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

“Maybe we should make a run for it,” DeVontay said. “I
don’t think we can outgun them.”

“Run where? And what about Stephen?”

“I can run faster than you,” the boy said.

Another shot rang out, this one from the side, and
skipped off a rock above Stephen’s head with a keening whine. DeVontay fired
wildly back in that direction, more out of anger than having a reasonable
target. Campbell unleashed a couple of shots himself, wondering how many were
left in his magazine. He had one extra magazine in his backpack, but that would
mean he’d have to stand, shuck his backpack, and dig around in it while keeping
one eye on these invisible but well-armed attackers.

Hilyard was now out of sight, too, probably up in the
hardwoods near the stand of pines. Campbell studied the terrain, wondering
where he might get a better view of the surroundings. Assuming he could
actually make his legs work. The chill had seeped into his bones, and his knees
felt like jelly.

“I
got an idea,” DeVontay said.

“I
hope it involves bulletproof vests.” Campbell had never been all that witty,
but he couldn’t stop his mouth from rambling nonsense.

“One
of us is going to have to flush him out. Since I can’t hit the side of a barn,
I’ll head down the trail as fast as I can, and when the guy pops up to shoot
me, you take him out.”

“That
doesn’t sound like an idea. That sounds like suicide.”

“We
can’t stay pinned down here forever.”

“I
guess you’re right,” Campbell said. “But maybe if we sit tight, Hilyard will
bail us out.”

“By
himself? We at least have to try.”

“What
about Stephen?”

“Just
keep your head down, Little Man,” DeVontay said to the boy. “We’ll have some
crackers when this is all over.”

“How
about another Reese’s Cup?” the boy asked.

“Deal,
but only if we get to split it.” Like Campbell, DeVontay was forcing himself to
joke. The strain in his voice was evident.

“I
just had another thought,” Campbell said. “If any Zapheads are around, all this
shooting is bound to draw them out.”

“Do
me a favor and quit thinking.”

Campbell
settled in and pointed his rifle at the briar patch.
This couldn’t be any harder than shooting zombies in the Left 4 Dead video
game, but those animated avatars didn’t shoot back, and he could always pull
the plug on them or hit the reset button. His hands shook, but he was sure
DeVontay’s must be shaking even more.

“Ready
when you are,” Campbell said.

“Okay,
on three. Thousand-one, thousand-two, thousand—”

A
volley of bullets strafed the trees directly above them, but DeVontay shouted “
Three
,”
and jumped out of his hole. He carried his rifle across his chest, which slowed
him down but seemed to help his balance as he slipped and skidded down the
trail.

Sure
enough, the guy in the briar patch fell for it, rising up and sighting down the
barrel of a nasty-looking weapon. Campbell could see now that he wore a
camouflage uniform and dark gloves, his broad face chapped red by the cold and
wind. Campbell took a breath and lined up the sight, then squeezed the trigger.
A three-round burst belched from the muzzle, and he repeated it. The weeds
flapped and swayed as bullets tore through them, and a line of red dots
appeared on the man’s upper torso. He threw his arms in the air, his weapon
flying from his hands, and then he pitched forward into a thicket of briars.
His body hung there, suspended and oozing blood.

Got
the bastard.

Still,
it was luck. The soldier must have thought so little of them as an adversary
that he exposed himself. His comrades probably wouldn’t be so stupid.

DeVontay
was just a dark shape flitting between trees when a shot came from yet another
direction. DeVontay cried out and tumbled to the forest floor.

“DeVontay!”
Stephen yelled, hurling himself from his hiding place in the rocks and dashing
pell-mell through the woods.

“Get
down, kid,” Campbell yelled, swiveling his rifle back and forth to track any
movement around them.

The
boy ignored him. Campbell cursed under his breath. The kid never had a chance.
Maybe
it’s better this way. One little jolt of pain, and then he’s free of all this.
Better than being captured by Zapheads.

More
shots rang out, and Campbell lost track of their origin. They seemed to be coming
from several places at once. And then Campbell saw a soldier slip out from
behind and tree and follow Stephen.

Shit.
Watching the kid get shot is not so easy, either.

Campbell
shoved his backpack out of the way, squeezed between
the deadfall that served as his cover, and ran after them. He lost his footing
and banged hard against an oak, nearly losing his weapon. He recovered his
balance, looked around, and decided he couldn’t get a good shot at the soldier,
who had veered uphill instead of pursuing in a straight line.

Now
Campbell could see what their stalker was doing—he was maneuvering himself to
the top of a slope so he could fire down on both DeVontay and the boy. DeVontay
was sitting up, so at least he was alive for the moment, but he’d lost his
weapon.

“I
told you to stay,” DeVontay said as Stephen ran to him, dropping to his knees.

“You
got hurt.”

“It’s
nothing. Just took the wind out of me.”

Campbell
wanted to warn them about the sniper getting into
position, but that would compromise his element of surprise. His best
chance—the best chance for all of them—was to get off a clean shot.

Don’t
think too much. Just pretend it’s a zombie on a computer screen.

But
before he could zero in on his target, another soldier came down the trail
toward him, yelling. Campbell gasped and panicked, spraying several bursts at
him. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit the man or if the soldier had jumped out of the
firing line. He was almost out of ammo, and his backpack with the extra
magazine was forty yards away.

DeVontay’s
gun.

Campbell
ran toward them, waving at them to stay down and
pointing up at the ridge where the soldier had taken position. Campbell swiveled and fired off two more shots before the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

He’s
going to shoot the kid.

Campbell
jumped, intending to knock Stephen to the ground
where he’d be a smaller target, but before he reached the boy, a searing pain
erupted in his back like someone had jammed a red-hot poker up his spine and
twisted it in circles. His legs instantly went numb. He tried to take another
step but flopped forward on his face.

A
flurry of shots erupted all around him, but the sounds came to him as if
underwater. He tried to breath but his lungs felt like bricks. He closed his
eyes, but the darkness behind them frightened him, so he rolled over and stared
up at the bare treetops, which looked like thin, black fingers reaching down to
drag him away.

He
must have lost consciousness. He wasn’t sure how many seconds passed—it might
have been minutes—but when he blinked awake, a bearded man, Hilyard, and
another soldier stood above him. DeVontay knelt on one side, holding his hand,
but Campbell couldn’t feel it. Stephen knelt on the other side, tears streaming
down his face.

“You
saved his life,” DeVontay said. His jacket was ripped at one shoulder, a raw
gap of torn meat visible through the fabric.

Campbell
wanted to explain everything, all the calculations
he’d made that were designed to save his own skin, but words just seemed like
too much trouble.

He
stared up at the old bearded man. “You must be Wheeler,” he managed to wheeze.

“Yeah,
son. Don’t talk. Just lay back and try to breathe.”

But
Campbell couldn’t help it. He had to laugh, although it turned into a gurgling
cough. This was the great Franklin Wheeler? The wizard of a utopian Oz who had
the apocalypse all figured out? This was the salvation of the human race they
had traveled nearly two hundred miles to see?

Why,
he looks more like some skeezy-assed wino in the Dumpster behind the homeless
shelter.

Then
Campbell looked at Hilyard’s face, and he knew. His journey wasn’t going to
end at some survival compound on an idyllic golden mountaintop.

His
eyes widened as he mouthed a few nonsense syllables. DeVontay leaned down to
put his ear near Campbell’s lips.

Campbell
whispered, “Tell Rachel I…hell, you know.”

DeVontay
nodded. “I know.”

The
sky went such a solid shade of gray that it was like a curtain had been draped
over it. Campbell’s last thought before he slipped away was:
What I wouldn’t
give for a Zaphead to come along right about now and fix me.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

“What
do you think?” Wanda Eisenstein said. “Still glad you don’t have a gun?”

Jorge
looked over the parapet. They were on top of a plumbing supply store, which was
in a fenced lot at the edge of town. Stacks of pipes, old ceramic toilets, and
rusted metal motors were scattered around the property, and the rest of the
neighborhood featured the same industrial clutter. Rows of rundown houses lined
a narrow, unlined street leading to the faded brick buildings of downtown. A
tall, domed building dominated a hill above town, shredded United States and North Carolina flags undulating from a steel pole atop it. It was a postcard of
the declining American South. But the architecture was of less interest than
the crowd occupying the street.

“How
long have they been here?” He’d never seen more than a handful of Zapheads at a
time. To see this many at once was so numbing that he could barely comprehend
their numbers.

“Ever
since Day One,” the stocky, middle-aged woman said. “I used to come down here
and raid the grocery store, and they were easy to dodge in the early going. I
was more worried about other folks like me. Desperate scavengers who didn’t
know what in tarnation was going on.”

“Didn’t
the survivors band together?”

Wanda
gave him a cockeyed squint. “What planet have you been living on? You think
people suddenly come around to teamwork and understanding once their backs are
against the wall? When it’s dog eat dog, the big dog eats first.”

“You
lived here. You had friends here.”

“I
drove a delivery van for the
Newton
Times.
Three editions a week,
up before the birds every morning. I didn’t have friends.”

“What
about your family?”

“My
family? They’re like people I read about in a book a long time ago. Better to
leave them there than to find out what happened to them.”

“I’m
going to find my family, even if I walk through hell and back.”

Wanda
nodded toward the street full of milling Zapheads. “Well, I reckon that counts
as hell, so maybe you should just head on downtown. But I wouldn’t count on the
‘back’ part of that deal.”

The
air had a fresh-scrubbed cleanliness after the hard rain, although a faint
whiff of decay lingered. Jorge wondered how many dead bodies lay in those
houses and cars, and how many had been slaughtered by Zapheads. He understood
Wanda’s reluctance to entrust her life to other survivors—Jorge’s initial
instinct was to take his family as far away from populated areas as possible.
But he wasn’t sure the end result would have changed much. With humans heavily
outnumbered, gathering in groups would have just made them easier targets.

Not
targets. Prey.

“They
didn’t all gather right away,” Wanda continued. “First you’d see two or three
at a time, and then half a dozen moving in a pack. No way that many of them
turned here. They come from all around.”

“Looks
like they just walk back and forth.”

“Oh,
they’ve been working hard. Doing a little housekeeping.”

“What
do you mean?”

Wanda
waved her hand at the cluster of houses. “Collecting.”

Jorge
noticed that the Zapheads were moving much more purposefully than he’d assumed.
What he’d taken as a pointless trudging up and down the streets now suggested a
pattern. They traveled in lines almost like ants, occasionally bumping into one
another and sometimes veering wildly off to the side, but always maintaining a
single direction. They repeated monosyllabic clicks, moans, and grunts, bits of
sound that wanted to be words. The combined effect was like the murmur of a
crowd at a public gathering just before the main event—an air of anticipation.

A
group of three Zapheads came toward them, and Jorge crouched lower, although
they weren’t looking along the skyline. All three were female, and their
clothes were in relatively good shape—threadbare and dirty, but not hanging
from their bodies in swaths of rags. They turned into the lawn of a small house
that had toys strewn across the yard and a swing hanging from a tree branch by
two rusted lengths of chain. There was no car in the driveway, which gave Jorge
some hope that the house had been unoccupied when the solar storms struck. He
couldn’t bear the thought of those children dropping dead on the scraggly lawn,
or turning into Zapheads and scrambling to destroy anyone who might have
survived unscathed.