“She’s out in Texas. For all we know, she might be living happily ever after.”
“Ain’t no happily ever afters.”
They were silent for a moment, Rachel growing drowsy again even though she should take over the watch so DeVontay could get some sleep. “About earlier…”
“Forget it. We got enough problems.”
“What if it’s not a problem?”
“It will be,” he said. “Ain’t no happily ever afters, remember?”
The fire hissed as the wood heated. Rachel was cold, even covered by a comforter she’d found in the luggage. She drew it around her. The hissing grew louder but the embers remained dark red.
“Hear that?” DeVontay said.
“Is it raining?” It had been clear earlier, when they were outside and shared that awkward intimate moment when DeVontay had pointed out constellations. But weather could change fast in autumn. She glanced at the cockpit’s shattered windshield, but no drops appeared on it.
“I thought it was crickets,” DeVontay said. “But this doesn’t sound right.”
“Whatever it is, it’s coming from all around us.”
Stephen stirred in his sleep. Rachel shed her comforter and went to him, hoping he wouldn’t cry out. Her pistol was on top of her backpack, within reach if needed. With DeVontay’s guidance and some target practice, she no longer felt uneasy with it.
DeVontay put his index finger to his lips in a “shushing” gesture. He grabbed his rifle and dropped to the ground, wriggling forward on his elbows until he lay in the jagged opening of their makeshift camp. “Put out the fire,” he commanded in a hoarse whisper.
Rachel poured the remains of a water bottle on the flames, arousing a humid steam. Then she pulled the comforter over it to suffocate the last of the embers. In the sudden darkness, Rachel was temporarily blinded, afraid she’d awaken Stephen if she moved. Then the ambient glow of the aurora settled in to cast a greenish hue as if she were looking through night-vision goggles.
The hissing grew louder around the cockpit. Rachel wanted to ask DeVontay if he saw anything, but she was afraid to make any noise. She felt along the damaged cockpit’s shell until she came to the nose of the plane, then she ascended the sharp incline of wreckage until she could see through the cracked window.
She was right about the sky—it was still shockingly clear, the striated bands of shimmering green aurora like a psychedelic fireworks display against the ceiling of heaven. Beneath it was the black outline of the forest. At first she could see nothing, but then the trunks of the closest trees individuated. Something moved between them.
Dozens of tiny sparks, like fireflies.
But fireflies were a summer insect. The September nights were too cool for them.
That glittering gold was familiar.
Zapheads?
They hadn’t seen any Zapheads in a week, and they’d been able to avoid contact through caution. Rachel had never seen more than a few at any one time.
Several of them had attacked in unison back in Taylorsville, when she and DeVontay had been held captive by soldiers. But she couldn’t comprehend the numbers now surrounding them in the woods, issuing their clicking ululations in the shadows.
“Eyes,” she said, mostly to herself, to grasp the awfulness of the idea, although she’d said it loudly enough for DeVontay to hear over the hissing.
“It’s them,” he said.
The sibilant hissing rose into a unified keening, almost a single soulful wail. The Zapheads were giving voice to the misery of After in a way that no human could articulate. Rachel shuddered, and the dread sank deeply into her bones.
We’ll die here. All this for nothing.
So much for protecting Stephen.
So much for paying my debt.
Thanks a lot, God.
But she couldn’t be angry at the force she’d rejected. If she’d stopped thanking God for survival and hope, then she couldn’t rightly blame Him for the disintegration.
The glittering eyes still hovered in the distance, not coming any nearer. Rachel slid to the ground and crawled across the ruptured cockpit, feeling her way. The smoky steam hung heavy in her lungs, and she forced back a cough. Stephen murmured in his sleep.
She expected DeVontay to begin firing at any moment, the night exploding with lead and powder. Even with the extra boxes of ammo he’d found back at the farmhouse, they would not be able to fend them off, even if every shot found its mark.
Rachel reached her backpack and clutched her pistol. Her grandfather would want her to go down fighting.
She could almost hear his demanding, raspy voice now. “Stand your ground. Make the bastards pay for messing with a Wheeler.”
The high, hissing wail echoed inside her skull, penetrating to her soul. This was the soundtrack to hell, inspiring her to madness. She fought an urge to burst out laughing, to flee into the forest with her pistol blazing, to meet their violence head on with no mercy asked or given.
But when she reached the cockpit opening, DeVontay blocked her way. “Wait,” he said, wrapping a strong arm around her.
“How can there be so many?”
“Dunno.” DeVontay held her against his body so tightly that she could barely breathe. Her heart felt like a zeppelin filling with warm hydrogen.
She struggled against him, barely hearing him over the noise. Now she wanted to scream instead of laugh, and then she thought she was screaming, because a shriek pierced the night like an electric guitar solo over a string orchestra.
The sound was coming from inside the cockpit.
Stephen!
The keening wail in the forest gave way to an ominous silence.
CHAPTER TEN
Stephen screamed again and Rachel tore free of DeVontay’s grip. She stumbled through the aurora-limned cockpit, until she found him. He clung to her with his thin, frail arms.
“Shh, it’s going to be okay,”
“Huh-had a bad dream,” he blubbered. “They were t-talking to me…”
“Who?” she asked, her stomach tightening.
“I don’t know. They… they were in the woods.”
She stroked his hair, careful to keep the pistol out of his reach. If the Zapheads closed in, she’d have to decide whether to use the last two bullets on the boy and then herself. Except she couldn’t remember how many bullets the magazine held.
Why isn’t DeVontay shooting?
In the hush of the night, the cockpit seemed small and fragile against the vastness of the sky. They’d grown overconfident, sleeping more or less out in the open after so many nights spent in abandoned houses along the way. But Rachel had been sure the Zapheads were thinning out, perhaps even dropping dead from some lingering, invisible effects of the sun’s radiation.
Now here they were in a multitude, all around them. Rachel had suffered the ultimate arrogance—the belief that this After was meant for humans, and that it was up to humans to put the pieces back together.
Maybe, like the dinosaurs, they were merely short-term tenants, squatting on land the rightful owners had yet to claim. Placeholders in history.
“Where’s DeVontay?” Stephen asked, a little calmer now, his sobs giving way to occasional shudders.
Good question. He didn’t go OUT there, did he?
Even with the high aurora and faint moonlight, she couldn’t tell if DeVontay was still at his outpost at the edge of the cockpit. Their campsite was steeped in shadows, giving Rachel the sense that the metallic shell was in truth a mausoleum that still contained the echo of those who had died here.
This whole After was nothing but an echo, a hollow mockery of life. The ultimate indictment of an allegedly merciful God.