“Mind giving us a hand?” Kiki asked Angelique in a stern voice.
“Who made you Queen Bitch?”
“We’ll get out of here faster if you help, and that will give you more time to paint your nails.”
“Now, now, ladies,” Rooster said. “No fighting. Unless it’s Zapheads.”
DeVontay piled the remaining food back in the blanket and hoisted the bundle again, eager to get out of there. Despite the fog, he felt exposed and vulnerable. And he was convinced Zapheads didn’t rely solely on sight to track humans. They might be “watching” right now from just inside the veil of fog.
“Okay, Little Man, why don’t you and DeVontay go on ahead, and we’ll follow? I’ll have my men bring up the rear so the Zaps don’t sneak up on us.”
Stephen glanced at DeVontay, who nodded. Stephen had taken only three steps when Rooster reached out and snatched him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him close.
“What the hell?” DeVontay said, dropping the bundle.
“We have to move fast,” Rooster said. “That means leave the baggage behind.” He called out to his men. “Take care of them like I promised.”
The first shot blew open the skull of a young girl, followed immediately by several shrill screams. DeVontay spun around, searching for the killer in the dark, and several more shots rang out. A dark blotch erupted on Carole’s chest and she collapsed, and a couple more children fell.
DeVontay felt as if he were clawing his way up from a tar pit. Two more children had dropped before he realized what was happening, and his shout mixed with the screams and the gunfire. When he turned back to Stephen, Rooster had his gun pressed against Stephen’s head. “This ain’t no time to play hero,” Rooster said, his voice as cold as the deepest crack in space.
Kiki shrieked and tried to shield the few remaining children, and DeVontay watched in horror as a series of red holes appeared along her thighs. James took off running toward the forest, rapidly vanishing into the fog, but the other kids lay in a bloody, quivering, moaning pile of carnage.
DeVontay could barely breathe, and he briefly wondered if he’d been shot himself. But his wound was internal, in a place that would never heal and wasn’t merciful enough to kill him.
Kiki was still alive, rolled onto her side, reaching out to aid one of the mortally wounded children despite her own injuries. DeVontay took a step toward her but Rooster shook his head and said, “Not if you want Little Man to keep his skull.”
Angelique walked over to Rooster and slid a semiautomatic pistol from his holster, then stood over Kiki.
Kiki looked up with defiance flashing in her brown eyes, although her face twisted with pain. “Burn…in…hell.”
“I’ve wanted to do this for a while.” Angelique pointed the pistol at Kiki’s forehead. Kiki kept her eyes open, staring at her killer.
“No, please,” DeVontay begged, more to Rooster than Angelique.
Rooster laughed. “We could have left them alive, but you know how Zapheads are. Carrying off these bodies will slow them down. They like them better dead than alive, and it’s the neighborly thing to do.”
Angelique knelt over Kiki, her pretty features now sinister and ugly, like a demonic mask had been slipped over her head. She was clearly enjoying her power. But Kiki didn’t falter.
“Die,” Angelique said. “Die.”
“You hear that?” whispered the man who’d shot at Stephen from the house.
“All I hear is you flapping your jaws,” Rooster said.
Then DeVontay heard it, too, a repetitive sound that melded with the noise of the night crickets and the riverbank frogs, becoming steadily louder. At first it was like a low drumbeat, but then the rhythm took on distinct phonetic.
“Die die die die die DIE DIE DIE…”
The Zapheads came out of the mist from all sides.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Die,” Rachel said.
“Huh?” Campbell had been asleep, and she repeated the word several more times before his drowsiness leaked away. He thought he heard a distant percussive sound, like popcorn popping, but it was drowned out by Rachel’s voice.
She rose from the bed and walked around the living room in the dim light of the embers. “Die die die die…”
“This isn’t good,” Campbell said, hurrying after her. She’d become increasingly detached, almost catatonic, since they’d fled the farmhouse. He’d hoped the symptoms were temporary, that whatever strange quantum-level healing the Zapheads had imparted would soon fade, but he could no longer lie to himself.
She was turning Zap.
He wondered if he should startle her back to awareness. He’d read that sleepwalkers were not supposed to be awakened. But there was no handbook for this sort of thing. So he simply followed in her wake as she paced around the room, repeating that horrible word over and over.
Once, he stepped in front of her, hoping she would recognize him and respond. But she only stared at him with eyes that glittered like the forge of the universe, two seething holes that spat the birth of stars or maybe struck the flint and steel of hell over and over.
And what scared Campbell even more than her condition was the idea that he’d lost her—that they could have grown together over time, become friends and eventually lovers. The two of them building a family and a new society.
Adam and Eve in the Garden of the Zapheads. Yeah, right. What a goddamned fool.
“Rachel,” he said, and she paused, the sparks dulling in her eyes.
“Die,” she said.
For a moment, he was frightened, because her face was as placid and emotionless as a robot’s, as if she could will him to die with the power of her mind. And that she wouldn’t suffer so much as a tinge of remorse.
He was afraid to restrain her, lest she launch into another violent rage. He repeated her name, hoping it would trigger some sort of memory of her former self. She cocked her head as if listening to something outside his range of hearing.
What if they’re calling her?
And what can I do about it?
Campbell believed they could use Rachel’s symptoms as a means to understanding the Zapheads, but that idea had been foolish as well. There was no inner struggle here, no rational human glibly controlling and conquering an unnatural mutation. The Zaphead won. Just like in the real world.
He wondered about the Zaphead sleeping inside him, and how it was some cosmic stroke of luck or maybe a simple genetic fluke that had prevented him from being affected by the radiation. What if he was the last surviving human in the world? His existential doubt would be God’s greatest private joke.
Rachel, now silent, stepped past him and walked toward the door with sliding, shuffling steps. She stopped before it and stared out through the black glass at the world beyond.
At the farmhouse while a captive of the Zapheads, Campbell had observed that Zapheads rarely used doors. Most of the time, doors were left open as the Zapheads traveled freely in and out. But apparently the professor had taught them how to work doorknobs, even though they had difficulty retaining the memory. They were like severe Alzheimer’s sufferers who had to rebuild their memories anew with each moment.
“Rachel, don’t do this,” Campbell said, standing behind her. Even her scent had changed, from a faintly attractive aroma of soap and clean, outdoorsy sweat to a bright, metallic odor.
She leaped forward and banged into the door. Her forehead bounced against the glass and she staggered back but didn’t fall. She flung herself forward again. This time the glass cracked but held in its frame. Rachel drew back to launch herself at it again, but this time Campbell grabbed her by the shoulders.