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

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Which way? Wanda asked.

  But Jorge couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t feel. If not for the stench that was almost like a solid, grasping thing, he would have ascribed the horrifying sight to a nightmare and expect to awaken screaming in bed next to Rosa. But his lungs couldn’t stir enough air to utter any sound, and all his dreams took place in Mexico. He was dimly aware of Wanda tugging on his shirt sleeve, dragging him back from his brief flight from sanity.

  “We either run or fight,” Wanda said. “But you don’t look like you’ll be worth a darn at either.”

  “Did…did you know?” he managed.

  “I suspected they were up to something. So did you, even if you never pictured this. But it wasn’t going to be pretty no matter what.”

  The mutants ringed the hill that he and Wanda had just left. A chain-link fence stood between the stands and the parking lot beyond the field. The concrete stands on the visitors’ side were empty, apparently waiting to be filled with the freshly dead. The brick buildings of the school rose in the distance, their refuge hopelessly far away.

  Wanda swept her shotgun back and forth, tracking the barrel across the horde of Zapheads behind them. The weapon was worthless at that distance, and even if she could shoot them, their numbers would absorb the pellets and just keep coming like the tide.

  “Come on,” Jorge said, sprinting across the field.

  His fellow laborers on the Wilcox farm had been big football fans, which they viewed mostly as excuses to drink on autumn weekends. He knew enough about the sport to consider it utterly American—extreme violence broken by endless stretches of plotting and scheming, all wrapped in the glossy sheen of corporate advertising and nationalism. The player with the ball had the goal of running to the far end of the field without getting knocked to the ground. That sounded to Jorge like a worthwhile ambition.

  Wanda was right behind him, but the Zapheads didn’t accelerate. Instead, they descended the hill to the bowl of the field as if the game was already over. They were several dozen in number, young and old, moving with a solemn persistence that was more disturbing than if they had been galloping and howling. Jorge glanced up at the stands, half expecting the ghoulish crowd to break into cheers. He just reached midfield when several groups of mutants emerged from behind the opposite stands and swarmed toward him and Wanda.

  “More of the freaks,” Wanda said, wheezing and sucking for air.

  “Up there.” Jorge pointed to the stands full of dead people and split off toward them.

  “You crazy? Run through that stinking mess?”

  “By the ticket booth. There’s an open gate. We can make it to the school.”

  “Might have bodies crammed to the rafters in there. Dead kids.”

  “No choice.”

  They reached an asphalt track that ringed the field and climbed a set of concrete steps to reach the stands. Some of the bodies appeared mummified, as if the blood had dried inside the skin, while others bulged with excrescence and rot. They wore the clothes they had likely died in, although a few of them were naked and glistening with decay. Jorge slipped and caught a metal rail with one hand. As he pulled himself up, he nearly fell into a corpse at the end of a row. Its eye sockets were two writhing pools of maggots. Flies buzzed in a black fleet, cutting crazy loops in the air.

  The bodies leaned against one another, and here and there they were propped up with posts and wire. Some had fallen forward, bent at an unnatural angle. One dead woman held an infant, its little pink knit cap sodden with putrefaction. Small children leaned against adults, all past aging now. A flock of ravens erupted from the heads and shoulders of the dead, disturbed from their feeding. The mass of bodies melded into a blur of green skin, black lips, slimy clothes, and squirming insects.

  Wanda lagged behind, and Jorge thought she had fallen, too, but she waited at the front row, facing the Zapheads that streamed across the field toward them.

  “Hurry!” he called, still ascending the steps, the cloying stink of rot thick in his nostrils.

  “Go on,” she said with a wave. “Find your family. I’ll be okay.”

  A low chant drifted from the Zapheads, unintelligible sounds that hinted at a rhythmic pattern. It was remarkably similar to the murmuring drone of the American football crowds Jorge had seen on television. Jorge hesitated, not wanting to abandon the woman after she’d taken a risk to help him. But she stood there in a determined pose, her shotgun looking as useless as an umbrella in a hurricane.

  She can catch up later. And they won’t kill her if she doesn’t fight.

  He was justifying his own selfish actions, but if he died here, or was captured, then Rosa and Marina would be on their own. He fled to the top of the stands without looking back, crossing the littered concourse to the ticket booth and the open gate beside it. A white-haired woman in a sweatshirt that read “Go Wildcats” hung from an electrical cable in the ticket booth. Before her sat a metal cash box, the bills held in place with small rocks. Her collapsed mouth, lacking any teeth, was a black maw erupting in a soundless scream.

  Jorge passed through the gate as the first shotgun blast echoed across the shallow valley.

  No Zapheads stood between him and the closest classroom building. Pumpkin-yellow school buses were parked along a fenced basketball court. Jorge briefly mulled their potential as hiding places but decided he could too easily be trapped. Two one-story wings branched off from the main school building, and Jorge plotted his alternatives if the nearest door was locked. In the chaos immediately following the solar storms, most schools immediately activated lockdown drills, but staff members sometimes remained on site. Jorge hoped the building wasn’t full of dead children. He wasn’t sure he could bear that.

  Wanda’s shotgun blasted again. Three shots left. But at least she was still alive.

  The door was locked. Jorge wiped the grimy film from the glass and peered inside. No bodies, and no movement, just a clutter of open lockers, books, and papers strewn along the tiled floor. A window to his left was open, a better option than trying for another door.

  Two Zapheads appeared at the ticket booth, heading for the school. He crept to the window, crouching low, and checked inside the room. Three rows of empty desks faced a dry-erase board at the front of the class, where math problems were scribbled in blue. Jorge could almost picture Marina sitting in a desk by the window, surrounded by noisy, happy children totally oblivious to the potential horrors of the world. He climbed through the window and rolled to the floor, checking to make sure the Zapheads hadn’t seen or sensed him.

  Another shot thundered in the distance. Two remaining.

  He went into the hall, his footsteps jarringly loud in the silence. The air was stale and carried just a faint whiff of corruption, but this section of the building was apparently clear of decomposition. Keeping to the shadows in the gloomy corridor, he passed the open doors of several classrooms, all of them unoccupied and dusty. He had no specific plan, but the deeper he penetrated the building, the more likely he could evade detection.

  Jorge turned the corner and came upon a wider hallway. A door creaked open in one of the off-shooting corridors, and a shaft of light flitted across the floor ahead of him. He pressed back against a row of lockers, waiting, holding his breath. The shadows of three figures shrank as their originators drew nearer. One very distinctly said, “Old people here.”

  Jorge backtracked a few feet and pushed open the first door he reached. He slipped inside and the door swung closed just as the voice repeated its odd phrase. Jorge waited in near-total darkness, the only light admitted by a row of glass bricks along the back wall. His eyes adjusted enough to see that he was in a restroom, likely the women’s, judging by the lack of urinals. The three Zapheads outside all spoke at once, although the phrases seemed to overlap and make no sense. It certainly wasn’t conversation. Jorge was reminded of the parrots in the pet store where he purchased pet food for Mr. Wilcox’s cats an
d dogs. The brightly colored birds articulated words with no emotion or intention, and Jorge couldn’t understand how anyone could live with such an annoying creature in the house.

  The Zapheads stopped talking just after they passed the door. Jorge’s heart climbed the ladder of his ribs and lodged in his throat. Then their voices came closer until they were just outside the restroom.

  Jorge opened the door to the nearest stall and slipped inside, twisting the latch and climbing onto the toilet seat. He slipped and almost plunged a foot down into the stagnant water in the bowl, but he grabbed the top rim of the stall wall and regained his balance. He pressed a palm against each wall to steady himself just before the door swished open.

  “Old people,” one of them said as they entered, the words booming off the ceramic tile and porcelain. The room grew brighter, as if they had switched on a small flashlight, and then Jorge realized the luminance was cast by their eyes.

  Jorge was angry at himself for backing into a corner. He was cut off and didn’t even have a window he could smash as an emergency exit. His only escape was through the door. Which meant battling his way through the mutants.

  If I stay quiet, they will go away.

  To his horror, they came directly to the stall in which he was hiding. The glinting sparks must have increased with their excitement or anger or whatever sense guided them, because the floor around the toilet brightened noticeably. One of them said, “Turn turn turn.”

  The door shook a moment, and then the silver latch turned and popped free.

  Jorge’s vision of a heroic dash for safety vanished. He could barely move, and he worried that he would collapse and drop into the toilet. A final indignity for the late, great human race.

  “Old people,” a teenaged girl said, expressionless, dark-haired, and dressed in a dirty white sweater and blue skirt. Her knees were scabbed and scraped, one sock rolled to her ankle. She might have been a student at Newton High School in her past life.

  “Come now,” said a man Jorge’s age who looked Hispanic, his black hair slicked back in greasy strands. The sparks in his dark eyes jittered wildly as he spoke. “Come now come.”

  They’re talking to me.

  The third mutant, a tall bearded man, stood behind the others with his head tilted slightly, almost as if he were dozing. They didn’t project the slightest air of menace. Jorge might as well have been a parent showing up for a P.T.A. meeting and being directed to the library. But that didn’t make his pulse rate any slower, and the social anxiety of mixing with Americans was nothing compared to the chilling strangeness of his present company.

  He could smell them, a mix of metallic vapor and body odor. He wanted to scream, but that might incite them.

  What if you act like they do? If they respond to violence with violence, maybe they’ll ignore you if you pretend they don’t exist.

  “No,” he said.

  The Zapheads looked at one another. Although their faces remained expressionless, their behavior changed and became a little more restless. As if they were confused and not sure what had agitated them.

  “Come now come now,” the Hispanic Zaphead said.

  He stepped off the toilet, gripping the handicapped bar. “I have to go.”

  “I have to go,” repeated the bearded man.

  “Come go,” said the teenager, as if the words had no connection and she was jamming them together through some automatic response.

  Jorge emerged from the stall, careful not to bump into any of them. He walked slowly, avoiding looking into their eyes lest he break down in a fit of madness. He pulled open the bathroom door and went into the hall while the three Zapheads carried on their inane conversation.

  More groups of Zapheads blocked the hallway from either direction.

  How did they know where I was?

  He wouldn’t be able to fight his way through.

  But he was going to try.

  He lowered his head and shoulders like he had seen the American football players do and then charged as if he were trying to bust through the helmeted human wall. Crossing the white line triggered celebrations from the crowd. In true football, what was called “soccer” here, the goal was to avoid contact and put the ball in the net. The American way was to injure as many people as possible on your way to a score. Now Jorge understood what it meant to be an American—crush anything that stood in your way.

  He plowed into the first wave of Zapheads, knocking several of them to the floor. He flung out his elbows, driving into soft flesh. Then he swung his fist into the face of a dark-skinned man and waded into their midst, glancing at the door a hundred feet down the corridor. A hand grappled at his shoulder but he shrugged it off. He was almost free of the crowd but hesitated when he encountered a boy of maybe twelve, who looked up at Jorge with an innocent face, the yellow coruscation in his eyes the only thing marking him as different.

  He’s not much older than Marina and he doesn’t know what he is. But I won’t let him keep me from her.

  He bumped into the boy and slipped from the grasp of several Zapheads surrounding him. Although the mutants yanked at his clothes and raked at his face, none hit or kicked him, as if they were deliberately restraining themselves from violence.

  Despite the cool, stale air, Jorge was slick with anxious sweat. He flailed out with his fists, striking skull and cartilage, blood erupting from the nose of a glittery-eyed woman who didn’t even blink at the blow. The Zapheads at the far end of the hall closed in, but they moved with no sense of urgency. As if they knew they had already won.

  Jorge groaned in frustration against the mutant tide around him, and a chorus of voices mimicked him. The din echoed off the metal lockers and cinder block walls. The Zapheads almost seemed to be laughing at him, but their faces were emotionless.

  With a giant shove and a twist of his elbows, he broke free and bolted to the door at the end of the hall. The Zapheads came after him but were in no hurry. As if they had forever.

  They could have killed me, but they didn’t.

  He jerked the door open and entered darkness, cool air circulating to suggest a large, open space. His relief was only momentary, though, because around him little bits of light twinkled like stars against the backdrop of an endless universe.

  A galaxy of Zapheads.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rosa couldn’t believe it.

  When the door opened and the silhouette of a man filled the entrance from the hallway, she thought: He’s almost the same size as Jorge.

  But of all the people the Zapheads had brought to the gymnasium since Rosa and Marina had arrived, none of them had entered alone. They were all herded or carried by Zapheads, collected from miles around until there were maybe thirty survivors on site. With each new arrival, Rosa looked hopefully for Jorge’s face, hiding her eagerness and subsequent despair from Marina.

  But it was Marina who recognized him first. “Daddy!” she squealed with joy, triggering the same cry from the Zapheads in the gym.

  The girl ran across the varnished floor, her shoes squeaking, and the Zapheads even vocalized the squeaking sounds. Rosa, who had been teaching Spanish to a toddler of maybe a year old, tried to stand, but her adult Zaphead companion rested a hand on her shoulder. “Stay here now.”

  “Él es mi marido.”

  The woman didn’t seem to care that this was her husband or even understand what that meant. The toddler named Rudolph, though, said “Neuvo Gente.” His name for “New People,” a phrase the older Zapheads had yet to learn. In the days since she had been confined here, she had almost grown comfortable, adapting to the horrible circumstances but believing things were better for Marina than when the Zapheads were trying to kill them.

  Now, though, with the sight of Jorge dropping to his knees as Marina leapt into his arms, she was appalled that she’d surrendered to her new role. “I must go to him,” she said to the toddler, realizing she was asking permission from this fragile creature that she could so easily choke into life
lessness.

  “Do you love him?” Rudolph asked.

  “I love him more than anything except my daughter.”

  The tiny voice sounded delighted. “You can’t love two different people. Not as you described love to me.”

  But Rosa wasn’t listening. She broke from the clutch of the Zaphead guardian and headed across the gym. Some of the survivors called to her, curious and confused. The humans rarely talked to one another, a self-imposed suppression due to their fear of an unknown punishment, but Jorge’s entrance had caused a disturbance that broke up the routine of teaching and caring for the young mutants.

  The tears broke just as she reached him, and Jorge gave them a crushing embrace. “You’re alive,” he whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “We knew you’d find us, Daddy,” Marina said. “Mommy kept saying so.”

  “Nothing will separate us again,” Jorge said, glancing behind him at the Zapheads gathered in the doorway. “Nothing. No matter what they do.”

  Rosa buried her face against his shoulder, happy to lose herself in his sweat and smell and strength. “Jorge,” was all she could manage to say.

  After a moment, Jorge pulled away and peered at them both. “Have they hurt you?”

  “We’re both fine,” Rosa said. There was no chance to say more, because already the Zapheads crowded around them. Some survivors were brave enough to leave their posts, but they kept their distance, watching.

  “What is this place?” Jorge asked, at last getting a look at the scale of the operation.

  “A nursery. A school. A…” She wanted to say “prison” but one of the infants might hear her.

  “We teach the New People,” Marina said. “They take care of us and we take care of them.”

  “And all these real people?” Jorge asked, glancing around at the humans and their sleeping areas in one corner of the large room, where blankets and food cluttered the floor.

  “The Zah—the New People keep us here,” Rosa said.

  Cathy came over, carrying Joey, and said, “Welcome to Newton.”