The Zapheads staggered and lost their grip on the corpse and it tumbled off their shoulders to the ground.
The Zapheads turned as one and stared up at the hiding place in the rhododendrons. Jorge tried to shrink back among the dark leaves and shadows.
Then the hissing began.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You old fool,” Jorge said. “Now the soldiers will come.”
“Let ‘em,’ Franklin said. His eyes gleamed with liquid malevolence, storms brewing behind them.
Below, the Zapheads massed, their hisses combining into a near screech. They didn’t approach, not at first, and Jorge wondered why they were hesitating. They showed no fear or anger, and their implacability was more terrifying than if they had swarmed up the slope toward them. The two adolescents were the creepiest—if not for their glittering eyes and ragged clothing, they could have been on a school outing, perhaps a nature hike with a picnic.
“You shooting, or you running?” Franklin asked Jorge.
“This isn’t my fight,” Jorge managed to say, although he could barely force air through his windpipe. He hadn’t given a second thought to risking his life to help rescue Cathy and her baby—although he hadn’t known at the time that the infant was a Zaphead. But this confrontation was unnecessary. All they’d had to do was wait it out and the Zapheads would soon be gone.
He wasn’t going to fight to save a dead man. Not while his family was at risk.
“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Jorge said.
“The plan is to survive.”
“We survive by staying out of sight.”
“I didn’t hear you saying that back when you were rescuing a damned Zap baby.”
“I…I didn’t know.”
“I’ve got enough bullets for all of them,” Franklin said, leveling his rifle again.
“Do you have enough for whatever army is out there?” Jorge scanned the surrounding forest, wondering if the three soldiers were even now returning to the trail. Or if other soldiers were out on patrol. He’d seen a lot of boot prints.
The Zapheads remained silent, still facing up the slope. Sweat ringed Jorge’s scalp line. The sweet aroma of sap and autumn decay filled his nostrils, the tension heightening his senses. A bird overhead emitted a piercing cry, and Jorge feared it would set off the Zapheads again. But they waited with an inhuman patience.
“They can’t take a hint,” Franklin said. “This is my mountain.”
He fired again, and one of the female Zapheads lurched forward one faltering step, mouth open in surprise. The bullet had entered her abdomen, blowing a pink, stringy chunk of intestine out her back. Judging from her blue blazer and white blouse, she might have been a bank teller or sales executive, someone you wouldn’t expect to ever meet deep in the forest.
Now she was dead a second time—the solar storms had inflicted a first death on her soul, leaving only her body.
Still, she was a woman.
“You’re killing them in cold blood,” Jorge said.
“Good,” he said. “No need to break a sweat.”
“You’re not shooting those kids, are you?”
“They ain’t kids no more. If you’re a Zap, you’re a threat to the human race. A threat to freedom.”
The Zapheads still didn’t show any distress or excitement, although they took interest in their fallen comrades. Two of them lifted the naked man and settled him across their shoulders, while three female Zapheads lifted their dead sister. They weren’t strong enough to bore her aloft, but they managed to raise her enough to drag her along the trail, one summer sandal sliding off her foot.
The remaining Zapheads started up the slope toward the rhododendron thicket. They moved with an eerie grace, as if working their way through water. At forty yards, their glittering eyes were like electric jewels.
Jorge brought his weapon to bear, but only in anticipation of the soldiers discovering them and attacking. He wasn’t going to shoot unless he had no other choice.
Franklin, on the other hand…
Ku-paaak.
Another shot, another Zaphead tumbling over.
Jorge flung his weapon to the ground.
Franklin turned, nearly snarling in rage. Jorge wasn’t sure if the anger was directed at him or the Zapheads—the raw emotion seemed diffuse and directionless, a tsunami finally breaching a seawall.
“Pick it up,” Franklin said.
“I’m not killing unarmed people.”
“They’re not people, Goddammit. They’re Zaps.”
“I’m done.”
Franklin lunged toward him with a speed that belied his age. Jorge tried to avoid the charge but fell into the branches, feathers of bark raining down on his face. Franklin clutched him by the front of his shirt, his fist jammed hard into Jorge’s Adam’s apple.
The Zapheads suddenly hissed and began storming the slope, kicking mud and leaves into the air. Their grace gave way to a kinetic madness that mirrored Franklin’s rage. Jorge fought to suck air into his lungs. Franklin’s breath smelled of old onions, stale coffee, and a metallic tinge that came from somewhere deep in his organs.
“Guh…guh…,” Jorge grunted, pointing at the approaching Zapheads. But Franklin’s bulging eyes fixated on Jorge’s as if he was oblivious to everything but the adrenalin coursing through his veins. Jorge struggled to get his balance but one knee was jammed in the crotch of a twisted rhododendron. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t fend off the grizzled oldtimer.
The Zapheads fanned out as they approached, half a dozen of them flitting through the trees and dodging behind the boulders. The two kids spearheaded the charge. Jorge hadn’t noticed before that one of them was a girl—her lithe body was undeveloped and her shape hidden inside a baggy T-shirt. She was close enough that he recognized the emblem on it from a pencil box Marina had owned.
Hello Kitty.
Jorge twisted away from Franklin’s grip, a branch scratching his cheek.
“Fray…Franklin,” Jorge wheezed. This time a glimmer of recognition clouded the burning rage of Franklin’s irises. He blinked as if awakening from a restless nap and looked down at his hands.
“They’re coming,” Jorge said.
“Who?”
Jorge wondered if the old man had suffered a stroke. “Zaps.”
The man shoved Jorge and scrambled for his rifle. Jorge hung splayed in the branches for another moment before dropping onto the moist loam.
From his knees, Franklin hoisted his rifle into position and swiveled the barrel left and right. The Zapheads darted between the trees, hissing and chuckling.
Franklin squeezed off another shot and a bullet pinged off granite.
An answering shot echoed across the valley from the opposite ridge.
Soldiers. Damn the ornery old man.
Jorge couldn’t locate any of the Zapheads. Once they had swarmed the forest, they moved with a predatory agility. He’d see a flash of movement or flutter of cloth and by the time he focused, all was shadows and trees again. If not for their hissing, Jorge would have believed they had retreated deeper into the woods.
Franklin cussed under his breath. “Did they turn into ghosts?”
Another shot rang out from a distance and this time Jorge heard a bullet whistle through the treetops above. He crouched low and scrambled on his hands and knees until he was out of the thicket.
“Where you going?” Franklin said.
“To the compound.”
“You forgot your rifle.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Jorge took off along the slope, running parallel to the trail. Below, the three females had lifted the woman Franklin had shot and now conveyed their grisly cargo toward a mysterious destination. The naked old man’s body was gone, but the dead soldier still lay where he’d tumbled. The Zapheads had apparently lost interest in the human once they had some corpses of their own kind.