After (Book 3): Milepost 291 (22 page)

CHAPTER
FORTY

The
screams rang in DeVontay’s head hours after the horrible sounds were swallowed
by the mist.

So
much for my goddamned magic eye. Never saw that coming.

The
horrors had merged into one slow-motion nightmare: the children lying bloody
and still on the ground, Angelique shooting Kiki in the head, Zapheads swarming
out of the darkness on all sides as Rooster’s men desperately tried to fight
them off.

DeVontay
broke from his paralysis long enough to grab Stephen, yank him to the ground,
and cover him until the bullets stopped flying. Angelique shot two Zapheads at
point-blank range and then she was buried under a squirming army of them,
kicking and cussing and finally squealing. The Zapheads imitated her words
until her shrieks gave way to the nasty wet sounds of violence. DeVontay could
have sworn her tendons and bones popped as they ripped at her body.

He
covered Stephen’s mouth so the boy wouldn’t cry out. He hoped the Zapheads were
too busy with their hostile prey to notice the two of them, but he couldn’t
count on the fog to conceal them all night. So he whispered in Stephen’s ear,
instructing him to crawl slowly toward the woods. “
Whatever you do, don’t
look up, and don’t look at any of the dead people
.”

And
so they had wriggled through the carnage around them, at one point crossing
over the body of a young girl who lay on her belly, a large red hole in the
back of her white sweater. Stephen whimpered and went rigid, but DeVontay
coaxed him forward until the violence was lost in the fog and darkness behind
them. But they didn’t move fast enough to escape the sounds and smells.

They
reached the trees and DeVontay wanted nothing more than to break into a crazed
run. But he could hear footsteps churning the damp leaves of the forest floor
and realized more Zapheads had responded to the sound of gunfire, pilgrims
trudging the sacred path to a temple of gore.

The
best—and worst—thing to do was to wait in hiding, pressed low in the filthy
weeds and rotted logs and fragrant evergreens. Stephen appeared to be in shock,
and DeVontay whispered to him to keep him calm. But the words of encouragement
were so hollow he almost laughed out loud. The boy had witnessed the true
condition of the world, and no words would ever erase the wide-eyed confusion
of the children as they were gunned down.

“My
fault,” Stephen whispered.

“No,
it’s not.”

“I
ran back to them. I shoulda—“

“No,
Little Man. If you feel guilty, then I have to feel guilty. Because I brought
Rooster to the group. He promised to take care of you all.”

And
I guess he did, in his way.

“Do
you think anybody got away?” Stephen whispered, with a heartbreaking hint of
hope.

DeVontay
fed the lie for both of them. “Maybe. James ran pretty fast, and I couldn’t see
everything.”

“How
long do we wait here?”

“Until
they’re done.”

The
actual slaughter and subsequent battle had lasted maybe three minutes, but the
Zapheads continued to march through the trees. At one point, with dawn
approaching, DeVontay risked lifting his head to look out at the meadow.
Figures moved in the cold steam of morning, like field medics gathering the
casualties of war after an assault.

He
saw bodies lifted and carried away, the Zapheads that had gleefully shouted
“Die” now mute in mock solemnity. Or maybe the Zapheads had no sound to trigger
them and thus derived no inspiration from the dead all around them. Most
disturbing, several of the Zapheads were children themselves, in soiled and
tattered clothes.

They
carried the bodies downhill, past the farmhouse and across the road. As the
mist evaporated under the yellow glare of dawn, DeVontay could see a mile’s
worth of valley rolling up to mountain ridges on all sides, the river cutting
through its heart like a twisted steel knife. Pastoral farms were scattered
across the pastures and glades, fence lines dotted with old apple trees and
towering red oaks, brown rectangles of gardens falling fallow with the first
breaths of winter.

The
beauty and peace of the landscape stood in stark contrast to the nightmarish
shapes that marched across it. Dozens of Zapheads conveyed their grisly cargo
across a bridge, forming a long parade that would march across DeVontay’s sleep
for as long as he lived.

He
recognized the clothing of some of the children, their frailer bodies supported
by only two or three Zapheads each. But some of the dead were clearly Zapheads,
victims of Rooster’s bullets who were carried with the same seeming
indifference. His heart squeezed in anguish when he recognized Kiki borne aloft
on the shoulders of four Zapheads, her head lolling and her long black hair
waving gently back and forth.

“DeVontay!”
Stephen called, louder than he should have.

One
of the Zapheads turned and looked toward the woods.

DeVontay
eased back into the foliage. The Zaphead took two steps toward him and then
hesitated. It was a male, wearing the remains of a priest’s dark jacket and
Roman collar, hair white and tufted, leather shoes scuffed. The face was
wrinkled and splotchy, but the eyes didn’t exhibit the characteristic sparks of
a Zaphead. It took DeVontay a moment to realize the priest must have been
blind, the milky orbs containing no pupils.

But
he was convinced the Zapheads had preternatural senses that allowed them to
detect sound and motion at great distances, as well as a subtler perception
that extended into the psychic. The professor had suggested they interpreted
pulse rate, skin temperature, and adrenaline levels to determine threats and
believed training them into pacifism was the best chance for the human race.
But this priest had blood on his clothes and the professor’s disciples had
turned on him like a pack of rabid Judases, so DeVontay took no chances.

He
shushed Stephen and crawled backward, maintaining surveillance of the meadow
while listening for footsteps in the forest. Only a few bodies remained, and a
group of Zapheads lifted one of them. An orange baseball cap tumbled free and
sat upturned in the dew-soaked weeds.

When
he returned to Stephen, he whispered, “We’re leaving now.”

“Won’t
they see us?” the boy said, still pale and shaken from the massacre.

“They
don’t have to see us to find us. But you have to be calm, okay?”

Stephen
nodded, not really listening.

“And
be brave.” DeVontay gripped the boy’s shoulder and met his eyes. “You can do
it, Little Man.”

They
crawled for maybe fifty yards, moving away from the meadow. DeVontay didn’t
want to head back toward the compound, which still spewed a plume of oily
smoke, but he also didn’t want to veer too far away from the road. From his
memory of the map, the road and the river both pointed toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Milepost 291 offered the last vestige of sanctuary and hope.

Once
they’d left the Zapheads behind, they rose to their feet and crept silently
along, although their passage disturbed birds that burst from the treetops in
sudden flurries of cries and flapping wings. One of them flew directly into a
tree trunk and fell dead. DeVontay wondered how many of the animals had been
altered by the solar storms and whether their behaviors had been forever
changed.

“I
see some people,” Stephen said.

DeVontay
realized his mind had been wandering, thinking about the larger world rather
than the immediate problem before him. Such foolishness would get them both
killed.

Through
the trees, he could see the black, crumbling road and the foaming rapids of the
river, as well as several stalled vehicles that looked like abandoned toys on a
playground. Then he saw them, two figures on the asphalt, their shadows
trailing behind them as they walked into the morning sun.

“Looks
like more Zapheads,” DeVontay said. “Heading toward the others.”

“Then
what are they doing alone? All the other Zapheads are together.”

“Maybe
they’re late to the party.”

“But
that one with the backpack doesn’t walk like a Zaphead. And why would a Zaphead
carry a backpack, anyway?”

Good
question.
DeVontay wished he had a
pair of binoculars. One appeared to be female, the other male, and their
clothes were in too good of a condition to have been worn for two months.

Then
the male, who tugged at the Zaphead as if to turn her around, lifted his head
and DeVontay saw the flash of his eyeglasses. No Zaphead could have kept a pair
of glasses for that long.
What would a survivor being doing with a Zaphead?

“We
need to help them,” Stephen said, with anxious urgency, grabbing DeVontay’s
hand.

“It
didn’t work out so well the last time we tried to help.”

Stephen
squeezed his hand as hard as his slender fingers could, and he turned his
tear-soaked face to DeVontay’s. “You told me to be brave. Don’t
you
have
to be brave, too?”

One
day I’ll learn to keep my damn mouth shut. Probably the day the Zaps are
hauling me off to their graveyard paradise.

“Okay,
we’ll check it out, but stay close to me, right?”

Stephen
nodded and they headed to the edge of the forest. The adjoining stretch of
pasture contained a herd of cattle and several horses, which looked sleek in
the sun and had been turned out with bridles and reins, as if their riders were
merely taking a break and had gotten fried before they could remove the
harnessing. Life had changed little for the animals, and may have improved
vastly, since their human owners had vanished.

“If
they’re not Zapheads, what are they doing out in the open?” Stephen asked.

“Good
question. Maybe we’ll ask them.”

They
were close enough to call out to them, and DeVontay could hear the man’s voice,
although he couldn’t make out the words. The syntax was in full sentences,
though, unlike the clipped repetition of the Zapheads.

“He’s
a human,” Stephen said, almost bolting across the pasture in his excitement.

“Sounds
like it. Not sure about the other one.” DeVontay was relieved to see the man
carried no weapon. The last thing he wanted was to get shot by someone he was
trying to help. But if they kept walking, they would soon be discovered by the
Zapheads.

“That
woman…” Stephen said.

“She’s
not saying anything.” DeVontay believed she was a Zaphead because of her
behavior, but her appearance didn’t match. Had the man changed her clothes,
maybe kept her as a pet of some kind? As a sex slave or walking Barbie doll?

No,
she would have torn him to shreds. Zapheads would likely respond to sexual
aggression in the same way they would other physical aggression.

“It’s
Rachel!” Stephen said.

Her
long, brown hair, too clean for a Doomsday world. Same build. The clothes
didn’t match what she’d been wearing two weeks ago, but she would have had many
opportunities to change.

“Can’t
be,” he said, although he knew Stephen was right. His heart tugged in two
directions at once: overjoyed to see her, but sickened that she had turned.

But
how HAD she turned? The Zap wasn’t contagious, it was a once in a lifetime
opportunity.

Stephen
grinned. “She’s just walking funny because of her hurt leg. The dog bite I told
you about.”

Before
DeVontay could stop him, Stephen slid under the barbed wire fence and darted
across the pasture. The cows and horses turned to watch him, and DeVontay hoped
those animals were the only witnesses.

CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE

Rachel
heard the boy before she saw him.

He
was running across a pasture toward them, waving his arm and shouting “Rachel!
Rachel!”

She
didn’t understand the word but was compelled to respond to its sound, and she
repeated it softly. The boy’s movement captured her attention, his footfalls
almost like thunder, grass swishing around his ankles as loud as crashing tidal
waves. She became agitated.

A
threat.

“Damn,”
said the man beside her, the one who’d been following her forever. “It’s your
friend. The boy you were looking for.”

Rachel
didn’t comprehend the sentence, but then the man also repeated the “Rachel,
Rachel, Rachel” until it filled her head and drove out the distant signal that
pulsed like a beacon. She was supposed to go somewhere, but now she couldn’t
remember, and she was confused.

“Rachel?”
she said.

“Yes,”
the man with her said, and she wished she’d destroyed him. Because now her head
hurt and her serenity was shattered, and the single purpose had been disrupted.
She couldn’t articulate these thoughts, but the sensation was of being yanked
back from a sheer cliff, hanging out over dizzying heights with the wind
rushing across her face and excoriating her ears.

But
something about the boy tugged at her…a memory of him running toward her in
that same fashion, only waving a sheaf of colorful papers in the air rather
than his hand.

“Rachel,
it’s me!” he said.

The
word came to her, interrupting the echolalia of her own name:
Stephen.

She
didn’t know what the new word meant, but she involuntarily moved toward him,
the sun stinging her eyes, the beacon signal fading.

Then
the boy was close enough that she could see his face, round and red-cheeked,
with dark brown, uneven bangs and a missing tooth. “Stephen?”

“Careful,”
the man with her said, but Stephen didn’t hesitate. He scrambled through the
fence onto the road and hugged her so hard she almost fell over.

After
a moment, she returned the hug. His smell was familiar, and her serenity
returned, but it was different than before, less focused and more resplendent
with the smell of the river and the grass and the air and herds of clouds
sliding across the blue curves of the sky’s high domed cathedral.

“You’re
alive!” Stephen said, his arms tight around her waist.

“Yes…”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she had no desire to repeat it. Her heart
swelled with an unidentifiable warmth that frightened her at first, but she
surrendered it into the serenity offered by her other senses.

“She’s…a
little sick,” said the man, and now Rachel remembered. He was Campbell. She
didn’t remember everything, not clearly, but she understood they had been
together. Same as she had been with Stephen.

“DeVontay’s
here,” Stephen said. Then he peered at her. “Your eyes. They look weird.”

“I’m
okay,” she said, a phrase lodged in her head. She
did
feel okay, although
her head ached a little and her legs were sore from walking.

Then
she saw the man coming across the pasture, leading two horses by leather loops.
He was dark-skinned, dressed in a familiar denim jacket, his black leather
boots shiny from the dew. His eyes looked weird, too—at least, one of them did.

DeVontay
put his foot against one of the fence posts and gave it a couple of kicks, and
then pushed until it leaned to the ground. He led the horses over the wire, and
they gracefully jumped until they stood in the weeds alongside the ditch,
watching with curiosity and perhaps amusement.

“DeVontay,”
she whispered.

“Rachel,”
he said, as wary of her as she was of him. DeVontay looked at Campbell, who
said something she couldn’t understand.

“You’re
the guy from Taylorsville,” DeVontay said to him.

“She’s
gone through some changes,” Campbell said.

“She’s
sick, but she’s okay,” Stephen said with evident happiness. “She’s not a
Zaphead.”

“What’s
a Zaphead?” she asked.

“
That’s
a Zaphead,” DeVontay said, pointing up the road.

Rachel
turned and saw a small group of figures, still distant but obviously coming
their way. She was struck by a desire to run toward them, but DeVontay’s voice
pulled her away and broke the signal.

“We’d
better get out of here,” he said. “Do you know how to ride?”

DeVontay
helped Rachel astride the horse, holding the reins as she struggled to keep her
balance as the animal swayed. Campbell started to climb up after her, but
DeVontay said, “I’ll hold her. You take care of the boy.”

Rachel
had ridden before, but she had no distinct memory of it. She gripped the
animal’s flanks with her legs as best she could. DeVontay launched himself up
onto the horse in front of her, and she had to wrap her arms around him to keep
from toppling off. The shape of his body and his smell were familiar and
comforting in a way that words couldn’t describe.

I’m
Rachel. Why does it seem so new?

When
Stephen and Campbell were likewise mounted, DeVontay guided their horse until
its hooves clopped on the asphalt. They headed upriver, the jostling of the
beast tossing them gently against each other. DeVontay wheeled the horse after
a minute, and Rachel saw the group of figures had grown smaller against the
horizon.

Then
they turned once again toward the great gray ridges with slopes that burned
with autumn colors gone to rust that hid the bones of winter beneath them.

“Where
are we going?” she asked DeVontay.

He
turned halfway so that his good eye was studying her. “Milepost 291. You ever
heard of it?”

“No,
but I can’t think of anywhere else to be.”

“Your
eyes…they…”

He
didn’t finish. He faced forward, gripped the reins, and urged the horse onward,
Stephen and Campbell in their wake.

Rachel
looked up at the sky.
Thank you, God.

She
didn’t know what those words meant, either, but they seemed old and familiar.
That other signal, the high, brittle keening of a single purpose, faded
altogether as they rounded a bend and passed lifeless cars and houses, and she
soon forgot it.