After: Dying Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 6) Read online

  “We came from them.”

  “As they came from the monkeys,” Kokona said, with ferocity lacing her small voice. “But should we exalt the monkey because of it?”

  “No, but we don’t need to kill the monkey, either.”

  “We would if the monkey wanted to kill us.” Kokona’s eyes narrowed to fervid slits. “Maybe it was a mistake to create you as a carrier. You haven’t joined the New People yet, not fully. You seemed more compliant when you were only half New.”

  “And you seemed more compassionate toward humans back then.”

  “Because we shared your desire to live in harmony. But now we know that is impossible. Once we’ve killed them all, we can one day learn to bring them back and make them New.”

  “Like you did with me.”

  “Yes, but obviously we didn’t succeed. Because you still haven’t fully joined us.”

  They reached an intersection that featured commercial development on the corners, and a Food Lion grocery store stood behind a gas station. “We can find food there,” Rachel said, hoping to distract Kokona before the baby probed her thoughts even more deeply and discovered all the things she was hiding.

  Kokona squinted up at the sun, which was almost directly overhead. “Okay, but then it’s off to the hospital. The others are waiting.”

  Rachel had a sense of the hundreds of New People converging on the town. Or, more accurately, she perceived Kokona’s sense of them. And when Kokona brought the other babies back to life—as well as the hordes of other dead at the hospital—then they would exterminate the humans of Newton.

  But Rachel had successfully planted the idea that Kokona was hungry. Maybe the baby had other weaknesses. For now, Rachel was grateful for the reprieve. She was about to cross the intersection to the grocery store when Kokona said, “Three of us are about to die.”

  Rachel looked around, seeing no signs of life. The area had been swept clean of bodies—currently still undergoing decomposition at the high school football stadium—and the adjacent garage, computer repair shop, Laundromat, and barber shop were dark. Rachel was about to ask what Kokona meant when she felt the intense, searing penetration in her flesh. But the sensation wasn’t pain, exactly—more of an abstract observation of an event.

  A short series of pops, muffled by distance, followed the sensations, and Rachel recognized the sound as gunshots coming from the eastern side of town. The tide in Rachel’s mind churned and roiled for a few moments, forcing Rachel to pause and recover her balance.

  “Death is loss,” Kokona said. “But only for a little while.”

  The turmoil inside her passed and Rachel understood the void caused by the deaths of three members of her tribe had smoothed, like ripples fading after a stone has broken the surface of a lake.

  “I wanted to stop the killing,” Rachel said. “Surely you can see that’s a worthwhile goal. When I was human, I couldn’t stand to see the humans die. Now that I am New, I don’t want us to die, either. Both tribes have value. We’re not that different.”

  Kokona gave a sad grin. “Most of what I know came from humans—what was taught to me by carriers and the books they shared. And one thing made clear by human history is that those who are different must always die. Tribe versus tribe until only one remains.”

  Rachel didn’t want to explore the matter, so she thought: Hungry hungry hungry. She summoned the memory of a yearning in her stomach.

  “Food,” Kokona said. “Now.”

  They crossed the parking lot to the grocery store, and Rachel’s thoughts drifted to DeVontay and the stricken look on his face when she’d rejected him. He wouldn’t understand her reasons unless he became New. But she didn’t wish him dead. She didn’t wish any of them dead. Because when humans died, especially those you cared about, the surface of the psychic lake stayed turbulent for years.

  But she pushed the thoughts away before Kokona noted them. If DeVontay, Stephen, and her grandfather were still alive, she would resist the part of her that wanted them to join her. Such desire was human, and she needed to be more than human now.

  The automatic doors of the grocery store had been jimmied open by scavengers or else by New People retrieving corpses, and Rachel slipped through the three-foot gap into the dark interior. The checkout counters were still piled with goods—moldy packages of shrink-wrapped meat, cans, bottles, boxes of cereal and detergent, and shriveled produce. Shopping carts were parked here and there, some containing sagging paper bags and the occasional purse. The place had a sour, musky odor spiced with the chemical brilliance of cleaning products.

  “Humans had many needs, didn’t they?” Kokona said. “All the better that they should welcome death. It’s simpler.”

  The aisle signs were barely visible in the gloom, but Rachel instinctively knew where the infant section would be—beside the toilet paper and feminine hygiene products. She soon found the baby formula and jars of mashed peas, bananas, and carrots. “Solid or liquid?” she asked Kokona.

  “If I can’t have a breast, I will take the formula,” Kokona said. “The idea of a spoon shoved in my throat makes me gag.”

  Did she learn that, or did she steal the knowledge from someone? Or is there any difference?

  Life was stealing. You took what was there and you took what you needed as long as you could. Food, ideas, breath, time. You gave none of it back.

  Love was the only thing you stole that you ever returned.

  She understood this now, even though it no longer mattered.

  The shelves contained a variety of powdered formulas that had to be mixed with water, but there were several brands of premixed plastic containers. Rachel opened a package containing a baby bottle, filled it with formula, and put the rubber nipple to Kokona’s lips. The combined glow of their eyes created a halo around them, an echo of the sacred bond between mother and child.

  “You love me,” Kokona said. “All my carriers love me.”

  Then Kokona took the nipple with a contented smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “That might not have been the best move,” Stephen said, ears still ringing from Franklin’s semi-automatic burst.

  “I had to kill them,” Franklin said.

  “But they heard us.”

  “I don’t think Rachel and Kokona made it here yet,” Franklin said. “We can’t do anything about all the Zapheads, but if we can find those babies, we can take care of them ahead of time.”

  Stephen didn’t like that idea. The hospital was spooky enough as it was, with all those bodies piled around, but Franklin wanted to go even deeper? The corridors were dark, and the curtains would be drawn in many of the room windows. And the hospital was four stories tall. That was a lot of possible places to hide eight little things.

  “Those babies could be anywhere,” Stephen said.

  “Yeah, but the people ordered to collect the bodies wouldn’t have carried them up the stairs,” Franklin said. “They probably tried to keep the job as simple as possible.”

  “Then why didn’t they dump them with the Zapheads out in the waiting room?”

  “Hilyard might have realized their significance. The hospital makes the most sense— but it’s possible he had them taken to another location, or plans to use them to torment the Zapheads. Maybe spear them on stakes like Vlad Dracul’s son used to do to his enemies’ heads to show what a badass he was.”

  “That would mean nothing to the Zapheads,” Stephen said. He’d heard about Vlad the Impaler in comic books. “They don’t get scared or mad. They get even.”

  Franklin nodded down the corridor, where the shadows resembled walls of tar that would suck you in and sigh as you vanished. “We check out the first floor and then boogie out of here before Hilyard sends a scout team. Deal?”

  “Sure,” Stephen said. “What about the dark?”

  “Wait here.” Franklin went around the nurse’s station, opened a closet, and made a clatter as he dumped supplies to the floor. He came out with a glass bottle
of clear liquid and a long cotton bandage. He laid his rifle on the counter, unscrewed the bottle’s lid, and wormed the cotton until one end was submerged in the liquid. He fumbled in his pocket and came out with a box of wooden matches.

  “Let there be light,” he said, striking a match and applying it to the other end of the cotton.

  “Where did you learn that?” Stephen asked with admiration.

  “Same place I got my second wife. The Internet.” He held out the makeshift lamp to Stephen. “You have to carry this. I need both hands for the gun.”

  The cotton wick was already burning toward the mouth of the bottle. Stephen took the bottle, watching the flickering bands of light on Franklin’s face. “You almost look like a Zapper when the fire reflects in your eyes.”

  “That’ll be the day. Careful when the wick burns down, it might get hot. But the alcohol won’t get enough air to really combust, so it should be safe. Just don’t drop it or you might have to do a ‘Stop, drop, and roll.’”

  “The Human Torch,” Stephen said. “That would definitely be uncool.”

  Franklin returned to the swinging doors and jammed the metal stand of an IV drip inside the door handles. “That won’t keep them out forever, but it should slow them down.”

  Franklin led the way, with Stephen keeping close. The flames threw long licks of light across the walls, and they began opening doors one by one, finding only empty beds for the most part, blankets tossed carelessly on the floor, food trays and towels slung around the room. One of the rooms contained what looked like the mummified corpse of an old woman, and the smell was so overpowering that Stephen tucked his nose into the crook of his elbow.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Franklin said, closing the door. “I forgot the Zapheads used this place for storage, too.”

  A number of the larger rooms were not for patients but instead were examination wards and labs. They encountered radiology, oncology, and several other “ologies” that Stephen couldn’t spell. One ward featured a small waiting room in which a dozen or so dead people sat on vinyl couches, all of them positioned to face a blank television mounted on one wall.

  “Are you sure Zappers don’t have a sense of humor?” Franklin said.

  “Not unless you think it’s funny to rip somebody’s head off and use it as a soccer ball.”

  They had just exited another empty patient room when distant booming blows resonated from the far end of the corridor.

  “Doesn’t sound like Zappers,” Franklin said.

  “Survivors. Think they’ll shoot us?”

  “No telling what Hilyard will do if he thinks we disobeyed an order or crossed some kind of imaginary line. Hell, he could even accuse us of desertion and have us face a firing squad.”

  “But if we can find the babies, then Rachel and Kokona will come for them sooner or later, right?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “And you don’t want Hilyard or anybody else to see the two of them?”

  “They’re both dead, in that case. And there won’t be anybody to bring Rachel back this time around.”

  “Well, we better hurry then.” Stephen changed hands so that he held the lamp in his right hand.

  “Hold on,” Franklin said. “Where would I put dead bodies if I thought I might want to get to them later?”

  “I mean, the refrigerator is the obvious choice. At least for cannibals and serial killers.”

  “You’re kind of right. In a hospital, there’s only one really big cooler. You always put the morgue way in the back, on the bottom floor, so patients aren’t exposed to what amounts to bad publicity. They usually have their own elevator as well as exit, so the aftercare industry vultures can swoop in without anyone the wiser.”

  Franklin hustled Stephen deeper into the bowels of the hospital, the banging and shouts diminishing behind them. Stephen switched hands with the lamp, cupping his free hand over the front of the wick to keep the draft from extinguishing the flame. “What if the babies aren’t here?”

  “Well, then we wasted a few bullets and might get shot or burned alive for nothing.”

  “Kokona thought they were here. But once they died, she lost her connection. The other Zapheads could have picked up on the hospital.”

  “That would explain the Zaps that came at us back there,” Franklin said. “But if they really wanted the babies, they would’ve sent more.”

  “There might be more. Or they could’ve already collected the babies and left.”

  “But only Kokona can bring them back to life, right?”

  “Yeah. If she wants to.”

  Franklin shoved open a set of swinging doors, and the flame revealed a cluster of men and women in surgical scrubs lined across a stainless steel table. Their bodies were shrunken in the dry air, and the odor was strong enough to make Stephen’s eyes water. Several pieces of diagnostic equipment and lamps were arranged around the table, and Stephen realized another corpse was underneath them, the top of its head peeled away and revealing a cap of white bone.

  “Guy must have been under the knife when the storms hit,” Franklin said.

  “No babies here,” Stephen said, not very interested in sightseeing. The smell caused the little bit of soup he’d eaten to gurgle in his stomach and try to swim up his throat. He backed away fast.

  As they took a turn in the corridor, a hollow boom echoed down from somewhere above them that seemed to run the height of the building. “Stairwell,” Franklin said. “Or the elevator shaft. We’ll have company soon.”

  “Let’s find that morgue and get out of here.” Stephen was nearly running now, with Franklin panting as he tried to keep up. Stephen barely looked at the doors blurring past, eager to find some windows and sunshine before he went nuts.

  Stephen stumbled and nearly tripped, lowering the lamp to reveal the uniform of a security guard filled with what looked like a couple of hundred pounds of rotten sausage.

  “Stephen,” Franklin said. “It’s here.”

  Stephen turned to see Franklin at a metal door with two rectangular signs posted on the wall beside it. They read “Pathology” and “Medical Examiner.”

  More pounding came from the stairwell, like footsteps drumming down toward them. Stephen hurried behind Franklin, holding the lamp up over the old man’s shoulder, but he didn’t need to see to know they’d found what they were seeking. The smell said plenty.

  The room was tiled, with several metal tables, counters, and shelves of glass jars filled with sections of organs, intestines, and other body parts, as well as rows of books shielded by glass. But those were barely visible because bodies were stacked along the walls—maybe thirty or forty in all. It was apparent they were Zapheads because of their lack of decomposition, but the blood on the floor had gone rancid.

  And on a table, piled unceremoniously, were the babies, arms and legs jutting in all directions. The one on top had gory holes where its eyes should be, and parts of it were missing. A length of intestine snaked from its soiled diaper.

  Stephen almost wished they hadn’t found them.

  Because suddenly the soup refused to stay down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When DeVontay returned to the square, Hilyard was putting several of Brock’s militia members through drills, teaching them the basics of maneuvering as a group. The civilians, three women and a man, didn’t seem to be getting the hang of it, but the lieutenant kept a patient demeanor. He gave DeVontay a cold glare, as if not trusting him, but DeVontay ignored him and continued across the square toward the drug store, drawn by the vibrant activity behind its windows.

  Although the sun was already tracking into afternoon, the morning chill hadn’t diminished, but DeVontay scarcely noticed it.

  I should have gone with Rachel, no matter what.

  Her rejection still stung, even though he knew it wasn’t her. And as pathetic as it was, he burned with an odd jealousy because Kokona chose Rachel over him as a carrier. But he understood. They were of the same tribe, and
he would forever be an outsider—the enemy.

  Two people sat on a bench by the cavalry statue, and several soldiers were visible as they stood watch at the barricade of cars. DeVontay saw no one on the rooftops, but he knew sentries were posted there and monitoring the surrounding streets. Tension hung in the air, and a sudden eruption of crows against the skyline caused everyone in the square to jerk with a start. One man reached for his gun before realizing the disturbance originated from the natural world.

  DeVontay entered the drug store and, despite his morose mood, the aroma of grilled meat made him hungry. Several people were queued up at the counter, receiving plates of food served by a man even older than Franklin. Others were at the prescription counter in the back of the store, inventorying the medicine and collecting what was useful. DeVontay looked around for Stephen and didn’t see him, so he took a stool at the counter.

  “What’ll it be, friend?” the old man said. “We’ve got canned ham, veggies, beans, and applesauce. Coffee, soda pop, or OJ to drink.”

  He looked at the plate of the man beside him. “What he’s having looks good.”

  “House special, coming right up,” the old man shouted at a scrawny young man with a bad complexion who worked the grill. To DeVontay, he said, “That’ll be nine ninety-five plus tax.”

  After a beat, he grinned at DeVontay with yellowed false teeth. “Kidding, son. You got to keep your strength up to defend the empire.”

  DeVontay looked around at the booths, where several groups of people picked over their plates or sipped coffee. He recognized Sierra, who sat a table with Jorge’s daughter Marina. Sierra’s assault rifle was propped beside her. He waved to her, and when his steaming plate arrived, he joined them.

  “Hi, DeVontay,” Sierra said. The girl wouldn’t look up at him, bent over a piece of paper and scrawling with a crayon across its white surface. Other crayons were scattered in front of her. DeVontay admired her ability to tune out the chaos around her and their grim situation to focus on an act of creation and beauty.