After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (8 page)

Cathy
wrapped the infant in a hug and headed down the street, navigating between cars
until she reached the crumbled sidewalk. Rosa followed, Marina at her side. She
glanced from the store windows to the vehicles, alert to any movement. She also
kept her eyes open for a sporting goods store or pawn shop where she might
secure a firearm. She’d left her rifle at the house where they’d spent the
previous night, having expended her last round in panicked shot at what turned
out to be a white cotton nightgown billowing on a clothesline.

Siler
Creek looked like it had been well on the way to extinction even before the solar
storms hit. The streets were riddled with potholes, the paint flaked from the
Colonial-style houses on the surrounding hills, and some of the shops were
boarded up, the warped plywood tagged with graffiti. Any survivors here might
have already drifted on like tumbleweed, rolling to the next stop.

“I
don’t like this place, Momma,” Marina whispered, sounding younger than her nine
years.

“It’s
okay, honey, we won’t stay long. See those black clouds moving in? We should
wait out this storm.”

Oh,
that is humorous. Miss Rosa Maria Nunez Jiminez. Wait out the storm. When this
storm never ends.

“I
don’t want to be here with the baby.” Maria said it with all the unease Rosa felt but couldn’t admit. Worse, Rosa was afraid the baby would hear them—or else sense
their hostility and paranoia.

“He’s
just a little baby, honey,” Rosa said.

“But
babies don’t talk like that. And he’s a Zaphead. Mr. Wheeler said—”

“Never
mind what Mr. Wheeler said. We’re with the child now and we’ll take care of it.
Remember in the Bible how Moses was put in a basket and floated down the river
so he wouldn’t be killed? Maybe this baby is like that. Special to God.”

“I
thought God loved people more than anything else He put on the world.”

A
dog howled somewhere in the distance, an abrasive, tortured sound, and Rosa wondered if the animal had mutated. Then a shot boomed across the ridges and the
howling ceased.

“Hurry,
hurry, hurry,” Joey wailed. Cathy was nearly to Mabel’s front door, and Rosa wondered if maybe they should take shelter in a different building. Not to lose the
child, exactly, but just to put a little distance between them.

But
somebody around here had a gun, and maybe Joey knew that. Maybe Joey picked
this building for a reason.  Rosa would either have to trust the child or
risk her own child’s life. No choice. No choice at all.

“Come
on.” Rosa tugged Marina toward the store, every rustle of loose sheet metal
sounding like the screams of swooping banshees. Cathy opened the front door
without bothering to knock or call out. Rosa followed with Marina, hoping no
trigger-happy survivors lurked inside, determined to protect their outpost.

Then
they were inside, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the dimness. Aside from a
musky, sweetish odor of old decay, death had left this place relatively
untouched. Mabel’s was a thrift shop, dank polyester suits hanging on racks,
garish fashions dangling from hooks along the walls, and shelves loaded with
the kind of dated kitchen clutter that the wealthy saw fit for nothing but
tax-deductible donations. Rosa was quite familiar with such shops—Jorge’s
meager wages from Mr. Wilcox had scarcely covered their monthly bills, so any
necessities had to be scrounged from thrift shops, flea markets, and yard
sales.

The
sales counter was a cash register set atop a glass display case that held
costume jewelry and music CD’s. No bodies lay behind it, but Rosa doubted the
store had been unattended during the first of the solar storms. The proprietor
might have mutated into a Zaphead and could still be on the premises.

“They’re
here,” Joey said in his small, high voice. He no longer squirmed in his
mother’s arms, as if he’d accomplished his mission for the moment.

“Who’s
here?” Rosa asked, unable to stop herself. She was conversing with a
three-month-old that knew more than she did. They lived in a world where
knowledge was the only currency of value. Rosa could now own any trinket or
appliance in the store, but she’d never be able to buy Marina’s survival.

Cathy
sat in a faded recliner and pressed the infant against her bosom. “Shh. Nappy
nap time.”

Marina
wandered over to a dusty corner where cardboard boxes
overflowed with toys, dolls, and stuffed animals. She rummaged through the
boxes, making a racket. “Careful, honey,” Rosa called, keeping her voice low.

Cathy
laid Joey on a coffee table and peeled off the towel he wore as a diaper. The
stench of his waste suffused the air and conquered the other moldering aromas
of the store. Cathy plucked a T-shirt from a discount bin and wiped the infant
clean, then clothed him in a fresh towel. The act seemed so ordinary that Rosa had to remind herself the child was a mutant with eerie intelligence and unknown
motives.

Rosa
checked the street outside. Still no signs of life,
but the wind had picked up a little and rain clouds veiled the sun. Rosa locked the door, feeling foolish since the storefront window would be easy to smash if
someone wanted inside. “I’ll check the back rooms and upstairs.”

Marina
looked up from a plastic bucket of Lego pieces she had
spilled across the wooden floor. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,
honey, you go ahead and play. This will only take a minute.” Marina fitting
together the interlocking plastic pieces was another sight that once would have
been ordinary but now seemed remarkable. Fortunately, the distraction wiped
much of the tension from Marina’s face, and she could have been sitting in the
living room of their mobile home with nothing to worry about except the
broccoli she’d be forced to eat at dinner and the fourth-grade boys who made
fun of her good grades.

Rosa
walked past the electronics section—twenty-year-old
televisions, computer printers, videotape players, and stacked snarls of
wire—to the rear of the store. From a rack of sporting goods, she selected a
golf club with a thick wooden head. She tested its weight with a short swing.
Golf was a game for the wealthy, but a club was a club.

The
back room was partitioned off by a curtain. Rosa poked the club handle through
the opening and nudged the curtain to one side, peering into the darkness. From
what little she could see, the room was used as storage for the donations that
weren’t in good enough shape for resale. There was likely a rear entrance, but Rosa didn’t wish to navigate the clutter in order to find it. Instead, she backtracked
until she came to the set of wooden stairs that led above the storage room.

As
she climbed, Cathy began a soft, lilting lullaby: “
Hush little baby, don’t
say a word, Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird don’t
sing, Poppa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring
.”

Rosa
turned to the front of the store. The fading glow of
day revealed Joey nursing from Cathy’s breast, little arms folded over his
chest. Marina’s dark hair fell over her eyes as she played, building an
imaginary city where little yellow Lego people lived without killing one
another.

Rosa
continued on her way, past a hand-painted sign
pointing up that read “MORE JUNK IN THE TRUNK.” She carried the golf club like
a baseball bat, the old wooden stairs groaning with each step.

If
anything’s up here, it will hear me coming a mile away.

She
didn’t believe the cashier would remain at the store after becoming a Zaphead,
because those who had changed were migratory and restless. But nothing in Siler
Creek had been burned or destroyed, as far as she could tell. It was more like
the entire town had just
stopped
. The bodies in the cars outside were
ravaged by several months of decay, but none of them exhibited signs of
brutality or violence.

The
second floor was quiet, with a few shafts of lesser gray leaking from the
windows. The merchandise here appeared to be antiques, furniture and glassware
mixed with cartons of hardbound books. Rosa was content with a cursory
examination, so she didn’t stray from the main aisle. She’d nearly reached the
far end of the floor, relieved that the store was unoccupied, when she saw the
cluster of figures.

The
foremost of them stood just beyond a hutch, watery light glinting off the glass
and revealing its silhouette. “Who’s there?” Rosa called, swallowing her desire
to shout in a panic.

The
figure didn’t answer, but it appeared to move. There were three other figures
with it, as if they were waiting for her. She didn’t want to frighten Marina—not unless she was sure they were in danger—so she stepped forward and poked at the
first figure with the tip of the golf club.

It
fell with a clatter, knocking over a stack of metal trays. Now deeper in shadow
herself, she saw the form was a mannequin, draped in dated fashions. Its
smooth, eyeless face pointed to the ceiling.

She
was turning to go back downstairs when she realized one of them
wasn’t
a
mannequin.

It
moved.

She
lifted the golf club and swung it around with all her strength, nearly losing
her balance. The club head landed with a meaty
thwack.
A rat
tumbled
from the figure, skittering to a hidden corner as a putrid stench crowded the
dusty air.

This
one has a face.

That
wasn’t exactly true. Mildew and black rot filled the orbital sockets where the
eyes had been, and broad, blunt teeth grinned from the green-gray flesh around
it. The corpse hung on a metal rack, as if in mockery of the mannequins, and a
scarf had been wrapped tightly around its neck.

Who
would desecrate a corpse when there were so many to play with?

But
Rosa had no time to contemplate the mystery. As she pulled the club from the
broken chest of the bloated corpse, Joey wailed, “Bad men are here.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

The
first Zaphead clambered over the hood of a Honda at the far end of the street, dropping
to the pavement and huddling by the front tire.

Rosa
couldn’t believe the thing had moved so quickly. The
Zapheads she’d encountered—and in one case, killed—moved slowly and stiffly,
unsure of their legs. But this one scrambled with the agility of a monkey and
coiled with graceful tension. If not for its shabby, torn clothes, she would
have assumed it was a survivor.

“What
is it, Momma?” Marina pushed Rosa from behind in an attempt to reach the front window,
where Rosa crouched with the golf club, thick, greasy fluid dripping from its
blunt wooden head.

Rosa
shielded her daughter as she gave a quick kiss on the
forehead. “Go back to the toys, honey. I need you to be very quiet and brave,
okay?”

Marina
nodded, black eyes wide with fear. Rosa’s heart
twisted at the expression, but she had no way to comfort her daughter. This was
a world without mercy, radiating only the barest glimmers of hope. Rosa gave a tight smile, the skin on her cheeks crinkling into familiar creases with the
gesture. The confidence and warmth were false, but they were all she had to
give at the moment.

I’ll
protect you somehow. And we’ll find your father, if he’s alive. You’re going to
have a future.
She tightened her grip
on the slender steel handle of the club as Marina dutifully obeyed.
No
matter who or what I have to kill.

Rosa
returned to her surveillance, and the Zaphead was
still huddled beside the car, perhaps two hundred feet away. Rosa was pretty
sure the Zaphead wouldn’t be able to see inside the dark store, but she stayed
low just in case. The clouds had grown thicker overhead, ushering an early
sunset, and the creature’s strangely sparking eyes might offer heightened
vision that would allow it to penetrate the gloom. But it seemed to be paying
attention to something farther up the street, out of Rosa’s sight.

Why
is it acting that way? As if it is hiding.

Cathy
whispered behind her, startling Rosa so much she almost swung the club. Then
she realized it hadn’t been Cathy who had spoken. It was Joey.

“Bad
men,” Joey repeated, wriggling in Cathy’s embrace as if wanting to drop to the
floor and crawl around.

But
the Zaphead wasn’t a man—it was a woman roughly Rosa’s age, with pale skin and
blonde hair, dressed in a yoga or dancer’s outfit with torn fabric revealing
knees scraped raw.

Cathy
helplessly shook her head. “He made me come and look.”

“Don’t
let her see you,” Rosa warned.

“She
not see,” Joey said in his high, surreal voice. “She
knows
.”

Then
another Zaphead came into view, a teen male, arms flailing in the air as he
ran, filthy sneakers flapping as he dodged between vehicles.

He’s
running from something.

This
Zaphead ran past the first one, apparently unaware of it, and Rosa expected him
to pass on the sidewalk just yards from them. But the Zaphead veered suddenly
to the right and ducked into the entryway of the shop across the street, a
lawyer’s or accountant’s office with ornate gold lettering in the window. The
Zaphead pressed into the shadows and went motionless, although like the one by
the Honda, he projected an air of taut anticipation.