After: The Shock

by Scott Nicholson

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

   

  “They’re blowing the hell out of everything that moves,” Pete said.

  Campbell covered Stephen’s ears against the popcorn staccato of gunfire and the growling blaze. The darkness had given way to a half-light.

  “I knew Donnie was going to crack sooner or later,” he said. “I was hoping to be miles away when it happened.”

  “She’s been in there too long,” Pete said. “The whole damned house is about to fall in.”

  Stephen gave a squeal of dismay at the news. Campbell wished he could elbow Pete in the gut to shut him up, but Pete was retreating deeper into the shrubbery, as if the vegetation could ward off stray bullets. Campbell saw a man on the roof of a nearby house, aiming a rifle into the street. He couldn’t be sure, but he guessed it was one of the camouflaged soldiers.

  “Yee-haw,” Donnie whooped in his unmistakable Southern drawl.

  The soldier fired a couple of rounds in the direction of Donnie’s voice, triggering a volley in response. The soldier froze, outlined against the hellish horizon for a moment, then he flung out his arms and dropped his rifle. He collapsed and rolled down the slanted roof, disappearing from sight.

  “So much for being on the same team,” Pete said. “We better get out of here.”

  “We told Rachel we’d wait.”

  “Raaaay-chel,” Stephen wailed.

  “Shh,” Campbell said. “We’ll get her.” He turned to the darkness behind him. “Pete?”

  But Pete was gone, vanished in the shadows between the houses. Campbell cursed under his breath. He didn’t dare leave Stephen alone, not after all the trauma he’d endured. But he couldn’t just sit there while people died, either—there weren’t all that many left to spare.

  “Come on, Stevie Boy,” he said, grabbing the child’s arm and dragging him forward.

  They burst from the rhododendron hedge, exposed in the flickering light of the burning house. It spat and sputtered like a volcano, sucking oxygen from the wooden shell to feed the wild orange-red fury on the roof. No one could last long in such an inferno.

  Campbell pulled Stephen along behind him as he ran toward the house. He saw a man run into the open back door just as Stephen called, “DeVontay!”

  “Is that your friend?” Campbell asked.

  Stephen nodded, tucking his doll under his chin and squeezing hard. Campbell figured DeVontay had a better chance of reaching Rachel than he did. But he was spared any dilemma or guilt when a familiar face stepped into the glow of the fire.

  “Well, well, well,” Arnoff said. “Guess your scouting mission went all to hell.”

  Arnoff’s hunting jacket was blotched with something wet and dark. His rifle pointed up, the butt riding the inside of one elbow, and his eyes were bright with a strange fever.

  “I found Pete,” Campbell said.

  “Us against them,” Arnoff said, staring at the boy. “Are you one of us, or one of them?”

  Campbell nudged the boy behind him, using himself as a shield against Arnoff’s apparent madness. “I found some other survivors, too.”

  “Some survivors shoot back.”

  “They…they’re military. They’re doing a Zaphead clean-up.”

  “Well, they’re doing a crappy job of it,” Arnoff said. “We must have seen four dozen Zappers back there at the big fire. They were drawn like moths. Me and Donnie took a bunch down, but some of them snuck off into dark.”

  “Where’s Pamela and the professor?”

  Arnoff hooked a casual thumb behind him. “Back there somewhere. They’ll be along shortly.”

  Behind Arnoff, Campbell saw DeVontay drag Rachel from the house, smoke boiling out after them as a portion of the roof folded in like sodden cardboard. But they weren’t alone. Something clung to Rachel, limbs entwined around her as DeVontay flailed at it.

  “Ruh-ray-ray!” Stephen stuttered.

  Arnoff turned in the direction of the boy’s gaze, watching the struggle fifty feet away. Without a word, he raised his weapon and peered down the barrel. Campbell leaped toward him, bellowing in rage, but the gun ripped out a percussive clap of noise and yellow light flashed from the tip of the barrel.

  The three figures rolled off the porch into the landscaping. Campbell dashed across the lawn, forgetting Stephen in his panic. Someone rose up from beside the steps, shadow melding with the low trees and flowers. Arnoff fired again and the figure was flung backward by the force of the bullet.

  “Hold your fire, goddamn it,” Campbell yelled, expecting a bullet in the back for his trouble.

  Arnoff chuckled loudly, the sound a perfect harmony to the madly swelling fire. Another form crawled from the landscaping, and Campbell recognized Rachel’s long, dark hair. His heart gave a leap of relief, and he was sickened by his own longing and selfish need.

  “You okay?” he asked, kneeling in the dewy weeds and pulling her toward him.

  She looked at him with bloodshot, bleary eyes, coughing and wheezing. “Stephen?” she managed to gasp.

  “Right over there,” Campbell said, pointing to where the boy stood near Arnoff.

  DeVontay stood up beside the porch, wiping his torn sleeve against his face. His dark skin glistened with sweat. “Careful who you shooting at,” he said to Arnoff.

  “Don’t worry none. I know a Zaphead when I see one.”

  “We all look alike in the dark.”

  “No comment,” Arnoff said, scanning the nearby rooftops. Stephen ran across the scraggly lawn as Campbell helped Rachel to her feet, and the boy dropped his doll in the enthusiasm of giving her a hug. DeVontay joined them and put a protective arm over Rachel’s shoulder, sending a flare of jealousy burning across Campbell’s chest.

  “You came back for me,” DeVontay said to her.

  “Told you I would,” she said. “Are you a doubting Thomas?”

  “I’m a doubting DeVontay,” he said. “I’ve been let down before.”

  Campbell glanced down at the Zaphead, which had a dark red dot in the center of its forehead where the bullet had struck. In repose, the rounded face looked like that of a math teacher’s or a financial advisor’s, fortyish, pale, a plump fold of fat under the chin. The corpse reminded Campbell of Uncle Frederick from D.C., a lobbyist who told political jokes that were neither funny nor insightful and who always seemed to end up with the last piece of fried chicken at family reunions. This Zaphead might once have been somebody’s uncle.

  Campbell turned to Arnoff. “Are you sure this guy was a Zaphead?”

  Arnoff shrugged. “Odds were better than fifty-fifty.”

  Rachel and DeVontay gave Campbell a dubious look, but he answered, “We’ve made it this far, so stick with the winners.”

  They moved away from the house as the flames engulfed the core, waves of dry heat wafting across Campbell’s skin. The fire had tried to spread across the lawn, but the dew had stifled it, so it contented itself with the wood, plastics, and fabrics already in its possession.

  Campbell looked around the edge of the fire’s light. “Pete?”

  “Your friend ran off again?” Arnoff said. “Maybe he’s not much a friend after all.”

  “It wasn’t his fault he got taken as a prisoner of war,” Campbell responded.

  “We’d best get away from this house before the Zapheads come out to party,” Arnoff said.

  Rachel pulled Stephen to her side. “We’re grateful for your help, sir, but we have other plans.”

  Arnoff propped the butt of his rifle against his hip and angled it outward at forty-five degrees. “Little lady, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking these last few weeks, but like Campbell here said, better stick with the winners.”

  “Sorry, man,” DeVontay said. “We promised the boy we’d get to Mi’sippi. And maybe our chances are better if we ain’t trucking around with some trigger-happy cowboy.”

  Before Campbell could move between the two men, Arnoff took an aggressive step forward. “Watch it, boy,” Arnoff said. “You
’re starting to look a lot like a Zaphead in this bad light. Somebody might make a little mistake.”

  “Come on, Arnoff,” Campbell said, about to put a hand on the man’s shoulder before deciding against it. Arnoff tensed like a cobra, and his dark eyes seemed cold and reptilian. “Let’s find Donnie and the others.”

  Arnoff scowled and then spat in the grass. “At least one of you has got a little sense.”

  Campbell wasn’t sure of his loyalties anymore. Pete was his buddy, and they’d been through plenty together, but Pete was likely to get them both killed. Arnoff, Donnie, and the others had firepower on their side, as well as an established social structure that provided the illusion of civilization. Rachel, DeVontay, and Stephen seemed more like a family unit than a pack of mutual survivors.

  Rachel’s face, although streaked with black soot, shone with a benevolent radiance as bright as the fires that surrounded them. Campbell knew most of it was projection, his own hope that he’d find something more in After than just the next breath. He needed a reason to live. And she was the first female he’d encountered that was anywhere close to his age.

  Somebody’s got to breed, right?

  “Watch out for the soldiers,” Rachel said. “They’re well-trained, heavily armed, and mildly psychotic.”

  She limped toward the street, DeVontay supporting her, Stephen trailing just behind them. The house crumbled into a pile of charred lumber, hissing from its blue heart, a mild mockery of the malevolence delivered by the distant sun.

  “Maybe we should give them a gun,” Campbell said to Arnoff.

  “Don’t go trying to save the world,” Arnoff said. “There’s no future in it.”

  “Well, what’s the plan, then? Walk around shooting Zapheads until you run out of ammo?”

  Arnoff checked the chamber of the Marlin, pulling a few cartridges from a vest pocket and sliding them into the tube. “Going from house to house, you’d probably find enough ammo to kill every Zapper on the planet, a hundred times over. Thank God for the Second Amendment.”

  “I’m not sure the Bill of Rights applies anymore,” Campbell said.

  “Maybe not. I can just see a bunch of Zapheads sitting on the Supreme Court right now. Wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference, if you ask me.” Arnoff scanned the rooftops and the perimeter of the surrounding yards. Now that the fire had banked itself and burned low, the neighborhood had fallen quiet again, although the holocaust to the east was spreading.

  They heard Donnie in the distance, giving his redneck rebel yell followed by a series of semiautomatic rounds. Arnoff grinned. “Hunting season,” he said, heading in the direction of the volley.

  “I’ll catch up in a minute,” Campbell said. “After I find Pete.”

  Arnoff didn’t even turn around. “Compassion was a game for the old days, son. Brownie points don’t add up to shit in the afterburn.”

  Campbell clenched his fists in rage. He could hear the echo of his overbearing dad’s, “Get with the program!” in those words. Was it any wonder that Campbell always shrank from responsibility and rejected authority? Assholes had always run the world and set the rules. Maybe it wasn’t so bad that their power had been wiped away by a few massive spasms of the sun.

  Campbell left the dying red glow of the house fire and entered the shrubbery where he’d last seen Pete, digging in his backpack for his flashlight.