After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (13 page)

Cathy
turned to them with a beaming grin, strands of wet blonde hair plastered to her
forehead and cheeks. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What’s
Joey saying?” Rosa asked.

“He
says go in.” She shrugged as if this was a party where somebody wanted to play
charades or they would all turn into pumpkins at midnight. “The New People
can’t hear him, so they’re just jabbering up a storm. But we better do as he
says.”

“How
come he’s the boss?” Marina asked, nearly sobbing.

Cathy
gazed down at her son. “Because he’s special. Aren’t you, Little Boo Boo?” She
touched the tip of his nose and wiggled it a little, and he actually giggled.

“Special!”
he agreed, slapping at the saturated blanket that kept him attached to his
mother. “Kissy Boo Boo.”

“Boo
boo,” repeated the Zapheads, and soon the call spread to dozens and then
hundreds, to mutants who must have been out of sight on different streets or
around the perimeter of the school. Rosa wondered how many of them had gathered
in this place, and how they were staying alive. And the biggest question, why?

But
questions could wait. Right now she just wanted to be away from that insane
cacophony and the drilling rainfall. She clamped her palms over Marina’s ears and followed Cathy into the gym.

The
space was cavernous and almost completely dark, with an odor of dirty laundry,
rotted food, and a faintly metallic tinge to the air. There were a few specks
of light Rosa recognized as Zaphead eyes, although there couldn’t have been
more than a dozen of the mutants in the building. Rain drummed against the roof
in a musical rhythm, but above the roar rose a whispered sibilance, like an
audience secretly gossiping while pretending to watch a play.

“New
People talk,” Joey said, and then Rosa realized what the sound was:
conversation.

“Other
people, Momma,” Marina said, with evident relief. “
Humans
.”

As
bad as it is, at least we won’t have to face it alone.
With that thought, she realized she’d stopped
including Cathy as one of “them.” Cathy had slipped over the edge, a devoted
mother to the point of losing touch with reality. In a way, Rosa envied her.
Living in a strange fairy tale was much easier than struggling in a world that
had changed so much it was no longer fit for human life.

Although
the double doors remained open, none of the Zapheads followed them in. Rosa wondered if this was some sort of sacred place to them. But Joey had entered, at his
own insistence, and none of the Zapheads tried to stop him. The Zaphead with
the severed hand stood at the door, still holding a rifle, and the Zaphead with
the bloody military cap waited beside him.

That’s
what they are doing: waiting.

Scraps
and fragments of phrases came to Rosa, mostly in English, although a few were
in Spanish as well as in one or two in languages she didn’t recognize. As her
eyes adjusted to the dimness, she made out several small groups scattered about
the spacious basketball court, whose lacquered wood caught the faint daylight
leaking through the high windows. In each group was a pair of glittering
orbs—belonging to a Zaphead.

“They’re
little babies, too,” Marina said. “The Zapheads brought people here to take
care of their babies.”

Marina
sounded hopeful, as if humans might serve a useful
purpose that would keep them alive. As with the Jews and the others persecuted
in the Holocaust, if the captors could squeeze labor from them first, death
could always wait a little while. It wasn’t like either the victims or the
executioners were in much of a hurry, at least not in the beginning.

But
those adults gathered around each infant didn’t do much speaking. All the
voices in the gym were high and thin, echoing off the cinder-block walls and
the rolled-up rows of spectator seating. The phrases weren’t much different
than those uttered by Joey: “Here now we are here,” “New People talk like Old,”
and “
Ve ahora ir aquí
.” Almost nonsensical, yet suggesting serious
intent. But the syllabic sequences were more complex, the articulation more
elaborate, than anything Rosa had heard from the Zapheads.

“The
babies are all talking,” Cathy said.

“We
are not babies,” Joey said, with a chilling clarity that was all the more
startling because of the childlike voice. He no longer twisted and contorted in
his mother’s arms. Instead, he lay still and watched them with narrow eyes. Rosa could have sworn the mutant was sizing her up, judging her intelligence.

“Of
course you are, Boo,” Cathy said.

“We
are New People,” Joey insisted. “
Gente nueva. De nouvelles personnes. Neue
Leute.”

Rosa
recognized the Spanish, and the last two sounded like
French and German. As far as she knew, Joey hadn’t heard either of those
languages spoken since they’d met at Franklin Wheeler’s compound. But what
sounded like scraps of those languages meandered into the various conversations
around the gym. As if all the babies were learning them at the same time.

In
public school in Tennessee, Marina had been discouraged from speaking Spanish
during classes. As a result, other children were deprived of the ability to
learn a second language, at least until the educational system required it of
them and quantified their ability to grasp it as a letter grade on a report
card. But Zapheads had no such strictures, apparently. All the different words,
phrases, and languages flowed into a seamless and seemingly random hubbub.

“This
is a wonderful,” Cathy said, apparently adopting the adjective as a
one-size-fits-all acceptance of her personal experience. “Babies learning to
talk.”

“We
are not learning,” Joey said. “We are already talking. We just don’t know what
already we know.”

“Then
why are we here?” Rosa asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“We
are New People,” Joey said. “You are my people.”

“But
we are not Zap—we are not New People.”

“
Usted
habla espańol
.” The richly accented, well-enunciated sentence was
utterly astonishing coming from that tiny mouth.

“
Si
,”
Marina said. Always an eager learner and bright student, she thought now she
could help as a teacher. Her enthusiasm crushed Rosa’s spirit.

“
Tomamos
su
espańoly luego lo llevamos,”
Joey said.

“What
did he say?” Marina asked Rosa. Although she was fluent in Spanish, she was
actually better at English, since Jorge had frowned upon her use of Spanish
around the house. He insisted that they be Americans, or at least his idea of
what that meant. Now Rosa was grateful for the limitation, because she didn’t
want Marina to know.

But
Joey must have understood her confusion, because he translated it into English
for her: “We take your Spanish and then we take the rest of you.”

CHAPTER
TWELVE

The
flapping of tin was like the cry of a rusty bird.

With
the wind whipping, slapping brown leaves from the trees, Jorge Jiminez had
difficulty judging the direction of the sound. But with those black clouds
boiling in, he’d need to find shelter soon. Since parting from Franklin Wheeler
weeks ago, he’d holed up in abandoned houses at night, searching for Rosa and
Marina during the day. Even though sunset was still hours away, he couldn’t
afford to get wet. While he could probably find a change of clothes in a dusty
closet, he wasn’t sure he could endure entering yet one more house where the
corpses had set up permanent residence.

He
guessed he was at least ten miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway boundary, because
the houses had become more frequent, most of them seasonal cabins perched
precariously on steep slopes. The farmsteads offered better foraging because
the cabins often held bare cupboards, even though they were less likely to be
occupied by either the living or the dead—or that third kind known as the
Zapheads.

The
creaking noise likely signaled an old outbuilding, probably a barn or tool
shed. Since he had a satchel of canned goods, he could skip the risk of
entering a house. Aside from the rogue military unit patrolling the area, other
survivors could be barricaded with firearms, ready to blow away anything that
moved. Franklin had been right about one thing: the human race was farther away
from joining hands and singing “Give Peace a Chance” than it had ever been.

So
an outbuilding sounded good. He could use some rest, and the yellow blister on
his big toe wouldn’t complain much, either. Every moment he wasn’t moving might
be putting more distance between him and his wife and daughter. But he had no
idea where they were—they could be a hundred yards away, or a hundred miles.
He’d instinctively moved downhill, figuring they followed the path of least
resistance. The valleys opened up before him, golden brown with autumn,
although winter’s gray showed itself here and there like the hairs in an aging
man’s beard.

He
didn’t even want to think of winter, or of Rosa and Marina fighting the harsh
elements. Those left couldn’t afford to think of the future. There was only
today. There was only now, and the hope of shelter.

He
stepped from the forest to discover a sagging stitch of fencing. Beyond the
barbed wire was a hay field, the weeds towering over the grass, the prickly,
purple knobs of thistles bending in the wind. His former boss would have been
horrified at the condition of the field, sending his migrant labor out with
tractors and weed-eaters to whip them into productivity. Jorge suspected the
old asshole would have loved to whip his workers as well, but even white, rural
Tennessee landowners had become victims of twenty-first century civility.

Of
course, Wilcox and the rest of the farm’s occupants had dropped dead with one
massive stroke of the sun, leaving only Jorge and his family to pick up the
pieces. But after surviving an attack by mutants, they sought the safety of the
mountains, where they’d met Franklin. But that journey had left them divided,
and now all that remained was…

The
shed.

It
could have once been a chicken coop, or perhaps a place to store silage and
hay. It leaned to leeward as if the coming winter might be its last, its
weathered plank siding warped and cracked. The structure offered dubious
sanctuary, but the first fat drops of rain decided it for Jorge. He navigated
the fence and darted toward the shed, grateful it was too cold now for the
copperheads and rattlers that had populated Wilcox’s fields.

By
the time he reached the sagging door and ripped free the bent sprig of wire that
held it fastened, the heavens had let loose, drilling silver fusillades at the
earth as if dispensing whatever retribution remained after the sun had vent its
wrath. Jorge ducked inside to the hammering of hailstones against the tin roof,
dust and chaff filling his nostrils and clinging to his sweat.

The
interior was dark, with only a couple of high openings illuminating a loft
above. Jorge ditched his satchel and was just shucking his jacket, intending to
hang it on a nail to dry, when the woman spoke over the rainfall.

“Don’t
move if you like your skull in one piece.”

He
glanced up to the loft, where a shadow separated itself from the larger
darkness. A bolt of lightning photographed her: fortyish, a wide-brimmed straw
hat topping a heart-shaped face, the gray-black rod of a shotgun barrel
protruding before her.

“I’m
unarmed,” he said.

“Like
I believe that? You’d have to be crazy to wander around Zaphead country without
some heavy ordnance.”

“They
only attack when provoked.” Jorge’s throat was dry with tension. He was tired
of people pointing guns at him.

“I
must be provoking the holy hell out of them, then, because I’ve killed at least
a dozen.” From her silhouette, Jorge judged her to be maybe five-two or five-three,
probably a hundred and eighty pounds. Not frail in the least. Her words were
disembodied in the disorienting half-light. “O’ course, some of them might have
been humans. I didn’t ask.”

“How
do you know
I’m
human?”

“Because
you haven’t attacked me yet. And you’re talking. And you just barely got enough
sense to come in out of the rain.”

“Have
you seen any of them lately?”

“No,
but I haven’t been looking. You got any food?”

“Some
cans of beans, fish, and soup.” Jorge started to reach into his satchel.

The
gun barrel glinted with movement. “Uh-uh-uh. Don’t move so fast.”

“I
told you I didn’t have a gun.”

“Just
ease that bag off your shoulder and lay it there in the floor.”

Jorge
could barely hear her over the drumming rain. He obeyed and stood waiting, the
chaff sticking to his neck and causing an itch. She shifted and then scooted a
wooden ladder over the lip of the loft. She’d obviously climbed up and then
pulled the ladder after her.