And the Pete-voice inside his head said Yeah, and you got so damn much to defend, don’t you? A box of Rice-a-roni, the San Francisco treat. A blister pack of Bics. A roadside First Aid kit. Three cans of Starkist tuna. A pack of stale Cheez-it crackers. Half a roll of toilet paper. Oh, yeah, that shit’s worth FIGHTIN’ for.
Campbell resisted answering the Pete-voice. That would be crossing the line into craziness, and Campbell wasn’t crazy.
That’s what they all say, the Pete-voice said.
When Campbell was twelve, his dad had taken him to New York—the Carolina foothills giving way to West Virginia coal country, the working-class heart of Pennsylvania, and then into the unbroken urban sprawl of the Northeast. And at every gas station or fast food restaurant, his dad would warn before they got out of the car: “Careful, they’re crazy here.”
In his dad’s world, everywhere else was crazy except Lake James, North Carolina, where the fish were always biting and the women never were. His dad was named Norman, a normal name for a salt-of-the-earth guy, one whose friends called him “Norm.”
“When people call me Norman, I know they’re after money,” his dad always said.
To his shame, Campbell had barely thought of his family in the aftermath of the solar storms. Lake James had only been a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Chapel Hill, but in a world without cars, it might as well have been the far side of the moon.
When Campbell had left home to attend UNC, his father had packed up the Suburban and ferried his stuff to his dorm room, leaving him with one tidbit of advice: “Careful, they’re crazy here.”
And now time and circumstance—and an epic hissy fit of the sun—had proven his dad right. He wondered if Norm was still alive, sitting on his bass boat and knocking back Bud Lights while the world raged on around him.
Somehow, he couldn’t picture it. The idea of his father’s and mother’s deaths didn’t make him sad. Instead, it carved a hollow in his chest.
Campbell didn’t want to be alone with the Pete-voice anymore. He didn’t care how crazy the people of everywhere else were.
He raised his head over the hood of the Pathfinder. The three figures were walking along the shoulder of the road, just as Campbell had done. The skinny soldier lit another cigarette, bluish-gray smoke swirling around his head. Their blindfolded captive stumbled along between them, with Crewcut giving him a bruising nudge of encouragement once in a while.
Campbell looked behind him to make sure they weren’t being followed. As noisy as they’d been, any Zaphead for miles around could have heard them. But the soldiers didn’t seem restrained in the least. Perhaps they’d already dealt with their share of Zapheads and had faith in their weapons.
Campbell shoved the Glock into a zippered pouch of his backpack and hurried after the threesome, carefully dodging from car to car, working the highway while ducking low. He had to work twice as hard to cover the same amount of ground as the soldiers, but he kept them within sight.
That’s good hustle, the Pete-voice said.
“Shut up.”
Campbell was horrified to realize he’d answered out loud.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Rinse it out, honey,” Rachel said.
Stephen looked at her with surprise. “There’s a whole box of them right out there,” he said, waving toward the surrounding clearing. Dusk had settled in a lavender cloak that darkened to an electric blue, as if the sun was going off to have a laugh on the far side of the globe, where other survivors might be huddled around greasy campfires.
“We need to care for what we have. This isn’t a time to be wasteful.”
DeVontay shook his head in resignation from the pilot’s seat. “Boy’s got all the plates he wants. We can stop in at the next Target and get us some gold-plated china if we want.”
Rachel wasn’t sure of her motives. She wanted to tell them that if they wanted a civilization, the minimal requirement was that they all act civilized. But perhaps it was simpler than that: focusing on small chores kept the bigger worries at bay.
And there are plenty of big worries to go around.
“Until we find your dad, we’re responsible for your behavior,” Rachel said. “And that means doing things you might not like.”
“My dad would tell me to throw it away.” Stephen looked down at his plastic plate. It wasn’t even that dirty; they’d eaten canned pork and beans and apples, and he’d licked up his tomato sauce. DeVontay would have been fine letting them all eat out of cans, but Rachel insisted on the routine of dinnerware.
“I’ll ask him when we find him,” she said, and DeVontay shook his head again, this time with a frown instead of a smirk. “Until then—”
“O-kaaaay,” Stephen said impatiently. “Wicked Witch of the West. Jeez.”
Rachel let out a cackle that reverberated in the cavity of the wrecked plane. “Hee hee hee hee. I’ll get you and your little dog, too!” She returned to her normal voice. “But you’re still going to clean your plate.”
Stephen poured some bottled water on his plate and started to wipe it with his shirt sleeve. Rachel didn’t even have to say anything. A scowl did the job. He dragged a T-shirt from the open suitcase beside him, wiped the dish carefully, and tossed the T-shirt back onto the pile.
DeVontay wiped his pocketknife on his trouser leg without comment and gazed through the plane’s window. Half of the windshield was missing, cool evening air funneling through from the gash where the nose had broken lose from the fuselage. Much of the instrument panel was intact, the radio handset dangling from its taut coil of cord. One of the pilot seats was missing, and DeVontay had taken the other one, building a fire with the help of tiny bottles of Scotch he’d plundered from the shattered galley. He twisted the cap from one and poured half the contents on the fire, and the flames turned blue and oily.
Rachel hadn’t asked about the bodies he’d encountered. She only knew that there must have been dozens. Even if the plane had tossed them like popcorn during the crash landing, surely a number of them must have followed the final instructions and buckled in. DeVontay was numb to it now, death just another traveling companion on the road to After. Rachel wasn’t sure if his grim equanimity was a necessary survival mechanism or yet more proof that any structure she imposed was just a sham.
She eyed the encroaching darkness that seemed to seep from the edge of the forest like a watery predator. “Are we safe here?” she asked, hating herself for saying it in front of the boy.
“Safe as anywhere.” DeVontay’s rifle was leaning behind him against the skewed wall of the pilot’s cabin. “We haven’t seen any Zappers for days.”
It was true. They hadn’t seen any survivors, either, and Rachel wondered if the solar storms had left lingering damage that upped the body count even weeks later. Right now the three of them could be changing, the microscopic synapses in their brains melting like burnt fuses, their impulse signals falling into darkness.
How would you know? Rachel wondered. One minute you’re walking and the next you’re walking braindead.
Stephen rubbed his eyes, red both from smoke and sleepiness. Rachel spread a plush brown jacket on the collapsed floor of the cabin and smoothed it. “We’ve put in some miles today,” she said to him. “Why don’t you hit the hay?”
Stephen opened his mouth to protest but yawned instead. “How much farther?”