The river was maybe fifty yards across and only a few feet deep, but it quickly narrowed into a boulder-strewn, churning waterway. The water flowed downhill, of course, and would carry him away from his destination, but he wasn’t so sure he cared about Milepost 291 anymore. That had been Rachel’s hallowed destination, not his, and now that she was gone, the objective seemed foolish.
Putting distance between him and his glittery-eyed stalkers was a more immediate goal. He propelled the kayak forward with long, powerful strokes, the bottom occasionally scraping on rocks. Zapheads came closer to the water to watch, and he fought a deep desire to laugh at them.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted. “Don’t you know how to swim?”
“Swim,” one of them said, a little girl who looked about Stephen’s age.
“Swim,” said an older Zaphead, waving his arms in imitation of the paddle strokes. Others took up the cry of “Swim” until it resonated like the cries of a crazed flock of birds. They came from the woods and from around the houses, dozens, maybe even hundreds.
One waded into the river, then another, and ahead of him, DeVontay saw more of them entering the water. He stroked with aching muscles and frantic breath, sure they would tip over the kayak and pull him under.
He didn’t want to put down the paddle and try shooting arrows at them. Because he only had one eye, he had poor depth perception. Rachel hadn’t realized what an awful shot he was with the rifle, and given the turbulence of the water, he needed both hands to keep the kayak straight.
The bottom had deepened as the channel narrowed, and the Zapheads were soon up to their necks. They made no move to swim or paddle, and so were pushed off their feet by the current. The first one went under and didn’t come back up.
More and more heads disappeared beneath the silvery-green water, and more Zapheads pressed their way into the water, like lemmings going over a cliff. When the young girl’s expressionless face vanished in the froth, a cold horror settled inside DeVontay’s sweating body. They were drowning.
He soon quit watching, instead focusing on the rocks and eddies ahead, choosing which gaps and rapids seemed to offer the safest passage.
He wondered if the river was large enough to hold all the Zapheads in the world, and if anyone—or any God—would mourn their extinction if such a lucky event came to pass.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Franklin Wheeler had been preparing for Doomsday for much of his adult life, but never in his wildest fantasies would he have planned for this scenario.
No, in his dream of a post-collapse world, he would be sitting in his little cabin on the ridge, the woodstove crackling, a kettle of water atop it for his dandelion-root tea. He’d never really planned to live alone, but the others in his fantasy had always been slightly amorphous and faceless—however, he’d always hoped Rachel would be the one family member who would appreciate his foresight and preparation. Instead, he’d ended up with an unlikely group of strangers, a reluctant leader instead of a libertarian loner.
Ah, hell with it, libertarians can’t really exist, because we all depend on one another. We’re all interconnected, one big hippie flower-power hallucination, or maybe God’s twisted little jigsaw puzzle.
“How’s it going back there?” he called to Robertson and Shay. Robertson’s bandaged head made him look like a mummy, but his eyes were alert and he kept up with the rest of the group.
“We’re good,” Shay answered for them. She’d taken Hayes’s field jacket as a trophy, although it was far too large for her and she had to roll up the sleeves. Her father had given her Hayes’ sidearm and holster. The belt had been too large for her slim waist, so she wore it over one shoulder like a bandolier. Franklin hoped her father had taught her about guns, because if they encountered one of Sarge’s patrols or a pack of pissed-off Zapheads, there wouldn’t be much time for target practice.
Franklin and Jorge carried the AR-15s of the two dead soldiers, but neither was all that comfortable with the semiautomatic weapons. Franklin figured what they lacked in accuracy, they made up for in sheer firepower. Robertson stubbornly carried the shotgun, claiming it was a better choice for close fighting. Considering what it had done to Bandana Boy’s head, Franklin couldn’t disagree.
They’d taken the packs from the two soldiers, filling them with the provisions Robertson had collected. Jorge had wanted to check the surrounding houses, but Robertson said they were already cleaned out. As they walked along the gravel road away from the last shots they’d heard, Franklin checked the angle of the afternoon sun to gauge their direction.
“What’s the plan?” Jorge asked Franklin.
“We’ll make a big sweep to the east and circle around to the parkway, then back to my compound. With luck, we’ll avoid Sarge’s troops.”
Jorge’s eyes were dark and serious. “I can’t go back until I find my family.”
“I know. I’m hoping we’ll see some sign of them.”
“How many more of us are left?” Robertson asked. “You guys are the first people we’ve seen in weeks, and if the Army has only a few dozen troops near the parkway, then I’m guessing the Zapheads outnumber us a hundred to one.”
“Yeah, but they haven’t figured out how to use guns yet,” Franklin said. “If we all got on the same team, we’d wipe them out in no time.”
“And then we’d turn on each other,” Jorge said. “You think your military will grow tired of killing once they get a taste for it?”
Another shot sounded in the distance, and the reverberation off the wooded slopes made its origin difficult to place. Franklin hoped they weren’t walking right into the middle of a Zaphead hunt. If they encountered an army patrol, they’d have to explain what happened to their two companions. And Sarge had specifically ordered them not to collect “prisoners,” so Robertson might be killed on the spot. And young Shay’s fate might end up the same as the one Bandana Boy and Hayes had planned for her.
“That’s Grandfather Mountain,” Franklin said, pointing to the dark, angular profile to the west. “Sarge’s bunker is somewhere maybe half a mile from the base of it, and my compound is another mile north. We could make it before nightfall.”
“And then what?” Jorge said. “They know where the compound is. Once they discover what happened to their friends, they would come for us.”
“We’d be ready for them.”
“Three against fifty?” Robertson said.
“Four,” Shay said, hooking her thumbs into the belt and pushing so that the sidearm flopped in its holster.
“Normally, I believe in ‘Live and let live,’ but I don’t think we have that option anymore,” Franklin said, ignoring the girl’s belligerent pose.
“I can’t simply hide on a hill while my family is in danger,” Jorge said.
Your family’s probably dead, amigo. But Franklin understood Jorge’s clinging to hope. He himself still believed Rachel was out there somewhere, despite all evidence suggesting otherwise. “Your family is just as likely to find their way back to the compound as you are to find them wandering around in the woods somewhere. I just hope to God they aren’t hanging around that woman and her Zap baby.”
“Zap baby?” Robertson said.
“This woman we rescued. We didn’t know it, but she had a baby that had been...” He glanced at Shay before he decided on the word. “…affected.”
“Do you think that had something to do with why they left your camp? Sounds to me like that’s the safest place this side of the Mississippi, if you don’t count the military bunker.”