After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2)

by Scott Nicholson

  “The Zapheads?”

  She nodded. He expected the memory would repulse her and make her shove the infant from her chest, but instead she only cradled it more protectively. “My husband shot three of them, but then they dragged him out of the car and—”

  Her voice broke, and even though she swallowed back her sob, it was forceful enough to cause the infant to stir. Franklin reached over its head and stroked the side of the woman’s cheek, her tears wetting the back of his hand.

  “We all went through some trauma,” he said. “The end of the world is never easy for anybody.”

  Her face clenched and a few more tears glistened on her lashes. “I grabbed Joey and ran. We spent one night in an empty car. I didn’t know where to go. So we just…”

  Franklin swallowed hard. The two females in the other bed stirred, and the fire hissed and popped with heat. “When did you know about…the baby?”

  “Baby?” She hugged the tiny Zaphead closer. “What about him?”

  “That he was different.”

  Her eyes grew soulful and happy. “He’s my special boy.”

  “Are you…” Franklin didn’t know how to approach the problem. He’d never understood women in the best of times, and under circumstances such as these, he was hopeless.

  Then the baby startled, waving its little fists in the air. It made a chuckling sound, as if something vibrated in its throat. Its face was still turned away from Franklin, but he studied it for the first time.

  With its eyes closed, it looked just like a human infant—tufts of downy hair, skin nearly translucent, limbs soft and plump. But that disturbing chuckle was like something from an animal, not a human.

  Cathy smiled. “He’s hungry.”

  Franklin was appalled to realize the infant’s throaty noises were a cry for milk. And even more horrifying was when the young mother pulled back the blanket and brought the infant to one of her creamy breasts. The baby opened its mouth and latched on, and the chuckling died away into a contented purr.

  Franklin turned away, trembling. He rose from the makeshift bed and went to the fire. He drove a metal poker into the embers to drown out the horrible moist sound of the suckling.

  Maybe the new order wouldn’t play out exactly as he’d planned it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Campbell lurched and kicked as the hands squeezed his head.

  Fingers pressed near his eye sockets and he went wild, bucking as the attacker climbed onto his back and tried to ride him to the ground. He swung his pistol around his side, driving the barrel into flesh. If he fired, the noise might bring the Zapheads back, and this attack seemed like a solitary act.

  He collapsed his legs and rolled, hoping to throw off his attacker. He was rising to run when her voice hissed in his ear: “Stop or they’ll hear us.”

  Campbell immediately relaxed his muscles and knelt against the forest floor. The woman pressed against him to whisper again, her breath ripe with garlic and wine. “You’re new to these parts, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah.” His heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a full trot. “But I’m thinking of settling down. People are very friendly here.”

  “Saw you come off the highway. What were you doing following those soldiers?”

  “Those were the first people I’d seen in days. Living people, that is.”

  “Well, I ain’t so sure those soldiers are human beings anymore. They’re acting like they rule the world.”

  “With automatic weapons, I guess they do. Why did you jump me, anyway?”

  “If I’d have hollered, they might have heard us.”

  “But I could have shot you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That was a possibility.”

  Campbell bent and looked through the trees. No sign of movement. “Do you live around here?”

  “Got a camper trailer back in the woods. Land’s been in the family for a century.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Safe as anywhere. Soldiers haven’t found it yet, and I lay low so the Zappers don’t pay me no mind.”

  He had a sense of her in the dark, a woman maybe 40, short and solid and tough. If she’d been seriously attacking him, he would have had a challenge fending her off. But he supposed anyone still left alive was tough in one way or another.

  “They took the dead Zaphead,” Campbell said. “What will they do with it?”

  “I don’t want to sit in the woods all night and jabber,” the woman said. “Come on.”

  She reached out and found his hand in the dark. She tugged him with surprising strength in the direction opposite of the highway.

  “I’m going back to the road,” he said. “It’s open so I can see any threats, and I can make better time.”

  She didn’t release his hand. “Where you headed?”

  “North. To the Blue Ridge Parkway. I heard there was a survival camp there.”

  “There are survival camps all over the place. Them soldiers have one. And you could say mine is one, too. Now come on.’

  He resisted, and she added, “Just for the night.”

  Campbell considered his options. He hadn’t had real human contact in weeks, and now that he had an alternative, he wasn’t sure he could face a night of locking himself inside a stranded vehicle to sleep. “Okay.”

  She giggled, a startling sound given the violence and strangeness Campbell had recently witnessed. “Ain’t picked up a man in a long time. And you don’t even know my name.”

  Campbell tried to pull his hand away, but she squeezed harder. “Lighten up,” she said. “If I was hunting for a husband, I wouldn’t go after one as skittish as you. Name’s Wilma.”

  He let her lead him through the woods. She flicked on a pen light and flashed the narrow beam steadily ahead of her feet, guiding him with a confidence that suggested she knew the woods well.

  “Hi, Wilma. I’m Campbell.”

  They walked in silence for some minutes, Campbell’s eyes adjusting to the gloom. The green-tinged sky occasionally appeared through breaks in the canopy. “You live alone?” he asked.

  “Do now. Where you from?”

  “Near Chapel Hill. Me and a friend bicycled out this way, and then he…”

  She squeezed his hand again, and he welcomed the sympathetic contact. “Happens to all of us sooner or later,” she said. “Personally, I’m shooting for the ‘later.’”

  Campbell glanced around, watching for lights or movement in the shadows. He wondered if the woman was armed, and then decided she must be. Otherwise, she’d have to be crazy to wander around knowing Zapheads and a crazed militia was afoot.

  The terrain was relatively flat but now it gave way to a slow incline. The ground was rockier here, and they came upon a wide ditch that featured a trickle of water.

  “Cane Creek,” she said. “Good water if you filter it.”

  Campbell realized he was both thirsty and hungry. Encountering the troops had disrupted his routine and he hadn’t eaten since midday. “Do you have any food?”

  “I know how to make do. There’s a convenience store off the exit ramp two miles up the road, and a little town another three miles after that. I go to the grocery store about once a week. A lot of the food’s gone over but you can always get canned stuff.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for a fresh steak.”

  “You should drop in at the army camp, then. They barbecue a steer once in a while. Rustling the local livestock.”

  “There’s a camp? How many soldiers are there?”

  “Six or seven. I try to keep clear of them, but I see them out once in a while, and I hear them shooting.”

  “So there are more Zapheads than soldiers.”

  “More Zapheads than anything. Is it the same in Chapel Hill and everywhere you’ve been?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Except now the Zapheads are gathering into groups or tribes.”

  “You noticed that, too, huh? While us humans all try to go solo.”

  Soon the trail widened and ga
ve way to a clearing on a hill. A camper trailer was parked under a large oak tree whose limbs clutched at the iridescent green ribbons in the sky. The home was propped up on cinder blocks, a propane tank sitting on the tongue. The camper’s windows were too small for anyone to crawl through.

  “Home sweet home,” Wilma said, fishing a key from somewhere within her bulky clothing. The door had a padlock on it.

  Wonder what she needs to lock out?

  Campbell glanced into the shadows of the forest, feeling vulnerable in the open. He marveled at how quickly he’d become used to a sky backlit with an unnatural aurora, the lingering effects of the charged particles from the solar storm. “Haven’t you been attacked yet?”

  “I don’t have anything anybody wants.”

  “Not even the Zapheads?”

  “I just lay low and let it all fly over me.”

  A tiny yap came from inside the camper. “Hush in there, Peanut,” Wilma said through the door before opening it. She put her hand through to let the dog sniff at it. “It’s me and a new friend.”

  Campbell wasn’t sure he was ready for a friend. Maybe he should have returned to the highway, where at least he’d developed some sort of routine. But here was a woman with a pet. It was almost disturbingly normal, although in his old life he’d have considered such a woman poor white trash or an eccentric old witch.

  At least she has a dog instead of a bunch of cats.

  She ushered Campbell inside and he found himself standing in the cramped quarters as she lit a candle. The camper’s interior was stacked with dried goods, snack foods, and cases of bottled drinks. The little dog that sniffed his trouser leg was a rat terrier with mangy gray fur.

  “Peanut, this is Campbell,” Wilma said, pushing back her wild tangle of red hair. He got his first good look at her face. Her freckled cheeks bore large red scars of recent vintage, and a dime-sized crusty scab clung to her lower lip.

  He swallowed hard as her stare challenged him to comment. Even her green eyes were sickly, red-rimmed and gummy with mucus. He’d guessed she was middle-aged but now he couldn’t be sure. She might have been twenty with a hundred years of damage and hard living pressed into the clay of her flesh.

  He forced his gaze away and knelt to pet the dog. It, too, seemed to be a carrier of afflictions, with one ear torn nearly in half and a viscous goo coating its dark nose. Campbell was bending to pet it when it lifted his head and bared yellow teeth, growling from deep in its throat.

  “Hey, Peanut, that ain’t the way we treat company,” she said, giving the dog a light kick in the ribs. “Get on to bed.”

  The dog slunk away into a sideways milk crate that featured wadded-up sheets for bedding. The camper held a small table and a bed on a low loft that extended over the trailer’s tongue. A small kitchenette had a two-eye gas stove, but the sink was piled with filthy dishes and empty tin cans. Flies buzzed around the mess. A salted hunk of ham dangled from the ceiling by a piece of twine, huge clefts cut in the marbled meat. Clothes were strewn on every surface.

  Wilma shucked her overcoat and tossed it on the table, knocking a candy-bar wrapper to the cluttered floor.

  “What do you think?” she said, waving her arm to indicate her home.

  Campbell was still taking in the tiny living space, which he estimated to be ten feet by fifteen feet, with hardly a square foot clear of refuse. The stench of stale food, mold, damp fur, and old sweat nearly made him vomit. He suddenly longed for the fresh air outside, even with all the accompanying dangers.

  “It’s…cozy,” he managed. He looked around for a place to sit, but decided he’d rather stand for now.

  Wilma reached over and flipped a lock on the door latch, then slid a hasp into place and snapped a padlock. “In case they break the window and try to reach the handle,” she said.

  Campbell was uneasy about the being locked in, especially given the candle and the amount of clutter. He imagined the place would torch like a wad of gasoline-soaked newspaper. But he calmed himself. If Zapheads attacked, he should be able to fend them off with his pistol, even in close quarters.

  He wasn’t sure about the soldiers, though. He doubted the thin metal walls would deflect bullets. He just had to trust that the woman was correct—the soldiers had no interest in her.

  But Campbell found trust difficult. He hadn’t been so good at it in the old days, and in the aftermath of the apocalypse, he’d not had a whole of opportunities to practice the trait.

  “Make yourself comfy,” she said, waving at the bed, which apparently doubled for both sitting and sleeping. Campbell sat on the edge of the bare mattress, suspicious of the musty patchwork quilts piled atop it.

  Wilma opened a cabinet, revealing a storehouse of liquor. The bottles were arranged with a neatness that contrasted vividly with the chaos of the living area, as if this was one area where the woman found comfort and control. Many of the bottles were full, and he wondered how many trips she’d made to the nearby town to collect such a stash.

  She reached in and plucked out some Scotch with a yellow label. “Nothing but the best for guests, right, Peanut?”

  The dog’s tail gave a couple of feeble thumps. Campbell wondered how many “guests” had made their way into the camper over the years.

  Without ceremony, the woman twisted off the cap and took two deep swallows. She gasped in obvious pleasure, revealing two black gaps in her teeth, and held the bottle out for Campbell. Although the numbing promise of the alcohol was alluring, he couldn’t help thinking of the scab on her lip, which was now damp with drink.

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “A teetotaler, huh? Well, no use racking up brownie points in heaven. God’s done given up on this kooky little experiment called ‘the human race.’ Right, Peanut?”

  This time, the dog ignored her.

  “You weren’t carrying a gun,” Campbell said.

  “What for? If they wanted me dead, I’d already be dead.” She blew out the candle, and then Campbell heard a plastic bottle fall as she headed toward him. She put her hand on his knee as she climbed onto the bed with the bottle.

  He braced for her touch, afraid she would demand intimacy, maybe even sex.

  “You better get some sleep,” she said. “Peanut will bark if anybody comes. You’re safe here as anywhere.”

  Campbell didn’t find any comfort in that, but he was exhausted. He lay down, fully clothed, his backpack still slung over his shoulder, listening to her sip from the bottle in the dark.

  He pictured the silent, somber procession of Zapheads carrying their corpse into the forest, an endless line of them, and soon he couldn’t tell memory from dream.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bzzzzzz.

  Rachel woke with the sun in her eyes. Disoriented, she wiped the sweat from her face. The sky was clear and brilliant blue overhead, and the air was moist with June humidity. She sat up and saw the grainy stretch of beach opening up to the expanse of blue-green water. A speedboat droned in the distance, the source of the hum that had awakened her.

  The Lake Norman vacation. A break from tenth grade and geometry and the persistent attention of David Anderson, first-chair clarinetist and algebra honors student. School a glorious eight weeks in the future, so far on the horizon as to not even be imaginable yet. Her parents back at the club, Dad probably sipping a beer after a round of golf, Mom in a lounge chair reading a James Patterson paperback. Not a care in the world.

  Chelsea?

  Chelsea was right there on the beach when Rachel had closed her eyes—just for a second, I only wanted to block out the bright blinding sun for a second—and now she was gone.

  Rachel lifted her head and squinted up and down the beach. They were in an isolated, shady spot, the nearest pier fifty yards away. The boats there were docked and tethered, and a couple of people sat on the edge of the pier, feet dangling in the water.

  Chelsea couldn’t have gone far in those few seconds Rachel had closed her eyes—and she was now willing to
admit it had been seconds, plural. Still, Chelsea wouldn’t have gone into the water without her big sister. Because Rachel would give her an Indian sunburn on her forearm or twist one of her pigtails until she squealed like a real pig.

  But Chelsea wasn’t on the beach. Had she gone up the trail and through the landscaped trees to the club?

  I’ll get that twerp for leaving me down here to get sunburned.

  But their tube of sunscreen, towels, and half-full Sprites were sitting beside Rachel, along with Chelsea’s iPod and ear buds. She was into Taylor Swift and Katy Perry at the moment, girl power music. Chelsea never went anywhere without her ear buds. The only time she took them out was when she was in the shower or...

  And the horror dawned on her just as the last dregs of drowsiness fell away. She didn’t even recall jumping to her feet. She could very well have levitated all the way to the water’s edge.

  Then Rachel was knee-deep in the lake, beating the surface, screaming Chelsea’s name as the silver droplets showered around her with a laughing rhythm. She dove into the water, the contrasting coolness heightening her senses. Chelsea was wearing a green bikini that was just starting to fill out a little with swells of pudginess. She should be easy to spot.

  The terrain sloped gently into the water, meaning Chelsea would have had to go out at least thirty feet to be in over her head. There were no sudden drop-offs, no real currents, no undertow. No reason to go under and not come up.

  Rachel held her breath until her lungs burned and her eyes stung. She forced herself to the surface and dove again, into deeper water.

  Still no Chelsea.

  This time when she broke water, she waved her arms and shouted “Help! Help!” The couple on the pier saw her and started running.

  Come on, Chelsea, don’t be lost.

  I only closed my eyes for a second.

  I didn’t mean to…

  She sat up, fighting for breath, wondering why the water was so cold.

  “Hey,” DeVontay said. “You okay?”

  He was crouched by the opening of the damaged cockpit, a map open across his knees and tilted toward the campfire. The flames had burned low, casting a reddish hue against the plane’s interior and glinting dully against the dead instrument panels.