, and switched on her flashlight, keeping the beam directed on the lobby floor.
Rachel stepped inside, immediately hit by the corrupt air of the three-story mausoleum. She played the flashlight beam over the figure in the chair and wished she hadn’t. She had been a maid with a Spanish complexion and dark hair knotted into a bun, perhaps taking a final break without realizing her shift was about to be punched out by the Big Time Clock in the Sky. Beside her was a cart filled with folded towels, linens, and cleaning supplies.
“Grab this,” DeVontay said, shoving his own backpack through the opening. She had to wiggle it to get it through, but was uneasy about turning her back on the dark lobby. Once she got it through, DeVontay followed, and she drew comfort from the pistol he now pointed before him into the darkness.
“Smell that?” she said.
He took her flashlight and walked over to the maid’s cart, ignoring the body. He came back with a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer. He squirted some on his fingers and rubbed the goo above his upper lip, into the faint stubble of his mustache. He gave an exaggerated sniff and passed her the bottle.
She understood and aped his actions. The perfumed aroma immediately filled her nostrils and masked the smell of death.
“You’re pretty resourceful,” she said.
“Saw it on a TV show,” he said.
“Wow.”
“Don’t sound so surprised. We got TV in Philly, too. Before it fried out, I mean.”
Outside, a faint dusting of stars stuck to the deep ceiling of the sky, the rippling green bands of aurora borealis painting the darkness.
“Let’s get a room,” she said.
“I could make a joke here, but it’s the end of the world,” he said. He crossed the lobby to the front desk, flicking the flashlight down each wing to make sure they were empty. He went behind the desk and into the open office while Rachel shouldered her backpack and waited. A moment later, he came out holding up a key ring.
“Key cards won’t work, but one of these gotta be the master key,” he said.
“Hurry. I’m getting the creeps out here.”
“Let’s take the first one we come to,” he said. “The nicest rooms are usually closest to the front desk. Might even get a Jacuzzi, for all the good it will do us.”
“Pass the apocalypse in pampered luxury,” she said. “I can see the television commercial already.”
“Except the part where there ain’t no TV anymore.” He gave her the flashlight and she illuminated the hallway so he could try the first door.
“What if there’s somebody in it?” She meant “somebody dead” but she didn’t have to say it.
He raised his hand to knock, and then grinned sheepishly at her, squinting against the light. The eyelid covering his glass eye didn’t fully close. “We can stand out here all night if you like.”
She peered past him down the hall, into the blackness beyond the flashlight’s reach. “You hear that?”
He turned toward the end of the hall, where a scuffling noise echoed down the concrete stairwell. “Hear what?”
“That,” she whispered.
“Probably just the air conditioning,” he said.
“Power’s off, remember?”
DeVontay didn’t say anything, but his face said, “Oh, yeah,” and he selected one of the keys on the ring and tried to jam it in the door lock. It slid in halfway and stuck. He jiggled it three times before he was able to yank it free. The noise was louder now, and clearly sounded like feet shuffling on concrete steps.
“What if it’s one of us?” Rachel whispered.
DeVontay pushed a different key into the lock, but it didn’t even penetrate. His hands were shaking, causing the keys to jingle.
“Give me the gun, you can go faster,” she whispered.
“You know how to shoot?” he whispered back, shoving a fourth key toward the slot.
“No, but I’ll feel safer,” she whispered.
Before he could answer, the key slid in and he turned it with a loud click. He depressed the door handle as Rachel swerved the beam down the hall. A bulky shape filled the opening of the stairwell, moving toward them.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Rachel implored DeVontay, pounding on his back. “He’s coming.”
DeVontay swung the door open, pointing the gun down the hall as she pushed past him into the room. The air was stale but didn’t smell of corpses.
Thank you, God, for small blessings.
“Who are you?” DeVontay yelled down the hall, but he waited only one second before stepping inside and slamming the door closed, quickly throwing the deadbolt in place.
“You know how to shoot?” Rachel mocked, aiming the flashlight at the pistol by his side.
“Smartass. I wasn’t the one squealing”—he raised his voice to a thin falsetto—“Ooooh, help, help.”
“Shush,” she said. “Maybe he won’t figure out which room we’re in.”
They heard him banging on doors, coming closer. Rachel didn’t know how smart Zapheads were, but in her observation, they seemed to have varying degrees of cunning. Perhaps the solar flares had short-circuited different people’s brains in varying degrees. Most died, some fried, and a few lucky souls were left to sort out the mess.
DeVontay drew back from the door, joining her in the middle of the room. She flicked the light around to make sure the room was empty. It was a suite, with a little kitchenette and a Jacuzzi. DeVontay had gotten lucky after all.
Then the Zaphead was pounding on the door, giving three hard blows with the bottoms of his fists. Rachel instinctively clutched DeVontay and switched off the flashlight, not wanting the beam to attract attention. She could hear DeVontay panting in the dark.
Then the Zaphead was off across the hall to the next door, repeating the pounding as he worked his way down the hall. Soon the banging was muffled, as if he had reached the far wing. Rachel exhaled, not realizing her lungs were burning with held breath and tension.
“Close one,” she said, flicking on the flashlight again.
“You got your Jacuzzi after all,” he said.
Without thinking, she turned the water tap, but nothing came out. “I haven’t had a bath in ages,” she said.
“You gonna be smelling worse than these corpses soon.”
“Well, just keep squirting that sanitizer up your nose and you’ll be fine.”
He chuckled, mostly with relief, and wiped sweat from his head. He plopped his backpack onto the bedside table and dug into it. He pulled out a few tins and cellophane bags of food, then a pack of white candles and a Bic. “Save your batteries,” he said, lighting a candle and jamming its base into the wrought-iron lamp.
He lit another, and then checked to make sure the curtains were drawn tight. “Guess we’re as safe here as anywhere,” he said.
“Would you have shot him?” she said. “If you had to?”
He turned, the candlelight soft on his face. He looked young, barely a teen. “Wouldn’t be the first.”
She couldn’t tell if he was just talking tough or trying to reassure her. She didn’t press. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to shoot. Even though they were Zapheads, they were still God’s creatures.
Do you really believe that, Rachel? Why can’t they be Satan’s army? Or are you one of those who only believe the convenient parts of the Bible?
She shuddered. “I’m exhausted,” she said.
“King-size bed.”
“Good.” She sprawled on one side, then curled into a ball with the pillow pulled to her stomach. “You can stay way over there.”
“I’m eating first,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”<
br />
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“Huh?”
“I left your Doritos in the lobby.”
CHAPTER SIX
Campbell slobbered over the pork and beans, which were heated in a tin can that had been resting in the embers. The fire was large and crackled with intense energy, and it could have been the primal fire, the first lightning strike that had forever changed the human race. It sent giant fingers of light stippling against the surrounding trees, creating a yellow wall against the black and unknown beyond.
There were four in the group. Donnie, a scrawny guy in a camouflage cap who’d challenged them when they’d entered the camp, had taken his turn at watch while shouldering a mean-looking automatic rifle. A woman named Pam was evidently asleep in one of the tents popped up in the clearing. The group must have settled there for some days, because of the clothesline strung between two trees and a stack of broken limbs piled nearby to feed the fire.
The man who’d stuck the gun in Campbell’s back was named Arnoff. He’d collected their guns after Donnie had demanded they drop them. Pete had been pissed at first, but now he was nursing a beer and gazing into the flames as if he were at a frat-house bonfire before the big homecoming football game.
Arnoff sat across the fire from Campbell, tenderly cleaning a disassembled rifle. “You boys made it all the way from Chapel Hill, huh?”
“We had bicycles,” Campbell said.
Arnoff nodded. “Yep. Saw you through the binocs.”
“That’s why we didn’t shoot you,” said the bald, thin-faced man with huge black spectacles that gave him the appearance of an insect. “We haven’t seen Zapheads exhibit such coordinated behavior.”
“I woulda shot you anyways,” Arnoff said. “Just for target practice. But the professor here said we need to gather as much info as we could.”
“He’s joking,” said the bald man, although Arnoff’s eyes held not the slightest hint of mirth.
“How long have you guys been together?” Campbell asked, eager to change the subject. His stomach wasn’t doing too well with the beans and he already felt bloated and gassy.
“I teach earth sciences at Wake Forest—I mean, I did teach, back when I had students,” the professor said, digging into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Absurdly, he still wore a tie, as if that one senseless symbol of civilization guaranteed that all the pieces would eventually fit back together. “My colleagues in the department were well aware of the approaching solar flares, which tend to come in cycles. Indeed, it was national news, but like most science stories, it was dumbed down for public consumption.”
“Yeah, we saw that on Yahoo!,” Pete said. “They were talking about the worst solar storm on record, sometime around the Civil War, but they said this one wouldn’t be that bad.”
Arnoffclacked a bullet into the chamber of his rifle. “They never get it straight. Goddamned media. Keep you so screwed you don’t know whether to sell your stocks or buy ammunition.”
“The 1859 solar flare, the Carrington Event, disrupted telegraph communications and burned some poles,” the professor said. “The aurora was spotted all over the country and as far south as Mexico.”
“Those freaky green and purple lights in the sky?” Pete asked. “That make you feel like you’re on a bad acid trip?”
“Yes, caused by charged particles. Other recent solar flares and sunspot events have caused power outages, but no one could have expected anything like this.”
“You mean Zapheads?” Campbell said.
“I mean, ‘all of it.’ Congress had ordered some research and contingency plans in the wake of massive solar disruptions, but that was mostly in the event of satellite problems and the like. Anyone presenting these types of doomsday scenarios would have been classified as Internet wackos and UFO conspiracy theorists.”
“I get the part where it knocked out power and electrical systems, even combustion engines,” Arnoff said. “Sorta like short circuiting the whole world at once. But I don’t understand what it did to people’s brains to turn them into Zapheads. And I sure as hell don’t understand why some of us are more or less still normal.”
“I doubt we’ll ever have those answers now,” the professor said. “Assuming the rest of the globe was affected like the United States, there’s no way to undertake the necessary research.”
Arnoff waved a hand. “Don’t get off on no lecture. Knowing won’t change the facts, and the facts is there are a bunch of Zapheads out there wanting to kill us.”
“You said they’ve changed,” Campbell said. “What did you mean?”
“They seem to be adapting,” the professor said. “You might have noticed yourself, if you’ve had repeated encounters. Just after the flares, the Zapheads”—his face curdled as he uttered the name, as if he found it distasteful and scientifically inaccurate—“engaged in violence at random, attacking any living thing in their immediate vicinity. But we’ve observed them engaging in communal activity, as if they are organizing.”
“That’s why I almost shot you,” Arnoff said. “Where there’s one, there might be more.”
“Great,” Pete said. “Nice to see us humans sticking together.”
Campbell gave a small shake of his head, trying to signal Pete to shut up. While Arnoff was a loose cannon, at least he was a cannon—Campbell hadn’t felt this safe since the apocalypse had started. He set the empty can of beans aside and licked the sauce from his fork.
“How many of us do you think are left?’ he asked the professor.
“It’s difficult to estimate. I met Mr. Arnoff between Winston-Salem and Greensboro, traveling east on Interstate 40. He was headed for the coast, figuring he’d find a little island and play Robinson Crusoe until things got sorted out. Thirty miles from here, we found Pamela and Donnie four days ago, hiding in a school bus. And now here are you two. It’s a small sample size, but I’d guess maybe one person in a million was immune to the electromagnetic disruptions.”
“Holy shit,” Pete said. “That’s sort of like winning the lottery.”
“Or maybe losing, in this case,” Arnoff said. “I always thought the world was too crowded, but I don’t like being outnumbered.”
“Which was my next question,” Campbell said. “We met a few other survivors, but we’ve seen a lot more Zapheads.”
He told them about their encounter with the Zaphead in the van, and Pete punctuated the story with sound effects to describe how they’d beat the woman to death. He didn’t embellish too many of the details, although he came off like the hero of the tale.
“Good for you,” Arnoff said. “I never woulda figured you had it in you.”
“Maybe we’re adapting, too,” the professor said, drawing on his cigarette. “Maybe the need to kill will turn us into Zapheads. The lingering magnetic fluctuations could be turning the kettle of our brains up to a boil as we speak.”
Campbell didn’t like the idea that his internal circuitry might even now be mutating into something treacherous.
“Don’t go getting all negative on me,” Arnoff said, leaning his rifle on a stump. “Things are bad enough already. Let’s keep it on the sunny side.”
“Ironic, given the fact that the sun is the cause of our problems,” the professor said. He flicked his cigarette butt into the fire.
“So, you guys have been walking?” Pete asked, slurring his words a little.
“I had a horse I found in a stable,” Arnoff said. “It threw me when it stepped in a pothole and broke an ankle. About broke my neck, too.”
“Let me guess,” Pete said. “You had to shoot it, but you didn’t get too down about it.”
Arnoff glared at him, and Campbell made a surreptitious slashing motion across his throat to signal Pete to cool it. “Some things just need to be put down,” Arnoff said.
The professor made a show of looking at his wristwatch, a nerdy wind-up model that had outlasted the planet’s digital watches. “Donnie’s time is about up.”
A
rnoff stood and collected his rifle, walking to the nearest tent and lifting the flap, revealing the mesh screen over the door. “Wake up, Pamela, it’s your turn.”
“So, what’s happening in the east?” the professor asked Campbell in a lower voice, to keep the conversation private.
Campbell shrugged. “A lot of dead people. A lot of Zapheads. Stalled cars. Nothing working right.”
“Any organization of emergency services?”
“Like, cops and stuff? No, they were as dead as everybody else. Once in a while, we saw people walking around off in the distance, but we were afraid to check them out. We didn’t know whether they were Zapheads or not.”
“Perhaps that was a good idea. I estimate the ratio of Zapheads to survivors is on the order of ten to one.”
“I just can’t believe it’s like this all over the goddamned world,” Pete said. “It’s like the zombie movie from hell.”
“It’s hopeless,” Campbell found himself saying. He had never given thought to the concept of “hope.” That was a word for a Hallmark card when a relative was undergoing chemotherapy, not a word that normal people worried about.
“We have food and supplies,” the professor said, keeping his voice at the same lecturing level as before. “If our bottled water runs out, we can filter water from this creek and boil it. This is our second day here, and we could easily last a week before making a foraging run into one of the nearby towns.”
“I don’t see no advantage in staying here,” Arnoff grumbled from his position by the tent. “How long before more of those Zapheads locate our camp?”
“That’s for the group to decide,” the professor answered.
Campbell had a feeling that opinions were divided and, for the first time, felt tension between the professor and Arnoff, whose eyes were like dark, wet beetles. And, Campbell wondered if he and Pete were now considered part of the group.
Safety in numbers, unless those numbers start shooting at each other.
Arnoff strode off into the trees at the dark perimeter of the camp. Campbell wasn’t sure whether the man was scouting or taking a leak.
