Scott Nicholson - Milepost 291

“DeVontay!” Stephen called, louder than he should have.

One of the Zapheads turned and looked toward the woods.

DeVontay eased back into the foliage. The Zaphead took two steps toward him and then hesitated. It was a male, wearing the remains of a priest’s dark jacket and Roman collar, hair white and tufted, leather shoes scuffed. The face was wrinkled and splotchy, but the eyes didn’t exhibit the characteristic sparks of a Zaphead. It took DeVontay a moment to realize the priest must have been blind, the milky orbs containing no pupils.

But he was convinced the Zapheads had preternatural senses that allowed them to detect sound and motion at great distances, as well as a subtler perception that extended into the psychic. The professor had suggested they interpreted pulse rate, skin temperature, and adrenaline levels to determine threats and believed training them into pacifism was the best chance for the human race. But this priest had blood on his clothes and the professor’s disciples had turned on him like a pack of rabid Judases, so DeVontay took no chances.

He shushed Stephen and crawled backward, maintaining surveillance of the meadow while listening for footsteps in the forest. Only a few bodies remained, and a group of Zapheads lifted one of them. An orange baseball cap tumbled free and sat upturned in the dew-soaked weeds.

When he returned to Stephen, he whispered, “We’re leaving now.”

“Won’t they see us?” the boy said, still pale and shaken from the massacre.

“They don’t have to see us to find us. But you have to be calm, okay?”

Stephen nodded, not really listening.

“And be brave.” DeVontay gripped the boy’s shoulder and met his eyes. “You can do it, Little Man.”

They crawled for maybe fifty yards, moving away from the meadow. DeVontay didn’t want to head back toward the compound, which still spewed a plume of oily smoke, but he also didn’t want to veer too far away from the road. From his memory of the map, the road and the river both pointed toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Milepost 291 offered the last vestige of sanctuary and hope.

Once they’d left the Zapheads behind, they rose to their feet and crept silently along, although their passage disturbed birds that burst from the treetops in sudden flurries of cries and flapping wings. One of them flew directly into a tree trunk and fell dead. DeVontay wondered how many of the animals had been altered by the solar storms and whether their behaviors had been forever changed.

“I see some people,” Stephen said.

DeVontay realized his mind had been wandering, thinking about the larger world rather than the immediate problem before him. Such foolishness would get them both killed.

Through the trees, he could see the black, crumbling road and the foaming rapids of the river, as well as several stalled vehicles that looked like abandoned toys on a playground. Then he saw them, two figures on the asphalt, their shadows trailing behind them as they walked into the morning sun.

“Looks like more Zapheads,” DeVontay said. “Heading toward the others.”

“Then what are they doing alone? All the other Zapheads are together.”

“Maybe they’re late to the party.”

“But that one with the backpack doesn’t walk like a Zaphead. And why would a Zaphead carry a backpack, anyway?”

Good question. DeVontay wished he had a pair of binoculars. One appeared to be female, the other male, and their clothes were in too good of a condition to have been worn for two months.

Then the male, who tugged at the Zaphead as if to turn her around, lifted his head and DeVontay saw the flash of his eyeglasses. No Zaphead could have kept a pair of glasses for that long. What would a survivor being doing with a Zaphead?

“We need to help them,” Stephen said, with anxious urgency, grabbing DeVontay’s hand.

“It didn’t work out so well the last time we tried to help.”

Stephen squeezed his hand as hard as his slender fingers could, and he turned his tear-soaked face to DeVontay’s. “You told me to be brave. Don’t you have to be brave, too?”

One day I’ll learn to keep my damn mouth shut. Probably the day the Zaps are hauling me off to their graveyard paradise.

“Okay, we’ll check it out, but stay close to me, right?”

Stephen nodded and they headed to the edge of the forest. The adjoining stretch of pasture contained a herd of cattle and several horses, which looked sleek in the sun and had been turned out with bridles and reins, as if their riders were merely taking a break and had gotten fried before they could remove the harnessing. Life had changed little for the animals, and may have improved vastly, since their human owners had vanished.

“If they’re not Zapheads, what are they doing out in the open?” Stephen asked.

“Good question. Maybe we’ll ask them.”

They were close enough to call out to them, and DeVontay could hear the man’s voice, although he couldn’t make out the words. The syntax was in full sentences, though, unlike the clipped repetition of the Zapheads.

“He’s a human,” Stephen said, almost bolting across the pasture in his excitement.

“Sounds like it. Not sure about the other one.” DeVontay was relieved to see the man carried no weapon. The last thing he wanted was to get shot by someone he was trying to help. But if they kept walking, they would soon be discovered by the Zapheads.

“That woman…” Stephen said.

“She’s not saying anything.” DeVontay believed she was a Zaphead because of her behavior, but her appearance didn’t match. Had the man changed her clothes, maybe kept her as a pet of some kind? As a sex slave or walking Barbie doll?

No, she would have torn him to shreds. Zapheads would likely respond to sexual aggression in the same way they would other physical aggression.

“It’s Rachel!” Stephen said.

Her long, brown hair, too clean for a Doomsday world. Same build. The clothes didn’t match what she’d been wearing two weeks ago, but she would have had many opportunities to change.

“Can’t be,” he said, although he knew Stephen was right. His heart tugged in two directions at once: overjoyed to see her, but sickened that she had turned.

But how HAD she turned? The Zap wasn’t contagious, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Stephen grinned. “She’s just walking funny because of her hurt leg. The dog bite I told you about.”

Before DeVontay could stop him, Stephen slid under the barbed wire fence and darted across the pasture. The cows and horses turned to watch him, and DeVontay hoped those animals were the only witnesses.

Rachel heard the boy before she saw him.

He was running across a pasture toward them, waving his arm and shouting “Rachel! Rachel!”

She didn’t understand the word but was compelled to respond to its sound, and she repeated it softly. The boy’s movement captured her attention, his footfalls almost like thunder, grass swishing around his ankles as loud as crashing tidal waves. She became agitated.

A threat.

“Damn,” said the man beside her, the one who’d been following her forever. “It’s your friend. The boy you were looking for.”

Rachel didn’t comprehend the sentence, but then the man also repeated the “Rachel, Rachel, Rachel” until it filled her head and drove out the distant signal that pulsed like a beacon. She was supposed to go somewhere, but now she couldn’t remember, and she was confused.

“Rachel?” she said.

“Yes,” the man with her said, and she wished she’d destroyed him. Because now her head hurt and her serenity was shattered, and the single purpose had been disrupted. She couldn’t articulate these thoughts, but the sensation was of being yanked back from a sheer cliff, hanging out over dizzying heights with the wind rushing across her face and excoriating her ears.