After: The Shock

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Why?” Jorge asked in return.

  “To bury it. Put it in the garden and the nutrients go back to the soil.”

  “But it’s in good shape,” Jorge said. “Es sabroso. Tasty.”

  Franklin shook his head. “I run a no-kill operation here. The chickens give me eggs in trade for their room and board.”

  “It’s dead anyway,” Jorge said. “You didn’t kill it.”

  Franklin’s face curdled as he looked at the hen. He shook his head. “I don’t know if I could eat it. Almost like eating one of the family.”

  “Rosa will cook it very nice,” Jorge said, knowing his English grammar was slightly off but hoping Franklin wouldn’t notice.

  “I…I don’t think I could pluck it and clean it,” Franklin said.

  “You give me a sharp knife, the job is done.”

  Franklin nodded. “Guess there’s not much use letting it go to waste. Like you said, dead is dead.”

  Jorge’s admiration for the man had taken a downward slide. All the defenses and food storage and solar-energy panels meant nothing if Franklin wasn’t prepared to make use of every resource. But Jorge also felt a surge of pride. He and his family had something to contribute here. They could be part of this society and culture, as small as it was.

  As Franklin went into the house, Jorge called to him, “Please tell Rosa to start a pot of water boiling.”

  Jorge lifted the hen, which was surprisingly light, given its bulk. Birds were deceptive in size because of their feathers and hollow bones. This hen could feed the four of them for at least two meals, assuming Franklin’s springhouse did a proper job of cooling. Besides, the most unpleasant part of the task—chopping off the head and taking the life—had already been delivered as a gift courtesy of Mother Nature.

  By the time Franklin returned, now dressed in blue jeans and a wool sweater, Jorge had already plucked most of the larger feathers from the wings. He took the knife and dissected the carcass, splitting down the breastbone to the tail and letting the internal organs spill. He carefully collected the heart and liver, both of which were still warm. The gizzard was packed with crushed grain and a few tiny bits of gray gravel.

  “Well, will you look at that,” Franklin said, apparently overcoming his squeamishness. “I guess you might call that her last supper.”

  “The rocks help grind the food for them,” Jorge said. He knew most Americans had no hands-on relationship with the meat they consumed. Mr. Wilcox had been the same way. Meat was something that came in clear plastic wrap from the store, or else was seared and slapped between pieces of bread at McDonald’s. Their meat was a stranger to them.

  Jorge used the tip of the knife to scrape the lungs away from the insides of the ribcage. After he severed the drumsticks just below the knee joints, he peeled away the skin as if removing a tight glove. Normally, he would dip the fowl in boiling water and pluck the feathers, but he figured a skinless bird would be a lean treat and more easily allow Franklin to forget it had once been a pet.

  “Are you a man who doesn’t like killing?” Jorge asked Franklin, dangling the naked chicken so that any offal and juice could drain.

  “I reckon I could kill if I had to,” Franklin answered. “Like that hawk there. Normally, I’d never shoot one. But when you come and mess with what’s mine, that’s when I fight back.”

  Jorge told Franklin about the men he’d fought back at the Wilcox farm, and how the men had changed into something threatening and alien.

  “No, they ain’t men no more,” Franklin said. “I heard on the shortwave radio they’re calling them ‘Zapheads.’”

  “Well, if they come here, you might have to kill them.”

  “If they come here, then they’re breaking the one law of this here compound,” Franklin said, sweeping an arm to indicate the garden, the animal pens, and the outbuildings. “And that law is to live and let live, respect the fences, and mind your own business.”

  “It is good to be self-reliant,” Jorge said, proud he’d learned such a word in his studies with Rosa. “But there’s another law that applies.”

  “Huh,” Franklin grunted. “What’s that?”

  “We’re all in this together.” He held up the chicken. “And let us hope this isn’t our last supper.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Two…three…four…

  Campbell counted the Zapheads on the streets surrounding the church. After a fruitless search for Pete the night before, he’d broken into a Baptist church, found the stairs to the steeple, and locked himself in. From the ground, the eastern horizon had appeared to be lit by a single bonfire that had spread. But from a vantage point fifty feet in the air, Campbell had seen at least a dozen large fires, dotting the black landscape many miles into the distance.

  Now, in the glare of daylight, the fires were largely hidden, although a thick gauze of haze lay over the world. A black circle of ash marked the house that Rachel had set afire last night. He’d traveled maybe a quarter of a mile in the darkness, but it had felt like a marathon of slogging through molasses. He was exhausted.

  The church was at the edge of town, the short square streets lined with houses that gave way to roads that curved gently into wooded areas. The streets were remarkably free of corpses, leaving Campbell to wonder if someone had been on morgue duty. Cars and trucks were scattered across the asphalt, although the traffic here must have been light when the solar flares erupted. On the street outside the church was a school bus, its wheels on the sidewalk. Campbell was grateful the windows were darkened by the angle of the sun, so that he couldn’t see inside.

  The Zapheads moved between the vehicles with as much indifference as water flowing around stones. Although they didn’t acknowledge one another in any way, they seemed aware of each other’s presence. The creepiest thing was, they were all heading east, back toward the largest of the fires.

  Movement on a side street drew his attention away from the ambling, vacant-brained creatures. A figure burst out of the garage bay of a service station, head lowered, dragging his backpack behind him so that it bounced on the sidewalk. Campbell recognized the black T-shirt.

  He stood and cupped his hands into a megaphone of flesh. “Pete!”

  Pete didn’t look up, but the Zapheads froze in their tracks and tilted their heads up to the church steeple.

  Holy shit.

  Campbell ducked below the ledge of the steeple, wondering how well Zapheads could see. But after a moment, he realized he would lose Pete again, so he raised his head until he could peer over and track Pete’s route. Pete was farther up the sidewalk, passing a row of shops with broken windows, and making a mad dash before abruptly turning into a brick building that sported a green awning and a protruding wooden sign that Campbell couldn’t read.

  Should be easy enough to find, assuming that he holds the fort.

  But Campbell had a more pressing concern. The Zapheads had begun making their way toward the church, cutting across unkempt lawns and filthy parking lots.

  A couple more emerged from nearby houses, the half-dozen effectively surrounding the church. They appeared to act in concert, although none of them grunted or signaled. It was their silence that was most disturbing—as if they were tapped into some massive hive mind that gave them instructions from afar.

  Campbell mulled his options. As much as he loathed Arnoff, he wished the trigger-happy cowboy was up there with him, playing sniper and, one by one, picking off the Zapheads. He’d even take the soldiers, who probably didn’t care if innocent humans were caught in the crossfire as long as the “enemy” was wiped out. But concepts like innocence had no place in this new reality.

  And, he had no weapon.

  The nearest Zaphead was a man in a polyester business suit, the sleeves and cuffs a darker gray than the rest of the fabric. He still wore a necktie, although the knot was loosened halfway down his shirt. He wore eyeglasses that sat askew on his face, disturbing the rounded Asian symmetry of his face. His jet-black hai
r spiked out like greasy wires.

  He was small-framed, so Campbell could knock him out of the way if necessary. But the Zaphead about fifty feet behind the Asian didn’t look so easy to handle. This one wore a mechanic’s coveralls, dark blotches spattered across the khaki cloth. Campbell couldn’t tell if the stains were oil or blood, and he didn’t want to look too closely. The mechanic was a few inches north of six feet, barrel-chested, and moving with the malevolent grace of an angry rhino.

  The two Zapheads to his left were female, both middle-aged, full-boned, and thick-hipped. If it came down to it, Campbell would take his chances on the one in the yellow cardigan sweater. She looked a little more bookish, like a schoolteacher who’d been headed to the kitchen for a cup of tea when the thermonuclear madness of the sun had other ideas.

  Closing in on the rear of the church was a skinny African-American guy in police blues and sunglasses. Although he had a gun strapped down in its side holster, he ignored it in favor of his thick black nightstick, which he swung from his hand like a batter determined to drive in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. Campbell hoped his own skull wasn’t slated to become the baseball.

  The final Zaphead—at least among the ones he could see—was a young boy of perhaps fourteen, his forearms covered in tattoos, blond streaks now growing through the blue dye of his hair. Campbell could easily imagine him on his skateboard, weaving through traffic and flipping a bird at the cop. Now they were like the best of buddies, happy campers on the winning team.

  Except, none of them looked happy. Their body language said they had a mission, a virus to eradicate from their midst.

  In case he lived long enough to follow Pete, Campbell took one last survey of the surroundings, scooped up his backpack and dashed down the dark, narrow stairs. At the landing, he considered locking the front door and holing up, but he was pretty sure the Zapheads could wait him out. After all, he only had a day’s supply of food, and he wasn’t sure they even needed food or water.

  Besides, if they really wanted in, they could shatter any of the large, stained-glass windows that featured stylized images of Christ with children, lambs, or serious-eyed men in robes. But he didn’t want to leave via the front door, because four of the Zapheads were closest. He hurried down the aisles of the nave, toward the altar, hoping to find a side exit.

  “Where the hell do I go?” he implored of the large, brass-coated cross fastened on the wall above the altar.

  “Seek and you shall find,” thundered a voice, so resonant and clear that Campbell thought it was a broadcast recording.

  Finally cracking. God’s talking back.

  Then Campbell rounded the front row and saw a man sitting in the pew, hunched forward and clasping a hymnal. The man was balding, his white shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, his dark leather shoes spotted with gray.

  “How long…who…?” Campbell couldn’t believe the man was just sitting there while civilization crumbled outside. But, he had to admit, the construction of the church hushed most sounds from outside and was probably as peaceful a place as any to die, outside of a well-stocked survival bunker.

  “They’re coming.” Campbell wondered if the man even knew about the Zapheads. His sunken eyes and vacant, rapt smile gave the impression of a man whose cares were few.

  Then his eyes lit with a fierce passion. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the Earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

  “Uh… some people out there are coming to kill us.” He wasn’t sure if “people” was the right word, but he didn’t have time for a brief history of the end of the world. He cast about for a weapon of any kind.

  “The Book of Peter,” the man said. “Do you know Peter?”

  “Yeah. He’s holed up a couple blocks away. Come with me. We have a better chance with the two of us.”

  The man waved to the empty rows behind him. “I can’t leave my flock.”

  “You the preacher?” Campbell thought he heard something scraping against the church door.

  “I am a servant.”

  Campbell’s frustration mounted. He didn’t have time to deal with a madman. But he still clung to old notions of camaraderie and civility, even if it meant those values were baggage. “Well, you better serve yourself right now. Or you’re going to be dead.”

  “And the dead in Christ will rise first.”

  Campbell gave up. There was banging at the main door, the noise made even more disturbing by its steady rhythm and insistence.

  Almost like they’re not enraged, just stopping by for a visit to check on the neighbors.

  The altar was about a foot higher than the nave floor, and was flanked by two tall brass candlesticks that matched the cross. United States and North Carolina flags stood on thick wooden poles on either side of the cross in an incongruous mash-up of church and state that was particular to Southern Baptist churches. A darkened set of stairs led down on one side of the altar. Despite the high windows, the light was so weak that Campbell didn’t think he’d fare better by wandering deeper into the bowels of the church.

  Campbell jumped onto the platform and grabbed the state flag, attracted by the sharp wooden point on top of the pole. It was about seven feet tall, and as he removed it from its heavy base, he realized that it would be far too cumbersome to ward off an attacker. He gripped one of the tall brass candle holders, knocking the stubby candle from it as he gave it a test swing. It was about three feet in length and had a satisfying heft.

  “That’s property of the Lord,” the preacher said, rising from the pew and dropping his hymnal.

  “I’ll give it back when I’m done.” Campbell made one last attempt to get the preacher to come with him, holding the candlestick aloft. “Side door, make a run for it—I got your back.”

  The preacher turned toward the main entrance, where the pounding of many hands continued. “All are welcome in the house of God.”

  The preacher clasped his hands and bowed in reverence as he started his slow trek up the aisle. He murmured some sort of poetic prayer, but Campbell didn’t wait around to see how the message played to his newfound congregation. Instead, he descended the stairs into darkness.

  On the lower floor, a few small utility windows illuminated a narrow hall that broke off into several meeting rooms. Campbell hoped he hadn’t backed himself into a corner. He felt confident that he could fight his way past one or two Zapheads, but he didn’t have any delusions about playing gladiator against a crowd of them.

  He tried a door to his left. It opened onto a dim room that had probably been used for Sunday School classes. The stench hit him like a sheet of ice. Bodies were stacked in various positions on the floor, arranged in the shape of a cross. As Campbell backed out of the room with his nose buried in the crook of his elbow, he wondered if the preacher had laid out some sort of demented holy tribute in a burst of apocalyptic fever.

  Out in the hall, he heard the preacher’s voice soaring into a rhapsodic welcome.

  Why haven’t the Zappers killed him yet?

  Turning a bend, he spotted a fire exit. As he kicked the release bar, gripping the heavy candlestick, sunlight poured around him, and he was cravenly grateful that the preacher had offered himself as a decoy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  They kept to the shadowed side of the street, moving fast. Rachel led the way, hoping she was headed north. DeVontay seemed to be even less of a Boy Scout than she was, so he didn’t question her judgment. Or maybe he was keeping his eyes in the side alleys, worried less about the destination than the journey.

  They’d gone at least ten blocks without seeing any signs of life—if such a word was even appropriate under the circumstances. Birds flapped in the eaves of the buildings and the canopy of trees, and Rachel heard a hound dog baying in the distance once, but mostly, the town was just a still life of abandoned cars and silent storefront
s. The stench of death emanated from inside many of the buildings, so they didn’t bother with a door-to-door search for survivors. Calling out for them was risky as well, since the noise might attract Zapheads.

  The streets were remarkably free of corpses, given the density of the population, but once they came upon a shrunken man with a stringy white beard, leaning against a brick wall with his arms tucked under his knees. In the old days, he might have passed for a homeless man, rags tied around his ankles.

  “Hey, Pops?” DeVontay whispered, afraid to touch him.

  The man didn’t move so they kept going. Stephen’s expression didn’t change, which saddened Rachel. A boy shouldn’t be hardened to the point of numbness. His days should be filled with bubble gum, comic books and video games instead of death.

  The street signs were just as ordinary as ever, a mute testament to places gone by: Hayward Street, Depot Street, Old Bristol Turnpike. They passed a bridal shop, the front window filled with headless and armless mannequins, impossibly anorexic, displaying flowing white dresses. Rachel’s breath caught at the sight. She’d never be a bride now, not like that.

  “Yuck,” Stephen said, bored by the window shopping. He walked to the edge of the street and bent to play with the trash that had collected in the rain gutter.

  DeVontay pressed close behind her. “That man back there…you notice something funny?”

  “Just another somebody that didn’t make it,” she said.

  “He’s fresh. Not dark and bloated.”

  Rachel glanced at Stephen, appreciating the relatively healthy glow of his skin compared to the putrefaction all around them. “Just because you survive the solar flares doesn’t mean you don’t have to die someday.”

  “But he wasn’t beat up, from what I could see. Just curled up like he was waiting for it.”

  Rachel again thought of the pills the pharmacist had given her. Not everyone had a spiritual or moral aversion to suicide. For some, suicide might look like an elevator to the Pearly Gates.