After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (14 page)

“Smart,”
he said.

“What’s
that?” she said, as she swung around to put a foot on the top rung and balanced
her rifle in one hand.

“The
Zapheads have no way to get up there and grab you.”

“Unless
the bastards learned how to fly. The way they’re changing, I wouldn’t put it
past them.”

She
descended the ladder with a grace that belied her bulk. One of Marina’s favorite movies was Disney’s “Fantasia,” and one segment featured hippopotamuses
performing a ballet. Jorge was reminded of the animated dance as the woman
perched on one foot in mid-air, grabbed the next rung with her free hand, and
took another step down. At no time did the pump shotgun’s aim seem to waver
from his chest.

“What
do you mean, ‘changing’?” he asked her. He and Franklin had arrived at the same
conclusion, which was why Jorge traveled unarmed. Neither of them had been able
to articulate the difference in Zaphead behavior, except that when they had
stopped fighting back, the Zapheads ignored them. Considering that the woman’s
gun seemed like an extra appendage on her body, she likely hadn’t reached the
same conclusion.

She
bent over his bag and rooted through the contents, spilling cans on the
straw-covered dirt floor. “They’re ganging up. And we’re just getting more and
more scattered.”

“Are
they near here?”

She
didn’t answer, instead pulling out a gas lantern Jorge had found in a garage.
“Well, well, well. Let there be light. You got any matches?”

“There’s
a lighter in the satchel.” Jorge relaxed a little as her attention shifted from
her gun to the lantern. After lighting it, she twisted a knob and the flame
leaped higher with a soft hiss mirroring that of the rainfall.

With
the shed illuminated, Jorge could make out a row of farm equipment, including
riding lawn mowers, harrow discs, plows, fertilizer spreaders and hay
balers—all equipment he had operated while working for Mr. Wilcox on a
Tennessee farm. Sacks of grain were piled high on pallets, their corners
worried free by rodents. The woman had apparently arranged bales of hay into a
little hut where she slept in the loft. Judging by the litter on the floor,
she’d been here a while.

“You’re
one of them there Hispanics, huh?” she said, squinting as if her eyesight was
poor.

“I’m
from Mexico, but I am an American now.”

“Countries
don’t matter no more. There’s human country and there’s Zaphead country, and
that’s all you need to know.” She picked up a can and read the label. “Pintos.
I ain’t had a warm meal in I don’t know how long. Been afraid to build a
campfire. Might burn the place down. And those Zappers sure do like fire.”

She
dug a can opener from his satchel and opened the can of beans, then pulled a
Swiss army knife from the breast pocket of her baggy plaid shirt. Thumbing out
a spoon from the multi-functional tool, she scooped up some beans and shoved them
into her mouth, chewing noisily. She motioned with the utensil. “Sit down and
eat.”

“You’re
not going to shoot me?”

“Haven’t
made up my mind yet. What’s your name?”

“Jorge
Jiminez.” He sat on the opposite side of the lantern from her, the door at his
back. He still had the option of making a run for it, but he didn’t think she
was as menacing as she pretended. Up close, her face looked broad and merry,
her eyes bright enough to diminish the impact of the wrinkles around them. Her
light-brown hair was streaked with gray and tied back in a ponytail.

“I’m
Wanda. Wanda Eisenstein.” She spoke around a mouthful of food, smacking her
lips without any pretense of manners. “Took back my maiden name when my husband
got zapped. Can’t really blame a gal for not wanting to be associated with
something like that.”

“I
have a wife and child,” Jorge said. “I’m looking for them.”

She
punched a hole in the top of a can of beans and rolled it toward him, as if the
supplies were hers and she was being hospitable toward a guest. “Better eat.
Got to keep your strength up these days.”

“I
ate a couple of hours ago.”

She
cocked her head. “You hear that?”

“Rain.
And some hail.”

“Thunder,
too. It’s like June and January mashed together and got drunk. I bet that sun
stuff messed up the weather just like it messed up people and animals and
cars.”

“And
people were worried about global warming.” Jorge didn’t understand the science
of it but he hadn’t evaded the arguments on the Wilcox farm, where the word
“liberals” was pronounced with so much hatred that it was more than just a
curse. Politics in America were so emotional, he’d almost preferred the sedate
corruption of his home country.

“People
are dumbasses. They always worry about the wrong things.”

“Many
of them no longer have to worry.”

“So
when was the last time you saw your folks? They didn’t turn Zap, did they? I’d
blow some steel pellets in their brains if they did that.”

“No,
they were fine. We were at a camp—” Jorge realized he wanted to protect Franklin’s secret, not that he ever imagined he’d wind up returning there. “We were in the
mountains and got separated. Another woman was with them. She…she had a baby.”

Wanda
wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “Awful terrible, to raise a baby in this
mess.”

“The
baby was infected. Changed by the sun.”

“Oh,
Lordy mercy.” She flung the empty can over her shoulder and it bounced off the
wooden wall. She wiped her spoon on the leg of her jeans, folded up the knife,
and returned it to her pocket. “You shoulda killed that thing on sight.”

“It
was her baby. It’s hard to explain. All I could wonder was that if it had been
my Marina, what would I have done? I would have protected her with all my
heart.”

Wanda
nodded. “I reckon. I never had no kids myself. My Joe was firing blanks all
those years. Used to make me sad, but now I thank the Lord I didn’t bring
anybody into the world to face all this.”

She
removed the shotgun from her lap and laid it aside, evidently trusting him now.
The rain had eased so that it made a musical patter on the tin above. The storm
had scrubbed the air clean, and the shed was almost cozy. Jorge allowed himself
to relax, and fatigue seeped into his muscles as if a switch had been flipped.

“So
you’re wandering all over the place trying to find them, huh?” Wanda asked.
“How long since you lost them?”

“Six
weeks.”

“Hate
to say it, but they’re probably dead now.”

Jorge
nodded, pain stinging his eyes. That truth had danced around the back of his
brain for days, but he refused to nourish it, hoping it would wither and fade
in the dark. “I think the baby led them away,” he said, realizing how foolish
it sounded. “Like it was commanding them.”

She
snorted a chuckle that held no humor. “They’re getting smarter, that’s for
sure. But what’s that baby gonna do if they don’t obey? Squirt green poop out
of its butt?”

“Like
you said, the Zapheads are gathering into groups. I haven’t seen any alone for
days. There are usually at least three of them together, sometimes more.”

“Oh,
I can do you way better than that.” She belched with a sigh of satisfaction. “I
can show you a whole gosh darn city of them.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

“We’ve
got to be getting close,” Lt. Hilyard said, checking the compass on his
wristwatch.

DeVontay
wasn’t sure about that. They’d found an old tool shed near the parkway where
they’d passed most of a rainstorm, waiting for the weather to break, and then
decided to go ahead and spend the night there. So they were at least a day
behind Rachel now, assuming they were headed in the right direction. The trails
broadened and became more developed and formal, and soon they found other signs
of park maintenance, and two hours after sunrise they came upon the parkway
itself.

A
ranger station near an overlook was abandoned, its windows smashed and the door
kicked in, with papers strewn around. A vending machine lay on its side, and
they collected handfuls of candy bars and packs of processed orange crackers.
The restrooms were foul and flyblown, but DeVontay treated himself to a toilet
seat after carefully wiping it down with paper towels. Hilyard found the keys
to a park service truck and gave the ignition a try, but the engine didn’t
yield so much as a hopeful click.

Several
vehicles parked at the overlook had corpses locked into their seats, their
mildewed eye sockets afforded a permanent view of the ridges rolling toward the
east like the gray waves of the ocean. Stephen and DeVontay sat at a picnic
table to divvy up the snacks.

“Maybe
we should just start our own little compound,” Campbell said. “We could fix up
that office, board the windows, and be able to see anybody coming a mile away.
We’ve got enough ammo to protect ourselves.”

“No
good,” Hilyard said. “Shipley’s unit could come in with a grenade launcher and
have the place smashed to toothpicks in thirty seconds. And we’d pretty much be
beef stew.”

“Not
to mention how easily the Zapheads could surround it,” DeVontay said. “Sure, we
could shoot them, but if they came in packs like we saw down in the valley,
they’d eat all our bullets and keep coming.”

“No
Zaps up here,” Campbell said. “Haven’t seen any since the night Rachel left.
Maybe they’re smart enough to head downhill where it’s warm while we’re getting
colder by the hour. I say we wait it out.”

“We
have to find Rachel,” Stephen said. He’d taken off his backpack and was sitting
on it, staring out across the mountains.

“She’s
probably dead, kid,” Campbell said. He leaned into the front window of one of
the abandoned cars and waved at the corpse belted behind the steering wheel.

“Don’t
say that,” DeVontay said.

“Well,
it’s probably true. We’ve just been chasing dreams and smoke for weeks. Who’s
to say this Wheelerville even exists?”

“It’s
something,” Hilyard said. “Better to be moving toward a goal than walking in
circles or sitting around waiting for the vultures to drop.”

Campbell
shook his head in disgust. “Haven’t you guys
forgotten what she is now?”

“She’s
Rachel,” Stephen said. “We have to help her like she helped us.”

Campbell
tried the door of the car and it opened with a creak.
He buried his nose in the crook of his elbow to ward against the smell as he
reached across the driver and checked the glove box. He came out with a
pamphlet that he unfolded and quoted: “‘The Blue Ridge Parkway is America’s most-traveled scenic roadway, stretching for four-hundred-and-sixty-nine miles
across rugged mountains and pastoral landscapes, providing recreational
opportunities for all ages.’” He tossed the pamphlet into the driver’s
putrefying lap and yelled into the back seat. “Hear that, kids? Fun for the
whole family!”

Stephen
drew his arms around his body, knotting himself into a protective hunch and
staring at the ground. The sight made DeVontay’s blood boil. He and Rachel had
worked hard to bring the boy back from a state of near catatonia after they’d
discovered him trapped in a hotel room with his dead mother, and Campbell was undoing their progress.

But
Campbell had already grown bored with his taunting of the corpses. He walked
to the front of the car, where the concrete lip of the overlook gave way to a
tumbling fall of boulders, briars, and scrub brush. The drop had to be at least
three hundred feet, but Campbell perched on one leg, spread out both arms, and
leaned forward as if flying. “I’m the king of the world!”

DeVontay
wanted to play out the rest of the movie
Titanic
and push the asshole
over the edge. But that would only damage Stephen more. If DeVontay was selling
the message of hope and unity, that meant working together, as much as Campbell was getting on his nerves.

Hilyard,
who leaned against the scenic attraction’s wooden sign—
Thunder Ridge
Overlook, Elevation 4,360 Feet—
and studied the map, called Stephen’s name.
The boy gave him a morose stare, but he sauntered over when Hilyard gave him a
“Come here” nod.

As Campbell checked the doors of a Honda C-RV, DeVontay joined the others. Hilyard passed the
frayed map to Stephen and pointed to a spot on the wiggly blue line that marked
the parkway’s track across the mountains of North Carolina. A bleary star of blue
ink marked Rachel’s best guess of the Wheelerville compound’s location. “Here
we are. Near Milepost 289. Two miles west and we reach our marker. See?”

Stephen
ran a dirty index finger along the blue line. “This way?”

“Yeah.”
Hilyard lifted his head to stare toward the southeast. “So, based on the map
and the position of the sun, can you tell me which town down there is burning?”

DeVontay
was so absorbed in Campbell’s antics he’d scarcely had time to study the
horizon. The haze that gave the Blue Ridge its name was barely evident, and he
guessed the view stretched about two hundred miles. A thin thread of black
smoke wended up from a pocket of hills in a distant valley.