After: Dying Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 6)

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Kokona wants to bring all the babies back.”

  “That hospital’s full of Zappers. They could raise an army. How long ago did they leave?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “And you’ve just been standing here all this time?”

  “They’ve won. It doesn’t matter anymore. Between what we saw last night, and with more Zapheads on the way from all over, we don’t have a chance.”

  “Damn it, DeVontay, I’m going to kick your ass. Do you think Rachel would put up with you talking that way? Now, come on, let’s get over there and deal with it.”

  DeVontay laughed. “What? You’re going to tell Hilyard and have him send in the storm troopers?”

  “They plan to burn down the hospital. One big funeral pyre.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best.”

  “I don’t know you anymore, son.” Franklin headed back toward the stronghold. He didn’t know if a weapon would help, but he wanted to be ready for anything. He was breathing hard and his lungs were on fire by the time he reached the square, waving at the sentries so he wouldn’t be gunned down. Hilyard established an armory in the bank along with his command post, but Franklin had hidden his rifle upon returning to the stronghold that morning.

  People moved along the streets, talking and smoking, while others sat in the sun and cleaned and reloaded their weapons. Franklin avoided interaction and kept his gaze on the ground, but Stephen’s voice froze him in place because he could tell immediately: He knows.

  The boy ran up to him and pounded him twice on the chest with the bottoms of his fists, but then seemed to gather himself. The pain was evident on his face, but also a cold resolve. “She’s dead and you didn’t tell me.”

  Franklin got down on one arthritic knee so he could be near eye level. “She’s not dead, Stephen. Listen very carefully, and don’t do anything to draw attention. You can be cool, right, Little Man?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Stephen delivered the venom in a steady tone but with plenty of suppressed anger.

  “She’s alive, but she’s one of them now. Not like before. She’s—”

  The boy’s mouth fell open. “You resurrected her?”

  Franklin glanced around to see if anyone had overheard. To the others, it probably looked like an old man and a kid sharing sorrow over a tragedy. Nothing remarkable at all about that.

  “DeVontay and Kokona did. But Rachel took the baby to the hospital, where all the dead Zaps are. I’m going to get her.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, Stephen, it’s not—”

  “Don’t give me that bull dookie. Nothing is safe anymore. And what’s the worst that can happen? You let her get killed again? I think I can handle it. I’ve had lots of practice.”

  Franklin nodded. “Okay. But she’s not Rachel anymore. She might not recognize us. She might even try to kill us.”

  “Kokona will be controlling her. But we promised to help each other, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah.” Franklin gave another look around. Someone had tied an American flag to the Confederate cavalry statue. Franklin wondered if the perpetrator appreciated the irony of the act. Probably not. “All right, let’s go. Keep your eyes straight ahead.”

  “What about DeVontay?”

  “He’s no good. Out of it.”

  Stephen nodded. “All right.”

  They walked side by side for several blocks, slipping through the barricaded street and heading toward the hospital. None of the sentries hailed them, and Franklin didn’t even look up to the rooftops to count them. Apparently Hilyard hadn’t imposed any restrictions on movement, much less a state of martial law.

  When they reached the Jeep where Franklin had hidden his weapon, he asked Stephen if he wanted a gun.

  “I had a knife but Kokona made me drop it,” Stephen said. “I would have killed her if I’d known what she had planned. I mean…I could have killed her if she let me.”

  “I’m putting a bullet in her. Whether she wants me to or not.”

  “Right in the head,” Stephen said. “Make those eyes go dark forever. And there won’t be anyone around to bring her back.”

  They crossed the jail’s parking lot, which featured splotches of blood here and there among the vehicles. Franklin was surprised Hilyard hadn’t posted sentries at the hospital, but the lieutenant assumed Kokona was far away, organizing the mutants to attack. He probably didn’t believe Zapheads could actually return from the dead. Who could blame him?

  They circled around to the back of the jail, approaching the hospital from the side rather than the emergency room entrance. The bay doors had been jammed open to make transportation of the dead easier. Two ambulances were parked near the entrance, which gave them cover as they made their way inside. The odor hit them right away, a fecund tide of stale, cool air.

  Stretchers had been wheeled into the hallway and waiting room, and on these lay the bodies of dead humans, respectfully covered in sheets. Stains and dried blood blotched most of them, and here and there a mottled hand dangled off the side. The Zapheads, though, had been tossed willy-nilly on the tiled floor, some in piles, others propped up obscenely in waiting-room chairs.

  “I don’t see any babies,” Stephen whispered.

  Franklin waved the barrel of his rifle toward a set of swivel doors beside the admitting station. “Must be back there.”

  “Where it’s dark.”

  “Yep.”

  Franklin thought about ordering the boy to wait here, but he couldn’t leave him with all these corpses. He eased open one of the doors, which led to a corridor that held a line of sick bays partitioned off with curtains. He’d have to prop the doors open to allow light because there were few windows on the first floor, and most were in patient rooms. He wheeled the nearest gurney against the door, and when he jammed it in place, he recognized the long black hair spilling from beneath one end of the lumpy, rumpled sheet. This was Rosa Jiminez, or what was left of her.

  “Can’t be far,” Franklin said, waiting for Stephen to join him. They navigated the corridor, checking each bay as they passed, wary of every shadow.

  As their eyes adjusted to the emergency ward’s dimness, Franklin noted a metallic, medicinal odor. The ward was a clutter of blankets, bandages, drip feeds, and diagnostic instruments. In the immediate wake of the solar storms, this place must have been a madhouse. The floor looked carpeted in spots, but it was actually patches of dried blood that had grown a fuzz of mold.

  “Why would they put the babies back here?” Stephen asked.

  “Don’t know,” Franklin said, although he was beginning to suspect the babies were not here. He wasn’t around during the clean-up, and he could just imagine Brock deciding to pile up the babies and burn them on the spot, or dump them in a creek somewhere.

  The gloomy hospital was giving him the creeps, and he couldn’t take another lungful of the bad air. “Let’s get out of here.”

  A screech and clatter, and suddenly they were in near darkness. The gurney containing Rosa’s body had rolled out of the way, allowing the doors to swing shut.

  Except it wasn’t an accident.

  Three sets of burning eyes hovered in the black.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The rules had changed.

  And Jorge accepted that the stronghold in Newton would never be able to withstand the Zapheads for long, not when the mutants could summon new recruits from the ranks of their dead. And Franklin’s mountain compound would only be secure as long as no Zapheads ever discovered its location. The big cities would be worse, and even his yearning to head back to Mexico seemed more like suicidal folly than an actual plan.

  If he only had himself to consider, he still might try to cross the country. But he had to think of Marina. And he could only imagine one place he’d felt secure since the solar storms: Shipley’s bunker.

  So if betraying Hilyard was the only way to protect his daughter, he’d pay that price a hundred times over. Too ba
d Franklin and the others would have to die, too, but in the end they weren’t family. They weren’t blood. They were foreigners. When it came down to his daughter or the human race, there was no debate.

  After leaving Marina at the drugstore in the care of Sierra, he returned to the bank where Hilyard had established headquarters. When he entered the office that now served as an armory, a college-aged man with a scruffy goatee and wire-rimmed eyeglasses was sitting in a chair by the door, flipping through a rumpled copy of Sports Illustrated. The man set the magazine aside and dispensed the kind of dark humor that so many adopted to deal with their terror. “Wonder if the Lakers will win it all this year.”

  “My bet is on the Bulls.” Jorge didn’t know one basketball team from another, but he’d heard a fellow farmhand complaining about the Bulls.

  “They haven’t been worth a damn since Jordan left,” the man said. “Maybe they can recruit some of these Zappers, though, and make a playoff run.”

  “The Zapheads will all be dead by the time we’re done with them.”

  “Ha, that’s the spirit. Kick ass and take names. I’ve already shot three of them myself. What about you?”

  “I’ve killed a dozen.”

  “That’s a lot of notches in the belt, my friend. I’m surprised the lieutenant hasn’t given you a promotion.”

  “I haven’t joined his army.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, but times have changed. I was on a camping trip with some buddies when things went haywire. We were hiking the Appalachian Trail one minute, and the next, the four people I was with just dropped dead. I was lucky, because I watched the highways and figured things out so I avoided the worst of it. When I found Brock’s group, man, I was so glad to not be alone anymore.”

  Jorge stared at a framed print of a pastoral landscape, a flower-filled meadow bright with gold and green. “I had a family.”

  “Holy shit,” the man said. “You’re the guy who greased his wife. That’s some heavy baggage, man.”

  Jorge feigned a moment of sorrow, shuddering a sob while closing the door behind him as if he didn’t want anyone to witness his unmanly display. The guard looked away with embarrassment and picked up the magazine again.

  Jorge eyed the assault rifles leaning against the wall. Piled on a desk were two dozen different handguns of all styles and sizes, magazines, and boxes of single bullets and plastic-coated shells. Five or six hunting knives with wicked-looking blades were jammed tip-first into the desk’s wooden surface. A wild array of other weapons were scattered around the room, stacked on shelves, or arranged across the couch cushions: sawed-off shotguns, compound bows, crossbows, a steel-handled bludgeon that resembled a medieval mace, and even a black-powder musket.

  He crossed the room, sniffing audibly, to where the grenade launcher lay beside the ammunition and two crates of grenades. He touched the grenade launcher so the guard would know its meaning to him. “For me, this is personal.”

  “Sure,” the guard said, picking his way around the emotional landmine. “I don’t blame you.”

  “So many weapons.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been scavenging the town, and that’s just from like a mile radius. Amazing what civilians keep in their houses. Some of this is military grade, and some of this is so illegal that even law enforcement and military are banned from using it. It’s like most of the population was hoarding and waiting for an excuse to cut loose, but they never got the chance.”

  “As a friend of mine says, you can’t count on the government to save your bacon.”

  “Got that right. Dog eat dog out there.”

  Jose picked through a box of ammunition, looking for a magazine for his AR-15. He found two and stuffed them in his jacket pockets.

  “Hey, man, you have to sign for those first,” the guard said, holding up a clipboard. “This isn’t personal, either. I just do what the boss tells me.”

  Jorge picked up a Glock and tested its heft, as well as a metal cylinder lying beside it. The guard, evidently eager to change the subject, said, “A nine mil. Not a bad choice.”

  Jorge lifted the cylinder. “What is this?”

  The man rolled up his magazine and shoved it in his back pocket as he stood. “That’s a suppressor. What they call a ‘silencer’ in the movies, but it’s not really silent. You can get the same effect by shooting though an oil filter, a bundle of steel wool, or even a pillow in a pinch.”

  “So if I wanted to shoot a Zaphead and not have his friends come running, this would be good?”

  The guard took the pistol from him, grabbed the cylinder, and showed Jorge how to screw it on the threaded end of the barrel. “It will still make a little pop. The sweet trick is to use subsonic ammo.”

  “What is that?”

  “Heavier bullets with a slower velocity so they don’t break the sound barrier. You can hear them whizzing through the air almost like a fat insect. You lose a little power but in the right situation, it’s a good trade-off.”

  “I’d like to try that sometime.”

  The guard popped out the Glock’s magazine, thumbed the rounds from the spring-loaded sleeve, and loaded some rounds from a different box. He held the pistol out to Jorge, butt first. “A war hero like you, you deserve it. Just make sure you get a few blocks out of town first. Hilyard will chew me a new asshole if he finds out.”

  “So this attachment is so quiet no one in town will hear me?”

  “As quiet as a champagne cork.”

  “Good.” Jorge lifted the Glock and shot the man between the eyes.

  After the man collapsed, Jorge took an extra magazine for the Glock, and then grabbed a canvas satchel and shoved in as many grenades as he could fit. He jammed the Glock in his jacket pocket and collected the grenade launcher, already bonding with the familiarity of its cold steel and the memory of its firepower.

  “You are correct,” he said to the corpse on the floor. “That was quiet.”

  He exited the room after checking to make sure no one was in the bank’s lobby, collected his rifle where he’d left it beside the front door, and then walked onto the street as casually as he could.

  He barely made it half a block before a burly man in a leather vest asked, “Hey, what are you doing with that launcher?”

  “It’s okay,” Jorge said without pausing. “I signed for it.”

  After two blocks, he found a fire escape and climbed two stories high, and then an access ladder allowed him to scale the final story to the roof. It wasn’t the tallest building in town, but it was centrally located and would allow him to kill in several different directions.

  He settled into a sitting position at the parapet, where he could see the statue in the town square and the drug store cattycornered from the bank. If Marina stayed put, she would be safe enough until he could reach her. With Jorge’s help, Shipley should have control of the town by sunset. Jorge couldn’t provide a mutant baby as promised, but Shipley would gladly accept the gift of his enemy’s death.

  Perhaps even Franklin’s as well.

  Shipley’s men would be taking up position around the town, assuming they avoided Zaphead contact. Jorge opened the satchel, collected a forty-millimeter green grenade outfitted as a signal cartridge, and loaded it into the launcher to fire first, and then filled the rest of the cylinder with standard high-explosive cartridges. He laid out his other weapons and ammunition around him.

  Then he leaned against the parapet to wait.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kokona wanted Rachel to take her to the other babies at the hospital.

  Rachel would let her think they were headed that way, but she also didn’t want Kokona to know she wasn’t compelled to obey. It took Rachel some time to separate Kokona’s thoughts from her own, and at first she’d been afraid Kokona could read her thoughts as well—that the baby knew of Rachel’s deception.

  And behind Kokona was the weight of all those other voices, the tribe whose thoughts were channeled in Kokona. These voices combined int
o one was much more overpowering now that she had returned—

  I was dead.

  “I have no milk for you,” Rachel said. “I can’t nurse you.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Kokona said.

  “And you need a change.”

  “No, I don’t. Go to the hospital now.”

  “But I have to feed you first. As your carrier, it’s my job.”

  After leaving DeVontay and the funeral home, Rachel headed west, intending to circle back to town while avoiding both the armed humans barricaded around the square and the New People gathering in the north. Despite Kokona’s protests, Rachel traveled the open roads with their abandoned, dusty vehicles and silent houses. She’d moved with tireless vigor, her body fueled by some force beyond her perception, and now she understood why the New People seemed impervious to pain and exhaustion and hunger. Because they were.

  Except the infants.

  The same newness that made them perfect vessels for incredible mental development also created a need for that development to be fed—the tiny nuclear furnaces in their bodies required additional energy. She used this knowledge to buy more time, because she wasn’t sure she could withstand Kokona’s power.

  “When is the last time you ate?” Rachel asked, using speech because she wasn’t sure she could keep her words distinct from the many other thoughts that crowded her mind.

  “I think yesterday, when the boy fed me.”

  The boy’s name—Stephen—flashed across her mind, as well as an image of him from Kokona’s point of view. She was horrified that she’d nearly forgotten him, although she supposed being dead gave her the best possible excuse. Now that his memory stirred inside her, it threatened to overwhelm her, but she suppressed it so Kokona wouldn’t realize his importance to her.

  “Is he still alive?” Rachel asked, adjusting her grip on Kokona without breaking her brisk pace.

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because he was your carrier. He delivered you to me, so he played an important role in our victory.”

  “I have you now. The first one to cross over. So I don’t need humans anymore. We don’t need them.”