After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) Page 6

  Rachel held up her palms. Still empty, even after all these years of reaching.

  “You were calling her name,” DeVontay said. He’d taken first watch, and Rachel suspected he’d let her keep sleeping even after it was time for her turn as sentry.

  She didn’t want to cry in front of him. She had to be strong. Even though she couldn’t claim to be a woman of faith any longer, she was still a woman. She couldn’t afford to live in an After where the rules were made by men.

  “We’ve all had losses,” she said, glancing at Stephen’s sleeping form. “You haven’t even talked about your family.”

  “I got my reasons,” DeVontay said. He checked outside for movement. Satisfied, he folded the map and moved a little closer to the fire. “We’re making good time. We’re maybe fifty miles from the parkway.”

  “The weather’s getting cooler as we get higher in elevation. We’ll be out of these foothills soon and into the real mountains.”

  “You think there’s anything up there waiting for us?”

  “My grandfather doesn’t play games. If he’s still alive, he’s waiting for me. And if he’s not, his compound will still be the best place to regroup and figure out the next step.”

  “What is the next step? Once it looks like we’re going to make it.”

  “What comes after? My grandfather believes it’s about more than just hiding in a bunker and growing old. He’d say, ‘Ray-Ray, I only know two things for sure. One is, Doomsday will come sooner or later. The other is, we’ll all have to learn to live together after it’s over.’ He’s the most optimistic cynic I’ve ever known.”

  DeVontay took a sip of water from a plastic bottle. “How come you got so much trust in him?”

  “A mix of inspiration and desperation. He was the only one who didn’t make me feel guilty after my sister drowned. He even wondered if it had something to do with him—like she was targeted because he’d once been a prominent survivalist.”

  “Sounds a little paranoid to me.”

  “Schizophrenia runs in the family,” she said. “He has a sister who didn’t get electricity because she didn’t want the power company to know her address.”

  “How do people like that make in the world?”

  “She’s out in Texas. For all we know, she might be living happily ever after.”

  “Ain’t no happily ever afters.”

  They were silent for a moment, Rachel growing drowsy again even though she should take over the watch so DeVontay could get some sleep. “About earlier…”

  “Forget it. We got enough problems.”

  “What if it’s not a problem?”

  “It will be,” he said. “Ain’t no happily ever afters, remember?”

  The fire hissed as the wood heated. Rachel was cold, even covered by a comforter she’d found in the luggage. She drew it around her. The hissing grew louder but the embers remained dark red.

  “Hear that?” DeVontay said.

  “Is it raining?” It had been clear earlier, when they were outside and shared that awkward intimate moment when DeVontay had pointed out constellations. But weather could change fast in autumn. She glanced at the cockpit’s shattered windshield, but no drops appeared on it.

  “I thought it was crickets,” DeVontay said. “But this doesn’t sound right.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s coming from all around us.”

  Stephen stirred in his sleep. Rachel shed her comforter and went to him, hoping he wouldn’t cry out. Her pistol was on top of her backpack, within reach if needed. With DeVontay’s guidance and some target practice, she no longer felt uneasy with it.

  DeVontay put his index finger to his lips in a “shushing” gesture. He grabbed his rifle and dropped to the ground, wriggling forward on his elbows until he lay in the jagged opening of their makeshift camp. “Put out the fire,” he commanded in a hoarse whisper.

  Rachel poured the remains of a water bottle on the flames, arousing a humid steam. Then she pulled the comforter over it to suffocate the last of the embers. In the sudden darkness, Rachel was temporarily blinded, afraid she’d awaken Stephen if she moved. Then the ambient glow of the aurora settled in to cast a greenish hue as if she were looking through night-vision goggles.

  The hissing grew louder around the cockpit. Rachel wanted to ask DeVontay if he saw anything, but she was afraid to make any noise. She felt along the damaged cockpit’s shell until she came to the nose of the plane, then she ascended the sharp incline of wreckage until she could see through the cracked window.

  She was right about the sky—it was still shockingly clear, the striated bands of shimmering green aurora like a psychedelic fireworks display against the ceiling of heaven. Beneath it was the black outline of the forest. At first she could see nothing, but then the trunks of the closest trees individuated. Something moved between them.

  Dozens of tiny sparks, like fireflies.

  But fireflies were a summer insect. The September nights were too cool for them.

  That glittering gold was familiar.

  Zapheads?

  They hadn’t seen any Zapheads in a week, and they’d been able to avoid contact through caution. Rachel had never seen more than a few at any one time.

  Several of them had attacked in unison back in Taylorsville, when she and DeVontay had been held captive by soldiers. But she couldn’t comprehend the numbers now surrounding them in the woods, issuing their clicking ululations in the shadows.

  “Eyes,” she said, mostly to herself, to grasp the awfulness of the idea, although she’d said it loudly enough for DeVontay to hear over the hissing.

  “It’s them,” he said.

  The sibilant hissing rose into a unified keening, almost a single soulful wail. The Zapheads were giving voice to the misery of After in a way that no human could articulate. Rachel shuddered, and the dread sank deeply into her bones.

  We’ll die here. All this for nothing.

  So much for protecting Stephen.

  So much for paying my debt.

  Thanks a lot, God.

  But she couldn’t be angry at the force she’d rejected. If she’d stopped thanking God for survival and hope, then she couldn’t rightly blame Him for the disintegration.

  The glittering eyes still hovered in the distance, not coming any nearer. Rachel slid to the ground and crawled across the ruptured cockpit, feeling her way. The smoky steam hung heavy in her lungs, and she forced back a cough. Stephen murmured in his sleep.

  She expected DeVontay to begin firing at any moment, the night exploding with lead and powder. Even with the extra boxes of ammo he’d found back at the farmhouse, they would not be able to fend them off, even if every shot found its mark.

  Rachel reached her backpack and clutched her pistol. Her grandfather would want her to go down fighting.

  She could almost hear his demanding, raspy voice now. “Stand your ground. Make the bastards pay for messing with a Wheeler.”

  The high, hissing wail echoed inside her skull, penetrating to her soul. This was the soundtrack to hell, inspiring her to madness. She fought an urge to burst out laughing, to flee into the forest with her pistol blazing, to meet their violence head on with no mercy asked or given.

  But when she reached the cockpit opening, DeVontay blocked her way. “Wait,” he said, wrapping a strong arm around her.

  “How can there be so many?”

  “Dunno.” DeVontay held her against his body so tightly that she could barely breathe. Her heart felt like a zeppelin filling with warm hydrogen.

  She struggled against him, barely hearing him over the noise. Now she wanted to scream instead of laugh, and then she thought she was screaming, because a shriek pierced the night like an electric guitar solo over a string orchestra.

  The sound was coming from inside the cockpit.

  Stephen!

  The keening wail in the forest gave way to an ominous silence.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Stephen screamed again and Rachel tore free o
f DeVontay’s grip. She stumbled through the aurora-limned cockpit, until she found him. He clung to her with his thin, frail arms.

  “Shh, it’s going to be okay,”

  “Huh-had a bad dream,” he blubbered. “They were t-talking to me...”

  “Who?” she asked, her stomach tightening.

  “I don’t know. They…they were in the woods.”

  She stroked his hair, careful to keep the pistol out of his reach. If the Zapheads closed in, she’d have to decide whether to use the last two bullets on the boy and then herself. Except she couldn’t remember how many bullets the magazine held.

  Why isn’t DeVontay shooting?

  In the hush of the night, the cockpit seemed small and fragile against the vastness of the sky. They’d grown overconfident, sleeping more or less out in the open after so many nights spent in abandoned houses along the way. But Rachel had been sure the Zapheads were thinning out, perhaps even dropping dead from some lingering, invisible effects of the sun’s radiation.

  Now here they were in a multitude, all around them. Rachel had suffered the ultimate arrogance—the belief that this After was meant for humans, and that it was up to humans to put the pieces back together.

  Maybe, like the dinosaurs, they were merely short-term tenants, squatting on land the rightful owners had yet to claim. Placeholders in history.

  “Where’s DeVontay?” Stephen asked, a little calmer now, his sobs giving way to occasional shudders.

  Good question. He didn’t go OUT there, did he?

  Even with the high aurora and faint moonlight, she couldn’t tell if DeVontay was still at his outpost at the edge of the cockpit. Their campsite was steeped in shadows, giving Rachel the sense that the metallic shell was in truth a mausoleum that still contained the echo of those who had died here.

  This whole After was nothing but an echo, a hollow mockery of life. The ultimate indictment of an allegedly merciful God.

  “Rachel?” DeVontay called from the darkness just outside the cockpit.

  “Get in here,” she said.

  “No. We need to figure out what they want. I’m going in the woods.”

  “Damn you, don’t even think about it.” Rachel said it more loudly than she’d meant to, and she wondered if the Zapheads were listening. Did they have any comprehension of language, or was it just noise to them, an instinctive signal to close in and kill?

  Stephen stiffened in fear beside her. “What’s happening?”

  Rachel didn’t have time to conjure a suitable lie. “Something’s out there, but we’re safe in here.”

  “Right, Little Man,” DeVontay said with false cheer. “Just like in your comic books. Back in a few.”

  Rachel patted Stephen. “Wait here.” Then she scrambled across the cockpit into the moist air of night. Under the surreal swirls of the tainted atmosphere, DeVontay crossed the clearing, picking his way among the strewn wreckage. She called to him and hurried to catch up.

  “You can’t leave that boy alone,” he said to her. “Get back in there.”

  “Who made you boss?”

  “This ain’t no time to go all femi-Nazi on me.” His good eye sparked with anger, while his glass eye reflected the green aurora, round and strange, a moon in an alien planet’s sky. “I’m going in. If they follow me, take the boy and get out of here.”

  “And if they don’t follow you?”

  “Then we’re all dead anyways.”

  He started to turn but she grabbed his sleeve. “What if we get separated?”

  “Then I’ll see you at Milepost 291.”

  DeVontay took a step but she didn’t release him. Instead, she pulled herself into him. She meant to kiss his cheek but he turned, and their lips met. He was six inches taller, but they seemed to fit. His lips were full and warm and, even in the chaos and fear that pulsed through her veins, a different kind of excitement ignited.

  Yet the kiss was also steadying, an eye in the hurricane, the sane center of a twirling universe gone mad. In the heavy silence of the autumn night, the contact was electric.

  Zap.

  After several skipped heartbeats, DeVontay pulled away. He smiled. “People’s looking.”

  Rachel touched her mouth, embarrassed. There were no glittering eyes in the forest, no strange fireflies. Just the natural world.

  “I…I’m sorry.”

  “Then I hope you stay sorry. I’ll be back.”

  He jogged toward the forest, rifle held before him, its barrel glinting with the faint light. Rachel scanned the trees once more, then looked at the forlorn shattered cockpit that gleamed like a monstrous egg under an alien sky. Stephen’s pale face appeared in the opening, and she wondered how much he’d seen.

  She hurried back to him. “Come on, we have to pack.”

  “Where’s DeVontay going?”

  “Looking for a better camping place.”

  “In the dark?”

  The boy was smart. And intelligence was a critical survival trait. Rachel didn’t know what the future held, but Stephen was part of it. Her desire to protect him was maybe nothing more than vanity. He was tough, or he wouldn’t have made it this far.

  “He’s trying to get the Zapheads to follow him.”

  “So we can get away?”

  “Yeah. So get packed. Hurry.”

  Rachel shoved some cans of food into her backpack, making sure she had water, the lighter, the map, and the hatchet. She checked a side pouch to make sure the two clips of ammo were there. The pistol was useless at long range, and despite DeVontay’s patient teaching, she still wasn’t much of a shot. But in close quarters, the gun would be better than the hatchet, especially if several Zapheads attacked at once.

  But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Not that she put much stock in “hope” these days.

  “Got everything?” she asked, as Stephen pulled on his tennis shoes.

  “I don’t got nothing,” he said. He was even starting to talk like DeVontay.

  By the time they were crouched at the edge of the wreckage, sporting their jackets and backpacks—Stephen wearing his frayed Carolina Panthers cap—the first gleam of dawn touched the eastern sky with pink and orange, muting the aurora. Mist hung between the trees, hiding anything that might have moved among them. The water on the dying leaves made the autumnal canopy sparkle like a king’s ransom of gold and rubies.

  “Are we going to wait for DeVontay?” Stephen asked.

  “He wants us to go on.”

  They’d heard no shots or cries of alarm, which probably meant that DeVontay had not yet encountered the Zapheads. But they could be following him, as he’d planned. Rachel couldn’t begin to guess the motives of the mutants—after all, why hadn’t they attacked in the night, when the three of them were surrounded?

  “The highway’s over there,” Rachel said, pointed to the northwest where U.S. 321 wound inexorably up into the mountains. She then realized that DeVontay no longer had a map. Even if he escaped, he might never find his way to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

  She couldn’t help one more little white lie. “DeVontay will meet up with us there once he’s sure the Zapheads are gone.”

  “Won’t he get lost in the woods?”

  “Nah. He’s pretty smart for a city boy.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Sure. He helped save our lives.”

  “Is that why you kissed him?” Stephen’s face was so earnest that Rachel almost grinned.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t get any cooties.”

  “Are you guys going to get married?”

  “I don’t see any churches around here, do you?”

  Stephen shook his head. “Just woods. And dead people.”

  Rachel glanced at the crumpled body of the plane where many had lost their lives. Their horror had been brief—a few minutes from loss of power at 20,000 feet until devastating impact with the ground. While Stephen’s horror continued, a minute at a time, an uncertain day at a time, lost in the as
hes of what civilization had once been.

  She took his hand. “Come on. DeVontay’s waiting.”

  They walked into the mist, Rachel carrying the pistol in one hand, the other gripping Stephen’s. She felt like an intruder in the forest. This place belonged to the beasts again.

  Her kind didn’t belong here.

  Her kind had its day under the sun, and now the new kind held sway.

  But until she was gone, this world would have to make room for her. She demanded it. She’d abdicated God’s will, and now all she had left was self-will.

  It would do.

  She squeezed the pistol’s grip more tightly, savoring its potency.

  Yes, it would do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Tracks,” Franklin said.

  He pointed off the forest trail where a thin stream trickled between moss-covered gray boulders. The black mud was pocked with footprints, a few of them holding water.

  Jorge knelt and studied them. “Some are wearing boots or shoes and others are barefoot.”

  “Give that man an Eagle Scout badge.” Franklin snapped a twig from a birch tree and chewed on the tip until it was frayed. Then he began brushing his teeth with it, savoring the minty flavor.

  They were on the western side of the compound, half a mile below the ridge. Franklin had scouted the entire mountain several times during the construction of Wheelerville, mostly to ensure no fellow squatters or preppers were setting up camps nearby. Since the highway access was limited, it was a long hike into the depths of the national forest. Hippies sometimes spent weeks in the wilderness, especially in summer and autumn, but the steep, rocky terrain inhibited most of them. Those who had toughed it out never ventured up to the peak.

  Franklin had decided on the reconnaissance mission because he wanted to know how many Zapheads were around. At least that’s what he told Jorge. In truth, he was still searching for the rumored secret military installation.

  He was pretty sure they would be able to hold off a few Zapheads. But defending the compound against trained and armed soldiers would be far more challenging.