“I’m checking out the house,” he said. “Wait there until I get back.”
Rachel led Stephen to the little garden that had been overtaken by weeds. The tomatoes were mostly rotten and the cucumbers had yellowed, but the mustard and collard greens were dark and healthy-looking. “Help me pick some,” she said, kneeling in the dirt. She stuck a turnip green in her mouth and chewed, savoring its vibrant bitterness.
“Gross,” Stephen said.
“You want to be strong like Spiderman, don’t you?”
“Your teeth are green.” The boy glanced at the barn. “What’s in there?”
“Hay,” she said. “Now, let’s pick. It will be good to have some fresh vitamins after all that canned food.”
“Hay tastes better than this,” he said, heading for the barn.
“Don’t go in there alone,” she said, lifting the lower front of her shirt to form a sack for the greens. She collected fistfuls of greens, waiting for Stephen to return. She was so intent on her harvest that she didn’t realize for a moment that he’d kept going.
He was almost to the barn. “Stephen!” she called.
The boy stood at the barn’s heavy wooden entrance, which was suspended by metal wheels on a steel track. The door opening was about two feet wide, and thick darkness waited beyond it. Rachel couldn’t imagine the boy would go in there, not after all the horrors he’d endured.
The boy took one look back, but he didn’t seem to notice Rachel. He cocked his head as if hearing distant music, and then slipped inside the barn. Rachel dropped the greens and hurried after him, the weariness and tension of the past days hitting her in a wave and weakening her legs. A blister on her big toe screamed in red electricity, but she pushed herself, thinking of her sister.
She called him again. The word was like a thunderclap in the quiet pastoral setting, birds falling silent in the nearby forest. She reached the door and the dark air inside was almost a solid thing, rich with the dust of hay and manure, and obsidian block framed by rough wooden planks and chicken wire. Rachel didn’t want to touch that miserable darkness, much less enter it, but Stephen was inside.
She’d promised to take care of him.
She stepped inside, calling his name, listening to the ticking of the hot tin roof. She derided herself for growing overconfident. She should have taken the pistol from DeVontay after he’d found the rifle. But the peace of the farm valley had lulled her into a false complacency, allowing her to forget that this was After and the rules had changed with one massive belch of the sun.
Stumbling in the darkness, Rachel fought an urge to wait for DeVontay. She was pretty sure no Zapheads were lurking in the barn, or they would have reacted to her voice. Still, the deep shadows carried the weight of menace, like the held breath of a stalker. Something wasn’t right here.
As her eyes adjusted to the shafts of light leaking through the cracks and windows, she was able to make out support posts and stalls, with tufts of yellow hay littering the dirt floor. On the center beam, three shapes dangled from ropes like old sacks of feed. Stephen stood silently, peering up at them.
“Oh my Lord,” Rachel said, limping to the boy’s side. She tried to pull him away, then cover his eyes, but he wriggled free.
“What happened?” Stephen asked.
The bodies were of a man and two young boys, obviously brothers. Their black tongues protruded from their gaping mouths and their eyes bulged. Although flies swarmed around them, they apparently had been dead no more than a day or two.
“This isn’t good, Stephen.”
“Did they kill themselves?” Stephen’s voice was cold and vacant again, as if his post-traumatic autism had seized control.
Rachel thought it was likely the man hanged his own children before killing himself. It didn’t look like the work of Zapheads. But she didn’t know which answer would give Stephen the most comfort. Perhaps there was no comfort to be found in death.
Perhaps.
Or maybe the man had taken stock of After and made a decision based on love and mercy. Despite the resources of the farm, the man may have seen no future that didn’t end in a violent death. Maybe this was the man’s way of protecting his family from Zapheads, killing his wife in the truck and then ushering his offspring to an eternal peace instead of facing another day of living hell.
Perhaps this had been the ultimate act of faith.
“I don’t know what happened,” Rachel said, and in this, at least she avoided a lie.
“I want my mother,” Stephen said.
Rachel hugged him. “I know you do, honey.”
“And my dolly.”
“I know. Why don’t we go into the farmhouse? I’ll bet these boys had some toys, and I bet they wouldn’t mind if you played with them.”
“They’re dead,” he said. He sneezed from the dust, then sniffled.
Rachel’s eyes were hot with tears, but she wouldn’t allow herself to sob. “Let’s go, honey.”
This time, Stephen allowed himself to be led from the corrupt air of the barn and back into the sunshine. Rachel glanced up at the high, uncertain clouds.
How could you do this, God? What possible plan do You have for all this?
But she couldn’t trust her own faith at the moment, because she was afraid it was slipping away. The one certainty of her life, the power that had given her comfort amid all the sorrow and hardship and added joy to every pleasure, was now as ephemeral as the distant smoke. And without it, who was she?
DeVontay was waiting on the porch when they reached the house, the rifle angled over one shoulder. “All clear,” he said, almost giddy with relief. “Even some canned food and a gas stove, so we can have us a home-cooked meal.”
Then he noticed their faces and glanced around warily. “What’s up?”
Rachel gave a wave back toward the barn. “We can stay in their house. They don’t need it anymore.”
“Oh. Well, come on in and let’s eat.” He held the door open for them, and Rachel could read the question in his eyes: Was it Zapheads?
“I think we’re safe here,” Rachel said. Despite her subdued anxiety, she found herself eager to escape in exploring the kitchen. “Why don’t you find a place for Stephen while I cook some dinner?”
She couldn’t shake the image of the limp, hanging bodies from her mind, nor the widening gap in the center of her abandoned heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Saw you running down the street and figured you’d lead me to your buddies,” Arnoff said.
“What buddies?” Campbell didn’t like the way Arnoff had his semiautomatic rifle cocked on his hip, a macho posture that would have been cartoonish under other circumstances.
“Your Army buddies.”
“Wouldn’t mess with ‘em,” Pete said, pouring himself another drink without offering Arnoff one.
“I don’t want to mess,” Arnoff said. “I want to join up. Enlist in Team Human.”
“I get the impression they’re not looking for recruits,” Campbell said. He glanced at the tavern door, hoping Arnoff had cleared the street before following him inside. If the Zapheads were gathering into groups, even a semiautomatic might not be enough.
“Their commander will listen to reason,” Arnoff said. “Donnie and the professor can shoot a little, and Pam…hell, she can cook or something, or keep the men happy. Safety in numbers.”
“I’m telling you,” Pete said, his drunkenness taking a belligerent turn. “He’s stars and stripes forever. And he doesn’t need numbers like us.”
Arnoff glanced around the dim room as if noticing the corpses for the first time. “What do you know about it?”