“Maybe they got some meat,” he said. “You smell that? Smells like barbecue.”
Campbell rubbed the bite wound on his shoulder. No. I’m not going there. The Zapheads aren’t crazed cannibals or zombies. They’re just…
Just WHAT?
And then he did smell it, smoky and acrid and rich, and he had the image of stumbling into a nest of Zapheads, all gathered around the fire and roasting a child on a slim white sapling, fat dripping onto the hot stones and hissing to greasy steam.
“Plenty of canned meat and jerky still around,” Campbell said. “Years and years of it.”
The wire basket of his bicycle held cans of tuna, sardines, corned beef, and pink salmon. Aside from the one stop at the “gypsy camp,” they’d eaten their food cold. But the smoke didn’t make him hungry. It was oily and tainted.
A bird chirruped high in the trees. The Big Zap had wiped out a lot of animals, but the survivors among them seemed to behave as they always had. It was only humans that seemed to have been affected on a neurological level. So far, anyway. All their homing instincts, territorial boundaries, and migration patterns could have altered in uncertain ways.
A branch snapped behind them, maybe twenty feet away. Pete swung around, bumping Campbell in the arm with his pistol.
At least the dumbass didn’t shoot me. But the night is young.
The rustling came closer, swick swick swick through the dry brush. Then a pause, as if whomever—or whatever—it was had stopped to listen for its prey.
Campbell strained to hear, holding his breath, but Pete was rasping away, the smoker’s rattle rising from deep in his lungs. He wondered if Pete was thinking the same thing he was: Who shoots first?
But what if it was a person? A fellow survivor? Maybe there were more, enough to form a group and—
Campbell beat back the faint flutter of hope. In the week since the event, they’d met only four survivors, and one of those had turned and fled when Campbell had called her. The other three were in the makeshift gypsy camp, and Campbell hoped to God that wasn’t a sample representation of mankind’s future.
Swiiick. One cautious footstep through the weeds.
Pete nudged him. Campbell turned, but Pete was just an onyx bulk against the lesser black of night. Then Pete’s mouth was at his ear, spraying saliva as he whispered: “Go left, and I’ll go right.”
Campbell nodded, trying not to tremble. A Zaphead wouldn’t be subtle. It would charge like a rhino through the veldt, using whatever it had in its hands as a weapon. Such a mad, predictable danger was reassuring in an odd way. This, however…
He edged to his left, pushing the barren flashlight before him to test the foliage. The susurration of Pete’s passage let him know the gap between them was widening. Campbell was on his own.
Swiiick. Another step forward.
Or had that been Pete’s footstep?
Campbell turned again, and he was disoriented. He could no longer see the thin licks of fire in the near distance and the night had blended with the canopy until he was unsure of the location of the highway, the forest, or the creek. He nearly surrendered to the impulse to switch on the flashlight, but he pinched his fingers together until the pain cleared the panic.
It’s not a Zaphead. And a survivor has no reason to hurt you.
But the smoke told a different story. The smoke said, “Mmm, tastes like chicken,” and “I’ll bet you’re just dying to join us for dinner” and “We’re pleased to serve you.”
Screw it. You watched too many horror movies back in the Old Days.
Never mind that the Old Days were July or so.
He looked up at the dim stars and mist-hidden wedge of moon, trying to get his bearings. The constellations themselves seemed alien and strange, as if the massive solar flare had tilted the planet’s axis. Maybe the world was all shook up, both literally and figuratively.
Swick swick swick, the steps were fast and close, and he raised the pistol, its sodden weight tugged by gravity until the act was like bringing to bear a field cannon.
And he heard the signature insane chuckling—not in the direction of the steps, but behind him, right behind him—and then the night erupted with a flash and roar. Campbell’s ears rang with sudden pain as he dropped his pistol and fell to his knees.
“You okay?” said a gruff voice above him.
“Yuh-yeah.” Campbell gripped the flashlight before him as if it was a dagger he could use to impale himself.
“What the hell?” Pete said, some distance away, crashing through the scrub toward them.
“Don’t shoot,” the gruff voice said. “Your friend’s okay.”
The man flicked a switch and a bluish Maglite blinded Campbell, although the beam was directed to the side. The light bounced past him and settled on a limp figure pressed face-first into the grass. A dark, wet bloom covered its back and ragged bits of flesh clung to a gaping hole in the back of the shirt. Campbell had the impression of graceful bulk as the man swept past him and stood over the corpse just as Pete burst into the circle of light.
“A Zaphead,” the man said.
“Who the hell are you?” Pete said. His Glock was pointed at the man, who gave it an amused glance.
“The king of nowhere,” the man said.
“Shit.” Pete looked at Campbell, letting his aim waver. “You sure you’re okay?”
Campbell nodded, a little embarrassed. He collected his revolver and looked at the man standing over the corpse. The man was bald, a little over six feet, and dressed in a matching gym suit, a khaki hunter’s vest over it. Although the suit was dirty, the man appeared well-groomed and fit, despite his age.
“Who is that?” Campbell managed to ask, pointing his revolver at the corpse.
“What,” the man said. “What is that? These things don’t deserve to be called a ‘who.’”
Campbell couldn’t tell by looking whether the corpse was once a Zaphead. All he knew was, it had once been human. Yet, Campbell had not heard it approaching, and Zapheads weren’t known for stealth and subtlety.
“You sure it’s a Zaphead?” Campbell asked.
“Zaphead? That’s a funny name for them, but it’s a good as any, I guess. We’ve been calling them ‘veggies.’”
“It was stalking me,” Campbell said. “They’re supposed to charge.”
“It was creeping up, all right. But not on you. It was watching us.”
“Wait a sec,” Pete said. “How come you could see in the dark?”
The man fished around in the hip pocket of his coveralls, eliciting a threatening wave of the Glock from Pete. The man ignored the gesture and pulled out some tinted goggles on a thick strap. “Infrared,” the man said. “Nothing but the best in survival gear if you want to survive, right?”
How come WE didn’t think of that? Oh, yeah. Because Pete’s drunk off his ass and my survivalist training ended in the sixth grade when Mom made me quit the Boy Scouts.
“Is it just you two fellas?” the man asked, tracking his flashlight along the scrub.
“Yeah,” Campbell grunted. “How come this one was sneaking? I’ve never seen any of them sneak.”
“They’re changing.”
“Changing?” Pete said. “Like what, growing a third eye or something?”
“The way they act. Come on, you can ask the professor about it.” The man turned and headed into the forest.