“Stephen, this isn’t some video game. These are people. They’re scared. And scared people don’t always act like they normally would.”
“Still woulda shot him.”
DeVontay fluffed Stephen’s hair. “I guess you’re scared, too. So am I.”
When they reached the edge of the yard, DeVontay had Stephen wait by a garden shed. “You know how to whistle?”
Stephen tried, but only a thin stream of hissing air came out.
“Okay, so much for secret signals. Let’s go.”
DeVontay made two complete circuits of the house, drawing closer with each step until DeVontay ended up peeking through each of the windows. “Looks good,” DeVontay whispered to the hiding Stephen.
He tried the back door and found it locked. He didn’t want to break the glass, so he tried the window beside it. It was unlatched, so he quietly slid up the lower half.
“Wait there,” he said to Stephen. “I’ll check it out and let you in.”
He crawled through the window, feeling his way in front of him, and decided he was entering the kitchen. He knocked over a jar of some kind and scattered utensils in a brittle clatter. Then he climbed off the counter and headed for the back door. A match struck a few feet in front of him.
In the bobbing orange orb of light, Rooster’s face was twisted with anger. The muzzle of his pistol seemed as big as a sewer pipe as it pointed at DeVontay’s chest.
“Eeeny meeny miney mo, catch a Zapper by his toe.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Just before the match burned down to a tiny red dot, DeVontay saw other figures behind Rooster. He had the impression there were maybe three others, haggard and frantic-eyed. Then the light winked out and the room fell into darkness, with only the faint haze from the window providing illumination. Their breathing was loud and labored, as if they’d been running.
“You broke your word,” Rooster said. “You said you were one of us.”
“Everybody left,” DeVontay said, refusing to allow fear into his voice. “Zaps overran the compound. I didn’t see any reason to stay there and be killed.”
“That compound was all we had left.”
“Then why did you leave?” He couldn’t see Rooster’s face, but the barrel of his gun glinted in the weak light. It was still pointed at DeVontay.
“Maybe I should blow your brains out right here,” Rooster said. “Ain’t no room in this world for traitors.”
DeVontay would have welcomed death, but now he had not just Stephen but a whole group counting on him. In Before, when he’d been a kid in South Philly, he never belonged—not on sports teams, not in the street gangs, not even in his family. He could hardly accept this image of himself as someone who would sacrifice for others, but that’s exactly what he’d done, almost against his will.
Because you keep finding people worth fighting for.
And the best way he could help Stephen, Kiki, and the others would be to stall for time so they could escape. But what were their chances out there alone? Maybe he should tell Rooster about his group, so that they might provide protection and shelter. After all, Rooster had considered them valuable enough to feed and shelter, even if he’d treated them like human livestock.
But Rooster’s voice contained a dangerous edge, like that of a man walked to the end of a gangplank. If he’d been unhinged before, watching his utopian vision crumble might have snapped his last few tethers of reality.
“How many others got away?” DeVontay asked. “Maybe in the morning we can get them together and take back the compound.”
One of the unseen men said, “We’ve been watching the road. You didn’t come that way.”
“I came through the woods. Zaps were blocking the gate.”
“Where’s your gun?”
“Lost it.”
“What about the women and kids?”
“I…I don’t know. I guess they’re still there, if the Zapheads didn’t get them.”
“Bullshit,” Rooster said. “You wouldn’t have left them there.”
“Well, you did.” Goading Rooster was a dangerous game, but he’d already lost this hand anyway. His best chance was to bluff his way into an extra round.
“He was best buddies with one of those boys,” said a woman whose voice he recognized. Angelique’s. “Like he knew him from before the compound. He wouldn’t have left that boy there.”
DeVontay wondered if Stephen could hear the conversation. Hopefully the boy was already running back to Kiki and the others. But he was worried that Stephen would consider running a cowardly act. Maybe DeVontay had proven to be a worse role model than he thought.
“Shut up, Angelique,” Rooster said. “If you had stayed there like I told you, we’d know where everybody was.”
“If I had stayed, I’d probably be Zaphead bait by now,” she said. “But they were all alive when I left. And this guy was playing Clint Eastwood, trying to lead them to safety.”
Rooster lit another match, and this time the globe of light revealed Rooster’s sneering, mad face. “So where are they?”
“I guess they’re all dead,” DeVontay said. “When we hit the woods, Zaps were everywhere. When I heard the screams, I just started running.”
“So you were a hero and then you were chickenshit.” Rooster pushed the muzzle of his gun against DeVontay’s forehead just as the match extinguished. “Which are you now?”
“Chickenshit,” DeVontay said, without emotion. The afterimage of orange flares danced across his vision as darkness returned.
“Pop him, Rooster,” said an unseen man.
“Right, dumbass. This quiet, in the middle of the night, the Zapheads could hear the shot from miles around.”
“Just let me go,” DeVontay said “I’ll keep moving, and that will draw any Zaps that might be around. I’ve done it before.”
“Oh, want to play hero again? Well, I think you’re bullshitting instead of chickenshitting.”
“Shh,” said Angelique. “I heard something.”
They all fell silent, and DeVontay thought his heart might boom like a kettle drum in the small, dark kitchen. Because he’d heard something, too, and it sounded like Stephen’s voice.
Rooster moved past DeVontay and his silhouette filled the window as he looked out. “Don’t see nothing,” he whispered.
“If it’s Zapheads, you better not leave me again,” Angelique said.
“Quit your bitching,” Rooster said. “You’re getting to be more trouble than you’re worth. Washburn, get back there and check the other side of the house.”
A set of footsteps shuffled slowly through the house, fingers feeling along the wall. Washburn must have bumped into some furniture because he hissed a “Shit” before continuing.
“DeVontay!” Stephen loud-whispered from outside.
Be quiet, DeVontay silently pleaded, but it was too late.
“It’s one of the brats,” Angelique said.
Rooster jabbed his rifle into DeVontay’s side hard enough to bruise his ribs and whispered, “Open the door and tell him to come in.”
DeVontay felt behind him and eased his way along the counter. The back door featured a high, narrow pane of glass so he could locate it. He paused with his palm on the handle, but Rooster poked him again, this time in the spinal cord, and cinders of pain flew up the chimney of his central nervous system.
DeVontay opened the door and yelled, “Stephen, run!”
Then an avalanche of red and black shards rumbled down the slopes of his skull and his vision went gray. He fell to his knees, blood trickling down his scalp. Even while fighting for consciousness after the blow to his head, he had the presence of mind to grab Rooster’s legs as the man tried to step over him and go outside. Rooster cursed and tumbled down a flight of several wooden steps, and another man stepped up to the doorway and lifted his rifle.