After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) Page 7

  “Sometimes mommas change their minds.” Rosa was determined to survive. Marina was more important to her than all the babies in the world, especially Zaphead babies.

  Marina opened her mouth to argue, but then grabbed a stuffed bear decked out in princess regalia before allowing Rosa to pull her toward the rear of the store. As they navigated the cluttered storage room in back, Joey’s wails changed pitch to a lower register, almost becoming a chant: “Not us, not us, not us…”

  In the darkness, Rosa lost her bearings and nearly fell over a row of appliances and furniture. Nearly frantic, she bumped into a rough cinder-block wall and followed it, soon coming to the smooth surface of a steel door. She bumped the push bar with her hip, but it didn’t budge.

  “Help me push,” she whispered to Marina, as Joey’s voice grew louder, echoing in the cavernous thrift shop while Cathy tried to shush him. Marina banged her thin shoulder against the door in time with Rosa, but it still held. Rosa ran her fingers along the jamb and felt an electronic keypad. The door wouldn’t open without power and an access code. They were trapped.

  “Upstairs,” Rosa whispered, pulling Marina back the way they had come.

  But when she parted the curtain to Joey’s strident mantra, she changed her mind.

  Because standing at the front window, looking in, were the two Zapheads. The male’s clothes were wet with blood. The female held the soldier’s rifle.

  “Dios mio,” Rosa whispered.

  But God likely didn’t hear her, because now the Zapheads chanted in unison with Joey: “Not us, not us, not us…”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rosa couldn’t scream, as much as she wanted to release the hot panic welling in her lungs.

  She forced herself to remain brave for Marina’s sake. But the Zapheads had taken a horrifying turn. Not only were they speaking, they were communicating with one another. Even more startling, they had exhibited cunning and teamwork in luring the soldiers down the street. Rosa was now sure the boy and the old man had used themselves as bait for the two Zapheads that waited in ambush. They’d been willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to lay the trap.

  The two Zapheads even managed to separate their adversaries—whether through luck or cunning—and then killed one. Took his gun. And now looked ready to kill again.

  Cathy backed away while little Joey squirmed and struggled in her arms, still wailing “Not us.”

  “Stay behind me,” Rosa whispered, grabbing Marina’s shirt sleeve. She edged toward the stairs, hoping the Zapheads couldn’t see them in the dimness.

  The Zapheads slammed their bodies against the storefront window, smearing blood and body grease. There was a loud crack, and a jagged fissure appeared in the glass. Rosa was momentarily paralyzed by the sight of the Zapheads throwing themselves against the window. Marina dashed for the stairs and Rosa broke from her spell long enough to yell for Cathy.

  But the young mother didn’t move. The window shattered and a large slab of glass severed a hand from the male Zaphead. He looked down at the red geyser spurting from his wrist, a silvery strip of tendon dangling, but exhibited no pain or surprise. He stepped through the storefront, wading through the display of clothes and household goods, kicking over a table covered with pottery. The female Zaphead followed, still carrying the gun, although with no apparent sense of how it operated.

  Rosa instinctively raised her golf club as if she could swat away bullets, or maybe wave it like a magic wand that would whisk her and Marina away to some fairy land of happily-ever-after. To her horror, the Zaphead tilted her gun in the same manner. Rosa swung the club from side to side, and the Zaphead mirrored the motion.

  Rosa flung the golf club aside. The Zaphead stepped out of the storefront display onto the sales floor. The Zaphead with the bleeding stump stooped down and picked up its severed hand, jamming the ragged wounds together as if the flesh might reattach. Then it turned toward a mannequin in the storefront that featured only a torso draped with a brocade velvet gown, without limbs or a head. The Zaphead lifted its ravaged arm to the mannequin as if comparing, and then tossed the hand aside and followed his mutant sister.

  Rosa called Cathy’s name once more, and the Zapheads repeated it. Joey’s chubby little arms and legs pumped as he wailed at his mother: “Stay, stay, stay here.” Cathy glared at Rosa with an expression of confused shock and shook her head as if to say, “I can’t. He won’t let me.”

  “Up the stairs,” Rosa whispered to Marina, shoving her into motion. Marina slipped on the first step, nearly falling, and Rosa gripped her upper arm and half-dragged her upward.

  “I want Daddy,” Marina moaned, the words like needles in Rosa’s chest.

  “We’ll find him, but first we have to hide.”

  “They’ll find us, Momma.”

  “No, they want the baby. They’ll leave us alone.”

  They reached the second-floor landing, Rosa panting with exertion while Marina shuddered from dry sobs. Despite the papered-over windows, there was enough visibility to navigate the clutter of exercise equipment, rocking chairs, broken bicycles, and dusty glass cases. Rosa considered hiding among the mannequins, but the Zapheads might be attracted to them because of their human-like shapes. Instead, she ducked into a small alcove that featured bookshelves on one side and quilts and bedding stacked on the other.

  The alcove was much darker than the open floor. Rosa knelt and explored the space beneath the bottom bookshelf. Aside from a couple of boxes of old vinyl phonograph records, the floor was clear.

  “Crawl in there and don’t make a sound, no matter what,” Rosa whispered, guiding her daughter into the narrow gap.

  “You can’t leave me.” Marina’s voice was on the edge of hysteria.

  If she breaks, we’re both done. Because I’m not too far from the edge myself. “It’s just for a little bit, honey.”

  They could both hear the commotion below them, the Zapheads doing their best to mimic whatever Joey said, although Joey’s command of language seemed much more advanced than those of the adults. Cathy shrieked at one point, but Joey kept on with his rant, oblivious to her pain and fear. Rosa felt a sick surge of joy that it was Cathy being targeted by the Zapheads instead of Marina.

  Maybe they’ll kill Cathy, take the baby, and go.

  And we’ll survive.

  Rosa tumbled some musty bedspreads from the stack and piled them as if making a nest. When Marina was completely concealed, Rosa slipped a hand inside the covers and felt along Marina’s body until she reached her hair. She touched her daughter’s cheek and whispered, “Wait here for me.”

  “What if you don’t come back?”

  “You wait as long as you possibly can, okay? Even if you get hungry or have to go potty.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “I have to, honey.”

  “Stay, stay, stay here,” Marina said, imitating Joey whether consciously or not. “Stay, stay, stay here.”

  “I’ll come back. I promise.” Rosa’s vision blurred with tears as she crept out of the alcove, Marina’s plea burning in her ears.

  Rosa doubled back to the head of the stairs, peering over the railing to make sure the coast was clear. The Zapheads had seen them flee but so far didn’t seem interested enough to pursue them. Rosa could only hope they would leave. She now understood that they’d been drawn to the thrift shop because of Joey.

  And Joey had been leading them to Siler Creek all along, because he knew his kind were here. Traps and bait, all along.

  Peering between the banister rails, Rosa watched the two Zapheads gather around Cathy, cutting off her escape. Joey reached out his arms to the female, crying out “New people!”

  Cathy tugged at Joey as the Zaphead tried to take him, but the injured male grabbed her by the shoulders—his amputation smearing blood on her blouse—and yanked her away. Cathy clawed at him, trying to break free, but she succumbed to the greater weight and power of her captor. The female Zaphead placed Joey on the floor, feet fir
st, and released him. Joey’s legs bowed and collapsed and his head struck the floor. He squealed like a wild beast caught in a cage, but Rosa wouldn’t have described it as a cry of pain.

  “No,” Cathy roared, wriggling out of the male Zaphead’s one-handed grip, leaving him clutching a ragged lock of her hair. “You don’t know how to hold him.”

  She knelt and scooped up Joey, nestling him against her chest and kissing his forehead. “There, there, kissy boo boo and make it better,” she said in a singsong voice.

  She’s gone mad. And I don’t blame her.

  “Kissy boo boo,” Joey said, calm and content once more. Cathy’s eyes shone with the maniacal triumph of motherhood, lost in the insanity of unconditional love.

  The female Zaphead retrieved the amputated hand and brought it to Joey. The male Zaphead drew close and brought its stump to the baby’s face. At first Rosa thought the baby was going to suckle from the gruesome wound, but then he waved to the other Zaphead. The female pressed the hand back into place, bits of pink flesh and white gristle dangling from the point of reconnection.

  “Kissy boo boo,” Joey said, straining to lift his large, pink head.

  Cathy moved the infant forward until his small lips pressed against the ragged gash. The female Zaphead held the hand in place with all the patience of a nurse, her eyes glinting and sparking. Rosa didn’t know what was happening, but the thrift shop had fallen silent for the first time since the two soldiers had chased the Zapheads down the street.

  Joey moved his head away. “Make it better,” he said with childish delight.

  The male Zaphead flexed the fingers of the injured hand. They twitched in uncoordinated spasms, but they curled and unfolded.

  The hand…cannot be.

  Modern medical science was amazing. A trauma ward in an American hospital performed what many would consider miracles. Limbs could be reattached even hours after an accident and function restored following months or years of physical therapy. Rosa had just witnessed an almost instantaneous healing through a bizarre and invisible surgery. Blood still oozed from the man’s wrist, but already the injury was scabbing over.

  Joey clapped his hands. “Kissy boo boo!”

  The male Zaphead clapped his hands. “Kissy boo boo!” he said in a high voice.

  “Patty cake!” Joey held up his pudgy hands and pushed them at the Zaphead.

  He mirrored the move and their palms bumped. “Patty cake!”

  Rosa backed away, unwilling to witness more. She bumped into a bureau and a porcelain doll tumbled to the floor, shattering with a brittle clatter. If the Zapheads had forgotten her, she’d just given them a loud reminder.

  She looked around for a weapon—curtain rods, floor lamps, cast-iron skillets, an antique walking stick. But how could she fight against creatures that could piece their bodies back together?

  Rosa dashed to the nearest window, thinking she might be able to climb out and escape. Marina would be on her own, but if Rosa could lead the Zapheads away from the store and hide long enough, she could sneak back after dark and rescue her. She had little sense of the town’s layout and even less of the Siler Creek’s location on a map, but maybe she could sight some landmarks like a water tower or billboards to guide her. If nothing else, the golden arches of McDonald’s could guide her back to the center of town.

  She peeled back some of the paper covering the window, realizing she’d fled to the front of the store. The dead Zaphead still lay sprawled in the street, and spread out beside it was the corpse of the soldier that had killed it.

  As footsteps creaked on the stairs, Rosa tried to lift the window, but it appeared to be sealed by ancient layers of paint. She nearly punched the thick glass with her hand, but then remembered the Zaphead’s accidental amputation. I don’t think I can count on Joey to fix me if I get sliced into pieces.

  She swept a pile of National Geographic magazines off a coffee table and scooted it beside the window, then climbed atop it. In a sitting position, she raised her legs and drove both feet into the window. It broke in bright thunder and rained shards to the sidewalk below.

  Marina must be scared to death. Have mercy on her, God.

  Rosa kicked a few jagged pieces of glass out of the way and straddled the sill. The two Zapheads reached the top of the stairs, and Rosa expected them to shout at her to stop. But they didn’t even look at her. Their attention was drawn by the cluster of mannequins and the human corpse propped on the metal rack that Rosa had clubbed.

  Rosa swung her other leg out of the window and eased her weight down until she gripped the outer concrete ledge. The drop was only about twelve feet, but if she twisted her ankle—or worse, broke a leg—then both she and Marina were doomed.

  At least the sidewalk below her was clear, aside from a few wedges of glass that reflected the red sky of sunset. And what choice did she have? She didn’t possess the strength to lift herself back into the store even if she wished it.

  Her fingertips ached, scoured raw by the concrete. But just before she let go, a young voice called out, “Not us!”

  Coming up the street was the dark-skinned boy in underwear who had helped lure the soldiers. Apparently he had survived the hunt.

  Not only that, several other figures—almost certainly Zapheads, judging by their grouping—were with him. One wore Rodger Dodger’s cap.

  A very bloody cap.

  The boy pointed up at her. “Not us.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  As a child in the Baja Californian town of Camalú, Rosa had been raised as the middle of five children by a mother who cleaned rooms at a hotel that catered to American tourists. She earned eighty pesos a day. Her father was a commercial fisherman, bringing in fish for the local restaurants, which also served the tourists. He’d been lost at sea one stormy winter. At least, that is what her mother always claimed. Other children in town said he’d desaperacido—abandoned his family to smuggle marijuana north to San Diego and Los Angeles.

  Whatever the real story, Rosa had grown up fast and hard, tending the chickens that ran free in the yard of their tin-sided shack in the hills. Her two older sisters talked of marrying hombres Americano as if that were the greatest ambition a woman could muster. Her two younger brothers wore the oversize counterfeit jerseys of American football teams, tackling each other and tossing a deflated soccer ball while pretending they were stars of the Dallas Cowboys. Her mother told her that all dreams, like the compass, could only point norto.

  She never wanted to leave Camalú, although her own future had looked little brighter than her mother’s. Indeed, she’d been on the same career track, coming in on weekends to help her mother with the laundry. She’d learned plenty about the filthy secrets of Americans. The stains on their sheets were no different than those the local women washed in tubs of rainwater captured off the roofs of their shacks.

  Her teen years marked ever fewer days at the regional school and more shifts at the hotel, watching her mother’s back become more humped and stooped as premature gray streaked her hair and hardship eroded deep creases around the brown skin of her eyes and mouth. Then she’d met Jorge, who delivered dry goods to the hotel from La Paz in a noisy, rusty truck. At age twenty, Jorge possessed a driver’s license, a reasonably reliable source of income, and most of his teeth. Unlike the tequila-loving pendejos of the neighborhood, Jorge had a serious demeanor. Jorge had plans instead of dreams.

  “You should go with him,” her mother said, although Rosa could plainly read the fear in her mother’s eyes. Of all the children, Rosa would have been the one to stay in the tin shack until the end. The end of everything.

  “I can’t,” Rosa replied. “You are my family.”

  “It is the way of families. A time comes to leave one and start another.”

  “I feel like each foot is in a separate grave,” Rosa said, hoping the decision would be taken from her.

  “So, choosing will hold no loss. You die either way. And it’s far worse to be atrapado en el medio.” />
  Too poor for telephones, with twenty-five-hundred miles between them, and the end of the world sweeping in from the sky, those words were among the last she’d ever heard her mother speak. Now, dangling by her fingertips between likely death below and above, they came back to Rosa.

  Atrapado en el medio.

  Trapped in the middle.

  The difference now was her choice of graves affected Marina. And Jorge, if he was still alive.

  She was done, but she could still serve a purpose. If a Zaphead could sacrifice its life, so could she. If she dropped to the sidewalk without shattering the bones in her ankles, then she would run. The plan hadn’t changed much: Lead the Zapheads away from Marina. She would just eliminate that portion of the plan where she returned for Marina.

  She could almost hear her mother’s voice. Whether they were delivered from heaven or merely the jolt of microscopic synaptic receptors in her brain, she couldn’t say. But the words were true nonetheless.

  “It is the way of families. A time comes to leave one and…”

  “And there’s nothing after,” Rosa whispered, letting go of the window ledge and falling. She didn’t consciously prepare to roll as she struck the concrete, but she landed off-balance and one knee buckled, sending her into a tumble that likely buffered the shock of impact. Her hip throbbed and one elbow was scraped raw, but as she gathered herself, all her limbs seemed functional.

  She rose into a sprinter’s stance, the Zapheads on the street maybe fifty yards away, walking toward her with a kind of mild curiosity. There were four of them, aside from the boy. Three were women, ranging in age from a teenager to a grandmotherly Asian who had to be at least ninety, although she moved with almost as much energy as the others. Perhaps Zapheads were all the same age, in the same way that dead people and unborn babies were the same age. Their count of days had begun when the sun sickness changed them.

  In many ways, so had Rosa’s. Because this was a new life.

  One where she was still unwelcome, still an outsider, still an immigrant, but with little hope of ever assimilating. Because Zapheads killed her kind instead of deporting them.