“Hell, no. I usually carry three. You caught me on a day off.”
McCrone snorted in laughter, apparently in a good mood again and feeling cocky. “Well, let’s get back to your little survival shack. I could use a hot meal.”
Franklin led the way along the ridge. He knew the route well, and he was pretty sure he could ditch McCrone if the soldier happened to slip or fall behind enough for Franklin to slip away between the trees.
But that would put him defenseless in the dark, with the woods probably teeming with Zapheads and soldiers with night-vision goggles.
That’s the damn problem with being a libertarian. EVERYBODY’S the enemy.
Franklin wondered how McCrone would react when he met the little tribe back in Wheelerville, especially that snot-nosed tiny creature with the glittering eyes.
Even paradise had its shitterhawks.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Campbell didn’t know what was more horrifying—the Zapheads closing in from all around, or the sinister gleam in Wilma’s eyes. The sinking sun splashed a volcanic orange on her irises, a ménage of madness and pleasure.
She clutched at his arm, almost purring. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
As the Zapheads emerged from the forest and negotiated the fence with their flailing, awkward movements, Campbell thought they were the most hideous things he’d ever seen. Their clothes—what still remained, anyway—hung in rags and tatters, and their hair was wild and unkempt, most of the men with scruffy facial hair. They even moved differently than they had weeks ago, almost like sleepwalkers, as if they’d forgotten how to tear a man limb from limb while his heart was still beating.
Campbell looked for an opening, a direction in which to flee. But it would probably come down to luck.
Unless…
“The house,” he said. “Have you been in it?”
She laughed. “I used to live here. Until something better came along.”
“Come on.” Campbell grabbed her arm.
She shuddered out of his grip. “You can’t run from them.”
“Like hell you can’t. What’s wrong with you?”
The Zapheads in the equipment shed had come fully out of the shadows. There were five of them. They could have been a welfare family from the past, as dirty as chimneysweeps and as somber as undertakers. If they harbored any mindless rage, it was well hidden. They might have been assembling for soup kitchen at some charitable church.
Because they’re hungry for…something.
He didn’t believe in zombies, not in real life. That was for video games and movies. He’d blown apart more than his share of zombie heads in Left 4 Dead, although those animated monsters were rapidly replenished to keep the fake adrenalin pumping. He wasn’t sure his mastery of the game would translate to the real world, the After, but he sure wished he hadn’t left his gun back at Wilma’s camper.
Without a gun, all he had was his feet.
And brainzzzz. Don’t forget your brainzzzz.
“I’m going in,” he said to Wilma. “You coming or not?”
“I’m not welcome there anymore.”
She seemed so much at peace, almost childlike. No wonder she’d implored him to feel no fear—she was too far gone to embrace anything but bliss. She was like that preacher back in Taylorsville, when Campbell had been trapped in the church and surrounded by Zapheads. The preacher had welcomed them as if only too glad to offer himself as a sacrifice, as if his life needed to come to the same conclusion as that of the savior he celebrated.
The Zapheads crossed the meadow with a solemn relentlessness, and Wilma turned in a slow circle as if marveling at—
What? Their very existence? The fact that they haven’t killed her yet?
Campbell owed her one more try. She was a fellow survivor after all, or maybe he was just afraid to be alone, to face whatever future lay ahead.
“We can hole up in there, barricade the doors. Maybe find a weapon.” He was already moving toward the porch, keeping surveillance on the soup-kitchen family and the three naked men coming up the driveway, their eyes coruscating like tiny golden disco balls.
“Be not afraid,” Wilma said, but her voice was distant, as if she were talking to herself or maybe so looming presence in the darkening sky that only she could see.
“Well, I am about to crap my pants over here. And that won’t do any wonders for my sprinter’s speed.”
Wilma gave a gentle shake of her head, dismissing him. The flesh around her eyes creased in pity, although her face kept that rapt shine in the sun’s dying light. She was almost golden herself, an idol cast in veneration of After and its shambling, soulless acolytes who heeded the inaudible call.
Campbell dashed across the shaggy, ankle-deep lawn, dew already collecting on the grass and wetting the cuffs of his jeans. He took the steps three at a time, already making Plan B because he was positive the door would be locked. Because that was just the way his luck had been running since the world had ended. Hell, maybe even long before then.
But when he yanked open the screen door, the front door was already ajar, a sweet musky aroma wafting through the crack.
The interior was dark, all the curtains apparently drawn, but Campbell took a last gulp of outdoor, meadow-flavored air and burst inside.
He balled his fists, ready for a dozen Zapheads to jump him. Maybe he’d been foolish and would have had a better chance in open space, but he couldn’t deny the security that a door suggested.
After ten tense seconds, during which time his heart managed one slow thud and then a staccato flurry of arrhythmia, he relaxed just a little. And then the smell hit him, a putrid slap in the face. As an undergrad at UNC, he’d had a work-study job tending laboratory rats used in cell research. The rodents were stacked in wire cages in a small basement room of the science building, and the stink of death, feces, and spoiled food had seeped into the concrete floor and walls like paint.
Campbell backed the door shut, then fumbled with the lock. If he had to escape, that would cost him another second or two, but he still felt a little safer not having to guard his back. He wasn’t sure Zapheads knew how to operate doors and locks—his observation of them had been mostly smash and maim, except for their odd funeral procession of the night before.
Out of habit, he fumbled for the light switch, then he caught himself and tapped the wall with the bottom of his fist. The house was quiet, but somehow that made it even more sinister, as if ghosts were lurking in the cobwebs and would swoop down at any second. As his vision adjusted to the gray netherlight that leaked through the curtains, he felt his way down the hall until he came to the big square of an open room. Mingled with the corrupt stench of death was a cloying, charred odor of a cold fireplace.
He dug in his pocket and retrieved his penlight, the one artifact he’d been smart enough not to leave back at the camper. Shielding the beam and bracing for an assault, he flicked it on. The battery was nearly dead and it cast little more than an orange cone of fuzz, but it was enough.
More than enough.
He was in a dining room, a large stone hearth at one end, a high window on the adjacent wall that faced the yard. The oak flooring was pitted and worn with the footfalls of decades, and a staid pastoral scene of slaves cutting wheat filled a painting frame above the mantel. An antique hardwood buffet stood against a wall, topped with dusty china and silver service sets. But it was the long table in the center of the room that turned the scene from Norman Rockwell to Alfred Hitchcock.
A dozen corpses circled the table, sitting up stiffly against their high-backed chairs.