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

  Franklin and Hilyard had spent the afternoon helping Brock arrange his fighters so they could pick off the Zapheads if they came this way to collect bodies. With Hilyard’s soldiers overseeing each group, the leaders gathered once again around the fire pit as the afternoon sun sank against the smoky red sky. Franklin’s urge to return to his mountain compound was temporarily blunted by his curiosity regarding this strategic puzzle.

  Plus, if he couldn’t get Rachel and DeVontay to come with him, what point was there in wandering up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to spend the winter alone? Sure, the goats might be glad to see him, but other than that, the world would just go on without him.

  Which might have been highly appealing even a year ago, but now seemed like an act of treason against his race.

  “You think Shipley’s launching another attack?” Franklin asked.

  “He’d be better off waiting until the Zaps have finished gathering,” the lieutenant said. “Easier to take them down when they’re all in one place. But I don’t expect Shipley to do the smart thing.”

  “Should we go in?” Brock said. “We can outflank the Zaps from along the river, and if Shipley’s coming from the north, we can squeeze them and meet in the middle, sort of like us and the Russians did to Germany in World War II.”

  “I hate to see good men go to waste, but they threw in their lot with Shipley,” Hilyard said to Brock. “And you’re responsible for a lot of civilian lives. You owe it to them to be smarter than Shipley.”

  “But what about the people still in there?” Rachel said. “The ones from the school who were held captive?”

  “Do you really think any of them are still alive besides the carriers?”

  “From my brief connection with the Zapheads, I’d put the number of captives at three dozen. I only saw ten or so dead.”

  “So do we risk the lives of thirty to save twenty?” Hilyard asked Brock. “And that’s not a rhetorical question, either. You don’t know anybody in there. Me, I have a mission, and that’s to win the war and restore the United States to its former glory. But you—I suppose I could technically declare martial law and commandeer your troops, but if we’re going to remain a democracy, that means I don’t get to decide how the whole world runs. That’s the difference between me and Shipley.”

  “What kind of victory is it if we don’t fight for each other?” DeVontay asked.

  He sat at the campfire beside Rachel, and they cozied up with a familiarity that Franklin didn’t want to contemplate too much. The young black man had stolen her away from him, but had Rachel ever been Franklin’s in the first place? Just because he groomed her to be his heir apparent didn’t mean she had to step into his scruffy boots.

  Besides, she’s changed. A whole hell of a lot.

  The glittering of her eyes had faded a bit but was still evident. And the seriousness on her face was plain. “I see this war a little differently than you do. We don’t win it by wiping them out, if that were even possible. We win it by understanding them.”

  “And people are dying in the meantime,” Hilyard said. “It took two atomic bombs before we understood the Japanese.”

  “What if we tried it my way one more time?” Rachel said. DeVontay visibly tensed beside her.

  “What do you mean?” Brock asked.

  “I go in and try to talk to them. The Central Committee. They might think I betrayed them, but I can show them why I didn’t join them. Maybe I’m just mutant enough to teach them what it means to be human, which is what they really wanted in the first place.”

  “No way,” DeVontay said. “I already got you out of there once.”

  “Might be a little too late for that anyway,” Hilyard said. “What did we teach them yesterday, and every day since the solar storms? That we want to destroy them. Even if they have some sort of psychic link with you that grows stronger with proximity, you’re just one person. All the rest of your kind—us, the ones who haven’t changed—have shown them something different.”

  Gunshots popped like firecrackers in the town.

  “Sounds like more than one gun, but certainly not a squad or army,” Brock said.

  “I hear one M16 and another that sounds like a single-shot hunting rifle,” Hilyard said. “Unless Shipley’s drafted a civilian militia of his own in the last couple of days, that’s probably a guerilla action.”

  Rachel clamped her hands over her ears. “And every shot is killing an innocent intelligent being.”

  “Get over it,” Sierra said. “There’s a hundred of them for every one of us. It’s not like wiping out the whales or the black rhinos or something like that.”

  “Humans are the only species that will be its own extinction event,” Franklin said. “Even if we get through this, we still have our nuclear mess to clean up. And how are we going to do that without electricity and technology? Go in and mop up hot uranium with brooms and shovels?”

  “Boy, thanks for that dose of optimism,” Hilyard said. “None of it changes my duty. Even if we go down, we go down red, white, and blue.”

  “But hasn’t diplomacy been part of the American Way?” Rachel said. “If we tried to solve every problem by force, we’d have destroyed ourselves long ago. What if the Cold War had been a Hot War instead?”

  “We’ve already decided there’s no way Zapheads and humans can live alongside each other, Rachel,” Franklin said. “The best we can hope for is peaceful co-existence. I’d be fine with giving them the hot zones and we take the remote areas where the radiation will take years to reach. But if they’re getting smarter by the minute like you say, they will probably evolve past us before winter’s over, and then what use could we possibly be to them?”

  “Maybe they won’t see us as a resource to be exploited,” Rachel said. “Not the way humans have always viewed the world.”

  “But you yourself said they planned to eradicate us,” Brock said. “After they’d drained all our knowledge from us and we could no longer serve them, and after their own kind learned to take care of these babies.”

  “That’s just where they are on the curve right now,” Rachel said. “Once they evolve and ascend—yes, into a higher form of life—they’ll grow into morality and compassion and wisdom. And if we can help them get there, maybe we’ll grow right along with them.”

  “I love you to death, honey, but that sounds like pie in the sky horseshit,” Franklin said. “What, like these things are angels sent to save us from our wicked ways?”

  “When Jesus returns, do you expect him to look like a long-haired, bearded bronze hippie wearing a robe? Wouldn’t God have far more imagination than that?”

  “Don’t go getting your religion mixed up in this,” Franklin said.

  “So I should only save religion for the little problems?”

  “Maybe you’re both right,” DeVontay said. “We fear what we can’t understand, and we always hate the other. But what if we try one more time? If Rachel’s secure in her faith, then she might be able to project love instead of fear. That’s not surrender, Franklin. Love doesn’t equal weakness.”

  Where the hell is this guy coming up with this stuff? Did he sleep with Rachel and catch some sort of flowers-and-rainbows disease?

  “I agree,” Hilyard said, to Franklin’s shock.

  “Lieutenant Dude,” Brock said. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “We’re not ready to attack, and anything Rachel learns can help us. If this Central Committee is willing to negotiate, that buys us more time to organize and plan. What do we have to lose?”

  “We have Rachel to lose,” Franklin said. “I’m not going to send her in to get nailed to the cross just so we can all feel good about trying to convert the savages.”

  “I’m at peace with it,” Rachel said. “They changed me, but it’s like I took one step into a whole new world and my other foot’s still stuck in the old. I want resolution. I want to fully become whatever this world needs me to be.”

  Franklin could almost apprec
iate that sentiment, even though he didn’t like it. She’d always placed service above self, even as a youngster who would give her Christmas presents to the poor and lead neighborhood canned-food drives. Her profession as a school counselor paid little and led her to work with the most troubled inner-city kids, a responsibility that offered far more frustrations than rewards.

  Smoking a peace pipe with Zapheads was probably just another line in the job description for her.

  “Let me go in,” Rachel said. “If I fail, then give me a gun and I’ll do whatever it takes. But we owe it to ourselves to be sure we’re doing the right thing. If humanity still stands for anything, surely we can agree peace is worth a try.”

  Franklin sighed. “I have a feeling John Lennon’s going to be rolling over in his grave, but you win. Go for it.”

  Rachel stood and looked at the sky. “It won’t be dark for three hours. Plenty of time to find the Central Committee.”

  “If the Zappers don’t kill you first,” Sierra said, with more than a little mocking bitterness.

  DeVontay stood and pulled Rachel to her feet. “Well, you’re not going alone. Get your things and let’s do this.”

  Rachel put her fist to her mouth, those fiery eyes moist with emotion and gratitude. Then she nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.

  As they headed toward the house to collect supplies, Franklin said, “Well, that didn’t go well.”

  “It went perfectly,” Hilyard said.

  “What do you mean?” Brock said.

  “You’ve heard of the Trojan horse? Well, we let Rachel lead us to this Central Committee, and then we do the right thing and blow them all to hell.”

  Sierra erupted in a cackle of glee. “Man, you’re one sneaky son of a bitch. I like that in a man.”

  Franklin didn’t, but he said nothing. If Hilyard was going in, so was he.

  Somebody had to watch Rachel’s back, and he sure didn’t trust any of this bunch with the job.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stephen wished he’d made a run for it.

  He was pretty sure now Sgt. Shipley wouldn’t have shot him in the back.

  No, Sgt. Shipley would have shot him in the knees, hung him upside down from a tree branch by his Achilles tendons, and then skinned him alive while letting the crows eat his eyeballs.

  The sergeant had given him no choice but to march into town with the troops. A couple of the soldiers scowled at Stephen as if they wanted to break him in half, but Sgt. Shipley apparently wanted him as a pet.

  At least he didn’t say “Polly want a cracker?”

  Newton was typical of the small towns he’d passed through with Rachel and DeVontay on their way to Milepost 291, built around furniture factories or other small industries that had closed down and left behind a shabby stack of buildings that was trying to change into something cute where tourists would want to shop. Well, that wasn’t such a good plan, considering that the town’s current visitors had no money and eyes like sunspots.

  When the soldiers split up, Sgt Shipley told him, “You’re staying with me, Cindy Lou Who. You’re my good luck charm.”

  Stephen thought that was silly, since the only luck going on was his, and it was all bad. But he didn’t say anything, just followed along with a sullen Private Broyhill behind him.

  “Gonna mess you up if you do anything funny,” Broyhill said. “Grind you up and feed you to the Zaps.”

  The idiot must have Zapheads mixed up with zombies, but he’s the one with the gun.

  They came upon their first Zaphead at a grocery store, walking across the parking lot between the rows of dead cars. She wore a baggy sweater and black pants, along with an apron that bore the store’s logo. She must have been a clerk at the store, or maybe she’d found it while cleaning up the dead and decided it would look nice.

  “She changed clothes,” Broyhill said.

  “What, do you know her?” Sgt. Shipley asked.

  “They’re clean. All the other Zaps have on raggedy shit.”

  “Maybe she’s somebody’s doll.”

  “Maybe she’s got a hot date,” Sgt. Shipley said. He asked Stephen, “What do you think, Cindy?”

  Stephen thought it might be a good idea to watch her behavior, because the Zapheads had been acting differently every day. Rachel described their evolving behavior as becoming more human-like even as they gained knowledge and understanding of the world around them. But they might as well be zombies to the likes of Shipley and Broyhill.

  “I think we can go around the back way and not be seen,” Stephen said.

  “You’re a sneaky little brat,” the sergeant said. “Maybe that’s why you’ve survived for so long.”

  Broyhill raised his rifle to shoot the Zaphead, but the sergeant slapped it away and said, “Hey, stupid, every Zapper in town will hear that. The kid’s right. Have to be sneaky.”

  The Zaphead reached the front of the store, where the sliding doors gaped wide open, and entered.

  “Maybe she’s picking up some beer and potato chips for the hubby,” Broyhill said.

  “Leave her,” the sergeant said. “We’ll clean up the strays later. If they’re still gathered in the middle of town, we’ll take down the easy meat first.”

  Even though the Zapheads had killed plenty of people, Stephen was kind of glad this one escaped. She looked like somebody’s mom. If Stephen’s mom had turned instead of dying during the solar storms, he’d hope that people would just let her live out whatever days she had left.

  Man, you’re getting soft in the head because of everything Rachel told you. But it’s hard to hate them when Rachel’s one of them.

  Shipley and Broyhill had no problem hating them, because they pointed out several as they darted from house to house and car to car. Not all of them wore clean clothes, but enough did to remove any doubt that this was a deliberate new development.

  “Dressing up for a party, maybe,” Shipley said.

  “Or a funeral,” Broyhill said. “A big, big funeral.”

  A group of Zapheads emerged from a building that had dump trucks and front-end loaders parked beside it. Shipley waved Stephen and Broyhill behind a car, where they watched for a moment. A low murmur arose from the crowd.

  “What’s that?” Broyhill said. “Are they pulling that echo shit again?”

  “Nobody said anything for them to echo,” Stephen observed. “Maybe they’re making up sounds.”

  Shipley snorted a laugh. “First they dress up, now they talking about the weather. They can’t even wait to wipe us out before they steal everything we got.”

  “Let me take ‘em down,” Broyhill said, licking his lips. “Seven or eight of them, I can do this with my eyes closed.”

  “They’re headed downtown,” Shipley said. “Let’s follow them in.”

  They crept behind the group for three blocks. The businesses grew more frequent, and the yards of the houses got smaller, and now the streets had sidewalks. From the location of the burned-out courthouse, Stephen knew they were circling the west side of town, but neither of the soldiers appeared to give much thought to direction. All they knew was that their objectives were somewhere in the middle of town and they were going for blood.

  Stray Zapheads came out of houses, backyards, and buildings to join the group, and as their numbers grew to the dozens, their murmuring grew louder.

  “Come here come now,” Stephen said.

  Broyhill cut him a look. “What the hell?”

  “That’s what they’re saying: ‘Come here come now.’ They’re just running all the words together.”

  “Well, I hope they all ‘come here’ in one place, so we can blow them to hell and be done with it,” Shipley said. “I’m ready to get back to the bunker.”

  Broyhill waved to one of the other soldiers who had taken position atop a slender building. The soldier, whose head and shoulders were barely visible above the parapet, gave a thumb’s up, then held his right arm out with elbow up like he was pledging on a bible
at the witness stand. He then lowered it to point to the right.

  “Contact made,” Broyhill said. “Looks like everyone’s in position now.”

  “Except us.” Shipley nudged Stephen toward an alley. “Keep quiet.”

  Stephen wondered what would happen if he jumped out into the open and yelled “Come here come now!” The crowd before them numbered in the dozens now. Maybe he could escape while Shipley and Broyhill were busy shooting them down.

  You can’t let them die like that.

  Dang it, Rachel, why did you have to make me see them as living things instead of comic-book creatures?

  He wasn’t up on the meaning of souls, and some people in Before—pet owners, mostly—said dogs and cats had souls, but not earthworms and fish. Did Zapheads have souls? Did their lives have any meaning?

  What do I know? I’m just a kid. But I can’t watch them die.

  Stephen dutifully crept into the alley, and now the chanting of the multitudes was louder, coming from the next block. Stephen was so intent on not being seen that he almost ran right into the old woman in the doorway.

  He backed away in shock, thinking she was a Zaphead, and the theoretical concern for their well-being vanished in the space of one skipped heartbeat. But as she turned her wrinkled, filthy face to him, her clouded eyes were unmarked by any mutant fires. But the baby in her arms was a different matter.

  Shipley pushed Stephen out of the way and raised his rifle butt to drive down into the huddled woman’s face, but Stephen yanked on the back of his uniform. “She’s human!”

  Shipley wavered for a second, and then said, “What you got there?”

  “Kokona,” the old woman croaked though a dry throat.

  “It’s a fucking Zapper baby,” Broyhill said. “And a chink to boot.”

  Stephen thought the baby was beautiful, with exotic almond eyes, round cheeks, and sand-colored skin that consummated the sparkling starlight emanating from the features. The old woman shrank back from them, shielding the infant from their gaze.

  “What’s the deal?” Shipley asked, nudging her with one boot. “Where you going with this little freak?”