After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4)

  Rachel Wheeler and a group of survivors seek a refuge in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with violent mutants and rogue militia.

  AFTER:

  WHITEOUT

  (Book #4 in the AFTER series)

  A post-apocalyptic thriller

  By Scott Nicholson

  Get Book #5 in the After series, AFTER: RED SCARE!

  Amazon US Amazon UK

  Copyright ©2014 by Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books

  ***

  “One of the most thrilling writers working today. Miss him at your peril.”

  --Blake Crouch, Wayward Pines

  Scott’s Author Central page at Amazon

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  Other books in the After series:

  After #0: First Light: Amazon US Amazon UK

  After #1: The Shock: Amazon US Amazon UK

  After #2: The Echo: Amazon US Amazon UK

  After #3: Milepost 291: Amazon US Amazon UK

  After #5: Red Scare: Amazon US Amazon UK

  After #6: Dying Light Amazon US Amazon UK

  Next #1: Afterburn Amazon US Amazon UK

  And the spinoff series ZAPHEADS:

  Zapheads #1: Bone and Cinder Amazon US Amazon UK

  Zapheads #2: Scars and Ashes

  Zapheads #3: Blood and Frost

  CHAPTER ONE

  They were eight miles south of the Blue Ridge Parkway when Rachel Wheeler first got the urge to kill her companions.

  They’d dismounted their horses as the terrain had grown steeper, DeVontay leading one of the pack animals just ahead of her. Dirt flew from the horse’s rear hooves, a clump of it bouncing off Rachel’s shin. The motion of the creature’s legs irritated her. She hated its power, its energy, its aliveness.

  DeVontay’s aliveness bothered her as well. Tall and dark-skinned, his shirt sleeves rolled up past his muscular forearms, shoulders straight despite the weight of his bulging backpack, he appeared vibrant and healthy. Except when he turned to look at her, that one dead glass eye catching the dappled sunlight that broke through the canopy of leaves overhead.

  “You okay, Rachel?” he asked, stopping for a moment.

  No, I’m not okay.

  But she smiled, because that was expected. That was the human thing to do.

  And she was human. Wasn’t she?

  “Not much farther,” she said, casting about on the forest floor for a heavy stick or broken branch she could use as a club. His skull looked inviting. She imagined it split open, with red blood and gray brains boiling out of it. But now that he and the horse were at rest, the inner dissonance faded. She could scarcely remember what the irritation felt like.

  Behind her on the narrow trail was Stephen, slowing them all down with his little-boy steps. Out of sight below them, Campbell led the other horse they’d appropriated from the valley below. The North Carolina forest was brilliant with late autumn, yellow and scarlet leaves skating down from the high branches to make a colorful carpet on the dirt.

  “Do you think he’ll be expecting you?” DeVontay said. “It’s been almost three months. He’s probably given up hope.”

  “No,” Rachel said. “Even if my grandfather thinks I’m probably dead, he’ll still be waiting.”

  Franklin Wheeler wasn’t the optimistic type, but he’d promised Rachel he’d stay at his compound at Milepost 291 “until the buzzards haul off my creaky old bones.” She hadn’t had any contact with him since the solar storms back in August ripped the world apart, shut down civilization, and wiped out billions with electromagnetic radiation. And a new kind—the mutant Zapheads whose physiology had been irrevocably altered—had ascended to the top of the food chain as a result.

  Seems like so long ago. A lifetime.

  “We’ll be exposed out on the parkway,” DeVontay said. “Maybe we should ditch the horses. The terrain’s getting too steep for them. This is mule country.”

  “What kind of message would that send Stephen? That we just toss things aside when they no longer suit us? He’d probably worry that we’d be getting rid of him next.”

  “Yeah, better keep you,” DeVontay said, patting the animal’s neck. “We don’t want to haul all that junk ourselves.”

  DeVontay tugged the reins and the horse lifted its big hooves. As they continued up the trail, Rachel’s rage returned. The motion of both the man and the animal caused her an almost physical pain.

  Stephen shouted something. He wasn’t alarmed but was clearly excited.

  “Keep it down,” DeVontay ordered in a stage whisper.

  Rachel finished his sentence in her head: Or the Zapheads might get us.

  “I’ll check,” Rachel said, relieved to get away from DeVontay before she attacked him.

  She backtracked thirty yards, passing an outcropping of granite slabs that looked like it had been shot into the earth from an alien spacecraft. Stephen was just beyond it, kneeling in the leaves, clawing at the ground. Campbell’s horse clopped in the forest, scuffling leaves. He must have taken a detour through the woods even though DeVontay told them to stay together.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked Stephen.

  He held it up. “A gun.”

  “Stephen, you shouldn’t be handling that. Put it down. Gently.”

  She looked around. What was a gun doing out here in the middle of nowhere?

  None of them were armed. DeVontay and Stephen had narrowly escaped a Zaphead attack after a rogue band of survivors killed the people they were with. She and Campbell had fled from a farm where Zapheads kept them as involuntary guests, but her experience there had changed her. The Zapheads healed a vicious wound in her leg, and she’d felt strange ever since.

  Colors and sounds seemed amplified, in much the same way she imagined psychedelic drugs might alter normal perception. Small movements annoyed her. And she’d seen the reflection of the small, animated flecks of gold in her own eyes. She wasn’t sure how much of a Zaphead she was, but she’d made her choice.

  She was going to be human and resist the urges that boiled away inside her.

  Yet here was a gun.

  Stephen studied her, as if not fully accepting her as the woman who’d adopted him after his mother’s death. He’d changed, too, no longer the innocent, scared child. He held the rifle in his hands as if it were a toy, his eyes slit, face creased with worry.

  You’re disobeying me. I said put it down. Now, you brat.

  But what she said was, “Stephen, you know what DeVontay would say.”

  “But I found it. It’s mine.”

  “We’ll let DeVontay decide.” She walked toward him, one palm turned up. “Let me have it.”

  Stephen held the rifle as DeVontay had taught him, barrel pointed down and to the side, but he looked like he could swing it up in a heartbeat. It was a little heavy for him, and a long magazine protruded from the stock just in front of the trigger. Probably an automatic or semi-automatic, a weapon designed to pump a hail of bullets as fast as possible.

  “There’s blood on it,” Stephen said.

  Rachel could make out the gummy, brown splotches on the stock. The blood wasn’t fresh, but it hadn’t dried and flaked away in the weather, either. The weapon had likely been dropped sometime since the last rain three days ago.

  “Could be some people around,” Rachel said. “Bad people. Like the ones that caught you before.”

  “So it’s good we have a rifle now, huh?”

  “Yes, but let me hold it for you until we figure this out.”

  Stephen lifted the rifle
a couple of inches. “Because I’m a kid, right? Because I’m helpless.”

  “No, you’re the Little Man,” she said, using DeVontay’s pet phrase for the boy. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Or to hurt me, either.

  DeVontay probably heard the murmur of their conversation but wasn’t coming back down through the woods to see what was happening. He must have decided it wasn’t an emergency and wasn’t worth trying to turn the big horse around on the narrow trail. Campbell was somewhere off to the left, maybe fifty yards away, snapping branches as he made a noisy passage through the trees.

  “I know how to shoot it,” Stephen said, curling one finger around the trigger. “And we’re supposed to kill Zapheads now, right?”

  “No, no, that’s not what we do. We try to avoid them.”

  “What happened to your eyes?”

  She’d been easing closer but now stopped. “Huh?”

  “Your eyes. They have the lights in them like the Zapheads do.”

  “That’s just the sun reflecting in them.”

  “How come they don’t reflect like that in DeVontay’s or Campbell’s?”

  Rachel considered rushing him, but that might cause him to panic. He was starting to annoy her. No, he was starting to really piss her off.

  “Put it down,” she said coldly. “Now.”

  “You’re scary,” Stephen said.

  “Guns are scarier.” She didn’t like the way the boy was looking at her, his eyes shaded by the bill of his baseball cap. She strode toward him, forcing herself to remain calm, stretching out her hand for the rifle, now only ten feet away.

  He raised the barrel, which quivered, the muzzle like a black eye seeking light.

  He’s going to shoot me.

  But then she was close enough to grab the gun and tug it away. He let go and looked down at the coagulated blood smeared on his hands. He wailed, “I’m sorry,” and she knelt before him and gave him a hug.

  “It’s okay, hon,” she said. “Like DeVontay says, it’s good to be scared. It means you’re alive.”

  Rachel picked up the rifle and checked it over. She put her finger on the safety mechanism. Even if Stephen had pulled the trigger, the gun wouldn’t have fired. It was a military-grade weapon, and the magazine appeared to be half full of brass jackets. It fired three-shot bursts, if she remembered correctly, or one shot at a time. Plenty enough to finish the job.

  A big brown horse snorted and clopped out from the trees, Campbell astride its back. The animal also carried several canvas bags of supplies and a bed roll the group collected from a house where they’d rested for several days. “What’s going on?”

  She could do it. Flip the safety, spray a burst in their direction, and then get DeVontay. Destroy them all.

  “I found a gun,” Stephen said to Campbell, who swung off the back of his horse, nearly losing his balance.

  “Nice,” he said. “We need some protection. Let me have it, Rachel.”

  “No. I’ll take it to DeVontay.”

  Campbell’s tousled hair gave him a sleepy aspect, but his lip curled in a sneer that was wide awake. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Who voted him king?”

  “He’s taken care of us for two months. And he’s gotten us this far.”

  “Sure, but who got you away from that farmhouse full of Zaps? Where was he then?”

  “We need to all stick together now.”

  “So your wacko grandpa can squirrel us away in some survival compound and turn us into beef jerky?”

  Two quick movements of your fingers. Flip this safety and pull the trigger, and you can shut him up. Forever.

  “Stop it,” Stephen shouted, clamping his hands over his ears. He was ten years old again, despite the growing up that had been forced upon him in that cataclysmic flash of light.

  Campbell shot her a look that seemed to blame her for the outburst. But he made no move to comfort the boy.

  “What’s going on down there?” DeVontay called.

  “We found a gun,” Rachel said.

  “Hold on. Don’t move.”

  Rachel imagined him tethering the horse to a tree so he could walk down the trail. She was glad he’d take the decision out of her hands, because she didn’t trust herself right now.

  “Don’t you wonder what that gun’s doing out in the middle of nowhere?” Campbell asked.

  “Looks like somebody was shooting it pretty recently.”

  “All that blood makes me think somebody was shooting back.” Campbell surveyed the forest around them. “But I don’t see any bodies.”

  The mountain slopes were shadowed by the late-afternoon sun, a slight chill in the air. The moist odor of loam and rotted wood mingled with the acrid smell of dying leaves. Back in the old days, the Before, November would have been the perfect time for a nature hike. Now it seemed like an unending trudge through a steep landscape that was busy dulling the fall colors toward gray and brown.

  All to chase a promise made by her grandfather, who was probably either dead or changed into…

  …the thing she was becoming.

  She eased the safety forward and aimed the weapon at the figure coming down the trail. She had practiced very little, but she figured close was good enough if you fired enough bullets.

  “Rachel,” DeVontay said. “It’s me.”

  I know.

  But as she sighted down the barrel, she made the mistake of looking at his face. This was the man who sacrificed himself so that she and Stephen could escape from Zapheads a month ago, and he’d risked his life to save her from a band of vigilante soldiers in Taylorsville. And he’d kissed her with those soft, full lips.

  The anger suddenly left her. As Rachel lowered the gun, the anger and emotional chaos dissolved. She felt empty and foolish. She needed these people.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just a little jumpy.”

  “We’re cool,” DeVontay said, nodding at Stephen but ignoring Campbell.

  “We might be in the middle of a war zone,” Campbell said. “What the hell’s a military weapon doing out here?”

  “Might be some other survivors around,” DeVontay said. “But we can’t trust anybody.”

  “I thought this hillbilly paradise was supposed to be safe,” Campbell said. “That’s why we came, isn’t it?”

  “Nowhere is safe anymore,” Rachel said. “But my grandfather was prepared for something like this. If we can make it to his compound, at least we’ll have a chance.”

  “Nobody could be prepared for something like this. The sun goes ballistic and suddenly everybody either drops dead or turns into crazy-brained killers. Your grandfather’s probably dead and gone to rot by now.”

  Rachel didn’t want to think about that. “Either way, his compound will be there. We don’t have any better options.”

  DeVontay looked up from checking the weapon. “When the first snow hits, we might wish we’d stayed in the city.”

  “Too many Zapheads there,” Stephen said.

  “Well, we’re not the only ones who know about this compound,” DeVontay said. “Those soldiers in Taylorsville were headed this way. And if there were any survivors from Stonewall. That might even be one of their guns.”

  “Great. So everybody’s going to play ‘King of the Hill’ using high-caliber weapons,” Campbell said.

  “If we lay low, we have better odds,” DeVontay said. “Zapheads respond to noise and react to violence by imitating it. If we stay out of the way, they may forget all about us.”

  “Genius at work,” Campbell said, throwing his hands in the air. “So we just give them the world and slink off into a cave somewhere.”

  Campbell had been antagonistic ever since they’d joined up with DeVontay and Stephen. Rachel was worried that Campbell felt possessive of her. True, she probably owed him her life. But survival was going to be a group effort.

  The Zapheads want to survive, too, and there are a lot more of them.

  She didn’t want to
think about the intuitive link with the Zapheads she’d experienced down in the valley. Bad enough her eyes were affected, but she’d also endured emotional extremes since the Zapheads inflicted the electromagnetic changes that healed her gangrenous leg. They’d somehow infected her, but not in any viral sense—the treatment altered her in ways she could barely recognize, much less understand.

  But she was still in control. Of course she was.

  “We still don’t know what we’re up against,” Rachel said. “The Zapheads are changing their behavior. Adapting or evolving, becoming more communal. They have some sort of intuitive link going on. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it telepathy, but they’re definitely working together in some sort of socialized pattern.”

  “Yeah, gathering up all the dead,” Campbell said. “That’s one way to boost the old community spirit.”

  “Remember what they did at the courthouse in Taylorsville,” Stephen said. “Where the Zapheads arranged all the bodies around like they were still alive. Like they were dolls.”

  “Jeez, kid,” Campbell said. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

  DeVontay’s horse whinnied nervously. DeVontay chopped the air with his hand and they all fell silent, listening to the forest around them. As the soft noises of nature—a distant, gurgling brook, a breeze through the crisp leaves, the chattering of crows and vireos—emerged around them, Rachel realized how loudly they’d been talking.

  DeVontay motioned for everyone to remain still and crept up the trail, holding the rifle up and ready to fire. Campbell’s horse snorted and he gave a tug on the bridle to hush it. Rachel put a protective arm around Stephen.

  “I’d drop that if I were you,” came a voice from somewhere uphill from them.

  On the granite outcropping crouched a man in body armor and battle-dress uniform trousers, pointing a weapon at DeVontay. He was maybe fifty feet away, his face cold, eyes hidden by aviator shades. His rifle barrel held steady on his target, as if he had all the time in the world. DeVontay eased his own weapon to the carpet of leaves before raising his arms in surrender.