“What do you want?” DeVontay said, stalling for time.
DeVontay heard a crack, then a small splash in front of him, followed by the keening whine. The sounds occurred almost simultaneously, so it was only after a small puff of blue-gray smoke wended from the man’s rifle barrel that he realized a shot had been fired.
He raised his arms, releasing the kayak, which slid downstream and turned sideways before scudding down the rapids.
“Get over here or this river’s gonna be running red,” said Orange Cap.
DeVontay slogged toward the bank, slipping once on the algae-coated stones and going to one knee. The rifle barrel tracked each step. By the time he reached the shore, he was soaked to the waist and chilled to the bone. Neither man made a move to help him out of the water, so he clawed his way up by grabbing fistfuls of slimy weeds.
When he stood on trembling legs, DeVontay found the tip of a rifle barrel against his nose.
“You normal?” asked the man with the sunglasses.
DeVontay risked a little defiance. “Are you?”
The man took off his sunglasses and shoved them in the pocket of his hunting vest, not lowering his weapon. “You traveling alone?”
“Yeah. You’re the first people I’ve seen in two weeks.”
“But I bet you seen a lot of Zaps.”
“Upriver. Dozens of them.”
“They’re ganging up,” said Orange Cap. DeVontay could now see that it bore a white T logo, for the University of Tennessee. “We were picking them off one at a time, a stray here and there, but lately, we’re trying to lay low.”
“What do you want with me, then?” DeVontay asked, glancing down the river where his goods floated on the green surface. “You made me lose my supplies.”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Why?”
“For one, because we said so,” said the bearded man. “For another, this is war, and you’re either with us or against us.”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“We got a little gang together. A few locals, a few oddballs like you. People who don’t want to go down without a fight.”
DeVontay unbuttoned his wet shirt. “I don’t want to fight. I want to run.”
“Ain’t nowhere left to run to. It’s all Zap country now. From sea to shining sea.”
How do you know? Got a satellite feed back at your camp? Or did the aliens beam it straight through your tinfoil skullcap?
“I’d rather take my chances on my own,” DeVontay said. “Besides, they didn’t attack me when they had the chance. They just kind of…monitored me.”
The bearded man plucked DeVontay’s knife from its holster and finally lowered his gun, but it was still pointed in DeVontay’s general direction. “Yeah, seems like they quit raging, burning, and murdering. But it feels like they’re up to something even creepier. Like they already know they’ve won.”
DeVontay didn’t like the idea that Zapheads were exhibiting signs of intelligence and organization, however rudimentary. But that theory didn’t jibe with their filthy clothes, eerie silence, and lack of purpose.
And were these two guys much better? Shooting at him, bossing him around?
He moved his right hand to dig in his pocket, causing both men to raise their weapons to his chest. He held up his other hand, palm open. “Easy. I don’t have any weapons.”
“Take ‘er slow,” warned Orange Cap.
DeVontay pulled out a couple of Slim Jims, which were protected from the water by their plastic wrappings. “This is all I have left after you made me lose my kayak.”
The bearded man turned and headed into the trees, motioning DeVontay to follow. “Better come with us then.”
DeVontay glanced wistfully downstream, where the kayak’s bow bobbed just above the surface as it tumbled along the rapids.
Should have taken a damned bike instead.
The bearded man fell in behind DeVontay, and soon they were through the weeds and knotty trees and following the narrow road.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Franklin finally caught up with Robertson and his daughter Shay where they waited behind a big Ford delivery van. The van was axle-deep in a ditch along the road, and no doubt a rotted corpse was slumped over the wheel.
“Where is he?” Franklin asked, trying to disguise his raspy panting.
“Circling the house,” Robertson said. “I guess he’s checking it out.”
“Finally getting some sense. Heroes don’t last long in After.”
“We all have to be heroes now,” Shay said, and Franklin couldn’t tell if she was putting him on or not. Her generation was weaned on Facebook and texting, and Franklin wasn’t sure they could string more than six words together.
Franklin peered around the van and studied the house whose chimney was leaking wood smoke. It was a one-story, brick ranch house. No movement in the yard, and the curtains were drawn. Two cars were parked out front and the garage door was open, but that meant nothing—the house’s original owners could have been preparing for a trip when the wave of cataclysmic solar flares swept across the planet.
Only two other houses were in sight, but Franklin didn’t draw much comfort from the area’s lack of population density. Even though fewer people meant fewer Zapheads, Franklin figured any survivors would have headed for safer territory by now—even though Robertson and Shay had fared pretty well since the storms.
Until the government happened.
“See him?” Robertson asked, cradling the shotgun and poking his head up just enough to peer through the van’s windows.
“I hope he’s not dumb enough to go up and knock,” Franklin said. “He might get a bullet in the throat.”
“You don’t think his wife and kid are still alive, do you?”
Franklin shook his head. “Doubt it. That little Zaphead baby was bad news. I knew it from the jump. I should have…”
“Should have what?” Shay asked after a moment.
He looked at her big blue eyes. She still had enough innocence for all of them, despite what those pig-assed soldiers had tried to do to her. But she would learn.
“Should have stayed with them,” Franklin finished. No need to tell her about the hard choices that were now necessary. Soon she’d be making choices of her own.
Then he saw Jorge, coming out of the trees on the far side of the house. He glanced up and down the road and apparently saw Robertson through the glass. He stuck up a thumb in an “all-clear” sign.
Franklin didn’t trust Jorge’s reconnaissance. The Mexican had handled himself well in their few skirmishes and at Sarge’s bunker, but the worry over his family was making him desperate. And desperate people made mistakes.
“You guys stay here,” Franklin said. “No use all of us getting shot.”
“I can sneak up and peek in the windows,” Shay said, her improvised bandolier sliding down her shoulder.
“No,” Robertson snapped.
“So I guess we’re not all heroes?” she responded.
Franklin’s weariness and annoyance brimmed over. “That’s the cheapest goddamned word in the dictionary. It’s one of those words that idiots die over. Same as ‘honor,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘courage.’ If we can get one thing right in After, let’s make sure we clean out some of the bullshit that clogged up the start of the Twenty-First Century.”
“Well, excuuuse me,” Shay said. “Grampa Grumpypants must not have had enough prunes in his oatmeal this morning.”
“Shay,” Robertson said, although he sounded like he was about to laugh.
“You don’t know who’s in there,” Franklin said. “Maybe some more of Sarge’s soldiers, ready to finish what your friends up there started.”