After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (23 page)

But
when Rosa tried to express her view, Jorge dismissed her with a frustrated
shake of his head. “No. We’re escaping as soon as we get a chance.”

There
was another tumultuous uproar near the double doors and several Zapheads
carried in two bloody bodies.

“Them
are the ones I shot,” Wanda said with a defiant sneer. “They got me, but I got
my licks in.”

Cathy
carried Joey over to the corpses, who were borne aloft a moment and then
balanced on their feet. Rosa had seen this before, and she decided explanation
was not only useless, it was beyond her lingual ability.

The
first wounded Zaphead lolled forward, supported by several of its brethren.
Joey uttered some phrases they couldn’t make out in the din, and then the baby
patted his little hand along the streaming, bloody pocks. The rivulets slowed
almost instantly, and the blood turned from wet and shiny to darker, shrinking
away until it vanished altogether.

“¿
Lo
que está sucediendo
?” Jorge blanched until his face was almost
wheat-colored.

“They’re
fixing her, Daddy,” Marina said, with childlike happiness. “Good as new.”

In
less than a minute, the seriously ravaged Zaphead stood erect under her own
power, fingering the holes in her clothes where the shotgun pellets had
entered. Joey then repeated the healing process on the second one, while Jorge
and Wanda protested the unnatural aberration.

But
who is to say what is natural now
? Rosa didn’t dare challenge her husband in his current state, though. He would learn soon
enough. And come to accept the new ways, just as she had.

Shortly,
Cathy came over with her bloody-handed baby, and Joey said to Wanda, “See. I
can treat your injury if you like. You will be good as new, right, Marina?”

Marina
clapped her hands in a playful patty-cake motion.

Wanda
drew back and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t have a gun no more, but I still got
teeth and fingernails. Come near me and I’ll wrap your diaper around your neck
and squeeze until your yellow eyes pop out.”

Joey
giggled. “That’s okay. I can fix myself, too.”

Cathy
sniffed at her mutant
wunderkind
. “Speaking of diapers…”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

“Why
did you run away? DeVontay asked her, leaning against an oak tree and watching
a bird.

Rachel
couldn’t explain. If she told him she was afraid of becoming a Zaphead, then
he’d keep a close eye on her and maybe even restrain her again. If she told the
truth—that she wanted to find the compound and kill her grandfather—then she
would be exiled or killed herself. But the truth was an ever-changing thing,
because now that she was here, she absolutely adored Franklin Wheeler. All her
childhood memories of him came back to her: the patient way he’d taught her to
fish and play chess, the support he’d given her when her sister Chelsea had
drowned, and all the books he’d given her that weren’t just good but also
worthwhile.

It
had been two days since Franklin had brought the group back to the compound.
Her joy at seeing DeVontay and Stephen—
human
joy—had been muted by the
sight of Campbell’s body draped across Hilyard’s shoulder. “This is one corpse
the Zaps aren’t getting,” DeVontay said, holding his bloody shoulder.

They’d
performed a solemn burial outside the compound, with Franklin offering a
rambling eulogy that basically amounted to expressing confusion at the current
state of existence. Since then, they’d been busy settling in, storing the last
of the vegetables from the compound’s garden, and healing from their long,
dangerous journey.

“I
couldn’t trust myself,” she said, choosing a middle ground. They were in the
woods outside the compound, collecting firewood. DeVontay’s shoulder was still
sore, but fortunately the bullet had passed cleanly without nicking any bones.
Still, his left arm was in a sling, and he joked that he was becoming closer to
half a man with every passing day. Rachel didn’t find it funny, since she was
in danger of becoming half a Zaphead herself.

“I
trust you,” he said. “So does Stephen. Whatever changes you went through didn’t
hurt you.”

“I’m
glad we’re all here.” She lifted a fallen locust pole from its blanket of damp
leaves. “This is about all I can handle on this trip.”

DeVontay
collected a thick hickory branch and said, “Okay, we’ve got about an hour’s
worth of heat. At this rate, we’ll be stockpiled by next summer.”

“Feels
like February already.” She glanced at the sky, which was now clearly visible
through the scraggly canopy of bare branches. The gray clouds had lingered for
days, which helped suppress the glowing sparks in her eyes. The temperature was
below freezing and they were all working hard to prepare for the cold months
ahead. She led the way back to the compound, DeVontay scuffing leaves behind
her so they wouldn’t leave a trail.

“Maybe
we should have stayed in the city,” he said. “At least it’s warmer there.”

“We
don’t know that. If the weather patterns have wildly shifted, there might be a
foot of snow in Charlotte right now. I like our odds better out here.”

“You
said ‘our.’ Do you mean me and you, or all of us?”

She
slowed and gave him a look. “Don’t talk about you and me.”

“Because
of Campbell?”

“Because
of everything. I’m sorry Campbell died. I know he had feelings for me, and he
probably saved my life, but it never clicked between us. Even though I figured
you were dead, I couldn’t just move on from your memory like that. And
then…well, then I changed.”

“We
all change. The important thing is to stick out the changes together. That’s
what you do in a relationship.”

She
rested her burden on a stump so she could easily take it up again. “I’m not
ready for that. Until I figure this thing out—”

He
tossed his firewood aside and wrapped his good arm around her, tugging her
against him. The heat came off his body in waves, despite their bulky jackets.
She looked into his eyes, and then focused on his lone good eye. Somewhere in
there, the real DeVontay was hiding. She wondered what he saw inside her.

She
wanted to resist as his face dipped down toward hers, but she was frozen, as if
the surrounding frigidity had seeped into her bones. His breath wafted across
her cheeks in a warm fog. It smelled of the turnips and potatoes they had eaten
for lunch. His lips touched hers and electricity raced through her entire body,
scaring her.

Rachel
recalled the encouraging words DeVontay often shared with Stephen:
It’s okay
to be scared. It means you’re still alive.

But
what if this tingling was something else? Some kind of adrenaline trigger or
endorphin rush that would kickstart the dormant mutation inside her?

Could
she risk it?

Love
is always a risk. And one I’m not willing to take.

She
couldn’t resist lingering, though, letting their tongues briefly explore. Her
heart pounded wildly against her rib cage.
Would it really be so terrible to
just surrender and accept whatever happens? Isn’t this as natural as anything
else that’s happened to the world? Doesn’t love have a right to exist, too?

“Rachel!”
Stephen called from just outside the compound gate.

She
pushed herself away from DeVontay, inadvertently bumping his shoulder and
eliciting a grunt of pain. He reached for her again but she danced away,
retrieving her log and heading for the compound.

“He
can’t see us,” DeVontay said.

“I
know. But we better catch up with the others.”

“You
can’t run forever. I’ve already covered a hundred and fifty miles to keep up
with you.”

She
laughed. “I can run for one more day, at least.”

Stephen
met them and helped Rachel carry the wood while DeVontay obscured their tracks.
With all the new traffic, the entrance to Wheelerville was becoming a black
quagmire, and Franklin already planned to move the gate to the opposite side of
the ridge once the weather cleared. Hilyard and Kreutzman were busy stringing
up apple slices on a piece of fishing line, intending to let them dry in the
sun. Franklin was in the animal shed, milking the goats. After Rachel and
Stephen dropped their contributions on the pile of logs, stumps, and branches,
Kruetzman took an ax to the wood and laboriously turned out pieces that would
fit in the cast-iron woodstove.

The
rest of the group gathered at the makeshift table outside the cabin. As they
pitched in to process the fruit for storage, Hilyard asked, “See anything out
there?”

“Pretty
dead.” With only one functioning arm, DeVontay wasn’t much good at slicing
apples. But when Rachel reached for the knife, he gave her a narrow-eyed glare.

“I’m
surprised Shipley hasn’t sent out more patrols. After we killed three of his
men, I figured he’d declare an all-out war.”

Kruetzman
delivered a crisp blow that cleaved a log in half and paused to rub his hands.
“They might have gone AWOL like me. For all we know, the unit has mutinied
again. Might be anarchy over there.”

“Or
the Zapheads could have attacked them,” Stephen offered.

“I
don’t think so, son,” Hilyard said. “Even though they’re a few miles away, we
would have heard the gunshots. And Shipley has enough ordnance to level a small
city. No matter how many Zaps attacked, it would be a massacre.”

“The
Zaps would do it anyway,” DeVontay said. “They seem pretty ignorant of
mortality. From all we’ve seen, they’re just as likely to tackle a senseless
suicide mission as come up with a plan that might work.”

Franklin
emerged from the shed carrying a tin pail of milk.
“Hurry up with that wood, Kreutzman. We’ll need a fire tonight.”

“As
cramped as your little love shack is, we ought to throw off enough body heat to
keep each other warm,” the soldier responded.

“Okay,
smartass, you’re welcome to build an addition any time you want. I didn’t
expect to provide food and shelter to half the human race.”

“For
all we know, we might actually
be
half of what’s left,” Hilyard said.

“Like
Noah’s Ark without the spiders and snakes, huh?” Franklin entered the
springhouse, where he kept the milk buckets partially submerged in the ice-cold
water.

“Noah
only took two of each kind,” Kreutzman said. “Might make reproduction a little
more awkward with what we’ve got. Hard to pair off when we’ve only got one
female.”

Rachel
blushed at the implication. She’d abstractly considered that someday humans
would have to breed again and replenish their population. But the reality of
it—from making love to enduring a pregnancy to delivering and raising a child
in this hostile world—was something she could only imagine stronger women
pursuing, not herself. She could barely contemplate her romantic attraction to
DeVontay, and she still wasn’t sure how much of that was due to circumstance.
If she had met him at a party six months ago, she likely wouldn’t have given
him a second glance.

At
least you’re feeling something. At least you’re not a New Person. Because when
you were like them, you wanted to kill him, not kiss him.

Hilyard
broke the uneasy tension by saying, “So, Private, do you propose a raiding
party to steal women from the next village?”

Kreutman
slammed the ax into a chunk of beech and left it there. “Wouldn’t hurt to
explore a little. Maybe get a deer to string up for jerky.”

Franklin
came out of the root cellar, shoved the sagging
wooden door into place, and said, “If it stays this cold, we can just hang the
meat from a tree. Just have to tie it out of reach of bears and coyotes.”

Stephen
held up his palm and stared at it. “Hey! Did you see that?”

“What?”
DeVontay asked.

Stephen
grabbed at the air as if chasing dandelion tufts. “Snow!”

Rachel
tilted her head and gazed at the sky. The soft white specks drifted on their
lazy way to the ground, almost lost against the turbulent ceiling of the sky.
The afternoon grew suddenly darker and Hilyard gathered the pile of apple
slices DeVontay had cut. “All right, people, we better move this circus
indoors. Looks like winter’s knocking.”

“Give
me a hand, Stephen?” Kreutzman asked, and then instructed the boy to load his
arms with firewood.

Rachel
walked over to help. “Women can do more than just breed, you know,” she said,
gathering a load that was much too heavy for her to carry.

“I
guess I’ll take first watch,” Kreutzman said. “It’s getting a little frigid
around here.”

“Now,
now,” Franklin said. “Everybody’s got to pull their weight.”

“What
about that white hen of yours that quit laying?”

“She’s
earned her retirement. You haven’t yet.”