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

By
the time Campbell caught up to them, the horse had decided to follow, and the
second horse was still tethered to its tree, nibbling on a patch of gray moss.
DeVontay freed it, boosted Rachel astride its back, and then lifted Stephen up
behind her. “It’s slow going now, but you may as well ride while you can.”

The
group followed Hilyard, whose footfalls scuffled leaves as he headed toward his
camp.

They
didn’t notice the three Zapheads watching them from a dark crevice in the
granite boulders.

CHAPTER
THREE

Lt.
Hilyard’s camp was a thick stand of tree branches built against a sloping sheet
of gray granite.

Rachel
sat before the campfire, her hands bound in front of her. The skin of her
wrists had rubbed raw almost to the point of bleeding, but she wasn’t going to
beg for release. The best thing now was to act normal, to pretend she was the
same as she had been before.

The
trouble was she couldn’t quite remember what that was like.

As
evening approached and the shadows of the trees merged into one solid wall of
darkness, the others gathered closely around the fire, welcoming its heat. With
November, the nights grew long and cold, and the higher elevations made for a
harsher climate. Rachel wondered if her grandfather had been unwise to build
his survival compound in the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but he’d always
insisted that being off the beaten path “will keep tourists away.”

Are
you out there, Grandpa? Are you still waiting for me like you said you would?

Will
you still love me if I’m a Zap—

But
she couldn’t finish that thought. She wasn’t a mutant. She felt perfectly
normal.

So
she worked her fingers into the tin can of mealy substance—the lieutenant and
DeVontay wouldn’t let her have a utensil—and shoved as much into her mouth as
she could stomach. She wasn’t hungry, but she understood the need to keep her
body nourished. DeVontay was standing watch near where the horses were tethered
about fifty yards away. The others mostly ignored her, although Stephen
occasionally glanced at her, wary and exhausted.

“Aren’t
you worried about the fire?” Campbell said to the lieutenant, finishing off his
MRE. “Somebody might see the smoke.”

“If
you use dry wood, it’s not bad,” Hilyard said. “Even if someone noticed the
smoke in the treetops, it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the source.
And it will burn out before dark.”

The
lieutenant held up his own can of military food and said, “Besides, this stuff
is bad enough when it’s warm. You don’t want to go cold turkey.”

Stephen
peered down into his own can. “Is this turkey?”

“Maybe
vulture, if you’re lucky.” Seeing Stephen’s face curdle, he added, “Just
kidding, son. That’s Grade-A American pork right there.”

“Glad
you had some food,” Campbell said. “We haven’t scored anything for two days.”

“What
are you people doing up this way? Seems like you’d stay in the valley and head
south for the winter. If it’s good enough for the birds, it’s good enough for
civilians.”

“I
don’t think the birds are flying south this year,” Campbell said. “The zap
knocked out their directional instincts. I’ve seen geese flying in twos and
threes, no pattern, and they don’t seem to know where they’re going. Last week,
I saw a seagull. And we’re five hundred miles from the coast. I’ll bet other
migratory animals are knocked off kilter as well. I saw a show on the Discovery
Channel that said gray whales migrate up to 12,000 miles in a year. Bet they’re
turning circles now.”

“Makes
sense. Most of what I know about EMP comes from nuclear weapons research they
taught us at West Point. But they didn’t teach us a damn thing about Zapheads.”

“What’s
EMP?” Stephen asked, licking his spoon.

“Electromagnetic
pulse,” the lieutenant said. “A burst of energy. In our case, the sun is like a
big nuclear bomb that decided to go off on its own.”

“My
mom told me about nuclear,” the boy said. “She said it was going to kill us all
one day.”

The
boy stared morosely into the fire at the memory of his mother. Rachel’s heart
lurched at the sight. She couldn’t comfort the boy. Not with her hands bound.
Not when they were treating her like a prisoner. Or worse, like a wild animal.

If
she sat here long enough and behaved—like a
human
—then maybe they’d
release her. That might take days. The tears had worked pretty well. Maybe more
of those, if necessary. She surreptitiously wriggled her wrists to loosen the
leather strap.

“Your
mother might be right,” Campbell said to Stephen. “I met this professor who
said four thousand nuclear power plants are melting down.”

“Yeah,”
Hilyard said. “If the Zaps don’t get us, we can look forward to a slow death
from cancer.”

“That’s
horrible,” Rachel said. “Don’t scare the boy any more than you already have.”

“He
needs to deal with reality,” Campbell said. “This isn’t a Boy Scout hike. This
is survival of the fittest, and if you bury your head in the mud, you’re not
going to make it.”

Rachel
smirked at him. “DeVontay wouldn’t say that.”

Campbell
’s jealousy flickered and shifted to anger as he
jerked to his feet. “Well, your boyfriend hasn’t done such a good job of it.
Where was he when you were dying of blood poisoning from that dog bite? Who
saved you from the Zapheads at the farmhouse? Which one of us almost got
Stephen killed down in the valley?”

“Easy
now,” Hilyard said. “We’re on the same team here.”

At
least for the moment.
Rachel shot a
cool glare at Campbell, and then motioned to Stephen with her head. “Come over
here, honey.”

The
boy’s eyes brimmed with tears, and he sniffed wetly. “You…I don’t know who you
are anymore.”

“I’m
Rachel. And I told you I’d be here for you all the way to Mi’ssippi where we’d
find your dad.”

Stephen
flung his tin can into the fire, sending sparks wafting up in a wild dance. His
lower lip trembled as he spoke. “My daddy’s dead. Quit lying.”

“We
don’t know that.”

“Either
dead, or he’s one of them. Just like you.”

The
rage flared but she suppressed it. Campbell and Hilyard watched her with
narrowed eyes. “Stephen. Look at me.”

He
snorted some snot back up his nose and ignored her for a moment. But he must
have considered the love and support that After would offer him on his own and
decided Rachel was better than nothing. When he finally turned to her, she
fought down a surge of victory.

The
boy is mine.

But
he looked past her, to the edge of the forest, where DeVontay emerged carrying the
rifle that Hilyard finally trusted them enough to load. “Did I miss the party?”
he asked.

“Plenty
of fun left for all,” Hilyard said. “A laugh a minute.”

“Your
watch,” DeVontay said to Campbell, holding out the weapon. “There’s a big oak
trunk scorched by lightning that makes a pretty good lookout perch.”

Campbell
snatched the rifle away and gave a mock salute. “Aye
aye, Captain.” He glared at Rachel as he left the camp. “I wish I’d left you at
the farmhouse. You’d be queen of the Zaps by now.”

“What’s
his problem?” DeVontay asked.

“That
he’s not you,” Rachel said.

Stephen
dashed to DeVontay and gave him a tight hug around the waist. DeVontay tugged
the boy’s baseball cap and chuckled with false cheer. “Hey, Little Man. What’s
got you so down?”

“I
don’t want to be here anymore.”

“We
won’t be here long, but we need to rest. And Lt. Hilyard was nice enough to
share his camp with us.”

“That’s
not what he means,” Rachel said. “He wants to go back to the way it was
before.”

That
sounded reasonable. That sounded like the school counselor she’d been in her
previous life. That sounded like something Rachel would say.

“We
might have scared him a little bit,” Hilyard said. “I’m sorry, son. I’m not
used to children. I’m career Army. I forget what the civilian world’s like.”

“I
think we all have,” DeVontay said, giving Stephen a soothing stroke on the
shoulders. “We’re going to make it, Little Man.”

“I
don’t want to go to Mi’ssippi no more,” Stephen said. “I don’t even remember
what my dad looks like.”

“We
don’t have to worry about that right now,” DeVontay said. “First, we’re going
to Milepost 291 and Rachel’s grandpa’s camp. We’ll be safe for a while. Then we
can figure out where to go from there, okay?”

The
boy wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,”
DeVontay said. “So, did I miss dinner?”

Hilyard
dug into a canvas satchel and tossed him an MRE. “Caviar and
foie gras
.”

“Good
enough. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

“DeVontay!”
Stephen said, drawing a giggle from Rachel. The giggle almost got away from
her, threatening to build into a wild cackle, but she swallowed it down.

“Don’t
worry, both of them are fine. But we may have to let them go if the terrain gets
much steeper, okay? It’s cruel to walk them up those rocks.”

Stephen
nodded, following DeVontay back to the fire. As DeVontay sat on a large stone
several feet from Rachel, she held up her bound wrists. “I’ve been a good girl.
Think I can get time off for good behavior?”

He
leaned forward until his face was inches from hers, and she realized he was
studying her eyes. She didn’t know if she could diminish the heat collecting
there. The best she could do was smile. Humans smiled when they wanted to fool somebody.
“How do I look?”

“Like
Rachel. No sparks.”

His
breath drifted across her cheek. If she bent forward, she could kiss him on the
mouth. She remembered what
that
was like. And then he would do anything
for her.

His
single eye fogged a little as if remembering, too, but he drew back as if
conflicted. “We can’t keep you tied up forever. It’s cutting off your
circulation.”

“I’m
fine now. I just snapped a little bit.” She shrugged. “Stress. The end of the
world will do that to you.”

DeVontay
took her hands in his, his strong, dark fingers squeezing firmly. “I’m going to
have to trust you. We need you, Rachel. Okay?”

She
nodded.
Yes. Trust me.

He
drew the knife Hilyard had given him and drove the point under the leather
strap, then
snicked
the blade upward and freed her. Blood made an
agonizing rush into her constricted veins as her circulatory system pumped her
hands back to life.

“I
don’t mean to be nosy, but I need to know what I’m getting into here,” Hilyard
said to her. “Campbell said you were somehow infected by those Zapheads when
they healed a wound on your leg?”

“It’s
not an infection. It’s…hard to describe.”

“Might
be some kind of shock thing. One of the cadets at WestPoint was struck by
lightning during a foot drill. He survived, but he suffered heart arrhythmia
and synesthesia, where he saw some letters and numerals as colors. Like ‘e’
would be yellow, so he could see patterns in words. They were going to make him
a cryptologist but the condition faded a month or so later. Maybe the
electromagnetic pulse did the same thing to these Zapheads.” He looked at
Rachel. “And to you. If these mutants harbor some kind of strong
electromagnetic field, they could have affected the way your body’s nervous
system operates. Like when you put a magnet next to a computer disk and erase
the information.”

“You
make them sound like machines,” Rachel said. “But I guess that’s better than
monsters.”

Hilyard
patted the rifle resting across a log beside him. “As long as they’re not
bulletproof, I don’t care what they are.”

“She
looks fine,” DeVontay said to him. “Whatever happened, it’s over now. We’ve got
bigger worries than just Zaps. You said survivors attacked you.”

“Yeah.
We had a bunker up on the ridge, a secret installation that was shielded to
survive a nuclear attack. When the first solar flares were reported, we were
ordered to hole up. The top brass didn’t really expect anything serious. It was
mostly just an excuse to test out the toys. Then we lost sat-comm and had to
disconnect all of our equipment like we would during an EMP event. Only nobody
suspected our bodies needed the protection more than our gear did.”

“So
the bastards knew,” DeVontay said. “The government knew days ahead of time that
we were all in danger and didn’t say shit. But I bet they sure as hell took
care of themselves.”

“This
is all top secret, not that it matters anymore. I don’t know how many other
shielded bunkers like ours are scattered across the country. Or the world, for
that matter. You better believe Russia has some, and the Chinese, and Israel.”