After: First Light

by Scott Nicholson

Mackie swallowed a pair of Vicodin with a mouthful of warm Diet Coke and patted his waist for the comforting heft of his Glock, tucked in his jeans and hidden beneath his windbreaker.

  He hadn’t needed it since gunning down the last Zaphead about three miles back.

  The Vicodin, however, Mackie always seemed to need. Even if he was wasn’t feeding addiction by chemically soothing his anxieties, prescription pain meds were in high demand in After, and thus served as useful currency.

  One didn’t want to spend much time on the highways these days without both weapons and items for bartering.

  Just ahead, he could see the campus begin to emerge from the rows of shops, assorted small businesses, and modest houses that lined both sides of the highway running through this particular stretch of western North Carolina mountains. Mackie hadn’t been here in some time, but even in After, he could see that the campus had lost none of its intoxicating bucolic flavor.

  With its quaint mountain charms and stone’s-throw proximity to a few ski resorts and a number of popular hiking destinations, Evans-Lawson was a school more popular with outdoorsy slackers than the more studious-minded. Mackie had belonged to neither group—and neither did Ally, really—but he missed it here just the same.

  Those days reminded him of things long forgotten in After: possibilities, youthfully naïve optimism.

  What came later was something very different.

  Something much uglier.

  And that was even before the solar storms that scorched the sky and turned the world below into a wasteland worthy of a Bad Religion record.

  The storms had shut down the world’s power grid and rendered any device or service dependent on it useless.

  Cell phones, cable, internet. Cars, even.

  All of it gone. Functionless.

  Mackie tossed his bike—a Wal-Mart cheapie he found in someone’s back yard a few miles across the county line–aside, dropped his Diet Coke can, adjusted his backpack, pulled his Glock, and loaded a round into the firing chamber. A pair of decomposed bodies, bloated with rot and saturated in congealed blood the consistency of pancake batter, lay facedown in the gas station parking lot just ahead. Another sat in a dark blue Mazda parked near the front entrance, his head leaning against the driver’s side window, smears of blood and liquefied skin staining the glass. There were no Zapheads nearby as far as Mackie could tell. The campus would likely be a different story.

  Mackie jogged across the highway and entered the campus from a northwestern angle, his Glock held in a two-handed grip and pointed downward. The summer session Ally was attending was obviously sparsely populated—otherwise the number of corpses lying on the campus grounds would have numbered in the dozens rather than the sporadic few Mackie encountered as he moved further toward Linvale Residence Hall.

  He couldn’t be sure he would find Ally there, assuming she had survived the storm and remained unchanged (a thin prayer at best), but she had made Linvale her home for the previous four semesters, so it made sense to try there first.

  Far more likely, though, that he would find her body lying somewhere here on the campus lawns among the other corpses.

  That was the second-best outcome Mackie could hope for.

  In addition to laying ruin to the world’s technological infrastructure, the solar storm also dropped most of humanity’s population dead where they stood and sat. A few scattered pockets survived, and some had come through relatively unharmed.

  The others became something different.

  Colloquially, these survivors were known as “Zapheads,” a reference given to the rabid, homicidal rages that possessed them after the solar storm boiled their brains and stripped away all traces of their humanity.

  Mackie had first heard the term used several days earlier by a stocky, middle-aged man Mackie had found trapped by beneath a pickup truck by a frenzied group comprised of varied ages. They were gripped by a rage that Mackie knew had no basis in natural human behavior. His mind first went to chemical or bacterial agents. But no, the solar storms obviously had something to do with this, and those were most certainly not the work of terrorists.

  Mackie had saved the man by emptying a magazine into the crowd of Zapheads, but eventually had to send a few rounds into his fellow survivor’s chest later that evening when he attempted to overpower Mackie and steal the supplies in his backpack.

  It was ammo Mackie regretted having to use, considering that his supply was quickly dwindling and there were assuredly a number of Zapheads left between him and Ally.

  Mackie felt conflicting measures of both nostalgia and revulsion. The deep, rich green of the campus lawns, the flowering dogwoods, and beautiful stone architecture of the various residence halls and academic buildings stoked the fires of pleasant memories from his days as a student here. But the sight of scattered corpses and the stench that accompanied them quickly turned those memories to vapor.

  He could feel the Vicodin begin to take hold in his bloodstream; that euphoric flush of warmth and the pleasurable numbness that soon followed. That was probably why the shuffle of staggered footsteps behind him didn’t register immediately, never quite coalesced in his mind as a viable threat until he felt a weight crash into him from behind and an arm snake around his neck, clawing for purchase.

  He felt the warmth of frenzied breaths on his neck before teeth sank into the space between his neck and right shoulder. The backpack he was wearing proved an ineffective barrier between him and the Zaphead attacking from behind. Mackie jutted his pelvis forward and then rammed his ass piston-like into the Zaphead’s gut with the force of a solid punch. Mackie then gripped the Zaphead’s forearm and quickly bent forward, driving his right shoulder at his left foot. The momentum carried the Zaphead over Mackie’s shoulder and she landed at his feet with a sharp exhalation of breath.

  He was an average martial artist at best, more efficient with a Glock or k-bar knife than his fists or feet, but a few of the techniques he picked up from Krider’s men in Tampa had thankfully stuck.

  The Zaphead was a girl, early 20’s. A brunette with a pixie haircut and a dingy grey tank top, a Misfits insignia tattooed on her throat beneath her right jaw. A punk chick, the type Mackie would’ve been drawn too back in his horny-hound days. Her eyes were a dry, stoner red and her lips were torn and mangled, most of her teeth ground down to stumps and exposed nerves.

  She had obviously tried chewing through something her teeth weren’t strong enough to pierce, tearing her mouth to raw hamburger in the process. Not uncommon behavior in the Zapheads Mackie had come across.

  The bite near Mackie’s shoulder burned and stung, but it didn’t concern him. Zapheads, as far as anyone could tell, weren’t infectious, unlike the zombies of popular cinema.

  The girl thrashed and shrieked, and Mackie held his foot down on her stomach to keep her planted. His Glock fired with a sharp crack and a hole opened in the Zaphead’s forehead. Instant silence.

  With its lack of external safeties and its point-and-shoot ease of use, Glocks were ideal weapons in the After, though Mackie had also found them useful in his previous profession. The problem was keeping a steady supply of ammunition, and Mackie had little of that to spare.

  That’s why, when Mackie spotted three other Zapheads ambling about near the rear of a lecture hall building to his left, a short distance ahead, Mackie thought it more prudent to evade them rather than shoot. The sound of the pistol shot had captured their attention, but with their vision of the area Mackie currently occupied partially obscured by the building, their eyes had yet to locate the source.

  Time to move.

  Unlike other, more sprawling mountain universities located nearby, such as Appalachian State, Evans-Lawson had a relatively small, compact campus. Traversing it from end to end was the work of 10 minutes at most, and that aspect of the college was either part of its charm or a major detriment depending on which student you asked. For Mackie, it was a considerable blessing, and as he took of
f at a jog, he knew he would reach Linvale quickly.

  What he might find when he got there wasn’t something he was ready to contemplate just yet.

  He darted forward, moving carefully around fallen corpses; most of them seemed to be students, given their youthful appearance and collegiate-appropriate attire.

  Well, youthful appearance was stretching it, considering the decomposition taking place. But these were obviously kids, only a few years younger than Mackie himself, cut down inside the comforting bubble of academia before the realties of post-college life would have an opportunity to do the same. A few of the bodies seemed older—30’s, maybe even early 40’s at a guess. Whether these were non-traditional students or faculty members, Mackie wasn’t sure.

  The constant stench of putrescence was something he hadn’t quite adapted to yet and he preferred to keep a wide berth between himself and the decaying bodies scattered on the grass. Even so, he looked at each one closely to be sure none was Ally.

  He no longer had a line of sight on the other three Zapheads he left behind; hopefully the noise from Mackie’s Glock had drifted vapor-like across what little remained of their ability to process stimuli and their attentions were now focused elsewhere. At any rate, now that Mackie was some distance ahead of them, they seemed to pose no threat.

  He could see Linvale just ahead, to the left of the student union and tucked behind another residence hall. At six stories in height, Linvale was the largest residence hall on campus and one of the few at Evans-Lawson that wasn’t co-ed. Like most other buildings on campus, it was an intricate, neoclassical style stone construction.

  Mackie covered the remaining distance quickly, his back bent in a slight crouch and his eyes scanning rapidly left and right.

  It was almost laughable, this notion that he actually had some idea what he was doing. Since graduation, he had learned to use a gun and handle himself reasonably well in a fight and he had killed a few people—normal people, not just Zapheads—but he was from an expert at this sort of thing.

  He paid particular attention to each door he passed. The doors to most buildings at Evans-Lawson were opened on the inside by push bars; while even the highest functioning Zaphead would have some difficulty negotiating a doorknob, it would be simple enough for one to lean his weight against a push bar and stumble outside if he happened to see Mackie through the door’s glass inset.

  Situational awareness was a crucial element of self-defense, and though some Zapheads—like the three he spotted just minutes before—moved at a more languid pace and seemed less observant then their more rabid brethren, Mackie wanted to spot them in advance rather than be caught unaware again. The Vicodin wasn’t helping; Mackie’s arms felt weightless and the fog of an early-stage narcotic high settled over his head.

  Not the most ideal circumstances for an armed man waist-deep in potential threats on an extraction mission, but he wasn’t sure he could handle what lay ahead without a good buzz to soften the edges.

  There was another scattering of corpses on Linvale’s front lawn—most female, but none of them Ally. A momentary surge of hope cut through the Vicodin swimming in Mackie’s bloodstream. But he realized there was no percentage in getting too excited just yet. Assuming she was even inside the building and not elsewhere on campus, the most likely fate for Ally was either that she was dead or another member of the Zaphead population.

  Or she could be nowhere near campus. It was the slimmest of possibilities, but Ally may have left the campus, either alone or with other survivors, to look for help elsewhere. Though her car was surely as dead as every other at the moment, she may have even tried finding her way back to her parent’s home, in a county several hours east.

  The thought put shards of ice in Mackie’s gut. He knew Ally wouldn’t likely last long on the highway, even with traveling companions.

  He wished he could call her, but even if cell phones were functioning, she had changed her number and blocked his several months ago.

  All residence hall doors required a keycard that doubled as student ID for entry. The glass panes in the front pair of doors and first floor windows remained surprisingly unbroken, but the glass in the doors was reinforced by wire mesh. No point in trying to shatter it to enter the building. The first floor dorm room windows were an option, but the blinds were drawn and Mackie wasn’t about to enter a room he had no view of from outside. The sound of breaking glass might also draw other Zapheads.

  The other option—and not one he particularly favored—was to search the pockets and purses of the corpses lying outside for a keycard.

  But...wait. The solar storm shut down all power. Anything powered by electricity is now useless...

  That should mean that the door would open without the need for a keycard, although he might have to force it.

  Mackie gripped the handle, pressed down on the latch with his thumb—

  —and felt his heart speed up as he pulled the door open smoothly and without even the squeaking of a hinge.

  The lobby was deserted; no corpses on the floor or on either of the couches that formed a right angle across from a television mounted on the wall.

  Ally’s dorm was on the fourth floor, or at least it used to be. He hadn’t spoken to her in so long that he had no idea if she had changed rooms. He wouldn’t have even known that she was attending this summer session if it hadn’t been for a Facebook posting from a friend of a friend, one of the few people in Ally’s life that hadn’t severed all to ties Mackie.

  If she’s here, she could be anywhere in the building. The prospect of searching six floors of dorm rooms was daunting. Mackie felt tired just thinking about it.

  Shit.

  I guess I’ll start there first and go from there.

  Ally had always seemed to love that particular room and wouldn’t likely have given it up. It was far from a sure bet, but it was a logical place to start.

  Mackie moved carefully up the stairs, his finger perpendicular to the Glock’s trigger, and his eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom. Even though the sun wouldn’t set for another couple of hours, without the overhead fluorescent lights, visibility would be low in the stairwell and hallways.

  Mackie hated the idea of entering an area where he had roughly the visual acuity of a fruit bat. You didn’t need to be a film scholar to know that that sort of thing rarely ended well in the movies.

  The stairwell was clear, but the stink of rot told him that there were bodies lying behind the door to the second floor hallway. He knew he should check to make sure Ally wasn’t among them...but no, her dorm room first.

  He jogged further up the stairwell, bypassing the entrance to the third floor hall, no longer cautious about the noise his footfalls made.

  The heat inside Linvale was stifling. Although summers in the mountains of western North Carolina were considerably cooler than in Florida, where Mackie had spent most of the last two years, the improvement wasn’t as significant as he expected. It was much too hot for even the thin windbreaker he was wearing, but he liked the extra protection of long sleeves and a second layer of fabric.

  Though they weren’t contagious, a bite from a Zaphead—as Punk Chick had so aptly demonstrated—was no less painful for it.

  Mackie quickly covered the remaining stairs beneath the fourth-floor entrance and threw open the door, dashing headlong into the hallway, his eyes trained to the left where Ally’s room would be, near the end of the hall.

  And plowed face first into a Zaphead that came charging out of the gloom to the right.

  Shit! Stupid, careless...

  Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit...

  Mackie tumbled backward into the stairwell with the Zaphead clinging to his shirt, spittle spraying in his face. They fell onto the staircase, the supplies in Mackie’s backpack jabbing painfully into his spine. The Zaphead’s weight pressed down on Mackie, choking off his breath with a force that felt like tons rather than pounds.

  This Zaphead wasn’t
as dainty as Punk Chick. This was a linebacker-sized male that obviously put in his time at the gym before the Big Zap. Here to engage in some extracurricular activities with one of the girls on this hall before the storms hit, no doubt.

  Mackie wedged his right forearm under the Zaphead’s chin. He wanted to get the bastard’s snapping jaws as far from his own face as possible. It also didn’t help that Mackie was holding his Glock in his right hand and had no chance of getting off an effective shot in his current position. His left hand was pinned beneath the Zaphead’s weight, so switching the Glock to his other hand was also out of the question.

  A second Zaphead tumbled out of the hall’s entrance before the door closed shut, and she staggered into the stairwell. A blonde, slim, her skin a shade too pale.

  Not Ally.

  But not what Mackie needed right now, either.

  Mackie sucked in as much breath as the Zaphead’s weight would allow and tried lifting his knees for leverage. Not much luck, but he did manage to raise just enough of the Zaphead’s weight to wriggle his left hand free. Mackie slammed his left palm against the Zaphead’s forehead, forcing his head back just far enough so that Mackie could remove his forearm from the Zaphead’s throat and press the Glock’s barrel against it.

  The female Zaphead stumbled down the stairs. If she fell on top of them, Mackie knew he’d have a hell of time excavating himself from beneath the combined weight of two Zapheads.

  Mackie squeezed the trigger, and felt a spray of blood on his neck and chest. The Zaphead on top of him gurgled and sputtered, fighting to suck air through his shredded trachea. Ropes of blood fell from his mouth onto Mackie’s face.

  The other Zaphead lost her footing on the stairs and fell foreword, aiming straight for Mackie and the dying bastard on top of him.

  Mackie squeezed off a second shot but missed, the bullet striking the convergence point of the walls and ceiling as the girl continued to fall.

  He braced himself as she fell on top of the Zaphead pinning him to the stairs. The added weight squeezed out what little breath Mackie could hold in his lungs, and he felt certain his backpack would push his spine out through his chest.

  He was also pretty sure he could taste his spleen.

  The girl thrashed and snapped, but couldn’t find purchase with the dying Zaphead between her and Mackie. Mackie reached out with his left hand, grabbed a fistful of hair behind her head, and with his other hand pressed the Glock against her temple.

  The bullet drilled through her skull and sent shards of bone and chunks of brain tissue flying in a splattery burst, like a messy meal heated in a microwave too long.

  It took Mackie several tries and far more time than he felt he had to spare, but he eventually managed to work himself from beneath the two Zapheads. If there were other Zapheads inside the building, the sounds of struggle and gunfire hadn’t alerted them yet.

  Mackie leaned against the stairwell wall and pulled in as much breath as his starving lungs allowed. His back felt like some kids had used it as a Piñata. When his breathing had found its rhythm again, he pulled himself and opened the hallway door again. He stepped inside, slower this time, sweeping his Glock left and right.

  No Zapheads. One female corpse that wasn’t Ally lying inside the entrance to the communal bathroom.

  Ally’s room –- or at least the room she had stayed in since the beginning of her freshmen year –- was on the left, second to last. If she was in there, alive and unaffected by the storm, she surely would’ve heard the noise in the stairwell.

  Mackie tapped on the door with the Glock’s barrel and called her name.

  Please, God...

  No response. But Mackie thought he could hear something stirring inside the room. Possibly the sound of soft footsteps, but maybe that was just what he wanted to hear.

  The door flew open suddenly, and on the other side was a blonde girl, a foot or so shorter than Mackie, her hair not much longer than Punk Chick’s pixie cut. She was wearing a pale green T-shirt and those tight, stretchy pants Mackie often seen women jog in. The kind that accentuated curves so well.

  She was gripping a pair of scissors in her left hand, and her wide, wet eyes reflected surprise and uncertainty.

  “Who are—?” she began before Mackie pushed her inside the room. He stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind him.

  This wasn’t Ally, and it wasn’t anyone Mackie recognized. She was still holding the scissors—as a weapon, Mackie was sure—but she made no effort to use them in her defense.

  “I’m looking for Ally. Ally Williams. This used to be her room.”

  The girl had no time to respond before Mackie’s eyes fell on a huddled, writhing form buried beneath a blanket in the closet space to the left.

  Oh, God...

  Mackie quickly walked over, ripped away the blanket, and felt his heart nearly punch through the walls of his chest.

  It was Ally, her wrists and ankles bound with duct tape. A pair of panties were stuffed in her mouth and bound in place by more duct tape. Her chestnut hair was disheveled and slicked with sweat, and her eyes had the distinctive redness and uncontrolled frenzy of a Zaphead.

  She seemed groggy and sluggish, but that was quickly wearing off, and she began struggling against her binds with more fervor, her mouth working furiously at the panties stuffed inside.

  Mackie’s insides felt as if they were about to drop through the floor.

  The girl behind him spoke. “Are you...are you Macklin?”

  Her turned and stared at her, but not really at her; it seemed more like he was staring through her and into the wall behind.

  And then he was on her, one hand clutching the back of her head, the other jabbing the Glock beneath her chin.

  “What...the hell...” he spat. The girl was still holding the scissors, but seemed to have forgotten them.

  “She...she kept trying to attack me. Had to...to restrain her...”

  Mackie held her place for a moment, and then let go of her head and lowered the Glock. He looked back at Ally still huddled in the closet space, her face a mask of demonic contortions.

  “Who are you?” he asked. He seemed deflated.

  The girl tried keeping her distance, but that wasn’t easy in such a small room.

  “Linzie. Linzie McAllister.”

  “Lindsey? Are you her roommate?”

  “Linzie. Z-I-E. No, we’re friends, but not roommates.” And then she added, unnecessarily, “I’m here for the summer session, too.”

  Mackie said nothing, just kept his eyes on Ally.

  “After I taped her up, I started giving her Benadryl I found in one of her drawers, like, to calm her down. Help her sleep.”

  Ally’s seasonal allergies were brutal. Of course she would have Benadryl lying around.

  And apparently, the drug’s sedating quality worked on even Zapheads.

  The notion that a Zaphead could even be sedated hadn’t yet occurred to Mackie. Maybe there was a cure? But that was too big a problem to think about right now.

  “I’ve seen what some of these things can do,” Mackie said. “How the hell did you get her restrained to begin with?”

  Linzie’s eyes fell. “I had to hit her a few times. I’m sorry, but I had to. She went crazy kept trying to hurt me.”

  Mackie said nothing. He moved closer to Ally again and took a more careful look at her face. Beneath strands of damp, lank hair he could see bruises on her forehead.

  Linzie answered his unasked question. “I grabbed a stapler from her desk and hit her with that a few times. I’m sorry, I just—”

  “How did you get the Benadryl in her?”

  “Just, y’know, forced the capsules down her throat. Flushed them down with some water. She bit me when I did that.” Linzie held up a hand, and Mackie could see where Ally’s teeth had scraped off some flesh on a few of the fingers.

  “Do you have any more?”

  “Don’t thi
nk so, no.”

  Mackie felt a wave of exhaustion consume him. He stumbled over to the bunk bends near the opposite wall and plunked down on the lower bunk.

  “You are Macklin, right?” Linzie asked.

  “Mackie. But yeah.”

  “How did you get here? Are you alone?”

  Mackie placed the Glock beside him on the bed’s comforter and rubbed his eyes. “I’m alone. I was in the next county over on business when all this shit started. I knew Ally was here for the summer session, so I wanted to find her, see if she was okay. My car stopped working when the storm hit, so I walked for a while, and then found a bike.”

  Mackie didn’t mention that his business in the next county involved paying a visit to a reporter named Julia Stone and warning her away from an investigation she was conducting into the western North Carolina branch of Lucas Krider’s operations.