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

  He backed toward the door and was about to turn when he bumped into something. Something tall.

  “Take it easy, Stephen,” Kokona whispered.

  He nearly dropped her onto the hard floor. “You knew.”

  “They won’t hurt you. I needed a carrier to bring me to my tribe.”

  “I should have let those soldiers kill you.”

  “Don’t be angry. They will hurt you if you attack them.”

  Stephen thought about drawing his blade. Three Zapheads blocked his exit, two adults and what looked like a female teenager. He’d have a hard time fighting his way through them. But maybe he could use the weapon against Kokona.

  If she’s dead, will the Zapheads swarm me?

  At least a dozen approached from the rear of the building. He didn’t want to die here, all alone except for some freaks that used to be human. He tried to picture Rachel’s face, but he was too scared to concentrate. He clung to Kokona so hard that she made little gasping sounds.

  “Make them back away or I’ll hurt you,” Stephen said.

  “No, you won’t.”

  Stephen wondered if Kokona had some form of power over him as well as the Zapheads. Because she was right. He couldn’t hurt her. He was her carrier.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Get some rest. You’re going to need it. And then we’re taking a walk. All of us.”

  The Zapheads stood around him without making a sound, their eyes glittering. As he slid to a sitting position on the concrete, he knew he wasn’t going to sleep a wink.

  Kokona grinned at him and patted her chubby hands together with delight. “We’ve learned from your people. We must do whatever it takes to survive. And now we understand revenge.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DeVontay didn’t like leaving Rachel in a casket, resting on a bier in front of rows of silent, empty chairs.

  It was bad enough that her skin hadn’t cooled. But her blood hadn’t even completely dried, just became a gummy ooze in her chest. He could almost believe she wasn’t dead—not fully dead—given the world’s strange new chemistry. Franklin offered one last wild thread of hope, and DeVontay was going to pull it until the fabric of his sanity unraveled.

  He kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “Sleep tight, my love,” and gently closed the casket lid before following Franklin back to the square.

  Hilyard divided Brock’s fittest militia members into five groups of four, placing one of his enlisted men in charge of each team. The lieutenant didn’t trust Riff Raff, who deserted Shipley’s unit to help Jorge, but Franklin and DeVontay took him into their group. Jorge didn’t want to leave his daughter, but he joined Franklin’s group when Sierra played big sister and successfully distracted Marina from her mother’s death. They played hopscotch with lines drawn using packets of lime Kool-Aid.

  Despite his grief, DeVontay admired Hilyard’s organizational skills. Those who weren’t part of the search teams had securely barricaded the central downtown area and gathered provisions for the forty or so survivors. Sentries, their heads barely visible against the skyline at sunset, were spaced across the rooftops in a defensive perimeter. Inside an alcove, a fire flickered, a couple of people hunched over the flames preparing food. Everyone was armed except the few children.

  Hilyard gathered the squad leaders just as dark was settling. “Okay, people, you’ve got your assigned sectors. Sweep from the north back toward the river and get back before dawn.”

  “Won’t we all get lost in the dark?” Brock asked.

  “Squad leaders have night-vision goggles and scopes.”

  “Sweet.” Brock slapped his AR-15 like a kid going on a camping trip. “Lock and load and let’s roll.”

  A female corporal in Hilyard’s unit chuckled. “This isn’t a Stallone movie, Brock.”

  “Hey, I’ve always wanted to say that. So shoot me.”

  “If you forget to duck if you’re in front of me, I can oblige,” she replied.

  “We’re on the same side here,” Hilyard said. “And don’t forget that Shipley’s still out there, and we don’t know the full size of his unit.”

  “I’d reckon maybe thirty left,” Riff Raff offered.

  “They have night-vision gear, too,” Hilyard said. “But we have an advantage over the Zaps. We don’t know how well they can see in the dark, but their eyes will give them away a mile off.”

  “So is this one of those search-and-destroy missions?” Franklin said. “Where we shoot everything that’s not us?”

  “We need that baby alive. And for all we know, if this resurrection business is legit, that baby could be out there right now tagging a whole army back to life.”

  “With a human helping it,” Jorge said. “That’s someone I would be pleased to kill.”

  “No firing unless absolutely necessary,” Hilyard said. “Shots will bring down heat we don’t need. Plenty of time to play hero later, if this war shapes up like I think it will. Let’s do this job and then worry about saving the world later.”

  As they split up, DeVontay fell in behind Franklin and the female corporal, whose last name was Volker. No one dared to ask her first name. She was “Corporal” to them. Jorge and Riff Raff brought up the rear, seemingly best of pals due to their mutual combat against the Zapheads earlier in the day.

  As the squad worked its way several blocks north, heading for the high school, the sun limned the distant ridges with a volcanic red blaze for a minute, and then darkness slammed down like a black door. The night was moonless, and even the stars seemed muted, as if the Earth were drawing back from the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy and seeking out its own bleak corner of the cosmos.

  DeVontay moved more on instinct than sight, although his lone eye quickly adjusted. The windows of the buildings and houses and cars seemed to glint with menace, although there was little light to reflect. A soft December wind rattled bone-dry leaves, awnings, and loose trash in an imitation of scurrying footfalls that kept the whole group on edge. Despite the chill in the air, sweat dotted DeVontay’s brow.

  The high school was their first target, on the theory that the baby might return to a familiar location in search of other mutants. The stench of the mass open grave at the football stadium rolled over them in a rancid wave, tinged with the scorched, ashy smell of the burned-out school.

  We’ll have to burn those bodies if we end up staying here. Unbidden, another thought came on the heels of that one: And we’d better do it before something brings them back to life.

  “The school is terreno malo,” Jorge said. “Bad ground.”

  “Smells like a lunchroom lady’s ass,” Riff Raff said, snickering at his witticism.

  Volker turned from point, night-vision goggles giving her the aspect of an insect. “Keep it down back there.”

  “Aye-aye, ma’am sir,” Riff Raff said.

  DeVontay wanted to elbow the guy in the gut. The soldier couldn’t understand that this mission was bigger than just saving a group of survivors—Rachel’s life was at stake.

  She’s dead, he reminded himself. Everything else is just a bizarro fantasy. But just keep clinging to that hope. It’s all you got left.

  They stopped at a chain-link fence at the edge of the parking lot. Dark humps of bodies were scattered among the cars, trucks, and buses, still lying there after Shipley’s attack. Volker paired off DeVontay and Franklin and directed them to circle the property. Since Jorge was familiar with the school’s interior, she sent him to explore the burned-out brick shell with Riff Raff riding shotgun. She took a position atop a maintenance shed that afforded a view of most of the school grounds. DeVontay glanced back once and, even though he knew where she was, she seemed to blend with the night and all he could make out were the lenses of her night-vision gear.

  “Stick to the shadows and we’ll do fine,” Franklin said.

  “I don’t think a baby’s going to be outside this time of night, especially as cold as it is.”

  “There’s more
to it than a Zaphead baby. No telling what’s walking around tonight.”

  DeVontay adjusted his grip on the rifle Hilyard had given him. He didn’t want it. He’d had enough of killing and dying, and his depth perception was crap because of his monovision. But Franklin talked him into it as the soldiers warily eyed him, and now DeVontay was glad of it. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just like when Shipley sent scouting missions to probe the town. Hilyard thinks a Zaphead army is standing around asleep on their feet, just waiting for a bugle call. So we’re basically glorified bait.”

  They kept along the fence until it opened onto a scruffy patch of landscaping that bordered several tennis courts. At least a dozen bodies were sprawled on the painted concrete surface, and DeVontay wondered which of them were Zapheads. They would still be warm, their cells treading water and awaiting a touch that would spark them back into action.

  Mutation: The gift that keeps on giving.

  “Shipley had the right idea,” DeVontay said. “Torch the town. Burn them out.”

  “All except Rachel, you mean.”

  DeVontay wasn’t sure about that. She used her last breath to tell him about the ninth baby, so she understood its importance. But she was one of them. How could he guess what she wanted?

  Glass shattered with a brittleness that set DeVontay’s teeth on edge. “That must be Jorge messing around inside the school.”

  They passed the tennis courts and cut through the parking lot, veering well away from the rot of bodies piled in the football stadium. The main building itself was blackened, and half the roof had collapsed. The taller section, probably the gym, had lost one wall. Half of the windows were broken and many of the others had gone gray with smoke. DeVontay imagined Jorge and Riff Raff picking their way through the melted plastic and blistered metal of the hallways.

  From this side of the school, Volker was out of sight. There were fewer vehicles, too, aside from a fenced lot that held scrapped vehicles, probably for auto mechanics class. Tall pines shielded the school from the surrounding neighborhood, and Franklin veered toward the trees, little more than a silhouette that would quickly fade from DeVontay’s vision if he didn’t keep up.

  “Maybe we should look inside the building with the other guys,” DeVontay said. “Seems more likely the baby would consider it home if they were living here for months.”

  “If so, then the baby would likely summon other Zappers,” Franklin said. “Besides, Volker’s the one calling the shots.”

  “I’m surprised,” DeVontay said. “The legendary Franklin Wheeler following orders. And from a government authority, no less.”

  “I didn’t choose this war,” Franklin responded. “It chose me.”

  “I didn’t choose Rachel, either. She just happened.”

  “About that,” Franklin said. “I was a little protective of her, and I’m sorry. I could see that you cared for her. But I didn’t want to lose her.”

  “Me, either. But I guess that just happened, too.”

  “Unless we find this ninth baby.”

  “And what if the baby does bring her back from the dead? Won’t she be one of them? All the way, not just halfway?”

  Franklin stopped and DeVontay nearly bumped into his back. “Would you be willing to live with that? A Zaphead Rachel that probably couldn’t remember you? Or what being human was like?”

  “None of us remember what being human is like.”

  The wind shifted and pushed away the corrupted air, delivering the deeper, loamy aroma of the distant mountains. Franklin took an exaggerated sniff. “Ah. I miss the compound.”

  DeVontay was about to ask if Franklin planned to return there once all this was over. But “all this” wasn’t something you just walked away from, like a bad vacation. You couldn’t hide from the end of the world.

  Their circuit of the property was nearly complete. They headed up an incline that put them at a higher elevation than the school, and in the ambient light the courthouse ruins were visible in the distance like the chalky skeleton of an ancient dinosaur. A few fires glinted here and there, mostly toward the southern outskirts along the river.

  Sgt. Shipley brought a pack of matches when he should have brought a nuclear warhead.

  “Not a bad little place to start over,” Franklin said.

  “What, you think we’ll settle down, plant vegetables, learn to harvest wind and water power, maybe even round up some pack animals?”

  “Kind of silly, isn’t it? The one thing people forgot—back in the Before times, I mean—is their little utopian visions didn’t mean you could roll around in the daisies all day dreaming up poetry. No, at some point, somebody was going to have to do a hell of a lot of work. These agrarian societies don’t feed themselves.”

  DeVontay grinned despite his somber mood. “Well, once we form a government, I’ll be sure to nominate you for dictator.”

  “The only true democracy is death,” Franklin said, heading down toward the parking lot and the maintenance shed on the far side of the line of buses.

  DeVontay started after him and then paused. Something seemed different about the parking lot. Weren’t there more bodies before?

  He rubbed his good eye. Grief’s a bitch. It’s got you hallucinating. As soon as the numbness wears off, you’re going to be in a world of pain.

  Franklin was already striding across the lot, moving between silent rows of steel and glass and rubber. DeVontay hurried to catch up with him, scarcely looking around.

  There was a body in front of him, a black heap that was barely distinguishable from the asphalt. DeVontay stepped over it.

  Part of it quivered.

  DeVontay forced himself not to look back.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Franklin navigated the vehicles and knotted bodies as if he were walking through a mine field, focusing on the shed where Volker was keeping watch over them.

  He imagined the school building’s interior was nearly pitch black, and he wondered why the corporal hadn’t yielded the night-vision gear to Jorge or Riff Raff, or led the patrol herself. The place seemed plenty dead, and the stink was getting to him. He was eager to wrap up the search party and head toward the center of town.

  He stopped beside a Japanese sedan, a Honda or Toyota whose dark color he couldn’t make out. At least the passenger area seemed clear of bodies. He leaned against it, catching his breath as he waited for DeVontay to catch up.

  Something flashed to his left, maybe fifty feet away. It was like a match or a cigarette lighter, an illumination easily ignored in the days of street lights, neon signs, and cell phones. But in the black ocean of the parking lot, the light was like a beacon. It faded so fast that he couldn’t even be sure he’d seen it.

  Then another flash, behind DeVontay.

  And another, but this one didn’t fade.

  The parking lot winked with dozens of lights, as if the sky had shaken down its stars. One of the dark humps wriggled and rose from the asphalt. Two tiny volcanoes radiated orange and red from the silhouetted mass.

  “Franklin!” DeVontay called, and then the parking lot came alive, shadowy forms rising all around.

  Zapheads.

  Franklin wasn’t sure whether they’d been lying there playing possum all this time or whether some external event had suddenly sparked them back to life, but none of that mattered now. He raised his semiautomatic and tracked the muzzle from one shape to another, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.

  Volker said to hold fire.

  But where was she? Wouldn’t she have noticed and warned them?

  “On the car,” Franklin shouted to DeVontay, taking his own advice and rolling onto the hood of the sedan like a man in a lifeboat yanking his legs away from sharks. Metal rippled and bent beneath him as he scooted up the windshield and perched on the roof.

  DeVontay was twenty yards away, kneeling on the luggage rack of a minivan. He’d moved even faster than Franklin.

  Dozens of Zapheads approached them, whi
le others melded back into the shadows of the school building.

  “Do we shoot?” DeVontay said.

  “That will just bring more of them.”

  “I thought we’d killed them all.”

  “Maybe we did. Like that matters anymore.” Franklin shouted toward the distant shed. “Corporal!”

  No answer.

  A metallic screech and thumping came from the school, and two hunched figures fled from an open door. A cluster of Zapheads burst out of the yawning darkness behind them.

  “Volker!” Franklin shouted again.

  “Volker!” echoed the Zapheads in unison.

  Shit.

  He was waiting for Volker to fire the first shot, or else issue the command to do so. But what if his paranoid notion was right? What if Hilyard had sent them all out as bait, with the intention of carrying the battle beyond the secure stronghold downtown? Volker could already be scurrying away, making good time thanks to the night-vision gear, laughing all the way.

  But before he decided to break protocol, Jorge did it for him, unleashing a spray of M-16 bullets that ripped the air like broken thunder. Riff Raff opened fire, too, streaming curses as he spun wildly. Franklin dropped to his belly on the roof of the car, more worried about friendly fire than mutants.

  Zapheads folded and tumbled back to the ground all around them. DeVontay joined in the fray, raising to one knee and aiming carefully, popping off one shot at a time.

  What the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Franklin rolled and worked his elbows until he could aim his weapon, and he squeezed the trigger hard enough to hurt. More Zapheads spilled from the school’s various openings and orifices and crevices, and these things had none of the lethargy of the tribe they’d massacred in Newton that day. These Zapheads moved.

  If they were learning, they must have skipped the survival lesson in gunfire, because they soaked up bullets like a hayfield taking rain. Whether they’d been resurrected or were dying for the first time, they did it by the dozen.

  Franklin’s ears rang from the percussion, and cordite hung heavy over the parking lot. Brass casings rattled against metal, and Franklin emptied his magazine in less than a minute. Jorge fled for the row of buses while Riff Raff backpedaled toward the school, evidently thinking he’d be safer inside. But just as he reached the entrance, two burning coals of hell appeared behind him and sinewy arms snaked out to pull him into a fierce embrace.