After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (20 page)

No
bodies are lying in the streets. Even if scavengers had eaten them, bones would
remain.

The
Zapheads ascended the three porch steps, clinging to the rail to maintain
balance, and one of them walked into the door, bumping hard into it, and
staggering backward as if surprised to discover it was solid.

“Watch
this,” Wanda whispered, laying her shotgun on the pebbled tar of the roof and
folding her elbows across the parapet as if waiting to be entertained.

A
second Zaphead grabbed the doorknob. Instead of twisting it, the mutant yanked
backward, losing her grip and falling into the one directly behind her. The
first one bumped face-first into the door again, and the third one moved to the
window and slid her hands over the glass as if expecting it to part like water.
If the sight of the haggard creatures hadn’t been so chilling, Jorge would have
been reminded of American slapstick comedy as they banged and clawed at the
house’s entrances.

Then
they turned toward one another and huddled, appearing to have some kind of
conversation with sounds instead of words. The second mutant grasped the
doorknob again, wriggling it up and down. Then she turned the knob as if by
accident and pushed it open. The three of them entered the house.

“They’ve
figured out doors,” Jorge said, wondering what else they had learned in the
weeks since he’d observed their behavior.

“Yeah,
it takes them a while, but they can get into things now,” Wanda said. “I’ve
seen them in cars, stores, churches, and even the police station. Sometimes
they just smash the windows if that’s the only way in. But that’s why I quit
coming in to town. Too risky, so I started raiding houses on the outskirts.”

“Is
that why you were staying in a barn? Because houses are no longer safe?”

“Part
of the reason. Keep watching.”

The
first Zaphead, a short gray-haired woman, came onto the porch dragging a
bundled sheet. At first Jorge thought the Zaphead was gathering food, but the
sheet bulged with ungainly swells. Then an arm flopped out from a fold in the
fabric. The meat was slick with decomposition, but it was clearly a human limb.
Jorge was hardened by the things he’d witnessed since August, but still his
stomach churned and a bolt of acidic bile sluiced up his throat. He fought it
back down, wishing he had a drink of water.

The
Zaphead knelt and unpeeled the sheet, revealing the corpse of a child maybe five
or six years old. The body had decayed enough that Jorge couldn’t tell the
gender, but the pajamas were a faded pink. The Zaphead scooped up the dead
child and tucked it over her shoulder like a sack of chicken feed, retracing
her route across the lawn and onto the street.

“Jesus
Christ,” Jorge said.

“They’ve
been gathering bodies all over town.” Wanda rolled into a sitting position, her
back against the parapet as she looked out at the mountains on the opposite
horizon. As if to cleanse her eyes of the sight they’d just endured.

“I’ve
seen them carry off the dead, but those were fresh ones. They also carry their
own kind. I never dreamed they’d be gathering the older corpses. I don’t
believe they’re eating them—I’m not sure they eat
anything
—but what are
they doing with them?”

“Never
followed them to see. This is the first time I’ve been to town in three weeks.
Since then, it looks like five hundred more of them have shown up.”

Jorge
was about to look away when the other two Zapheads came out of the house. They
carried a body between them, one holding the feet and the other holding the
wrists. This corpse was a little larger than the first, but still
heartbreakingly small. The corpse’s head lolled down so that her long black
hair brushed the ground. She was wearing eyeglasses that slipped off and fell
to the ground. The Zaphead bearing the weight of the upper torso stepped on
them with a bare foot, crushing them. The grisly ensemble continued down the
street without pausing.

“It’s
not just the dead,” Wanda said, fishing a can of sardines out of a jacket
pocket. She twisted the metal ring and reeled back the top, then tilted the can
to her mouth and slurped at the juice. The strong odor of the oily fish
triggered Jorge’s nausea again, and he put one hand over his mouth. Wanda
pulled out a piece of fish, held it up above her mouth, and took it like a
SeaWorld seal being rewarded for performing a trick.

“Not
just the dead?” Jorge’s head reeled just as much as his stomach. He’d come to
accept the Zapheads as violent killers whose sole purpose was to destroy any
living thing that crossed their paths, but here they were acting communally and
working toward some sort of unknown goal.

“They’ve
collected some live folks, too.”

She
was about to shove another sardine in her mouth, but Jorge grabbed her wrist.
“Live folks?”

“Yeah.
Sometimes they walk them in, like prisoners. But sometimes they have to carry
them. Because the people don’t want to go, of course.”

“You’ve
seen this and did nothing to stop it? To save those people?”

Wanda
shook from his grip and shoved the fish in her mouth, chewing with a loud
smacking sound and speaking around her food. “Heroes don’t last long these
days.”

He
wondered about the Zapheads’ range and how far they would carry bodies. It was
possible Shay and Robertson—the daughter and father who had been killed while
traveling with Jorge and Franklin—had ended up in Newton. Jorge was struck with
a horrible thought. What if Rosa and Marina were here?

He
crawled across the roof to the metal ladder that provided access from the back
of the building.

“Where
are you going?” Wanda called.

“To
find out where the bodies go.”

Wanda
jammed a final handful of fish into her mouth, licked her palm, and wiped the
hand on her pants. She gathered her shotgun and said, “All right, then. Wait
up. You need somebody that knows their way around town.”

“I
thought you were more interested in saving yourself.”

“Oh,
I will, if it comes to that. In the meantime, might as well amuse myself.”

After
they descended to the ground, Wanda ran her finger along the dusty window of an
abandoned truck. She traced out a rough map of the town, featuring lines
crisscrossed in a grid. “There’s only four main roads in and out, and they
curve like crazy because of the hills.” She drew an X between two of the lines.
“That’s the courthouse, that building with the dome. We’re here, three streets
over.”

“Has
anyone fought the Zapheads here? An organized attack?”

“I
used to hear gunshots once in a while, but you remember what I said about
heroes. Sure haven’t seen any Army or National Guard. The county jail is locked
and bolted, and the hospital is full of Zapheads. There just ain’t anyplace
left where a group could hole up and defend themselves.”

“What
about schools? Their cafeterias would have enough food for a small group of
survivors.”

“The
elementary school burned down. The high school’s on the back end of town, on
the other side of the courthouse. There’s a wastewater treatment plant by the
river. It doesn’t have any windows and the property is fenced in. Heck, there’s
even an animal shelter a mile out of town. Plenty of good places to barricade
and make a go of it, assuming you had enough food.”

“I
made deliveries myself. In Mexico. You soon discover the best routes for
everything. Since you drove these routes, you know all the shortcuts. Show me
around, please. That is all I ask, and then you can leave.”

“You
sure about that? Can’t you picture your skinny little butt being dragged down
the street by the freaks?”

“I
am looking for my family. Until I am sure they aren’t here, I stay. And once I
know for sure, I go to the next town. And the next.”

Wanda
nodded and looked around the industrial lot. “Okay. I got nothing better to do
for the rest of the day. And then I’m back to the sticks. But if we come across
any food, I got dibs.”

“Fair
enough.”

They
crept out the gate and around the back alley, keeping to the side streets and
moving from car to car, from garage to shed, and from Dumpster to alcove. They
saw a few Zapheads moving in small groups, but they didn’t appear to be on the
hunt. One group was carrying a collection of dead bodies, “housekeeping,” as
Wanda called it. She pointed out the main landmarks of Newton, using the
courthouse’s dome as the orienting hub.

They
gradually worked their way closer to the center of town. Jorge wondered if even
the mere presence of Wanda’s gun would somehow give them away, as if the threat
of violence was something Zapheads could sense. After all, the Zapheads had
stopped attacking him and Franklin once they quit fighting back. If the mutants
were truly interested in destroying the human race, they’d passed up a good
opportunity to mark two more off the list.

“There’s
the hospital,” Wanda whispered. They’d taken cover behind a pickup truck,
parked along a street where no Zapheads were evident. The hospital was an
inelegant, boxy stack of bricks with metal framing around the windows, what
Jorge understood to be mid-century construction. The sliding doors to the
emergency room were parted, and an ambulance filled the bay just outside it.
Jorge wondered whether the final patient had changed during the solar storms,
or if the driver had collapsed for the final time at the wheel. Either way, the
diagnosis was grim.

“I
don’t see anyone moving,” Jorge responded.

“They
cleaned it out last week. Took them a couple of days. I reckon it was filled
with the first wave of people affected. You know, back when nobody knew what
was going on.”

Jorge
wasn’t interested in a closer look. Without any activity, the structure offered
little hope of finding Rosa and Marina. “Maybe we should follow them and see
where they are taking the bodies. If they are holding any survivors captive, it
seems those people would be in the same place.”

“Assuming
there’s any rhyme or reason to their shenanigans. For all we know, they might
just like to play with dead things, like kids poking at roadkill with a stick.”

Something
clattered to the ground behind them, and they both turned. A metal sign
announcing a real-estate sale had blown to the ground.

“That
was a little loud,” Wanda said.

As
if to support her statement, a cluster of four Zapheads came around the corner
of the intersection, moving between cars and glancing around with those blazing
eyes.

“Gosh
darn it to hell,” Wanda whispered.

The
Zapheads fanned out onto both sidewalks, murmuring as if to themselves. Since
Jorge couldn’t be sure how they communicated, he didn’t think waiting it out
was the best move. They could easily be cut off. And even though Jorge believed
the Zapheads wouldn’t hurt them if they didn’t fight back, the theory weighed a
little differently when the threat was closing in and multiplied by the dozens.

“That
way,” Wanda said, pointing toward the hospital and the narrow street beyond it.

“Don’t
shoot unless you have to,” Jorge said.

“I
only have five shells in the tube. That’s just enough to piss them off.”

“How
fast can you run?”

She
flashed him a yellowish grin. “As fast as it takes.”

“Go.”

She
broke into an ungainly trot, slowed by the weight of her twelve-gauge. Jorge waited
a beat, monitoring the Zapheads’ response. He half expected them to break into
a graceful lope like a pack of feral wolves, but the nearest one stopped at the
sight of her. The mutant was male, just a few inches over five feet, bald, and
wearing the dirty blue uniform of a laborer. One foot was bare, and the other
sported a leather boot with loose, frayed shoelaces trailing out behind.

The
mutant didn’t attempt to chase Wanda. Instead, he tilted his head back and
quite clearly said, “Old People.”

 Not
in any tone of alarm, but more as if stating a fact.

The
other Zapheads quickly mimicked it, and soon the call spread to other streets.
No chance of outrunning them now, not with Zapheads all around.

But
he wasn’t going to abandon Wanda, not after she’d risked her life to help him.
He broke from cover and dashed after her, trusting her knowledge of the town’s
streets. She avoided the hospital parking lot, which was jammed with dusty
vehicles but offered no long-term hiding places. She started back the way they
had come, but then changed direction, and seconds later, Jorge saw Zapheads
coming that way.

A
row of medical facilities, doctor’s offices, and clinics lined the adjacent
street, and they looked as empty and lifeless as the hospital. At one point,
Wanda looked back at him, but he waved her forward. He was already catching up
to her, and he didn’t want to waste breath.

The
Zapheads didn’t appear to be in any hurry to capture them, and certainly their
behavior was less aggressive than during Jorge’s previous encounters. They
acted like they had all the time in the world and were secure in their
strategic and numerical advantages, as well as their physical superiority. They
reminded Jorge of the men on the Wilcox farm where he’d worked who would hunt
deer in a group, knowing that even if they missed out on meat, they’d still
have plenty of beer to drink afterward.