Scott Nicholson: Milepost 291

“Do you have a camp?” Rachel asked the woman holding the rifle, who was obviously their leader.

“We came from one,” the woman said. Her tone was neither welcoming nor threatening, as if she were feeling out Rachel’s potential for danger. “But we had to leave.”

“We were about to bed down in a cave, but Stephen—he’s the little boy I’m looking for—saw a snake and ran. Now he’s lost.”

“They have him now,” said the blonde woman carrying the bundle.

“I haven’t seen any lately,” Rachel said, assuming she was referring to Zapheads.

“They have him,” the woman repeated with cold conviction.

“Well, then I’ll just have to get him back.”

Rachel had no idea which way to go. She was also reluctant to leave the group of females. Besides Stephen, she hadn’t seen a human since they’d split with DeVontay two weeks ago. She didn’t want to think about him; he’d sacrificed himself to lure away Zapheads so she and Stephen could escape. He was probably dead, despite what she’d told Stephen.

Stephen might be dead, too.

No. She’d lost her sister and she wasn’t going to lose Stephen. “Where are you guys from?”

“Up on the mountain,” said the woman with the rifle. She spoke clipped, clear English but her accent was Spanish.

“That’s where I’m headed. As soon as I find Stephen.” Her leg was killing her, but Rachel didn’t dare sit down. She flicked the light among the surrounding trees, checking for the reflection of glittering eyes.

“Milepost 291,” said the blonde woman.

“What?” Rachel couldn’t believe it, even though the location couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty miles away.

“A compound. We were holed up there, but…” The woman clasped the bundle more snugly to her chest. “Joey told us to leave.”

The bundle wriggled and emitted a soft cry.

A baby?

But if this woman was telling Rachel the baby was talking to them, then perhaps they’d been affected by the solar storms. While billions had been killed and others mutated into becoming Zapheads, the intense electromagnetic field fluctuations could have caused a wide range of effects on the human brain. It wasn’t like anybody was studying this stuff in a lab, and she’d had little opportunity to observe them. She’d been too busy surviving.

“This compound,” Rachel asked, scanning the forest around them once more. “Was Franklin Wheeler there?”

“Mr. Wheeler,” said the woman with the rifle. “Yes. He saved us.”

He survived!

Rachel’s heart started pumping faster, and the pain in her leg surged in giant waves. And she realized that her hope had been only that—she expected him to be dead and the compound a fantasy land. “Can you show me how to get there?”

“No!” shouted the woman with the baby. “Joey told us to leave. Bad things are happening.”

A regular little Nostradamus there. That’s a pretty safe prediction.

Rachel addressed the woman with the rifle, who now seemed like the sane one of the bunch. “Franklin’s my grandfather. I’m trying to find him.”

“He wasn’t there when we left,” the little girl said. “The baby made us go.”

“Go,” the baby said.

Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. The bundle thrashed and a small arm poked out, pale fist balled in indignation. “Go,” the baby repeated.

Judging from the size of the arm, the infant couldn’t have been more than six months old. No way should it be able to speak. Then the fingers splayed curled. The baby seemed to be waving them downhill into darkness.

The haggard young mother stepped outside the yellow perimeter of the glow stick’s haze. The woman with the rifle nudged her daughter to follow.

“Wait,” Rachel said. “That’s crazy. Babies can’t talk.”

The mother turned, and the bundled shifted. In its folds was a scattering of small bright sparks.

Its eyes.

“You don’t understand,” the mother said.

You’re right about that.

The Spanish woman said, almost in apology, “We have to follow. You are welcome to come with us.”

“Not without Stephen.”

The woman nodded and glanced at her own daughter as if she understood. Her dark eyes were solemn but determined, and Rachel saw she would make whatever sacrifice was necessary in order to survive.

“How far is the compound?” Rachel asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or twenty miles. Top of the mountain.”

“The Zapheads are here,” the mother said. “We have to go.”

“Go,” the baby blurted. They did.

As the group shuffled downhill, kicking up the scent of mud and pine, Rachel almost shouted after them. Instead, she shoved the glow sticks in her pocket and waited for her eyes to adjust to the faint haze of starlight leaking through the bare forest canopy. They’d come from her grandfather’s compound, and he was still alive. She figured her odds were better with Franklin Wheeler than with a group of delusional women who thought a baby was bossing them around.

Or maybe she was growing delirious herself. The infection in her leg might be poisoning her nervous system, slowing her reaction time and disrupting her senses. She didn’t like feeling helpless, but walking twenty more miles on her own was a demoralizing challenge. She listened until the group was lost in darkness, their footfalls faded, and then she continued up the slope in the direction Stephen had fled.

“Rachelllll.”

It was Stephen, somewhere in the darkness above. She almost yelled back but was afraid Zapheads might hear. Instead, she hobbled faster, stumbling over a damp, fallen log.

Stephen didn’t sound panicky, although he must have been terribly frightened. He repeated her name, almost in a whisper.

Coming, honey. Just hang on tight.

She guided herself from trunk to trunk, judging distance by the branches overhead, which were like black bones etched against the gray sky. The only sound besides her feet in the muddy leaves was the wind whining through the forest.

“Rachel,” he said again, and she saw his silhouette among a cluster of large boulders. She was surprised he’d venture near them after the encounter with the snake.

“It’s me,” she said.

She pulled the dimming glow sticks from her pocket and held them in the air.

Only it wasn’t Stephen.

It was a young girl, barely teen-aged, and her eyes glittered in the glare of the flashlight beam.

“Rachel,” she said, perfectly imitating Stephen.

Shadows separated themselves from the surrounding trees and walked toward her.

“Rachel,” they said. “Rachel.”

And their eyes winked and danced like a thousand radioactive fireflies.

Morning was probably the worst of it.

Dreams had become a refuge for Campbell Grimes, and the sweetest ones were of all the mundane things that now seemed so rare and beautiful. They were already distant artifacts of a lost culture even though it had only been two months since the solar storms.

Alien archaeologists of the future might one day make sense of the civilization that left behind little but a thin layer of poisoned plastic, but it was unlikely they would learn of Campbell’s drawings, addiction to Diet Coke and videogames, his casual obsession with Kate Upton, or his collegiate flirtation with Buddhism. The facts of his life weren’t his body-mass index and date of birth, but the wildly colorful fantasies and ideals that echoed in the boned curves of his skull.

Upon awakening, a shutter was drawn down over the past and the hellish light of After dragged him into its spotlight. He’d been dreaming again of Catawba Lake where his family had spent their summers. He’d been upstairs in their waterfront home, looking down on the neighbor’s dock, where a new ski boat was tethered. But the boat was the least eye-catching of John Hampton’s treasures—his wife Tamara wore that crown. She lay sprawled on a lounge chair in her bikini, skin glistening like oiled amber, the wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses adding just enough concealment that Campbell could objectify her without feeling too creepy.