“Do you know where they are?”
DeVontay, studying the map again to avoid joining the discussion, pointed to the northwest and said, “Yeah, little man. They’re that way.”
“Is that way Mi’sippi?” Stephen asked. “My daddy’s in Mi’sippi.”
Rachel found herself nodding. Little white lies didn’t make her wicked, did it? “Yes, Mississippi’s that way.”
“I hope Daddy’s good. I don’t want him to be one of the mean people.”
Stephen’s eyes welled, and Rachel scooted over to hug him. He sagged into her arms and she patted his back. “With a boy like you, I’m sure he’s good. We’ll find him for you.”
She imagined an older, pudgier version of Stephen, a bloated corpse lying in bed or on a sidewalk or roasting in a car. Then she saw him staggering along the street, looking for something to attack. She pushed the vision away.
Please, God, give me strength. Show me Your purpose and help me be part of Your order. Even if I don’t understand it.
DeVontay folded the map backwards, so that it was lumpy and the corners uneven. He pushed it into his backpack, along with the leftover food. He pulled the pistol out, making sure Stephen wasn’t watching, and said, “Hey, we better get started if we got to walk all the way to Mi’sippi, right?”
Rachel brushed Stephen’s hair back from his freckled face and kissed his forehead. “You’re a good boy. And I don’t believe wicked people can hurt good people, do you?”
He shook his head no, bumping her cheek with the bill of his cap. She smiled and helped him to his feet. DeVontay had eased back into the shade until he was behind the tree. He tilted his head toward the highway.
Rachel saw four of them, coming up the pavement between the jumbled lines of cars. Their clothes didn’t look ragged, and they didn’t jerk and shake, but she knew they were Zapheads. Something about them was off. Maybe it was the way they peered in each vehicle as they passed, as if searching for any movement they could make still forever.
They were about three hundred yards away, and it was unlikely they would notice anyone on the slope above them. From Rachel’s observations, Zapheads had a suppressed sense of perception, as if they could only process information in their immediate vicinity. Maybe their focus on destruction was so all-consuming that they had no larger awareness of the world.
Perhaps that is the definition of “wicked”: pure selfish destruction.
“I need you to be very quiet, Stephen,” she said calmly, in her regular voice. “Can you do that for me?”
He opened his mouth and caught himself, then nodded. He looked at DeVontay and saw the gun.
“We’re going to Mississippi now,” she said.
“I’ll be good,” Stephen whispered.
“This way,” DeVontay said, waving them into the scrub vegetation that dotted the top of the slope. Rachel nudged Stephen toward DeVontay and collected their backpacks. On the highway below, one of the Zapheads pounded an iron bar against a car hood. The brutal thwack was an intrusion on the pastoral serenity of a few moments earlier, and Rachel was reminded that After was not paradise.
It was a land where the wicked walked.
When three of the four Zapheads disappeared from view behind a tractor-trailer rig, Rachel hurried into the bushes to join DeVontay and Stephen. Glass shattered below them, followed by a strange inhuman cry that might have been glee.
They hurried without speaking, DeVontay beating back the branches and briars with the arm that held the gun, Stephen hunched low so that the bill of his cap hid his face, and Rachel repeatedly glancing behind her. They were still moving roughly parallel to the interstate, although they’d put more distance and vegetation between them and it. The morning coolness had given way to an intense heat that had burned away the dew, and the air held all the promise of an oven.
After ten minutes, they could no longer hear the crazed vandalism, and DeVontay slowed a little, tucked his gun in his belt, and picked up Stephen. He must have noticed the dark circles of exhaustion under the boy’s eyes.
“I know you’re big enough to walk, but I want you to rest so you can tell me bedtime stories,” DeVontay said.
“Are you going to shoot the wicked people?” Stephen said, letting the doll nestle between them. It must have been uncomfortable for DeVontay, but he said nothing.
“No wicked people are going to get you while we’re around, okay, little man?”
“Okay.”
Rachel peeled away Stephen’s backpack to help lighten DeVontay’s load. The act caused the doll to fall to the ground, and Stephen gave a bleat of alarm. She hurriedly collected it before he could scream and alert the Zapheads. They continued through the vegetation, which had thinned considerably and occasionally allowed them a view of the cluttered highway.
After a few minutes, Stephen was asleep and DeVontay slowed to reduce the bouncing of his gait.
“Did you see what I saw?” Rachel asked.
“’fraid so. But tell me anyway, so it’s not my imagination.”
“The Zapheads were moving in a group. They weren’t doing that before.”
“Maybe it was random. They just happened to bump into each other and said, ‘Yo, muthas, let’s break some shit together, whaddya say?’”
“Either way, I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like any of this. Things were bad enough without no wicked-ass gangbanger shit.”
He’d reverted back to his street persona. She didn’t blame him. Maybe it was a useful survival mechanism, and they might need all such mechanisms they could find.
“You were good back there,” she said. “With Stephen.”
“So, I’m one of the good people for a change,” he said. “Don’t be getting used to it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Campbell was dreaming of Gina Bellinari, the first girl he’d ever kissed. In the dream, they were behind the bleachers at the Idlewild High School football stadium, and it must have been a school day, because he could hear kids running and laughing on the practice fields. Gina was saying people would notice they were missing, and she couldn’t afford to get sent to the office again, and Campbell knew her reputation and figured just a kiss was being cheap. But when he went in again, his lips puckered out like he was about to suck down a sour gummy worm, she kicked him hard on the shin.
“Fuh,” he said, knowing he looked uncool, and uncool didn’t cut it when Gina had her choice of any straight boy in the school, except the artists and the geeky band students who’d probably be virgins all the way through college.
“We’re moving out,” Gina said, but her voice was gruff, cracked, and masculine, and she didn’t look all that happy about being kissed.
Campbell opened his eyes to find Arnoff standing over him, dressed in camouflage overalls. The encounter with Gina had given way to an ROTC nightmare and all the chisel-jawed goons in high school who’d waved their flags in his face and had strutted around spouting word like “duty” and “honor.” But this wasn’t some high-school faker, this was a grown man, although his cheeks were shaven as brightly pink as a teenager’s.
Then Campbell remembered the camp, and the solar storms, and the world with six billion dead people. And his back was killing him from sleeping on the ground. “Hell,” he groaned.
“Yep, same as yesterday,” Arnoff said, walking away to the fire, where the professor was tending a blackened coffee pot.
Campbell peeled back the thick blanket and the stench of his rumpled clothes crawled over him. He hadn’t changed since they’d left Chapel Hill, and he’d only bathed once, half-heartedly swabbing his armpits with creek water. If the Zapheads didn’t get him, flesh-eating fungus eventually would.
He glanced over at Pamela’s tent. Donnie was helping Pamela break it down. Donnie was slender and had bad teeth, like an ex-con who’d been deprived of decent hygiene. His black, greasy hair was combed straight back over his head, and he wore a sleeveless denim jacket and his arms were covered with crude t
attoos. In high school, Campbell would have called him a redneck, but never to his face.
“Make sure you shake the leaves out,” Pamela said to Donnie. At least Pamela had taken the time to brush her red curls, and Campbell couldn’t be sure, but she apparently was wearing mascara and foundation. In the firelight, he’d taken her for thirty-ish, but the harsh morning sun added a good decade to her face.
“A little bit of dirt never hurt nobody,” Donnie said.
“I didn’t say it would hurt, I just said I didn’t want them.”
“It’s my tent, too.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“I push what I want, where I want.”
“Enough of that, lovebirds,” Arnoff barked. “I’m making a scouting run and I want everybody ready to roll when I get back.”
Roll? On what, bicycles? Some armored column you got here, Rambo.
Campbell crawled out of the blanket and looked around the camp. It was shoddier in daylight than it had appeared last night, with filthy clothes flapping from a sagging piece of twine that was stretched between two trees. Ten feet behind the professor was a mound of cans, plastic bags, and coffee grounds. Pete lay bundled up on the edge of the clearing, apparently having rolled away from the fire during the night.
Campbell stood and stretched the stiffness from his spine. Pamela glanced his way with a smirk and said, “Is this the best Generation Y has to offer?”
Donnie scowled, not passing up a chance to bicker. “Dead weight. I don’t know what the hell Arnoff thinks he’s doing.”
“Pissing you off, Donnie. And just maybe saving your life.”
Campbell nodded at the professor, who focused all his attention on making the perfect cup of coffee under the most trying circumstances, as if the apocalypse was just a crude chemistry lab. The bespectacled man was perched as if he’d spent the entire night gazing into the flames. Campbell would never be caught dead in such company under normal circumstances. But normal was a distant memory.
Two weeks? It’s not even been two weeks?
While Donnie and Pamela wrestled their tent into a nylon bag, Campbell woke up Pete, whose bedroll was surrounded by half a dozen crushed beer cans. Pete blinked his bleary eyes and said, “Ugh. I must have turned into a Zaphead, because it feels like somebody cracked my skull open like an egg and took a big electric dump in it.”
“You don’t have time to enjoy your hangover. Sgt. Rock has ordered us to move out.”
“We don’t have to stick with these clowns. We were doing pretty well on our own.”
“Really? Your idea of a Plan A is to go from beer truck to beer truck until we’re in Milwaukee.”
Pete sat up and wiped the crust from his eyes, then grabbed his wool cap and pulled it down to his eyebrows. “Give me a break. At least I’m not thinking I’ll crash my parents’ house and sleep in the basement until I can get back on my feet.”
“Dude, it’s a thing called ‘hope.’ When the shit hits the fan, you hold on to it.”
Pete looked around, spied his sodden cardboard case of beer, and fished out a warm can. It spewed as he popped it. “This is the only thing I’m holding on to.”
“Hey,” Pamela called to them. “You party boys coming with us?”
“Safety in numbers,” Campbell said to Pete.
“Not numbers like these. Look at the professor. You want your life in his hands?”
The professor poured dark, thick fluid from the coffee pot into a tin cup and blew on it. “At least he wouldn’t eat your liver if you were snowed in together,” Campbell said. “And Sgt. Rock seems to know his way around a gun. Unlike you.”
“Yeah, then how come he didn’t give us our guns back? I don’t think this is such a good time to be a control freak. Because there’s shit out there beyond everybody’s control.”
Donnie sauntered over to them, a backpack, a rifle, and the bagged tent slung over his shoulder. “So, which one of you is the momma’s boy?”
“Excuse me?” Pete said.
“Come on, guys like you? You kidding me? You’re doing everything but holding hands. I need a momma’s boy to carry this tent for me.”
“Screw you,” Pete said, still sitting with his blanket wadded around him.
With the ferocity of a wolverine, Donnie slung the tent bag down his arm and hurled it at Pete. The bag knocked the beer from his hand and forced the wind from his lungs with an oomph.
Pete rose from the ground and wobbled a moment, still woozy from his hangover, but rage twisted his face. Campbell had to hold him back, but Donnie was unimpressed.
“Look at the lover boys hugging,” Donnie said, grinning with black teeth. “Ain’t that sweet?”
“Knock it off, Donnie,” Pamela said. “Arnoff won’t like you messing with the guests after what happened last time.”
Last time? Campbell didn’t like the sound of that.
“Look, Donnie,” Campbell said, taking a chance and calling the guy by his name, not knowing how he would take it. “We’re basically what’s left of the human race. If we go fighting each other, we’re no better than the Zapheads.”
“Shit on them,” Donnie said. “I got enough ammo to take care of all of them.”
“We don’t know how many are out there,” the professor said, sipping his coffee like he was kicking around theories at the local barista. It was the first time he had interacted with anyone that morning. Maybe he needed caffeine before he could face the horrors of modern life.
“That’s why Arnoff wants us to stick together,” Pamela said.
“Arnoff this and Arnoff that,” Donnie said. “We were getting along just fine until you made him king of the world.”
The smoky air was ripped by an explosion of gunfire.
Arnoff emerged from the brush. “Good thing I wasn’t a Zaphead, or you’d all be meat.”
“Come on, Arnoff, you’ll scare the children,” Pamela said.
“They ought to be scared. How come you guys aren’t packed?”
Pete and Donnie glared at each other for a moment, and then Donnie gathered the tent from the ground. The professor tossed his coffee into the fire and said, “How was the reconnaissance mission?”
“It’s clear to the west, so we’ll be heading that way.”
“Yesterday, you wanted to go east toward the coast,” Donnie said.
“Changed my mind. People change their minds from time to time.”
“And sometimes the sun does it for them,” the professor said.
“What about our bikes?” Campbell asked. He assumed Pete was sticking with the crowd. Campbell certainly was, at least for now.
“We move as a unit,” Arnoff said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to have fresh legs to do some advance scouting.”
Donnie smirked. “Hear that, pretty boys? Fresh legs.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Donnie,” Pamela said, shouldering her own backpack. Campbell wondered if she had a firearm tucked in one of the bulging pockets of her thin cotton jacket. Even the professor had a rifle leaning against a tree near his pile of gear.
“Do we get our guns now?” Campbell asked Arnoff.
“Get packed up. Then we’ll see.”
Campbell helped Pete roll up his blanket. When Pete reached for a fresh beer, Campbell kicked away the cardboard box. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“If these creeps don’t kill us first. Don’t you think they’re a little unhinged?”
“We’re all a little unhinged. We just got hit with the apocalypse. What do you expect?”
“Yeah, but you’d think they’d be banding together. Instead, they’re ripping each other to pieces.”
“Stress. We’re in a war zone now.”
“We’ll play it your way for a day or two. But if this is the best they have to offer, I’m taking my bike and flying solo.” Pete shouldered his backpack and headed out of the clearing.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Arnoff shouted.
“Getting my bike.”
Arnoff pointed his rifle ninety degrees to Pete’s left. “You might want to head in the proper direction.”
Pete gave an insolent wave and slipped into the woods, Campbell following. When they came to the place where Arnoff had shot the Zaphead, the corpse was gone. Only a crushed section of grass and a rusty brown stain remained.
“What do you think happened to it?” Pete asked.
“Maybe somebody buried it.”
“You serious? You think Arnoff would pass up an opportunity to put us on gravedigger detail? And why would he bother, anyway? They knew they were breaking camp and leaving. So what’s one more corpse?”
“Or maybe he wasn’t dead, just wounded.”
Pete peered into the surrounding trees. “I don’t like it.”
“Come on. Let’s get our bikes before the others catch up.”
As they emerged from the trees and climbed the rocky slope to the guardrail above, Pete said, “At least the professor seems to have his shit together. Maybe we can learn something from him.”
“All he’s got is theories,” Campbell said.
“Beats what we got.” Pete began clambering up the rocks but only made it about ten feet before he stopped.
“What’s the matter?”
“You smell that?”
“I don’t smell anything but your body odor.”
“Seriously. Smoke.”
“The campfire.”
“No. This is like plastic and garbage and stuff instead of wood.”
“Maybe the professor made them clean up their trash. ‘Leave no trace’ and all that.”
Pete kept climbing, and by the time they reached the guardrail, Campbell was out of breath. He could only imagine how Pete felt, with last night’s beer leaking from his pores. The morning was already muggy.
“Look,” Pete said, pointing to the east.
Several massive pillars of smoke boiled in the far distance, shimmering in the heat. “The hell is that?” Campbell said.
“That would be Greensboro,” Arnoff said.
They both turned in surprise to see Arnoff perched in the bed of a pickup truck, scanning the horizon with binoculars. They hadn’t even heard him come up behind them.
After: The Shock Page 9
