Scott Nicholson

AFTER: THE ECHO

A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

CHAPTER ONE

The September sun burned the treetops in a kaleidoscope of gold, scarlet, and a purple so Doomsday deep that the forest appeared bruised in spots.

The air was clean, with much of the haze confined to the eastern horizon behind them, where Charlotte and Winston-Salem had burned to nothing. No one had informed the birds that the world had ended, so their songs and chirrups rang from the high branches. All in all, Rachel Wheeler considered it just another ordinary day in After.

If you don’t think about the dead and the changed. And the next solar storm that could fry us all to madness.

Her legs were sore, but they’d grown stronger with the miles. DeVontay Jones, the dark-skinned man with the glass eye walking behind her, couldn’t even keep pace. Or perhaps he was dawdling so that Stephen could explore like an ordinary boy, dashing to grab a flower here or poke a stick in a mud puddle there. Stephen kicked at the first of autumn’s fallen leaves, taking joy in the loud scuffing sounds.

“How much further?” DeVontay asked Rachel.

“You’re the one with the map.”

“I don’t care about no numbers,” he said in his Philly accent, although its hard edge had softened in the six weeks since the solar flares had erased all borders. “I’m talking how much more of our lives we got to spend walking in the woods.”

“The rest of our lives,” Rachel said. With Stephen out of earshot, she could add, “Which may not be much longer.”

“Miss Optimistic,” DeVontay said with sarcasm. “Where’s the little pep talk, the prayers, the faith?”

Rachel didn’t want to confront faith. Somewhere along the way, the bodies and the carnage and the relentless horror had chewed a ragged hole through the walls of her heart. Any light left inside had leaked out with all the sad inevitability of a ruptured balloon. Where faith had abandoned her, stubbornness had taken up the cross and pushed her toward the mountains.

Where hope had died, anger had stepped into battle formation.

“I still believe,” she said and felt no shame at the lie. She simply believed in something different now.

Survival.

“Well, I believe we ought to sit down a minute,” DeVontay said. “You might know where we are, but I wouldn’t mind getting a look at the map.”

“Don’t you dare make a joke about women drivers,” Rachel said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He tried to wink, but the lid dropped only halfway down his glass eye, making the expression more of a creepy leer.

“Stephen!” Rachel called.

The boy had pranced off into the woods, breaking their rule that they should always stay in sight of one another. Not that Rachel was worried. Since leaving the farmhouse five days ago, they’d stuck to the forest roads, only occasionally intersecting a highway or coming across a house. They hadn’t seen a Zaphead since then, although once in a while strange chuckling sounds had ridden the breeze from a distance.

“That boy doesn’t listen too good,” DeVontay said.

Rachel could tell he was uneasy, because he shrugged the shoulder strap of his rifle down his arm and into position for action. “We’re safe out here,” she said. “Nothing for Zapheads to hunt.”

She shut out the memory of the Zapheads she’d encountered in Charlotte and how they had swarmed over any survivors, driven to destroy any breathing creature that crossed their paths. But the Zapheads—so named by clever bloggers in the early stages of the solar storms and then picked up by the mainstream media—had largely stuck to populated areas, which Rachel believed was due to their suppressed intelligence. Lacking any reason to migrate, they stayed where their brains had fried.

DeVontay, though, had a different theory: the meat was easier.

“Stephen!” Rachel called again. The highway ran a good hundred yards to their right, littered with cars and gas-bloated corpses. Stephen knew enough not to head in that direction.

“Guys!” Stephen called, somewhere past a wall of autumnal maples and sycamores. “I found something.”

Rachel’s ribs squeezed around her heart. She’d settled into the numb routine of foot travel, weary enough of discovery. She’d discovered the sun could unleash invisible hell upon the world, killing billions and changing others into mindless killers. She’d discovered she was among the few survivors plunged into a world where the technological infrastructure built over decades had been erased. She’d discovered God wasn’t nearly as benevolent and constant as she’d always believed.

And now she discovered that she didn’t want to take another step. No more surprises, no more challenges to overcome. But she took the step anyway, and then the next.

And then she was running.

After finding the rifle back at the farmhouse, DeVontay had given her the pistol, and they had practiced with both weapons until she felt confident with them. She’d fought Zapheads at close range, and—in another unwanted discovery—found their blood was red, too, that for all their savagery, they were not much different than the human survivors.

Still, if anyone threatened her or Stephen, she was willing to spill their blood again and again and again.

The thought no longer horrified her. Anger was her last remaining source of motivation, the fire in her belly and the burning in her soul.

DeVontay’s long strides moved him past Rachel, and he entered the clearing a good ten seconds before Rachel. When she saw him slow and lower his rifle, she knew there was no danger.

“Plane,” Stephen said, and Rachel found herself involuntarily scanning the sky, but all she saw was an uneven layer of late-afternoon clouds.

The tops of the trees had been sheared off in a great line, branches twisted and skinned naked, white wood exposed to the sun. Fifty yards ahead, an airplane fuselage had gouged into the ground, a long furrow of reddish-brown soil marking the path of its crash landing. One wing was crumpled against the trunk of a massive oak, and the other was nowhere in sight, perhaps cartwheeled into the far pines.

The plane had a shattered propeller, so Rachel knew it wasn’t a jet. It was a commuter plane that held thirty or forty people, what business travelers called “puddle jumpers.” It had probably been airborne when the solar storms hit, knocking out power and radio contact. The pilot had wrestled the manual controls just skillfully enough to prevent a nose dive, but it was highly unlikely anyone could have survived the crash.

“Damn,” DeVontay said.

“Maybe they were the lucky ones,” Rachel said. Stephen hadn’t registered any shock, more like a boyish wonder. Considering he’d nearly lost his mind after his mother died, Rachel took it as a good sign that he was almost normal.

As normal as anyone could be in After.

“Too bad we can’t fly it,” Stephen said. “Then we’d really get to Mi’ssippi.”

Rachel and DeVontay had nurtured the illusion that they’d eventually get Stephen to his father, who was almost certainly dead or worse. Rachel no longer felt the slightest guilt at the deception. Guilt was a luxury for the civilized.

“Wonder how many people were in planes when the Big Zap happened?” DeVontay said.

“The electromagnetic pulse would have knocked them out of the sky like a giant flyswatter,” she said. “Like they were talking about on the newscasts, back when all this was just a theory.”

“No parachutes,” DeVontay said. “But I guess if you think it’s going to crash, you don’t get on in the first place.”

“What a horrible way to die.”

Rachel had never had a fear of flying, but she’d never set foot on a gangway without thinking about the possibility of a crash. And she’d decided it wasn’t death she’d feared, it was the possibility of knowing you were going down and getting several minutes to appreciate the coming impact.

But isn’t that what is happening anyway, to all of us, all the time? We’re all headed for it. We just maintain plausible deniability. We know we’re dying, but just not today. We all want to go to heaven, but not right now. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Stephen continued toward the plane, transfixed as if it was the first time he’d seen one up close, or maybe just enjoying a boyish fascination with destruction. Rachel tugged at his shirt sleeve, but he shook free and moved closer. A small circle of scorched grass surrounded the rear of the plane, but the hull was relatively intact. Luggage lay scattered around the wreckage, one bag torn open to reveal a vivid red dress, another with the heads of golf clubs poking from one end.

Rachel saw no movement behind the rounded rectangular windows, and she didn’t want Stephen exposed to the stench of several dozen decomposing bodies. Even in the shade, the plane’s interior had probably topped a hundred degrees, roasting the bodies trapped inside.

“Wanna see,” Stephen said.

“Let DeVontay check it out first,” Rachel said.

DeVontay lowered his eyebrows, his glass eye glinting drily in the sunlight. “Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, you’re the man of the family,” she said.

They hadn’t discussed their odd relationship, but they’d become a family in perhaps the truest sense of the word. Nothing the bible would recognize, certainly, but they’d faced tribulations together that even the Old Testament plagues couldn’t rival. They were bound by mutual survival.

DeVontay headed toward the wreckage, rifle at the ready. Stephen started after him, but Rachel reached out and snagged his shirt, this time keeping a grip. “Not so fast, fearless scout.”

DeVontay peered through one of the rounded port windows, then walked around to the front where the nose of the plane had torn loose from the body. Rachel knelt over a green suitcase that had busted open in the crash. A tag around the handle revealed the baggage had been through Atlanta. Rachel briefly considered the privacy of the suitcase’s owner. Did she have the right to prowl in someone’s personal history?

She glanced over at the plane. Beyond it, in the weeds, a sodden stretch of cloth ended in a twisted nub. At the end of the nub, a leather shoe pointed up at the treetops.

If that were me, I’d want someone to use whatever I could offer.

As she opened the case, Stephen joined her and dug into the clothes, books, and a little zippered bag of makeup. Stephen pulled out a pair of panties and his face curdled in disgust before he flung them away. “Yuck.”

His reaction was so much that of an ordinary boy—a boy from Before—that Rachel almost smiled. But smiling seemed like sacrilege at this scene of such slaughter.

She found a long-sleeved blouse in a shade of subdued rose. She held it up over the grimy flannel shirt she’d been wearing since they’d left the farmhouse. It looked close to her size. “What do you think?” she asked Stephen.

He shrugged. “I guess it’s pretty, if you like that kind of thing.”

She wadded it up and tossed it back in the suitcase. “You’re right. No use looking pretty these days.”

Stephen picked up the blouse and held it out to her. His big brown eyes were wide and hopeful—like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to pretend things hadn’t changed so much. “It’s pretty. Like something my mom would wear.”

This time she did smile. “Okay,” she said, lifting one arm and giving an exaggerated sniff of her armpit. “Guess this one is getting a little stinky.”

DeVontay emerged from the devastated fuselage, his rifle slung casually over his shoulder. “All clear,” he said. “I think we got us a roof for the night.”

A jolt of horror shot through Rachel. He didn’t expect them to sleep among all those bodies, did he?

DeVontay pointed to the plan’s nose, which was cracked like an egg and sheared upward. “Empty,” he said.

Rachel started to repack the suitcase, and then realized how ridiculous her instinct was. She tucked the blouse under her arm. “Five-star accommodations?”

DeVontay glanced up at the sinking sun. “I don’t like stars. Especially that one.”

Stephen, apparently taking the adult cue that it was okay to prowl through the luggage, ran over to a satchel and unzipped it, throwing clothes and papers into the air. He fell silent and still, staring down into the mess.

Rachel and DeVontay shared a glance, and DeVontay frowned and shook his head. “Go on. Do your counselor thing.”

“Aye-yay, Captain.”

Rachel went over to Stephen and saw the baby doll nestled in the satchel’s contents. Stephen had outgrown his attachment to his baby doll Miss Molly, leaving it with the corpse of a girl to comfort her on her journey to the beyond. But now the loss of his mother showed on his face, a mute, hollow kind of pain.

“Come on,” she said, taking him by the shoulder and guiding him to the nose of the plane where they would camp for the night. She’d soon be gathering clothes to bundle into makeshift beds, and then starting a campfire to heat a few cans of Campbell’s soup with crackers. DeVontay was busy clearing wreckage from the tilted nose of the plane.

They’d sleep surrounded by the dead.

Just another ordinary day in After.

As Rachel comforted Stephen, she didn’t notice the movement in the surrounding forest, or the eyes that watched them settle in for the night.

CHAPTER TWO

“Need to kill it,” Franklin said.

Jorge didn’t like the way the old man was gripping his rifle, as if he couldn’t decide whether to shoot or hurl the weapon to the forest below. They were perched on a platform twenty feet off the floor of Franklin’s mountain compound, a two-acre, fenced-in patch of claimed wilderness he jokingly called Wheelerville.

Ever since Franklin had welcomed Jorge and his wife Rosa and helped tend his daughter Marina back to health, Jorge had been looking for a way to thank the man. But Franklin was more interested in contribution than gratitude. Jorge had worked hard to tend the man’s garden and livestock, and Franklin seemed pleased with the help.

But after Jorge had rescued the woman and her baby and brought them back to the compound, they’d discovered the baby had been affected by the massive solar storms that had wiped out the world’s infrastructure.

The baby was a Zaphead, the colorful name conjured by the media for those whose personalities had been altered by the first waves of electromagnetic radiation. But soon the waves had grown more intense, until the talking heads on the television were replaced by static and then darkness, as electricity failed and car engines fell quiet and people died by the millions.

And now Franklin wanted to kill more.

“It is only a child,” Jorge said.

“I don’t like it in the compound.” The old man spat off the platform, watching his saliva arc into the golden leaves below. “It’s going to draw more of them.”

“They haven’t attacked us yet.” When Jorge and Franklin rescued the young woman, the Zapheads had been chasing her. But now Jorge wasn’t sure whether the others had wanted to kill the woman or whether they’d wanted to take her infant.

“They’re out there. Watching. Waiting.”

“Do you think they are intelligent enough to wait? The Zapheads”—Jorge was still uncomfortable using that term, because it could just as easily be “spic” or “beaner” in another situation—“that attacked me were like mindless killers, hardly aware of what they were doing.”

“They’re acting weird, all right. Can’t trust ‘em. I liked them better when they were crazy. At least then, a fellow knew what was what.”

Franklin pressed a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the surrounding ridges. “Smoke.”

“Where?”

Franklin passed the glasses and pointed into the distance. Jorge adjusted the lenses until he saw the thin plume of gray rising about five hundred yards to the south. “Think it’s Zapheads?”

Nah,” Franklin said. “I’d bet it’s a recon patrol from the army. I told you they had a bunker up here.”

“And you haven’t found the bunker?”

“They hid it good. Your tax dollars at work.” Franklin gave him a half-lidded look, the leathery skin of his forehead crinkling. “If you ever even paid taxes, that is.”

Jorge didn’t like the man’s implication that Jorge was an illegal alien instead of a worker on an agricultural visa. “I even have private health insurance.”

“Cheating on taxes is the purest form of patriotism,” Franklin said. “But I guess that don’t matter much anymore. Neither does your insurance.”

Jorge was glad the man had changed the subject away from the infant. Jorge himself was conflicted by the baby’s presence. The Zapheads that attacked him on the farm had been intent on killing Jorge and his family, and he’d suffered no remorse about killing them.

But the ones that had pursued the woman, Cathy, and her baby had acted less with malevolence and more with a cautious curiosity. He wasn’t able to articulate the difference, and he doubted Franklin cared.

The baby was much too small to be harmful, and Zapheads didn’t appear to carry an infection that could change those unaffected by the solar storms. Still, the baby’s presence might somehow attract other Zapheads, and that would place Rosa and Marina at risk. They were in the cabin right now with Cathy and her sparkle-eyed little creature.

Jorge was about to ask Franklin what he thought they should do about the baby, but the old man raised an open palm to silence him, and then pointed into the forest.

At first Jorge saw nothing, but then the golden-brown foliage began to shimmer, the pattern broken. He thought at first it might be the horses, which they’d ridden from the Wilcox farm into the mountains. They’d had to turn the animals into the wild because the compound couldn’t generate enough feed for them.

But this movement wasn’t the flick of a tail or the stomp of a hoof.

A human form moved silently between tree trunks, taking slow, deliberate steps as if to avoid scuffing the carpet of leaves. A patch of red-checkered flannel was visible for an instant, and then the figure was lost in the shadows.

“One of them?” Jorge said in a low voice.

Franklin raised his rifle and sighted down the barrel. “Either that, or some hippie sure picked the wrong place for a nature hike.”

“If you shoot, they will know where we are.”

Franklin grinned with yellow, crooked teeth. “Well, the federal troops already know we’re here, and the Zaps are going to find us sooner or later.”

“I thought you didn’t like to kill.”

Franklin held the barrel steady for another few seconds and then lowered it. “Can’t get a half-decent line of sight.”

Jorge studied the southern slope, where giant ropes of poison sumac wrapped the trunks of beeches and poplar, their leaves a startling shade of brilliant red. Another figure moved, again with measured stealth. Jorge didn’t point this one out to Franklin, but Franklin whistled under his breath.

“Damn if there ain’t another one.” Franklin pointed to the east, and Jorge could clearly make out a woman in a tan trench coat, her bare legs descending to the moss beneath her as she padded across a rocky heap. She was moving parallel to the compound’s fence, although she was at least fifty yards away.

Jorge checked the south, and noticed another figure.

“They’re circling us,” Franklin said. “Although I’ll be damned if I know why.”

“Then they already know we’re here.”

Franklin nodded. “So it’s open season.”

“You don’t know what they want.”

“And finding out might get us killed.”

“You said they can’t clear the fence.”

Franklin frowned down at the compound’s interior, where his vegetable garden was still flush with green. The cabin and shed were built against trees and were difficult to spot from a distance, even in the undressing of autumn. The lower portion of the surrounding chain link fence was thick with vines and briars, shielding the structures even more.

“I dragged the materials up with a four-wheeler,” Franklin said. “Took me two years to build this place. And I ain’t giving it up without a fight.”

Jorge was exasperated. “Why would the Zapheads want your compound? They don’t care.”

“Maybe they know the baby’s here.”

“But you said they didn’t follow us.”

“You saw how the Zaps were acting. Right after the sun spit in our eyes, I saw one down there on the road chasing a guy out of his car after they crashed into each other. The Zapper—although at the time I thought it was just some nutball pissed off because somebody damaged his wheels—jumped on this big, heavy guy and took him down like a wildcat takes a doe. Pounded his head into the pavement until it was like a watermelon dropped from a forklift.”

“And you didn’t help him?”

Franklin flashed a one-eyed squint beneath his thick gray brow. “You kidding? I don’t get involved in other people’s business. Besides, it was over before I could even think. Don’t you remember what it is like in the beginning?”

The beginning. Like this was Genesis, a new creation myth. “All people on the Wilcox farm dropped dead. Except for us.”

“So you didn’t see any crazies?”

“Not for days. And then…” Jorge recalled discovering Willard, a fellow laborer on the Wilcox farm, in the barn loft. The man’s fierce grip and mad, sparkling eyes had been shocking, then dangerous, and Jorge had to sever the man’s arm at the wrist to free himself. But Jorge didn’t care to recount the story, because then the vivid details would rise from the sleep of memory. “Yes. We discovered the change.”

“Yeah,” Franklin said, satisfied by the dismay on Jorge’s face. “Change. Remember how the dumbass politicians always had ‘Change’ as their campaign slogans? Then, when they got elected, the slogan became ‘Don’t change.’ Well, we got change, all right. I hope every last one of those squirrel-eyed bastards has been scorched straight to hell. But I got a feeling they’re bunkered up like their Army buddies and living in luxury.”

Jorge scanned the forest and saw movement amid the sumac. It was another Zaphead, circling the perimeter, keeping the same distance as the others. “What are they doing?”

“Looks like they’re putting us under siege.”

“But they’re not attacking and they’re not closing in.”

“If they got any brains, maybe they’re trying to wait us out.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until we do something stupid. Go out there where they can jump us, or get cabin fever and make a run for it.”

“Then they don’t realize you have food and supplies enough for years?”

“Well, that was assuming they had a little brains. It could be they’re as stupid as they look, and they can’t figure out how to get in the front gate.”

Jorge didn’t think the gate would withstand three or four of the Zapheads slamming against it. But Franklin didn’t appear too concerned.

“Do we have enough ammunition to hold them off?” Jorge didn’t relish the thought of shooting them. It would be too much like slaughter. But if Rosa and Marina were threatened, he would joyfully gun down anything that walked into the compound.

“I don’t think it would come to that,” Franklin said.

“Why not?”

“If they come knocking, I’m giving them the baby.”

CHAPTER THREE

They’re behind me.

Campbell wasn’t sure whether his stalkers were Zapheads, rogue soldiers, or that brand of crazed survivors celebrating the utter breakdown of law and order in the wake of collapse.

Since his best friend Pete had been shot to death, Campbell had avoided contact with any other people. That wasn’t much of a challenge—the dead seemed to outnumber the living at least a thousand to one.

And he wasn’t sure whether Zapheads counted as dead or as alive, since they seemed to be something in between.

Campbell was crouched in the shadow of a Nissan Pathfinder, one of those plastic-and-steel behemoths that would have alien archeologists of the future wondering about their use as burial chambers. Judging from the stench oozing from the interior, Campbell was guessing a family of four. Not that he wanted to check.

Instead, he leaned down and looked under the vehicle to scan the road behind him. He’d been walking the shoulder of the highway, both to avoid the clutter of stalled traffic and to take it easy on his knees. He’d compromised on being out in the open by figuring he’d be able to cover ground in a hurry if the need arose.

And the need might be arising.

He fished in his backpack for a Glock pistol he’d taken from the corpse of a cop back in Taylorsville. He didn’t wear a holster because it could be taken as a sign of aggression. Campbell didn’t want to end up like Pete, killed by an unseen sniper. But Pete hadn’t been displaying any weapon besides a beer bottle.

These days, they might kill you just because you’re upright and breathing. Just because you stumbled a little and resembled a Zaphead. Or maybe just because they can.

Campbell had heard occasional whoops in the distance, and shouted phrases that couldn’t have come from Zapheads. As far as he could tell, Zapheads only uttered those strange chuckling and hissing noises. And while those human shouts gave him some comfort that he wasn’t truly alone, he was afraid to meet other survivors.

Anytime he saw movement, he laid low or steered well clear, not bothering to check if the activity had been caused by fellow survivors, Zapheads, stray dogs, or wild animals. For the same reason, he hadn’t dared take target practice with the Glock. Aside from his and Pete’s brief training with Arnoff’s band of scavengers, he had little experience with weapons.

So if someone was trailing him, he’d either have to run or shoot. But a deeper part of him, a tiny voice he’d been conversing with inside his head, assured him that he was just being paranoid. The core problem, though, was that the inner voice sounded a lot like Pete and couldn’t be trusted.

Campbell saw nothing behind him on the road, but his stalkers could easily hide behind the numerous vehicles that trailed up and over the ridge. Zapheads had no interest in concealment, though. They simply came for you.

But nothing came. After maybe half a minute, he sagged against the tire. Maybe he’d fantasized the pursuit just to break the boredom. A deep melancholy had descended upon him the last couple of days, and the nights spent in abandoned vehicles had resulted in restlessness and little sleep. He was exhausted, but it was more than that—Pete had been his last real tie to the normal world, back when Xbox, Friday nights at Clyde’s, and the Carolina Panthers’ losing streak had been his constants.

Campbell slid the gun into his lap, looking at it. One bullet in the roof of his mouth, just like in the movies.

He even tried to raise the gun, tentatively parting his lips and imagining the metallic taste. But he was too much of a coward.

He glanced up and just happened to gaze into the Pathfinder’s side mirror—

Movement.

In the forest that bordered the highway.

Heart lurching, Campbell rolled to the front of the vehicle, skinning his elbow on the asphalt.

Three men emerged from the trees, two of them in military garb, although they were slovenly and exhibited little training in their movements. They flanked a man in a filthy T-shirt whose hand were bound together in front of him. A ragged cloth was wrapped around the man’s head in a makeshift blindfold, blonde curls spilling out of the cracks.

“Don’t feel like walking no more,” said the soldier on the left. He dug in his pocket and came out with a cigarette.

The other soldier, who seemed to be doing most of the work of escorting their captive, said, “Sarge doesn’t care what you feel like.” But he stopped and let his comrade light the cigarette. The captive slumped, his head down as if resigned to whatever fate the soldiers had planned.

Campbell sized them up. The smoking soldier was in his mid-20s, lean, with a hawkish face and cruel eyes. A rifle was slung across his back. The soldier held the cigarette out to the prisoner, and then remembered the prisoner was blindfolded.

“Wanna smoke?” he sneered.

The captive twitched his head.

“Too bad.” The soldier took a deep puff of his cigarette, turning the tip bright orange, and then jabbed the cherry against the man’s forehead. The man dodged away, grimacing and hissing in pain, although the heat did little more than scorch his hair. The soldier’s laugh was like that of a horse with a busted larynx.

The other soldier, middle-aged and with a crewcut showing some gray, said, “Quit messing around. We need to get one of these back alive.”

One of these? Campbell wondered. Just how many people have they found, and what is happening to them?

“He’s just a Zaphead,” the scrawny soldier said. “He’s too dumb to feel pain.”

That didn’t make sense. The captive didn’t act like a Zaphead. And even if he were one of those whose behavior had been altered by the solar storm, why hadn’t the soldiers simply shot him?

“I’m going to make you feel some pain if you don’t stay in line,” Crewcut said. He sported a semiautomatic assault weapon that looked like it could turn butter into Swiss cheese.

The scrawny soldier delivered one half-hearted stroke of the cigarette, nearly singeing the captive’s cheek, before stepping away to relish his tobacco and stare into the west, where the sun had only just begun its descent into afternoon.

The captive opened his mouth for the first time and made thick, chuckling noises. Crewcut gave him a shove forward. “Don’t want to hear it.”

Campbell pressed back into the shadows as the two of them approached the highway. He considered his options. Crewcut appeared to be the most competent, so he should be the first one taken out. Then, while Campbell still had the element of surprise, he’d go for the smoker.

He looked at the pistol in his lap. Crewcut was a good forty yards away. Even if Campbell got lucky, he’d probably just wing his target and then have two soldiers gunning for him.

And even if he did pull off a miracle and fell them both, what then?

“Wait up,” the scrawny soldier shouted, tossing aside his cigarette and breaking into a sullen jog.

“I swear, Zimmerman, you’re as slow as my granny.”

“Your granny’s a Zaphead.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I banged your sister after she was dead. What ya think about that?”

The smoker howled in strained laughter. “So what? You got my sloppy seconds.”

“You’re a sicko,” Crewcut said. “I like that in a foxhole buddy.”

The smoker, having caught up to the other two, jabbed the blindfolded man in the back. The captive didn’t grunt, although Campbell could hear the air whooshing from his lungs.

Campbell couldn’t shoot now even if he wanted, because they were seventy yards away. But Campbell realized he didn’t want to hurt anyone. There had been enough suffering. He wasn’t sure he could even kill a Zaphead in self-defense.

And the Pete-voice inside his head said Yeah, and you got so damn much to defend, don’t you? A box of Rice-a-roni, the San Francisco treat. A blister pack of Bics. A roadside First Aid kit. Three cans of Starkist tuna. A pack of stale Cheez-it crackers. Half a roll of toilet paper. Oh, yeah, that shit’s worth FIGHTIN’ for.

Campbell resisted answering the Pete-voice. That would be crossing the line into craziness, and Campbell wasn’t crazy.

That’s what they all say, the Pete-voice said.

When Campbell was twelve, his dad had taken him to New York—the Carolina foothills giving way to West Virginia coal country, the working-class heart of Pennsylvania, and then into the unbroken urban sprawl of the Northeast. And at every gas station or fast food restaurant, his dad would warn before they got out of the car: “Careful, they’re crazy here.”

In his dad’s world, everywhere else was crazy except Lake James, North Carolina, where the fish were always biting and the women never were. His dad was named Norman, a normal name for a salt-of-the-earth guy, one whose friends called him “Norm.”

“When people call me Norman, I know they’re after money,” his dad always said.

To his shame, Campbell had barely thought of his family in the aftermath of the solar storms. Lake James had only been a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Chapel Hill, but in a world without cars, it might as well have been the far side of the moon.

When Campbell had left home to attend UNC, his father had packed up the Suburban and ferried his stuff to his dorm room, leaving him with one tidbit of advice: “Careful, they’re crazy here.”

And now time and circumstance—and an epic hissy fit of the sun—had proven his dad right. He wondered if Norm was still alive, sitting on his bass boat and knocking back Bud Lights while the world raged on around him.

Somehow, he couldn’t picture it. The idea of his father’s and mother’s deaths didn’t make him sad. Instead, it carved a hollow in his chest.

Campbell didn’t want to be alone with the Pete-voice anymore. He didn’t care how crazy the people of everywhere else were.

He raised his head over the hood of the Pathfinder. The three figures were walking along the shoulder of the road, just as Campbell had done. The skinny soldier lit another cigarette, bluish-gray smoke swirling around his head. Their blindfolded captive stumbled along between them, with Crewcut giving him a bruising nudge of encouragement once in a while.

Campbell looked behind him to make sure they weren’t being followed. As noisy as they’d been, any Zaphead for miles around could have heard them. But the soldiers didn’t seem restrained in the least. Perhaps they’d already dealt with their share of Zapheads and had faith in their weapons.

Campbell shoved the Glock into a zippered pouch of his backpack and hurried after the threesome, carefully dodging from car to car, working the highway while ducking low. He had to work twice as hard to cover the same amount of ground as the soldiers, but he kept them within sight.

That’s good hustle, the Pete-voice said.

“Shut up.”

Campbell was horrified to realize he’d answered out loud.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Rinse it out, honey,” Rachel said.

Stephen looked at her with surprise. “There’s a whole box of them right out there,” he said, waving toward the surrounding clearing. Dusk had settled in a lavender cloak that darkened to an electric blue, as if the sun was going off to have a laugh on the far side of the globe, where other survivors might be huddled around greasy campfires.

“We need to care for what we have. This isn’t a time to be wasteful.”

DeVontay shook his head in resignation from the pilot’s seat. “Boy’s got all the plates he wants. We can stop in at the next Target and get us some gold-plated china if we want.”

Rachel wasn’t sure of her motives. She wanted to tell them that if they wanted a civilization, the minimal requirement was that they all act civilized. But perhaps it was simpler than that: focusing on small chores kept the bigger worries at bay.

And there are plenty of big worries to go around.

“Until we find your dad, we’re responsible for your behavior,” Rachel said. “And that means doing things you might not like.”

“My dad would tell me to throw it away.” Stephen looked down at his plastic plate. It wasn’t even that dirty; they’d eaten canned pork and beans and apples, and he’d licked up his tomato sauce. DeVontay would have been fine letting them all eat out of cans, but Rachel insisted on the routine of dinnerware.

“I’ll ask him when we find him,” she said, and DeVontay shook his head again, this time with a frown instead of a smirk. “Until then—”

“O-kaaaay,” Stephen said impatiently. “Wicked Witch of the West. Jeez.”

Rachel let out a cackle that reverberated in the cavity of the wrecked plane. “Hee hee hee hee. I’ll get you and your little dog, too!” She returned to her normal voice. “But you’re still going to clean your plate.”

Stephen poured some bottled water on his plate and started to wipe it with his shirt sleeve. Rachel didn’t even have to say anything. A scowl did the job. He dragged a T-shirt from the open suitcase beside him, wiped the dish carefully, and tossed the T-shirt back onto the pile.

DeVontay wiped his pocketknife on his trouser leg without comment and gazed through the plane’s window. Half of the windshield was missing, cool evening air funneling through from the gash where the nose had broken lose from the fuselage. Much of the instrument panel was intact, the radio handset dangling from its taut coil of cord. One of the pilot seats was missing, and DeVontay had taken the other one, building a fire with the help of tiny bottles of Scotch he’d plundered from the shattered galley. He twisted the cap from one and poured half the contents on the fire, and the flames turned blue and oily.

Rachel hadn’t asked about the bodies he’d encountered. She only knew that there must have been dozens. Even if the plane had tossed them like popcorn during the crash landing, surely a number of them must have followed the final instructions and buckled in. DeVontay was numb to it now, death just another traveling companion on the road to After. Rachel wasn’t sure if his grim equanimity was a necessary survival mechanism or yet more proof that any structure she imposed was just a sham.

She eyed the encroaching darkness that seemed to seep from the edge of the forest like a watery predator. “Are we safe here?” she asked, hating herself for saying it in front of the boy.

“Safe as anywhere.” DeVontay’s rifle was leaning behind him against the skewed wall of the pilot’s cabin. “We haven’t seen any Zappers for days.”

It was true. They hadn’t seen any survivors, either, and Rachel wondered if the solar storms had left lingering damage that upped the body count even weeks later. Right now the three of them could be changing, the microscopic synapses in their brains melting like burnt fuses, their impulse signals falling into darkness.

How would you know? Rachel wondered. One minute you’re walking and the next you’re walking braindead.

Stephen rubbed his eyes, red both from smoke and sleepiness. Rachel spread a plush brown jacket on the collapsed floor of the cabin and smoothed it. “We’ve put in some miles today,” she said to him. “Why don’t you hit the hay?”

Stephen opened his mouth to protest but yawned instead. “How much farther?”

“A long way,” DeVontay said. “But we’re closer now than we were this morning.”

Rachel understood the response on a metaphorical level. They might not have a bigger purpose—and she certainly didn’t, not since turning her back on the Lord that had seen her through easier times—but Rachel had convinced them that her grandfather’s mountain compound was the only desirable destination. Stephen believed they would leave from there and go on to find his father in Mississippi, but Rachel couldn’t see past the next day’s walk.

What happens after After?

“You’ll like the mountains,” she said, helping Stephen swaddle into the makeshift bedding.

“Sing me to sleep?” he said, drowsily, exhaustion seeming to hit him all at once.

DeVontay sensed their need for an intimate moment and retrieved his rifle. “I’ll go take a look around.”

He ducked through the jagged opening where the nose had torn free from the plane’s body, then slipped into the growing darkness. Rachel stroked Stephen’s brown hair. The bedtime routine had started a week ago, when Stephen announced that his mother used to sing to him. Since they’d left her in a hotel room where Stephen had been trapped with her corpse for three days, Rachel had taken on an ever-deepening mothering role.

But even that was colored with guilt. She’d been the “responsible one” when her younger sister Chelsea had drowned, and her whole life afterward had been about making amends. Rachel had trained to be a school counselor because she wasn’t Catholic enough to become a nun. Now there were no more schools, and the only person she could counsel was a ten-year-old boy who had seen his world shatter in the blink of an eye.

“What song would you like?”

Stephen snuggled into the jacket. He looked years younger, almost like a toddler with his thick lashes and pursed lips. “Beatles.”

That didn’t narrow it down much, but it was too late for the rousing fun of “Yellow Submarine.” And “Help!” would be a little too maudlin. She took a breath and began “Blackbird.”

She made it fine through the chorus, even though she wasn’t a great singer, choosing a low, sweet lilt. The tune itself was like a bird, sinking and then rising, testing the wind and finding its altitude. And on the final verse, her voice broke, sunken eyes learning to see. She managed to turn the stutter into a vocal embellishment and recover for the finale, wondering if this was the moment they’d been waiting for all their lives.

“Sing it again,” Stephen murmured, eyes closed.

“In a little bit, honey. I need to go check on DeVontay. Be right back.” She kissed his forehead and he was asleep before she reached the wreck’s opening.

Outside, the air was crisp with autumn’s cool, a skein of stars brilliant against the blue-black ceiling of the universe. The vivid lime-green auroras so deep and haunting in the wake of the electromagnetic upheavals had diminished but still hung like a ghost overhead. The smoke of distant cities had grown thinner over the past week, giving her hope that the worst might be over.

But hope was something she didn’t quite trust, and any temptation to call upon whatever divine force might be beyond the wall of stars vanished when she saw the plane’s shattered passenger area.

“That was a pretty song,” DeVontay said from the darkness behind her.

She turned, unable to make out his shape against the trees. “You weren’t supposed to listen.”

“It’s not like I could put on the headphones and jam to my iPod.”

“It’s amazing how quiet it is out here.”

They both listened to the muted chirrup of insects, the orchestra rubbing legs and wings together to warm up for a nightly performance.

“You can see the stars, too,” DeVontay said. “There’s the Dipper and Cassiopeia.”

The Big Dipper was obvious, but Rachel squinted against the field above, straining to discern depth. She tried to recall the assignments from her college astronomy lab. Her lab partner had been a tall guy named Randy Woodard who smelled of clove cigarettes, and she’d spent too much of the lab making small talk that she wished would lead to big talk. In the end, Randy turned out to be dating a library assistant and she made a B-minus.

She hated herself for not knowing Cassiopeia, as if the information would somehow give her control over their place in the universe. “I don’t see it.”

Then DeVontay drew close behind her, his breath on her neck, reaching one arm around to grip her wrist. He guided her hand until they were both pointing at the sky and waving in the shape of a W. “There,” he said, in a voice that was almost inaudible. “Those five points.”

He held her hand a moment longer and she stiffened, not sure whether she wanted to sag back against his body. She sensed his muscles coiled like a tiger’s, though she couldn’t be sure whether the tiger would bolt into a run or leap upon its prey. His breathing was fast and heavy.

She hadn’t thought of him in that way…not like she had Randy Woodard. But wasn’t DeVontay the father to Stephen just as she was the mother? Wasn’t it natural that they…pair off…for whatever this new world intended?

Didn’t she have a duty to be fruitful and multiply?

And despite her denial of a God above, she couldn’t help but think this was some great practical joke He was pulling. What if God wasn’t an all-knowing force with a predestined plan, but was instead just a childlike entity that had set the universe in motion and then stood back to watch in wonder as it unfolded? Wouldn’t such a God be snickering right now at the absurdity of it all?

DeVontay tensed and moved slightly away from her. “What’s so funny?”

She hadn’t realized she’d laughed out loud. But the moment was broken, just like the blackbird’s wings in the Beatles’ song. “It’s just strange,” she said, recalling her astronomy professor griping about urban light pollution that fouled his telescopic view. “Without any lights, you can see better.”

“That’s real deep, Rachel,” DeVontay said, and she couldn’t be sure if he was stung by the rejection or just being DeVontay. Maybe she’d imagined the romantic gesture. It wasn’t like she had much experience in such matters.

“Seriously. You could count the rest of your life and still not get them all.”

“That’s why people invented constellations. They just picked out the big patterns and used them instead of worrying about all the little details.”

“You don’t sound so streetwise-Philly now,” she said.

“Maybe the Zapheads weren’t the only people to get changed by the solar storm,” he said. He moved farther away, restoring their personal space to its previous distance.

She groped to salvage his feelings without making the moment any weirder. “Where did you learn the constellations?”

“Virginia Beach. We went there on vacation when I was twelve. I had one of those little star charts on a cardboard wheel. I stood in the sand at night, the waves crashing around, and I taught myself. At the time, I imagined I might get shipwrecked one day and I’d have to sail home by the stars. I figured anywhere I went, at least I’d know where I was.”

“Do you?”

“Do what?”

“Know where you are?”

She could see his eyes, the celestial light making them sparkle, even the glass one, and then she took the three biggest steps of her life and was in his arms. His lips brushed her temple and she whispered, “No. Just hold me.”

He didn’t answer, just complied. The firelight bobbed and grew low inside the nose of the plane, outlining the jagged orange mouth where they would soon enter to sleep. They would not sleep together. Not yet, maybe not ever.

Somehow, it wasn’t that important. For now, his arms were enough, strong and safe and comforting.

After a minute, DeVontay said, “Here.”

“Hmmm?” She had closed her eyes against the dizzying and bottomless possibilities of the night.

“That’s where we are.”

Somewhere in the forest, just beyond their hearing, a low voice tried out a new trick of sound. It was only a chuckling sound at first, more rodent than human, and then it gained form and shape.

“Bluh… bluh… blaaa… buhr…flyyyy. Blah bird flyyy.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Campbell followed the soldiers for half a mile, slinking from vehicle to vehicle. Where the road was relatively clear, Campbell either climbed into the drainage ditch that ran along the road, used the concealment of the guardrail, or slipped through the roadside undergrowth.

The soldiers showed little concern over being followed or attacked. Either their experience or their weapons—or possibly both—made them brave. The skinny one had more of a twitching disposition, occasional stopping to check his bearings or light another cigarette. Crewcut kept a steady pace, prodding their prisoner along.

Campbell wasn’t even sure why he was following them. Perhaps it was merely a detour from despair. He harbored no fantasies of joining whatever coalition the solders belonged to, even if they would accept him into their ranks. He’d had his fill of groups: first Arnoff’s ragtag militia and then the cultish army from which Rachel and DeVontay had rescued that little boy, Stephen, back in Taylorsville. Campbell was sure one of those groups was responsible for Pete’s murder.

But he’d also become obsessed with the “Milepost 291” that Pete had talked about before his death. That was the site of a rumored military bunker on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Arnoff spoke of it as a utopia, a resort with hot showers, iced drinks, and all-you-could-eat buffets safe from the threat of Zapheads.

Campbell wasn’t ready to believe the government had planned for such an unpredictable event as a cataclysmic solar storm. He supposed the preparations weren’t all that different from surviving a nuclear attack.

He might not reach Milepost 291, but he’d encountered fewer people and Zapheads since heading north along U.S. 321. And following these soldiers had at least silenced the Pete-voice in his head.

After an hour, the soldiers stopped to rest, Crewcut climbing atop a white service van to survey his surroundings. The prisoner sagged over the hood of a car, face down, hands tied behind his back. The scrawny soldier opened the driver’s side door of a yellow sedan and pulled out the sagging, rotted corpse of what must have once been a young woman, judging by her sporty skirt and blouse.

The scrawny soldier hooted and spun her around as if dancing, even though he could barely support her weight. Her stiff yellow hair flopped over his shoulder, a barrette catching sunlight as she made a grotesque turn.

“Hey, honey, you’re my kind of woman,” the soldier drawled. “You don’t talk and you don’t say no.”

Campbell, peering through the guardrail, again considered shooting at the soldiers. Crewcut was a clear target, standing tall against the graying sky, and his partner was oblivious to danger, thrusting his hips obscenely against the corpse.

“I can just tell you been without a man for way too long,” the scrawny soldier shouted. He lifted up the dead woman’s skirt, revealing mottled blue skin.

“Hey, Jonesy, check it out,” he called to Crewcut.

“If that Zaphead gets away, your ass is grass and I’m the weed eater,” Crewcut answered.

“One hundred percent prime beef on the hoof.” The soldier gave the dead woman a slap on the rear. The sickening liquid sound curdled Campbell’s stomach, but despite his horror, he couldn’t look away.

Why doesn’t the prisoner run?

But Campbell knew why. It was a Zaphead.

Then why isn’t it attacking them?

Crewcut clambered down from the van. The scrawny soldier grew bored and gave his ghastly dance partner one last squeeze before dumping her. She collapsed like a bundle of wet laundry, making a sickening splat against the pavement.

“I never was one for letting ‘em down easy,” the soldier said.

Crewcut stepped over her without looking down. “Saddle up, Romeo, and don’t forget to wash your hands before dinner.”

“It’s not an infection. Brainstorm said—”

“And you’re going to take his word for it? Look around.”

Campbell ducked to avoid detection, wondering what he would do if they spotted him. Would he run? Shoot? Join them?

He suddenly felt foolish and exposed. His pulse pounded against his eardrums so hard that he barely heard the scrawny soldier answer.

“So? Just a bunch of wrecks and dead people.”

“And you think it’s all an accident?”

“Sure. The sun did it. Everybody knows that.”

“Nobody knows nothing. Remember that, and you might just make it to see the next sunrise.”

Crewcut clomped away and Campbell dared a peek. Crewcut collected his prisoner, who had scarcely moved since being deposited against the hood of the car, and shoved him forward. The scrawny soldier lit a cigarette and hurried after them. Campbell let them gain another fifty yards before he surreptitiously followed.

Dusk was settling against the foothills, shrouding the autumn canopy, when the soldiers left the highway and headed down a country lane. The vehicles had thinned out quite a bit by the time Campbell reached the detour. Fortunately, the forest was thick here, pines mixed with scrub locust and crabapple, as if the land had been farmed a generation ago and let back to nature.

A single-wide mobile home was perched just beside the lane, two ragged flags—the Confederate Stars and Bars above the Stars and Stripes—hanging from a pole by the front door. A junker hot rod sat in the front yard, its hood removed and the engine suspended from a chain wrapped around a wooden crossbeam. A kiddie-sized swimming pool contained a black soup of fallen leaves. The narrow yard was salted with trash, plastic bags and fast-food wrappers. Most of the old world’s packaging had outlasted the items contained inside, as well as the people who had once done the consuming.

The soldiers stopped near the trailer, and Campbell wondered if this was their camp. He’d expected more of them, a unit like the one outside Charlotte, but maybe these were the last survivors here. He saw no reason why military personnel would have better mathematical odds of surviving the solar storms than civilians.

Unless, as Crewcut had hinted, there was more going on than met the eye.

Campbell waited, crouched in the dark forest, waiting for them to continue. The blindfolded prisoner stiffened and jerked, nearly breaking free of Crewcut’s grip. The scrawny soldier was quick to drive the butt of his rifle into the prisoner’s back.

“Easy there, Zapper,” he said with a grunt. The prisoner still twitched with sudden agitation, tugging against his bonds.

“Hear that?” Crewcut said.

The scrawny soldier stood silent a moment and then shook his head. “Nope.”

“The thing that’s not right.”

Sounds like night to me.”

Campbell strained his ears, wondering if Crewcut had heard a barking dog, shouts for help, or maybe a distant scream.

“Listen beyond the noise,” Crewcut said.

“What are you, some kind of Zen master all of a sudden?” But the soldier grew quiet again, and this time Campbell heard it, too.

What he’d taken for insects was actually something else. Sure, there were crickets and night birds and flickering winged things, but also a different type of sound. It was odd but disturbingly familiar, and then Campbell remembered the Zaphead woman that had jumped from the back of a van and attacked him and Pete. He’d had to crush her skull, sickened by her resemblance to his mother.

Now he heard that same chuckling, only it wasn’t from just a single throat; it sounded like it issued forth from a dozen or more.

The two soldiers pointed their guns before them and spun in slow circles, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. But it was coming from all around them.

“What is it?” the scrawny soldier said, his voice cracking a little in a nervousness he couldn’t fully suppress.

“Nobody knows nothing.” Crewcut sounded calm, although he clacked a mechanism on his assault weapon. The prisoner now stood silently, head tilted back as if listening.

A twig snapped somewhere to Campbell’s left. He hoped the soldiers didn’t panic and open fire. He slumped a little lower into the weeds, sliding his pistol from his backpack.

The chuckling sound rose in pitch, a keening vibration that pierced the forest air. The contrast made Campbell realize just how deep the silence of the post-Doomsday world was—he had become accustomed to the absence of car engines, radio broadcasts, chainsaws, and police sirens. Now this sudden disruption of peace was almost shocking. He echoed Crewcut’s catch phrase: “Nobody knows nothing.”

He’d had a very limited view of events since the solar storm—this new phase of evolution the woman Rachel had referred to as “After.” He’d adjusted to a perception of Zapheads as bloodthirsty, mindless killers and of fellow human survivors as desperate potential killers, all tossed into a stew of rotten bodies and failed technology.

But if a wider change was underway, wouldn’t the military be the strongest organized force? Wouldn’t that rigid chain of command have a better chance of enduring in chaos, and wouldn’t those commanders have the most information about the current state of affairs?

And isn’t that the reason I am following them? For answers?

“Whoever you are, you better stay back,” the scrawny soldier shouted at the trees. “Or I’ll blow you to hell.”

Crewcut snorted. “Even if they can hear, they sure as shit don’t listen.”

The chuckling was almost a liquid hissing now, like moist air pouring from a dozen punctured tires. The soldiers slowly backed toward the porch of the mobile home, whether instinctively or through some sort of unspoken tactical ploy.

They left their prisoner by the road, where he turned in slow circles, tilting his head left and right. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a string of blood trickled forth.

Branches stirred behind Campbell, followed by the muted flutter of disturbed leaves on the forest floor. He rolled with his back against the trunk of an oak, the rough bark scouring him into a heightened sense of awareness.

He breathed through his mouth in order to hear more clearly. Through the trees, the sky had turned an ashen gray with approaching dusk, and the blackness pooled among the base of the trees. Night was rising more than it was descending, crawling up from the hidden pores of the earth.

If anything was moving in that blackness, Campbell had no hope of detecting it.

A metallic thud vibrated from the clearing, followed by another. Crewcut, still deathly calm, said, “Quit banging. Nobody’s home, dumbass.”

The scrawny soldier knocked twice more on the trailer door before slamming the door handle with the butt of his rifle. “Maybe we ought to make a run for it.”

“We’ve got orders.”

“Nobody ordered us to get killed.”

Although Campbell could see nothing in the ebony ink of the forest, he could sense movement all around him. The trailer’s yard was spacious enough to catch the last ragged shreds of sunset. Crewcut, standing on the porch, raised his assault weapon.

The hissing rose to a brittle crescendo, seemingly all around him.

The dusk was torn by a staccato burst of three shots.

The prisoner’s chest erupted in a bloom of red, and then he staggered forward two steps and collapsed.

The hissing immediately gave way to an oppressive silence.

CHAPTER SIX

“Holy hell, Jonesy, you shot it.”

Crewcut swept the barrel of his weapon at the forest surrounding the trailer. “Quiet.”

Campbell, who had ducked at the report of the gun, crawled backwards away from the clearing, dragging his pack through the damp leaves. The sudden quiet was freighted with menace, as if the trees themselves were tensed for an attack. Campbell wanted to put some distance between he and the gunmen before they got trigger-happy in their panic.

“We were supposed to bring it to camp,” the scrawny soldier whined. “Sarge will be pissed.”

“Plenty more where that came from.”

“What’s out there? Is it them?”

Campbell held his breath and dropped to the ground, expecting bullets to rip overhead at any moment. Through the foliage, he saw Crewcut leave the vantage point of the porch and veer across the yard so he could check around the trailer. The gray air of dusk was leaden with expectation.

“Move out,” Crewcut said, waving his gun down the road in the direction they’d been heading before their pit stop.

The scrawny soldier, Zimmerman, hurried down the porch steps and dashed across the yard, leaping the prisoner’s corpse. Crewcut followed, his head on a swivel, peering intently into the dark trees. In moments, they had vanished down the dirt road. Campbell thought about following them, but he was pretty sure any overt movement would draw a hail of gunfire.

But staying in place also meant he was now alone in the forest with…

…whatever lay in the shadows.

Campbell waited another thirty seconds, his face pressed into the leaves, the odor of rich loam in his nostrils. The darkness was almost total now, except for the dim glow of the constant aurora, but he was reluctant to expose himself. What if the soldiers were just waiting for any sign of movement?

And then that movement came, about ten yards behind him. He froze, his palm tight around the butt of his pistol. Had the two soldiers somehow circled around behind him?

If I stay low, they won’t see me. Just me and the dark, right down here passing the time.

The foot passed inches from his nose, so close that even in the darkness he could make out the scuffed rubber of filthy sneakers. A muted sibilance marked the person’s passage. It wasn’t one of the soldiers, who were wearing combat boots.

Campbell’s breath caught, and so did his heartbeat.

Then the feet moved on and silence surrounded him. He kept his face in the dirt until he couldn’t bear it any longer. Lifting his head a few inches, he peered through the gloom to the clearing.

A crowd of silhouetted figures gathered around the Zaphead’s corpse. Campbell hadn’t seen so many gathered in one place since his escape from the church back in Taylorsville. But there, the Zapheads had been spread out, acting like a mob. Now they assembled with an intimate calm that was somehow far more frightening than when they were trying to tear him limb from limb.

They’re acting like they are aware of another. Like one big family.

About twenty of them stood beside the road, in ragged and filthy clothing. They ranged in age from an old man with tousled white hair to a girl of about seven who wore a Dora the Explorer pajama shift as if she’d been napping when the solar storms forever changed her. The Zapheads seemed to communicate without speaking, as several nearest the corpse bent in unison and gently lifted their fallen brethren. Creepiest of all was their eyes, with radiated tiny golden sparks.

The crowd parted as the corpse-carriers headed across the yard, and then the other Zapheads fell in behind them like a twilight funeral procession. Their absolute silence was so eerie that Campbell almost screamed aloud, just so his madness would reassure him of reality. Instead, he bit down hard on his lower lip as they filed past on a forest trail that had been carved by deer and raccoons but now guided far more surreal creatures.

The Zaphead in the lead of the procession, a bearded, glittering-eyed man who could have convincingly portrayed a prophet in an Old Testament epic, carried the corpse’s legs. As if mirroring the fierce power projected by his burning eyes, he was strong and steady, mouth expressionless.

The next two were young women, scantily clad, their skin like alabaster in the dusk. They bore the weight of the corpse’s trunk, which was peppered with ragged wet splotches from the gunshots. A dark-skinned teenaged boy held the head, cupping it reverently with both hands as if it were some sacred offering to the sky.

Although the trail meandered thirty yards away from him, with the procession soon blending into the onyx forest, Campbell was still afraid to move. If they spotted him, he wasn’t sure he had enough ammunition to fend them off. Arnoff had shown him how to slide the clip of bullets into the butt of the gun, but Campbell had no idea how many shots he had, and he only had one spare clip in his backpack, even if he had time to find it in the dark.

In the end, he decided to wait it out, even as the noises of night rose around him—insects, a distant owl, and the skittering of tiny paws across the leaves. He debated breaking into the trailer, checking it for food and supplies, and using it as a shelter until morning. But he couldn’t be sure if the Zapheads or soldiers would return.

At that moment, he felt forlorn and foolish for having struck out on his own rather than catching up with Arnoff’s group or Rachel and her friends. If Pete were alive, Campbell might have taken a different course. With a traveling companion, he’d had a sense of purpose, but now he was walking solely for the next step, breathing just to take the next breath, living for no other reason than to be alive.

Campbell pressed the pistol flat against his chest, taking comfort in its cold steel. One shot would do it. An end to the surreal madness, and a purpose at last in providing an easy meal for the foxes and opossums that never second-guessed their survival instinct.

“Do it, asshole,” he whispered. His breath plumed out before him in a moonlit mist, and he realized the night had turned cool. The sound of his own voice startled him back to his senses, and he angrily shoved the gun into his backpack and bundled it up, ready to move on.

Just keep moving. Like the yoga hippies and acidheads say, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

He checked the clearing once more. The Zapheads had left at least twenty minutes ago, but Campbell couldn’t trust his own sense of passing time. The trailer yard was bathed in muted moonlight and the greenish cast of the lingering aurora, a glistening puddle of thick blood the only sign of the disturbing encounter.

Go to the dirt road and backtrack to the highway. Then head north. Milepost 291. Milepost 291. Milepost 291.

He repeated “Milepost 291” under his breath like a mantra. It became his Shangri-la, a fantasy land of milk and honey and running hot water and television and full-service banking and cute babes in swimsuits on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He stood and pushed back the branches, heading between the trees in the dark.

He’d taken only seven steps before the hands descended over his face and pressed hard.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Franklin Wheeler stared into the fire, poking the dying embers. Behind him, Rosa and Marina slept side by side on the floor, bundled in blankets. On the mattress curled Cathy and her mutant baby boy. She had the infant cradled against her bare breasts, as if the little monster demanded constant access to her human milk.

Disgusting.

Jorge was standing sentry in the platform, not trusting Franklin’s battery-operated alarm system. No one was around to stop Franklin from grabbing the infant and hauling it into the woods. Franklin could disconnect his alarms and pretend they had failed, that he had fallen asleep. The elements would soon take care of the remains, and Franklin could convince the others that the Zapheads had crept in and stolen the thing.

The others might question the Zapheads’ behavior and whether they were sophisticated enough to carry out such a raid—as well as the glaring problem of why the Zapheads wouldn’t kill them all in their beds—but no one knew exactly how these things operated.

Besides, would anyone be too upset if a creepy little Zap bit the dust? It wasn’t like they were in danger of going extinct.

The mother snorted in her sleep and twitched as if having a bad dream. Franklin turned away and filled a pot to put on the woodstove. In the morning he’d want coffee, even though the beans were old and stale. Caffeine was another of those comforts from the old world he’d soon have to relinquish.

But you can bet your ass the president and his world-banker buddies are sipping organic lattes in a luxury bunker right now.

Franklin wondered if Rachel was still out there, and if she’d be brave and tough enough to trust him. Perhaps he should have abandoned his compound and went out in search of her. He could only imagine how horrible the conditions must be in the cities, even though he’d spent much of his adult life preparing for and envisioning the inevitable.

But his highest function was here, operating the compound as a sane stronghold against whatever challenges the future held. He would wait here for his granddaughter, and he would survive for her. Because, to him, she was the future.

Although a devout loner, he was at the core a family man, which was part of the reason he’d allowed Jorge’s brood into the compound. And there was strength in numbers. While many in the prepper network had toiled away with an isolationist mindset, Franklin understood that simply surviving wasn’t enough.

At some point, after the nuclear holocaust or the viral epidemic or the worldwide civil war, people would have to live together. They would need to build communities and—at some unfortunate and messy point—construct a new social order.

Growing pains.

This whole game of human evolution brought with it eternal growing pains.

And only the strong could fight for freedom.

“Joe?” one of the women called from sleep. It was the mother, Cathy. She rolled over, nearly crushing the infant.

And that gave Franklin another idea. He could smother the baby. One minute with a pillow should do the trick.

Then he could tuck the corpse back under the mother and simply wait until morning. It would look like a case of nature taking its course. Why shouldn’t a Zaphead die in its sleep, anyway? Should anyone expect their bizarre biology to mirror that of living, breathing humans?

“Joe?” the woman called again, and this time it was more of a frightened moan.

Franklin held his hands to the open flame in the belly of the woodstove. The heat sharpened his senses.

Goddammit, she’s one of us. A human. A woman.

He crossed the narrow stretch of wooden floor and bent beside her, taking care not to look at the baby. In the firelight, her bare skin was golden, her blonde hair glistening with sweat.

What if this was Rachel?

Cathy was maybe a year or two older than Rachel. Different physically, a little heavier and with a milky complexion. But these were the women who’d be carrying on the race, the ones who would breed for the benefit of the new order. Could he afford to cast any of them out?

And what if Rachel didn’t make it? Indeed, what if Cathy was one of the few women left outside the government bunkers?

Franklin looked past her restless form to Marina and Rosa huddled together under a blanket. He didn’t even really care that they were Mexicans. The future had no borders. They were fit and healthy, good stock for the cause. And his job was to help keep them strong and to teach them.

In case Rachel didn’t make it here.

No, not “in case”…just “until.”

Cathy moaned again and her eyes flickered open. The fire glittered in them momentarily, almost eerily like that of her mutated offspring’s. Then it struck him.

The sun in their eyes…that’s what it looks like. A hundred little suns  in their eyes.

He wondered briefly if she had somehow mutated as well, as if the little creature’s bite marks on her breasts had passed its sick strain into her. But then she blinked and the illusion passed. She was just a frightened young woman, staring wide-eyed at him as if not knowing where she was.

“You were having a bad dream,” he whispered.

He reached out to her but she flinched away. He realized his hand was passing distressingly close to her naked breasts and he pulled away, grabbing the edge of the blanket to slide it over the smooth curve of her shoulder. He gave it a paternal pat as she snuggled down into the blanket.

“Thanks,” she replied, moving the infant so that its head was exposed. So it wouldn’t suffocate.

Franklin kept his eyes fixed on her face. “Who’s Joe”?

Her eyes darted as if she expected to see him in the fire-illuminated room. Then sadness settled over her. “My husband.”

Franklin nodded. He didn’t want to wake the other two, but he wanted to understand her—to understand how someone could betray their kind and harbor the enemy like this.

“Did he…die?” he asked.

“Yes, but not in the burn.” She kept her voice low to match his. “I was a nurse at the Asheville hospital. I was on maternity leave but they were already getting cases of inexplicable behavioral changes, just after the solar storm first reached Earth.”

He didn’t realize she was a nurse. Yes, the new order would need her. Assuming she didn’t waste her talent and skill keeping the wrong types alive.

“And it all happened so fast,” she said. “My husband—Joe—was a police officer. He learned before most people what was happening, so he came home and said we needed to get out of town. I wrapped up little Joey while he packed, and we got in his patrol car. We didn’t have a real plan, but already people were dropping dead, the highways were clogged, everything was going crazy. He thought the parkway would be safer, and we’d just turned on it when we found the road was blocked with wrecks. And then they started attacking us.”

“The Zapheads?”

She nodded. He expected the memory would repulse her and make her shove the infant from her chest, but instead she only cradled it more protectively. “My husband shot three of them, but then they dragged him out of the car and—”

Her voice broke, and even though she swallowed back her sob, it was forceful enough to cause the infant to stir. Franklin reached over its head and stroked the side of the woman’s cheek, her tears wetting the back of his hand.

“We all went through some trauma,” he said. “The end of the world is never easy for anybody.”

Her face clenched and a few more tears glistened on her lashes. “I grabbed Joey and ran. We spent one night in an empty car. I didn’t know where to go. So we just…”

Franklin swallowed hard. The two females in the other bed stirred, and the fire hissed and popped with heat. “When did you know about…the baby?”

“Baby?” She hugged the tiny Zaphead closer. “What about him?”

“That he was different.”

Her eyes grew soulful and happy. “He’s my special boy.”

“Are you…” Franklin didn’t know how to approach the problem. He’d never understood women in the best of times, and under circumstances such as these, he was hopeless.

Then the baby startled, waving its little fists in the air. It made a chuckling sound, as if something vibrated in its throat. Its face was still turned away from Franklin, but he studied it for the first time.

With its eyes closed, it looked just like a human infant—tufts of downy hair, skin nearly translucent, limbs soft and plump. But that disturbing chuckle was like something from an animal, not a human.

Cathy smiled. “He’s hungry.”

Franklin was appalled to realize the infant’s throaty noises were a cry for milk. And even more horrifying was when the young mother pulled back the blanket and brought the infant to one of her creamy breasts. The baby opened its mouth and latched on, and the chuckling died away into a contented purr.

Franklin turned away, trembling. He rose from the makeshift bed and went to the fire. He drove a metal poker into the embers to drown out the horrible moist sound of the suckling.

Maybe the new order wouldn’t play out exactly as he’d planned it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Campbell lurched and kicked as the hands squeezed his head.

Fingers pressed near his eye sockets and he went wild, bucking as the attacker climbed onto his back and tried to ride him to the ground. He swung his pistol around his side, driving the barrel into flesh. If he fired, the noise might bring the Zapheads back, and this attack seemed like a solitary act.

He collapsed his legs and rolled, hoping to throw off his attacker. He was rising to run when her voice hissed in his ear: “Stop or they’ll hear us.”

Campbell immediately relaxed his muscles and knelt against the forest floor. The woman pressed against him to whisper again, her breath ripe with garlic and wine. “You’re new to these parts, ain’t you?”

“Yeah.” His heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a full trot. “But I’m thinking of settling down. People are very friendly here.”

“Saw you come off the highway. What were you doing following those soldiers?”

“Those were the first people I’d seen in days. Living people, that is.”

“Well, I ain’t so sure those soldiers are human beings anymore. They’re acting like they rule the world.”

“With automatic weapons, I guess they do. Why did you jump me, anyway?”

“If I’d have hollered, they might have heard us.”

“But I could have shot you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That was a possibility.”

Campbell bent and looked through the trees. No sign of movement. “Do you live around here?”

“Got a camper trailer back in the woods. Land’s been in the family for a century.”

“Is it safe?”

“Safe as anywhere. Soldiers haven’t found it yet, and I lay low so the Zappers don’t pay me no mind.”

He had a sense of her in the dark, a woman maybe 40, short and solid and tough. If she’d been seriously attacking him, he would have had a challenge fending her off. But he supposed anyone still left alive was tough in one way or another.

“They took the dead Zaphead,” Campbell said. “What will they do with it?”

“I don’t want to sit in the woods all night and jabber,” the woman said. “Come on.”

She reached out and found his hand in the dark. She tugged him with surprising strength in the direction opposite of the highway.

“I’m going back to the road,” he said. “It’s open so I can see any threats, and I can make better time.”

She didn’t release his hand. “Where you headed?”

“North. To the Blue Ridge Parkway. I heard there was a survival camp there.”

“There are survival camps all over the place. Them soldiers have one. And you could say mine is one, too. Now come on.’

He resisted, and she added, “Just for the night.”

Campbell considered his options. He hadn’t had real human contact in weeks, and now that he had an alternative, he wasn’t sure he could face a night of locking himself inside a stranded vehicle to sleep. “Okay.”

She giggled, a startling sound given the violence and strangeness Campbell had recently witnessed. “Ain’t picked up a man in a long time. And you don’t even know my name.”

Campbell tried to pull his hand away, but she squeezed harder. “Lighten up,” she said. “If I was hunting for a husband, I wouldn’t go after one as skittish as you. Name’s Wilma.”

He let her lead him through the woods. She flicked on a pen light and flashed the narrow beam steadily ahead of her feet, guiding him with a confidence that suggested she knew the woods well.

“Hi, Wilma. I’m Campbell.”

They walked in silence for some minutes, Campbell’s eyes adjusting to the gloom. The green-tinged sky occasionally appeared through breaks in the canopy. “You live alone?” he asked.

“Do now. Where you from?”

“Near Chapel Hill. Me and a friend bicycled out this way, and then he…”

She squeezed his hand again, and he welcomed the sympathetic contact. “Happens to all of us sooner or later,” she said. “Personally, I’m shooting for the ‘later.’”

Campbell glanced around, watching for lights or movement in the shadows. He wondered if the woman was armed, and then decided she must be. Otherwise, she’d have to be crazy to wander around knowing Zapheads and a crazed militia was afoot.

The terrain was relatively flat but now it gave way to a slow incline. The ground was rockier here, and they came upon a wide ditch that featured a trickle of water.

“Cane Creek,” she said. “Good water if you filter it.”

Campbell realized he was both thirsty and hungry. Encountering the troops had disrupted his routine and he hadn’t eaten since midday. “Do you have any food?”

“I know how to make do. There’s a convenience store off the exit ramp two miles up the road, and a little town another three miles after that. I go to the grocery store about once a week. A lot of the food’s gone over but you can always get canned stuff.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a fresh steak.”

“You should drop in at the army camp, then. They barbecue a steer once in a while. Rustling the local livestock.”

“There’s a camp? How many soldiers are there?”

“Six or seven. I try to keep clear of them, but I see them out once in a while, and I hear them shooting.”

“So there are more Zapheads than soldiers.”

“More Zapheads than anything. Is it the same in Chapel Hill and everywhere you’ve been?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Except now the Zapheads are gathering into groups or tribes.”

“You noticed that, too, huh? While us humans all try to go solo.”

Soon the trail widened and gave way to a clearing on a hill. A camper trailer was parked under a large oak tree whose limbs clutched at the iridescent green ribbons in the sky. The home was propped up on cinder blocks, a propane tank sitting on the tongue. The camper’s windows were too small for anyone to crawl through.

“Home sweet home,” Wilma said, fishing a key from somewhere within her bulky clothing. The door had a padlock on it.

Wonder what she needs to lock out?

Campbell glanced into the shadows of the forest, feeling vulnerable in the open. He marveled at how quickly he’d become used to a sky backlit with an unnatural aurora, the lingering effects of the charged particles from the solar storm. “Haven’t you been attacked yet?”

“I don’t have anything anybody wants.”

“Not even the Zapheads?”

“I just lay low and let it all fly over me.”

A tiny yap came from inside the camper. “Hush in there, Peanut,” Wilma said through the door before opening it. She put her hand through to let the dog sniff at it. “It’s me and a new friend.”

Campbell wasn’t sure he was ready for a friend. Maybe he should have returned to the highway, where at least he’d developed some sort of routine. But here was a woman with a pet. It was almost disturbingly normal, although in his old life he’d have considered such a woman poor white trash or an eccentric old witch.

At least she has a dog instead of a bunch of cats.

She ushered Campbell inside and he found himself standing in the cramped quarters as she lit a candle. The camper’s interior was stacked with dried goods, snack foods, and cases of bottled drinks. The little dog that sniffed his trouser leg was a rat terrier with mangy gray fur.

“Peanut, this is Campbell,” Wilma said, pushing back her wild tangle of red hair. He got his first good look at her face. Her freckled cheeks bore large red scars of recent vintage, and a dime-sized crusty scab clung to her lower lip.

He swallowed hard as her stare challenged him to comment. Even her green eyes were sickly, red-rimmed and gummy with mucus. He’d guessed she was middle-aged but now he couldn’t be sure. She might have been twenty with a hundred years of damage and hard living pressed into the clay of her flesh.

He forced his gaze away and knelt to pet the dog. It, too, seemed to be a carrier of afflictions, with one ear torn nearly in half and a viscous goo coating its dark nose. Campbell was bending to pet it when it lifted his head and bared yellow teeth, growling from deep in its throat.

“Hey, Peanut, that ain’t the way we treat company,” she said, giving the dog a light kick in the ribs. “Get on to bed.”

The dog slunk away into a sideways milk crate that featured wadded-up sheets for bedding. The camper held a small table and a bed on a low loft that extended over the trailer’s tongue. A small kitchenette had a two-eye gas stove, but the sink was piled with filthy dishes and empty tin cans. Flies buzzed around the mess. A salted hunk of ham dangled from the ceiling by a piece of twine, huge clefts cut in the marbled meat. Clothes were strewn on every surface.

Wilma shucked her overcoat and tossed it on the table, knocking a candy-bar wrapper to the cluttered floor.

“What do you think?” she said, waving her arm to indicate her home.

Campbell was still taking in the tiny living space, which he estimated to be ten feet by fifteen feet, with hardly a square foot clear of refuse. The stench of stale food, mold, damp fur, and old sweat nearly made him vomit. He suddenly longed for the fresh air outside, even with all the accompanying dangers.

“It’s…cozy,” he managed. He looked around for a place to sit, but decided he’d rather stand for now.

Wilma reached over and flipped a lock on the door latch, then slid a hasp into place and snapped a padlock. “In case they break the window and try to reach the handle,” she said.

Campbell was uneasy about the being locked in, especially given the candle and the amount of clutter. He imagined the place would torch like a wad of gasoline-soaked newspaper. But he calmed himself. If Zapheads attacked, he should be able to fend them off with his pistol, even in close quarters.

He wasn’t sure about the soldiers, though. He doubted the thin metal walls would deflect bullets. He just had to trust that the woman was correct—the soldiers had no interest in her.

But Campbell found trust difficult. He hadn’t been so good at it in the old days, and in the aftermath of the apocalypse, he’d not had a whole of opportunities to practice the trait.

“Make yourself comfy,” she said, waving at the bed, which apparently doubled for both sitting and sleeping. Campbell sat on the edge of the bare mattress, suspicious of the musty patchwork quilts piled atop it.

Wilma opened a cabinet, revealing a storehouse of liquor. The bottles were arranged with a neatness that contrasted vividly with the chaos of the living area, as if this was one area where the woman found comfort and control. Many of the bottles were full, and he wondered how many trips she’d made to the nearby town to collect such a stash.

She reached in and plucked out some Scotch with a yellow label. “Nothing but the best for guests, right, Peanut?”

The dog’s tail gave a couple of feeble thumps. Campbell wondered how many “guests” had made their way into the camper over the years.

Without ceremony, the woman twisted off the cap and took two deep swallows. She gasped in obvious pleasure, revealing two black gaps in her teeth, and held the bottle out for Campbell. Although the numbing promise of the alcohol was alluring, he couldn’t help thinking of the scab on her lip, which was now damp with drink.

“No, thanks,” he said.

“A teetotaler, huh? Well, no use racking up brownie points in heaven. God’s done given up on this kooky little experiment called ‘the human race.’ Right, Peanut?”

This time, the dog ignored her.

“You weren’t carrying a gun,” Campbell said.

“What for? If they wanted me dead, I’d already be dead.” She blew out the candle, and then Campbell heard a plastic bottle fall as she headed toward him. She put her hand on his knee as she climbed onto the bed with the bottle.

He braced for her touch, afraid she would demand intimacy, maybe even sex.

“You better get some sleep,” she said. “Peanut will bark if anybody comes. You’re safe here as anywhere.”

Campbell didn’t find any comfort in that, but he was exhausted. He lay down, fully clothed, his backpack still slung over his shoulder, listening to her sip from the bottle in the dark.

He pictured the silent, somber procession of Zapheads carrying their corpse into the forest, an endless line of them, and soon he couldn’t tell memory from dream.

CHAPTER NINE

Bzzzzzz.

Rachel woke with the sun in her eyes. Disoriented, she wiped the sweat from her face. The sky was clear and brilliant blue overhead, and the air was moist with June humidity. She sat up and saw the grainy stretch of beach opening up to the expanse of blue-green water. A speedboat droned in the distance, the source of the hum that had awakened her.

The Lake Norman vacation. A break from tenth grade and geometry and the persistent attention of David Anderson, first-chair clarinetist and algebra honors student. School a glorious eight weeks in the future, so far on the horizon as to not even be imaginable yet. Her parents back at the club, Dad probably sipping a beer after a round of golf, Mom in a lounge chair reading a James Patterson paperback. Not a care in the world.

Chelsea?

Chelsea was right there on the beach when Rachel had closed her eyes—just for a second, I only wanted to block out the bright blinding sun for a second—and now she was gone.

Rachel lifted her head and squinted up and down the beach. They were in an isolated, shady spot, the nearest pier fifty yards away. The boats there were docked and tethered, and a couple of people sat on the edge of the pier, feet dangling in the water.

Chelsea couldn’t have gone far in those few seconds Rachel had closed her eyes—and she was now willing to admit it had been seconds, plural. Still, Chelsea wouldn’t have gone into the water without her big sister. Because Rachel would give her an Indian sunburn on her forearm or twist one of her pigtails until she squealed like a real pig.

But Chelsea wasn’t on the beach. Had she gone up the trail and through the landscaped trees to the club?

I’ll get that twerp for leaving me down here to get sunburned.

But their tube of sunscreen, towels, and half-full Sprites were sitting beside Rachel, along with Chelsea’s iPod and ear buds. She was into Taylor Swift and Katy Perry at the moment, girl power music. Chelsea never went anywhere without her ear buds. The only time she took them out was when she was in the shower or…

And the horror dawned on her just as the last dregs of drowsiness fell away. She didn’t even recall jumping to her feet. She could very well have levitated all the way to the water’s edge.

Then Rachel was knee-deep in the lake, beating the surface, screaming Chelsea’s name as the silver droplets showered around her with a laughing rhythm. She dove into the water, the contrasting coolness heightening her senses. Chelsea was wearing a green bikini that was just starting to fill out a little with swells of pudginess. She should be easy to spot.

The terrain sloped gently into the water, meaning Chelsea would have had to go out at least thirty feet to be in over her head. There were no sudden drop-offs, no real currents, no undertow. No reason to go under and not come up.

Rachel held her breath until her lungs burned and her eyes stung. She forced herself to the surface and dove again, into deeper water.

Still no Chelsea.

This time when she broke water, she waved her arms and shouted “Help! Help!” The couple on the pier saw her and started running.

Come on, Chelsea, don’t be lost.

I only closed my eyes for a second.

I didn’t mean to…

She sat up, fighting for breath, wondering why the water was so cold.

“Hey,” DeVontay said. “You okay?”

He was crouched by the opening of the damaged cockpit, a map open across his knees and tilted toward the campfire. The flames had burned low, casting a reddish hue against the plane’s interior and glinting dully against the dead instrument panels.

Rachel held up her palms. Still empty, even after all these years of reaching.

“You were calling her name,” DeVontay said. He’d taken first watch, and Rachel suspected he’d let her keep sleeping even after it was time for her turn as sentry.

She didn’t want to cry in front of him. She had to be strong. Even though she couldn’t claim to be a woman of faith any longer, she was still a woman. She couldn’t afford to live in an After where the rules were made by men.

“We’ve all had losses,” she said, glancing at Stephen’s sleeping form. “You haven’t even talked about your family.”

“I got my reasons,” DeVontay said. He checked outside for movement. Satisfied, he folded the map and moved a little closer to the fire. “We’re making good time. We’re maybe fifty miles from the parkway.”

“The weather’s getting cooler as we get higher in elevation. We’ll be out of these foothills soon and into the real mountains.”

“You think there’s anything up there waiting for us?”

“My grandfather doesn’t play games. If he’s still alive, he’s waiting for me. And if he’s not, his compound will still be the best place to regroup and figure out the next step.”

“What is the next step? Once it looks like we’re going to make it.”

“What comes after? My grandfather believes it’s about more than just hiding in a bunker and growing old. He’d say, ‘Ray-Ray, I only know two things for sure. One is, Doomsday will come sooner or later. The other is, we’ll all have to learn to live together after it’s over.’ He’s the most optimistic cynic I’ve ever known.”

DeVontay took a sip of water from a plastic bottle. “How come you got so much trust in him?”

“A mix of inspiration and desperation. He was the only one who didn’t make me feel guilty after my sister drowned. He even wondered if it had something to do with him—like she was targeted because he’d once been a prominent survivalist.”

“Sounds a little paranoid to me.”

“Schizophrenia runs in the family,” she said. “He has a sister who didn’t get electricity because she didn’t want the power company to know her address.”

“How do people like that make in the world?”

“She’s out in Texas. For all we know, she might be living happily ever after.”

“Ain’t no happily ever afters.”

They were silent for a moment, Rachel growing drowsy again even though she should take over the watch so DeVontay could get some sleep. “About earlier…”

“Forget it. We got enough problems.”

“What if it’s not a problem?”

“It will be,” he said. “Ain’t no happily ever afters, remember?”

The fire hissed as the wood heated. Rachel was cold, even covered by a comforter she’d found in the luggage. She drew it around her. The hissing grew louder but the embers remained dark red.

“Hear that?” DeVontay said.

“Is it raining?” It had been clear earlier, when they were outside and shared that awkward intimate moment when DeVontay had pointed out constellations. But weather could change fast in autumn. She glanced at the cockpit’s shattered windshield, but no drops appeared on it.

“I thought it was crickets,” DeVontay said. “But this doesn’t sound right.”

“Whatever it is, it’s coming from all around us.”

Stephen stirred in his sleep. Rachel shed her comforter and went to him, hoping he wouldn’t cry out. Her pistol was on top of her backpack, within reach if needed. With DeVontay’s guidance and some target practice, she no longer felt uneasy with it.

DeVontay put his index finger to his lips in a “shushing” gesture. He grabbed his rifle and dropped to the ground, wriggling forward on his elbows until he lay in the jagged opening of their makeshift camp. “Put out the fire,” he commanded in a hoarse whisper.

Rachel poured the remains of a water bottle on the flames, arousing a humid steam. Then she pulled the comforter over it to suffocate the last of the embers. In the sudden darkness, Rachel was temporarily blinded, afraid she’d awaken Stephen if she moved. Then the ambient glow of the aurora settled in to cast a greenish hue as if she were looking through night-vision goggles.

The hissing grew louder around the cockpit. Rachel wanted to ask DeVontay if he saw anything, but she was afraid to make any noise. She felt along the damaged cockpit’s shell until she came to the nose of the plane, then she ascended the sharp incline of wreckage until she could see through the cracked window.

She was right about the sky—it was still shockingly clear, the striated bands of shimmering green aurora like a psychedelic fireworks display against the ceiling of heaven. Beneath it was the black outline of the forest. At first she could see nothing, but then the trunks of the closest trees individuated. Something moved between them.

Dozens of tiny sparks, like fireflies.

But fireflies were a summer insect. The September nights were too cool for them.

That glittering gold was familiar.

Zapheads?

They hadn’t seen any Zapheads in a week, and they’d been able to avoid contact through caution. Rachel had never seen more than a few at any one time.

Several of them had attacked in unison back in Taylorsville, when she and DeVontay had been held captive by soldiers. But she couldn’t comprehend the numbers now surrounding them in the woods, issuing their clicking ululations in the shadows.

“Eyes,” she said, mostly to herself, to grasp the awfulness of the idea, although she’d said it loudly enough for DeVontay to hear over the hissing.

“It’s them,” he said.

The sibilant hissing rose into a unified keening, almost a single soulful wail. The Zapheads were giving voice to the misery of After in a way that no human could articulate. Rachel shuddered, and the dread sank deeply into her bones.

We’ll die here. All this for nothing.

So much for protecting Stephen.

So much for paying my debt.

Thanks a lot, God.

But she couldn’t be angry at the force she’d rejected. If she’d stopped thanking God for survival and hope, then she couldn’t rightly blame Him for the disintegration.

The glittering eyes still hovered in the distance, not coming any nearer. Rachel slid to the ground and crawled across the ruptured cockpit, feeling her way. The smoky steam hung heavy in her lungs, and she forced back a cough. Stephen murmured in his sleep.

She expected DeVontay to begin firing at any moment, the night exploding with lead and powder. Even with the extra boxes of ammo he’d found back at the farmhouse, they would not be able to fend them off, even if every shot found its mark.

Rachel reached her backpack and clutched her pistol. Her grandfather would want her to go down fighting.

She could almost hear his demanding, raspy voice now. “Stand your ground. Make the bastards pay for messing with a Wheeler.”

The high, hissing wail echoed inside her skull, penetrating to her soul. This was the soundtrack to hell, inspiring her to madness. She fought an urge to burst out laughing, to flee into the forest with her pistol blazing, to meet their violence head on with no mercy asked or given.

But when she reached the cockpit opening, DeVontay blocked her way. “Wait,” he said, wrapping a strong arm around her.

“How can there be so many?”

“Dunno.” DeVontay held her against his body so tightly that she could barely breathe. Her heart felt like a zeppelin filling with warm hydrogen.

She struggled against him, barely hearing him over the noise. Now she wanted to scream instead of laugh, and then she thought she was screaming, because a shriek pierced the night like an electric guitar solo over a string orchestra.

The sound was coming from inside the cockpit.

Stephen!

The keening wail in the forest gave way to an ominous silence.

CHAPTER TEN

Stephen screamed again and Rachel tore free of DeVontay’s grip. She stumbled through the aurora-limned cockpit, until she found him. He clung to her with his thin, frail arms.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay,”

“Huh-had a bad dream,” he blubbered. “They were t-talking to me…”

“Who?” she asked, her stomach tightening.

“I don’t know. They… they were in the woods.”

She stroked his hair, careful to keep the pistol out of his reach. If the Zapheads closed in, she’d have to decide whether to use the last two bullets on the boy and then herself. Except she couldn’t remember how many bullets the magazine held.

Why isn’t DeVontay shooting?

In the hush of the night, the cockpit seemed small and fragile against the vastness of the sky. They’d grown overconfident, sleeping more or less out in the open after so many nights spent in abandoned houses along the way. But Rachel had been sure the Zapheads were thinning out, perhaps even dropping dead from some lingering, invisible effects of the sun’s radiation.

Now here they were in a multitude, all around them. Rachel had suffered the ultimate arrogance—the belief that this After was meant for humans, and that it was up to humans to put the pieces back together.

Maybe, like the dinosaurs, they were merely short-term tenants, squatting on land the rightful owners had yet to claim. Placeholders in history.

“Where’s DeVontay?” Stephen asked, a little calmer now, his sobs giving way to occasional shudders.

Good question. He didn’t go OUT there, did he?

Even with the high aurora and faint moonlight, she couldn’t tell if DeVontay was still at his outpost at the edge of the cockpit. Their campsite was steeped in shadows, giving Rachel the sense that the metallic shell was in truth a mausoleum that still contained the echo of those who had died here.

This whole After was nothing but an echo, a hollow mockery of life. The ultimate indictment of an allegedly merciful God.

“Rachel?” DeVontay called from the darkness just outside the cockpit.

“Get in here,” she said.

“No. We need to figure out what they want. I’m going in the woods.”

“Damn you, don’t even think about it.” Rachel said it more loudly than she’d meant to, and she wondered if the Zapheads were listening. Did they have any comprehension of language, or was it just noise to them, an instinctive signal to close in and kill?

Stephen stiffened in fear beside her. “What’s happening?”

Rachel didn’t have time to conjure a suitable lie. “Something’s out there, but we’re safe in here.”

“Right, Little Man,” DeVontay said with false cheer. “Just like in your comic books. Back in a few.”

Rachel patted Stephen. “Wait here.” Then she scrambled across the cockpit into the moist air of night. Under the surreal swirls of the tainted atmosphere, DeVontay crossed the clearing, picking his way among the strewn wreckage. She called to him and hurried to catch up.

“You can’t leave that boy alone,” he said to her. “Get back in there.”

“Who made you boss?”

“This ain’t no time to go all femi-Nazi on me.” His good eye sparked with anger, while his glass eye reflected the green aurora, round and strange, a moon in an alien planet’s sky. “I’m going in. If they follow me, take the boy and get out of here.”

“And if they don’t follow you?”

“Then we’re all dead anyways.”

He started to turn but she grabbed his sleeve. “What if we get separated?”

“Then I’ll see you at Milepost 291.”

DeVontay took a step but she didn’t release him. Instead, she pulled herself into him. She meant to kiss his cheek but he turned, and their lips met. He was six inches taller, but they seemed to fit. His lips were full and warm and, even in the chaos and fear that pulsed through her veins, a different kind of excitement ignited.

Yet the kiss was also steadying, an eye in the hurricane, the sane center of a twirling universe gone mad. In the heavy silence of the autumn night, the contact was electric.

Zap.

After several skipped heartbeats, DeVontay pulled away. He smiled. “People’s looking.”

Rachel touched her mouth, embarrassed. There were no glittering eyes in the forest, no strange fireflies. Just the natural world.

“I…I’m sorry.”

“Then I hope you stay sorry. I’ll be back.”

He jogged toward the forest, rifle held before him, its barrel glinting with the faint light. Rachel scanned the trees once more, then looked at the forlorn shattered cockpit that gleamed like a monstrous egg under an alien sky. Stephen’s pale face appeared in the opening, and she wondered how much he’d seen.

She hurried back to him. “Come on, we have to pack.”

“Where’s DeVontay going?”

“Looking for a better camping place.”

“In the dark?”

The boy was smart. And intelligence was a critical survival trait. Rachel didn’t know what the future held, but Stephen was part of it. Her desire to protect him was maybe nothing more than vanity. He was tough, or he wouldn’t have made it this far.

“He’s trying to get the Zapheads to follow him.”

“So we can get away?”

“Yeah. So get packed. Hurry.”

Rachel shoved some cans of food into her backpack, making sure she had water, the lighter, the map, and the hatchet. She checked a side pouch to make sure the two clips of ammo were there. The pistol was useless at long range, and despite DeVontay’s patient teaching, she still wasn’t much of a shot. But in close quarters, the gun would be better than the hatchet, especially if several Zapheads attacked at once.

But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Not that she put much stock in “hope” these days.

“Got everything?” she asked, as Stephen pulled on his tennis shoes.

“I don’t got nothing,” he said. He was even starting to talk like DeVontay.

By the time they were crouched at the edge of the wreckage, sporting their jackets and backpacks—Stephen wearing his frayed Carolina Panthers cap—the first gleam of dawn touched the eastern sky with pink and orange, muting the aurora. Mist hung between the trees, hiding anything that might have moved among them. The water on the dying leaves made the autumnal canopy sparkle like a king’s ransom of gold and rubies.

“Are we going to wait for DeVontay?” Stephen asked.

“He wants us to go on.”

They’d heard no shots or cries of alarm, which probably meant that DeVontay had not yet encountered the Zapheads. But they could be following him, as he’d planned. Rachel couldn’t begin to guess the motives of the mutants—after all, why hadn’t they attacked in the night, when the three of them were surrounded?

“The highway’s over there,” Rachel said, pointed to the northwest where U.S. 321 wound inexorably up into the mountains. She then realized that DeVontay no longer had a map. Even if he escaped, he might never find his way to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

She couldn’t help one more little white lie. “DeVontay will meet up with us there once he’s sure the Zapheads are gone.”

“Won’t he get lost in the woods?”

“Nah. He’s pretty smart for a city boy.”

“Do you like him?”

“Sure. He helped save our lives.”

“Is that why you kissed him?” Stephen’s face was so earnest that Rachel almost grinned.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t get any cooties.”

“Are you guys going to get married?”

“I don’t see any churches around here, do you?”

Stephen shook his head. “Just woods. And dead people.”

Rachel glanced at the crumpled body of the plane where many had lost their lives. Their horror had been brief—a few minutes from loss of power at 20,000 feet until devastating impact with the ground. While Stephen’s horror continued, a minute at a time, an uncertain day at a time, lost in the ashes of what civilization had once been.

She took his hand. “Come on. DeVontay’s waiting.”

They walked into the mist, Rachel carrying the pistol in one hand, the other gripping Stephen’s. She felt like an intruder in the forest. This place belonged to the beasts again.

Her kind didn’t belong here.

Her kind had its day under the sun, and now the new kind held sway.

But until she was gone, this world would have to make room for her. She demanded it. She’d abdicated God’s will, and now all she had left was self-will.

It would do.

She squeezed the pistol’s grip more tightly, savoring its potency.

Yes, it would do.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Tracks,” Franklin said.

He pointed off the forest trail where a thin stream trickled between moss-covered gray boulders. The black mud was pocked with footprints, a few of them holding water.

Jorge knelt and studied them. “Some are wearing boots or shoes and others are barefoot.”

“Give that man an Eagle Scout badge.” Franklin snapped a twig from a birch tree and chewed on the tip until it was frayed. Then he began brushing his teeth with it, savoring the minty flavor.

They were on the western side of the compound, half a mile below the ridge. Franklin had scouted the entire mountain several times during the construction of Wheelerville, mostly to ensure no fellow squatters or preppers were setting up camps nearby. Since the highway access was limited, it was a long hike into the depths of the national forest. Hippies sometimes spent weeks in the wilderness, especially in summer and autumn, but the steep, rocky terrain inhibited most of them. Those who had toughed it out never ventured up to the peak.

Franklin had decided on the reconnaissance mission because he wanted to know how many Zapheads were around. At least that’s what he told Jorge. In truth, he was still searching for the rumored secret military installation.

He was pretty sure they would be able to hold off a few Zapheads. But defending the compound against trained and armed soldiers would be far more challenging.

“They’re probably using this as a water source,” Franklin said. “Assuming Zapheads even drink water. We have no idea what their needs are.”

“The baby drinks,” Jorge noted.

Franklin didn’t want to be reminded of that blasphemous act. “One thing’s for sure, they’re moving in packs. These tracks are pretty fresh.”

“Should we follow the creek down?”

Franklin looked back at the animal path that meandered up the slope between the trees. He was tired. If they walked the creek until it reached the Elk River, they wouldn’t get back home before later afternoon.

“Think the women will be all right?” Franklin asked.

“Rosa is getting good with the rifle, and Marina is a sharp lookout. They will be fine.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Franklin sighed. “Okay, but keep your eyes open. I still think the Zapheads are after the baby.”

He and Jorge had had this discussion several times. Jorge didn’t believe the Zapheads were intelligent enough to track them all the way from the road to the top of the mountain, even if they’d understood what was going on. Franklin, though, never trusted conventional wisdom.

In big systems of chaos, the simplest answer was usually the right one. In his younger days, he’d concluded that the answer was the Illuminati, and then he’d come to believe that a small group of people—no matter how all-powerful and corrupt—would never be able to organize the behavior of billions of other people. Later he’d gone with the “foreign banker” theory, popular with the economic Doomsday crowd. That was a notch below the Illuminati in paranoia level and made a little more sense because greed was much more motivational than a desire to shape the future.

The wealthy elite had purchased most of the world’s governments long ago, leaving only the petulant tyrants in places like Iran and North Korea to resist them. And that was the source of Franklin’s fear of the military: even now, in a post-apocalyptic world, their imprinted marching orders would be to defend the elite.

Which made people like Franklin a threat, because he’d never kneel before the swine whose snouts had been buried so deeply in the trough.

“We’ll walk for an hour, and if we find nothing, we’ll head back,” Jorge said as a form of compromise.

Franklin didn’t like how the Mexican now seemed to be the one giving orders. This wasn’t a democracy. Franklin had built Wheelerville, and as far as he was concerned, he called the shots. He didn’t give a damn whether it was public land or not.

But he also didn’t want to be standing in the mud all day. Rosa was a talented cook, and she was probably fixing a stew or baking a pot pie of some kind. He’d put on several pounds since the Jiminez family had moved in with him. It wouldn’t hurt him to walk off a little of the extra fat, even though winter would soon be coming.

“All right, then,” Franklin said. “But watch your step. If you break a leg, I’m leaving you here for the coyotes.”

“Your hide’s too tough for them to chew through. You have nothing to worry about.”

Franklin had to chuckle at that one. Jorge and his family were hard workers, and he’d grown fond of them. Even the woman, Cathy, was a help in her way. If not for that little Zapper brat, the Wheelerville enclave would be just fine.

“How many of them you think are out there?” he asked Jorge, who was a good twenty feet ahead of him on the walk. Franklin resisted using his rifle as a crutch or cane. The footing was treacherous and they both had to concentrate on each step, or the wet leaves might skid out from under them and send them tumbling down the steep, rocky slope.

“I don’t know. If we’ve seen maybe a dozen out here in the middle of nowhere, there could be thousands in the cities.”

Franklin had been specifically wondering how many Zaphead babies there were, but the simplest answer was usually the right one. If there were thousands of Zapheads, then that meant hundreds of babies. He wondered how many of their mothers would let the little monsters gum their breasts. No doubt many of the mothers had died along with the mass of humanity.

But what if a Zaphead mom had a Zaphead baby? What if those things are out there breeding even now?

Franklin gritted his teeth. He just didn’t know enough about them. And he couldn’t plug into the preparation network to get answers, not with the satellites, electricity, and Internet down and the shortwave reception spotty at best.

They had walked maybe twenty minutes, covering another half a mile, when Jorge pointed to a worn path that wound away through the trees. The creek had widened into a slow, deep pool that would attract thirsty animals. The ground was level here, too, a natural shelf of rock covered with a thick skin of dark dirt.

“Footprints are heading that way,” he said.

“But they’re also still following the creek. Looks like the traffic splits off here.”

Franklin knelt to study the prints more closely. In addition to the tracks of deer, raccoons, and a larger animal that was probably a bear, the prints heading along the trail featured tread patterns.

“These were made by boots,” Franklin said. “Those following the creek are regular tennis shoes or work shoes, plus the bare feet. Even a hippie wouldn’t be stupid enough to climb up here with bare feet, so those belong to Zapheads.”

“And the boots?”

Franklin eyed the cinnamon-skinned man. “Uncle Sam’s finest.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Soldiers.”

“Why would soldiers be up here?”

“Same reason we are. So they can stay alive.”

The government was clever enough to put an installation along the Blue Ridge Parkway because no one would suspect it. At least, no one normal. In Franklin’s former circles, guessing the locations of secret bunkers was practically a drinking game.

“Then they can help us,” Jorge said.

“Who says we need help? Besides, these guys aren’t like the ones in picture shows. They would be trained for a situation like this. And I don’t think that training means helping civilians compete with them for available resources.”

“You mean they are a danger?”

“Troops are always a danger. Sort of like bullets. You don’t have them unless you’re pretty sure you’re going to use them.”

“We should go back now,” Jorge said. “The women might be getting worried.”

“No, sirree,” Franklin said. “I want to get a fix on them, learn their strength and habits.”

“We can come back another day.”

Franklin gloried in the gorgeous, colorful foliage in the trees. “All we have is today,” he said. “First rule of survival. Prepare for the best and prepare for the worst.”

“Excuse me, Franklin, but that sounds like two rules.”

“Don’t they have any yin-yang in Mexico? Tao and such as that?”

“I’m Catholic.”

“Then you’re already screwed. I never met a single Catholic that wasn’t expecting to burn away in hell forever.”

“I wasn’t expecting hell to come to Earth while I was still alive.”

Franklin grinned. “Good point. Okay, this time I deal the cards. We go down this trail another ten minutes, and if we don’t see anything, we call it a day.”

Jorge considered a moment, and then nodded. “All we have is today.”

Franklin gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “You’re learning.”

“I just hope I live long enough to become as wise as you. Another century should do it.”

“Move it, smartass.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Campbell awakened to the odor of fried ham.

Before he opened his eyes, he thought he was back at the summer house on Lake James, where the Grimes family went for Dad’s annual Fourth of July vacation. Mom, who was generally not a morning person, made it her duty to rise before daybreak and cook a big country breakfast, featuring enough cholesterol to choke a T. Rex. Bacon, sausage, salted ham, grits swimming in yellow margarine, scrambled eggs, dirty gravy, and toast dripping with butter, all washed down with orange juice and coffee.

Those breakfasts were one of the few times the family actually sat together and talked. Dad was a workaholic but, like Mom, he donned a new persona for that vacation week, relaxing and showing interest in the people he loved. Even his sister Caroline wasn’t totally an annoying brat at the lake. Campbell always thought they were acting like a television family during those times, that the whole thing was a sham.

But when he opened his eyes and realized where he was, and when he was, his heart longed for even thirty seconds of that long-ago mirage.

“You hungry?” Wilma asked, her voice as rough as if she’d already smoked a pack of cigarettes to celebrate the dawn.

After a steady diet of Beanie Weenies and Cheez-its, Campbell’s belly growled at the thought of a home-cooked meal. Even if the “home” was a filthy and cramped camper trailer in the deep woods.

Something rough and wet scraped across Campbell’s cheek and he turned to meet the wrinkled face of Peanut, who’d climbed into the bed.

That explains the stink. Well, part of it.

Campbell sat up, nearly bumping his head on the camper’s roof. Wilma had taken off his socks and boots while he slept. The sun was fully up outside, streaming through the gaps in the treetops to illuminate the tiny windows and reveal the extent of the clutter. Wilma hovered over the gas stove in the kitchenette, where a blackened iron skillet popped and spat.

“I haven’t slept in a bed in a week,” Campbell said. “I’m usually up and moving by now.”

“You been on the road since the sun sickness started?”

“I slept in a couple of houses, but there were too many ghosts.” Campbell reached for his boots and found that Peanut had gnawed the leather. “Even in the ones that didn’t have dead bodies in them, I felt like an intruder.”

Wilma turned from the stove and studied him, her spatula angled at her hip like a weapon. “Well, you can stay here as long as you like.”

“Thanks, but I better keep moving.”

“Scared of all the Zappers around here?”

“I’m scared of everything.” He recounted the brutal attacks in Taylorsville and how the soldiers there had been killing at random. He grew solemn after telling how his friend Pete was gunned down in the street as they were leaving town. “I like to think he was accidentally shot by friendly fire, but that doesn’t make him any less dead.”

Wilma slid some ham onto a ceramic plate that Campbell was glad he couldn’t see. “It’s dog eat dog out there, right, Peanut?” She flipped a piece of shiny gristle to the floor, where the mutt rooted it out from the folds of a filthy towel with lip-smacking glee.

Campbell navigated the stacked boxes of food and supplies until he reached the counter. He plucked a slice of ham from the plate and crammed it into his mouth, relishing its salty warmth. Wilma watched his face as he chewed.

Up close and in daylight, her wrinkles were even deeper, although her eyes were green and clear and intense. Her hair framed her face in wild, oily tangles, as if she’d given up grooming in the wake of the apocalypse. Campbell had a suspicion that her lifestyle had been much the same even before the sun had let loose with a vicious tsunami of charged particles.

“So what’s your plan?” she said, taking one of the pieces herself and chewing it in the side of her mouth that still had most of its teeth.

“Heading to the mountains,” he said. “Somebody told me there’s a compound there, at Milepost 291.”

He immediately regretted telling the truth. What if she wanted to come with him? He couldn’t imagine making any time at all with her dragging along, a mangy mutt trailing at their heels.

Maybe survival’s not a zero-sum game. Isn’t this woman a survivor? Maybe not the most shining representative of the human race, but she’s making it. And, you have to admit, she knows the territory.

“That don’t sound like much of a plan,” she said, still chewing, the scab on her lip greasy with pork fat. “Sounds to me like more of a hope.”

“Hope is something I can’t wrap my head around right now,’ Campbell said. “Mostly, I just need something to do.”

“Like I said, you’re welcome to stay here.” Her eyes narrowed. “As long as you want.”

“I…” Campbell didn’t want to disrespect her generosity and hospitality. After all, who knew what other tools and tricks she had to offer?

For all he knew, she was better situated than the people in the mythical Milepost 291 compound—assuming there were any people waiting at all. But he knew for certain that Rachel and her traveling companions were headed that way, and he had thought about her often in the days since Taylorsville.

He knew the obsession was silly, about on par with the crush he’d had on the married woman in the house next door at Lake James—a woman he’d spied secretly sunbathing topless but to whom he’d rarely ever spoken.

“Well, maybe I’ll rest here for a day and think about it.” He took a second slice of ham and fished a peach half from an open tin can. “I appreciate the offer.”

Wilma nodded, not entirely pleased, but she wasn’t giving up, either. “I can show you the Zapheads.”

Campbell didn’t comprehend her. “I saw them…last night.”

“Where they live.” She gave a distant smile.

“Live?” Campbell still couldn’t put it together. Because he couldn’t think of those mutant creatures as “alive.” But they had to sleep someplace, assuming they slept. And they probably ate. And they cared for their dead…

The ham in Campbell’s mouth now tasted like cardboard. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know more. Zapheads were violent and deadly things. They were the enemy.

But he couldn’t not know.

“Show me,” he said.

“After breakfast.”

“Now.”

Campbell went to his backpack. It was open, the contents rifled. He thrust his hand in and groped around, then dumped the contents on the floor. “Where is it?”

“No guns,” she said. “I haven’t had a gun, and they haven’t bothered me.”

He flung the empty backpack across the camper’s interior. Peanut started yapping in distress. “I want my gun.”

The closet above the liquor cabinet had a lock on it. Campbell kicked at the cheap plywood, causing it to splinter. Wilma ran at him, but he shoved her away. He was in a panic, feeling helpless without his weapon.

His boot finally shoved through the wood and the door fell from its hinges. Inside the closet were more cardboard boxes. He pushed them over, digging through their contents. Nothing but soup, dried milk, bags of rice, round pasteboard cartons of oatmeal.

“Calm down, or they’ll hear you,” Wilma pleaded from her knees.

After searching the lowest box, Campbell sat on it, drained and embarrassed. Peanut yapped until Wilma tossed him a piece of ham. The dog snatched it up and proceeded to its milk crate, where it savored the meat with a great slobbering of lips.

“Sorry about the mess,” Campbell said.

Wilma laughed, a horrible, broken noise that could have passed for a death rattle. “You think you’re the first? I’ve had men. None of them lasted long. Because they all thought Zapheads were something to be killed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

“Those soldiers—they shot that Zaphead and lived to tell about it.”

“For now. Don’t think their day ain’t coming.”

“I’m not leaving until I get my gun.”

“Let me show you, Campbell. Then you decide whether you need a gun. And whether you want to leave.”

Campbell’s anger threatened to return. He felt claustrophobic, and the grease in the air caused his stomach to roil. He needed fresh air. But when he reached the door, he discovered the padlock was keeping him imprisoned.

“You—” he shouted at Wilma, who sagged in the corner of the camper like a beaten boxer riding the ropes until the end of the round.

“I couldn’t let you leave. Not like the others.”

Others?

He could probably kick in the hollow metal door, but the noise might arouse the Zapheads. His anger melted to acidic pity. “Tell me all you know about them. And I’ll decide which one of us is craziest.”

“I… I’ll show you.” She moved toward him. Peanut growled.

“First,” Campbell said, “give me my gun.”

“After we get back,” she said. “Trust me. It’s the best way.”

He wasn’t sure he could trust anyone anymore. “I can’t go out there unarmed. I’ve seen what they can do.”

“They’re like dogs. They smell fear.”

As if to punctuate the woman’s words, Peanut barked.

Campbell was torn between curiosity and frustration. Even after the night’s sound sleep, he felt wired and raw, exhausted to the bone but with a brain running at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. He knew something was off, but he couldn’t connect the dots. He desperately needed to learn more about the Zapheads, as if there was some deep and useful knowledge that would help him survive.

And perhaps a knowledge he could share with fellow survivors.

The price of that knowledge was trusting Wilma, who was as unpredictable and wild as the people whose behavior had been forever altered by the sun’s radiation.

“Okay,” Campbell said, looking at the growling mutt. “But the dog stays here.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jorge was a little ahead of Franklin on the trail, so he was the first to come upon the body.

The dead man was in his mid-twenties, wearing khaki pants and a green T-shirt. His combat boots were clotted with dried mud. He was freshly shaven, eyes closed and sunken, a camouflage cap laying upside down beside his crewcut head. He was sprawled on his back, lying in the ferns as if he were napping.

Jorge gave an urgent wave of summons as soon as Franklin rounded the bend. Franklin raised his weapon, looked around, and then jogged over to Jorge and knelt beside the corpse.

“You think it’s the sun sickness?” Jorge asked, keeping his voice low.

Franklin checked the man for wounds, and then rolled him half over. “Could be. I’ve never seen anybody change since the storms, but we don’t know the science behind it. For all we know, it could be sleeping inside us right now.”

Jorge pointed to a dark bruise behind the man’s left ear. “Somebody struck him there.”

Franklin nodded at the gray boulders surrounding the trail. “Or he could have fallen and cracked his skull. Either way, he ain’t been dead long.”

Franklin lifted the man’s arm and let it flop to the ground. “Critters would have been eating the meat if it was out here more than a couple of days. He’s black around the eyes, which shows he’s not too recent. Flies ain’t even found him yet.”

Jorge was disturbed by the casual nature of Death. It could come upon even a healthy man, or it could sweep across the sky and kill without discrimination. And again he felt a chill of gratitude roll through him. Even though these times were terrible, he was alive—and so was his family, by the mercy of God.

Franklin fished the chain from around the man’s neck and pulled the dog tags from inside the man’s T-shirt. He read the embossed name aloud. “Carson. Simon L.”

“Do you think Zapheads did this?” Jorge asked.

“Hard to say. That bruise is the only injury I see. Don’t hardly seem like the Zapheads’ style. They’re more likely to rip your arms off and beat you to death with the bloody stumps.”

“Where’s his gun?”

Franklin rose and made a quick search of the nearby woods while Jorge followed the man’s likely track to his final resting place. After a couple of minutes, they returned to the dead man empty handed.

“He could have been on a solo recon mission,” Franklin said.

“If the Zapheads took his weapon…”

“Yeah. That wouldn’t be good if they’ve learned how to shoot. They were dangerous enough already.”

“Why was he out here alone?” Jorge asked. “And why haven’t the soldiers retrieved the body? Isn’t that part of their code of honor?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions, Jorge,” Franklin said. “I got one answer: Just keep your voice down and your eyes open.”

“Maybe we should go back now.” Jorge was uneasy over this new mystery. Rosa could handle most situations, like she had back at the Wilcox farm when she killed a Zaphead that had attacked him, but no one could prepare for a danger they couldn’t understand.

Franklin peered into the woods, his gray eyebrows arching up into his creased forehead. “I got a better idea. Let’s hide up in that rhododendron thicket and watch for a little bit.”

“I have a family to protect.”

“And maybe you can protect them better by heading off danger at the pass.”

The old man was hardheaded. But Jorge had to admit the man’s judgment may have saved his family’s life. “Okay. Half an hour, no more.”

Franklin looked down at the corpse. “He ain’t going nowhere.”

“I wasn’t volunteering to bury him.”

“Is that how they do things down in Mexico?”

Jorge didn’t want to think of the friends and relatives he’d left behind and might never see again—assuming any of them were still alive. “Mexico may not even exist any more.”

“Good point.” Franklin led the way up a stretch of stubbled slope, among locusts with bright yellow leaves and jagged protrusions of granite streaked with white crystal. Jorge saw a hawk flying overhead and wondered if it was their chicken-killer. It was likely an illusion, but the hawk’s eyes had glistened as if reflecting the sun.

The forest seemed at peace, accepting of the new way of things. Even though the sun sickness had killed many animals along with humans, balance was quickly restored.

Nature kept on with the business of keeping on.

Jorge followed Franklin into a tangle of branches and soon they were hidden by the dark, waxy leaves of the rhododendron. The shadows grew, marking the sun’s descent into afternoon. Gnats flew around Jorge’s ears, annoying him and making him restless, but he kept as motionless as he could. Franklin’s head dipped, his rifle across his lap, and Jorge wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

But Franklin snapped alert and put a finger to his lips. Jorge wiped futilely at the gnats. Franklin pointed to the trail. A man came out of the woods on the other side and knelt over the corpse.

This man was of a similar age and dressed in the same fashion, except he wore an unbuttoned camouflage shirt over his T-shirt. He was unarmed and his clothes were grimy with the dark mud of the forest. At first Jorge wondered if he was a Zaphead, because of the skulking, uncoordinated movement of his limbs. Then he realized the man was exhausted and perhaps suffering some form of psychological trauma.

Franklin carefully raised his rifle and aimed down the sights at his target thirty yards away.

If you shoot, not only will the Zapheads know where we are, but the soldiers, too.

The soldier fell over his fallen comrade and pulled at his T-shirt. “Come on, Carson,” the soldier cajoled. “No time to be sleeping.”

The soldier looked around, his gaunt cheeks damp with tears. “Get up, you asshole, they’re coming!”

He drew back his right boot and kicked Carson in the ribs. The thunk and crack caused Jorge to wince. Franklin held his rifle steady, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

Phu-ziiiiiing.

A shot rang out.

Jorge thought for a moment that Franklin had fired—but the report echoed through the valley. The soldier dropped to all fours and scrambled toward an outcropping of rocks and vanished beneath the mossy trunk of a fallen tree.

“That wasn’t a Zap,” Franklin whispered.

Unless they’ve learned how to use guns.

Someone shouted a name in a brusque voice. “McCrone!”

A few seconds later, three uniformed soldiers in full battle gear dashed up the trail. The point man knelt over Carson’s corpse before flicking a wave in each direction to send a soldier to each side of the trail. As they fanned out looking for McCrone, Jorge put a hand on Franklin’s shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jorge half-whispered, half-moaned.

Franklin shook his head. The look on his face was almost one of pleasure. Perhaps he’d been isolated too long and now here was adventure. Maybe he’d been relishing this opportunity to strike at the government he despised.

Except the government is able to strike back.

Jorge saw no advantage in confronting trained and well-armed soldiers. They appeared to be carrying assault weapons, and their utility belts featured holstered sidearms and grenades. These were killing machines, intent on completing their mission—which appeared to be the capture of their comrade. The soldier closest to Jorge, an onyx-skinned man with a mustache and cold brown eyes, looked down at the scuffed leaves and tracks Jorge and Franklin had left in their wake.

The soldier started up the slope, swiveling his semiautomatic weapon left to right. Jorge was sure Franklin was going to shoot him, but then the soldier on the other side of the trail yelled, “Over here!”

The dark-skinned soldier galloped back down the slope, slipping once and nearly tumbling. The squad’s leader, who bore three stripes on his shirt sleeve, abandoned Carson’s corpse and headed up the slope. The third soldier must have discovered McCrone’s tracks, because he leaped over the fallen tree and ran into the woods shouting McCrone’s name.

Another shot rang out, and soon all three soldiers were out of sight. Jorge tracked their position through the woods by their shouts, the scuffling of leaves, and the snapping of branches.

“Maybe McCrone went AWOL,” Franklin whispered, finally lowering his rifle.

Jorge exhaled to let the tension out of his gut. “But why would they kill him? Why not just let him go?”

“Maybe he knows something.”

“Would you have shot that black man?”

Franklin grinned. “You’re either with us or against us.”

Jorge was relieved the chase was headed away from Wheelerville. Even though the compound was at least two miles away, the soldiers might easily discover it by accident. But maybe they’d already spotted it because of the wood smoke. Even though Franklin insisted on burning nothing but dry hardwood, on a clear day the smoke knitted gray-white gauze in the sky.

“We should go around the ridge and avoid the trail,” Franklin said. “Even though it will take longer.”

“You’re the ancient one,” Jorge said. “I’m in good shape.”

“Survival is a marathon, not a sprint, my friend. We’ll see who lasts.”

“Let’s get on with it, then. I want to be back before dark.”

They heard one more shot, hundreds of yards away. Franklin nodded. But just as Jorge was about to thread his way through the tangles, Franklin grabbed him by the rifle strap. A hissing filled Jorge’s ear, and he thought the gnats were back. But even as he brushed at the side of his head, he knew this sound had a different origin.

They came out of the woods as solemn and steady as disciples on a pilgrimage. Jorge knew they were Zapheads right away due to their unkempt hair and filthy clothing. They seemed to seep instead of walk, silent except for their high-pitched vocalizations.

Jorge wondered if they had responded to the gunshots and came in search of a human to kill. But they moved with little urgency—certainly not as frenzied and bloodthirsty as the soldiers.

“Creepy as hell,” Franklin whispered. Jorge grimaced, unsure how well the mutants could hear, or to which frequencies they might respond. From a lifetime of handling farm animals, Jorge had seen nature’s range of perceptions in action. And this was a disruption of nature, a disturbing aberration, a new kind of animal with unknown properties.

There were about a dozen Zapheads, five of them women. Two were adolescents, clothed in T-shirts, shorts, and flipflops, their spiked and greasy hair making them seem like siblings.

A middle-aged man in a stained white tanktop had tattoos covering his arms, the knees of his blue jeans worn through. Several of the Zapheads were barefoot, as if they’d been napping when the solar storms struck and had risen from dreams to find themselves trapped in a nightmare. One old man was naked, his withered appendage bobbing amid a tuft of gray hair as he worked his scrawny legs.

“We could shoot ‘em, but the soldiers might come back,” Franklin whispered.

“Maybe they won’t see us,” Jorge said. The hissing pierced his ears like needles, their tips trying to meet in the midpoint of his skull.

“Just be ready for anything.”

You don’t have to tell me twice, gringo.

The Zapheads converged toward the corpse lying beside the trail, and for one horrible moment, Jorge wondered if they were going to gather around and eat it—like fresh meat on the hoof.

That’s one kind of “anything” I’m not ready for.

And he knew he would snap and start shooting wildly if such a blasphemy occurred. No matter how much he warned himself that Rosa and Marina would be at risk if they engaged in gunfire, Jorge couldn’t witness such a horror.

But the Zapheads didn’t appear in any hurry to do anything—whatever hunger pulsed through their strange veins, they didn’t crave meat.

Instead, they bent over the corpse and lifted it tenderly from the ground. The hissing suddenly ceased, and the ensuing silence was as shocking as a slap. Jorge’s heartbeat roared in his ears.

The Zapheads rolled the corpse onto their shoulders, falling into single file. They might have been lumberjacks hauling a log. As they started down the trail with their burden, one of the soldier’s arms lolled out. The naked old man reached up and flopped it back across the dead man’s abdomen.

At first, the procession was uncoordinated, the shorter Zapheads straining on tiptoes. One of the women let the legs sag so the Zaphead behind her could take the weight, nearly toppling the whole group. But after twenty or so steps, they were moving in unison, a well-oiled machine.

In a moment, the bizarre spectacle would be around the bend and lost in the trees, and Jorge would be able to breathe again.

“Bunch of shitterhawks,” Franklin muttered.

Then he raised his rifle and fired, the sudden explosion like a sonic slap across the valley. The old naked Zaphead collapsed, a gush of red spurting from his rib cage and mixing with the mud.

The Zapheads staggered and lost their grip on the corpse and it tumbled off their shoulders to the ground.

The Zapheads turned as one and stared up at the hiding place in the rhododendrons. Jorge tried to shrink back among the dark leaves and shadows.

Then the hissing began.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“You old fool,” Jorge said. “Now the soldiers will come.”

“Let ‘em,’ Franklin said. His eyes gleamed with liquid malevolence, storms brewing behind them.

Below, the Zapheads massed, their hisses combining into a near screech. They didn’t approach, not at first, and Jorge wondered why they were hesitating. They showed no fear or anger, and their implacability was more terrifying than if they had swarmed up the slope toward them. The two adolescents were the creepiest—if not for their glittering eyes and ragged clothing, they could have been on a school outing, perhaps a nature hike with a picnic.

“You shooting, or you running?” Franklin asked Jorge.

“This isn’t my fight,” Jorge managed to say, although he could barely force air through his windpipe. He hadn’t given a second thought to risking his life to help rescue Cathy and her baby—although he hadn’t known at the time that the infant was a Zaphead. But this confrontation was unnecessary. All they’d had to do was wait it out and the Zapheads would soon be gone.

He wasn’t going to fight to save a dead man. Not while his family was at risk.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Jorge said.

“The plan is to survive.”

“We survive by staying out of sight.”

“I didn’t hear you saying that back when you were rescuing a damned Zap baby.”

“I…I didn’t know.”

“I’ve got enough bullets for all of them,” Franklin said, leveling his rifle again.

“Do you have enough for whatever army is out there?” Jorge scanned the surrounding forest, wondering if the three soldiers were even now returning to the trail. Or if other soldiers were out on patrol. He’d seen a lot of boot prints.

The Zapheads remained silent, still facing up the slope. Sweat ringed Jorge’s scalp line. The sweet aroma of sap and autumn decay filled his nostrils, the tension heightening his senses. A bird overhead emitted a piercing cry, and Jorge feared it would set off the Zapheads again. But they waited with an inhuman patience.

“They can’t take a hint,” Franklin said. “This is my mountain.”

He fired again, and one of the female Zapheads lurched forward one faltering step, mouth open in surprise. The bullet had entered her abdomen, blowing a pink, stringy chunk of intestine out her back. Judging from her blue blazer and white blouse, she might have been a bank teller or sales executive, someone you wouldn’t expect to ever meet deep in the forest.

Now she was dead a second time—the solar storms had inflicted a first death on her soul, leaving only her body.

Still, she was a woman.

“You’re killing them in cold blood,” Jorge said.

“Good,” he said. “No need to break a sweat.”

“You’re not shooting those kids, are you?”

“They ain’t kids no more. If you’re a Zap, you’re a threat to the human race. A threat to freedom.”

The Zapheads still didn’t show any distress or excitement, although they took interest in their fallen comrades. Two of them lifted the naked man and settled him across their shoulders, while three female Zapheads lifted their dead sister. They weren’t strong enough to bore her aloft, but they managed to raise her enough to drag her along the trail, one summer sandal sliding off her foot.

The remaining Zapheads started up the slope toward the rhododendron thicket. They moved with an eerie grace, as if working their way through water. At forty yards, their glittering eyes were like electric jewels.

Jorge brought his weapon to bear, but only in anticipation of the soldiers discovering them and attacking. He wasn’t going to shoot unless he had no other choice.

Franklin, on the other hand…

Ku-paaak.

Another shot, another Zaphead tumbling over.

Jorge flung his weapon to the ground.

Franklin turned, nearly snarling in rage. Jorge wasn’t sure if the anger was directed at him or the Zapheads—the raw emotion seemed diffuse and directionless, a tsunami finally breaching a seawall.

“Pick it up,” Franklin said.

“I’m not killing unarmed people.”

“They’re not people, Goddammit. They’re Zaps.”

“I’m done.”

Franklin lunged toward him with a speed that belied his age. Jorge tried to avoid the charge but fell into the branches, feathers of bark raining down on his face. Franklin clutched him by the front of his shirt, his fist jammed hard into Jorge’s Adam’s apple.

The Zapheads suddenly hissed and began storming the slope, kicking mud and leaves into the air. Their grace gave way to a kinetic madness that mirrored Franklin’s rage. Jorge fought to suck air into his lungs. Franklin’s breath smelled of old onions, stale coffee, and a metallic tinge that came from somewhere deep in his organs.

“Guh…guh…,” Jorge grunted, pointing at the approaching Zapheads. But Franklin’s bulging eyes fixated on Jorge’s as if he was oblivious to everything but the adrenalin coursing through his veins. Jorge struggled to get his balance but one knee was jammed in the crotch of a twisted rhododendron. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t fend off the grizzled oldtimer.

The Zapheads fanned out as they approached, half a dozen of them flitting through the trees and dodging behind the boulders. The two kids spearheaded the charge. Jorge hadn’t noticed before that one of them was a girl—her lithe body was undeveloped and her shape hidden inside a baggy T-shirt. She was close enough that he recognized the emblem on it from a pencil box Marina had owned.

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 near-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.”

“I just wanted to pet it,” he whined.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m sorry.” He was on the verge of blubbering, and neither of them could afford that right now.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. The dogs are just not used to people.”

If crotchety old Mrs. Federov from Greenwood Academy could see me now, she’d reconsider denying me a recommendation for my resume. Revenge is sweet, bitch.

And so is human flesh, if you’re a Zaphead dog.

“What about my comic books and stuff?” Stephen asked, recovering a little.

“We’ll come back and get them in a little bit, after the nice doggies go home.” She took another step forward, and the retriever and the beagle took four more steps. Now they were closer to Stephen than she was, and she didn’t dare charge them.

She tried to recall what she knew of animal behavior. Smell was a dog’s most powerful sense, and they related to the world on a spectrum people could only scarcely understand. Steaks on the grill were the equivalent of a majestic symphony to them. A Slim Jim was like a painting by Monet, and bacon was like the erotic caress of a velvet glove on the nape of the neck.

But fear also had a smell, a brittle, metallic tang that promised pain or death. Or maybe just easy prey.

“Okay, Stephen,” she said, now taking steady, slow steps forward as the hissing intensified. “When I count to three, run to the station wagon like I told you.”

All three dogs lifted their heads in anticipation of her approach, and their yellow teeth gleamed in the dying light of dusk.

“Run!” she yelled, charging toward the dogs with her arms wide. She’d once seen a show on the Discovery Challenge about animals that made themselves appear larger in order to scare off predators. In that case, she wanted to look like a giant she-banshee from hell.

She let her own hiss rise in her throat, a release of her mounting fear, and Stephen’s mouth opened in surprise. Then he obeyed and broke out of his trance, pumping his little legs as he scooted around the truck.

Just as she suspected, her little freak show stole the dogs’ attention and they didn’t even glance at the retreating boy. Rachel was impressed by the noise she was making, and she unleashed all the rage, frustration, and hopelessness that had been hiding in a black well inside her soul.

Her anguished howl poured over the highway and reverberated off of steel and glass, becoming the lost voice of the forgotten human race and drowning out the hissing of the mutant dogs.

For a moment, she even forgot to be afraid.

Then the shepherd lunged at her.

And then she remembered.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Campbell didn’t believe what he was seeing.

Wilma had led him deep into the forest and they’d suddenly emerged on the edge of a beautiful meadow that exploded with vibrant orange jewelweed, yellow asters, and daisies. A barbed-wire fence marked off the boundaries of the pastoral scene, and a red barn stood at the bottom of the slope. A set of twin brown ruts wound up the opposite hill, leading to a two-story white farmhouse with black shutters on the windows and high columns on the porch. An old Ford truck was parked under a tin shed, along with a tractor and various implements like a disc harrow, plow, and hay baler.

It was like a postcard from a bygone era, nostalgia for a way of life that had never existed.

“If this wasn’t the end of the world, I would think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said.

Wilma leaned against a locust post, catching her breath. “Cows all died or they would have eat the grass down.”

“How far are we from the highway?”

“Three miles or so. That dirt road goes past about six more farms just like it. This one is the end of the road.”

Campbell wasn’t sure how to ask the next question. The woman hadn’t shown much concern for the Zapheads as they’d navigated the forest. Campbell had been on high alert for the both of them, but he hadn’t seen so much as a stray blue jay.

“That looks like a solid house. Why don’t you live here instead of—”

“Instead of that trashy little camper trailer?” She spat onto a stalk of pokeweed, and the drop of clotted saliva clung to a cluster of indigo berries.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know your kind. Uppity fellows that go to college and read the New York Times and think they know what’s good for everybody else. If the dookie hadn’t have hit the fan, you’da been a lawyer and got yourself elected to the town council, then made up zones and rules for everybody else to live by. When all you really want is for people to be just like you.”

“I—I’m sorry about all that. It’s just…nobody knows how we’re supposed to live anymore.”

“And that pisses you off, doesn’t it?”

“All of this makes me realize how fragile we are,” he said, knowing philosophical debates were as useless as ever. “The people we love, the structures we believe in, the investments we make for the future.”

“A little smarts is all we need.” She tore one of the leafy stalks from the pokeweed plant. “Did you know you can eat these? Fine source of vitamins. But the berries will kill you stone dead. People used to know that, but they forgot it when they started relying on ‘structures’ instead of themselves.”

She handed him the leaf and he sniffed it suspiciously. She laughed. “It’s bitter as hell in autumn. You want to eat it in the spring when it’s young and tender. Same as dandelions and ramps. Cleans you out after a long winter.”

Campbell wondered if they would be able to return to the camper trailer before dark. He didn’t like being unarmed with night falling, and he wondered if trusting Wilma had been a mistake. Perhaps his initial impression had been correct and she was mentally ill.

“Shouldn’t we be heading back?” he asked.

“I thought you wanted to see them.”

“Where?”

Wilma nodded toward the house.

“They’re inside?”

“Around back.”

“So we walk around the edge of the fence and watch them from the woods?”

“No. We walk right up to them.”

His suspicions were right. She was crazy. “We don’t have any weapons.”

She put a foot on the lower strand of barbed wire and yanked up the middle strand, then slid between the gap with all the grace of a bloated goat. From the other side of the fence, she said, “Suit yourself,” and began walking across the meadow.

He looked back into the woods, where the rising shadows seemed even more ominous. Then he climbed over the fence and hurried after her.

When he caught up, she said, “Whatever you do, stay calm and don’t show any fear.”

“How can I do that? Zapheads are scary as shit.”

“It’s the only way. That’s why weapons don’t do any good. They outnumber us now, in case you ain’t noticed.”

Campbell reflected on his experience of the past few weeks. He’d clung to the illusion that humans were still on the top of the food chain, that it was only a matter of time until they organized and restored those structures again. But what if they were done? What if they were the Neanderthals giving way to Homo Sapiens, or dinosaurs yielding to mammals? He didn’t like that line of thought, but since the solar storms, he’d encountered far more Zapheads than survivors.

“We’re smarter than they are,” Campbell said with defiant anger.

“Keep thinking like that and you’re dead meat.”

They waded through the meadow toward the house. The weeds were knee high and Campbell tried not to think of snakes and rodents squirming along the ground. As they drew closer to the house, Wilma signaled him to walk more slowly and be quiet.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.

The repetitive mantra did little to actually quell his fear. But he had to admit, he was also curious. If the Zapheads indeed congregated on this farm, he’d have his first chance to observe their behavior without actually running from them or battling them.

As they passed the barn, Campbell noticed the high wooden doors were swung wide. The inky darkness inside could harbor bloodthirsty Zapheads. He half expected a group of them to rush from the barn and rip him limb from limb. But soon they were past it and heading up the slope toward the house, where they once again crossed the fence into the yard.

Campbell decided if the Zapheads attacked, he would flee down the dirt road. But he wouldn’t be able to abandon Wilma, even though she was likely more capable than he was to fend off the vicious killers.

Sounds like you’re planning to be afraid.

Campbell couldn’t help wondering if they were watching from the windows. But he kept pace with Wilma, who strode with a determined gait as if she’d made this sojourn more than once. Soon they stood before the porch steps.

“Do we go in?” Campbell asked.

Wilma grinned, eyes sparkling with mischief. “We don’t have to go. We’re already in.”

It was only then that Campbell looked back across the meadow. Against the steepening shadows of the surrounding forest, a hundred tiny sparks glinted. Three of them approached from the driveway, and other silhouettes lurked among the farm implements.

The realization punched him in the gut. They were surrounded by Zapheads.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The shepherd hit Rachel high, knocking her flat on her back.

She was dimly aware of the other two dogs closing in, but her world narrowed to the stinking, slavering mouth snapping at her.

She thrust her forearm into the dog’s neck and pushed, yellow fangs clacking inches short of her face, the steaming pink tongue lolling against the black maw of the throat.

Up close, the glittering eyes were hellfire. It was easy to think of the dog as a demonic creature shot from the land of myth, but its moist, putrid breath was all too real against her skin.

She rolled, something in her backpack digging into the base of her spine. She debated the pistol, knew there was no time, and kept rolling as the dog’s paws skidded painfully across her breasts. She made it to her knees and, as the shepherd fell away, the beagle lunged for her midsection.

During the roll, her pack slid from one shoulder and she shrugged it the rest of the way down her arm. Rachel punched at the only soft point she could find, the dog’s quivering, slimy nose. The blow landed flush and the dog yipped, backing away and howling in surprise.

The dogs circled her, keeping out of reach, apparently finding her more challenging than their usual prey.

How many people have they slaughtered? Or is this their first taste of warm blood?

She shrugged free of the backpack and held it by one strap. Slinging it before her, its fifteen pounds of weight was like a sledgehammer. She’d quickly grow weary, but for the moment, the threat kept the dogs at bay.

The retriever made a play for her ankles and she whipped the pack against its ribs. It yelped and hobbled away.

“That’s right, Cujo, I’ll kick your ass back to Maine.” The bravado felt hollow, and the shepherd’s attack had driven the wind from her lungs, but at least she was standing.

Four legs good, two legs better.

Stephen had made it safely around the truck, so Rachel began backing away from them, using the truck as a wall so they couldn’t surround her. She swung at the beagle when it snarled at her, and when it retreated, she was able to gain a position by the truck’s front tire. She thought about climbing the driver’s-side runner and trying the cab door, but if it was locked, the backs of her legs and buttocks would be exposed to attack, and she doubted she’d get a second chance.

The dogs barked, hissed, and howled in a sickening mix, like coyotes strung in an electric fence. As the dogs paced back and forth, searching for an opening, Rachel found the backpack’s zipper and worked it down, never letting her gaze stray from the dogs. Their glittering eyes were both mesmerizing and repulsive.

If fear encouraged them to attack, maybe arrogance would drive them away. So she shouted at them, channeling gangster movies and tough-guy clichés, figuring the dogs wouldn’t give a damn if she mangled a few lines.

“Are you looking at me? Wanna piece of this? You can’t handle the truth.” The rant was silly but it gave her courage, and she scarcely paid attention to the stream of inanities she spewed. “I’ll tear your leg off and beat you into a pile of Alpo. You want some doggie style?”

Her words, or perhaps her animated delivery, caused the dogs to retreat even further. She dug frantically through the backpack, feeling for the cool steel of the pistol. Her heart sank when her fingers came away empty.

Damn. Must have left at the last stop.

As if sensing her panic, the dogs closed in again, hiss-barking as they came.

“Rachel!” Stephen called from the other side of the truck.

“I told you to get in the car and close the door.”

“I can’t. There’s dead people in here.”

“Just…just pretend they’re sleeping.” Right. Resting in pieces, that’s all. Perfectly ordinary day in After.

“Are you coming?”

The retriever growled, baring its teeth. The shepherd circled around toward the front of the truck as if responding to Stephen’s voice.

“In a minute,” Rachel said, gripping the backpack’s strap again, grateful for the cans of food that gave heft to the makeshift weapon. “But I need to make sure you’re safe first.”

“They smell bad,” the boy yelled. “Real bad.”

“I know, honey. But you can do this for me. Close the door and I’ll be right there.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.” Just like I promised Chelsea I’d always be there for her. Until water got in the way.

Thinking of Chelsea renewed her determination. Despite occasional suicidal thoughts, she really didn’t want to die, especially not by the fangs and paws of filthy beasts, going down like an animal. Rachel had no way of knowing whether Chelsea would have survived the solar storms, or if she would have mutated into a Zaphead. But as long as Rachel was alive, she’d live for both of them.

As long as she was a human, she’d fight like a human—the only animal intelligent enough to be aware of its own mortality, and the only animal capable of measuring its own will to survive.

I am a survivor.

“Close the door,” she shouted, still monitoring the dogs. “Now.”

The door slammed closed, clipping off Stephen’s wail of exasperation or perhaps a sob. Now free to act, Rachel turned and ran around the front of the truck, intending to climb the bumper and scale the truck’s hood. It was only when she was calculating the first foothold that she realized the bumper was set into the engine compartment, the shiny chrome extending only a couple of inches.

With the luxury of seconds, she would have been able to dig her hands into the rungs of the grille and make the climb, but already the paws were pounding into full gallop behind her.

She didn’t have seconds,

She made a sudden circle, swinging the backpack and flinging it toward the closest dog—the shepherd. The dog swerved and nearly dodged the blow, but the pack glanced off its rear flank. Something snapped and the dog went down, yowling and hissing but still slithering toward her by digging the ground with its front paws.

The retriever and beagle didn’t slow at all, and Rachel sprinted toward the Subaru with her heart beating the insides of her ribs like a prizefighter working a punching bag.

The Subaru was only twenty feet away, and Stephen’s forehead was pressed against the driver’s-side window, his breath fogging the glass. At least he’d obeyed her. Chalk one up for counseling school.

Rachel slipped, and a rush of corrupt stench wafted over her, and she realized she’d stepped on one of the corpses. The lost momentum allowed one of the dogs—the beagle, she suspected, because it hit her low—to dig its teeth into her right calf.

She kicked, hearing her jeans rip, a current of electric acid pain screaming through her veins.

The dog tumbled away but then the retriever caught her, snapping at the hem of her blouse and yanking so hard that the top two buttons popped free.

Trying to drag me down, to go for my throat.

She kicked out with her good leg, nearly losing her balance as the agony of the bite wound roared in on a massive red wave. The rubber tip of her sneaker drove into the retriever’s ribs but it didn’t let go. Its four paws dug at the ground as it pulled backwards, snarling and growling wetly in its throat.

The beagle leaped at her injured leg and she couldn’t dance away. The attack was rushed, though, and instead of finding purchase, the sharp teeth raked across her kneecap, tearing fabric and flesh with equal ease.

As it scurried past, the Zaphead dog’s eyes radiated ever more brightly, as if the scent of blood and weakness had amplified its terrible appetite.

Stephen screamed from inside the car, but the sound was mercifully muffled. She was afraid he’d open the door and then she’d have the double duty of protecting him while saving her own neck.

Then the retriever jerked backward and Rachel fell on her hands and knees, roiling in the desecrated offal of the dogs’ earlier meals.

And God threw her a bone.

Literally.

Her hand scraped across a smooth, dense object and she clutched its roundness. It was a human femur, licked mostly clean, a big knot of gristle on one end where the ball joint was still attached.

Like a mad Samson slaying Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, she swept the bone like a mace and struck the retriever right between its odd, glittering eyes. The animal’s skull crunched and it dropped like a rock, ripping a large swatch of her blouse as it collapsed.

The beagle brayed, as if realizing it had underestimated its prey. The shepherd wriggled forward, dragging its shattered hindquarters, but it no longer posed any real threat. It whimpered through its nose, blowing bubbles of bloody mucus, but she had no sympathy.

She waved the femur at the beagle. “Wanna play fetch?”

The beagle’s sagging jowls crinkled and its incisors showed over the black folds of its lips. The orange-and-gold specks in its eyes grew darker, as if its smoldering bloodlust had cooled.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said, limping toward the Subaru, bracing for the beagle to lunge again. Instead, it trotted over and sniffed at the shepherd, then licked its face with a long, slobbering tongue.

When she reached the Subaru, Stephen’s eyes were wide with shock. He opened the door for her and the stink hit her with renewed power.

“You’re right,” she said. “Smells bad in here.”

“You… you…”

“Move over,” she said, and he scrambled into the passenger’s seat, pushing the mutilated body parts into the floor. Death was omnipresent in After, but usually they’d managed to keep it out of sight.

He pointed, and she thought he was showing her where she’d been bitten. As her adrenalin rush faded, the pain dug in teeth of its own, and one leg of jeans was wet with blood.

“Yeah, guess I better take care of that,” she said. She started to unbutton what remained of her cotton blouse, planning to rip it into strips for a tourniquet and bandages.

“They tore your pretty blouse,” Stephen said.

“Yeah, but now it’s my turn to tear it.”

“Here,” he said, peeling his own T-shirt over his head. Whether he was being helpful or whether he was embarrassed to see her in a bra, she couldn’t tell. Darkness was falling, and she’d eventually have to take off her jeans and tend the wound, but as the endorphins drained from her body, she felt washed away beneath a great, pressing wall of water.

“Thanks,” Stephen whispered, reaching for her hand.

She gripped it in return. “You’re welcome. Just promise me you won’t ask for a pet anytime soon.”

“Not even a goldfish,” he said.

The beagle was still licking the dying shepherd when she fell into a restless sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jorge reached the compound with the sun already slipping below the western horizon and throwing violet shadows across the sky.

He’d nearly gotten lost, taking a wrong turn on a footpath, and he’d also veered well out of his way to avoid any armed soldiers who might be patrolling. The gunfire was sporadic and off in the distance, and he silently cursed Franklin for stirring up a hornet’s nest. The two of them could have easily slipped into the forest and returned without a confrontation.

Now, the soldiers would likely be scouring the forest looking for them—assuming they didn’t kill Franklin and believe him to be a lone wolf.

Once, he’d seen movement in the trees, but he couldn’t tell whether it was a wild animal or a Zaphead. He’d ducked behind a tree and remained still for fifteen minutes, then continued on his way. By the time he found the well-disguised trail leading to the front gate of Wheelerville, he was scratched up, thirsty, and exhausted.

“Rosa!” he called, when he was within site of the gate.

There was no answer. He wasn’t alarmed by her absence, because even the most tireless person wouldn’t be able to stand vigil on a raised platform for a full day. She also had a caretaking role. Marina was too young for the responsibility, and Cathy had her hands full with her baby.

Instead of directly approaching the gate, Jorge moved through the trees the way Franklin had taught him, so as to not wear a direct path that others might discover. When he came to the fence, with its concealing vines and bushes, he parted the leaves until he could see inside the compound. No one was in sight, and the place was silent except for the low bleating of a goat.

“Rosa!” he called again. She couldn’t hear him if she was inside the cabin. He didn’t want to risk raising his voice, so he decided to try the gate.

After easing back into the woods and approaching again, he found the gate locked. Despite his weariness, he smiled with satisfaction.

Rosa followed our instructions. At least one of us has some sense.

Jorge reached inside the hollow of a split log and found the plastic connector that deactivated Franklin’s solar-powered alarm system. If he had to scale the fence, at least he’d lower the likelihood of being shot by his wife.

He put his back against a slim maple tree and extended his legs against the chain-link fence, scooting his way up until he reached one of the lower branches, then began an easy climb. When he’d pointed out to Franklin the weakness in his defenses, the old man had responded, “Zapheads are too dumb to climb and the government would just burn us out anyway.”

When Jorge was at the top of the fence, on eye level with the lookout platform, he surveyed the compound. Still no sign of his family. The goats milled in their pen and the chickens had settled in their roosts, but otherwise Wheelerville was eerily calm.

The cabin door was closed, so Jorge didn’t bother calling again. He stepped across onto the strand of vine-enwrapped barbed wire that topped the fence and then swung over, snagging his trouser leg and nearly tumbling to the ground in the process.

He soon descended the fence and made his way to the cabin. He called his wife’s and daughter’s names so they wouldn’t be startled, but he still got no response. He even knocked on the cabin door. No answer. He tried the handle but the cabin door was also locked, and Jorge’s gut sank like it was full of mud.

Panicked, he tugged at the handle and hammered at the door, imagining their corpses ripped apart, organs littering the floor and blood spattering the crude pine planks of the walls. The door didn’t budge. The only windows were high, inset slabs of glass that didn’t offer enough room for entry. The cabin had been designed for defense as much as habitation.

Jorge rushed to the little woodshed and grabbed an ax. He bashed the blade into the door handle, then hacked at the wooden frame until the door swung open with a creak. Ax in hand, he rushed into the dark cabin. The beds were empty.

Rosa’s pack and Marina’s satchel hung on pegs by the door, along with Marina’s jacket. Her coloring book was open on the table, crayons spilled across the pages. The food supply appeared to be intact, and Cathy’s baby blanket lay across her makeshift bed on the floor. He couldn’t imagine the woman leaving it behind.

But how did they get through two locked doors? And why would they leave?

It was possible to lock the cabin door from the outside, but only Franklin had a key. The gate, however, could only be locked from the inside, because it featured a steel restraining bar that slipped into a sleeve to reinforce the gate’s strength.

His dead boss, Mr. Wilcox, had once returned from a fishing trip to the North Carolina coast and told the farmhands about the “Lostest Colony,” an English settlement that had vanished without a trace several hundred years ago. Mr. Wilcox believed the settlers had been hauled off and chopped up by savages, but Jorge had been fascinated by the idea that a whole community of people could just disappear into thin air.

Mr. Wilcox said the only clue left behind was a word carved into a tree, but he couldn’t remember the word and he was pretty sure it wasn’t an English word, anyway. “Probably one of them redskins done it,” he’d concluded, content with the version that confirmed his own xenophobic, hostile view of the world.

Perhaps Rosa had left a similar clue here. He lit an oil lantern and searched the cabin, finding nothing unusual. Rosa’s few personal items were still in her pack, and a pot of vegetable soup sat on the still-warm woodstove. His heart sank when he discovered the rifle leaning in the corner. Wherever she was, she was unarmed.

But maybe not helpless. She’d already proven herself, fending off Zapheads back at the Wilcox farm. But this time she had her daughter, another woman, and an infant to protect.

Jorge explored the compound, although it offered few hiding places. He checked the small building that housed the batteries for the solar power system, followed by the dug-out hollow that served as a root cellar, which barely had enough room for one person, much less four. He even looked in the goat shed. The goats bleated with hunger, but he didn’t take the time to toss them some hay. Dusk was settling by the time he returned to the cabin.

“Marina,” he whispered, touching the crayons. Her favor color, pink, was worn halfway down, a waxy fray of wrapper extending from one end. She’d been working on one of the Disney princesses, although he didn’t know if it was Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. His heart ached with absence and helplessness.

Then Jorge noticed the corner of the page had been torn away. Marina was meticulous with her art, almost obsessive, and he’d admired her ability to focus on such detail while the world fell apart around her. She would never damage her page that way. He immediately began looking around for the scrap of paper, hoping it contained a secret message, while at the same time wondering what sort of situation would merit such a message.

He found it tucked beside Franklin’s short-wave radio. The two words were scrawled in blue crayon, the last letter interrupted as if Marina didn’t have time to finish:

“He’s mad.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Come on, you starry-eyed sons of bitches.

Franklin Wheeler had maintained his post in the rhododendron thicket, waiting for one of the Zaps to poke a head out from behind and tree and get blown back to the Stone Age. He’d collected the rifle that coward Jorge had dropped. He was disappointed but not too surprised. The Mexican was an illegal alien, after all, and he didn’t have any sense of patriotism.

Franklin’s last shot had been nearly an hour ago, and he was pretty sure he’d rid the world of one more Zaphead. The target had fallen, although it had rolled out of sight, so he couldn’t confirm a kill. But he notched it up anyway just to make himself feel better.

The soldiers who had been scouting the opposite ridge had also stopped firing. Maybe they’d finally figured out Franklin wasn’t one of their happy little comrades.

You’re not taking my mountain without a fight. None of you.

But as darkness fell, he knew he’d be at a disadvantage even with his commanding view of the trail. The Zappers could sneak up on him, and if the soldiers were well trained and not the usual government screw-ups, he’d have a hard time fending them off if they attacked in an organized unit.

He was happy to die for the cause, but he didn’t want to die for no reason. He still harbored hope that one day Rachel would walk out of the woods, and all his planning and perseverance would be worth it.

I’d die for me, but I’ll live for you, Rachel. Wherever you are.

Franklin worked his way out of the thicket, carrying his rifle with Jorge’s slung across his back. Instead of climbing the hill at an angle the way Jorge had done, Franklin cut a straight line to the ridge, weaving between the dark, stoic hickories, maples, and oaks. The crickets were already out, and they sang a song as old as time, a time before man walked the woods and a time before the mockery of man.

Franklin wasn’t worried about getting lost in the dark, because that godforsaken aurora would soon be lighting up the sky like a hippie’s Halloween party. But he might stumble upon a Zap in the dark, and he wouldn’t be able to get off a decent shot before the thing hissed and warned the others.

As he walked, a twinge working through his aching legs, he considered how he’d handle Jorge’s betrayal. He could give the man a second chance—after all, Jorge had worked hard around the compound, cutting firewood, tending the garden, and mending fences. The new world needed good men like him. It wasn’t like Franklin had any willing breeding partners, and it had been so many years since he’d been summoned for that particular duty that he wasn’t sure he was equipped for the job.

But Franklin would have to lay down the law, and in front of his family, too. They all had to learn this wasn’t some half-assed tea party. The future of the human race was at stake. And if Wheelerville was the last outpost of freedom, then its occupants had to draw on the valuable principles of common sense, backbone, and the ability to rely on one another to do the right thing.

All the qualities the human civilization of the early 21st century had abandoned for greed, apathy, and instant gratification.

Wasn’t no surprise the End Times came when they did. If anything, we were well overdue.

Still, who the hell would have imagined a Zap invasion? I always figured God had a hell of a sense of humor, but—

The blow hit him high and hard, like a gunnysack of wet stones dropping from the sky.

Franklin folded under the weight as his rifle flew from his arms and skittered across the leaves. His left shoulder absorbed much of the impact, numbing his arm. His face was jammed into the moist loam, and the ancient rot of the mountain flooded his nostrils. He struggled to free himself, but he was too weak and the burden too heavy. The rifle slung across his back pressed against him in a bright bar of pain.

“Easy, oldtimer, don’t make me play dirty,” the man atop him said.

Franklin elbowed backward with his good arm, hoping to connect with the man’s ribs. The effort brought only a chuckle in response. Franklin sagged in surrender, his mind racing for a way to defend himself.

“Who are you?” he wheezed, fighting to catch his breath. “You’re not…a Zapper…or you’d already be beating me to death.”

“Just a guy who wants to make it through another day, just like you. Which means you’re going to stop kicking and squirming, right?”

The cold, thin edge of a blade pressed against Franklin’s neck. He gave one last defiant wriggle and the blade bit, not deep but enough to subdue him.

“That’s better,” the man said.

“You’re one of the soldiers. McCrone. The one they were chasing.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look. And that’s a good thing, because you look dumb as a turkey buzzard.”

“No need to cut me,” Franklin said. “We might be on the same side.”

“I’m not on nobody’s side. Sarge didn’t like that too much, though.” The soldier shifted the knife from Franklin’s neck. “Now be a good buzzard and keep quiet.”

The soldier rolled off of him, grabbing the rifle strap and working the weapon free from around Franklin’s neck. Franklin sat up with a groan and rubbed his throbbing shoulder.

The soldier crouched, checking the rifle’s chamber to make sure it held a bullet. “Thirty-thirty. You a deer hunter?”

“Nah. A Zap hunter.”

McCrone laughed again, whistling through his bad teeth. “You’re that guy, aren’t you? The prepper wacko who built the compound.”

Franklin kept his face as stiff as a block of ice. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Aw, come on. You babble your prep bullshit on a shortwave radio? Sure, the solar radiation knocked out our high-tech satellite gear, but you’re not the only one who knows how to build a Faraday cage. The only reason Sarge didn’t send out a strike force was because you just plain weren’t that big of a threat to the new government.”

“You talk like you drank the red, white, and blue Kool-Aid down there in the bunker. But when you think about it, your new government is a bunch of cockroaches, squirming around underground. I live like a free man out under the sun.”

McCrone laughed again, his body shaking with pleasure. “Damn, old man, you’re full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?”

“If you had the balls to come on face to face instead of playing flying monkey, you’d find out.”

The night had deepened, and shadows filled the creases of McCrone’s pinched face. He no longer sounded amused. “I saw you gun down those Zapheads. But you’re not the only killer around here. It’s all the same to me if I leave you laying here with a leaky windpipe or if you lead me back to your little freedom paradise.”

“What if I’m not scared of dying?”

“We’re already dead. That’s what this is all about, don’t you think?” McCrone stood and checked the forest around him, rifle at the ready. “I mean, you are Franklin Wheeler, right?”

“Damn government just can’t keep its nose out of a free man’s business,” Franklin said, standing and eyeing his rifle, which was half buried in leaves. McCrone must not have seen him carrying it and assumed the rifle across his back was his only weapon.

“We had a full dossier on you. You don’t go stocking a secret military installation until you know the neighbors. Satellite photos, email, your criminal records. How are the goats doing?”

“Spy cams,” Franklin said. “You fellows must be desperate if you’re wasting time on the likes of me. What happened, you figured Red China was too tough now, so you go picking on your own people?”

“Hey, old man, don’t get crabby. I was just looking for a job, not an adventure. Now let’s get moving. The platoon has some infrared gear and we’re sitting ducks.”

“I thought I was a turkey buzzard.” Franklin eased one step closer to the gun, pretending to massage a sore knee.

“Whatever. Just go.”

“One thing first.”

“This isn’t a democracy, Wheeler. It’s whatever I say.”

“I need to know what happened to your pal. The one on the trail. Carson, wasn’t it?”

McCrone glanced up through the autumn canopy. Beyond it, the first stars winked amid the winding bands of aurora. Soon day would slide into that long quasi-night and Franklin would have no chance to grab his rifle.

But maybe this wasn’t a time to fight. Maybe he’d be better off biding his time and letting the punk get overconfident.

“We were going AWOL together. Carson knew a place off the mountain, a farmhouse where he’d been sweet on some girl. Her daddy didn’t want her messing around with a man in uniform, so he ran him off. But they had livestock, a garden, a ton of canned food and all that. We figured we’d hole up for the winter and then figure it out.”

“But Sarge had other plans.”

“Somebody ratted us out. We made a run for it anyway, but we got separated. All I can figure is he got clubbed by a Zaphead or he fell and busted his skull.”

“Zaps didn’t kill him. That’s not their style.” Franklin took another step toward the rifle. Four more to go. McCrone was busy surveying the woods below them to notice.

Or so Franklin thought.

“You ever watch that movie ‘Braveheart,’ with Mel Gibson?” McCrone asked.

Franklin’s fists clenched. He didn’t want to talk about movies. Mel Gibson was probably stinking up some fancy L.A. penthouse right now. “Sure. Everybody did.”

“Well, if you make a play for your rifle, you won’t even have time to scream ‘Freedom’ before I spill your guts.”

Franklin sagged in defeat. McCrone came over and slapped him on the sore shoulder. “Aw, nothing personal. I just need you to get me out of here, now that Carson’s dead.”

“Okay. But you have to tell me about the bunker before you leave.”

McCrone squinted, the shadows and aurora combining to cast eerie green striations across his face. “You’re not in any position to negotiate. But I wouldn’t mind if you slowed Sarge down a little after I’m gone. A little delaying action would be pretty sweet.”

“Sign me up.”

McCrone walked past him and scooped up Franklin’s rifle. “You always carry two guns when you’re hunting Zapheads?”

“Hell, no. I usually carry three. You caught me on a day off.”

McCrone snorted in laughter, apparently in a good mood again and feeling cocky. “Well, let’s get back to your little survival shack. I could use a hot meal.”

Franklin led the way along the ridge. He knew the route well, and he was pretty sure he could ditch McCrone if the soldier happened to slip or fall behind enough for Franklin to slip away between the trees.

But that would put him defenseless in the dark, with the woods probably teeming with Zapheads and soldiers with night-vision goggles.

That’s the damn problem with being a libertarian. EVERYBODY’S the enemy.

Franklin wondered how McCrone would react when he met the little tribe back in Wheelerville, especially that snot-nosed tiny creature with the glittering eyes.

Even paradise had its shitterhawks.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Campbell didn’t know what was more horrifying—the Zapheads closing in from all around, or the sinister gleam in Wilma’s eyes. The sinking sun splashed a volcanic orange on her irises, a ménage of madness and pleasure.

She clutched at his arm, almost purring. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

As the Zapheads emerged from the forest and negotiated the fence with their flailing, awkward movements, Campbell thought they were the most hideous things he’d ever seen. Their clothes—what still remained, anyway—hung in rags and tatters, and their hair was wild and unkempt, most of the men with scruffy facial hair. They even moved differently than they had weeks ago, almost like sleepwalkers, as if they’d forgotten how to tear a man limb from limb while his heart was still beating.

Campbell looked for an opening, a direction in which to flee. But it would probably come down to luck.

Unless…

“The house,” he said. “Have you been in it?”

She laughed. “I used to live here. Until something better came along.”

“Come on.” Campbell grabbed her arm.

She shuddered out of his grip. “You can’t run from them.”

“Like hell you can’t. What’s wrong with you?”

The Zapheads in the equipment shed had come fully out of the shadows. There were five of them. They could have been a welfare family from the past, as dirty as chimneysweeps and as somber as undertakers. If they harbored any mindless rage, it was well hidden. They might have been assembling for soup kitchen at some charitable church.

Because they’re hungry for…something.

He didn’t believe in zombies, not in real life. That was for video games and movies. He’d blown apart more than his share of zombie heads in Left 4 Dead, although those animated monsters were rapidly replenished to keep the fake adrenalin pumping. He wasn’t sure his mastery of the game would translate to the real world, the After, but he sure wished he hadn’t left his gun back at Wilma’s camper.

Without a gun, all he had was his feet.

And brainzzzz. Don’t forget your brainzzzz.

“I’m going in,” he said to Wilma. “You coming or not?”

“I’m not welcome there anymore.”

She seemed so much at peace, almost childlike. No wonder she’d implored him to feel no fear—she was too far gone to embrace anything but bliss. She was like that preacher back in Taylorsville, when Campbell had been trapped in the church and surrounded by Zapheads. The preacher had welcomed them as if only too glad to offer himself as a sacrifice, as if his life needed to come to the same conclusion as that of the savior he celebrated.

The Zapheads crossed the meadow with a solemn relentlessness, and Wilma turned in a slow circle as if marveling at—

What? Their very existence? The fact that they haven’t killed her yet?

Campbell owed her one more try. She was a fellow survivor after all, or maybe he was just afraid to be alone, to face whatever future lay ahead.

“We can hole up in there, barricade the doors. Maybe find a weapon.” He was already moving toward the porch, keeping surveillance on the soup-kitchen family and the three naked men coming up the driveway, their eyes coruscating like tiny golden disco balls.

“Be not afraid,” Wilma said, but her voice was distant, as if she were talking to herself or maybe so looming presence in the darkening sky that only she could see.

“Well, I am about to crap my pants over here. And that won’t do any wonders for my sprinter’s speed.”

Wilma gave a gentle shake of her head, dismissing him. The flesh around her eyes creased in pity, although her face kept that rapt shine in the sun’s dying light. She was almost golden herself, an idol cast in veneration of After and its shambling, soulless acolytes who heeded the inaudible call.

Campbell dashed across the shaggy, ankle-deep lawn, dew already collecting on the grass and wetting the cuffs of his jeans. He took the steps three at a time, already making Plan B because he was positive the door would be locked. Because that was just the way his luck had been running since the world had ended. Hell, maybe even long before then.

But when he yanked open the screen door, the front door was already ajar, a sweet musky aroma wafting through the crack.

The interior was dark, all the curtains apparently drawn, but Campbell took a last gulp of outdoor, meadow-flavored air and burst inside.

He balled his fists, ready for a dozen Zapheads to jump him. Maybe he’d been foolish and would have had a better chance in open space, but he couldn’t deny the security that a door suggested.

After ten tense seconds, during which time his heart managed one slow thud and then a staccato flurry of arrhythmia, he relaxed just a little. And then the smell hit him, a putrid slap in the face. As an undergrad at UNC, he’d had a work-study job tending laboratory rats used in cell research. The rodents were stacked in wire cages in a small basement room of the science building, and the stink of death, feces, and spoiled food had seeped into the concrete floor and walls like paint.

Campbell backed the door shut, then fumbled with the lock. If he had to escape, that would cost him another second or two, but he still felt a little safer not having to guard his back. He wasn’t sure Zapheads knew how to operate doors and locks—his observation of them had been mostly smash and maim, except for their odd funeral procession of the night before.

Out of habit, he fumbled for the light switch, then he caught himself and tapped the wall with the bottom of his fist. The house was quiet, but somehow that made it even more sinister, as if ghosts were lurking in the cobwebs and would swoop down at any second. As his vision adjusted to the gray netherlight that leaked through the curtains, he felt his way down the hall until he came to the big square of an open room. Mingled with the corrupt stench of death was a cloying, charred odor of a cold fireplace.

He dug in his pocket and retrieved his penlight, the one artifact he’d been smart enough not to leave back at the camper. Shielding the beam and bracing for an assault, he flicked it on. The battery was nearly dead and it cast little more than an orange cone of fuzz, but it was enough.

More than enough.

He was in a dining room, a large stone hearth at one end, a high window on the adjacent wall that faced the yard. The oak flooring was pitted and worn with the footfalls of decades, and a staid pastoral scene of slaves cutting wheat filled a painting frame above the mantel. An antique hardwood buffet stood against a wall, topped with dusty china and silver service sets. But it was the long table in the center of the room that turned the scene from Norman Rockwell to Alfred Hitchcock.

A dozen corpses circled the table, sitting up stiffly against their high-backed chairs.

At first, Campbell thought it was a farm family, the house’s occupants, trapped at a last supper by the sudden death served up by solar storms. But these corpses were fresher, less disintegrated than their human counterparts scattered across North Carolina and presumably the world. Most horrible of all, their eyes were peeled open, clots of darkness staring into a long nothing.

The closest corpse, mercifully facing the other way, was a young girl of maybe eight or nine, a blue bow in her blonde hair. At the head of the table was a paternal old man, the penlight glinting off his bald head and the pair of round spectacles perched delicately on the end of his nose. Lining each side of the table were men, women, and adolescents all sharing that same hollow-eyed gaze. One of the women had a toddler in her lap, a bib tucked under his plump, discolored chin.

Zaps. Goddamned creeping Zaps.

Unlike the Zapheads outside, who might even now be closing in before he had a chance to check the back door and windows, the assembled dead were all dressed in clean clothes, the men in jackets and clumsily knotted ties, the women in dresses and jewelry. They each had empty plates before them, with silverware and napkins laid out for a formal meal. But it was the centerpiece—the main course—that was most chilling of all.

Laid out on the table, hands folded neatly over his chest, was the Zaphead the soldiers had killed the evening before. He was naked, his hands covering the clotted smear of dried blood where he’d been shot through the heart. Someone had combed his hair and apparently washed the body. He’d been filthy while incarcerated by the soldiers, but here he had been tended like…

Campbell couldn’t complete the sickening thought and fought down a rising gorge of nausea. He couldn’t afford weakness, so he backed out of the room, reeling with the possibilities.

Did Wilma do this? She’s nutty enough about the Zaps to do such a thing.

But that was impossible, because they’d been together since the Zapheads had retrieved the corpse. He recalled her cryptic words: “I’m not welcome there anymore.”

“So, wonder what joys are waiting upstairs,” he whispered, mostly to hear his own voice and be reassured that he hadn’t, in fact, gone mad along with Wilma. Except he might be talking to the Pete-guy in his head, and that wasn’t a good sign. “Maybe one of those hillbilly orgies, a necrophilia wet dream.”

Something pounded on the front door. And again.

“Nobody home,” he said, giggling.

The pounded grew insistent, and then multiplied, a rain of wooden blows. Campbell covered his ears and fled to the end of the hall, climbing the stairs. The back door might be open, and the Zapheads would get in sooner or later anyway. None of that mattered. All he cared about was flight, movement, the illusion of escape.

During his Psych 101 class, he’d learned all about the house as a metaphor for consciousness and the mind. It made sense on every level—the dark basement where the bad things lurked in shadow, the ground floor of habit and routine and comfort, the stairs to measure spiritual and emotional ascension.

And the attic…

Which usually had only one narrow access door, easily blocked or defended.

“What do you think, Pete?” he said, reaching the second-floor landing and facing several doors. “Do we take Door Number Two with the all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, or do we stay practical and go for Door Number Three and the brand-new Buick Skylark?”

If Pete were alive, he’d want Door Number One, which likely contained dope, booze, and wasted teen-aged girls, with Death Cab for Cutie on the jambox and a carton of cigarettes on the coffee table.

If only, Petey. If only.

Campbell tried the nearest door. He could only endure one glance before he killed his penlight and vomited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Franklin and McCrone reached the compound an hour after dark.

But “dark” was the wrong word, because the aurora cast a green radiance across the sky, like cheap mercury vapor streetlights above an empty parking lot. Although eerie, Franklin had come to enjoy the lack of pure darkness, although the star fields were cloudier and harder to follow.

He’d often wondered if the lingering aurora signaled that the solar radiation was still affecting the planet in ways no one could measure. Did birds still know how to fly south for the winter? Could bees find their way back to the colony? What about dolphins and whales and aquatic life that counted on subtle shifts in tide and temperature?

There weren’t many eggheads left to come up with answers. All their instruments and formulas hadn’t done a bit of good when Doomsday arrived.

He supposed humans hadn’t been the only living creatures affected by the radiation. But the chickens acted much the same as before. The goats—well, you could never tell with goats, because they were already peculiar as hell. Franklin had always enjoyed them, finding more in common with them than with his fellow humans. They were quirky, clever, and often downright ornery, which is why he kept them even though they ate more than they produced in milk.

Franklin stopped before the gate, winded from the long climb through the forest.

McCrone jabbed him in the spine with the tip of the rifle. “Where is it?”

“Right here.”

“Damn, oldtimer. All those years in the survival network must have paid off. We would have never found this place without satellite surveillance and GPS.”

“There used to be a thing called ‘American pride.’ Then the government made it a catch phrase to brainwash folks like you.”

“I told you, I didn’t enlist because I loved my country,” McCrone said. “I signed up because my unemployment ran out and your generation shipped all the jobs to China. Now get us in there. I’m tired.”

Franklin parted the nest of vines and dug for the gate latch. “Locked.”

“Right. And I don’t suppose you have the key. What a coincidence.”

“I got a key, all right. But it’s on the inside.”

“You locked yourself out of your own compound? I thought you preppers were supposed to be smart.” McCrone paced a few steps, feeling the fence himself, marveling at the natural camouflage Franklin had installed. “It’s only ten feet or so. Should be able to climb it easy enough.”

“Topped by barbed wire. Be careful you don’t catch the family jewels.”

“I’m not the one doing the climbing. You are.”

Franklin considered his options. He could climb over and then just leave the gate locked, but first he’d have to deactivate the alarm system. If the woods were crawling with soldiers and Zapheads, they’d zoom in soon enough. But once inside, he’d have the advantage. McCrone had both his rifles, but he still had two pistols, a sawed-off shotgun, several military-grade incendiary devices, and some hand weapons like knives and hatchets stored in a strongbox. He’d also be on his home turf. And if McCrone became impatient and climbed over the fence himself, Franklin would have the element of surprise.

But he was worried that none of the others had reacted to their approach. If Jorge had come back, he would know to be on high alert. And if Jorge hadn’t made it—if the Zaps or the equally brain-dead citizens of Army Nation got him—then Rosa or her daughter should have been on lookout.

Franklin had been uneasy leaving them there alone with that young woman, Cathy, and her Zap brat. He was pretty sure that the solar sickness wasn’t spread by human contact—or else the mom would have gone all mutant long ago, the way that thing gnawed at her milk glands—but maybe the evil was more insidious. Maybe its mere presence contaminated the compound, just the way all the older Zapheads had blighted the planet.

If he was a religious person like his granddaughter Rachel, he’d pray that the Zaps and the army wipe each other out. But a casual glance at the heavens revealed that God viewed this place as nothing more than a carnival sideshow. Maybe His whole purpose for creation was to enjoy the Doomsday. Then He wouldn’t rest on the just the seventh day; He could rest the whole week long.

“Are you going to stand out here all night?” McCrone said.

Franklin shook the gate, rattling its metal framework. “There’s an alarm system. If I climb over, the whole compound will light up and a siren will wail.”

Franklin was exaggerating the power of the system, but if McCrone had swallowed the legend of Franklin Wheeler, Internet Survivalist Guru, maybe he’d fall for it. But McCrone laughed.

So much for respect. I keep forgetting, he’s been brainwashed by the best.

McCrone peered through the fence. “Hey. Something’s moving in there.”

There was a pop and whir in the distance, shrieking like a banshee across the night sky. Then an explosion high above them triggered a shower of sparks that hung in the air. The illumination flare was bright enough to erase the aurora and cast the forest into sudden day.

“Looks like your buddies want you pretty bad,” Franklin said.

In the bright glare of burning nitrate and magnesium, McCrone’s face looked drained of blood. “If they get me, they get you, too,” he said, no longer laughing.

Something bumped Franklin’s foot, and he realized the gate had eased open. He glanced at McCrone, who was still squinting up at the trace left by the flare.

Franklin didn’t hesitate. He yanked the gate wide and lunged inside the compound, intending to slam it closed and then hurry to the cabin for a weapon.

“Hey!” McCrone shouted, breaking from his spell. “Damn it—”

Franklin drew the gate closed but he underestimated McCrone’s speed. The soldier jammed the rifle barrel in the gap and the gate slammed against it with a metallic clang, bouncing back open. Franklin reached for the gate to give it another try, but the gate opened to the outside, and McCrone was already on him, cussing and slapping at Franklin with his free hand.

McCrone shoved him to the ground and stood over him. “You old bastard, I’ll string you up by your beard and let the crows eat you.”

For good measure, McCrone drove a boot into Franklin’s ribs. Now inside the compound, he used the fading radiance of the flare to glance around the compound. “Not bad for a Doomsday wacko, Franklin.”

“Go to hell.” Franklin was just about tired of this red-blooded all-American hero standing over him all the time. He was content to go ahead and get shot. At least he’d die a free man on his own turf, not cowering as a slave like the rest of the human race.

Go to hell, all of you. Even freedom’s a burden after a while.

But then he remembered Rachel, and his pledge to her. He’d built Wheelerville out of his own good intentions, but utopia was a luxury. In its way, his ideal was just as selfish and elitist as those of the international banking complex and military-industrial corporate powers that had corrupted the old world, buying and selling human dignity like it was just another commodity on the stock market.

He rolled and staggered to his feet, determined to go down fighting. He wobbled as he faced McCrone, his legs like rubber and his rib burning as if a branding iron was jabbed against the bone.

McCrone pointed the rifle at him, the last of the flare’s illumination furrowing his face with cruel shadows. The soldier no longer seemed boyish in the least. He was like ancient evil, the embodiment of naked arrogance. A perfect product and symbol of the government he served.

“Do it, if you have the guts.” Franklin didn’t know if he was just being an ornery old goat or whether he’d actually swallowed his own belief in a better future, one where Rachel was more than just a symbol of hope, a day when he’d be worth a damn and—

The faint hiss of air came just before McCrone’s skull erupted in a geyser of blood, bone, and gray gore.

The ax blade withdrew, dragging one of McCrone’s ears with it. The soldier’s remaining eye was shocked wide, nearly popping from its socket in surprise, but then it was veiled by a cascade of blood as it blinked shut for the final time. The soldier dropped in a heap on top of the rifle.

Jorge stepped from the shadows, gripping the ax like a pinch hitter digging into the batter’s box with two out in the ninth. He looked down at the corpse with all the dispassion of an overpaid All-Star as blood dripped from the blade.

“Took you long enough,” Franklin said.

“I was just waiting to see if you could sweet-talk your way out of getting shot,” Jorge said.

Franklin bent and retrieved the rifle from beneath McCrone’s corpse. “After you turned tail and ran, I figured you wanted me dead one way or another.”

“There was no need to shoot those innocent people.”

Franklin eyed the way Jorge held the ax. The Mexican was still two swings from a strikeout. “They weren’t innocent. They were Zaps.”

“And what did we gain? Are you going to kill every stranger in the world?”

Franklin nodded at the soldier’s damaged skull. “Looks like you’re kicking in your share.”

Jorge flung the ax away. “Rosa and Marina are gone.”

“Damn.”

“So are Cathy and… the baby.”

Franklin didn’t think that word should apply to a Zaphead. “Any sign of a fight?”

“No. They’re just gone.” Jorge pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. Now that the flare had faded, Franklin could only see Jorge in silhouette. “Marina wrote, ‘He’s mad.’”

“Who’s the ‘he’? One of the soldiers, maybe?”

“No,” Jorge said, his voice cold. “I think she meant the baby.”

The chill in Jorge’s voice seeped into Franklin’s bones, and he felt old and tired and void of all the hope he’d pretended to harbor only moments before while facing death.

In After, even the small things were worse than death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Campbell wiped the acidic bile from his mouth, spitting out tiny chunks of half-digested ham.

He couldn’t make sense of what his eyes told him, and he didn’t plan on sticking around for a closer look. He’d rather take his chances breaking the cordon of Zapheads outside. Maybe the backyard would offer better opportunities. He leaned against the stair rail and headed down in the dark, but he’d only taken three steps when the hissing arose.

They’re in the house.

Behind him, the bedroom door creaked open—

And so did the other two upstairs doors.

How many are there?

A beam of light arced across the downstairs hall. He heard voices amid the mad sibilance of the Zapheads—human voices.

“Told you,” Wilma said, although her voice was muffled, as if she were standing on the back porch. “Told you he’d be afraid.”

“Let me handle this,” a man answered—and Campbell recognized his voice.

Or is it just another ghost in your head, like Pete?

He giggled again, and the giddy delirium trickled from the crevices of his mind like ancient water squeezing from stone. The madness was building like floodwaters behind a dam, threatening to breach at any moment.

The man called again. “Campbell? Is that you?”

Campbell took another cautious step, hoping the stair didn’t creak with his weight. He made the mistake of glancing back along the landing, and the constellation of glittering eyes moved closer.

In a panic, Campbell stumbled down the stairs, his mouth metallic with vomit, ears roaring. He didn’t care if they caught him, even killed him, as long as he didn’t end up like those in the bedroom.

He sensed movement below, and the cone of light bounced around the house’s interior.

“Stay calm, Campbell.”

“They…do you know what they did?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“How come you’re still alive?” Campbell was now halfway down the stairs, the choice made for him. Zapheads congregated on the landing above, drawn from the tasks that had occupied them behind closed doors. Unlike the ones downstairs, though, these didn’t hiss; they merely stared in mute solemnity, their eyes sparking.

Campbell took two more downward steps. The house was full of heightened tension, as if a thundercloud was about to deliver lightning. Between the greenish half-light leaking from the various windows and the bobbing flashlight beam below, Campbell felt like he was in some hellish carnival.

“Listen to me,” the professor said, and now Campbell realized who was hanging upside down in the bedroom—Donnie, Arnoff, and Pamela. “Listen.”

And the hissing shifted, in a slushy imitation of the professor. A dozen voices, maybe twenty: “Lishen. Lishen. Lishen.”

Campbell screamed, and that broke whatever spell had restrained the Zapheads above. They poured across the landing, their feet thundering on the floorboards. Campbell hurtled down the stairs but lost his balance and tumbled, banging his knee and knocking his skull against the newel post. It was a glancing blow, just above his left ear, but his vision grew fuzzy and it felt as if his veins had been drained of blood and infused with molten lead.

Then the flashlight was in his eyes and the professor knelt down to tend him. “Shhh,” the man said. “Stay down and don’t move.”

The Zapheads who’d been pounding down the stairs had stopped and were now waiting again. Campbell sensed other Zapheads massed behind the professor.

“What they did…to Pamela…” Campbell whispered.

“And what they’ll do to you if you don’t calm down.”

“Please don’t let them…” Campbell tried to sit up but the professor put a firm hand on his chest to pin him in place.

“They don’t want to hurt you,” the professor said, and the hissing Zapheads echoed a chorus of “Hurchoo, hurchoo, hurchoo.”

Campbell giggled again, and he hoped he was dreaming. Or even dead. Yes, he’d take dead. That would be okay.

Because then the Zapheads couldn’t do to him what they’d done to Donnie and Arnoff. Well, they could, but he wouldn’t care.

Because behind the door he’d opened, he’d seen a group of Zapheads sitting on the floor like disciples around a sage. They were gathered before a rocking chair in which a man—Arnoff, Campbell now realized, although he would never have recognized him if not for the professor’s presence—was bound in thick ropes. Arnoff was still alive, because his eyes were wide open and animated with a scream that his mouth couldn’t make.

The penlight revealed that Arnoff’s tongue had been taken. His chin was caked with gore and coagulated blood. He might have been tied there for days.

Behind him, hanging upside down, was Pamela, her clothes removed, her body marbled with bruises. Her red hair dangled so that the tips brushed the floor. In that split-second, Campbell had seen she was mercifully dead.

Donnie, however, wasn’t so fortunate.

He lay facedown on the bed, his head facing the door and lifted back at such an extreme angle that his neck had to be broken. His voided bowels likely accounted for much of the room’s stench, as feces combined with the ordinary odor of death in a putrescent mélange.

Donnie’s hands were extended through the brass bedrails, fingers twisted in a dozen different directions, as if someone had meticulously broken and reset them over and over. Donnie’s eyes, like Arnoff’s, were open, but they were so glazed and dull with agony that he likely was beyond even screaming.

Campbell tried to imagine his own role in the Grand Guignol. Would they pull his ears from his head, or pick his freckles as if they were bugs?

The professor set the flashlight on the stairs so that illuminated both of them. Although his forehead was crinkled from strain and he appeared to have aged a decade in the weeks since Campbell had last seen him, the professor was unmarked and reasonably functional. His hands trembled as he checked Campbell’s leg for broken bones.

“You’re lucky,” the professor said, words barely audible above the incessant hissing of the Zapheads above and below. He put his fingers on Campbell’s eyelids and lifted them. “Doesn’t look like you have a concussion.”

“I don’t feel so lucky.”

“You’re not dead or maimed. They are accepting you.”

“That’s lucky?”

“They sense that you won’t harm them.”

Campbell remembered what Wilma had said about not showing any fear. But he couldn’t help it. He still wanted to scream—and if he wasn’t in such pain, he would still fight his way past the Zapheads to the door. No sane human could be trapped with a houseful of destructive mutants and not be afraid.

Ah. Maybe “sane” is the operative word here.

“Why haven’t they killed you?” Campbell asked, shaking the lingering cobwebs from his skull, nearly recovered from the fall.

“They need me.”

“Me me me,” the Zapheads chanted. “Me me me me me.”

The ones upstairs picked up the chorus. “Me me me meeeeee.”

The professor smiled, though intense strain showed on his face. “They’ve learned a new word.”

“They can’t learn. They’re destructive killing machines.”

“Sheens,” one of the nearest Zapheads said. And a chorus of “Sheens” rippled through the house.

“We’ve all changed since the storms,” the professor said. “It’s time for acceptance.”

He finished examining Campbell and helped him sit up on the lowest step, then collected his flashlight. He waved it in the air and the Zapheads fell silent, although Campbell could hear their heavy breathing.

As if they were waiting.

Campbell still expected to be swarmed at any moment and have his limbs ripped from his body. He couldn’t shake the vision of Arnoff, Donnie and Pamela in the room upstairs. “Why did they let you live while they…did those things to the others?”

“They’re like children,” the professor said. “And I’ve been a teacher all my life.”

“Children don’t destroy for fun.”

“Yes, they do,” the professor said, putting a hand on Campbell’s arm to signal him not to raise his voice. “It’s perfectly natural. Children pull the wings off flies to see how they work. They pour soda down anthills. They eviscerate frogs and earthworms to see what’s inside.”

“In,” a Zaphead shouted. The crowd of them pushed forward, until one of them stood inside the cone of the flashlight’s beam. It was a woman of maybe thirty, attractive despite her wild and tangled mane of auburn hair, although her eyes sparked and glinted with a deranged excitement. “In, in, in,” she chattered.

“In,” came from three dozen throats.

“I want to come in!” Wilma wailed from outside the house.

The Zapheads all fell silent. An electric tension built, causing Campbell’s hair to stand up on his forearms.

“She’s becoming a problem,” the professor said.

“She said they wouldn’t let her in.”

“Let her in,” the auburn-haired Zaphead said.

Several Zapheads parroted her words, and then the chant spread up the stairs. Campbell covered his ears, unable to bear this stunning and sickening new discovery. He’d finally come to accept a world where the human race had been whittled down by the billions, and even accept a new natural order where many of those humans were savage killers.

At least that followed some sort of logic—a collapse of a society.

But here was a new and strange society that was actually rising. A mutant race apparently evolving to replace the old one.

Covering his ears didn’t help. The house thundered with the almost-jubilant vocalizing of the Zapheads. “Let her in! Let her in! Let her in!”

Wilma cackled with laughter, apparently at the back door now, because Campbell could hear her clearly. “I’m coming in, then!”

Campbell rose to protect her, feeling somehow responsible for her even though she’d lured him to this house of horrors. But the professor put a hand on his shoulder and restrained him.

“She’s insane,” Campbell said. “They’ll tear her to pieces like they did your friends.”

“It’s not your war, Campbell. Acceptance.”

Campbell broke free and started through the crowd of Zapheads. The stench of the house, the death it harbored, and the unwashed mutants made him dizzy and claustrophobic. He no longer cared if they killed him. He’d been surviving day by day based on some hope of a distant, better future, but now he saw that such an ideal was impossible.

His world was over.

There was a commotion in one of the hidden rooms, probably the kitchen. The hissing rose like steam whistling from a cracked radiator. Campbell pulled out his penlight, head throbbing, legs sore, and his throat parched with thirst and anxiety.

The Zapheads had all turned away, congregating around Wilma, who laughed and screamed. “Give him back to me!”

They closed on her, and she was crushed by the sheer numbers. Campbell didn’t want to touch any of the repulsive creatures, but they were turned away from him, blocking the exit. He worked his way down the hall as far as he could go, shining his penlight over the heads of the crowd.

The beam settled on Wilma’s pocked, deranged face. The struggle with the Zapheads appeared to have aroused her to a state of bliss.

“Stay out of it, Campbell,” the professor warned from somewhere behind him. The stairs thundered as the Zapheads descended.

“Don’t be afraid,” Campbell said to Wilma, nearly shouting over the hissing. She stopped struggling for a moment and looked toward the light, although she likely couldn’t see his face.

“Breeder!” she said. “I wanted you for a breeder! This world needs breeders!”

“Needs breeders!” one of the Zapheads shrieked.

The phrase rippled through the house and amplified. “Needs breeders, needs breeders, needs breeders.”

One of the Zapheads grabbed Campbell by the front of his shirt and gave a mighty tug, yanking him off-balance. The beam of his penlight darted wildly across the ceiling before slicing across the face of the Zaphead who held him. It was the auburn-haired woman.

“Needs breeders!” she screeched in delight.

“I’ll kill you, bitch,” Wilma shouted, slapping at the Zapheads around her.

The Zapheads fed her words right back to her, along with the blows she was reining. “I’ll kill you, bitch! I’ll kill you bitch!”

The house shook with shouts and blows and Wilma’s grunts.

Then Campbell’s penlight was knocked from his hand and crushed underfoot as the crowd converged and rushed forward into the violent center of the kitchen. Campbell slunk away from them until his back was against the wall, and then he slid down into a fetal position and covered his head.

That didn’t drown out Wilma’s screams.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“You’d have been better off getting some sleep,” Franklin said.

He sat at the table, connecting the shortwave radio to the battery system. An oil lantern glowed beside him, its light low. Jorge paced the cabin, unable to sit, much less sleep.

“I’m going, whether you come or not,” Jorge said. The old man had napped for several hours, during which time Jorge had searched the immediate perimeter of the compound. He’d also monitored the forest from the platform, afraid the military would discover Rosa and Marina before he did. Rosa was strong and resilient, but Jorge could imagine a hundred horrible possibilities—usually leading to an image of them being carried along a remote trail by silent Zapheads.

“Told you I’d come with you,” Franklin said. “But it never hurts to gather up a little information.”

Franklin scanned the frequencies as the speaker alternated between a high hum and sharp static. At one point a few broken words of Spanish spilled forth, but by the time Franklin zeroed in, the transmission was lost. “Damned charged particles in the atmosphere are messing with reception,” Franklin said. “The sun must be acting up again.”

Jorge froze in his pacing. “What does that mean?”

“‘Solar cycles’ means just that—cycles. The sun doesn’t just turn on and off like a tap. It’s always pushing out energy, but sometimes it erupts from deep inside and spews out big shitballs of radiation. The government knew those solar storms were trouble—they just didn’t want to panic the people.”

“How could they not warn us of the danger?”

“Well, the clues were there, and news reports told about the solar flares, but they mostly warned about the communication problems. But preppers who knew enough to read between the lines figured this was way bigger than anyone was letting on. I could just see that jug-eared moron in the White House saying, ‘We can’t have a public panic.’ I hope that son of bitch is rotting away in the Oval Office this very minute.”

“I don’t care about your president. I care about my family.”

“The wealthy elite and their government lapdogs kept the truth from us, so we wouldn’t have time to prepare. They didn’t cause the solar storms, but they sure didn’t boost our odds of survival. And now their foot soldiers are out there wiping out any remaining man that wants to be free. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the world’s bankers are holed up in their private luxury bunkers right now, or drifting out there in the ocean on their private yachts, with no power and no navigation systems.”

Jorge shook with rage and anxiety. “Hijo de puta! I hope they all drown in their own blood. But none of that matters now.”

“It’s the only thing that matters.” Franklin turned the dial, scanning the bandwidth one more time before shutting off the radio and disconnecting the power supply. “Zaps ain’t the biggest enemy out there. As long as these leeches are alive, none of us are safe.”

Jorge looked out the cabin door, where the green luminescence of the night’s aurora mixed with the first pale light of dawn. “Wait a moment,” Jorge said, as if finally comprehending Franklin’s words. “You said there were more sun storms?”

“Could be. We’ve probably been hit with waves of it over the past few weeks, but not enough to notice. That doesn’t mean there’s not another big one on the way, maybe even worse than the first batch. That’s the thing about Doomsday—if you read the literature, it’s usually not one thing that goes to hell. It’s lots of interconnected events and one fat trigger on a smoking gun.”

Jorge gathered Marina’s pack and began hurriedly stuffing it with food, a compass, cursing himself for his stupidity. In recent days, he’d become comfortable with the idea that the worst was over, that God’s trials had yielded their final judgment and now the rebirth began. But maybe God was just beginning to punish the sinners. “What can we do to protect ourselves from the radiation?”

More importantly, how can I protect Rosa and Marina?

“Well, probably sitting in a Faraday cage is a good move. I suspect that’s why so many of these soldiers are still running around when most everybody else got blasted to death or turned into Zaps.”

“But we don’t know when the sun storms will hit. We can’t live in cages.”

Franklin grinned with crooked teeth and tugged his beard. “Now you’re catching on.”

“Your government and your soldiers can battle over foolish ideals,” Jorge said. “If I die, I will die protecting my family.”

Franklin retrieved the bloody ax from its place leaning by the woodstove. “I hope we stay on the same side, Jorge. Because I’ve seen what happens when people get in your way. There’s a slumbering dragon in there. We need free men like you.”

When people get in the way.

Jorge thought of the Hello Kitty girl in the forest, and his hallucination that she’d spoken. Jorge hadn’t mentioned it to Franklin, lest the man think he was losing his mind. He needed Franklin to help him. Even though Franklin was driven by a personal mission, he had proven himself a survivor and he knew the territory.

Perhaps in a situation that had never before existed in the history of the world, experience didn’t matter. But until Jorge found his family, he would use every tool and weapon and resource he could find.

Franklin unlocked a strongbox and handed Jorge a pistol. “Glock holds seventeen rounds. If we get surrounded by Zaps, make sure you save the last bullet for yourself.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A shark had her leg.

She turned in the murky water, still looking for Chelsea, but the pain was intense.  She kicked, trying to shed the shark. Chelsea had already been under for, what, minutes? Oryears? Blooms of red colored the water around her, and the surface above sparkled with a thousand blue diamonds. She struggled for breath, fought to get free, fought the pull of the inevitable tide of gravity that pulled her to the center of the earth and into the ultimate darkness.

“Rachel?” Her shoulder shook, and she thought the shark had discovered a fresh morsel, but then she recognized Stephen’s voice.

What’s HE doing here? He didn’t come to the lake with us.

She opened her eyes to bright sunlight. Her leg still throbbed, but it was unencumbered.

“Whew,” Stephen said. “I was worried. You wouldn’t wake up.”

Rachel sat up. She was still in the driver’s seat of the Subaru, but the seat was both reclined and moved away from the steering wheel. One leg of herjeans was split up the knee, a bandage covering the dog bite on her calf. She didn’t remember wrapping it. The passenger door was ajar, letting in a fresh autumn breeze. The stench was present but no longer overpowering.

“It’s morning,” she said. Her throat was cracked and dry. As if reading her thoughts, Stephen held out a bottle of water. He was in the passenger seat, a comic book in his lap.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the water. “So you got our backpacks.”

He shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

“And you… cleaned out the car.”

“Well, that was easier than trying to move you. I’m just a kid.”

No, Stephen, you’re much more than just a kid.

She sipped, and then drank deeply and gratefully. The water was warm and tainted with plastic, but it was the best she’d ever tasted. Far better than the poisonous water of Lake Norman. Which, as far as she knew, didn’t contain sharks, but plenty of far deadlier creatures.

Like memories.

Like guilt.

Between the Subaru and the truck lay the dead German shepherd and golden retriever. “Where’s the other dog?” she asked.

“He took some of the meat and went into the woods.”

“You should have stayed in the car. He might be out there watching.”

Stephen shrugged. “It didn’t mean to hurt us. It’s just a dog. Just like the Zapheads are just people, right?”

“We don’t really know what they are.”

“Well, they used to be people, didn’t they? So they can’t be all bad. Somewhere inside them, they have some of the love and stuff, right?”

“It’s complicated.”

“What about the ones that Jesus saved? They’re not bad, are they?”

Rachel fidgeted with her bandage. Ointment squeezed out from around the cloth, as well as some nasty yellow-red fluid. “You’ll have to ask Jesus.”

Luckily for her, Stephen changed the subject, as boys will. “Can I have a dog? I mean, after this is over?”

It’s never going to be over, sweetie.

But she couldn’t tell him that, so she fell back on that timeless adult bailout. “We’ll see.”

“Will DeVontay catch up today?”

“Maybe. But he wants us to keep moving. I like the look of that Exxon station up there.”

Stephen grinned. “Maybe it has some Slim Jims!”

“Bet so.” She flexed her leg, wondering if she’d be able to walk. But she suspected if she sat there much longer, it would stiffen up and hurt even worse. The gas station would likely provide some antibiotic ointment and hydrogen peroxide, as well as some aspirin.

“Okay, let’s pack up.” She was eager to be out of the stinking vehicle, but by the time they were ready and she opened the door, she was already sweating with exertion, even though the autumn morning was pleasant. She hoped she wasn’t getting a fever from infection.

Stephen was waiting for her outside the car. She gritted her teeth and put weight on her injured leg. The pain came in a fresh rush, but she buried it so Stephen wouldn’t see it and worry. When she stood, she held onto the roof of the car so she wouldn’t sway.

“How are you feeling?” Stephen asked.

“I can make it.”

“You told me not to lie.”

“Okay, then. I feel terrible. But I’ll feel even worse if we sit here and the Zapheads get us. Besides, it’s only a mile or so. I can make it that far, don’t you think?”

Stephen pursed his lips, looking far too wise and mature for a boy his age. “We’ll see.”

She took a couple of hobbling steps and he ducked under her right arm to take some of her weight. At first she resisted, not wanting to seem weak and dependent, but soon she leaned into him and they fell into a rhythm, keeping on the shoulder of the highway so they wouldn’t have to weave between the occasional vehicles.

By the time they crested the hill, sweat was rolling down Rachel’s face. They stopped once for water, resting a moment in the shade of a jackknifed tractor trailer. Below was the exit ramp, with a Cracker Barrel, McDonald’s, and an Autobell car wash beside the gas station. Houses were visible along the side road, scattered across the wooded slopes. Farther ahead, the great swells of the Blue Ridge Mountains rose toward the dawn-tinted sky.

“Looks like people might be here,” Rachel said.

Stephen fanned himself with one of his comic books. “You mean Zapheads?”

“Yeah, them too.”

“Well, you know what they say. We’re not getting any younger.”

“How about McDonald’s? My treat.”

“All those burgers are yucky by now. Besides, it’s probably full of dead people.”

“All right, then. We’ll stick with junk food in plastic bags.”

“Can I have a Sprite?”

Rachel considered it. “Well, I guess you deserve a treat for taking care of me.”

“Time for a bread crumb.” Stephen ripped a page from his comic, walked over to the nearest vehicle, a rusty Toyota pick-up, and slid the paper under the windshield wiper. He shoved what was left of his comic into his backpack and zipped it, then returned and helped her to her feet.

Her leg throbbed worse than before, and the skin felt wet under the bandages. She wasn’t looking forward to the long hike down the incline. Looking at the truck, she got an idea. “Was there anybody in the truck?”

“I didn’t really look, but I didn’t see anybody.”

“Come on,” she said. “I know an easy way to get down there.”

The Toyota still had the keys in the ignition, not that they were any use. Like most survivors, in the days after the solar storms she’d tried to crank plenty of cars, only to find them all dead. The pick-up’s bed contained baskets of rotten peaches, and yellow jackets buzzed around the fruit.

“It’s a straight drive,” she said. “On old models like this, you usually don’t have power steering or brakes. All we have to do is get it rolling, and we can coast down the hill.”

“At least it’s pointed in the right direction.” Stephen didn’t sound convinced. “Can you steer around all those cars?”

“Easy. Look how spread out they are.”

“Okay, then. Let me move my bread crumb.” He plucked the ripped comic page from the Toyota’s windshield and ran it over to an SUV.

Rachel had already checked the handbrake—the truck’s driver might have abandoned the car when it lost power, heading down to the exit on foot and intending to return. Except the driver would have taken the keys under those circumstances. He’d probably mutated into a Zaphead and gone on an interstate killing spree.

“Okay, load up,” she said, tossing her backpack in the cab.

Stephen opened the passenger door and put his backpack on the floor. He climbed in the seat and looked over at her. “Well?” he said with impatience.

“These trucks don’t roll themselves. We have to push.”

“Oh.” He jumped out, ran to the back of the truck, and leaned against the tailgate. The shock absorbers squeaked as he pushed.

“Not yet,” she said. “I have to take it out of gear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Okay,” she said, after moving the gear shift to neutral. “Once it starts rolling, run and get in before it gains momentum. One, two, three!”

The truck was heavier than she’d imagined, and a fresh wetness leaked down her shin from the bite wound. She reached in to put one hand on the wheel as she leaned her shoulder into the door jamb. The truck’s tires barely budged, and she dug in her heels and pushed harder, ignoring the pain flaring in her leg. The truck gained momentum and now gravity was working for them.

She glanced back to see Stephen standing there as the truck pulled away. “Hurry! Get in.”

“Uh…Rachel?”

“What?”

He pointed down the road. Fifty yards in front of them, five figures formed an uneven line across the double lanes of the highway. The truck was picking up speed, Rachel limping alongside of it, hanging on to the driver’s-side door. “Come on, Stephen! Your comics are in here.”

That broke the spell, and Stephen raced to catch up to the truck. He yanked open his door and tumbled inside, one shoe still dragging on the asphalt. Rachel launched herself behind the steering wheel and the truck hurtled forward. She was surprised by its speed, and she worked the wheel to veer between two cars, narrowly missing the front fender of a little Nissan sedan.

The figures didn’t dodge or even really respond to the approaching truck. But Rachel already suspected they were Zapheads, and she silently berated herself for getting complacent and not paying attention to their surroundings.

“Who are they?” Stephen said.

“Guess,” she said. She tapped the brakes just to test them, and the tires grabbed at the road. She didn’t want to lose any momentum, though, so she let the truck accelerate as she cut around stalled van. The Zapheads were now thirty yards ahead, and they appeared to finally realize a hunk of rolling steel was headed their way—two men, two women, and a boy about Stephen’s age, dressed in ragged clothes.

“They’re not getting out of the way,” Stephen said, leaning forward and gripping the cracked vinyl dashboard.

Rachel instinctively pushed down on the horn, forgetting that the vehicle’s power system was fried. “Put on your seatbelt and lock the door,” she said, and Stephen complied without protest.

Instead of fleeing, the Zapheads actually headed up the road toward them.

Rachel considered driving onto the inside shoulder in an attempt to avoid them, but the grass median sloped inward to a central drainage ditch. If she lost control, the truck might roll over. And now she saw more Zapheads across the median, in the outbound lanes. The motion of the truck must have aroused them from whatever it was that Zapheads did during the day when they weren’t murdering survivors.

She had no time to pick an angle, but she couldn’t bear striking the boy. Even if he was a mutant, his condition wasn’t his fault. He was innocent.

“You’re going to hit them,” Stephen said.

She could almost hear God’s laughter in the whining of the tires. The speedometer didn’t work, but Rachel estimated they were going about thirty-five miles an hour. The Zapheads’ mouths opened as they ran toward the truck, but their voices were inaudible inside the cab.

“Hang on,” Rachel said, whipping the wheel at the last second. The right fender clipped one of the women and she tumbled onto the engine hood with a metallic dink. One of the unkempt men stared directly at Rachel, almost daring her with his golden-spotted eyes, and then the bumper and grille chewed him up and he went under the wheels. The truck bounced as it rolled over him like a fleshy speed bump.

Rachel glanced sideways at the boy’s face, just inches from the glass as she passed. The side mirror nearly slapped him across the cheek but he barely seemed to notice. When the truck rolled by, the remaining Zapheads, including the boy, took off after it. Rachel twisted the rearview mirror to confirm her hunch that the Zapheads in the opposite lanes were after them, too.

She didn’t have a gun, and with her injured leg she wouldn’t be able to run from them. The gap was widening but soon the truck would hit level ground and the next upward incline.

Stephen had turned in his seat, standing on his knees and looking through the back window. “They’re coming.”

“I know,” she said. “Got any ideas?”

“There was this really cool movie where Jackie Chan drove a car through the front of a department store.”

“Jackie Chan was a stunt man,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Well, he might be a Zaphead now. And you’re not.”

“Good point.”

She avoided the brake and let the truck max out its momentum as she took the exit. The gas station was on the left, across the intersection. She guided the truck in a straight line so it hopped up on a concrete divider, plowed through a stop sign, and rolled into the gas station’s parking lot.

“They’re coming after us,” Stephen said.

Rachel glanced in the side mirror. Dozens of Zapheads poured from the woods, staggering like refugees from a war zone. Their clothes hung around them in loose, dirty tatters. Some of them were naked, their skin as pale as grubworms in the morning light.

Some of the younger ones broke into a jog. One dark-skinned male carried a length of pipe, held aloft like a Persian general leading a charge against the Spartans. Shirtless, his muscles gleamed with sweat as his bare feet slapped the pavement. Others mimicked his enthusiasm and began jogging after the truck, some of them carrying hand weapons or tools.

“Look out!” Stephen shouted.

Rachel looked forward just in time to see the pumps looming ten feet ahead. She yanked the wheel to the right but it was too late. The left front tire struck the raised concrete island, then the truck sheared against them, popping two of the pumps loose from the ground and opening a sluggish geyser of gasoline. One of the hoses jerked free and twisted in the air like an agitated rattlesnake, spitting petroleum venom.

The impact flung Stephen forward, knocking his chin against the dashboard. Rachel jammed on the brake, the bite wound sending red rockets of pain up her leg. By the time she brought the pick-up to a halt, gas was spreading in a pool around the pumps.

“Quick, get out!” she said, frantically releasing Stephen’s seatbelt. He held his jaw in pain, a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth.

But he kicked his door open and dragged his backpack with him, not willing to abandon his comic collection even if it meant Zapheads might catch him. Rachel grabbed her own pack and followed out the passenger’s side and away from the powerful gasoline fumes.

Good thing the power’s off, or those pumps might have flooded the whole parking lot.

And good thing none of that grinding metal caused a spark.

“Nice driving,” Stephen said.

“Next time get Jackie Chan.” She grabbed Stephen’s wrist and hobbled toward the station’s shop. Only when she reached the door did she realize the lack of power was now a negative instead of a positive.

The door was automatic, opening via an electronic motion detector. And electricity was now the province of thunderclouds and nylon, not wires and switches.

“We have to break in,” she said.

“No way,’ Stephen said. “That glass is at least an inch thick. I think it’s bulletproof.”

The Zapheads must have been drawn to the populated area—perhaps this had been their home and they were operating on some sort of lingering memory or instinct. But whatever the reason, they were agitated by this sudden disruption. They had probably wiped out all the survivors in the area weeks ago, and now two humans had upset their routine and revived their need to destroy.

Because they were coming fast.

“I won’t be able to outrun them,” she said, pointing to the soaked red bandage on her leg.

“Sure, you can,” Stephen said, eyes wide with fright. “You’re Rachel.”

“No,” she said. “You need to run. As fast as you can. And don’t look back.”

Stephen was near tears. Rachel’s eyes were also stinging.

It’s the gasoline. Yeah. Right.

“I’ll distract them,” she said, pointing toward the McDonald’s restaurant. “I’ll go in there and get them to chase me while you run into the woods.”

“We need a distraction?” Stephen said, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling. “Then start a fire. That’s what that guy did back at Taylorsville, remember?”

Rachel recalled how the massive bonfires had attracted the Zapheads, creating a compelling, noisy, and colorful chaos that likely appealed to their sense of destruction. If devastation was their drug of choice, then Rachel could serve them up a hell of a happy hour.

The question was how to do it without immolating both her and the boy. She’d seen enough “dumb redneck videos” on YouTube to know that playing with gasoline and matches wasn’t the smartest move in the world. But she didn’t have time to craft a clever fuse that would offer a reasonable safety barrier.

Jackie Chan would already have this problem solved.

She dug in her backpack, tossing out cans of food and bottled juice, wondering why she’d hoarded so much while they were still in a civilized area. But that was the uncertainty of Doomsday—it wasn’t Doomsdays, plural. It was all now.

“Okay,” she said, drawing out a long wool scarf she’d filched from a department store. It was tan, accenting her chestnut eyes and dirty-blonde hair, and she’d grabbed it fantasizing about a future where fashion mattered. “Improvising here. Go dip this in the gasoline and be careful not to get it on your clothes.”

Stephen dutifully ran toward the shallow pool of fuel. Rachel dug into a side pouch until she found her Bic lighter.

Thank God for butane.

She realized it was the first time she’d thanked God for anything in weeks. If those shambling, scurrying mockeries of humankind cascading toward them were part of some divine plan, then she was perfectly willing to exercise her free will to destroy them.

Is killing only a sin if you know what you’re doing? Maybe these Zapheads are God’s truly blessed creatures, because they don’t suffer the pain of guilt. They’d nail Jesus to the cross and call it a favor, not a sacrifice they’d have to repay over centuries.

“Hurry, Stephen!” she yelled.

The nearest Zaphead was now about a hundred yards away. Two small bands of them approached from each direction of the side road, too, and Rachel realized for the first time that they now seemed to travel in groups, like pack animals.

She’d had a vague sense that their behavior was changing, but she’d been too focused on daily survival to question it. Like most “Ah-ha” moments, this one came in such a rush that she had no time to process, only react.

Stephen dragged the scarf back by holding the frayed threads of one end, inadvertently laying a thin trail of gasoline as he hurried away from the pumps.

“Good job,” she said when he returned, taking the scarf from him and laying it on the pavement. “I’m going to start calling you ‘Chan Junior.’”

“As long as you don’t call me ‘sweetie’ anymore.”

“Sorry. Just a habit from my counseling days.”

Which weren’t that long ago but were literally from another world, the world of Before. And those experiences hadn’t taught her one damn thing about setting a gas station on fire without blowing herself and a kid into a thousand pieces.

“I can’t light this until you leave,” she said, thumbing the Bic. “You might have some gasoline on your clothes.”

He sniffed his sleeve. “I don’t smell nothing.”

“Start running,” she said. “Behind the station and up the hill.”

“What if I get lost?”

The Zapheads were now close enough that Rachel could hear their strange hissing—it sounded like the spitting heart of a giant winter fireplace. “I’ll be along real soon. I just want to make sure you’re safe before I light this.”

Stephen nodded. “Maybe DeVontay will see the smoke.”

“Maybe so. Now get.”

She waited until he disappeared around the building, hoping more Zapheads weren’t descending from the surrounding hills. There was nothing she could do but hope.

And set their world on fire.

She flicked the Bic, lifted the frayed end of the scarf, and applied the flame. At first the fibers curled and shrank, and then fire spread along the length of fabric faster than she’d anticipated. She dropped the scarf and fled, wondering how big the explosion would be and how many steps she would get before—

KA-WHUUUMP.

Much of the force of the ignition blew straight into the air, lifting the metal canopy from the pump island. The windows in the front of the shop shattered inward, and the Toyota truck rolled over on its side, flames licking along the oily bottom of the engine. The force of the sudden combustion hit her in the small of the back like a fist. Rachel was thrown onto the ragged landscaping between the kerosene pump and dumpster, rolling in the sodden mulch and scratchy evergreens.

Holy hell.

She rose to her hands and knees, coughing and choking as black plumes of smoke roiled around the parking lot. She didn’t know how many pumps were yet to catch fire. She’d read somewhere—probably some wacky Web link her grandfather Franklin had emailed her—that gasoline stored in tanks beneath the surface couldn’t explode because of a lack of oxygen, but the tank openings would burn like giant flame-throwing Bic lighters until the fuel was depleted.

Rachel didn’t plan on sticking around to test the theory. She scrambled to her feet and limped up the hill in the direction Stephen had gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Well,” Franklin said. “There are really only three possibilities.”

Jorge barely listened to Franklin. He half suspected the old man’s paranoia had finally shifted from eccentricity to full-blown borderline schizophrenia. Under normal circumstances—if, say, Franklin was a fellow farmhand—Jorge would simply nod in noncommittal agreement and then avoid him whenever possible.

But here in the Blue Ridge Mountains with the human race nearly extinct, Franklin’s deranged and peculiar genius might even be an asset.

After all, there are no head doctors around to declare him a lunatic.

Willard, one of the local farmhands who had been raised in the rural Tennessee Mountains, was fond of his Friday evenings, when he’d show up with a glass jar of clear homemade liquor. He’d sing off-key about old drunks outnumbering old doctors, mangling the words into incoherent chunks of wildcat wailing and blubbering.

The last time Jorge had seen Willard, the old drunk was a crazed Zaphead who had attacked Jorge in a barn loft. And now Willard was beyond the need for doctors.

Franklin passed his pair of binoculars to Jorge. “Look down yonder,” he said.

They were sitting on a rocky outcropping, with a commanding view of the surrounding mountains and the deep valley trailing away to the foothills in the South. Jorge looked through the lenses in the direction Franklin had pointed. An oily column of smoke rose in the valley from beside a twisting gray ribbon of road.

“Probably some Zappers having a weenie roast,” Franklin said.

Jorge wasn’t that interested. Rosa and Marina wouldn’t have had time to reach the valley, even if they had managed to round up the horses they had turned into the wild. So the fire might as well have been on television for all he cared.

“What are the three?” he asked.

“What’s that?” Franklin took back the binoculars and scanned the valley again.

“The three possibilities.”

“Well, they could have been taken by the Zapheads. Or they could have been taken by the soldiers. Or they could have left on their own, for another reason.”

“There was no sign of a struggle. Rosa would have fought.”

“That’s what I figured. She seems a little feisty.”

“She’s a good wife. And a good mother.”

“Yeah. And Cathy…who the hell knows what kind of mother she is.”

“But why would they leave? They had food, shelter, and security.”

“You want to know my theory?” Franklin shifted to the left to survey the adjacent ridge. The trees at the peak had already lost their leaves and were gray-brown sticks mixed with stunted jack pines. The slopes still bore swatches of deep scarlet, pumpkin, and brilliant yellow where the autumn wind had yet to scrub the limbs clean.

Jorge was afraid of Franklin’s theory, because it might confirm some of the dark worries he harbored deep inside. But every moment of uncertainty was another moment that his family was in danger.

“You think it’s the baby?” Jorge said. He touched his pocket where the scrap of paper bore those waxy words: “He’s mad”

“You seen the Zaps on the trail. Even when they attacked us, they weren’t real serious about it.”

“You shot them. No wonder they attacked us.”

Franklin lowered the binoculars and glared at him beneath iron-gray eyebrows. “Are you on their side now? Because this is us against them, and there are a lot more of thems than uses.”

“I’m not on anybody’s side but my family’s,” Jorge said. The plume of smoke in the valley had grown large enough that it was now visible to the naked eye.

“Well, I can respect that. But don’t go running off in the heat of battle next time. If we can’t trust each other, we don’t have a chance.”

Jorge recognized both the immediate need for survival and the long-term idealism in the old man’s declaration. For all his paranoia, Franklin was ultimately an optimist—a man who had high hopes for his race’s potential but had been continually disappointed.

“If the baby caused them to leave, where would they go?”

Jorge hadn’t been as repulsed by the mutant infant as Franklin had been, but now he belatedly assigned sinister motives to its behavior. What had compelled its mother to risk her life to save it? Indeed, why had he and Franklin rescued them when they were pursued by other Zapheads? And why had Franklin even allowed the creature into the compound, given his own hatred of the Zapheads?

But it’s just a child. A strange one, but an innocent child nevertheless.

“She might have decided to take the young’un to them.” Franklin squinted up at the eastern horizon where the sun staked its claim on this side of the world. “Maybe Cathy got changed herself.”

What if Marina and Rosa changed? Could I still love them? What if I’M changing?

“You think people can still catch the sun sickness?” he asked.

“I think you can be sick on your own.” Franklin stuffed his binoculars in his pack and shouldered his rifle. “We’d best get moving. I don’t want to lose these tracks.”

In the forest, they had located three sets of footprints, one of them smaller than the others. The mud didn’t reveal a distinct direction, but it was the only clue they’d found. Franklin figured the group had followed the easiest path down the valley. Even though Rosa and the others might have had a head start of as a much as a full day, the infant would slow them down.

As Jorge followed Franklin back to the trail, he wondered again why Rosa hadn’t left a sign or message. Secrecy wasn’t one of Rosa’s traits. But then, what man really knew a woman?

Franklin took the trail in great strides, erect and alert, while Jorge often fell behind, ruminating on the horrible possibilities. His obsessive thinking was counterproductive, but he couldn’t seem to break free of the anxiety and depression. To further complicate matters, he had killed a man.

Not a Zaphead—a man.

Even though he considered the murder an act of self-defense, he had crossed into a moral territory he never knew existed. And no amount of rationalization could bring that young soldier back to life. They hadn’t even taken the time to give him a proper burial, instead dragging the corpse into the woods and covering it with leaves, where the scavengers would soon find a feast.

Jorge was so fogged by his guilt that he nearly ran into Franklin when the old man stopped suddenly.

“What is it?” Jorge said, as Franklin slowly raised his hands into the air.

“Getting old, that’s what,” Franklin muttered. “Getting too goddamned old for this.”

That’s when Jorge saw the men on each side of the trail, aiming semiautomatic weapons at them.

Jorge considered going for his rifle, and then realized if Franklin hadn’t bothered to resist, their situation was indeed grim.

“Well, well, well,” one of the soldiers said, stepping out of the concealment of the bushes. His khaki sleeves were rolled up to the three stripes displayed at his biceps. A half-smoked dead cigar was jammed in one corner of his mouth, and he spoke around it. “You must be the notorious Franklin Wheeler.”

Franklin kept his arms raised. “I didn’t know I was notorious. I would prefer ‘legendary’ or maybe ‘visionary.’”

“You can’t become a legend until you’re dead. But maybe I can help you with that.”

Jorge mimicked Franklin by lifting his arms in the air, careful not to make any rapid movements. The two young soldiers behind the sergeant were nervous and wide-eyed, the tips of their weapons shaking as they pointed them at their new prisoners.

The sergeant nodded at one of them, and the soldier stepped forward and seized Franklin’s rifle first, and then Jorge’s.

“Who’s your buddy?” the sergeant asked Franklin. “One of your prepper militia?”

“I got out of the militia business,” Franklin said. “They tended to get their asses torched by the government.”

“Now, Mr. Wheeler, I’d say we’re past all that, wouldn’t you?”

Franklin grumbled as the soldier took his backpack and searched him for weapons. “You at war with the Zaps now?”

“He’s clean, Sarge,” the soldier said to the sergeant. Jorge didn’t think the kid was any older than nineteen.

“Check the Mexican,” the sergeant commanded.

“I’m an American,” Jorge said, drawing a yellowed grin from Franklin. The soldier removed his pack and patted his sides and down his legs before stepping away and lowering his weapon again.

“So, where are you fellows off to?” Sarge said, striking a wooden match against his belt and lighting his cigar. “Deer hunting?”

“We’re looking for my wife and daughter,” Jorge said.

“Are they Zaps?”

“No, they’re Americans, too.”

One of the soldiers laughed, and Sarge shot him a menacing scowl. “Okay, smartass. You’re trespassing in a militarized zone. Under the Patriot Act, you can be confined without trial on suspicion of terrorist activity.”

“This ain’t no military zone,” Franklin said. “It’s a national park.”

“It’s the birth of a new nation, Mr. Wheeler. New laws, new boundaries. You citizens don’t know it yet, but as soon as the war’s over, we’ll set things right.”

“Christ,” Franklin said. “It’s only been six weeks since Doomsday and already the dictators and tyrants have climbed on the top of the heap like cockroaches at a garbage dump.”

Jorge didn’t care about old or new laws. He was desperate to find Rosa and Marina, and every second wasted might lower the chances of finding them. “Have you seen three women and a baby?”

The second soldier, a thin, Asian-looking man with his khaki cap turned around backwards, said in an accented voice, “I wish we’d have seen three women. I haven’t been laid since June.”

“You’re a liar, Huynh,” Sarge said. “Unless you don’t count your hand.”

“What do you want with us?” Franklin said. “We’re not any threat to you.”

“That remains to be seen,” Sarge said, stepping up to Franklin and exhaling cigar smoke into his face. “Somebody was shooting out in the woods yesterday, and it wasn’t military-grade weapons. In fact, it sounded a lot like those little peashooters you two are carrying. Pop pop pop.”

Franklin blinked away the smoke but didn’t draw back from the sergeant’s aggressive stance. “So I shot a few Zapheads. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Well, maybe I’ll put you in for the Bronze Star. But I’m more concerned about a couple of my boys that went missing.”

The sergeant moved until he was in Jorge’s face. The officer smelled of old sweat, booze, and gunpowder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No, sir.” This was no harder than ignoring the stares and taunts of the rednecks down at the feed store. Jorge had long ago learned how to hide his true feelings.

The sergeant relaxed a little at the “sir,” obviously feeling that Jorge was beneath serious consideration. But he mistook compliance for weakness, as did many of the gringos Jorge had endured—and survived—in the last few years.

“Really, Sergeant,” Franklin said. “Don’t you think we have bigger problems than whether some of your boys turned tail and ran?”

Sarge moved with such sudden ferocity that even his own men gasped and drew back. He slapped Franklin on the side of the head, driving the old man to his knees. “You didn’t respect the old laws, but you’re sure as hell going to respect the new ones!”

Jorge rushed forward to help Franklin but the sergeant put an elbow in his chest and shoved him away. The Asian soldier jammed the muzzle of his gun into Jorge’s back.

Franklin spat blood. “Let freedom ring.”

Sarge tossed away his cigar and pulled his sidearm from its holster. Jorge feared he was going to shoot Franklin, but the man twirled it by the trigger guard, gripped it by the barrel, and whipped the butt onto the crown of Franklin’s head with a loud crack.

Franklin dropped like a rock. Sarge motioned to the two soldiers. “Grab him and bring him back to the bunker.”

“Damn it, Sarge,” the Asian said. “Why couldn’t you have beaten the hell of him after we got him back to the bunker?”

“You want to be next?” Sarge’s cruel sneer was enough to spur the soldiers into action.

Apparently the new law is whatever this man says it is.

Sarge waved his pistol at Jorge, motioning him along the trail. “I got a feeling you’re not as hardheaded as Wheeler. So I suggest you get moving.”

“But my wife and daughter—”

“They’re Zaphead bait by now.”

“I can tell you where McCrone is.”

Sarge got interested in a hurry. “McCrone? How did you know his name?”

“He begged us to help him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I know better than to take on the U.S. Army.”

“Damn straight. At least somebody here remembers the Alamo.”

The army of Santa Anna had actually besieged the Alamo to suppress a revolution by unwelcome illegal immigrants from the United States, but Jorge didn’t think Sarge would appreciate the history lesson. “He said he was running away.”

“Where he is?”

Jorge looked the man in the eyes, which were smoky gray and flecked with ice blue. “I killed him.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes, studying Jorge. Then he slapped his own thigh and gurgled out a laugh. “Goddamn it, Mex, I almost believe you.”

“The other one is dead, too, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Damn.” Sarge wiped his mouth with his sleeve, annoyed and impatient. “Zapheads must have got him.”

The soldiers helped Franklin to his feet. A large red knot appeared on his skull, a trickle of blood trailing down to his ear. He was barely conscious and clearly suffering a concussion, but the soldiers propped him up and hauled him down the trail.

Sarge pushed Jorge after them. “Get moving.”

“Why don’t you let me go? I’m no use to you.”

“You’re guilty of crimes against the state. We’ve already had one breakdown, but things are different now. This time around, we’re doing it the right way.”

Jorge wondered why the sergeant didn’t kill them both on the spot. But he also believed if he resisted, he would be killed, and then he would have no hope at all of finding Rosa and Marina again.

Even a slim hope was better than none.

So he marched.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The bedroom allowed enough daylight that Campbell could see the blank faces of those gathered around him.

He was exhausted and defeated, lacking the energy to even despair. The horrors of Wilma’s death in the night were still fresh in his mind, her screams resonating off the inside of his skull.

And that can be you, too. All you have to do is stand and walk.

Campbell sat on the bed, the professor beside him. On a small bedside table were two plates of food for them, laid out much like the place settings on the obscene dining-room table. Fortunately, the food was not human flesh, but instead canned peas, raw dough piled in a sticky white lump, and a wilted carrot.

At least this bedroom was mercifully free of both the dead and the maimed. In the bedroom next door, Donnie emitted an occasional grunt of pain.

“We get a window,” the professor said. “And we get food. And we get to live. All in all, it could be a lot worse.”

Donnie’s muffled scream punctuated the statement.

Campbell ignored the fifteen or so Zapheads sitting cross-legged on the floor before them, their palms clasped. They stared up at a framed painting on the wall above the headboard. In it, Jesus held his own hands clasped in prayer, a globe of radiance around his long hair and beard. Jesus looked up to the heavens in much the same way the Zapheads gazed up at the painting—with intense adoration and solemnity.

“How did you end up here?” Campbell asked the professor.

“Just like you did, I imagine. We met Wilma on the road and she said she had food. Arnoff wanted to push on to Milepost 291, but Pamela bitched and then Donnie found out there were Zah—”

The professor caught himself and glanced at the assembly, but the Zapheads were intent on their sacred mimicry. “Donnie wanted to shoot some. For sport. He said he hadn’t had any target practice in days. I was ambivalent, and I thought Wilma was a little too eager, but I went along when Arnoff relented.”

Campbell used his fork to spear a couple of peas and shovel them into his mouth. One of the Zapheads nearest him, a granny with wispy white hair, imitated his motion and chewed air, although she must have lost her dentures long before. Campbell was no longer hungry but he forced himself to eat, knowing he’d need his strength.

At some point you’re going to run or you’re going to kill yourself.

“I got suckered by my own curiosity,” Campbell said. “When I saw the way she lived, I thought, ‘If this is what we’ve come to, then it’s stupid to even try. The human race is beat.’”

“That mangy dog of hers. Peanut.”

“It’s locked in the camper, but there’s enough food in there for weeks.”

“So how did she get you guys out here to the house?” Campbell asked. Through the window, he could see Zapheads out in the meadow. They had somehow surrounded a chicken and flapped their arms like children in imitation of its frantic wings.

“She said there were lots of supplies here. Guns and canned food and a survival shelter in the basement. That got Arnoff hooked. Just like with you, she brought us here just as it was getting dark. They were on us before we knew it.”

It felt weird to be here among them and talk about their deadly behavior while they sat as meekly as sheep. But everything since the solar storms had been weird. None of the fictional scenarios of Doomsday or any of his video games had prepared him for the reality of an extinct civilization.

Not just an extinct civilization, but a profane imitation of society rising to take its place.

“They took Arnoff’s tongue just to see how it worked,” the professor said, with a resigned equanimity. “All that yelling he did, I guess it drew their attention. They took turns playing with Donnie’s fingers, bending them and snapping them like they didn’t understand what they were for. And Pamela…”

“I don’t understand. If they are learning, where did they learn to tie ropes? Who taught them that?” Campbell bit into his carrot with an audible crunch. One of the Zapheads turned to look at him, and he quietly ground it between his molars.

The professor nodded at the Zapheads and then at the painted posture of Christ they imitated. “I believe they learned from pictures. When they…surrounded me…I had run into the other bedroom, and there were magazines and photographs all over the floor. It must have been a teenager’s rooms, because it had a lot of books. And some…uh…”

The professor lowered his voice. “Bondage porn.”

Campbell’s stomach curdled around its fresh contents. “Pamela?”

The professor removed his glasses and wiped the lenses. “I suppose.”

Campbell was glad he hadn’t gotten a good look at what had happened to her. Outside, the chicken had gotten away and now the Zapheads drifted aimlessly in the meadow.

“How did you figure out what they wanted from you?” Campbell asked.

“Same way you found out last night. When I yelled at them, they yelled some of my words right back to me. And I realized if I didn’t fight and struggle like the others had, they calmed down.”

“It’s creepy as hell when they’re standing all around you like that. I almost liked them better when they were trying to kill me. At least that, I could understand. But this…” Campbell waved at the Zapheads. Two of them in the middle waved back.

“In a strange way, I’ve come to accept it,” the professor said. “Even embrace it. I’ve always been a teacher and that’s all I really know how to do. Now here I am after the end of the world, still teaching.”

“But where does it end? Do we teach these things peace, love, and all that happy hippie horseshit? Look at them out there in the field. Like a bunch of flower children on drugs.”

“So far, all we’ve taught them is violence.”

“Because we’re afraid.”

“No wonder. I’ve seen them tear people apart with their bare hands. And enjoy it.”

The professor looked at the painting of Jesus, whose sad brown eyes seemed to reflect an understanding of the martyrdom that awaited Him. “I’ve never been a religious man, but maybe there’s a reason for all this.”

Campbell stood and stamped his foot. “No!”

Half of the Zapheads broke out of their reverie at the commotion.

“Easy, Campbell,” the professor said. “Don’t rile them up.”

“How long have you been their bitch? A week? Teaching them to eat, pray, love, and wipe after they crap, like they’re a bunch of senile patients in an old folk’s home? Excuse me if I don’t want to sign on for that.”

Campbell paced, eyeing the ten feet to the door and wondering if he could reach it before the Zapheads reacted. They were all watching him now, eyes glittering with whatever deranged fuel burned inside them. Even if he made it to the hall, he had no idea how many more would be waiting downstairs or around the house.

Campbell gave a bitter laugh. “‘Show no fear,’ Wilma said.”

“And she was right,” the professor said.

“Right,” one of the Zapheads said.

“Right,” said another, and then another.

“Don’t you see?” the professor said. “This is a chance to start over. To teach them—to program them, if you will—without all the old sins and failures.”

Campbell sat back down on the bed, its springs squeaking. He’d be sleeping here tonight. Would one of the Zapheads crawl in with him, maybe imitate the positions portrayed in the pornography? Or maybe he’d start snoring and they’d tear his throat apart to see where the noise was coming from.

Yeah, sweet dreams forever.

“They’re like children,” the professor said. “They become what you feed them, so act with care. It’s the key to your personal survival as well.”

“Nothing personal, professor, but you look like you’ve aged a hundred years since I last saw you.”

The man gave a tense smile. “I have tenure now.”

“Well, you can stay on the retirement track if you want. Me, I’d rather die.”

“Die,” said the granny, followed by several others, until the room thundered with their repetitive “Die, die, die.”

Campbell tried to shout over them and make them shut up, or at least mock a different word, but the chant continued. Campbell finally did the only thing he could think of, a way to silence them, the only option left besides actually dying.

He pressed his palms together, stuck his hands under his chin, and turned to face the painting above the bed.

Within a minute, the room had grown still and quiet again, all the Zapheads in their bizarre yoga positions with their hands once again clasped in reverence.

What the hell. Prayer works.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Well,” Franklin said. “If this is how they were wasting my money all those years, I should have cheated more on my taxes.”

Jorge was in no mood to endure the old man’s gallows humor. All he could think about was his wife and daughter out there somewhere, facing danger and uncertainty. And he was helpless.

The soldiers had marched them at least five miles through the woods, leading them to a massive outcropping of rock. Jorge had been sure the soldiers were going to shoot them there and leave them for the buzzards, especially because Franklin was cussing and taunting them every step of the way.

Instead, they were led into a narrow crevice that opened into a wider alley of rock, where a thick steel door was set into the stone and held in place with concrete. Franklin had called it “Hitler’s Hideaway” and Sarge had punched him in the stomach, and Franklin had fallen to the concrete floor and coughed and laughed for a full minute, until Sarge kicked him in the head and knocked him unconscious.

Jorge kept his mouth shut so he was largely left alone, although he took in the surroundings of cold steel walls, rusty iron girders supporting the weight of the earth above, and lockers and shelves stacked with supplies. A string of dim bulbs illuminated the long corridor, barely brighter than the lights on a Christmas tree. The passageway was lined with about twenty tiny rooms, the first holding a desk and some communications equipment that looked like it had been gutted and then smashed in frustration. Another large room with cinderblock walls was occupied by uniformed men playing cards at small tables, smoking cigarettes, or reading magazines. Most of the other rooms held twin sets of bunk beds.

It was in one of these beds that Franklin’s limp form had been deposited. Jorge had been ordered into the room, and the door was locked and bolted from the outside. The door featured a narrow grill through which he could see several feet down the hall in each direction. A little slot near the bottom served as a food access, and a metal pail on the floor was apparently intended as a toilet.

Jorge wasn’t sure how long he’d been brooding when Franklin groaned from the cramped, uncomfortable bed. The room only held one weak light that did little more than illuminate the center of the room. Jorge guessed it was powered by a solar-panel system similar to Franklin’s, although occasionally he heard a deep thrum that might have been a gasoline-powered generator. He supposed it was possible the military had shielded some equipment and gear from the sun’s effects, just as Franklin’s Faraday cage had protected his radio and batteries.

Franklin staggered to the door and yanked at the little window grill as if trying to tear it loose, although the opening was far too small for him to crawl through even if he’d been successful.

“Hey, I want to call my lawyer!” Franklin shouted down the hall. His words bounced off the concrete surfaces.

“You should save your energy,” Jorge said.

“Aw, come on, Jorge,” Franklin said. “You can’t take this shit too seriously.”

The man’s eyes fairly glistened with good humor. Jorge couldn’t understand it. But the man had no family to worry about. Maybe he was relieved to have his conflicts resolved and to be given an opportunity to serve as a martyr for his cause. After all, this tyrannical treatment confirmed everything Franklin had ever believed and preached.

“I remember something you said to me once, while we were digging potatoes.”

“Potatoes,” Franklin said. “The eyes have it.”

Jorge was worried that the man had truly gone over the edge. And here they were, confined in an eight-by-ten room where clocks no longer held sway.

“About ‘The End is Near’ sign,” Jorge said.

“What about it?”

“Take a guy walking around with a sign that says ‘The End is Near.’ Even if he turns out to be right, he’s still an asshole.”

Franklin started guffawing as if he’d never heard the saying before. He slapped his knees, then bent over and wheezed himself into a coughing fit. Finally he sat down on the little bed, still chuckling.

A commotion erupted down the corridor, shouts and blows and curses. Franklin and Jorge crowded at the window to get a look. At first they saw only a group of soldiers, clumped together and waving their arms. Then Sarge emerged from the pack, pulling a rope that was tied to a man’s hands. The man was shaggy, his gray suit hanging in shreds, most of the buttons missing from his shirt. His bearded face was covered in bruises, and blood seeped from one of his nostrils.

“Whoo-hoo,” one of the soldiers whooped. “Finally got you one, Sarge!”

“Bastards are harder to catch than a butterfly in a hurricane,” Sarge said. One of the soldiers opened the door to the room across the hall from Jorge and Franklin. Just before the man was shoved brutally into the room, he turned to face Jorge.

Glittering eyes.

“Get in there, you freak,” the sergeant screamed, releasing the rope and driving a boot into the Zaphead’s spine. The mutant whipped forward and skidded across the rough floor.

Another soldier held up a gleaming knife. “Let me see what makes him tick, Sarge.”

“Time enough for that later, dumbass. First we have to watch him and see what they’re up to.”

“Looks like a commie Russian spy to me,” Franklin said. “Or a commie U.S. spy.”

Sarge charged up to the grill, jabbing a menacing finger. Jorge backed away but Franklin stood his ground.

“You better watch your mouth, or I’ll toss you in there with that thing,” Sarge said. “We could use a little entertainment around here.” He leered in at Jorge. “Maybe we will find us a spicy little mamacita to play with.”

Jorge leaped at the door, bones clanging against the riveted steel panels. Sarge walked across the hall and slammed the door on the Zaphead.

Soon after, the lights went out, but Jorge’s mood could not have gotten any darker.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Zapheads gathered around the conflagration, drawing as close to the flames as the heat allowed.

Intense ripples of light danced across their faces, and Rachel wondered if this was a new form of sun worship, if something deep inside their beings enticed them to the act of combustion. They exhibited no reaction to pain, although smoke rose from some of their clothes as if the fabric was on the verge of igniting.

“Won’t they catch on fire?” Stephen asked. “Like the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four?”

“I hope so,” Rachel said. The sprint up the hill had opened the bite wound on her calf, and the bandage was soggy and stained with a pink excrescence of blood and pus.

“But the Human Torch doesn’t burn up. He shoots fire out of his arms.”

“That wouldn’t be so good, then.”

From their position on the hill, shielded by low brush and weeds, they could see the entire valley. Flames swarmed the gas station complex, engulfing several cars whose shoppers had probably died there during the solar storms. The thick black smoke drifted toward the west, away from them, but the smell of burning rubber and plastic was pungent.

“DeVontay will see the smoke,” Stephen said.

“Sure,” Rachel said.

“And he’ll come see what caused it.”

“Yes,” she said, although it was more likely DeVontay would avoid the area, knowing the fire would attract Zapheads.

Assuming he’s still alive.

“We’ll be able to see him if he comes down the highway,” she said.

“Following the X-Men bread crumbs!”

She ruffled his hair, noting that it was greasy. “We’re going to have to find you some shampoo soon.”

“I’m not taking no bath.”

“That’s ‘any’ bath.”

“You don’t correct DeVontay when he doesn’t talk right.”

“DeVontay’s a grown man. You’re still a child.”

“A child who helped save your life.”

“Score,” she said. “You’ve got a point.”

Rachel looked around, wondering how long it would take for the fire to spread to the other stores and then the hill. The way the wind was blowing, it might reach the trees and then grow into a wildfire.

“We need to keep moving,” Rachel said.

Stephen shot her a dubious look. “Can you even walk?”

“Of course.”

“Your backpack’s down there.”

“Yes.”

“And we don’t got no…I mean, we don’t have a map.” Stephen hugged his own backpack as if she might claim it, along with his comic book collection.

“That’s okay. We’ll stop at houses along the way and find what we need. And we don’t need a map because we’re almost there.” She pointed to the undulating ridges that rose in the northwest. “The Blue Ridge Parkway runs across those mountains. If we just keep walking, we’re bound to hit it sooner or later. Then we can find Milepost 291 and rest a bit.”

She didn’t believe it would be that simple. Nothing in After had been easy. But all that remained was to do the next right thing, to trust in the vision that her grandfather Franklin Wheeler had imparted.

She could almost hear him now: “Freedom doesn’t come without sacrifice, Rachel.”

She stood, smiling at Stephen to hide her grimace. Her leg felt as if someone had ripped open the flesh with a circular saw, packed it full of battery acid, tied it shut with barbed wire, and then poured salted lemon juice on it before applying the tip of a blow torch to seal the wound.

Rachel took a tentative step and decided that she could endure it. Their progress would be slow, but she wasn’t ready to surrender yet.

The next step, and the next.

For Chelsea. For Stephen. For Grandpa.

Even for me.

“Rachel?”

She’d been so focused on whether her leg wouldn’t betray her that she hadn’t realized she’d left Stephen behind. She turned around to find him watching the Zapheads at the gas station.

One of them, standing near the overturned and blackened hull of the Toyota pickup, reached out a hand as if to touch the fire. His shirt sleeve burst into flames and then the yellow and orange heat licked along the length of his arm.

The Zaphead turned his palm up as if curious about the strange, flickering light. It caught the full fabric of his shirt, and then his beard and hair burst into flames. Soon he was ablaze from the torso up, immolated, but he didn’t beat at the fire or retreat from the heat.

It reminded Rachel of the famous photograph of the Buddhist monk who’d set himself on fire to protest persecution in Vietnam.

Except this Zaphead wasn’t protesting.

Neither did he flee.

Instead, he seemed entirely ambivalent about the blistering and popping of his flesh.

“He looks just like the Human Torch,” Stephen whispered.

She pulled on his arm. He’d seen far too much already.

The nearest Zaphead also reached out a hand to touch the burning creature, which then stepped forward into the larger conflagration. The second one looked at her palm and the smoke rising from scorched flesh, and then she followed. So did another.

All the gathered Zapheads then walked into the fire, one by one, approaching from all sides, their bodies outlined in dark silhouette for just a moment before vanishing into the roaring heart of hell.

“Come on,” Rachel said, nearly weeping, tugging Stephen so hard they both almost tumbled over.

Stephen finally relented and she led him up the slope, disguising her limp, as the fire crackled and spat with the discovery of new fuel. The petroleum smoke changed flavor, and Rachel nearly vomited.

It smelled like barbecue.

They didn’t scream.

God, why didn’t you at least let them scream?

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Her name had been Kasey.

She didn’t know that her parents had both been attorneys—her father an intellectual properties expert who mostly worked with corporations, her mother a family lawyer and juvenile guardian ad litem who also volunteered with a non-profit legal defense agency that advocated for minority rights.

She no longer remembered that they had lived in Atlanta, and that they had been on a vacation that would take them across the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland before her farther traveled on to a conference in D.C.

Kasey had been looking forward to seeing the wild horses that strolled across the dunes. Her father had even bought a new tent and a kite, and he had promised to turn off his cell phone for three whole days.

She was eleven years old and about to enter the seventh grade, nervous because she was a little younger than her classmates. Plus Ashleigh Ostermueller had grown boobs over the summer, which meant Bradley Staley would probably like Ashleigh better than he liked Kasey.

It was Thursday and she had been sleeping in the backseat of the Nissan Pathfinder when the thing happened.

Her father must have sensed the electrical signals misfiring, no longer sending the appropriate messages from his brain to his heart. He had slowed the SUV and pulled over to the grass, looking beside him at his wife. She was already slumped against the glass when the vehicle rolled to a stop and didn’t respond to the last sentence he ever spoke.

Kasey wasn’t aware of it now, but she had awakened at the sound of her father’s voice, unbuckled her seatbelt, and became something different. If she had known she would lose her awakening sense of fashion, with increasingly frequent trips to Aeropostale and T.J. Maxx, she would have changed into different clothes. Kasey wouldn’t have been caught dead in a Hello Kitty T-shirt, because that was for kids, and she was almost a woman. Or at least a teenager.

But pride no longer bothered her, nor did fear, nor did seventh grade, Ashleigh Ostermueller, or the pungent stink of smoke in the breeze.

She didn’t understand the instinct that had compelled her to follow the ridge and find herself before a gate. The complexities of charged particles, the molecular structure of her budding body, and the delicate firing of her neurotransmitters were far beyond her. Even if she had attended college, she probably would have avoided molecular biology like the plague.

Unless, of course, Bradley Staley was taking the class.

She was aware of others behind her, following through the forest. Their hissing filled her senses and connected her in a way she would never have been able to describe in a paper for English class. But inside her skull, another word resonated over and over. “Who? Who? Who?”

The Kasey thing walked through the gate and the first thing that drew her attention was the goats. They bleated when they saw her, demanding hay from the little shed beside their pen.

She didn’t understand hunger. But she was drawn by the sound of their voices.

“Bahhhhh,” the nearest goat bleated.

The Kasey thing moved toward it. The old Kasey would have been embarrassed by her attitude, which was currently one of childlike wonder and innocent curiosity. The old Kasey had been busy learning to be cool, ignoring her parents, and manipulating the people around her to increase her social standing and—more importantly—damage the standing of her female competitors such as Ashleigh.

None of that mattered now, only this rich, new sound that resonated inside her head and drove out and replaced the repetitive “Who?”

She let the new sound sink into her throat and then she pressed her lips together and vibrated her larynx.

“Bah.”

The others of her kind fanned out into the compound, not sure where they were or what they were, only that they were.

The thing that had been Kasey would have giggled at being called a “Zaphead.” Such a pejorative term was probably on the list of phrases that would earn a trip to the guidance counselor’s office and a lecture on the social evils of bullying.

The Kasey thing pressed her lips together again and exhaled, imitating the goat. “Bah.”

The other goats shoved against the fence, begging for hay, sounding almost like crying children. “Bahhhhh! Bahhhhh!”

The Kasey-thing repeated the simple phonetic, stretching out the sound by inhaling more air and expelling it. “Bahhhhh!”

The others of her kind stopped hissing and came closer to the pen. One of them said “Bah.”

Then more of them joined in. “Bahhh! Bahhh! Bahhh!”

The old Kasey would have been horrified to find herself a part of the crowd. Fitting in was one thing, but being just like everyone else was lame.

This new Kasey, though, she didn’t care. Any more than she cared about Hello Kitty and the end of the world.

This new Kasey liked the sound, and liked the others voicing it as well, and soon the sound became a bigger sound repeated over and over and over.

“Bahhh! Bahhh! Bahhh!”

Over and over, ever After.

THE END

Look for the prequel novella After: First Light, in May 2013. The third book in the After series, After: Milepost 291, will launch in early autumn 2013. Unless the sun collapses.

About Scott Nicholson:

I’m author of more than 30 books, including The Red Church, Drummer Boy, The Harvest, and Speed Dating with the Dead. I collaborated with bestselling author J.R. Rain on Cursed, The Vampire Club, Bad Blood, and Ghost College. I’ve also written the children’s books If I Were Your Monster, Too Many Witches, Ida Claire, and Duncan the Punkin, and created the graphic novels Dirt and Grave Conditions. Connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, my blog, or my website. I am really an organic gardener, but don’t tell anyone, because they think I am a writer.

Sign up for my Tao of Boo newsletter for free books and giveaways: http://eepurl.com/tOE89

Try these other thrillers because they are good:

AFTER: FIRST LIGHT

By Scott Nicholson

The beginning of the end…

When NASA scientists detect intense solar activity, the warnings go unheeded. Soon communications fail, power goes out, and the world’s technological infrastructure collapses.

But the solar radiation has also inflicted an unpredictable change--a disruption in the impulses of the human brain. Billions die. And they are the lucky ones…

Prequel novella to the After post-apocalyptic series, with a bonus story by Joshua Simcox. at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

AFTER: THE SHOCK

By Scott Nicholson

A massive solar storm wipes out the earth’s technological infrastructure and kills billions. As the survivors struggle to adapt, they discover some among them have… change. The first book in the After series.

Learn more about it at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

McFALL

By Scott Nicholson

Too good to be true.

That’s what the residents of Barkersville say when Larkin McFall moves to their small Appalachian Mountain community. The lawyer and developer quickly gains respect as a community leader who improves the economy, supports charitable causes, and takes an interest in local government.

But not everyone is so welcoming. The McFall family has been linked to supernatural legends and odd disappearances for generations. But Larkin laughs off the stories as superstition and promises a bright new future for the town. When those who oppose McFall begin dying in mysterious and violent ways, Sheriff Frank Littlefield investigates the newcomer and discovers a man with no past and no fingerprints—and no weaknesses.

THE HOME

By Scott Nicholson

A Top 50 Kindle bestseller.

Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s past as an insane asylum. In development as a feature film.

Learn more about The Home or view it on Amazon US or Amazon UK.

MEAT CAMP

By Scott Nicholson & J.T. Warren

In a desperate attempt to save their land from tax foreclosure, Delphus Fraley and his daughter open a camp for at-risk kids, with the goal of building character through experience in the Appalachian Mountain outdoors.

But a strange infection contaminating the camp’s mess hall soon triggers a violent rampage. As the isolated camp turns into a bloodbath, camp counselor Jenny Usher first fights to save the children, and then finds she must fight to save herself.

Because this infection doesn’t just kill, it brings the dead back to life…

Adapted from Scott Nicholson’s original horror screenplay.

View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

CREATIVE SPIRIT

By Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist’s retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban’s form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Creative Spirit or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK

DISINTEGRATION

By Scott Nicholson

A Top 30 Kindle bestseller.

When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.

Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion.

But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood. And the childhood games have become deadly serious.

Learn more about the psychological thriller Disintegration or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE RED CHURCH

Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won’t stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother’s ghost.

The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

“Sacrifice is the currency of God,” McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

Learn more about the real haunted church that inspired The Red Church or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

DRUMMER BOY

Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as “The Jangling Hole,” and the wind carries a whispered name.

It’s the eve of a Civil War re-enactment, and the town of Titusville is preparing to host a staged battle. The weekend warriors aren’t aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from over.

And one misfit kid is all that stands between the town and a sinister evil force…

Learn more about Drummer Boy and the Appalachian legend that inspired the novel or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.

With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name “Judas Stone,” the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father’s disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now Julia has a head full of memories, but she doesn’t know which are real. Julia’s therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia’s body and soul….

Learn more about The Skull Ring and False Recovered Memory Syndrome or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Southern Appalachian mountains…a man’s promise to his late wife that he’d summon her spirit…a daughter whose imagination goes to dark places… and demonic evil lurking in the remote hotel’s basement, just waiting to be awoken.

Learn more about Speed Dating with the Dead and the 2008 paranormal conference and inn that inspired the novel or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

KISS ME OR DIE

By Scott Nicholson

Richard Coldiron’s first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend…and then some who aren’t so friendly.

Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he’s about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard’s nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

Now Richard doesn’t know which voice to trust. The book’s been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

Learn more about Kiss Me or Die and the six people in Richard Coldiron’s head or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

LIQUID FEAR

By Scott Nicholson

A Top 20 Kindle bestseller.

When Roland Doyle wakes up with a dead woman in his motel room, the only clue is a mysterious vial of pills bearing the label “Take one every 4 hrs or else.”

Ten years before, six people were involved in a secret pharmaceutical trial that left one of them murdered and five unable to remember what happened. Now the experiment is continuing, as Dr. Sebastian Briggs wants to finish his research into fear response and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Only by taking the mysterious pills can the survivors stave off the creeping phobias and madness that threaten to consume them. But the pills have an unexpected side effect—the survivors start remembering the terrible acts they perpetrated a decade ago. They are lured back to the Monkey House, the remote facility where the original trials took place, and Briggs has prepared it for their arrival.

Now they are trapped, they each have only one pill left, and cracks are forming in their civilized veneer. After the pills are gone, there’s only one option. “Or else.”

Read about it at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

CHRONIC FEAR

By Scott Nicholson

A Top 20 Kindle bestseller.

Chronic Fear is the second installment of the chilling Fear series, which began with the harrowing Liquid Fear. The story picks up one year after the notorious Monkey House trials, from which the tiny handful of survivors have scattered in the wind. For while the unwitting human guinea pigs are still alive, the experimental drugs to which they were subjected continue to wreak havoc on their emotional stability. World-renowned neurobiologist Dr. Alexis Morgan knows first-hand the horrors of the sadistic experiment: her husband, Mark, was one its victims. As a result, he is plagued by unpredictable bouts of rage and paranoia. Dr. Morgan’s research into the drug leads her to suspect presidential candidate and U. S. Senator Daniel Burchfield of plotting to gain control of the drug for his own purposes, a power play that is sure to result in countless casualties unless she and three Monkey House survivors can outwit the shadowy figures behind the conspiracy—if they don’t lose their own sanity first.

Read the first chapter at Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

OCTOBER GIRLS

By Scott Nicholson

Crystal doesn’t want to be a trailer-trash witch like Momma. Her best friend Bone is only too happy to escape the afterlife and help Crystal break the rules.

Then a young movie maker comes to Parson’s Ford, and he has a very special project in mind: a horror movie starring a real ghost. The movie is rolling, the creatures are stirring, and the brainwashed teenagers are ready to welcome a new star from the other side of the grave.

Learn more about the paranormal fantasy October Girls or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

CURSED

By J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson

Albert Shipway is an ordinary guy, an insurance negotiator who likes booze and women and never having to say he’s sorry.

And he thinks this is just another day, another lunch, another order of kung pao chicken. Little does he know that he’s about to meet a little old lady who knows his greatest fear. A little old lady who knows what’s hiding in his heart.

In just a matter of minutes, Albert’s life turns upside down and he enters a world where magic and evil lurk beneath the fabric of Southern California. And all his choices have brewed a perfect storm of broken hearts, broken promises, shattered families, and a couple of tiny problems. Namely, killer mice and a baby.

Albert Shipway is finally getting a chance to right some wrongs. That is, if it’s not too late.

Learn more about the urban fantasy Cursed or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

GHOST COLLEGE

By Scott Nicholson & J.R. Rain

First in a new series featuring paranormal investigators Ellen and Monty Drew. Ellen claims to possess a sixth sense but Monty, a former P.I., only believes what he can see. She views their work as a sacred mission while Monty just wants a happy wife and a paycheck.

Then the Drews are summoned to a Southern California bible college after workers report hearing mysterious voices at night. When they encounter the unhappy ghost of a young girl, Monty’s skepticism is shaken, but he resolves to help his wife free the trapped spirit. Their search uncovers the Latin phrase “Non omnis moriar”—not all of me shall die—and they learn more about the site’s history as a Catholic school destroyed by an earthquake. But a mysterious presence has plans of its own for the young ghost, and Monty and Ellen must go head to head with a Dark Master that’s had more than a century of practice in demonic deeds.

Learn more about Ghost College at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

THE VAMPIRE CLUB #1: First Bite

By J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson

A group of college students pursue their passion for vampires, but when they discover the real thing, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the undead kind. A new vampire series by the author of the Samantha Moon series and the Liquid Fear series.

View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK and look for the next book Second Sips!

BAD BLOOD

By J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson, and H.T. Night

People call him Spider. And people come to him when they have a problem. So when teenager Parker Cole approaches Spider at night school, he figures she’s just another problem waiting to happen. But then she tells him about her father, who runs a cult called Cloudland based at the foot of mystical Mount Shasta, California. And then she tells Spider about her best friend, who is now dead, her body completely drained of blood. Spider wonders if the death is the work of a fellow vampire…or if he’s now the target of a sinister game designed to lure him to Cloudland, where darker mysteries await.

View Bad Blood for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

THE HARVEST

By Scott Nicholson

It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.

The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.

A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author’s preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.

Learn more about the science fiction thriller The Harvest or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE DEAD LOVE LONGER

By Scott Nicholson

Private investigator Richard Steele must solve his most difficult case ever—his own murder—while caught between women on both sides of the grave. In a race against time as his spirit slips away, Richard confronts his many, many failings and trusts in a power beyond his understanding—love. His only weapon is faith, and he’s running out of bullets. It’s going to be a hell of a showdown.

Learn more about Transparent Lovers or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

CRIME BEAT

A novella by Scott Nicholson

Crime doesn’t pay… but neither does journalism. When John Moretz takes a job as a reporter in the Appalachian town of Sycamore Shade, a crime spree erupts and circulation increases. Then the first murder victim is found, and soon a serial killer is grabbing headlines. Moretz comes under suspicion, but he stays one step ahead of the police, his fellow reporters, and seemingly even the killer.

Learn about Crime Beat or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

BURIAL TO FOLLOW

A Novella by Scott Nicholson

When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it’s up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles… or else. Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology “Brimstone Turnpike.”

Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

FANGS IN VAIN

By Scott Nicholson

Sabrina Vickers is on a mission from God. Unfortunately, she’s not quite sure what it is.

All she knows is that her lover Luke is a soulless vampire that she’s supposed to save, the forces of evil could be approaching, and her spiritual adviser is a fallen woman who has been falling for the past few hundred years. And, of course, Sabrina has yet to master the set of angel wings God granted her.

A romantic getaway turns into a showdown that could trigger the start of Armageddon, if Sabrina can’t handle her on-the-job training. The first installment of the Sabrina Vickers series features paranormal action, humor, and romantic fun.

Read about it at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

FLOWERS

By Scott Nicholson

Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner “The Vampire Shortstop” and other tales of fantasy, such as “When You Wear These Shoes” and “In the Heart of November.” Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.

Learn more about Flowers and the award-winning “The Vampire Shortstop” or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

ASHES

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including “Homecoming,” “The Night is an Ally” and “Last Writes.” From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.

Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

THE FIRST

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction imbue these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson’s first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.

Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

ZOMBIE BITS

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-‘em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart…Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry’s “Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard.”

Learn more about Zombie Bits and see zombie art or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

CURTAINS

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes “How to Build Your Own Coffin” and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror selection “Dog Person,” as well as the psychological thrillers “Letters and Lies,” “Sewing Circle,” and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.

Learn more about Curtains: Mystery Stories or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

GATEWAY DRUG

By Scott Nicholson

After the first hit, there’s no turning back. Ten tales of horror and suspense from a bestselling author. A man learns fast cars and fast women don’t mix, even when they’re dead. A young boy discovers the terrible power of love. A rock musician will do anything for stardom. Bonus contributions from Tim Lebbon and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, as well as the afterword “One Sick Puppy.”

Learn about Gateway Drug or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK

HEAD CASES

By Scott Nicholson

Nine stories of psychological suspense and paranoid horror, featuring the first-ever appearance of “Fear Goggles.” Collected from the pages of Crimewave, The Psycho Ward, Cemetery Dance, and more, find out what happens when a writer thinks Stephen King is stealing his ideas. Bonus stories by William Meikle and John Everson.

Learn more about Head Cases for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK

MISSING PIECES

By Scott Nicholson

Ten stories of suspense, fantasy, and the supernatural, including “The Beaulahville Gospel; Jubilee,” “Floating Cathedral Song,” and “Constitution,” as well as three stories making their original appearance. View it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

THESE THINGS HAPPENED

By Scott Nicholson

It’s been a strange life. It’s been my life. Features stories, poems, and essays on relationships, romance, writing, and taking oneself far too seriously. Plus some humor. You may laugh, you may cry, you may decide you want to be a writer, too. You may hate me after if it’s over. That’s okay. You wouldn’t be the first. Learn about These Things Happened. Or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER

Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK

TOO MANY WITCHES

Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

DUNCAN THE PUNKIN

Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro

A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK

IDA CLAIRE

By Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis

Little Ida is a handful of feisty fun for her harried dad, bursting with imagination and play while Dad tries to keep up. Features 32 full-color screens. View it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

SOLOM (UK)

By Scott Nicholson

When Katy Logan and her teen daughter Jett move to the remote Southern Appalachian community of Solom, they make fun of the local stories about a horseback preacher who haunts the hills.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the Smith family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Author’s preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.

Learn more about the supernatural thrillerSolom or view it at Amazon UK

THE GORGE (UK)

By Scott Nicholson

An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain wilderness…and then THEY come out.

Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK or view the original screenplay adaptation at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

OMNIBUS EDITIONS

You can also save with the omnibus editions

Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red  Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)

Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, The Dead Love Longer, Burial to Follow, Creative Spirit, and Speed Dating With The Dead) at Amazon US or Amazon UK

Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Gateway Drug, Head Cases, and Missing Pieces)

Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Ashes, American Horror, and Curtains)

Odd Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains The First, Flowers, and Zombie Bits)

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 1

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 2

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3

Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4

Are you a writer? Please check out The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success

BONUS CHAPTER TO THE PREQUEL (MAY 2013)

AFTER: FIRST LIGHT

The sun looked like a cheese pizza that had been broiled in hell’s hottest oven.

Dr. Daniel Chien frowned at the monitor, concerned less with the rippling cheese than the rising bubbles of red sauce. Each bubble erupted with a force equaling 100 billion megatons of TNT, spewing electromagnetic radiation across the solar system. Chien was intellectually aware that the pizza was really a massive star around which Earth and the other planets revolved, but technology had reduced it to little more than a commercial-free reality-TV show.

Sir Isaac Newton nearly blinded himself staring at the sun, and I can do it from the comfort of my air-conditioned cubicle.

The images recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory were a marvel of modern technology. Not only was the space-launched observatory performing a continuous, real-time monitoring of solar activity, it used an array of solar panels as its energy source. In turn, the data allowed Chien and other researchers to study the sun’s electromagnetic fluctuations, solar wind, sunspot activity, and particle radiation.

The sublime beauty of the system had lured Chien from a faculty position at Johns Hopkins. Even as a boy in Vietnam, he’d been fascinated by the sun as the giver of life. The Earth’s precarious position at just the right orbital distance counted as something miraculous, although Chien was careful to avoid debates over science and faith. To him, wonder was wonder and did not require further complications. Let the glory hounds like Newton clog the pages of scientific history while Chien and his fellow grunt workers added to the pool of knowledge bit by bit.

But his role as a researcher didn’t diminish his appreciation of solar myth. After all, there was hardly a more apt metaphor for human hubris than Icarus flying too close to the sun and having his wings melt.

The sun, as he liked to tell his friends, was cool.

Chien still found childlike delight in the real-time images of the sun captured in a variety of spectra, available to the public via the NASA website. The array of sophisticated instruments measured multiple wavelengths and offered multiple ways to observe and measure solar phenomena. The main image was the one now commanding his attention, and although he was fully aware of the sun’s petulant temperament, he didn’t like the erratic pulsations appearing on its surface.

Somebody’s burning the pizza.

“Katherine?” he said, calling to the other on-duty researcher at the SDO’s offices in the Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Katherine Swain was several years his senior, a 20-year veteran of NASA, and a woman who held no romantic notions of the sun at all.

“Yes?” she said, in an annoyed tone, looking up from her laptop. She’d confided to Daniel that she was having “family problems,” and Daniel had projected a polite pretense of concern without pressing for details. Which meant avoiding her unless something important was happening.

“It looks like some irregular plasma activity.”

“We’re in an irregular phase,” she said, not clicking away from whatever she was working on. “The moon’s having its period.”

Much like a woman, or the moon, or any other natural object, the sun went through nearly predictable cycles of behavior. Solar cycles lasted about 11 years, and the study of radionuclides in Arctic ice had allowed researchers to map an accurate history of the sun. Although the cycles followed identifiable patterns, the general agreement was that the current cycle was among the most active on record.

“It’s not just regularly irregular,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

“Ah, here comes the big one, huh?” Katherine teased. “Guess they should have listened to you, huh?”

As a member of a commission asked to assess the nation’s vulnerability to electromagnetic pulse attack, Chien had testified before an Armed Services subcommittee. He’d warned of the impact of massive solar flares, but his cataclysmic scenarios were pushed aside for what were considered the more-relevant dangers of low-flying nuclear missiles. The military couldn’t fight the sun, and neither could it procure billions of tax dollars by provoking the administration’s fear of the sun. Besides, terrorist threats were far sexier than probability modeling.

Last year, Chien had co-authored a report that painted a grim picture of infrastructure failure on the heels of a massive solar storm, calling it “the greatest environmental disaster in human history.” Since then, Katherine and the other SDO researchers had wryly called Chien “Dr. Doom.”

Chien had stood firm in his quiet way. Besides, it really wasn’t a matter of “if.” It was a matter of “when.”

But even Chien didn’t really expect “when” to be now.

“Look at AR1654,” Chien said.

Katherine’s keys clacked as she brought up an image on her laptop screen. “It’s only an M-1,” she said. “At worst, we could get a few radio blackouts in the polar regions. No biggie.”

“But AR1654 is aligning with the Earth. That means we will be right in the path of the plasma stream if a flare erupts.”

“And it will pass right over us. That’s why we have an atmosphere, so we’re not exposed to constant radiation. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be around to have this conversation.”

Katherine, apparently satisfied with her prognosis, resumed typing. Chien watched the image on the screen for another minute, as sauce leaked from the edge of the pizza’s crust and bulged out into space in huge, curling ribbons.

Maybe I’m no different than Newton, a sensationalistic glory hound. But he died a virgin, so I’ve got him beat there.

Chien went through the rote recording of data that occupied much of his duties, but his mind wandered to Summer Hanratty, the woman he’d been dating for the last six months. He couldn’t escape the irony of her first name, and its connotation with sunny weather had fueled their initial conversation at a colleague’s party. Maybe they were getting serious.

Heating up, huh? Well, even Dr. Doom needs a little comfort in the night.

Katherine’s clipped voice interrupted his reverie. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Chien had flipped away from the satellite imagery to tables of temperature, X-rays, and magnetic energy.

“Check the Magnetogram,” she said, referring to the telescopic image that mapped the magnetic energy along the sun’s surface.

Chien summoned the proper screen, which now showed the solar pizza as a mossy tennis ball pocked with violent orange and cobalt-blue acne. The area near AR1654 showed a brilliant plume erupting from the surface.

“It will loop,” Chien said, referring to the sun’s habit of bending much of its escaped energy back into the thermonuclear maw. As turbulent as the imagery made the sun appear, most of the activity took place deep inside, where hydrogen and helium burned away at astonishing temperatures. It took light 200,000 years to emerge from the center of the sun to the surface, and from there a mere eight minutes to reach the Earth.

Chien thought he would share that little factoid with Summer when he dropped by her apartment tonight. It was the kind of romantic bon mot that would wash down well with a glass of Chablis.

“Even with a loop, it will likely shoot some electrons our way,” Katherine said.

“Should we log a report?”

One of the center’s responsibilities was to warn of potential interference with satellites and telecommunications equipment, which helped justify the $18 billion NASA budget. A caricature of a notoriously penurious Republican senator was pinned to the bulletin board near the restrooms, with a handwritten admonition: “A phone call a day keeps the hatchets away.” Providing a practical public benefit was essential to the long-term survival of the center.

“The usual,” Katherine said. “Possible disruption of regular signal transmission but no need for extraordinary measures.”

“A little static on the cell phone,” Chien said. “A little snow for the TV viewers with a dish. No Doomsday on the radar.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m thrilled. An apocalypse would be terribly inconvenient. I’ve got a hot date tonight.”

Katherine managed a rueful smile. “Wish I could say the same. Take my advice and never get married.”

Chien didn’t want to tiptoe through those conversational landmines, so he shifted back to business. The bulging projectile of the solar flare clung to the sun’s surface like a drop of water on the lip of a leaky faucet. Usually, the flare would collapse again, the charged particles of helium and hydrogen reeled back by the intense gravity. But this one kept swelling, a ragged dragon’s breath of plasma leaping into space.

Chien flipped through the suite of instruments, observing the flare at different wavelengths. “Are you seeing this, Katherine?”

“Let me get this bulletin out first.”

“I’d hold off on it for a moment. We might be upgrading.”

“We can’t upgrade. This is M-1 already.”

Chien’s mouth went dry and his heart hammered. The solar flare’s footprint grew both on the surface and in its bulge in the heliosphere. “Looking like an X.”

“Daniel, that’s serious. It means rerouting high-altitude aircraft and damage to satellites. If we send out a red alert, we’d better be right.”

“The sun doesn’t care who’s right or wrong,” he said, watching the ragged hole on the sun’s surface widen further and the plume take an immense leap.

X-class solar flares dispensed radiation that could threaten airline passengers with exposure if they were not adequately shielded by the Earth’s atmosphere. Such flares were rarely recorded, but Chien was well aware that human measurement of such phenomena was but the blink of an eye against the ancient history of the sun. No doubt thousands—perhaps millions—of massive flares had swept across the Earth in ages past, scouring the planet with radiation and scrambling its geomagnetic fields. Chien was alternately excited and frightened that he might be witness to one of them.

But Katherine was right. Issuing an X-class bulletin would set a whole range of actions in motion, affecting the telecommunications industry, defense, and air transportation. Rerouting flights alone would cost millions of dollars, not to mention throwing off flight schedules that could disrupt international travel for weeks. Any shutdown of telecommunications and satellite service could quickly run to costs in the billions as well. This was a panic button that, once pressed, could not be easily dismissed.

“You know what happens if we cry wolf,” Katherine said.

As project director, Katherine would be the scapegoat for any political fallout, but Chien would likely be drummed out as well. Sure, he could always return to university life, where notoriety was little more than a mildly eccentric selling point. But he’d likely be done in the field of government-funded research, and there wasn’t a whole lot of private-industry opportunity.

But data was data, and the numbers were screaming X all the way.

“Okay, I will give a warning of ‘possible disruption, monitoring closely,’” Katherine said. “That should keep us covered until we can analyze all the data.”

She issued the alert to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. She rated the threat a G3, a strong geomagnetic storm as measured on a scale of one to five. She logged the data and noted the time, saying to Chien, “Your shift is up. You better go play Romeo.”

“No way,” he said. “The solar cycle doesn’t peak again for 11 years, and I’m not getting any younger.”

“Your call. But take my word for it. When you get to be my age, you wish you’d had more dates with people and fewer with computers.”

The solar plume on the screen had grown to epic proportions, so much so that Chien had to zoom out on the imagery just to fit it on the screen. Even for a trained scientist, it was difficult to equate what looked like a bit of Hollywood illusion with billions of tons of solar material hurting toward the Earth at two million miles an hour. Even if the plume proved truly dangerous, the solar wind and its charged particles wouldn’t reach Earth for at least a day, maybe two.

“Something’s got me worried,” Chien said. “The SDO has only been operating for two years, and in that time we’ve had no major solar storms.”

“So?” Katherine had apparently already swallowed her own downplaying of the threat and accepted mild space disturbance as fait accompli.

“The SDO is itself a satellite. With a vicious enough solar wind, we’d lose uplinks and downlinks, as well as orientation. Worst-case scenario, we won’t be able to track the effect.”

“Well, let’s just pray it’s not a worst case, then,” Katherine said, with a wry smile. Religious references were rare in the space center.

Chien, a Taoist, was not amused, nor was he comforted.

Look for After: Milepost 291 in early autumn! Thanks for your reviews and support.

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Copyright ©2013 Scott Nicholson

Hauntedcomputer.com

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Content

Scott Nicholson
AFTER: THE ECHO
A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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BONUS CHAPTER TO THE PREQUEL (MAY 2013) AFTER: FIRST LIGHT

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