After: Dying Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 6) Page 16

  I just hope he lives long enough to become a man. Not a Little Man, but a Big Man.

  DeVontay sighted his M-16 into the front line of attackers, who were now only twenty yards from the barricade. Brock and the remaining woman on the battlements retreated, and DeVontay laid down a line of cover fire. Four or five Zapheads dropped, men and women and one boy who was not much older than Stephen.

  DeVontay tried not to think about the people they’d been, the lives and loves and families and dreams all swept away by an invisible, radioactive tidal wave spat from the nuclear belly of the sun. They died in August, and these things that now used their flesh were the enemies of everything those people believed in.

  Even from this distance, the fiery orbs of their eyes were plainly visible, made all the more intense as dusk crept over the ridges in the east and threw long shadows across the town. DeVontay aimed between each set of orbs as he pulled the trigger, switching back and forth between single shots and automatic fire. He swapped his final magazine into place, wondering if he should save the last two rounds for him and the boy.

  He scanned down the length of the barrel, aligning the front and rear sights, and he zeroed in on a Zaphead he’d shot only minutes before—its body had folded into meat origami on the sidewalk near a knocked-over baby stroller.

  There was a Zaphead beside it, leaning over the body to retrieve the weapon from its fallen comrade, and DeVontay was about to squeeze off a burst when he realized the Zapper ignored the weapon.

  Instead, it hovered over the corpse.

  And the corpse’s legs twitched.

  DeVontay leaned his rifle against the windowsill and grabbed the binoculars. With magnification, there was no mistaking the kneeling Zaphead’s figure and clothing. And the two tiny brown hands that reached out from a bundle in her arms.

  “Rachel!”

  Stephen raced over to his side. “Where?”

  DeVontay resisted Stephen’s tugs on the binoculars, watching with horror and fascination as the dead Zaphead sat up and regained its footing and Rachel and Kokona moved over to the next fallen, bloody heap.

  “I see her!” Stephen said. “Are you sure she was dead? Because she looks normal to me.”

  “She is…she was…I mean, hell if I know anymore. But check out her eyes, you’ll see.” He gave Stephen the binoculars again

  “Full metal Zaphead,” Stephen said. “But she looks just like Rachel.”

  Rachel and Kokona seemed oblivious to the scattered volley of gunfire around them, drifting from casualty to casualty like a bizarre pair of battlefield medics. Although they were within range of the survivors fortified in the center of Newton, there were several ranks of mutants in front of them.

  Seeing the Zapheads rise from their mortal wounds brought home the futility of their defense, and DeVontay fought off the curtain of hopelessness that threatened to drop over him.

  “Let’s go,” Stephen said.

  “Are you crazy? We wouldn’t last two minutes out there in no-man’s-land.”

  Stephen glared at him. “You lost her twice already. I only lost her once. So I don’t have as much quit in me as you do.”

  “But even if we reach her—and that’s a big ‘if’—she’s just as likely to kill us as smile and say hello. Kokona’s controlling her. The whole damn Zap Nation is controlling her. We have no way of understanding her.”

  “Rachel’s in there somewhere. She saved me and gave me a reason to live. She taught me hope in this crappy wasteland where I’ll never get to Facebook memes or watch movies or hear Beatles again. That’s worth taking a risk for, and if you don’t see that, maybe you need your other eye back.”

  The boy’s dirty face somehow added to his earnestness, and he tugged the bill of the John Deere cap low over his eyes to show he meant business.

  DeVontay nodded, watching Rachel and Kokona perform another revival, even as their previous subjects once again joined the fray. Zapheads swarmed over the barricades and wedged their way between the jam of vehicles, working their way toward the center of town with little resistance.

  “All right,” he said. “I love her. I believe in her. And if love means anything in the face of extinction, then I’d rather die now than not have it.”

  “Cool,” Stephen said, jutting out his chin and heading for the door that led down the stairs.

  “Hold your horses, Little Man. Running in there like idiots is the worst thing we can do. We need a little help from above.”

  Stephen squinted. “Jesus? You want us to pray?”

  “A prayer wouldn’t hurt. But I’m thinking of Franklin.” DeVontay leaned out the window and hollered Franklin’s name.

  The old man was out of sight, but in seconds he appeared at the parapet, the launcher resting on his shoulder. He cupped his hands to his mouth to form a megaphone. “Doesn’t look real good.”

  DeVontay pointed down the street and shouted, “Rachel.”

  Franklin leaned over the parapet for a closer look, muttered something DeVontay couldn’t hear, and lifted a hand as if to say “What can we do about it?”

  “We’re going in,” DeVontay shouted. “Cover us.”

  Franklin touched his thumb and forefinger in a circle to make an “Okay” sign, and took up a position with the launcher at his shoulder.

  “It’s time,” DeVontay said to Stephen. “We get there, grab her, and run for it.”

  “Which way?”

  “The fastest way.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Rachel wondered how many resurrections she had left in her.

  She’d long ago lost count of the number of corpses she and Kokona revived, and with the sun now touching the western horizon and pouring red lava over the iron-gray mountains, this single first day of her New life felt like a millennium. She couldn’t comprehend the horror of an ageless, unchanging future rolling out before her, and she found herself grateful that Kokona would eventually deplete her and toss her aside.

  But for now she was compelled to move from bloody heap to bloody heap, touching the dead and charging them via Kokona’s small hands, the baby’s eyes burning intensely while serving as the conduit between Rachel and the fallen members of their tribe.

  Ahead of her, the New People clambered over the makeshift barricade the humans constructed in their pathetic attempt at self-preservation. The screams no longer fazed her, nor did the rattle of gunfire. She couldn’t even hope for a bullet to end her misery, because Kokona would either compel her to heal herself or perform the task on her own.

  The corpses were less frequent now, and the gunfire dropped away to isolated pockets of resistance. She wasn’t sure how many humans had holed up in the center of Newton, but there couldn’t be more than two dozen remaining. The fighting transformed from a massed frontal assault to disorganized door-to-door combat, although the mutants moved with a steady persistence that was somehow more disturbing than if they’d howled and jibbered and scrambled among the wreckage. They moved as if they were performing a mildly unpleasant duty rather than carrying out the extermination of an intelligent species.

  An explosion in the midst of a group beyond the barricade sent four of them sprawling. “Go there go now,” Kokona commanded.

  Rachel gripped the child and headed toward the freshly dead. She was in no more of a hurry than the rest of her tribe. She had a job and she must do it. The instinct was more powerful than any stunted willpower and flailing outrage buried in her second, human layer.

  But all the while, her human part—her soul—maintained a constant prayer, a telepathic connection that no other minds could penetrate:

  God, remember me. No matter what happens, please remember Rachel Wheeler. Forgive me for my failures and bless me for any good I might have delivered through You to this world of pain and pride and sin.

  She couldn’t truly believe in God, not after all that happened, but God didn’t care about her lack of faith. God remained constant as she twisted and turned and denied and begged. God neith
er demanded nor compelled. God just was.

  When she reached the barricade, she turned sideways and squeezed between a truck and a sports car, with a motorcycle jammed between them in a poor attempt to close the gap. A human corpse—a red-haired female—slumped against the junk pile, painted pale by a mercifully permanent death. Rachel avoided her, climbing over the motorcycle’s mangled rubber tire with Kokona clutched against her chest.

  When she reached the group of mutant corpses, she recognized two of them as having already undergone her necromantic ministrations. Their new wounds were severe, their skin shredded by shrapnel. One was missing an arm, and Rachel collected the limb and stabbed it back on its stump. Kokona poured energy into the corpse and it soon rolled back into action, flexing the arm whose wet, red scar was already fading.

  “You’re getting good at this,” Kokona said. “I think you’ve found your calling.”

  “They’ll all be dead soon, and there will be no one around to kill us,” Rachel said. “What becomes of me then?”

  “Our work has only begun. All the tribes shall gather, and we find the next village of Old People. One after another until we live in peace.”

  “You could have had peace, but you rejected it.”

  “We’re still evolving, we do not age, and no disease can touch us. We’re the perfect tribe for this planet, nature’s final answer. Do you really think humans would allow us to live among them? That they could watch with envy as we repaired their infrastructure, cleaned up their nuclear radiation, and brought new technologies into their lives? When each day would bring us a step further along the road to advancement while humans wallowed in the same slime as their ancient ancestors?”

  “You’re only as smart as your smartest mind,” Rachel said. “All the mutants only have one thought.”

  Kokona smiled and patted a playful hand against Rachel’s cheek. “You can’t hide the human inside, Rachel. But that’s okay. Humans are so weak I’ll not bother to take that away from you until our work is done. Now let’s heal these poor victims of desperate rage and jealousy, shall we?”

  And Rachel did as she was commanded, bending to the nearest corpse.

  “Rachel!”

  The voice sounded unreal, and she assumed it issued from some crevice deep in her soul, a place where memory and fantasy struggled for air. It was familiar but new, like notes of a simple musical scale fused into an original composition.

  “Rachel!”

  She looked up from the dead female face that Kokona caressed to life beneath them. The boy ran toward her, a gun in his hands, eyes bright beneath the bill of his baseball cap. Behind him was another she knew—a black memory and tall fantasy become fact.

  Stephen.

  DeVontay.

  “Stephen,” Kokona called. “DeVontay.”

  Both of them slowed to a walk, moving uneasily toward them. The recently revived mutant opened its fervid eyes and crawled for its fallen rifle a few feet away.

  “Stop,” Stephen said, lifting his own weapon.

  “Stop,” Kokona said.

  The mutant clapped its curled fingers on the rifle and tried to sweep it into its grasp. Stephen fired and the mutant sagged, a fresh and oozing maw in its neck.

  “Come on, Rachel,” DeVontay said, standing over her and Kokona. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “I can’t,” Rachel said.

  “She’s my carrier,” Kokona said.

  “Shut up,” DeVontay said.

  “I’m her carrier,” Rachel said.

  “No, you’re one of us,” Stephen said, swiveling around and sweeping his rifle before him.

  Rachel shared Kokona’s silent summons and a pocket of mutants converged on them, instinctively holding their fire because of Kokona. The battle raged on behind them, but the gunshots and screams were now few and far between.

  “If you kill us, you don’t get the other babies,” DeVontay said to Kokona.

  “The other babies?” Kokona giggled. “Oh, how utterly human. When all else fails, try lying to save yourselves.”

  “You want to take that chance? You think you can run this tribe on your own? Burning out one carrier after another? When you kill all of us, who will help you?” He waved at the steadily approaching mutants. “These brain-dead slaves?”

  For the first time, Rachel detected a quiver from Kokona of what she could only describe as doubt. As if to prove DeVontay’s point, the approaching mutants stopped twenty feet away, their fiery eyes wide and staring and, for all their turbulence, utterly vacant.

  Kokona had commanded them to stop.

  “There are others like me,” Kokona said. “This isn’t the only tribe. I can feel us everywhere, all across this land.”

  “Yeah, but who will take you to them?”

  “Put her down, Rachel,” Stephen begged, his voice nearly cracking despite his brave front.

  “You know I can’t do that,” said the mutant part of her, while the human inside screamed: Do it, do it, do it.

  “Where are the babies, then?” Kokona asked.

  “We’ll show you, but only after you free Rachel,” DeVontay said. “And only if you stop the killing now.”

  “I can’t free Rachel. You know that better than anyone. She’s one of us forever.”

  “You can’t change her back, but you can let her come with us.”

  Rachel hated that she had no voice in her own fate—the human layer roiled with poisonous, futile rage in its embryonic helplessness while the mutant part of her caged the emotion. She could only say what Kokona would allow her to say: “She needs me.”

  “I have a different deal for you,” Kokona said to DeVontay, delighted at the game. “You tell me where the babies are and I promise not to let you join us when we learn how to resurrect your kind.”

  “I think you underestimate us,” DeVontay said. “We’re even more ruthless and bloodthirsty than you think we are.”

  With that, he dashed forward and jabbed the muzzle of his rifle against Kokona’s temple. Rachel drew back in horror, pulling the baby close, but DeVontay fired anyway. The bullet shattered Kokona’s head and her last silent cry reverberated through the group of nearby mutants and across the town—perhaps even across the world.

  “KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER killer killer killer”

  So much grue and gore spattered Rachel that it took her a moment to recognize the bullet had torn into her flesh as well. She didn’t feel pain, exactly—although the human layer tried desperately to convince her of it—but the damage was enough to mar her functioning. She hugged Kokona against her breasts and the baby’s head lolled forward, the neck and arms limp, a shimmering miasma of brains and bone swimming in the broken bowl of its skull.

  Kokona’s last cry was taken up by her tribe, thundering off the brick cliffs of the town: “KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER.”

  The mutants crushed forward, closing on Stephen and DeVontay, who fired shot after shot until their weapons were empty. They flung their weapons at their attackers, who appeared to have lost the knowledge of gunpowder and firearms, although they pressed forward with their arms outstretched.

  Rachel stared down at the dead baby, consumed by a deep sense of loss. Their connection died along with Kokona, but she still joined with the rest of her tribe in the escalating chant, even though she realized she was the “her” they meant to kill.

  DeVontay grabbed her jacket and yanked her toward the barricade. “Come on.”

  Now rudderless, she succumbed to his strength, clinging to the baby out of some strange need she could never explain—as if their bond ran far deeper than mother and daughter.

  Creator and creation? Maker and the made? Giver and receiver?

  A percussive burst in the middle of the pursuing mutants knocked several of them down, followed by four more detonations in brief intervals, until most of them lay in the street, disabled and with no one to return them to life.

  When the humans reached the barricade, DeVontay climbed onto the hood
of a sedan and dragged Rachel over while Stephen pushed her from behind. “Drop it,” DeVontay shouted at her, but she shook her head.

  She was so damaged she couldn’t resist them, and after she slid to her knees on the other side of the barricade, Stephen clambered over and helped her to her feet.

  “Come on,” DeVontay said, lifting her into his arms and limping down the bloody, bullet-pocked street. He cradled her in the same manner that she embraced Kokona, firmly and protectively.

  “Franklin’s got our back,” Stephen shouted, and Rachel recognized that name, too. The human layer grew stronger the farther she got from the other mutants, but their repetitive cries of “Kill her” still rang from the square, along with more muffled explosions and renewed bursts of small-arms fire.

  “You’re wounded,” DeVontay said, looking down at her with concern, each step jarring her body. “Sorry about that. It was the only way.”

  No, it was the human way, but he would never understand that.

  She eased her elbow forward, careful not to disturb Kokona’s final rest, and touched the wound in her chest. Her finger penetrated the slick hole, sliding between bones to touch her heart. The wound was in the same place as the one that killed her the first time, as a human. She imagined the rough membranes inside were the scar tissue of that fatal entry, and that maybe there was just no escaping death.

  That’s the realm of God, and no natural catastrophe can alter the basic truth of the universe.

  But she healed herself just the same, working from the inside out.

  If she truly believed God lived in all of them, well, God just was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You sure?” Stephen asked, curling his upper lip as if DeVontay had finally totally lost his mind.

  Maybe DeVontay had. But if they were spinning the roulette wheel in the game of survival, the more balls in play the better. So when he carried Rachel to the funeral home, he accepted the probability that this was where they’d find their eternal rest.