After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) Page 19

  DeVontay couldn’t know what sort of senses the tiny mutant employed—the Zapheads had always acted in concert, as if some hive mind operated somewhere deep inside them, but if they were evolving and adapting, fine tuning the firing of their synapses, maybe they’d developed some kind of telepathy or extrasensory perception. DeVontay was neither a scientist nor a mystic, but he readily admitted that the universe operated on far more complex wavelengths than he could ever comprehend.

  But if the Zapheads already knew Rachel’s location, he had no hope of tricking them. He wasn’t ready to accept they were smarter than he was.

  “What are you going to do with Rachel?” He would never have imagined himself talking this way to an infant, but something about the fierce intelligence in those wildly glimmering eyes made DeVontay feel like the child here. That chubby-cheeked countenance was already imbued with a thousand years of knowledge and experience.

  “It’s not what we’re going to do to Rachel,” the infant said. “It’s what she’s going to do for us. All of us.”

  “She’s not one of you.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to know what she is if I were you.” The infant flashed a toothless grin. “Although perhaps you can find out. Let us heal you.”

  “I’m not hurt,” DeVontay said, even though blood streamed down his face and soaked his jacket, and his injured arm had slipped free of its sling and hung limp and useless at his side.

  “As you wish. Rachel was our first, and that was an accident. We didn’t understand at the time. Now we’ve learned.”

  The woman holding the baby shivered visibly, although the Zapheads seemed impervious to the cold. Dusk had advanced as DeVontay confronted the mutant infant and his bizarre tribe, and now he couldn’t see the rear ranks of Zapheads except for their eyes. But he could sense them poised around him, the air fraught with anticipation.

  “What if I leave now?” DeVontay said, knowing he shouldn’t have asked the question. He should have acted instead, even if the odds were hopeless.

  “Humans value their freedom.” The child seemed almost bored now, her nostrils flaring and sending steam into the night. “Or at least your illusion of freedom. That’s nothing but pride dressed up as ignorance of your own insignificance.”

  “She gets like this,” the woman holding her said. “I blame the people in Newton.”

  “Newton? What’s in Newton?”

  “The beginning,” the infant said. “We’d like you to join us.”

  Some of the Zapheads eased back into the darkness, carrying Kreutzman with them. DeVontay was relieved that they were heading downhill following the creek instead of ascending toward the compound. But several dozen mutants remained. And DeVontay would have to fight them all.

  He glanced at the Zaphead holding Kreutzman’s rifle, and the move was so obvious the infant didn’t even need telepathy to read DeVontay’s mind. The child erupted in a gleeful giggle. “You don’t want to fight us. And you refuse to surrender. So what shall we do?”

  DeVontay’s toes were numb from the cold, and his fingers ached. One way or another, he’d have to make a decision. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and found the flare Hilyard had given them. “I’ll go with you, as long as we all go together.”

  “Your plan to lure us away from the compound is admirable,” the infant said. “I accept. Because Rachel is coming regardless. And your other friends…there’s no hurry. We learn more every day.”

  DeVontay followed the line of tracks in the snow made by the Zapheads who had already left. The woman carrying the dark-skinned infant walked just behind him. The Zapheads held back a moment as if to make sure he wasn’t playing a trick, and then they all fell in behind them. The combined luminance of their eyes lit up the path just enough to keep DeVontay from bumping into trees or falling into the creek.

  The volley of gunfire ahead was so sudden and sharp against the wintry silence that at first DeVontay couldn’t place the noise. Then more shots erupted. Judging by the volume, they could only have come from Shipley’s Army unit.

  “They die,” the infant said, with no more emotion than if she was talking about a sand castle being swept into the sea.

  “Those men will kill all of us.”

  The baby almost sighed. “Death is not important. The New People will last no matter what. It’s your own kind you should be worried about.”

  DeVontay noted the infant naturally assumed DeVontay was concerned about the Zapheads. Maybe I’m not the only one who suffers from pride. Maybe that’s a flaw I can use later.

  “But we have no choice,” the infant said loudly enough for the others to hear. “Violence creates discord, and we can’t tolerate discord. Ease the suffering. Make peace.”

  That was apparently an order of some kind. The Zapheads around them dissolved into the night like a stealthy pack of panthers, muttering jumbled combinations of the baby girl’s words. They wouldn’t have a chance against armed soldiers, especially since their eyes made them easy targets.

  But DeVontay didn’t care which side won. The chaos created an opportunity.

  Only he, the woman holding the bundle of swaddling, and the infant remained by the creek.

  He headed into the woods away from the popping of gunfire, already bracing for the utter darkness that awaited.

  “What would you like me to tell Rachel?” the infant called after him, stopping him in his tracks.

  Someone screamed in the distance.

  And Zapheads didn’t scream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Hilyard said. His night-vision goggles reflected tiny twin wedges of the moon.

  “You don’t know her,” Franklin said. “I do.”

  The gunshots peppered the slopes below them in a staccato rhythm. Once in a while, a scream or cry pierced the night in the distance. Franklin could only imagine the battle being waged out there in the darkness. From the platform, all they could see was the occasional muzzle flash in the distance.

  “Sounds like all hell is breaking loose, and DeVontay and Kreutzman might be in the middle of it.”

  “We just have to stick it out. We can’t go out there with Stephen, and we can’t leave him here by himself.”

  “Judging by the gunfire, I’d guess maybe a dozen soldiers out there. The bunker is vulnerable right now, and if enough Zapheads are swarming, they might take us all down.”

  “How many Zaps do you think it would take to beat a dozen trained and well-armed men?”

  “Under normal circumstances, maybe a thousand,” Hilyard said. “In conditions like this, a hundred might do it. Casualties don’t matter to Zaps. They can stack them like cordwood and keep on trucking.”

  “So you don’t think Shipley was coming to get us?”

  “I suspect one of his scouts spotted a mass movement of Zapheads. If he’s gone so loco that he thinks he’s fighting a holy war, he won’t employ the soundest strategy. The book would say fortify the bunker and hold a defensive posture. But he might be too impatient for that.”

  “Guessing the thought process of a lunatic is as foolish as understanding what the Zapheads are after.” Franklin glanced back at the cabin, where the boy was waiting, probably watching from the window.

  “Then why did you let Rachel go out there alone?” Hilyard asked.

  Franklin could never explain. He’d seen the signs, the erratic behavior, and the occasional gleam in her eyes—a literal gleam. She had never fully come back from whatever had happened to her in Zap captivity. There was a restlessness sleeping inside her, and although her instinct had won out enough to bring her here, she couldn’t stay for long. And although it broke Franklin’s heart, he couldn’t keep her caged. That would go against everything he ever stood for and every principle he believed in.

  Freedom doesn’t just mean that you get to be free, but you have to let everybody else be free, too.

  “I didn’t let her do anything,” Franklin said. “We all have our callings
.”

  A brilliant burst of red light burned a hole in the darkness. “Flare,” Hilyard said, peering through the binoculars in frustration.

  “Is it ours, or theirs?”

  “Can’t really tell. But Shipley’s men wouldn’t use it unless they were calling in reinforcements and showing their location.”

  “I’ll bet it’s our guys.”

  “It’s suicide to go out there now,” Hilyard said. “Bullets flying, God knows how many Zaps wandering around, and it’s black as tar. You’d be more likely to trip and break your neck as to take a slug or get your heart yanked out of your chest.”

  “This is my home. I have to protect it. And Rachel will come back when she’s finished with whatever she has to do.”

  Hilyard’s face was largely hidden by the darkness, but his eyes reflected the moonlight. “Yeah, you’re right. And those are my men out there getting slaughtered. It wasn’t a battle I would have sent them into, but that doesn’t matter now. I should be with them.”

  “Even though they kicked you out in the cold?”

  “I’d guess most of them are praying for a little spit and polish by now. Anarchy isn’t such a good foundation for a new world order.”

  As if to punctuate his words, another volley of gunfire erupted. Franklin tried to picture the soldiers with their night gear and automatic weapons against an enemy that didn’t care whether it lived or died. Maybe everybody—and everything—was fighting for its home.

  “So, once an officer, always an officer, huh?” Franklin said.

  “Those are my men,” Hilyard repeated.

  Although he couldn’t see the lieutenant’s eyes, the determination in his face was evident. Franklin nodded and shook the man’s hand. Hilyard climbed down from the platform.

  “I took an oath,” Hilyard called after reaching the ground. “I know you have no use for governments, but I still believe in the United States. At some point, we’re going to win. And it’s worth dying for.”

  “We’ll agree to disagree on that one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish you the best.” Franklin flipped him a casual salute and watched until Hilyard worked his way into the thick shadows of the forest. Then he descended and entered the cabin.

  “Stephen?” he called.

  He expected the boy to be watching from the window, or perhaps sitting by the woodstove reading a book. But the cabin was empty. It was too small for hiding places.

  He was about to open the door and yell into the compound, thinking the boy might have gone to the outhouse or the animal pen, when he saw the note on his desk, written in a careful but uneven hand:

  Mr. Wheeler,

  Thank you for your hospi—hospa—for being nice and letting us stay here. I hope we can come back real soon. Rachel needs me out there. She took care of me when I had nobody else. I owe her.

  Please don’t follow me. And please tell DeVontay thanks for all the candy and Slim Jims.

  Stephen

  P.S. I borrowed your copy of Animal Farm but I promise to take care of it and bring it back one day.

  “Shit,” Franklin said.

  He glanced around the cabin that had gone from overcrowded to barren in just a few hours. The dream that had sustained him for years now looked plain foolish and delusional in the candlelight.

  So much for utopian compounds removed from the troubles of the world.

  The muffled gunplay was barely audible now, as if the war was taking place in a foreign land. DeVontay and Kreutzman would arrive soon, and they could form a plan. Running off into the night would help no one.

  Maybe Hilyard was right. Anarchy wasn’t sustainable. Franklin’s highest purpose was to stay here and maintain an outpost of sanity and reason in a world turned sideways.

  He pulled out a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and sat by the woodstove, hoping some wisdom would strike him like the great patriarch’s legendary bolt of lightning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The guns popped around him.

  DeVontay realized that, even with the moonlight reflecting off the snow, the soldiers wouldn’t be able to tell him from a Zaphead.

  Maybe they could see that his eyes didn’t burn, but would any of them bother to look? They were likely shooting anything that moved. DeVontay had ignited the flare to get a sense of the terrain, but the red incandescence had merely served to trigger a volley of gunfire.

  Worse, the battle had spread along the slopes around them, and he couldn’t tell which direction offered the safest way out. Not that he could risk leaving now. Until he found out what this smug mutant brat knew about Rachel, he was staying.

  But he had no desire to serve as target practice, either, so he squatted behind a tree in the darkness. Not that he could hide from the baby girl. Her human porter held her close, apparently unfazed by the bullets whizzing around.

  “Don’t be afraid to die,” the baby said to DeVontay. “It’s only temporary.”

  “What do you know about dying? All your kind does is kill.”

  “We’ll learn to fix you,” the baby said. “We’ll make all of you new. Right, Lisa?”

  The face of the woman was illuminated by the intense brightness of the infant’s eyes. The blank expression was replaced by slight animation, and Lisa smiled. “The newer, the better.”

  DeVontay saw a pair of glinting eyes maybe fifty feet to his left, and then a muzzle flash erupted.

  That Zaphead—it’s shooting a gun.

  So they finally figured it out. Took them long enough, considering how many people they’ve seen shooting at them. And each other.

  “We don’t want to kill, you see,” the baby said. “But if we must make peace, we may as well do it quickly. You Old People have taught us much.”

  “Well, if you weren’t trying to bash our brains in all the time, you might have seen a better version of us,” DeVontay said. “When humans get backed into a corner, they come out fighting.”

  “I look forward to talking with you when peace is made,” the baby said. “Once we’re in Newton, we can explore these differences. Not that it will change anything.”

  “I’m not going to Newton.”

  A three-round burst trimmed a branch overhead and it dropped into the snow. The armed Zaphead returned fire.

  They copy our behavior. So the more these soldiers fight, the longer and bloodier the war will be.

  Judging by the less frequent screams and the diminishing gunfire, DeVontay figured only two or three soldiers remained. The Zapheads were “making peace” with ruthless efficiency. Already the guns sounded more distant, as if the men were retreating and simply spraying cover fire. But cover fire wouldn’t work on Zapheads. They didn’t duck because they didn’t care if they got hit.

  The baby seemed unperturbed by the battle raging around them. She almost seemed happy, and at one point she yawned, putting a little brown fist to her mouth. With her eyes closed, she was even crushingly cute. But when those eyes were open, they served as reminders of the solar storms that had wiped the slate clean and pushed Zapheads to the top of the food chain.

  DeVontay heard a wet splat, and he thought a clump of snow had fallen from a high branch.

  A dark red dot appeared in the center of Lisa’s forehead, the entry wound evident in the spotlight of the baby’s gaze. She sagged forward as her eyes rolled up as if to see what had given her such a sudden headache, and as she collapsed, the infant bleated a pathetic wail.

  The bark on the tree behind Lisa was splotched with blood, brains, and bits of skull. The swaddled infant slid from her grasp and skated several feet across the snow.

  DeVontay’s horror turned to a rush of triumph.

  The creepy little shit doesn’t look so omnipotent now, does it?

  The blanket that swaddled the baby had unfolded upon impact with the ground, and two little arms flailed at the air. “Whaaaaa,” the baby cried, and the noise was mimicked by five or six Zapheads within earshot, creating an eerie soundtrack to the battle�
�s end.

  DeVontay took three strides forward, slipping in the snow. He lifted a boot to crush the mutant and dowse those fiery eyes forever.

  He hesitated and a clump of mud fell on the baby’s cheek. She wriggled her head and blinked, bunching up her nostrils.

  If only it would speak, he could crush its head.

  But the baby batted his hands together, helpless fingers curled.

  It’s just a baby.

  She lifted her arms up toward him. A helpless, innocent creature seeking a porter.

  A father.

  DeVontay knelt and lifted the child from the ground, brushing snow from the blanket before it melted and caused discomfort.

  “Dah-dah,” she said.

  “I’m not falling for that. I’m just not the monster you think I am. That you think all of us humans are.”

  “We have much to explore. In Newton.”

  “I’m not going to Newton.”

  The baby grinned. “Of course you are. You want to see Rachel.”

  “How did—”

  “She was an accident. We didn’t know what we were doing. That’s why she isn’t finished yet.”

  “She got better.” DeVontay found himself whispering as the last gunshot rang out, followed by a choking groan of agony, mimicked and mocked by a dozen voices that sounded like the gibbering ululations of chimpanzees.

  “Not as better as she is going to be soon,” the baby said. “What is your name?”

  DeVontay thought about lying, or ignoring her, but he told her.

  “Dee-von-tay. I like that.” The baby appeared to concentrate a moment, tiny face scrunched, and then she said, “They are all dead now. We shall gather them and go home.”

  The baby drew a breath and tensed her muscles as if trying to stand in DeVontay’s arms. Then she let out a high, piercing cry that seemed to fill the forest: “Go now go.”

  “Go now go!” The call was repeated by two, four, dozens, and then hundreds of voices along the slopes.