After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (16 page)

So
when he heard the whisper of leaves and the crack of a branch beyond the
camouflaged walls of his compound, his first thought was “
Wildlife
.” He
ran a no-kill operation, drawing milk from the goats and eggs from the
chickens, but he’d need extra protein in winter, which meant deer meat. He
wished he’d mastered the crossbow, but the complex contraptions seemed like
more trouble than they were worth. That was the type of weapon that
skinny-legged men in tights should use, not a wild-bearded mountain man. True,
nobody was around to stereotype him, but self-image was important.

Even
though he wasn’t ready to hunt, it wouldn’t hurt to monitor the deer population
and behavior. No complacency allowed. And if any of Sarge’s soldiers were out
there, well, they’d likely walk right past his compound. They knew he was
somewhere within a fifty-mile radius of their bunker, but exploring several
hundred miles of rough, raw Blue Ridge wilderness was a little different than
looking for a battleship from an airplane.

Franklin
came to a crevice in the fence where he could nudge
aside some dead branches and peer through the chain links. A shadow moved
between the trees maybe fifty yards away.

Despite
his earlier resolve, his instinct was to raise the rifle and sight down the
barrel.

If
it’s got sparkly eyes, shoot it.

The
figure shifted and came briefly into view. It was human, all right, or at least
human-shaped.

He
managed only a glimpse of clothing, but it wasn’t military camouflage or khaki.
He focused through the rifle’s telescopic sight. The late-afternoon sun threw
long, slanting shadows from the nearly bare trees, and the forest was etched
with black lines. He couldn’t be sure whether the person was moving closer to
the compound.

What
if it’s Jorge?

Franklin
didn’t believe the man would return without his
family. The two of them had escaped from Sarge’s unit and teamed up with two
other survivors. During a Zaphead attack that killed several soldiers and their
new companions, Franklin had discovered that Zapheads wouldn’t attack unless
provoked. The behavioral change suggested humans had a chance to survive
despite the much greater numbers of Zapheads.

Still,
even survivors brought risk. He’d already seen how Sarge’s unit had turned
violent and barbaric. Franklin was never a big believer in law and order,
preferring personal responsibility as the guiding principle, but if the
government’s trained soldiers couldn’t even hold the chain of command, what
hope was there that civilians could work together without killing each other?

Keep
walking. Whether you’re a Zap or a human, I don’t need the drama.

His
scope tracked across a brown eye.
Was that a mutant spark, or a speck of
sunlight?

The
figure stepped into a clearing, a column of golden light pouring down. Franklin didn’t want to believe it. She was supposed to be dead.

Rachel?

He
almost called out to his granddaughter, a surge of joy rushing through him, the
first he’d experienced since the cataclysm. But what if she wasn’t alone? What
if she had been followed?

He ran
across the compound to the concealed gate, hoping the goats didn’t see him and
bleat for grain. He removed the chain and slipped quietly into the forest.

Franklin
didn’t approach Rachel directly. Instead he eased
down the slope and away from the compound. The forest was crisscrossed with
animal paths of varying widths, many of them narrow threads of mud. Franklin had spread a thick layer of leaves around the camp’s entrance to conceal any
footprints, so he wasn’t worried about any intruders marching right up through
the front door.

He
estimated the pace of her progress and circled around so she was between him
and the compound. Satisfied that no one was following—either Zaphead or
human—he approached her from behind, hoping she wasn’t armed.

If
she’s gotten this far and lived this long, she’s probably developed some
survival skills. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of them.

But
Franklin couldn’t help feeling a bit of pride. Of all the Wheelers, she had
the most similar temperament and constitution to him, although her youthful
optimism had yet to be tempered by the years and the many fools that would
plague her. She was the only one he could trust with the compound’s location,
and after nearly four months, here she was. She’d even correctly translated the
series of stones he’d stacked near the Milepost 291 sign, pointing the
direction of his home.

Now
it would be her home, too.

As
he crept up on her, alert to any movement around them, he couldn’t help
noticing she had changed. She wore a bulky tan coat to ward off the cold, but
she moved with stilted awkwardness. Her brown hair hung across her shoulders in
uneven, oily strands. Her hands were empty, although she carried a canvas
satchel that dangled from one shoulder by a leather strap. Now that he could
see her face, she looked much older than her twenty-five years.

So
much older that he was no longer sure this was Rachel.

She
didn’t appear to be wandering, though. She moved with purpose, her head up and
alert. She was looking for something.

And
then her hand went to her face and slid up her cheek. She tugged at her right
earlobe. It was an unconscious gesture, and one of Rachel’s habits since
infancy. Even while nursing, she would grip her ear with her tiny fingers.

He
stepped from behind the tree. “Rachel!”

She
turned and glared at him. Like an animal. Her eyes flashed golden and red like
the heart of a volcano.

The
hell?

But
the illusion passed and it was just his beloved granddaughter, haggard, cheeks
streaked with dirt, and dark wedges under her eyes, but beautiful nonetheless.

She
held out her arms to him.

Franklin
grinned, an unfamiliar expression. He took three big
strides toward her and stopped. “Rachel?”

She
remained motionless, her face blank. No recognition in her eyes.

At
least they weren’t sparking.

But
she didn’t look
right
.

If
only she would speak.

Or
smile.

Or
blink.

Then
he realized she wasn’t looking at his face. She was looking at the rifle in his
arms.

He
rested it against a tree and lifted his hands as if to say, “
Just playing it
safe
.”

And
then she smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds, the dawn
of a whole new day, a radiance that warmed instead of burned or destroyed.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Her
grandfather’s compound wasn’t quite like she’d pictured it.

For
one thing, it was far more ramshackle and cluttered. Rachel expected a tidy,
efficient cluster of small buildings, with stone walls and modern luxuries.
Instead, the place looked cobbled together out of scrap lumber and baling wire,
and the garden and animal pens were closer to mud holes than carefully arrayed
landscape. The only obvious nod to the Twenty-First Century was the solar panel
attached to the slanting tin roof of an outbuilding. Chickens roosted on the
little wooden pen that housed several goats, their manure streaking the boards
with white and gray. The discord of the setting made her uneasy, despite Franklin’s attentiveness and affection.

They
sat beneath a tree at an upended wooden cable spool that served as a table. She
wasn’t hungry, but she ate some of the pumpkin soup anyway. At least it was
warm, and Franklin was eager to care for her. She’d told him about her escape
from Charlotte in the immediate aftermath of the storms, the encounter with the
troops in Taylorsville, and DeVontay’s serving as a decoy so she and Stephen
could escape. She skipped the part about the farmhouse and the change she’d
undergone.

“Have
you heard from the rest of the family?” Franklin asked.

“Nothing.
I suspect they’re all dead.” Rachel should have felt some remorse for her
mother’s loss, but everybody had lost people close to them. And she didn’t know
how to feel about those in her life who might be alive, dead, or changed. They
were like actors from an old movie seen late at night—floating memories whose
faces she could barely picture.

“Yeah,
I guess we’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea.” Franklin dug a piece
of cornbread out of a cast iron skillet and offered it to her, but she shook
her head.

“Thank
you for trusting me enough to tell me about this place.”

“I
knew you’d make it,” he said, spooning his own soup with a steady motion as he
slurped and talked. “If anybody could beat the odds, it’s you. Besides, I
didn’t want to end up one of those lonely old bunker coots who drinks his own
urine for twenty years.”

She
smiled. She was relieved the others of her kind hadn’t followed. She’d finally
figured out that their proximity not only agitated her but also caused her eyes
to glint and spark. That was why she’d lost it back in the camp with the group.
She hadn’t wanted to kill her companions. She had
needed
to kill them.

But
since she was alone, she could control her behavior. And the longer she was
away from the others—
New People, that’s what they call themselves—
the
more
human she felt. She could almost forget what she was.

Almost.

“Who
are these people you’re traveling with?” Franklin asked. “Charlotte’s a long
way from here.”

“I’ve
been with people at different times. Some of them are organized, but there are
also bands of psychos who take what they want.”

“Oh,
yeah, I know about those.” Franklin put his soup bowl to his mouth and slurped
at it. Juice ran down the salt-and-pepper wires of his beard. “Me and this
other man got captured by soldiers who want to establish a new government with
their sergeant as King, President, Czar, and High Priest. We barely got away.
The way I see it, they’re a bigger threat to me than the Zapheads are.”

Rachel
winced at the word that now seemed so crude and childish. “Zapheads?”

“Yeah.
The muties. The ones who turned during the storms. Isn’t that what they called
them in the big cities? It was all over the news.”

“Sure,
Grandpa, I know what you mean. The word just sounds so…I don’t know.”

“Politically
incorrect? Fuck, yeah. They don’t have rights, they don’t have feelings, and
they don’t get a special name so they can feel good about themselves. They’re
standing between us and the life we want to rebuild.”

Rachel
had to be very careful here. “So what’s the goal? Do you just want to hide out
in this compound until it’s all over?”

“We’ll
worry about tomorrow when it gets here.
If
it gets here. But I’m
wondering one thing. How did you make it a hundred fifty miles on foot without
a weapon?”

“I’ve
killed. I had to, early on. Then I got smarter and started evading them.”

Franklin
crammed the cornbread in his mouth and small yellow
crumbs flew out as he spoke. “What about the people you were traveling with?
Did you have any showdowns with the Zaps?”

“The
cities and highways were bad. I’d guess maybe only one in a thousand survived
the storms. A lot of bodies are out there rotting.” With those odds, she should
have felt lucky to be alive, but she wasn’t sure how alive she was anymore.

“Sounds
about right,” Franklin said. “From what I can tell, the Zapheads outnumber us a
hundred to one. I suspect that’s a worldwide rate. My ham radio was shielded so
I made contact with a few people on the waves, but now every bandwidth is dark.
I don’t know if those folks died, their batteries lost power, or the Big Zap
did something to the atmosphere. That probably means no government, no army,
and no cavalry to ride in and put the pieces back together.”

“I
thought you didn’t
want
the pieces to fit back together. That’s the
point of this compound, isn’t it?”

“‘Wheelerville.’
That’s the name of the place. Pretty lame, if it’s just me, but we’re likely to
have others at some point.”

Rachel
tensed. “Others?”

“That
man I was telling you about, the one who escaped with me. We got caught in a
battle between some soldiers and Zaps, and he probably saved my life. He went
to look for his family. And if he finds them, he might bring them back, assuming
there’s nothing better out there.”

“So
much for your loner image, Grandpa.” She pushed her bowl away and pulled her
coat more tightly around her. The air was chilly and the sky foreboding, the
clouds like clumps of wet ash.

“Well,
we might need numbers to make it. Sarge—that’s Sgt. Shipley, according to the
name stitched on his pocket—runs a military goon squad of maybe thirty-five men
or so intent on taking over the world. And since I’m right on their border, I’m
probably one of the first to go.”