CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Saw you running down the street and figured you’d lead me to your buddies,” Arnoff said.
“What buddies?” Campbell didn’t like the way Arnoff had his semiautomatic rifle cocked on his hip, a macho posture that would have been cartoonish under other circumstances.
“Your Army buddies.”
“Wouldn’t mess with ‘em,” Pete said, pouring himself another drink without offering Arnoff one.
“I don’t want to mess,” Arnoff said. “I want to join up. Enlist in Team Human.”
“I get the impression they’re not looking for recruits,” Campbell said. He glanced at the tavern door, hoping Arnoff had cleared the street before following him inside. If the Zapheads were gathering into groups, even a semiautomatic might not be enough.
“Their commander will listen to reason,” Arnoff said. “Donnie and the professor can shoot a little, and Pam…hell, she can cook or something, or keep the men happy. Safety in numbers.”
“I’m telling you,” Pete said, his drunkenness taking a belligerent turn. “He’s stars and stripes forever. And he doesn’t need numbers like us.”
Arnoff glanced around the dim room as if noticing the corpses for the first time. “What do you know about it?”
Campbell moved away from the bar, expecting Arnoff to stop him, but the man was more interested in what Pete had to say. Pete muttered something incoherent, but Campbell made out a personal invitation for Arnoff to commit a depraved and self-inflicted sexual act.
He glanced through a grimy window, at the silent cars and still bodies, at a baby carriage tipped on its side near a fire hydrant. A pigeon with a broken wing skipped along the sidewalk, the only sign of life.
“You were with them,” Arnoff said. “They grabbed you on the highway.”
“They wanted me for Zaphead bait,” Pete answered. “Just like you did.”
“We all have a part in the plan,” Arnoff said. “Some parts are bigger than others.”
“What’s your plan, then?” Campbell asked. “Assuming The Captain lets you join the A-Team? You’re going to start a genocide sweep? Gun down all the Zapheads? And kill anybody else that’s not your type while you’re at it?”
“Hold on with the Commie talk. This is about survival of the human race. Survival of the fittest. I don’t know what them things are, or why they want to bash our brains in, but I don’t need the professor to know when something needs killing.”
“They’re changing,” Campbell said, trying to formulate ideas he’d only just begun considering. “I don’t think they’re attacking us…us normal people…just because they want us out of the way. I think they’re as scared and confused as we are.”
“To hell with your Commie talk.” Arnoff waved his arm at the dead bodies, the gray, dreary bar that once had teemed with music and laughter and the communal clink of glass. “They’re a danger to not just our life, but to our way of life. If we want all this back, we’ve got to win today. Then we can fight for tomorrow.”
“I’m done fighting,” Pete said. “I’m ready to drink instead. But you’d be happy with The Captain and his happy little troop. They’re heading for a base up north.”
“A base?”
Pete took a sip from his glass, enjoying Arnoff’s anxiety. “Yeah. Said there was a secret military base up there, underground, total doomsday prep. Built for nuclear war, he said, but outfitted for pretty much anything. And I guess the Big Zap counts as ‘anything.’”
“How far north?”
“Off to see the wizard,” Pete said, voice slurring. Even for someone with Pete’s tolerance levels, the prodigious amounts of whiskey were taking their toll. “Wonderful Wizard of Ozzzzz.”
Arnoff swung the barrel of his rifle forward and shattered Pete’s bottle. The strong, sweet odor of the whiskey briefly overwhelmed the fermenting of the dead.
Pete snarled and reached from behind the bar to swipe at Arnoff. “You goddamned animal.”
“How far north?” Arnoff repeated. Even in the bad light, his eyes and teeth gleamed with a fierce menace that briefly sobered Pete.
Pete gave a weak wave of surrender and disgust. “To the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
“I need more than that. The parkway’s nearly five hundred miles long.”
“Milepost 291, he called it. Don’t know what that means.”
“You better not be shitting me, or I’ll track you down and leave you hanging on a lamppost so the Zappers can eat your liver.”
Pete snorted in disgust and reached for another bottle in the row behind him. Campbell watched the tableau in the dusty bar mirror and was startled by the person standing to the left of Arnoff. Campbell tilted his head to the side to be sure the reflection belonged to him. Gaunt and stubbled cheeks, windswept hanks of greasy hair, deep purple wedges under each eye.
I don’t know about zombies, but we’re becoming the living dead.
Arnoff rested his rifle against a bar stool and fished a map and flashlight from his pocket. He wiped away the pool of liquor with one elbow, and then spread the map on the pitted wooden surface. Campbell couldn’t help bending over and looking when Arnoff switched on the light.
“What town is that near?” Arnoff asked Pete.
“Who do I look like, Ranger Rick? I heard him mention ‘Boone.’”
Arnoff ran a stubby forefinger along the map of North Carolina, outward from the red circles he’d drawn to mark their current location and his route since leaving Charlotte. “About a hundred miles. Should be able to get there in a week to ten days of hard walking.”
Pete laughed again. He no longer bothered with a glass, sipping straight from the bottle of Knob Creek and wincing at the taste. Campbell studied the map, noting the small towns that dotted the highway to Boone. Arnoff scowled at him and folded the map with crisp efficiency.
Taking up his rifle, he headed for the door. “You guys coming, or you going to wait here for the Zappers?”
Campbell shouldered his pack and followed. Pete, however, didn’t move from his position behind the bar. He stared past them as if lost in a Happy Hour from long ago, where the beer flowed and the Stones kicked from the speakers and the neon lights winked their green and red seductions.
“Come on, Pete,” Campbell said, waiting at the door. Arnoff, after making sure the street was clear, headed across.
“You’re getting to be as much of a bossy asshole as Arnoff,” Pete said, although he came around the bar, nearly tripping on a dead biker whose leather vest was splotched with the excrescence of death.
Arnoff was already down the block, about to turn the corner. Campbell was afraid the man would leave them behind. And as bad as the Arnoff option was, Campbell imagined it would be far worse to spend another night alone in a church steeple. He dodged between vehicles, ducking low in case any Zapheads were around.
When Campbell reached the corner, Arnoff was barely in sight. The man had forgotten all about them.
Campbell turned and motioned for Pete to hurry. Pete had just exited the bar and squinted against the glare of sunset. He dragged his backpack with one hand, and the other gripped a quart bottle of liquor by the neck. As he staggered forward, slumped and skulking and jerky, Campbell fought a wave of irritation.
What a loser. He looks just like a Zaphead, the way he’s—
The distant volley echoed off the canyons of the building facades. Pete’s head lifted, mouth open in shock. The sudden blossom of crimson on his shirt spread across his chest. Then his legs folded and he dropped, the liquor bottle smashing on the sidewalk.
Campbell ran toward him, keeping low. “Hold your fire!” he screamed, not sure it would do any good.
The soldiers clearly didn’t care. Anyone not in uniform was a target. The Captain’s words came back to him: “We’re the government. You’re either with us or against us.”
Campbell expected the next bullet to pierce his own flesh, and he almost welcomed it. But all was silent as he knelt i
n the dead town beside Pete, whose blood mixed with the tequila in a sick and final concoction. Campbell knelt, muttering to his dead friend, as dusk fell around him.
It was After.
And he was alone.
After: The Shock Page 33
