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

  “Zaps didn’t kill him. That’s not their style.” Franklin took another step toward the rifle. Four more to go. McCrone was busy surveying the woods below them to notice.

  Or so Franklin thought.

  “You ever watch that movie ‘Braveheart,’ with Mel Gibson?” McCrone asked.

  Franklin’s fists clenched. He didn’t want to talk about movies. Mel Gibson was probably stinking up some fancy L.A. penthouse right now. “Sure. Everybody did.”

  “Well, if you make a play for your rifle, you won’t even have time to scream ‘Freedom’ before I spill your guts.”

  Franklin sagged in defeat. McCrone came over and slapped him on the sore shoulder. “Aw, nothing personal. I just need you to get me out of here, now that Carson’s dead.”

  “Okay. But you have to tell me about the bunker before you leave.”

  McCrone squinted, the shadows and aurora combining to cast eerie green striations across his face. “You’re not in any position to negotiate. But I wouldn’t mind if you slowed Sarge down a little after I’m gone. A little delaying action would be pretty sweet.”

  “Sign me up.”

  McCrone walked past him and scooped up Franklin’s rifle. “You always carry two guns when you’re hunting Zapheads?”

  “Hell, no. I usually carry three. You caught me on a day off.”

  McCrone snorted in laughter, apparently in a good mood again and feeling cocky. “Well, let’s get back to your little survival shack. I could use a hot meal.”

  Franklin led the way along the ridge. He knew the route well, and he was pretty sure he could ditch McCrone if the soldier happened to slip or fall behind enough for Franklin to slip away between the trees.

  But that would put him defenseless in the dark, with the woods probably teeming with Zapheads and soldiers with night-vision goggles.

  That’s the damn problem with being a libertarian. EVERYBODY’S the enemy.

  Franklin wondered how McCrone would react when he met the little tribe back in Wheelerville, especially that snot-nosed tiny creature with the glittering eyes.

  Even paradise had its shitterhawks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Campbell didn’t know what was more horrifying—the Zapheads closing in from all around, or the sinister gleam in Wilma’s eyes. The sinking sun splashed a volcanic orange on her irises, a ménage of madness and pleasure.

  She clutched at his arm, almost purring. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  As the Zapheads emerged from the forest and negotiated the fence with their flailing, awkward movements, Campbell thought they were the most hideous things he’d ever seen. Their clothes—what still remained, anyway—hung in rags and tatters, and their hair was wild and unkempt, most of the men with scruffy facial hair. They even moved differently than they had weeks ago, almost like sleepwalkers, as if they’d forgotten how to tear a man limb from limb while his heart was still beating.

  Campbell looked for an opening, a direction in which to flee. But it would probably come down to luck.

  Unless…

  “The house,” he said. “Have you been in it?”

  She laughed. “I used to live here. Until something better came along.”

  “Come on.” Campbell grabbed her arm.

  She shuddered out of his grip. “You can’t run from them.”

  “Like hell you can’t. What’s wrong with you?”

  The Zapheads in the equipment shed had come fully out of the shadows. There were five of them. They could have been a welfare family from the past, as dirty as chimneysweeps and as somber as undertakers. If they harbored any mindless rage, it was well hidden. They might have been assembling for soup kitchen at some charitable church.

  Because they’re hungry for…something.

  He didn’t believe in zombies, not in real life. That was for video games and movies. He’d blown apart more than his share of zombie heads in Left 4 Dead, although those animated monsters were rapidly replenished to keep the fake adrenalin pumping. He wasn’t sure his mastery of the game would translate to the real world, the After, but he sure wished he hadn’t left his gun back at Wilma’s camper.

  Without a gun, all he had was his feet.

  And brainzzzz. Don’t forget your brainzzzz.

  “I’m going in,” he said to Wilma. “You coming or not?”

  “I’m not welcome there anymore.”

  She seemed so much at peace, almost childlike. No wonder she’d implored him to feel no fear—she was too far gone to embrace anything but bliss. She was like that preacher back in Taylorsville, when Campbell had been trapped in the church and surrounded by Zapheads. The preacher had welcomed them as if only too glad to offer himself as a sacrifice, as if his life needed to come to the same conclusion as that of the savior he celebrated.

  The Zapheads crossed the meadow with a solemn relentlessness, and Wilma turned in a slow circle as if marveling at—

  What? Their very existence? The fact that they haven’t killed her yet?

  Campbell owed her one more try. She was a fellow survivor after all, or maybe he was just afraid to be alone, to face whatever future lay ahead.

  “We can hole up in there, barricade the doors. Maybe find a weapon.” He was already moving toward the porch, keeping surveillance on the soup-kitchen family and the three naked men coming up the driveway, their eyes coruscating like tiny golden disco balls.

  “Be not afraid,” Wilma said, but her voice was distant, as if she were talking to herself or maybe so looming presence in the darkening sky that only she could see.

  “Well, I am about to crap my pants over here. And that won’t do any wonders for my sprinter’s speed.”

  Wilma gave a gentle shake of her head, dismissing him. The flesh around her eyes creased in pity, although her face kept that rapt shine in the sun’s dying light. She was almost golden herself, an idol cast in veneration of After and its shambling, soulless acolytes who heeded the inaudible call.

  Campbell dashed across the shaggy, ankle-deep lawn, dew already collecting on the grass and wetting the cuffs of his jeans. He took the steps three at a time, already making Plan B because he was positive the door would be locked. Because that was just the way his luck had been running since the world had ended. Hell, maybe even long before then.

  But when he yanked open the screen door, the front door was already ajar, a sweet musky aroma wafting through the crack.

  The interior was dark, all the curtains apparently drawn, but Campbell took a last gulp of outdoor, meadow-flavored air and burst inside.

  He balled his fists, ready for a dozen Zapheads to jump him. Maybe he’d been foolish and would have had a better chance in open space, but he couldn’t deny the security that a door suggested.

  After ten tense seconds, during which time his heart managed one slow thud and then a staccato flurry of arrhythmia, he relaxed just a little. And then the smell hit him, a putrid slap in the face. As an undergrad at UNC, he’d had a work-study job tending laboratory rats used in cell research. The rodents were stacked in wire cages in a small basement room of the science building, and the stink of death, feces, and spoiled food had seeped into the concrete floor and walls like paint.

  Campbell backed the door shut, then fumbled with the lock. If he had to escape, that would cost him another second or two, but he still felt a little safer not having to guard his back. He wasn’t sure Zapheads knew how to operate doors and locks—his observation of them had been mostly smash and maim, except for their odd funeral procession of the night before.

  Out of habit, he fumbled for the light switch, then he caught himself and tapped the wall with the bottom of his fist. The house was quiet, but somehow that made it even more sinister, as if ghosts were lurking in the cobwebs and would swoop down at any second. As his vision adjusted to the gray netherlight that leaked through the curtains, he felt his way down the hall until he came to the big square of an open room. Mingled with the corrupt stench of death was a cloying, charred odor of a cold f
ireplace.

  He dug in his pocket and retrieved his penlight, the one artifact he’d been smart enough not to leave back at the camper. Shielding the beam and bracing for an assault, he flicked it on. The battery was nearly dead and it cast little more than an orange cone of fuzz, but it was enough.

  More than enough.

  He was in a dining room, a large stone hearth at one end, a high window on the adjacent wall that faced the yard. The oak flooring was pitted and worn with the footfalls of decades, and a staid pastoral scene of slaves cutting wheat filled a painting frame above the mantel. An antique hardwood buffet stood against a wall, topped with dusty china and silver service sets. But it was the long table in the center of the room that turned the scene from Norman Rockwell to Alfred Hitchcock.

  A dozen corpses circled the table, sitting up stiffly against their high-backed chairs.

  At first, Campbell thought it was a farm family, the house’s occupants, trapped at a last supper by the sudden death served up by solar storms. But these corpses were fresher, less disintegrated than their human counterparts scattered across North Carolina and presumably the world. Most horrible of all, their eyes were peeled open, clots of darkness staring into a long nothing.

  The closest corpse, mercifully facing the other way, was a young girl of maybe eight or nine, a blue bow in her blonde hair. At the head of the table was a paternal old man, the penlight glinting off his bald head and the pair of round spectacles perched delicately on the end of his nose. Lining each side of the table were men, women, and adolescents all sharing that same hollow-eyed gaze. One of the women had a toddler in her lap, a bib tucked under his plump, discolored chin.

  Zaps. Goddamned creeping Zaps.

  Unlike the Zapheads outside, who might even now be closing in before he had a chance to check the back door and windows, the assembled dead were all dressed in clean clothes, the men in jackets and clumsily knotted ties, the women in dresses and jewelry. They each had empty plates before them, with silverware and napkins laid out for a formal meal. But it was the centerpiece—the main course—that was most chilling of all.

  Laid out on the table, hands folded neatly over his chest, was the Zaphead the soldiers had killed the evening before. He was naked, his hands covering the clotted smear of dried blood where he’d been shot through the heart. Someone had combed his hair and apparently washed the body. He’d been filthy while incarcerated by the soldiers, but here he had been tended like…

  Campbell couldn’t complete the sickening thought and fought down a rising gorge of nausea. He couldn’t afford weakness, so he backed out of the room, reeling with the possibilities.

  Did Wilma do this? She’s nutty enough about the Zaps to do such a thing.

  But that was impossible, because they’d been together since the Zapheads had retrieved the corpse. He recalled her cryptic words: “I’m not welcome there anymore.”

  “So, wonder what joys are waiting upstairs,” he whispered, mostly to hear his own voice and be reassured that he hadn’t, in fact, gone mad along with Wilma. Except he might be talking to the Pete-guy in his head, and that wasn’t a good sign. “Maybe one of those hillbilly orgies, a necrophilia wet dream.”

  Something pounded on the front door. And again.

  “Nobody home,” he said, giggling.

  The pounded grew insistent, and then multiplied, a rain of wooden blows. Campbell covered his ears and fled to the end of the hall, climbing the stairs. The back door might be open, and the Zapheads would get in sooner or later anyway. None of that mattered. All he cared about was flight, movement, the illusion of escape.

  During his Psych 101 class, he’d learned all about the house as a metaphor for consciousness and the mind. It made sense on every level—the dark basement where the bad things lurked in shadow, the ground floor of habit and routine and comfort, the stairs to measure spiritual and emotional ascension.

  And the attic…

  Which usually had only one narrow access door, easily blocked or defended.

  “What do you think, Pete?” he said, reaching the second-floor landing and facing several doors. “Do we take Door Number Two with the all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, or do we stay practical and go for Door Number Three and the brand-new Buick Skylark?”

  If Pete were alive, he’d want Door Number One, which likely contained dope, booze, and wasted teen-aged girls, with Death Cab for Cutie on the jambox and a carton of cigarettes on the coffee table.

  If only, Petey. If only.

  Campbell tried the nearest door. He could only endure one glance before he killed his penlight and vomited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Franklin and McCrone reached the compound an hour after dark.

  But “dark” was the wrong word, because the aurora cast a green radiance across the sky, like cheap mercury vapor streetlights above an empty parking lot. Although eerie, Franklin had come to enjoy the lack of pure darkness, although the star fields were cloudier and harder to follow.

  He’d often wondered if the lingering aurora signaled that the solar radiation was still affecting the planet in ways no one could measure. Did birds still know how to fly south for the winter? Could bees find their way back to the colony? What about dolphins and whales and aquatic life that counted on subtle shifts in tide and temperature?

  There weren’t many eggheads left to come up with answers. All their instruments and formulas hadn’t done a bit of good when Doomsday arrived.

  He supposed humans hadn’t been the only living creatures affected by the radiation. But the chickens acted much the same as before. The goats—well, you could never tell with goats, because they were already peculiar as hell. Franklin had always enjoyed them, finding more in common with them than with his fellow humans. They were quirky, clever, and often downright ornery, which is why he kept them even though they ate more than they produced in milk.

  Franklin stopped before the gate, winded from the long climb through the forest.

  McCrone jabbed him in the spine with the tip of the rifle. “Where is it?”

  “Right here.”

  “Damn, oldtimer. All those years in the survival network must have paid off. We would have never found this place without satellite surveillance and GPS.”

  “There used to be a thing called ‘American pride.’ Then the government made it a catch phrase to brainwash folks like you.”

  “I told you, I didn’t enlist because I loved my country,” McCrone said. “I signed up because my unemployment ran out and your generation shipped all the jobs to China. Now get us in there. I’m tired.”

  Franklin parted the nest of vines and dug for the gate latch. “Locked.”

  “Right. And I don’t suppose you have the key. What a coincidence.”

  “I got a key, all right. But it’s on the inside.”

  “You locked yourself out of your own compound? I thought you preppers were supposed to be smart.” McCrone paced a few steps, feeling the fence himself, marveling at the natural camouflage Franklin had installed. “It’s only ten feet or so. Should be able to climb it easy enough.”

  “Topped by barbed wire. Be careful you don’t catch the family jewels.”

  “I’m not the one doing the climbing. You are.”

  Franklin considered his options. He could climb over and then just leave the gate locked, but first he’d have to deactivate the alarm system. If the woods were crawling with soldiers and Zapheads, they’d zoom in soon enough. But once inside, he’d have the advantage. McCrone had both his rifles, but he still had two pistols, a sawed-off shotgun, several military-grade incendiary devices, and some hand weapons like knives and hatchets stored in a strongbox. He’d also be on his home turf. And if McCrone became impatient and climbed over the fence himself, Franklin would have the element of surprise.

  But he was worried that none of the others had reacted to their approach. If Jorge had come back, he would know to be on high alert. And if Jorge hadn’t made it—if the Zaps or the equally brain
-dead citizens of Army Nation got him—then Rosa or her daughter should have been on lookout.

  Franklin had been uneasy leaving them there alone with that young woman, Cathy, and her Zap brat. He was pretty sure that the solar sickness wasn’t spread by human contact—or else the mom would have gone all mutant long ago, the way that thing gnawed at her milk glands—but maybe the evil was more insidious. Maybe its mere presence contaminated the compound, just the way all the older Zapheads had blighted the planet.

  If he was a religious person like his granddaughter Rachel, he’d pray that the Zaps and the army wipe each other out. But a casual glance at the heavens revealed that God viewed this place as nothing more than a carnival sideshow. Maybe His whole purpose for creation was to enjoy the Doomsday. Then He wouldn’t rest on the just the seventh day; He could rest the whole week long.

  “Are you going to stand out here all night?” McCrone said.

  Franklin shook the gate, rattling its metal framework. “There’s an alarm system. If I climb over, the whole compound will light up and a siren will wail.”

  Franklin was exaggerating the power of the system, but if McCrone had swallowed the legend of Franklin Wheeler, Internet Survivalist Guru, maybe he’d fall for it. But McCrone laughed.

  So much for respect. I keep forgetting, he’s been brainwashed by the best.

  McCrone peered through the fence. “Hey. Something’s moving in there.”

  There was a pop and whir in the distance, shrieking like a banshee across the night sky. Then an explosion high above them triggered a shower of sparks that hung in the air. The illumination flare was bright enough to erase the aurora and cast the forest into sudden day.

  “Looks like your buddies want you pretty bad,” Franklin said.

  In the bright glare of burning nitrate and magnesium, McCrone’s face looked drained of blood. “If they get me, they get you, too,” he said, no longer laughing.

  Something bumped Franklin’s foot, and he realized the gate had eased open. He glanced at McCrone, who was still squinting up at the trace left by the flare.