After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (5 page)

“So
there could be other survivors out there,” Rachel said. “Organized. Putting the
pieces back together.”

“In
theory,” Hilyard said. “Didn’t go so well for us. I was commanding officer, and
we were under orders to stay down for a month. We had plenty of food and
supplies, chemical toilets, battery-powered electronics. We were in good shape.
But guys got cabin fever. Didn’t know what was happening outside the door. And
two weeks in, my staff sergeant staged a mutiny. He convinced the others that
some sort of catastrophe had occurred and the government had collapsed. Chain
of command went all to hell. A few of the privates supported me, but Sgt.
Shipley figured mob rule was the answer. As long as he got to be head of the
mob.”

Stephen
slumped against DeVontay and closed his eyes. He might have been napping, or
just listening. The boy had turned to DeVontay as his protector since he and
Rachel had become separated. She felt a sting of loss, but it was short-lived.
Stephen would eventually come back around. Every child needed a mother.

Even
if that mother was like…whatever she was becoming.

“How
many were in your platoon?” DeVontay asked Hilyard.

“Forty.
When Sgt. Shipley opened the bunker door two weeks after the solar storms, I
gathered the men who were loyal and pretended to go out on a recon mission. By
then we’d figured out something was wrong, because we couldn’t raise anyone on
the radio and all the electronic gear we’d left outside was fried, including
our Humvees. My plan was to get off the mountain and reach a city, establish
contact with headquarters, and have Shipley court-martialed. The trouble with
that plan was that there were no more headquarters and no more cities. And
Shipley had plans of his own.”

“Civil
war,” Rachel said.

“It
wasn’t war. It was murder. They ambushed us.”

“Didn’t
they know about the Zapheads?” DeVontay asked. “That we all needed to stick
together?”

“We
found out pretty quick that a lot of people had died. All those travelers on
the parkway were fried. Some of them had driven off the road, others must have
coasted to a stop, sitting there stinking behind the wheel. There were a few
collisions, but traffic must not have been too heavy that day. Then we found a
few survivors. Only they weren’t people anymore.”

“
Monsters
?”
Rachel asked.

“They
attacked us. We had to defend ourselves. Shipley must have snapped, because he
started ranting about how we were the last outpost of the human race and it was
our duty to establish a new world order. He’d always been a little
unconventional in his views, but I guess he’d just never had the opportunity to
go all Stalin and Mao.”

“And
you were the only one that got away,” DeVontay said, a mild note of suspicion
in his voice that Hilyard apparently didn’t register.

“I’d
guess some of the soldiers aren’t on board, but no way they’ll say anything
now. Not after watching Shipley kill seven men. Besides, they’re safe at the
bunker. It’s easy to defend, they have enough supplies to get through the
winter, and nobody really knows what the world is like off the mountain. In the
meantime, they’re sending out patrols to kill or capture whatever Zaps they can
find.”

“What
about survivors like us?’ DeVontay asked. “Where do we fit in Sgt. Shipley’s
New World Order?”

“You’re
civilians. That makes you low priority in his eyes. If you don’t have a useful
purpose, you’re just a drain on resources.”

“And
you call the
Zapheads
monsters?” Rachel said. The circulation had
returned to her fingers and the tingling, fiery ache had resolved into numb
warmth. The ligature marks on her wrists cut deep red furrows in her flesh. The
men shouldn’t have hurt her. But she couldn’t risk anger.

Not
yet.

“We’d
better put out this fire,” Hilyard said. “Dusk is settling in, and we need to
figure out bedding and the sentry schedule. You folks hit the lean-to and
settle in. The boy needs his sleep. I’ll go relieve Campbell for a while and
let you folks work out the next watch.”

An
owl hooted in the high trees, a harbinger of sunset.

The
hoot was echoed in the distance.

“That’s
a good sign,” Hilyard said. “If anything big was moving around, it would have
spooked the owls.”

Yes
, Rachel thought.
That’s a very good sign.

Because
those aren’t owls.

CHAPTER
FOUR

When
DeVontay awoke, he thought he was sleeping under the stars.

But
the air was warm and still, although the stars danced like the universe had
kicked into a carnival waltz, whirling and spinning to a tune beyond the range
of human hearing. Then the tiny sparks slowed, and Lt. Hilyard spoke.

“It’s
one,” he said, his face thrown into stark shadows by a dim glow below him.
“Your turn as sentry.”

“Your
wristwatch works,” DeVontay said, his throat cracking from dryness. They both
talked in low tones, aware of the others in the lean-to.

“I
had it with me in the bunker. Luminous dial. We had some flashlights and spots,
but this is all I had with me when they attacked us.” When Hilyard let the dial
go dark, specks of light still floated across DeVontay’s vision—even in his
glass eye, as if some memory had been triggered there.

“I’d
forgotten what artificial light is like.”

“I
keep it covered unless I’m inside. Not that time matters anymore, but it’s kept
me connected to the real world while I’ve been playing Robinson Crusoe of the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

DeVontay
had slept heavily, with cluttered dreams whose residue haunted him. Hilyard sat
by the lean-to’s opening as if he’d been awake for years. DeVontay reached
beside him in the dark, first feeling Rachel’s hair and then the boy’s. Stephen
snuggled against her, breathing steadily, his body still.

Rachel
didn’t stir at DeVontay’s touch, but he was struck with the impression that she
was awake. He listened to her breath for a moment, but it didn’t alter from its
slow, shallow state. He rolled away from her and crawled past Hilyard.

“Here,”
Hilyard said, bumping him.

DeVontay
reached out in the dark and took a slender cylinder. “What’s this?”

“Orion
flare for emergencies. If anything happens, you might be able to see well
enough to run for your life.”

“Or
blind the people that want to kill me?”

Hilyard
chuckled. “That, too. This is a handheld flare, so pop this cap and yank this
thing here at the bottom.” He guided DeVontay’s hands along the flare. “It’ll
burn for about three minutes.”

“Heard
anything from Campbell?”

“I
went out to check on him at midnight. He was shivering and pissed off, but he
was awake. I told him the cold was a blessing.”

“He’s
pissed off in general, as far as I can tell.”

“I
picked up a little tension between you guys. What’s that all about?”

“Nothing.”
DeVontay was suddenly eager to be out of the lean-to. Even in the dark,
claustrophobia squeezed at him from all sides.

“I
need to know what I’m getting into here, DeVontay. I didn’t have to take you
people on.”

This
is silly. Like high-school bullshit.
“He
wanted to play white knight for Rachel, but…she already had a black one.”

Hilyard
sighed. “The world ends and people are still people. The human race never had a
chance, did it?”

“Sure,
we did. It’s slim, but it’s all we got. And I notice you haven’t surrendered
yet.”

“I
don’t like to lose.”

“Neither
do I.” DeVontay gripped the officer’s muscular forearm in the dark, squeezed
it, and crawled through the opening and outside.

The
air was clear and cold, tiny bits of frozen blue light jabbed into the curtain
of night. The pale wedge of moon was barely visible through the nearly bare
branches. The ground felt heavy and sodden beneath his feet, as if autumn had
downshifted into winter while he slept. He carried the flare in one fisted
hand, the other resting on the butt of the knife Hilyard had given him.

The
moon provided enough illumination for him to backtrack to where the horses were
tethered. He assumed Campbell would be standing guard there, and he gave a low
whistle as he approached. He didn’t need Campbell panicking and shooting him in
by mistake.

Or
on purpose, either.

Campbell
didn’t answer. The forest was silent, except for a
soft whinnying from one of the horses. DeVontay pressed himself against a tree
and peered toward the animals. All he saw were the broad, dark flanks of the
animals, their necks bent low.

“Psst.
Campbell?”

No
answer. He might have made a circumference of the camp, making sure nobody
approached from high ground. But Hilyard said the craggy terrain would inhibit
advance from any direction but downhill. Given the officer’s tactical training,
DeVontay believed it. However, Zapheads probably hadn’t read any manuals on
military strategy and didn’t seem to care if their bodies were torn and broken
by sharp rocks.

DeVontay
checked the horses to make sure they were okay. They seemed to be drowsing on
their feet.
Nice survival trait. You can break into a run if necessary, or
kick at any predators.

Then
he noticed that Campbell—or somebody—had loosened the halters. The animals were
free but hadn’t wandered away.
That’s odd. We’d talked about releasing them
but Campbell shouldn’t have made a unilateral decision. I don’t like this.

If Campbell had wanted to break from the group, he would have taken one of the horses. With a
horse and a rifle, he’d have a decent chance to reach the valley and hole up in
an abandoned house. But Campbell had never expressed a desire to go solo.
He
wouldn’t leave Rachel, not while he’s still got that goofy crush on her.

DeVontay
took an oblique angle back toward camp, figuring he’d see Campbell before he
reached the lean-to. If not, he’d keep going to the stacked wall of granite
behind them. Campbell might be stubborn enough to think he could climb it and
view miles of surrounding ridges.

DeVontay
considered alerting Hilyard and then discarded the idea. The man already felt
burdened by them, and any extra drama might be enough to push him over the
edge. Besides, the man needed rest if he was going to help them. DeVontay was
pretty sure Hilyard would join their journey to Franklin Wheeler’s compound at
Milepost 291, and another competent ally would be welcome.

He
called Campbell’s name several times in a loud whisper, carefully navigating
the gaps between trees. He was two hundred feet behind the lean-to when he
nearly bumped into the silhouette standing beneath the scraggly limbs of a
gnarled oak.

“Shit,
Campbell, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” DeVontay said. “Why didn’t you
answer?”

The
silhouette said nothing and didn’t move from the shadows. Then a branch shifted
and glinted in the moonlight.

No,
not a branch, the barrel of a gun.

“My
watch,” DeVontay said, determined not to let Campbell intimidate him. “Go on
down and get some sleep.”

“Sleeeeeep,”
Campbell said, only it wasn’t Campbell.

At
first DeVontay thought this must be one of the rogue soldiers from Hilyard’s
unit. So much for Campbell’s prowess as a sentinel. But the man spoke as if he
were drunk. Then other voices came from unseen mouths around him.

“Sleep,
sleep,” they said, imitating DeVontay’s stage whisper.

“What
the hell?” DeVontay wondered if he should shout and warn the others. He might
get shot because of it, but they might have a fighting chance. And he was
probably going to get shot anyway.

“Sleep,”
the man with the rifle said, and then DeVontay saw the glints of yellow dancing
above the source of the words.

Zap.

DeVontay
lunged toward him, bracing for the sting of hot lead in his guts. But the
figure didn’t react as DeVontay slapped the weapon from his hands and knocked
him to the ground. DeVontay had never seen a Zaphead with a firearm, and this
one apparently didn’t know how to use it.

DeVontay
crawled atop the Zaphead and grappled for his throat, intending to choke until
the larynx popped like a persimmon. His other hand, which still held the flare,
clubbed the man in the temple. The man sprawled passively beneath him for a
heartbeat, and then exploded into a flurry of flailing fists and wild kicks.

Someone
else climbed onto DeVontay’s back, putrid, metallic breath strafing his neck.
He bucked to throw his new assailant but only succeeded in getting more
entangled with the man beneath him.

He
landed an elbow in the ribs of the attacker behind him, eliciting a decidedly
feminine grunt. Sharp fingernails raked across his cheek and brow. Hot fluid
poured down his forehead, and he wasn’t sure if his scalp had ripped or if
somebody’s knuckles had split open.