After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

By the time they reached the high school, DeVontay was no longer sure whether he was a guest or a captive.

The Zapheads had lost any semblance of order, teeming through the streets in all directions at once. He’d come upon one more dead soldier, this one apparently climbing a tree to escape his pursuers. The soldier didn’t go down without a fight, though. Although the bodies had been removed, several large splotches of dark red marked the locations of the fallen. The soldier hung in a lower branch, eyes wide in shock, face swollen with the edema of death.

The fires had spread on the western side of the town, and the school building was a charred shell of blackened bricks. Flames ate their way up the slope to the century-old courthouse on the hill, and columns of smoke twisted into a massive black cloud that wreathed the town and veiled the sinking sun.

“You said you’d take me to Rachel,” DeVontay said to Willow, leaning against a utility pole and sliding into a sitting position.

“I never said that.”

DeVontay looked down at the baby in his arms. She didn’t seem the least bit bothered that her tribe was disrupted and facing destruction. If anything, she looked amused.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “Up in the mountains, when I was deciding whether or not to kill you.”

“You heard what you wanted to hear. What I actually said was ‘You want to see Rachel.’ That was an observation, not a promise.”

DeVontay wasn’t going to debate semantics with a ten-pound, mutant-eyed monster that was more intelligent than he was. He looked around for other Zapheads. Five others aimlessly walked the streets, paying no attention to them.

I can kill her right here. Or just leave her on the sidewalk, or stick her in one of these cars.

“You have a link with Rachel,” he said. “That’s why your people came to the mountains to get her. That’s how you were able to find her.”

“I have links with all of us,” Willow said. “But the signal is noisy right now.”

“Where is she?”

Willow giggled. “Hide and seek.”

DeVontay gave his most menacing scowl, which he hoped was made all the more sinister because of his missing glass eye. “I’ll drop you here and leave you for the fires.”

“And you’ll never find Rachel without me.”

An explosion rocked the far side of town, followed by a few pops that might have been gunshots. DeVontay wondered if Shipley was mounting a follow-up attack. An advance probe, sacrificing a few soldiers while others set fires to smoke out the enemy. Then a full-scale assault before dusk, while the Zapheads were in disarray.

“We need each other,” DeVontay said. “I’ll protect you from the soldiers and you’ll take me to Rachel.”

“A temporary alliance of convenience?”

“We have to start somewhere.” He was worried the surrounding Zapheads would revert to their violent ways and turn on him, but they wandered back and forth like they were lost.

As if reading his thoughts, Willow said, “The others like me, the New People, are organizing the tribe. We’re the leaders. We’re learning from your kind, which is why we wanted Rachel. Since she was the first of you to become like us, she can help us understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why you fear us so much. Why you want to destroy us.”

DeVontay shook his head. “What did you expect us to do? We’re facing extinction.”

“Would that really be so bad? You had your time. From what I have learned, your kind was already destroying itself. Climate change, pollution, warfare, genocide. And we haven’t even begun to deal with the multiple nuclear power plants that are melting down.”

She had a point. Given the psychos banding into survivalist camps and Shipley’s fascist ambitions of ruling the world, DeVontay couldn’t make the case that humans offered a brighter future than the Zapheads. He just hated like hell to be caught in the middle.

“We can fix all that later,” he said. “Right now, let’s get to Rachel.”

“That way,” she said, pointing a tiny finger to an apartment complex a few hundred yards beyond the school. The buildings were in no immediate danger of fire, and the route looked as safe as any other. DeVontay still had a Plan B of slipping out of town under cover of darkness, but not until he’d done his best to rescue Rachel.

If she even needs or wants to be rescued.

“How far is it?” he asked.

“Around the corner. A shop beside the gas station. Go down the stairs around back.”

“Okay,” DeVontay said. “I’m going to cover your face with the blanket to filter out some of the smoke.”

Willow nodded, the fiery sparks in her eyes quieting to a dull glow. Just before he pulled a fold of cloth over her, she said, “I trust you.”

Great. Bad enough when other humans were counting on me. Now I’ve adopted a pain in the ass whose tribe wants to knock us off the top of the food chain.

“Wait a second,” DeVontay said. “You won’t be able to tell me where to go if you can’t see.”

“I don’t need to see,” Willow said, her words muffled. “I
know
.”

DeVontay clutched the bundle to his chest and veered away from the school. The heat from the flames warmed his skin and hot air seared his lungs. A figure to his left sprinted through the open door of a house, and DeVontay was pretty sure it was a fellow survivor—the first living human he’d seen since arriving in Newton.

Maybe she knows where the others are.

He called after her but heard no response. A series of explosions ripped the outskirts half a mile away—grenade launchers, most likely. Franklin and Lt. Hilyard had told them about Shipley’s arsenal of death, and even a small Army unit could pack a big punch with them. Bullets could start flying at any moment, and DeVontay didn’t want to be out in the open when it started. Shipley’s crew wouldn’t care what they were aiming at. Any moving target was a good target.

“There’s one of us,” DeVontay said to Willow.

The hidden baby answered, “I’m not one of you, remember?”

DeVontay was reminded how quickly he’d accepted the existence of a hyper-intelligent infant that couldn’t take care of itself. This was the future of the world. And he was burying the old one with every step.

He ran toward the house after the woman.

“Where are you going?” Willow called, the blanket rippling as she struggled to peel it away from her face. “Rachel is the other way.”

“You’ve got your people and I’ve got mine,” DeVontay said.

He entered the dark house. “Hello?” he called.

“Get away,” a woman said. She sounded frightened, panicked, and likely on the edge of madness.

DeVontay couldn’t make out her face, but she was silhouetted against a back window, against which a distant fire cast a coruscating wash of orange and red.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“You have one of
them
.”

DeVontay realized she meant the baby. Willow’s eyes glowed with an eerie light that mirrored the flames outside, and they were bright enough to radiate through the blanket. She squirmed in his grasp.

“Where are the others?” DeVontay asked, holding his position.

“Everywhere…nowhere…I don’t know.” The woman calmed down a little. “Scattered now. Or dead.”

“So there are more of us around?” DeVontay hoped Willow would stay quiet so the woman wouldn’t panic. DeVontay’s eye adjusted to the dark and he could make out her middle-aged, lean face.

And the pistol in her hand.

“They forced most of us to go to the football stadium.” The woman let out a sob. “They had all these dead bodies piled up. Thousands and thousands of them. Like they were watching a game. And then the Zapheads started chanting ‘Wheeler, Wheeler, Wheeler.’ And this woman showed up, and then the shooting started.”

Rachel. She was here, just like Willow said.

“Easy,” DeVontay said. “There’s an Army unit up in the mountains, and they’ve attacked the town. You’re going to be free, but you have to stay off the streets until it’s over.”

“The Army’s not going to save you,” Willow said. “For every one of us they kill, a hundred more step in. We’re confused right now, but soon we will organize and solve this problem.”

The woman raised her pistol, arm wavering.
“Make it shut up!”

DeVontay held up one palm in a “Stop” gesture. “She’s called ‘Willow.’ She can help us. Do you know what happened to the Wheeler woman?”

“I hope she’s dead. Because she’s one of them, too.”

Gunshots peppered the landscape. A series of muffled explosions boomed across town. Outside, Zapheads moved toward the sounds as if they’d finally regained their communal mind.

Willow’s right. The attack disrupted their unity, but they’re adapting and recovering. This might be the first time they’ve been hit this hard.

Which meant he’d have to find Rachel fast and get out of there. This woman was too far gone to be helpful. He couldn’t waste the time to help her, either.

It’s come to this. The Zapheads are more human than we are.

“I have to go now,” DeVontay said. “You just stay put like I said and keep your head down.”

“What happened to your eye? Did one of the Zapheads take it?”

DeVontay didn’t understand her for a moment. He was so used to having only one eye that he didn’t consider it noteworthy, and his glass eye was of a quality that the casual observer wouldn’t know it was a prosthetic. But with the socket empty, he must look shocking.

“I lost it as a child,” he said. “I’ve been with the Zapheads for two days now and they haven’t hurt me.”

“We’re the New People,” Willow said. “We reject your insulting name for us.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the woman wailed. “Shut the little freak
up
.”

DeVontay took a step backward toward the door. He wasn’t totally sure the Zapheads wouldn’t erupt into a murderous frenzy, but the street seemed a safer bet than this woman’s company. “She’s just a baby.”

“But the babies are the worst,” the woman said, face twisting, her eyes taking on a mad light. With her wild hair and leer, she might have been a witch out of some demonic fairy tale. But the gun was real. “The babies are the smart ones. Planning the takeover.”

“We’re not taking over anything,” Willow said. “You’re giving it to us.”

“Shh,” DeVontay said. In her straightforward innocence, Willow didn’t understand she was feeding the woman’s lunacy.

“They’re our extinction event,” the woman said. “The comet got the dinosaurs, and the Zapheads are going to get us. Except nobody will be around to write the history.”

“We’ll be around.” DeVontay didn’t believe it, but he hoped to soothe the woman.

“You’ll live as long as we let you,” Willow said.

The room erupted in a flash of light and percussion, wet and warm fluid spattering DeVontay, a line of silvery heat searing along the side of his rib cage.

The blanket held a mushy mass of soft red pulp where Willow’s head had been.

A broken cackle of laughter poured from the woman’s throat. DeVontay didn’t know how many rounds she had left, but she didn’t seem to be aiming anymore.

He laid Willow on the floor and touched the gash in his side. His fingers came away bloody but the bullet had skimmed instead of penetrated.

“Nobody will be around to write the history,” the woman repeated.

Humans write their histories in blood.

But DeVontay didn’t respond to her. Instead, he slipped out the door and took his chances with the swarming Zapheads.

CHAPTER TEN

Dusk was settling as Franklin followed Brock through a greenway running along a sluggish brown creek.

The public park had probably been the pride of Newton, with picnic tables, basketball courts, skateboard ramps, and swing sets, but now the grass was knee high and weeds sprouted up through the asphalt walking track. Franklin had seen photographs of Chernobyl taken forty years after the deadly nuclear accident, and Mother Nature quickly reclaimed the streets and parking lots with little effort, trees already rivaling the three-story buildings of the abandoned city. The solar flares were a disruption of a different sort, but Franklin found comfort in the notion that life would go on, no matter what forces tugged and tore at the world.

Probably be deer roaming this park by next year. Good hunting territory. Now, if I only had a goddamned gun.

But he wasn’t sure about the quality of meat anymore. Some of the animals in the forest around his compound had exhibited those strange, gleaming eyes and erratic behavior. Although animals didn’t die off to the same extent humans did, they were affected by the solar storms, too. Franklin was just glad his goats and chickens hadn’t turned on him, but goats were pretty weird even without mutations.

The woman behind him—Sierra, Brock had called her—carried Franklin’s rifle. Brock was no gentleman, putting the extra weight on the woman, but he seemed like the kind who got what he wanted and never had to pay full price.

The smoke rising from Newton threw a haze across the horizon, painting the sunset blood red. “Looks like there won’t be much of Newton left by the time we get there,” Franklin said.

“Who said we’re going there?” Brock said without turning.

Franklin thought about adding, “Well, we’re getting closer with every step.” But he’d have better luck with Sierra. “How long have you guys been together?”

“We’re not together,” she said.

“Don’t start that,” Brock said. This was apparently a discussion they’d kicked around before.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Franklin said. “That’s none of my business. I meant, how long have you been in this group?”

“How do you know we’re in a group?” she answered. She’d obviously been studying at the Brock School of Conversation for a while.

“Everybody’s either in a group or dead.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m in a group. I just lost mine.”

“We’re putting something together,” Brock said. “If it works out, we’re taking it all back.”

“Sounds like we won’t get much help from the Army.” After the flurry of explosions half an hour ago, the shooting had diminished to an occasional distant burst. If Shipley was the one leading the charge, he wasn’t going in at full strength.

“The Army’s part of the problem, not part of the solution,” Brock said.

Jesus, is this guy a business major? Next thing you know he’ll be calling the apocalypse a “win win win, with plenty of upside potential.”

“What do you mean?” Franklin asked. He thought he saw movement in the trees beyond the creek, but he kept walking.

“We won’t defeat the Zapheads through brute force. We’ll have to outsmart them.” Brock stopped where the walking path intersected a street. A pile-up of vehicles blocked the road. But something was off about the massive collision. For one thing, why would that many cars travel a side road like this at one time?

Then Franklin realized the cars hadn’t smashed into each other at high speeds—they’d been rolled into place and arranged. The effort must have taken many hands and many hours.

“What’s all this?” Franklin asked.

“You know they collect bodies, right?” Sierra said.

“Sure.” Franklin hoped they weren’t going to use him as bait.

“They filled up the football stadium at the high school with them,” Brock said. “Propped them up like spectators, as if the Zapheads had some kind of crowd memory.”

Franklin supposed there would be plenty more dead folks around before it was all over. They could fill the schools, the churches, and the shopping malls, everybody posed like they were going about their business as usual. In a way, nothing would change—zombies watching zombies rot away.

“What do you think they’re going to do with all of them?” Sierra asked. He wondered if she knew what “rhetorical” meant.

“Just guessing,” Franklin said, “I’d say they want their own Super Bowl. After all, that game, or maybe just the commercials, was the peak of Western civilization.”

Brock sat on a fence post and propped his gun in the crook of his elbow, barrel up, as if he were posing for the cover of
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. “One of our people was captured by the Zaps. She escaped and made it back to camp. Said it was the babies that are running things. The fucking little rug rats.”

Franklin recalled Cathy’s mutant baby and how he’d considered killing it while they were at his mountain compound. In the end, the thing had looked innocent, a victim of circumstance as much as any of them. And when its eyes were closed, you could hardly tell it from a human baby. Cathy’s motherly love had blinded her to the infant’s strangeness.

But nothing about the infant had suggested intelligence or power.

Of course, Rachel was in the same boat. She’d sought out the Zapheads because of her own mutation, driven by misguided compassion and a belief that she could help resolve the conflict between the two tribes. And, like a fool, Franklin had just let her walk right out.

“I don’t get it,” Franklin said. “The Zapheads I’ve seen will kill and maim and destroy, but if you leave them alone, they practically slip into hibernation. It almost seems like we’d be better off ignoring them and just building a new society, relearning how to generate electricity and grow food and set up fair rules we can all live by.”

“The babies are evolving much faster than the others,” Sierra said. “The theory is the wiring in their brains is agile and still forming connections, so the mutation is exponentially affecting them. Our source said there were maybe two dozen of them, and the Zaps captured a group of humans to teach them.”

“That’s creepy as hell,” Franklin said. For the first time since Doomsday, he ached for a drink of liquor.

A drink, hell. A quart bottle might do the job.

“They’re using the high school as their base,” Brock said. “And from what she told us, the babies don’t want to kill us.”

“Well, that’s mighty comforting,” Franklin said, glancing at the deepening bruise of sundown. “Guess we can all head back to our homes and warm beds now. Party’s over.”

A spatter of gunfire came from up the road, maybe half a mile away. If Shipley’s soldiers were in retreat, they could be headed this way. Franklin didn’t want to be anywhere within bullet range of those psycho cowboys.

“They don’t want to kill us,” Sierra repeated, leaning against a tree and resting Franklin’s rifle butt-down beside her. “They want to heal us. Turn us into them, make us new, and get rid of our chaotic, murderous thoughts.”

“These little shitters said that? They can
talk
?”

“Maybe that has something to do with all the bodies in the football stadium,” Brock said. “Sort of like science projects, the way we had to cut open frogs in biology class.”

“Well, they did something to my granddaughter when she was hurt,” Franklin said. “An infected wound from a dog bite. They fixed her, but they changed her in the process. That’s why I’m here. To find her.”

“She turned Zap?” Sierra said.

Hearing it that bluntly was like an icy spear driven into Franklin’s temple. His fear made him angry. “No, she’s not one of them. She’s something in between. She thought she could serve as an ambassador of some kind. But I’m thinking the other way now. She can help
us
. Figure them out, and figure out how to beat them.”

“We’ve seen them heal each other,” Brock said, more effusive now, as if he trusted Franklin a little more. “If one of them is injured, the other Zapheads lay their hands on them. And the wounds vanish in minutes.”

“Sound like faith healers in the charismatic churches,” Franklin said. “They’re passing on some form of
chi
or vital energy, like ancient Chinese shit gone nanotech. But patching up a paper cut is a little different than bringing somebody back from the dead.”

“The escapee told us the babies were better at healing than the adults. In some ways, the adults are like the extension of the tribe, worker bees serving the queen and the hive. You’ve observed how they can act as one without any evident form of communication?”

“Sure. The worker bee thing works for me,” Franklin said. “Like they all have one mind but not all of them have access to the same thoughts.”

Franklin didn’t like where this was headed. He’d come to accept a rampaging horde of mutants whose purpose was to wipe the human race off the planet. Hell, he’d even accept a divine hand dispensing punishment for the world’s sins. God only knew humans had committed enough of them.

But a massive army of missionaries determined to save mankind from itself—well, that was Franklin’s worst nightmare.

“Assimilation or extinction,” Brock said. “That’s their future for us. We’re so inferior that any service or labor we supply won’t outweigh the resource drain.”

“A planet this big, population trimmed to a tenth of a percent of its former size, and still no room for everybody?” Franklin said.

“We’ve been working this out for weeks, while you’ve been up there on your mountain playing Zen Buddhist monk,” Sierra said. “What’s the sound of one hand clapping when it’s bitch-slapping you in the face?”

Franklin bristled at the stereotype he’d become, although he harbored a yin-yangish bit of pride that his legend had spread among the survivors. No doubt some saw him as a kind of mystical messiah whose prophecies had come to fruition.

If he gave more of a damn, he could use that charade to his advantage. But he was well aware that anyone who became a messiah was eventually plagued by followers, and every last Christ ended up getting nailed to a fucking piece of wood by the very folks he tried to save.

Franklin was at peace with the idea that sometimes a cockroach needed smashing.

“So what’s your plan to outsmart them?” Franklin asked.

“Those vehicles there? We’ve created our own little piece of performance art,” Brock said. His face was barely visible in the fading light of day, but Franklin didn’t like the sinister smirk on the guy’s face. He was enjoying After
way
too much.

“Our bait,” Sierra said.

The wind shifted, and Franklin smelled it, scarcely evident over the smoke: rot, corruption, and death.

“We did some collecting of our own,” Brock said. “While Sgt. Shipley was busy killing them, we gathered them and brought them here and piled them in the vehicles.”

“And when the Zapheads show up to retrieve them, we add to the pile,” Franklin said.

Sierra swept her arm in an arc to indicate the surrounding houses. “A little army of our own. Forty-two in all, most of them well-armed and relatively functional adults.”

“One or two psychos, but variety is the spice, am I right? It’s going to be a hell of a night.” Brock was back in business mode, like a frat boy gearing up for a keg party. “But we want you on the team. Good for morale to have a folk hero such as yourself on board.”

“I’m in,” Franklin said. “But nobody kills Rachel.”

“We’ll pass out her description,” Sierra said. “I doubt she’s changed clothes if she’s gone Zap.”

“She’s not a mutant, goddamnit,” Franklin said, surprised at his annoyance. “She’s just a little confused.”

Brock chuckled. “Sounds like half my exes.”

“One more thing,” Franklin said.

“Yeah?” Sierra didn’t look as girlish and vulnerable as she had earlier, as if that had been an act for Brock’s sake.

“Can I have my rifle back?”