After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4)

by Scott Nicholson

  Rachel walked over to help. “Women can do more than just breed, you know,” she said, gathering a load that was much too heavy for her to carry.

  “I guess I’ll take first watch,” Kreutzman said. “It’s getting a little frigid around here.”

  “Now, now,” Franklin said. “Everybody’s got to pull their weight.”

  “What about that white hen of yours that quit laying?”

  “She’s earned her retirement. You haven’t yet.”

  Once inside, Franklin lit a fire in the woodstove while DeVontay and Hilyard sliced vegetables that would be put into a cast-iron pot on the woodstove. Rachel gutted a pumpkin, saving the seeds so they could dry behind the stove. By candlelight, Stephen read one of Franklin’s books—a tattered paperback of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut—while occasionally asking Rachel or DeVontay what a certain word meant and how to pronounce it.

  “Couldn’t we ease him into Vonnegut?” Rachel asked. “Maybe start with Isaac Asimov or John Steinbeck?”

  “You’ve seen my library. Most of the books I had to use for kindling. But Vonnegut is somebody you can read over and over if you have to.”

  “I would have thought you’d be stocked up with Karl Marx, John Locke, and Ayn Rand,” Hilyard said. “Or at least some Lao Tzu.”

  “I don’t have time to be smart anymore. Plus, most of what I thought I knew no longer applies. Seems like the bulk of our intellectual duty now lies in forgetting how it used to be and learning what works today.”

  “Heil, Kamerad,” Hilyard said. “What kind of social structure are we going to build? Shipley created a fascist dictatorship, the Zapheads created some kind of communal anarchy, and it looks like we’re heading toward a true democracy, where everybody gets a say.”

  “Not really,” Franklin said. “This is still my home and you all are guests. I reckon that makes me king for now.”

  That was the Franklin that Rachel knew and loved. His gruffness was a front for his wounded hopes. She was reminded of something she’d heard in graduate school: “Scratch a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed optimist.”

  “Well, Mr. Hilyard’s a lieutenant, so he outranks you,” Stephen said.

  “A king decides whose head gets chopped off,” Franklin said. “And get those muddy feet off the bed, or you’ll be sleeping outside with the goats.”

  They had rearranged the layout of the cabin to accommodate the extra people, leaving the loft for Stephen and Rachel. She’d enjoyed precious little privacy, besides in the ramshackle outhouse beyond the animal pens. Several sleeping bags were spread out on the floor, and Franklin claimed the cot for himself. Kreutzman had threatened to string a row of hammocks in the main room, but so far he hadn’t followed through. The close quarters created a slight tension and plenty of interesting odors given the lack of running water, but so far they had managed to function as a loose tribe.

  DeVontay rubbed the lone window with the bottom of his fist to remove the condensation and then peered outside at the rapidly settling dusk. “Ground’s covered already,” he said. He turned to Stephen. “Good news. School will probably be cancelled.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Rachel said. “Not until you know what ‘pilgrim’ means.”

  “I think he does,” DeVontay said. “I think we all do now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The snow began in earnest a week after DeVontay and the others arrived at Wheelerville.

  By then, they had settled into a routine. Kreutzman had taken on the role of hunter and scout, often spending entire days in the woods. Hilyard became de facto chief of security, manning the lookout post and helping Franklin build another surveillance platform on the back end of the compound. DeVontay and Rachel stocked and dried food, including salted flanks of deer that were dried to jerky over an open fire. Autumn squash, cold-weather greens like collards and kale, and stores of potatoes, beets, and turnips rounded out their diets. The sweets and snack foods DeVontay had collected on the journey were nearly depleted, and the exercise, fresh air, and organic food had them all feeling healthy and energetic.

  Stephen buried himself in Franklin’s small library, and soon declared George Orwell’s Animal Farm his favorite book of all time, even better than Spiderman. Franklin managed to resist explaining the political allegory of Orwell’s classic, although he did joke that the other animals should have discovered the wonders of bacon. He spent his mornings on his shortwave radio, rationing the voltage in the solar-powered batteries while scanning the various bandwidths in search of a callback. DeVontay’s shoulder was finally healing, although a few days of fever provided a scare of something more serious. Hilyard and Kreutzman buried the three dead soldiers from Sgt. Shipley’s unit in shallow graves, not because they felt their former comrades-in-arms deserved respect, but to deter scavengers—the natural ones like coyotes and the unnatural ones like Zapheads.

  DeVontay was relieved that Rachel’s symptoms had vanished and her temperament had improved. They didn’t talk much of her changes, as if they’d mutually agreed that her mutation had never happened. They grew closer in some ways, but the intimacy was diminished by their lack of privacy. DeVontay suspected Rachel was cautious, too, after Campbell’s affections had created conflict between him and DeVontay. Kreutzman was clearly interested in her and didn’t seem to take DeVontay seriously as a rival. DeVontay suspected racism but didn’t know the man well enough to judge him—not that he didn’t harbor his own suspicion and resentment.

  With dark coming earlier each day, the group had time to discuss their plans. Franklin wanted to fortify the compound and prepare for the inevitable showdown with Shipley. Hilyard favored a reconnaissance mission to locate the military bunker in anticipation of a surprise assault. Kreutzman thought surviving the winter and then moving into the valley and settling in a town was the best move. Rachel was content to stay where they were, arguing that they’d come all this way for refuge and that they had not discovered any better alternatives in the last few months. DeVontay was the only one to consider the mutants part of their future—he was worried that the others had put them out of mind in the face of more immediate problems.

  DeVontay was restless from spending so much time around the compound, and one morning he asked Kreutzman to take him out on a patrol. Since they only had four rifles in their inventory, DeVontay borrowed Hilyard’s pistol. “I can only lift one arm anyway,” he said.

  “Just make sure to keep me to your good side,” Kreutzman said. Like the other men, he’d given up shaving, and his beard was thick and unruly. But his growth lagged behind Franklin’s impressive possum-colored facial wool. “Don’t want you mistaking me for a Zaphead.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for you,” he said, pushing on his glass eyeball to elicit a giggle from Stephen.

  Rachel gave him a hug good-bye, refusing to kiss him in front of the others. “Be careful,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  “You’ve got a flare,” Hilyard said. “Pop it if you run into trouble.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Kreutzman said with an insouciant salute.

  “Give that salute to Shipley and you’ll be picking teeth up off the ground.”

  “Sarge would probably skin him alive and drop him in the Zaphead pit,” Franklin said.

  “You think he’s still holding some of them prisoner?” Hilyard asked.

  “He only had half a dozen when I boogied out,” Kreutzman said. “He claimed he was conducting research, but it looked like torture for entertainment to me. That’s one of the reasons I decided to get the hell out of there. A psycho with an armory is a man best avoided.”

  “Keep that in mind while you’re out there,” Franklin said. “Don’t take any chances.”

  “It’s a world with melting nuclear power plants, a million rampaging mutants, and a bunch of high-caliber crazies who shoot everything that moves,” DeVontay said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Remember Code Red?” Franklin asked S
tephen.

  “Yeah. If the dookie hits the fan, we get the heck out of Dodge and meet at the Milepost 291 marker.”

  “Be sure to take a coat,” Rachel said. “It won’t do any good to get there and then freeze to death.”

  DeVontay smiled. That was a Rachel thing to say. She was back.

  The snow in the forest suffocated all sound, and DeVontay and Kreutzman hiked half a mile before either of them spoke. “So, what’s the plan, bro?” Kreutzman asked.

  DeVontay was scanning the ground for deer prints, the silver mist of his breath billowing from his mouth and nostrils. “What do you mean?”

  “You sticking it out here with the geezer wearing the tin-foil cap, or are you taking the honey and heading for the beach?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on. Remember television? This is like the cast of a reality show. Which is not reality. No way we make it through the winter without getting cabin fever and chopping each other to bits with an axe.”

  “We have food, shelter, and heat. We’ve got it pretty good, compared to what I saw in the cities.”

  “Where it was eye for an eye, right?”

  “Funny.” DeVontay hid his annoyance and tugged his wool cap farther down his forehead. “We’re doing all right. We haven’t had to shoot anybody since we reached Wheelerville, and we haven’t been shot at. No Zapheads in sight. Been pretty chill for an apocalyptic hellscape, if you ask me.”

  “Sure. But how long can it last?”

  “For as long as we’re willing to put in the work.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?” Kreutzman wiped his nose with a gloved hand, studied the result, and then brushed his glove clean against his jacket. “Old Man Wheeler is a ticking time bomb. That brand of paranoid schizophrenic is a snake swallowing its own tail. He’s liable to wake up one morning and think the Zappers are beaming secret radio messages into his brain, telling him to kill us all.

  “And the lieutenant—he’s brass balls through and through. He talks like the unit kicked him out when Shipley took over, but plenty of guys were grumbling under their breaths even before Sarge got a wild hair. The world goes all to shit and Hilyard’s sitting there following protocol. What kind of idiot still goes by the book when the pages have been written in backwards Chinese ink?”

  “He’s done right by us so far. He risked his life to save us.”

  “Yeah, but he got you shot.”

  “We won that round, and that’s all that matters,” DeVontay said.

  “And the boy—dead weight, man. I know you’re fond of him, and it’s cool to play hero or father figure or whatever. But what are you getting out of the deal?”

  Kreutzman suddenly lifted his M16 toward the treetops and sighted down the barrel. “Bang,” he said. He grinned at DeVontay. “Just a squirrel. Not even worth a bullet.”

  “We’re supposed to take care of each other, especially the vulnerable,” DeVontay said. “That’s what makes us human. If we can’t maintain some of that in After, then it doesn’t even matter whether we make it or not.”

  “‘After’? What kind of hippity-dippity horseshit is that? Do we have special names for everything now?”

  “There’s Before and there’s After. Makes sense to me.” The trail narrowed and intersected a creek that cut a zigzagging black line through the field of white. DeVontay wondered if they should turn back, but Kreutzman would likely take the suggestion as a sign of weakness.

  “And that brings us to your lady friend,” the soldier said. “I guess that’s reason enough to stick around. She seems like a real sticky honeypot to me. Wouldn’t mind finding out, but then you guys say she has some kind of Zap infection inside her. I mean, is it worth the risk just to dip into that sweet stuff? Might pull it out to find it’s shooting little fireballs or something.”

  DeVontay stepped in front of Kreutzman and their faces were only inches apart. “If I had two good arms, I’d bust you in the mouth. Hell, I might do it anyway.”

  “Ease off, Romeo. You’re losing sight of the big picture. We need a woman around the place, even if she doesn’t do anybody’s laundry. But we should be sharing, just between fellows. Like you said, we all got to work together.”

  “I don’t think there’s going to be a ‘we’ that includes you. You’re right; it won’t last, so you might as well bolt. You have your rifle and ammo. I’m sure you can take care of yourself until you find a new home.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Leave the honeypot all to you. Well, I’ve got a different plan.” He leveled his rifle at DeVontay. “You die out here. What a tragedy that we got ambushed by Shipley’s soldiers. She’ll be sad for a little while, maybe get all Zap-eyed for a couple of weeks, but then the lid’s open and all that sweet honey is there for the taking. I’ll even manage to be sensitive.”

  DeVontay’s breath settled in his lungs like sacks of ice. His heart turned over and then galloped in place. He was scared, but most of all he was angry. Kreutzman had never really bought into the vision. DeVontay didn’t trust the man, yet he’d joined him for a nice little wilderness stroll where anything could happen.

  You deserve to get shot for being such a dumbass.

  “You look like you’re used to this,” DeVontay said, hoping to buy some time while glancing around at the trees and terrain. The pistol was holstered on his hip, and in no Wild West fantasy could he envision himself performing a daring quick-draw. “I’ll bet those two guys who went AWOL with you ended up on the wrong end of your gun, too.”

  “They had their little plans, and theirs didn’t fit mine. Somebody’s always got to lose, and it’s not going to be me.”

  DeVontay lifted his chin and bellowed, “Hey.”

  Kreutzman laughed. “Nobody’s going to hear you. We’re nearly a mile from the compound and three or four miles from Shipley’s bunker. But I can’t risk shooting you right here. Hilyard or Wheeler might see your blood in the snow, and I’d have to drag your body to a hole somewhere. But the creek ought to take care of the mess. So get walking or start praying to whatever burr-headed African god you worship.”

  DeVontay stared down at the gun’s barrel and was the first to blink. As he sloshed through the four inches of snow, he thought of Rachel’s last words to him. I don’t want to lose you again.

  His senses heightened as they took stock of their final impressions. He’d never realized so much was going on all at once: the brittle tinkle of water falling over stones in the creek, the soft sigh of the wind batting tiny pellets of snow against the trees, the soothing texture of the moist air on his cheeks, and the clean scent of the snow above the rotting autumn beneath his feet. This was so beautiful and peaceful, and aside from the penetrating chill, it wasn’t so bad as an image of heaven. He could easily die here amid the stark trunks of trees, the deep evergreen fronds, and the water that spilled crystal mysteries dredged from the deepest cracks of the Earth.

  But not this way.

  Not by the hands of somebody who didn’t value the—

  “Hey!”

  The call came from somewhere above them, and DeVontay’s first thought was that Hilyard must have followed them. But then other voices repeated the word.

  “Hey! Heyheyhey. Heeeey!”

  “The fuck?” Kreutzman spun, seeking the source of the words.

  DeVontay kicked at Kreutzman’s rifle, and it went off with a muffled crack. Kreutzman screamed and curled his shooting hand, dropping the weapon. His trigger finger was twisted at a grotesque angle, and as he grabbed his wrist, DeVontay lunged at him. They tumbled down the ravine toward the creek, bouncing off trees and rocks, their feet slipping when they scrambled for purchase.

  DeVontay ended up on top of Kreutzman when they sloshed to a stop at the water’s edge. His wounded shoulder shrieked with raw nerve endings, and the fall had knocked the wind out of him. He fumbled for a rock, intending to knock Kreutzman out cold and mash his face into the shallow creek until the bubbl
es stopped. But their grunts echoed back at them from all round.

  Kreutzman twisted his face away from the icy water. “Get off me, you black motherfucker.”

  “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!” chanted the voices.

  DeVontay released Kreutzman to go for the pistol, but Kreutzman exploited the opening to drive an elbow in DeVontay’s wounded shoulder. It was like a steel spike had been driven into his collarbone. The scab busted and oozed juice down his biceps, and his arm went numb. With only his good arm to keep Kreutzman pinned, he drove a knee into the base of Kreutzman’s spine. The soldier groaned in agony and flopped into the creek.

  DeVontay clutched the back of Kreutzman’s scalp and drove his skull into the wet stones. The resulting moist sloosh, like the dropping of a watermelon, horrified DeVontay so much that he released his quarry and rolled onto his back, staring at the silver and black lines of branches overhead as he fought to catch his breath.

  “Motherfucker!” someone said, and DeVontay turned to see a man with glittering eyes, holding Kreutzman’s rifle like a walking stick.

  More silhouettes came out of the chiaroscuro of the wintry forest.

  They gathered in the mud around the two men, their eyes glinting with tiny orange slices of fire, white smoke boiling from their mouths as they chanted “Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “I bet they’re coming,” Stephen said.

  Rachel peered into the forest, but all she saw were the stark lines of trees and swelling shadows as dusk crept in from the four corners of the world. The storm had eased, but the ground was coated with a new skin of snow. Up on the lookout platform, the air was so cold it worked through the layers of Rachel’s clothes. She only owned two outfits and she’d donned both to take a turn as watch. Stephen insisted on coming with her, and Franklin agreed, saying the boy should take on more responsibility.

  “I can’t see the forest for the trees,” Rachel said. “And I can’t see the trees because these branches are in the way.”