After: The Echo (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 2) Page 9

  Hello Kitty.

  Jorge twisted away from Franklin’s grip, a branch scratching his cheek.

  “Fray…Franklin,” Jorge wheezed. This time a glimmer of recognition clouded the burning rage of Franklin’s irises. He blinked as if awakening from a restless nap and looked down at his hands.

  “They’re coming,” Jorge said.

  “Who?”

  Jorge wondered if the old man had suffered a stroke. “Zaps.”

  The man shoved Jorge and scrambled for his rifle. Jorge hung splayed in the branches for another moment before dropping onto the moist loam.

  From his knees, Franklin hoisted his rifle into position and swiveled the barrel left and right. The Zapheads darted between the trees, hissing and chuckling.

  Franklin squeezed off another shot and a bullet pinged off granite.

  An answering shot echoed across the valley from the opposite ridge.

  Soldiers. Damn the ornery old man.

  Jorge couldn’t locate any of the Zapheads. Once they had swarmed the forest, they moved with a predatory agility. He’d see a flash of movement or flutter of cloth and by the time he focused, all was shadows and trees again. If not for their hissing, Jorge would have believed they had retreated deeper into the woods.

  Franklin cussed under his breath. “Did they turn into ghosts?”

  Another shot rang out from a distance and this time Jorge heard a bullet whistle through the treetops above. He crouched low and scrambled on his hands and knees until he was out of the thicket.

  “Where you going?” Franklin said.

  “To the compound.”

  “You forgot your rifle.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Jorge took off along the slope, running parallel to the trail. Below, the three females had lifted the woman Franklin had shot and now conveyed their grisly cargo toward a mysterious destination. The naked old man’s body was gone, but the dead soldier still lay where he’d tumbled. The Zapheads had apparently lost interest in the human once they had some corpses of their own kind.

  Franklin fired again and Jorge winced, half expecting a bullet in the back. But he didn’t turn around. Instead, he angled up the slope, pushing between the gray corrugated trunks of oak and poplar. He imagined movement from the edges of his vision, but his senses were reduced to his ragged breathing and the ache in his legs. He hoped the soldiers hadn’t circled around the ridgeline and taken position on high ground.

  But there were only three of them…

  He came to a fallen tree that had been split and scorched by lightning. Its branches held the trunk three feet off the ground and Jorge had to make a choice whether to scramble under it or climb over. Since he needed the rest anyway, he dropped to his knees and listened, sucking in the sweet forest air and straining to hear.

  A volley of gunfire erupted in the distance, and Franklin returned fire. Jorge doubted if the old man had even spotted his targets. He’d probably just let loose to mark his territory. A squirrel chattered in a cluster of golden-brown leaves overhead, and Jorge savored the ordinary little notes of a bygone world.

  But the past wasn’t dead yet. It was waiting back at the compound.

  Hang on, Rosa. I will be there soon.

  He scrambled under the fallen tree and rose to come face to face with a Zaphead.

  She stared at him with those eerie, glittering eyes. Her face was blank but her mouth parted to let out a wet exhalation. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, thin arms protruding from the sleeves of the oversize T-shirt that reached to her knees. The expressionless Hello Kitty logo with its red bow filled the center of her shirt. She wore mismatched socks without shoes, and the wool was sodden and black with mud.

  She was only a year or two older than Marina, maybe even had already started menstruating. Her hair hung in black strands that ended in loose, greasy curls.

  Jorge took a slow step to his right as if to go around her. She matched it so that she remained three feet in front of him, blocking his path.

  Jorge fought an urge to reason with her, to apologize for Franklin’s murderous outbreak.

  The wet sound in her throat gained intensity, and he realized she was about to hiss. He spun and grabbed a shattered branch from the fallen tree, twisting it free with a splintered squeak. It was four feet long, laden with dead leaves. Even though it was unwieldy, he gripped it with both hands and reared back like a baseball batter.

  But even as he aimed his blow, he couldn’t avoid her eyes. Even when her mouth parted into an O—projecting all the innocence of a soprano in a church choir—and emitted that nerve-gnawing hiss, he couldn’t swing his weapon into that angelic face.

  The hiss was echoed across the woods as others of her kind heard and responded.

  The glitter of her eyes intensified, as if the hiss ignited some sort of internal combustion deep in whatever passed for her soul. She didn’t flinch or in any way react to his threat. Jorge dropped the branch and held up his hands as if to show he wouldn’t harm her.

  She abruptly fell silent. If she shut her eyes, he wouldn’t have known she was a strange mutant. She would just be another child, another person who required nurturing and guidance. Just another person for whom adults toiled to leave the world a better place.

  Just…another…person.

  Yet she stood between him and the people he loved, so she was the enemy. He took another step to the right. If she blocked his way again, he would have to bowl her over and keep running.

  She stood where she was. Mouth open, eyes fixed on his face.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “Who?”

  At first, Jorge wasn’t sure he’d heard it. Had she spoken?

  Impossible.

  Maybe she is not one of them. She looks so…normal.

  But her eyes were so strange, he couldn’t believe she hadn’t been affected somehow. Then she hissed high in her throat and he dismissed his illusion—his wish—that she was still human in any sense.

  He took another step, then another, careful not to show hurry.

  He couldn’t tell if the hissing of the others had stopped because his feet scuffed in the fallen leaves, drowning out any noise. But apparently none of them were near enough to attack him.

  Three more steps, then five, and then he was running again, and soon he knew she could never catch him with those frail, short legs.

  After a good sixty feet up, he risked a look back at her. She stood watching after him, her eyes like miniature suns.

  Jorge wondered what had happened to her parents, and whether she was aware that she had changed. Instead of boy crushes and bubble-gum pop bands and makeup and braces, she was part of a new culture, a new way of life and half-life and unlife.

  In her world, there was no longer Hello Kitty.

  He couldn’t hope to understand, so he did the only thing he could. He churned his way toward the ridgeline, hoping he wouldn’t get lost on his way back to the place he now called home.

  To the people he knew and loved.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “When’s DeVontay going to catch up?”

  Stephen pulled off his Panthers cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Rachel had kept them moving, putting as much distance as possible between them and the Zapheads, even if it meant leaving DeVontay behind. Rachel tried not to think of him—she couldn’t summon the necessary faith to imagine him still alive.

  Whenever she let her mind roam, she saw him lying on the ground dead, one eye closed while his glass eye stared up at the heavens. But she couldn’t show it.

  “He’ll be along soon.” She scooted Stephen’s backpack up on his shoulders, even though his neck chafed from the straps.

  “Yeah, just follow the bread crumbs,” the boy said.

  Rachel smiled despite the grim mood. Every half mile, Stephen had ripped a page from a comic book and slid it beneath the windshield wiper of a car, taking care not to look inside. She recalled how Pete had given him a n
ear-mint collection of classic Marvel comics and wondered what had happened to Pete in the weeks since they’d met him in Taylorsville. “Must hurt a lot to damage the comic books,” she said.

  “Nah, it’s okay. It’s just the X-Men. I still have the Spidermans.”

  “That’s good.”

  He looked at her with dark circles under his eyes. “Can we rest?”

  “Just one more mile.”

  That could well be her new motto, in the face of all the other mantras and prayers she’d wiped from the chalkboard of her past.

  Rachel looked back along the highway. The sinking sun glinted off bumpers and windshields. The eastern horizon was mostly clear of the haze from the burning cities, and as they had gone deeper into the Appalachian foothills, the towns were fewer and spread farther apart. Even the number of stranded vehicles had declined noticeably, although the sweetly fecund smell of corpses was inescapable.

  Soon they’d be coming up on Lenoir, the last town on the map before the climb into the mountains. Rachel had selected a side route to circumvent the highway, figuring the downtown area was as dead as that of most small Southern towns, while the crowds had convened at Wal-Mart, Cracker Barrel, and Home Depot on the main strip. Local officials, either well-meaning or through naked personal greed, saw national chains as a way to put themselves on the map, throwing their own distinct brick-and-cobblestone identities into the great melting pot of American slime.

  Not that any of it mattered now. Ambitions and corporate branding were equally useless.

  Dead downtowns are just the way we like them these days.

  “Keep moving, munchkin,” she said with false cheer, urging him forward between the silent vehicles. Stephen no longer had the least curiosity about the contents of the vehicles. After witnessing an endless array of corpses in various stages of decomposition, his usual reaction had become a halfhearted “Yuck.”

  Rachel took his hand to help energize him, and she even managed a smile. With one wistful backward glance to ensure DeVontay wasn’t running to catch up, she guided him north up a long incline.

  Ahead, an Exxon sign came into view above the trees, marking an exit. The gas station was less than a mile away and was likely surrounded by other businesses and perhaps a motel. It was as good a goal as any.

  She flung her arm across Stephen’s chest to bring him to a sudden stop.

  “What is it?” the boy asked. He was tired, hardly aware of his surroundings. Rachel was grateful, because the pavement ahead was littered with rotten clumps of body parts. A headless torso protruded from the driver’s side of a green Subaru wagon, one stump of an arm dangling. The corpse was black with rot, although red strings of meat trailed out from the wounds.

  “Come here, honey,” Rachel said, covering Stephen’s eyes and guiding him to the grass median so that a refrigerated Valleydale sandwich-meat truck blocked his view of the carnage. A marching band of pink cartoon pigs paraded across the side of the truck’s cargo area.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “Sit here and rest a minute. I want to check something out.”

  “Okay,” he said, plopping onto the grass. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a Spiderman comic. Before Rachel had taken a dozen steps, he’d immersed himself in a world where superheroes saved the day and evil was always defeated.

  Rachel fished a kerchief from her back pocket and held it over her mouth. When she reached the Subaru, she checked the interior. Aside from the driver, the car had apparently held a couple more occupants who must have died during the solar storm’s peak. The back seat was stained with a thick gruel of fluids and dried blood. The front passenger’s seat contained three blackened fingers that curled like slow-baked earthworms.

  Rachel had seen plenty of rotten flesh in After. But this corruption was different. Someone—or something—had gnawed or torn the bodies and strewn them across the pavement. The mutilation was fairly fresh. Flies still buzzed around the jagged and leaking rips in the skin.

  Have the Zapheads run out of live entertainment and now amuse themselves by desecrating the dead?

  Rachel resisted the urge to check the Subaru’s glove box. The decadent odor inside the vehicle pushed her away like a sentient wind. The car was unlikely to offer anything of use, and she already carried more weight than she’d like. Cell phones, GPS monitors, and even weapons wouldn’t improve her odds of reaching her grandfather’s compound at Milepost 291.

  As she circled the Valleydale truck’s front grille, she plotted a route that would spare Stephen the sight of the bodies. Both sides of the highway featured open rolling fields. Stalks of corn had turned ochre with the autumn, crisp leaves flapping in the breeze. She’d come up with some excuse for the detour, perhaps saying they should collect some ears of corn to save for seed.

  Besides, it looks like collecting ears is a popular hobby around here.

  But when she stepped onto the gritty shoulder of the median, her ribs clenched and all her plans were forgotten.

  Stephen stood beside his open backpack, contents scattered around his feet, his comic book splayed out on the grass. He extended his arm toward a mangy German shepherd. The dog’s tail was curled down, ears pricked up in a wary stance. The moist nose sniffed at Stephen’s hand.

  The boy was feeding the dog a Slim Jim. He’d developed a fondness for the cured meat snacks, emulating his new hero DeVontay. While Rachel had nurtured him with healthier fare, she had indulged this one addiction and had allowed him to stock up whenever they plundered a convenience store. Now it looked like that decision was coming back to bite her on the behind.

  Or, more accurately, Stephen’s.

  “Here, boy,” Stephen said, in a calm, friendly tone. He waved the Slim Jim.

  The dog took a hesitant step forward. The animal was gaunt but apparently not starving, and suddenly Rachel recognized its food source. She only hoped the dog could tell the difference between living prey and carrion—and that the dog preferred the latter.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Stephen said. “It’s yummy.”

  The dog’s tail gave a little wag that was almost forlorn. The depths of Stephen’s loneliness and loss draped over Rachel like a shroud. She wanted to be his mother, his sister, and all his friends, to give him enough love to replace all he’d had before. But at best she was a hollow resonance, maybe even just a cruel reminder of the people she could never be.

  Not everything’s about you.

  If you’re really all about the sacrifice—the noble school counselor, the savior of the ignored, the sufferer of survivor’s guilt—then do your job. Be what you were born to be and what you shaped yourself to become.

  The dog’s nose was now inches from the meat snack. Stephen wore a goofy grin, oblivious to everything but the dog. Its tail lifted and flailed at the air a couple of times.

  “Good boy!”

  Two more dogs emerged from behind a black Honda. They hunched low, almost stealthy as they approached Stephen. One was a shaggy golden retriever, dreadlocks of filthy hair hanging from its abdomen. It was a breed known for its joyous enthusiasm, but this particular specimen projected a dark menace. The second dog was smaller, a spotted beagle mix, but if anything, it appeared the wilder and tougher of the pair.

  But Rachel remained still, hoping the German shepherd would grab the snack and retreat, or that Stephen would drop the Slim Jim and step back.

  Instead, the golden retriever growled. It was a liquid, hissing sound, terrible and yet bone-chillingly familiar.

  Both Stephen and the shepherd turned toward the two dogs, and Rachel reacted.

  “Stephen,” she said, as calmly as she could muster, not wanting him to panic, although she was on the verge herself.

  Now all eight eyes turned to her, and she froze as if an icicle had been driven into her heart.

  The eyes of the dogs all glittered with that same sick radiance, a million mad suns exploded inside their skulls.

  Zaphead dogs.

  Stephen was confused, as
if he’d been caught doing something naughty. “I…I just wanted to pet him.”

  “It’s okay.” Rachel took a step toward them, and the shepherd dropped nearly to its haunches, ears pinned back. It let out a high-pitched hiss.

  “Good doggie,” she said, feeling stupid. If the dog attacked, she wouldn’t have time to dig in her backpack for her pistol, and she was angry at herself for the lapse in judgment.

  She’d grown overconfident, and arrogance usually killed, especially in After.

  The retriever and the beagle joined in the hissing, a bizarre howling parody of a midnight mutt-pound concerto.

  “Drop the treat,” she said to Stephen, taking another step forward. The shepherd was locked in position but the other two dogs crept a few slinking steps forward. Rachel was maybe twenty feet from Stephen, but the dogs would surely be able to move faster than she could. And they were only forty feet away.

  Stephen looked down at the shepherd, tears leaking down his chubby cheeks. “I’m sorry, boy.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Rachel said. “We’re just not all friends yet.”

  That sounded stupid even to her, but the psychology classes and counselor training led her to paint a thick layer of honey on every situation. In the La-La Land of the counselor’s world, all was dancing gummy bears, rainbows, and fluffy pillows. And that fantasy world was surely just as absurd as this new world in which they all lived, where dog ate dog and dog ate human and maybe even human ate human.

  Yes, a stranger is just a person you haven’t met yet. Liberal Arts Horseshit 101.

  Rachel took another step, and the shepherd bared its teeth. The other two dogs pawed closer, nails clicking on the pavement.

  Stephen opened his hand and let the Slim Jim fall to the ground, but the shepherd didn’t even glance at it.

  “Okay, Stephen,” she said. “Here’s what I want you to do. Run around the truck and you’ll see a green station wagon with the door open. I want you to climb in and shut the door and don’t open it until I tell you it’s okay.”