Scott Nicholson - Milepost 291

Shay pulled the pistol out of its holster. It looked huge in her slender fingers.

“You know how to aim that thing?”

“Just like a video game,” she said. “But if I accidentally shoot you in the leg, maybe it’s because I’m just a girl.”

Franklin grinned. Maybe he’d underestimated her, or she’d toughened up more quickly than he’d acknowledged. Anybody that had survived two months of After deserved a medal.

Honor. We can’t get rid of honor, either. Shit.

“Okay,” Franklin said, rising over the hood of the van enough to indicate to Jorge he’d circle the house from the nearest side. Jorge waved in response.

Franklin felt exposed on the open road. Even if the occupants of the house weren’t watching, Sarge’s patrols could be anywhere. They might even have discovered the bodies of their comrades and connected it to the absence of Franklin and Jorge.

He gave one glance back at the van. Shay had crawled underneath it and lurked by the back wheel, gripping the pistol with both hands, its butt resting on the rough gravel. Robertson’s shotgun wouldn’t have the range to contribute much firepower, but perhaps the noise would create a distraction.

Franklin crouched and jogged, keeping one finger locked against the trigger guard of his semi-automatic. Maybe he should have gotten Sarge to train them a little, like real soldiers. Then he’d feel a little braver about charging into the unknown.

Courage. I’ll be goddamned if that one isn’t going to stick around, too.

Then all Franklin could think about was the house ahead of him, and strange eyes that might be tracking him even now. The property had no fence, and besides a few scraggly apple trees, the yard offered no concealment. He wondered if they should just yell and see if anyone answered.

But, as had happened with Robertson and the girl, Jorge’s family could have been captured. They might already have been savaged by Sarge’s psychopaths, in which case Franklin needed to be the first one inside, because Jorge would be useless with rage.

And if Zapheads were waiting behind the closed door, then Franklin was eager to empty the clip of the AR-15. He figured he had at least twenty rounds left. Unless they were the Zaphead Brady Bunch, he could handle them.

Jorge closed in on the house in tandem with Franklin. They were maybe forty yards from the front door. With luck, it would be unlocked and they could slip inside owning the element of surprise. Otherwise, they might have to kick the door in and be ready for all hell to break loose.

“You sure you want to do this?” Franklin said in a loud whisper across the yard.

“You can wait by the cars,” Jorge replied, leaning against a tree. “This is my battle.”

“Don’t start that with me. We’re a team now, whether we like it or not.”

“I thought you were a loner, a survivalist.”

“It was fun while it lasted, but I’ve given up on peace and quiet.” He lifted the rifle a little. “No wonder these jarheads get addicted to danger.”

“Me first,” Jorge said. “If Marina and Rosa are in there, I want their lives to be in my hands, and no one else’s.”

“I thought you were Catholic. Aren’t you going to leave it up to God?”

Jorge pointed his rifle to the sinking afternoon sun. “We’ve seen God at work, and almost everyone was sent to hell. Now it’s our turn.”

Without waiting for Franklin’s response, Jorge silently charged the door. Franklin swept his rifle barrel from window to window, expecting a shattering of glass and a hail of gunfire at any moment. But the curtains remained closed, and Jorge reached the porch and pressed himself against the bricks to one side of the door.

Then he reached out with one brown hand and tried the door knob. He nodded at Franklin, and then it turned, and revealing a wedge of darkness as the door swung open. Jorge stepped inside, and Franklin made his move toward the house.

But before he could reach the door, Jorge burst back outside and fell to his knees, flinging his rifle away. He retched and coughed, and then vomited the canned food they’d eaten at Robertson’s outpost.

Evidently seeing there was no immediate danger, Robertson and Shay approached from the van, but Jorge waved them back. “No…for the love of God…”

Franklin hadn’t loved God for decades, so he had no hesitation. He stepped through the door that Jorge left open. His heart skipped a beat and then crammed three beats into one. He took several steps inside to verify what his mind refused to register.

The living room was arranged with half a dozen human corpses. Fresh corpses, judging by the wet blood that still coated their nude bodies.

They were propped in a mockery of a Sunday afternoon family tableau, three of them on a sofa facing the big flat-screen television. An old man sat in an E-Z chair with an open newspaper in his lap, the pages soggy and red. Two hunched-over children sat cross-legged on the floor, a pile of mutilated dolls between them. The hearth held a mound of glowing embers, suggesting the fire had been built sometime that day.

What kind of sick fuck…

“Zapheads,” Robertson said from the doorway behind him.

“I don’t think so,” Franklin said. “Unless Zaps learned how to write.”

He pointed to the television. Smeared in dark, congealing blood across its black face were the words “Milepost 291.”

Rachel’s head throbbed like drumbeats in the distant jungle of her mind.

She opened her eyes to a gauzy and gray world that slowly came into focus. A sheet was pulled up to her chin, and a blanket spread over her lower legs. She was numb, unable to feel her limbs, and she wondered if she had died.

So much for going toward the light.

Then a hand squeezed hers, and she realized she was lying on her back. She tried to clench her fingers in return, but she didn’t have enough strength. She sensed movement around her, dim shapes circling like great, lumbering beasts. Every few seconds, one of the shapes blocked the source of the light and threw her in shadows again.

Her skin was cool, although a little moist and clammy. The fever had broken.

My leg…did someone say something about an infection…a knife?

Horror sluiced through her as she recalled images of that guy—Campbell—helping her across the meadow, followed by hordes of Zapheads. She vaguely remembered a two-story farmhouse, which is where she must be now. The window allowed the last of the evening light to suffuse the walls and reveal a deer-head trophy with dark glass eyes that made her think of DeVontay.

“Welcome back,” said a voice, from the man holding her hand.

She blinked her watering eyes and squinted at his face. He looked different somehow, and she wondered if the fever had affected her sight.

“How…” she rasped, realizing her throat was parched and lips cracked. She shivered. The room was chilly.

“Easy,” Campbell said, releasing her hand. He put a glass to her lips and she sipped at it. The water tasted metallic and stale, but she was thirsty enough to relish it like wine. After several painful swallows, she closed her mouth.

“Where?” she whispered.

Campbell was also whispering, which was odd since the shapes still orbited them. She was propped on a couch and could make out bookshelves, an entertainment center, and some hulking pieces of rustic furniture. The room smelled of old cobwebs and sweat, and she realized her own body reeked with sour tension.

But the sweet, rotted-meat smell that had clung to her for days was gone.

My leg… did they really cut it off?

She dug her left hand under the covers and along her body, which felt like an alien landscape. Then she found her bare leg and realized someone had removed her pants. She was relieved to discover she still wore underwear. Her fingers continued their slow crawl downward until she reached the wound.