After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (18 page)

“I’m
not your pack mule,” Franklin said.

The
soldier took a deep, final draw off his cigarette and flicked the butt to the
ground as he exhaled a tumbling pillar of smoke. “Look, I’m not trying to be an
asshole, but we’re going to have to come to a meeting of the minds. I’ve got
the guns, so that means I have the upper hand for now. It’s nothing personal. I
even kind of admire you in a way. But the longer we stand here and play out a
little power struggle, the more likely both of us end up dead.”

Franklin
nodded. “Fair enough. But if it looks like you’re
taking me back to the bunker, the struggle is for real.”

The
soldier nodded back. “Fair enough. My name’s Kruetzman. From Idaho.”

“For
real? I didn’t know people actually came from Idaho.”

“A
lot fewer of them now.”

“A
lot more Zapheads, though.”

Kreutzman
stuck his 9mm in a hip holster and collected his backpack. Franklin relaxed a
little.
Who am I trying to kid? I’m not ready to die quite yet. The end of
the world is just getting interesting.

“Okay,
let’s see this legendary compound of yours,” the soldier said.

“How
can I be sure you’re not a plant? I show you the compound, you kill me and
boot-scoot back to your unit and sound the alarm. Then Sarge’s boys come wipe
out whoever else is there and torch the place.”

Kreutzman
considered a moment, and then shucked Franklin’s rifle from his shoulder and
returned it. “If you don’t like what goes down, you’ll have a fighting chance.”

Franklin
figured he wouldn’t get a much better commitment of
trust than the ability to shoot the guy in the back. But he was reluctant to
let more people into his circle, which was already larger than he’d ever
imagined. As he’d told Rachel, there was strength in numbers, though. And if worse
came to worst, better to have somebody trained in the art of combat.

“
Worse
comes to worst,” hell. I thought I had imagined the worst, but the Big Zap went
beyond anything I could ever dream up. Even if I was asleep, I wouldn’t believe
it.

But
this was the hand they’d been dealt. The Zaps had all the aces up their sleeves
and God held the jokers, and he was playing with house money anyway. None of
them deserved to be spared the effects of the solar storms, but here they were,
making the best of it. Maybe it wasn’t great, but no creature ever asked to be
born, they just got squirted out slimy and squealing into the world and told to
deal with it or get out of the way for the next one.

“This
way,” Franklin said, heading uphill through the woods. The sky had taken on a
wintry gray above the skeletal talons of bare branches. Each day since the end,
Franklin had carefully marked the days on a calendar and he was pretty sure
today was the seventh of November. But if he had awakened from a coma and found
himself in the mountain’s chilly, damp environs, he would have sworn it was
nearly Christmas.

I
don’t know if Santa’s making his rounds or not this year, but one thing’s for
sure: there won’t be a whole lot of Thanksgiving.

He
was struck by an absurd image of a manger scene featuring Zapheads gathered
around a glittery-eyed little savior, and he drove it from his mind by thinking
of Rachel. Which reminded him. “How did you hear about my granddaughter?”

“We
ran into a couple of soldiers from a different unit. They were stationed at Ft. Bragg, and ended up in a shitstorm of Zaps in Taylorsville. Half the town burned down
around them, and only a handful of them got out. They met some civilian
survivors there, and one of them was apparently your granddaughter. Some guy
dimed out the directions to your compound, but it was the same vague bullshit
we already had. But now the legend’s built up so everybody thinks you’ve got a
fifty-room marble castle with an indoor swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and bowling
alley where naked island girls bring you drinks with little paper umbrellas in
them.”

Franklin
chuckled. “Yeah, keep on looking for that one. What
else did they say about her?”

“One
of the soldiers said she was hot, but considering the competition these days,
that don’t mean much. And, nothing personal, if she shares your genetic code,
I’m betting against it.”

“I
built the place for her. Sure, I got off on the image of the grizzled old
hermit delivering manifestos from a hidden cave, but I didn’t see much point in
just pissing my days away. It had to matter.” He waved vaguely at the entire
world and the vault of heaven that stretched beyond comprehension. “
This
has to matter.”

“I
wouldn’t waste much time on philosophy,” Kreutzman said. “There’s dead, and
there’s Zap, and there’s whatever we are. And I’ve got a feeling the first two
are going to be around a lot longer than us.”

“Zap
activity’s been way down the last few weeks,” Franklin said. Despite his
meandering route up the slopes, the compound was only three hundred yards away
now. He’d have to decide how to handle Kreutzman soon. “If Sarge wasn’t sending
out patrols to stir them up, we might even be able to get through the winter in
peace. Buy some time to figure out the next move, and who knows? Maybe the Zaps
will freeze off in the cold.”

“Sarge
has already figured out the next move. All-out war. Genocide. As he
says,”—Kreutzman shifted into a parody of Sgt. Shipley’s gruff bluster—“‘You’re
either with us or against us.’”

“That’s
real comforting. Bad enough that the human race is on its last legs without us
killing ourselves off. I swear, sometimes I think the human race is determined
to be its own extinction event.”

Kreutzman
lowered his voice and said, “Might not be up to us.”

Franklin
turned in the direction Kreutzman was staring, along
a western ridge where high pines shaded the forest floor. Shapes moved in the
near darkness, lesser shadows that stood out among the scabbed bark and mossy
boulders.

Kreutzman
glanced at Franklin and his eyes widened at the rifle pointed at his chest.

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

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

The
first shot came from a copse of high white pines somewhere to their left.

Campbell
was bringing up the rear, staring at the tips of his
boots as they churned up mud on the animal path. He was tired and almost
drowsing on his feet. The explosion of the gunshot was so jarring after the
long silence of the forest that at first Campbell thought the thunderstorms had
returned.

But
when the bark erupted six inches in front of his face, sending a thin sliver of
wood into his cheek, he knew he’d gotten way luckier than he deserved. He
dropped to the ground even as Hilyard issued the command. Campbell rolled onto
his side, trying to maneuver his rifle off his shoulder, but the strap was
tangled around his elbow. He braced for impact as he wriggled toward a pile of
deadfall where three rotten trees collected moss.

“Are
you hit?” Hilyard asked.

Campbell
wiped at his face and his hand came away bloody, but
the flesh was in one piece. “I’m good,” he said, appalled that the words had
almost squeaked out of his mouth. For all his bluster of the last few days, he
was still chickenshit at the core. Hilyard was right—he’d gotten complacent
from days of downtime and the notion that Zaps had migrated from the mountains.

“Stay
down,” DeVontay called to Stephen, who was huddled into a ball near a rock
cleft barely big enough to shield a house cat. DeVontay was out in the open,
but he found a shallow gulley and got busy squirming into it as if trying to
tunnel his way to China.

Hilyard
took cover behind the trunk of a thick maple, looking around to make sure they
weren’t surrounded. “Shooter at ten o’clock,” Hilyard said.

“What
the hell does that mean?” Campbell yelled back.

Hilyard
gave an exasperated expression, as if to sigh “
Civilians
,” and pointed
toward the pines.

“Could
have just said ‘Up in the pines.’” Campbell knew he was talking too fast and
loud, but he couldn’t help it. He finally wrestled his rifle free, but he was
afraid to stick his head up and aim. Not that he knew what he was aiming
at
.

“Think
there’s only one of them?” DeVontay called.

“No
way to tell,” Hilyard said. “I don’t think he’s from my unit, or we’d probably
all be dead by now.”

“So,
what do we do?” Campbell asked. “Just wait here until dark and try to sneak
away?”

He
didn’t like that prospect, because sunset was at least two hours away, and
maybe the theory of the Zapheads was wrong and they were crawling all over the
place.

“Keep
your eyes open and make sure none of them sneak up on us from below,” Hilyard
said. “DeVontay, squeeze off a round to serve as cover for me so I can work my
way uphill.”

“I
can’t shoot for shit.”

“Doesn’t
matter. Just make a boom. Whoever it is will duck.”

DeVontay
fired a shot and Hilyard dashed to the next tree.
Great
, Campbell thought.
At this rate, five years and ten thousand bullets from now, problem
solved.

But
he shifted his gaze away from Hilyard’s slow advance, monitoring the forest
behind them. The tree trunks were silver and black, the shadows thick between
them. The laurel and fern offered plenty of hiding places for a sniper. Maybe
Hilyard had walked them right into a trap.
So much for military genius.

But
what if it was Hilyard’s old outfit? Why would they want to kill him and the
other two when Hilyard was their real target?

Campbell
lodged the butt of his rifle against his shoulder and
sighted down the barrel. If he took out Hilyard for them, they’d probably let
the rest live. Hell, they might even give him a reward, buddy up and invite
them back to their bunker. Sure, Hilyard had said they were all psychos now,
but that’s just what Hilyard
would
say, wasn’t it?

Maybe
Hilyard was the real problem. That made sense. He could have gone all brass
tacks on the unit, following orders given before the Big Zap. Orders that
didn’t mean shit in After. Men like Hilyard couldn’t throw off two decades of
indoctrination that easily, even in a catastrophe. If anything, they’d get more
conservative and by the book, because that was how they were trained to deal
with emergencies.

And
the unit would have rightfully mutinied and tossed him out on his ass. And
maybe Hilyard drafted him and DeVontay as new recruits to help him take back
the bunker. All that talk about Wheelerville was just a chance to regroup, pull
in some more warm bodies, and have a base to launch a counterattack. And that
battle was sure to end in lots of bloodshed on both sides, at a time when the
human race already had the odds stacked against it.

When
you think about it that way, I’m doing all of us a favor. One bullet in the
back, and I can be a hero.

He
even went as far as putting his finger on the trigger. But he couldn’t do it.
Killing a man was hard enough when it was a stranger a great distance away.
Even killing Zapheads wasn’t a walk in the park.

Ah, hell with it. Maybe somebody else will shoot him.

Then he saw movement below, in a clearing where
blackberry briars and poison oak vines tangled together in a reddish-brown
snarl. He scooted lower so the top of his head was concealed, peering through a
gap between two logs. “DeVontay,” Campbell called in a whisper. “Behind you.”

DeVontay rolled over, pushing his backpack in front of
his face as if the nylon sack and its contents would stop a bullet. His rifle
barrel slid out and quivered.

“See him?” Campbell said. “Down there in the briar
patch.”

“Can’t see nothing. Only got one eye, remember?”

“Don’t talk too much.” Hilyard was now fifty feet up
the slope, crawling on his hands and knees. “Makes it easier for them to
pinpoint your location.”

Great. At least they can’t call in air support and
Napalm our asses.

“So, are you going to shoot or not?” Campbell said.

“I don’t know who that is. Might be Rachel, for all I
know.”

Stephen sat up. “Don’t shoot Rachel!” he wailed.

A man’s head appeared above the vines and briars. In
the slanted shadows of evening, Campbell couldn’t be sure of the man’s dress,
but he had a crewcut. That was evidence enough for him. He squeezed off a shot.

The man ducked back into the scrub. Campbell put a
finger in his ear and tried to rub away the ringing.
Missed by a mile.

“So there’s at least two of them,” DeVontay said.
“We’ve still got them outnumbered.”

“We were outnumbered when there was only one of them,”
Campbell said. “Must be Army or he would have yelled at us to stop shooting.”