“Just my luck,” she said. “Roses.”
The rose bushes extended in a border around the side of the house, meaning Rachel would have to jump outward several feet instead of merely dropping to the ground. She shoved the lighter in her pocket.
Here goes nothing.
Rachel resisted the urge to yell “Geronimo” as she flew through the air. She had the presence of mind to roll as she landed, taking the brunt of the force on her left leg before tumbling across the grass. Gathering her balance, bruised but otherwise uninjured, she glanced around to see if anyone had spotted her. She wasn’t sure whether to be more afraid of the Zapheads or The Captain and his minions.
She sprinted as best she could with her aching legs, quickly reaching the concealment of the neighbor’s azalea thicket.
Okay, you’re free. You can give up on DeVontay and Stephen and make a run for it. Your chances are better alone. They’re just deadweight anyway, right?
She glanced heavenward, starting to ask for guidance, but realized prayers were never answered with a simple yes or no.
God had granted her longer life for a reason. And that reason wasn’t just to keep on surviving.
She had a mission.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Campbell was still searching the trees on the side of the road when Arnoff’s tribe caught up with him.
Campbell emerged from the woods to see Arnoff poking Pete’s backpack with the tip of his rifle. Pamela, Donnie, and the professor hung back a little, warily checking the vehicles on the highway. “Looks like your buddy chickened out,” Arnoff said.
“Somebody got him,” Campbell said.
“Hell, yeah,” Donnie said. “Zapheads.”
“It wasn’t Zapheads. There’s no blood.”
Arnoff knelt and plucked one of the warm beers from Pete’s backpack. “Well, he didn’t abandon ship, or he’d have never left this.”
“So, what do you think happened?” Pamela asked, fishing a cigarette from a pocket of her floral-print blouse. She was sweating from the heat, and the wind carried a faint whiff of the distant burning cities. Campbell thought about what the professor had said, about the four hundred nuclear reactors that would eventually melt down, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to live long enough to worry about radiation poisoning.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological strain,” the professor said. “He might have just snapped and wandered off somewhere.”
“Turned into a Zaphead, you mean?” Arnoff said.
“We’ve not seen any evidence of latent effects. The experts predicted the solar event was a one-time phenomenon.”
“Hell, some horny old bat might have roped him into the back of one of these vans for a go,” Donnie said, grinning at Pamela. “You know how women are.”
“Hush your mouth or I’ll hush it for you.” She glared back, taking a deep puff of her cigarette, but she seemed bored by her own threat.
Campbell’s guts knotted in frustration, but he forced himself to remain calm. He didn’t know these people. They were acquaintances of circumstance, and bleak circumstance at that.
The end of the world makes strange bedfellows.
Arnoff walked ahead to a BP tanker truck. The silver petroleum tanker reflected the sunlight, causing Campbell to squint. Arnoff shouldered his rifle and climbed a metal ladder on the tanker’s rear. Standing atop the giant cylinder, he scanned with his binoculars in all directions.
“Zapheads are going to see him,” Donnie said, checking the chamber of his automatic pistol. “This is a time to lay low, not play gold-medal dumbass at the Special Olympics.”
“Hush your mouth,” Pamela said, sitting on the hood of a green Mercedes. A man was slumped over the wheel, body swollen with rot around the confines of his suit jacket and tie. Campbell was grateful the car’s windows were sealed shut. The man likely had the air-conditioning going, probably some Eagles twanging on the stereo, on his way to rake in money off of other people’s work. And then life made other plans for him.
Big, big plans.
“See anything?” the professor called to Arnoff.
Arnoff lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “No Zapheads, no survivors, no Pete.”
“Too bad we can’t get a vehicle going. There’s enough gas to get us across the country and back a hundred times.”
“You’re the egghead,” Donnie said, banging on the roof of a Ford Escort. “Why don’t you hotwire one of these?”
“As I explained, modern vehicles have electronic ignitions, computerized operating systems, alternating-current batteries and—”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Donnie said. “Everything got zapped. I know all that. But the zap’s over, right? Why can’t we rebuild one?”
“Possible,” the professor said. “But we’d need newly produced parts, which means manufactured parts, because all the existing circuitry is fried. And it takes high-technology equipment and electricity to make the parts you need. Catch-22.”
“Sort of like needing a fish for bait so you can catch a fish, right?” Donnie said.
“Sort of like that, yes,” the professor said.
Campbell hadn’t thought that far ahead. Sometimes at night, before falling asleep, he’d had little fantasies of the world rebuilding itself, everyone pitching in like it was a community-pride clean-up event. But he always assumed “somebody,” either the government or people from some unaffected part of the globe, would eventually ride to the rescue and restore all the essential services. But what if they were on their own? What if they had to save themselves?
What if human civilization had come down to isolated clusters like Arnoff’s tribe?
Then we’re screwed.
“Zaphead at ten o’clock,” Arnoff said, dropping the binoculars so they dangled from a cord around his neck. He raised his rifle and sighted down the barrel.
Donnie jumped from the Mercedes hood and ran toward the tanker. “Save some for me. I ain’t killed a Zaphead in three days and I’m getting a little twitchy.”
“I’m not shooting it,” Arnoff said. “I’m observing it.”
Campbell eased over to where the professor and Pamela were standing. The tang of tobacco smoke overwhelmed the stench of bodies and distant fires.
“What do you make of all this?” Campbell asked the professor. He almost asked for the man’s name, but the group seemed to function better with anonymity. Names didn’t seem to matter now.
“Our tenuous situation as survivors, or the geological effects of the solar storm?”
Pamela pursed her lips. “I love it when you use them big words.”
“A little of both,” Campbell said. “I mean, it’s hard to separate them now, isn’t it?”
Donnie hoisted himself up on the tanker’s ladder and climbed toward Arnoff, who was still peering through the rifle scope.
“We can’t be certain of the long-term effects on the environment,” the professor said. “But short term, in human terms, we’ve lost our infrastructure. We’ve lost all the systems that connected us with food, safety, shelter, and companionship. And, as I said, manmade problems like the nuclear radiation and other pollutants add to the mix.”
“Doesn’t sound real good,” Pamela said. “Then again, I never expected there to be a ‘long term.’”
“But surely we can adapt,” Campbell said, although the argument sounded hollow even to his own ears. “We’re smart and tough and adaptable—”
“That’s how smart we are,” Pamela interrupted, pointing to the top of the tanker. Donnie had opened a little metal access hatch and was urinating into the opening.
The professor shook his head in grim amusement. “I think the Zapheads are in far better position to adapt. From what I can tell, they have none of the moral baggage and ten times the survival instinct.”