Now he heard that same chuckling, only it wasn’t from just a single throat; it sounded like it issued forth from a dozen or more.
The two soldiers pointed their guns before them and spun in slow circles, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. But it was coming from all around them.
“What is it?” the scrawny soldier said, his voice cracking a little in a nervousness he couldn’t fully suppress.
“Nobody knows nothing.” Crewcut sounded calm, although he clacked a mechanism on his assault weapon. The prisoner now stood silently, head tilted back as if listening.
A twig snapped somewhere to Campbell’s left. He hoped the soldiers didn’t panic and open fire. He slumped a little lower into the weeds, sliding his pistol from his backpack.
The chuckling sound rose in pitch, a keening vibration that pierced the forest air. The contrast made Campbell realize just how deep the silence of the post-Doomsday world was—he had become accustomed to the absence of car engines, radio broadcasts, chainsaws, and police sirens. Now this sudden disruption of peace was almost shocking. He echoed Crewcut’s catch phrase: “Nobody knows nothing.”
He’d had a very limited view of events since the solar storm—this new phase of evolution the woman Rachel had referred to as “After.” He’d adjusted to a perception of Zapheads as bloodthirsty, mindless killers and of fellow human survivors as desperate potential killers, all tossed into a stew of rotten bodies and failed technology.
But if a wider change was underway, wouldn’t the military be the strongest organized force? Wouldn’t that rigid chain of command have a better chance of enduring in chaos, and wouldn’t those commanders have the most information about the current state of affairs?
And isn’t that the reason I am following them? For answers?
“Whoever you are, you better stay back,” the scrawny soldier shouted at the trees. “Or I’ll blow you to hell.”
Crewcut snorted. “Even if they can hear, they sure as shit don’t listen.”
The chuckling was almost a liquid hissing now, like moist air pouring from a dozen punctured tires. The soldiers slowly backed toward the porch of the mobile home, whether instinctively or through some sort of unspoken tactical ploy.
They left their prisoner by the road, where he turned in slow circles, tilting his head left and right. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a string of blood trickled forth.
Branches stirred behind Campbell, followed by the muted flutter of disturbed leaves on the forest floor. He rolled with his back against the trunk of an oak, the rough bark scouring him into a heightened sense of awareness.
He breathed through his mouth in order to hear more clearly. Through the trees, the sky had turned an ashen gray with approaching dusk, and the blackness pooled among the base of the trees. Night was rising more than it was descending, crawling up from the hidden pores of the earth.
If anything was moving in that blackness, Campbell had no hope of detecting it.
A metallic thud vibrated from the clearing, followed by another. Crewcut, still deathly calm, said, “Quit banging. Nobody’s home, dumbass.”
The scrawny soldier knocked twice more on the trailer door before slamming the door handle with the butt of his rifle. “Maybe we ought to make a run for it.”
“We’ve got orders.”
“Nobody ordered us to get killed.”
Although Campbell could see nothing in the ebony ink of the forest, he could sense movement all around him. The trailer’s yard was spacious enough to catch the last ragged shreds of sunset. Crewcut, standing on the porch, raised his assault weapon.
The hissing rose to a brittle crescendo, seemingly all around him.
The dusk was torn by a staccato burst of three shots.
The prisoner’s chest erupted in a bloom of red, and then he staggered forward two steps and collapsed.
The hissing immediately gave way to an oppressive silence.
CHAPTER SIX
“Holy hell, Jonesy, you shot it.”
Crewcut swept the barrel of his weapon at the forest surrounding the trailer. “Quiet.”
Campbell, who had ducked at the report of the gun, crawled backwards away from the clearing, dragging his pack through the damp leaves. The sudden quiet was freighted with menace, as if the trees themselves were tensed for an attack. Campbell wanted to put some distance between he and the gunmen before they got trigger-happy in their panic.
“We were supposed to bring it to camp,” the scrawny soldier whined. “Sarge will be pissed.”
“Plenty more where that came from.”
“What’s out there? Is it them?”
Campbell held his breath and dropped to the ground, expecting bullets to rip overhead at any moment. Through the foliage, he saw Crewcut leave the vantage point of the porch and veer across the yard so he could check around the trailer. The gray air of dusk was leaden with expectation.
“Move out,” Crewcut said, waving his gun down the road in the direction they’d been heading before their pit stop.
The scrawny soldier, Zimmerman, hurried down the porch steps and dashed across the yard, leaping the prisoner’s corpse. Crewcut followed, his head on a swivel, peering intently into the dark trees. In moments, they had vanished down the dirt road. Campbell thought about following them, but he was pretty sure any overt movement would draw a hail of gunfire.
But staying in place also meant he was now alone in the forest with…
…whatever lay in the shadows.
Campbell waited another thirty seconds, his face pressed into the leaves, the odor of rich loam in his nostrils. The darkness was almost total now, except for the dim glow of the constant aurora, but he was reluctant to expose himself. What if the soldiers were just waiting for any sign of movement?
And then that movement came, about ten yards behind him. He froze, his palm tight around the butt of his pistol. Had the two soldiers somehow circled around behind him?
If I stay low, they won’t see me. Just me and the dark, right down here passing the time.
The foot passed inches from his nose, so close that even in the darkness he could make out the scuffed rubber of filthy sneakers. A muted sibilance marked the person’s passage. It wasn’t one of the soldiers, who were wearing combat boots.
Campbell’s breath caught, and so did his heartbeat.
Then the feet moved on and silence surrounded him. He kept his face in the dirt until he couldn’t bear it any longer. Lifting his head a few inches, he peered through the gloom to the clearing.
A crowd of silhouetted figures gathered around the Zaphead’s corpse. Campbell hadn’t seen so many gathered in one place since his escape from the church back in Taylorsville. But there, the Zapheads had been spread out, acting like a mob. Now they assembled with an intimate calm that was somehow far more frightening than when they were trying to tear him limb from limb.
They’re acting like they are aware of another. Like one big family.
About twenty of them stood beside the road, in ragged and filthy clothing. They ranged in age from an old man with tousled white hair to a girl of about seven who wore a Dora the Explorer pajama shift as if she’d been napping when the solar storms forever changed her. The Zapheads seemed to communicate without speaking, as several nearest the corpse bent in unison and gently lifted their fallen brethren. Creepiest of all was their eyes, with radiated tiny golden sparks.
The crowd parted as the corpse-carriers headed across the yard, and then the other Zapheads fell in behind them like a twilight funeral procession. Their absolute silence was so eerie that Campbell almost screamed aloud, just so his madness would reassure him of reality. Instead, he bit down hard on his lower lip as they filed past on a forest trail that had been carved by deer and raccoons but now guided far more surreal creatures.