After: The Shock

by Nicholson, Scott

  Treat the banker like a pig.

  The banker didn’t have the strength of a young boar. Jorge straddled the banker’s upper chest with his legs, squeezing him in a scissors grip. The banker bellowed and pushed forward, scraping Jorge’s back but moving them both closer to the machete.

  The man in coveralls slammed his fist against the front door.

  If you make Marina cry, I will castrate you.

  And that was when Jorge recognized him. He was the farrier who visited once a month and trimmed the horses’ hooves and replaced their metal shoes. While the banker had been inside the house, probably sipping lemonade or brown liquor in the den, the farrier had no right seeking entry. Workers never went inside the Wilcox house.

  The machete lay five feet out of reach, and the banker wasn’t letting Jorge gain any traction. Jorge squeezed the man harder between his knees. His thighs trembled with fear, rage, and exertion.

  The farrier pounded on the door with both fists, the noise like a horse galloping across a wooden bridge.

  Jorge thought he heard a scream inside the house.

  That would be Rosa. Marina is the calm one. Marina would never break her promise to be good.

  He was almost as angry at Rosa as he was the two men. Marina would be an American, not so weak with her emotions.

  But the scream fueled him. He grabbed the banker’s head and slammed his face into the ground. A soft merp of surprise flew from the man’s mouth on impact. He hardly seemed to notice the pain.

  The banker’s head lifted. Those dry eyes looked right through Jorge and into the Badlands beyond everything.

  The man’s pink skull enraged him. The banker became the symbol of all the times he’d had to stand with his hat in his hands, all the nodding and sweating in the immigration offices, all the frowns and smirks in the feed store when Jorge picked up farm supplies. The banker was bacon in a world where Jorge could only afford salted fatback.

  Jorge punched at the man, banging against one rubbery ear. He drew back for a second blow, but the banker crawled forward when Jorge’s legs unclenched.

  Now the banker was on top of him like a lover, a stench of musky sweat mingled with faint fancy cologne. Jorge swung again but the blow was stunted. It bounced off the man’s shoulder.

  “Get off,” Jorge grunted at the man.

  The banker wriggled higher onto Jorge’s chest, his bulk making it difficult for Jorge to toss him aside. Then his breath was on Jorge’s face and it stank like a barn stall.

  He’s smiling. Like this is American football.

  Jorge angled his neck until he could see the farrier at the door. The man had stopped pounding and was fishing in one of the thigh pockets of the coveralls. He emerged with a set of metal pinchers, a tool used to trim hooves. Jorge shoved the banker as the farrier clamped the tool on the door lock and began twisting with a skree of metal.

  The banker lunged forward again, his glistening forehead now right at Jorge’s chin, and Jorge had to fight an urge to bite into pink flesh.

  Instead, he used the momentum to slide them both forward another foot until his fingers found the machete handle.

  He waggled the blade through the air, unable to get a clean arc. The side of the steel blade slapped against the banker’s back with a thwack. The banker, apparently not able to understand that the blade could harm him, ignored it and continued to grind himself against Jorge as if to smother him.

  Jorge got a better swing the second time and the blade cleaved through the fancy jacket and struck meat. Blood spouted from the wound.

  The banker’s face curdled in confusion. Jorge hewed another opening across the man’s back.

  Now the banker relaxed his grip enough for Jorge to kick free and roll to his knees, just in time to see the door open in front of the farrier.

  He’s broken in—

  Jorge’s heart fluttered in fear. He used the adrenalin to hurtle toward the porch, blood dripping from the machete blade. He was off balance, the bright sun blinding him, and the creaking of the door hinges seemed as loud as an animal’s scream.

  He wasn’t going to make it in time. The farrier entered the house, the wicked tool dangling at his side.

  He waited for Rosa’s scream. He leaped up the steps and raised the machete.

  But before Jorge could enter, a loud ka-doom poured through the doorway. Jorge entered to the acrid smell of gun smoke in the air.

  The farrier lay facedown on the floor, a patch of crimson blossoming across the back of his coveralls. Rosa stood by the kitchen counter, the shotgun in her slender arms.

  A blue thread of smoke curled from the barrel as if she’d just burned the toast instead of killing a man.

  Not a man. A thing. A pig.

  “Marina?” Jorge asked her.

  “In the closet.”

  Where the guns were. Jorge pictured Rosa shoving Marina in there and grabbing the gun. Maybe he didn’t know his wife at all.

  “Who is he?” Rosa asked.

  “The horseman.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Jorge nudged the corpse with his boot. It lay like a sack of rotted potatoes. “Sí.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Something has changed.” Jorge laid the bloody machete on the granite countertop, crossed the kitchen, and opened the pantry door. Marina sat hunched on a cardboard case of wine, her hands over her ears, hair trailing over her face.

  He knelt and brushed her hair away until she peeked at him.

  “Is the bad man gone?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t trembling or whiny, just cautious, like she’d done something bad but wasn’t sure what.

  “Yes, tomatillo, he’s gone.”

  “It’s not like on TV, is it? Where the bad man comes back after you think he’s gone?”

  Jorge hugged her, glancing back into the kitchen. From there, he could see the farrier’s feet. “No, this isn’t TV.”

  But he’d forgotten about the banker. Jorge had delivered several vicious blows with the blade but probably not enough to kill. “Stay here, okay? Un momento.”

  He was slipping, using Spanish. Marina would never become American if he didn’t control himself. She nodded and even gave him a tired smile. He reached behind her and took the hunting rifle with the big scope. He didn’t know what caliber it was, but the shell he’d put in the chamber was nearly as thick as his pinky.

  Yes, smile in the face of danger and you will fit in here. Because America is a dangerous land.

  He closed the pantry door and Rosa was waiting, still cradling the shotgun. Her eyes were wide and wet with fear, but her jaw was firm.

  “Is the other one dead?” she said, quietly so that Marina couldn’t hear, although it seemed as if the boom of the gun still echoed off the kitchen tiles.

  “I need to check.”

  “I saw through the window. And when he came up on the porch—”

  “You did well. Stay while I check on the other one, the banker.”

  “Will we be in trouble? For killing these white men?”

  Jorge didn’t tell her about Willard. “I don’t know who would cause trouble. Mr. Wilcox is dead. Who would call the police?”

  “The phone doesn’t work.”

  Jorge took a position near the big window, parting the white curtain with the tip of the rifle barrel. The banker was on all fours, crawling away from the porch. His jacket was shredded and his tie dragged in the dirt. Jorge wondered if he should shoot the man. Was the man in pain, or was he beyond feeling? The anger that Jorge had felt when his family was threatened washed away and left him tired and confused.

  “What do we do now?” Rosa said behind him.

  “We could stay,” he said, not liking his indecision. He’s always been the patriarch. And now his wife was a protector, a killer, while he let a man crawl away who had attacked him and threatened his family.

  “What if there are others? Mr. Wilcox had many friends.”

  “He had no friends. He had people who wa
nted his money.”

  And now we have everything he once owned.

  Jorge glanced at the giant TV mounted to the wall in the living room, the shadows of the tree branches from outside swaying across the black surface. The high glass cabinet held carved wooden ducks, fish, and turtles, as well as ivory elephants that Mr. Wilcox had boasted were illegal to own. Above the marble fireplace was a painting of black people cutting wheat with hand scythes.

  Upstairs, in the dresser beside Mr. Wilcox’s puffy and waxy corpse, Jorge had found eight thousand dollars in a cigar box. He had been afraid to take the money, sure that rich people had a way to track cash.

  Everything Mr. Wilcox owned is now worthless, except these guns and the food in the pantry.

  Jorge glanced at the farrier’s cooling corpse and the pool of blood that was already coagulating around it.

  And horses.

  “Get Marina ready,” Jorge said.

  “Ready?”

  “Load some backpacks with food we can eat on the road.”

  “So, we’re not staying here?”

  “More people may come. I don’t want to wait.”

  Jorge felt a surge of strength as he took control of the situation. He was still masculino. But he kept the rifle, even though he sheathed the machete. Locking the front door behind him, he checked the banker’s progress. The banker was halfway down the drive, flies already circling him in black clouds.

  Soon the vultures will have him.

  Jorge studied the sky, wondering whether his family would change, would become like them.

  But such worries would make him weak, and Marina and Rosa needed him to be strong. Plus he had the rifle. He thought again about Mr. Wilcox’s money and all the useless comforts of his boss’s life. He wasn’t an overly religious man, despite his Catholic upbringing. But perhaps the meek truly did inherit the Earth.

  It was as good an explanation as any why the three of them had been unaffected by the sun sickness.

  He went to the barn to saddle the horses.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What road are we on?” DeVontay said, peering at the crumpled map.

  They sat in the shade of a large oak, careful not to touch the poison sumac that was already turning fierce red with the end of the summer. The boy had quickly grown tired and had asked for his mother once. But they kept moving, determined to get away from the population centers where Zaphead encounters were more likely.

  “That’s I-77,” Rachel said, pointing to the four-lane highway below them. They’d walked parallel to the road, staying in the vegetation even though the traveling was more difficult. Rachel didn’t trust the vehicles, especially since so many of them had tinted windows. On the crest of the slope, they were able to see movement in any direction.

  DeVontay squinted through the treetop at the rising sun. “Which way we headed?”

  “The sun rises in the east,” Rachel said. “I learned that in Girl Scouts.”

  DeVontay scowled, the expression almost comical because of his glass eye. “Wish I’d left you back at the hotel.”

  The boy stiffened and shuddered beside Rachel, and she shot DeVontay an angry glance and shook her head.

  We’re his parents now. We have to pretend everything’s going to be all right, just like real parents do.

  I failed Chelsea, but I won’t fail this boy.

  The boy’s blonde hair and freckles suggested a fair complexion that would sunburn easily. At their morning stop at a convenience store, she’d found him some sunscreen and made him put on a Carolina Panthers ball cap. She’d also collected some of the healthiest offerings she could find, including some apple juice she hoped hadn’t spoiled. DeVontay had collected the map, a pack of butane lighters, and half a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

  Rachel fished a bottle of water from her backpack and held it out to the boy, who still clutched the naked doll to his chest. “Here, honey. I’ll bet you’re thirsty.”

  The boy shook his head. He’d barely spoken a dozen words all day. Rachel wondered if he was in shock. She hadn’t studied much basic health, but she knew shock tended to kill people before they had a chance to die from more horrible things.

  She put the water bottle by his sneakers and offered him a granola bar. He shook his head.

  “You gotta speak the language,” DeVontay said. He opened one of his Reese’s and held a cup of chocolate and peanut butter out to the boy. The boy’s mouth visibly watered and he licked his lips.

  “It’s okay.” Rachel gave an encouraging smile, hoping the boy didn’t crash from a sugar high while they were putting in some miles.

  The boy let the doll fall into his lap. He took the candy, which was soft from the heat. As he bit into it, DeVontay said, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”

  “That’s M&M’s,” Rachel said.

  “Whatever. Same principle.”

  “No, it’s not. M&M’s has a hard shell so instead of smeary chocolate, it leaves artificial food coloring on your fingers.”

  “Do you got to argue about everything?”

  “No, only when you’re wrong. Oh, wait a minute. You’re wrong about everything.”

  The boy’s blue eyes tracked back and forth, from one of them to the other. He had returned to the world a little, back from whatever private hell inside his head.

  “Here,” she said, reaching out for the other peanut butter cup. She held it in her palm until the chocolate ran. Then she popped the candy into her mouth. It was so sweet that it made her teeth hurt.

  She showed her palm to both of them. “See? A gooey mess.”

  “That looks like poopie,” DeVontay said.

  Rachel made a show of studying her palm as if making a scientific observation. “Hmm. You’re right, it does.”

  She licked her palm, making sure to smear chocolate all over her lips. “Mmm. Tastes like poopie, too!”

  DeVontay laughed, and the boy giggled. “Yuck!” the boy said, in a small, delighted voice.

  “Hey, watch this,” DeVontay said. He dug his fingers into the skin beneath his left eye, then touched the glass orb and rolled it a little so that it appeared the eye was gazing far to the left.

  Whoa, don’t freak the kid out. We’re trying to get him back to normal, not make him think you’re a Zaphead.

  But the boy gazed with intense interest. DeVontay smiled, then lifted up the skin just beneath his eyebrow and rolled the glass eye into his fingers. He held it up like a marble. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  “Can I hold it?” the boy said.

  “Sure. But only if you let me hold the doll for a minute.”

  The boy nodded and made the trade. It was the first time Rachel had seen him without the doll since they’d rescued him. She decided to bring him all the way out. “What’s your name?”

  “Stephen.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  The boy shrugged, focused on the glass eye. He turned it so it caught the light. “How did you lose your eye?” he asked DeVontay, his lips pressed into a solemn line.

  “Messing around. You know how kids are.”

  “Mommy says if you play with sticks, you’ll poke your eye out.”

  “She’s pretty smart,” DeVontay said.

  Rachel noted he used present tense. He’s got a good instinct. Maybe he has more social experience than he lets on.

  DeVontay stroked the doll’s kinky hair. “What’s her name?”

  “Miss Molly.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Rachel said.

  “Does it hurt?” the boy asked, passing the glass eye back to DeVontay.

  “Not anymore. It’s just something you get used to. But it took a while.”

  Rachel noticed his street grammar had softened, and his former aggressiveness was buried. “Just like this—this After—is something we’ll all have to get used to,” she said to Stephen.

  The boy touched the bill of his cap. “Like not having football this year.”

  “
Probably not,” DeVontay said. “But the Panthers wouldn’t be no good anyway. The Eagles would have whooped them bad.”

  As DeVontay plopped his glass eye back in place, Rachel scanned the road below. All those people rotting in the August heat.

  “Mommy said only the wicked people changed,” Stephen said.

  “Lots of people have died, Stephen,” Rachel said. “None of us are perfect, but most of us are good.”

  “Then why did my mommy die? Does that mean she is wicked?”

  DeVontay gave Rachel a look like: “I’m not touching this one.” He gave Stephen his doll back and the boy immediately clutched it to his chest, apparently lapsing back into his near-catatonic state. Rachel knew this might be their only chance to pull the boy out again.

  “Your mommy wasn’t wicked,” Rachel said. “God just needed an extra angel in heaven, to make things ready for when the rest of us arrive.”

  Crap. Maybe this wasn’t such a good direction. But they didn’t cover this in Counseling 101.

  “Then how come some people died and some just walk around being mean? Aren’t they wicked?”

  “We don’t know that, honey. That’s why we need to stay away from everyone until we can figure out what is happening.”

  “So, it’s just the three of us forever?”

  “We’ll find others like us.”

  “Other good people?”

  Rachel wasn’t sure why she’d survived. She’d always felt special, but not in an arrogant way. Even from an early age, she’d always felt God made her for a reason, and made only one person like her in the whole world, and she was supposed to be Rachel all her life. She’d felt it even before her mother took her to Catholic services or her dad gave his grumbling rants that took her years to understand as atheism.

  She wasn’t even sure if she’d ever accepted his atheism, because she couldn’t comprehend a world without purpose and order. After Chelsea’s death, Dad had shut off any pretense of faith, insisting that no merciful God would allow such a tragedy. She wondered what Dad would make of this apocalypse.

  “Yes,” Rachel said, realizing the silence had stretched too long, filled by the twitter of birds and the soft flapping of leaves overhead. “Other good people.”