Scott Nicholson - The Echo

“You—” he shouted at Wilma, who sagged in the corner of the camper like a beaten boxer riding the ropes until the end of the round.

“I couldn’t let you leave. Not like the others.”

Others?

He could probably kick in the hollow metal door, but the noise might arouse the Zapheads. His anger melted to acidic pity. “Tell me all you know about them. And I’ll decide which one of us is craziest.”

“I… I’ll show you.” She moved toward him. Peanut growled.

“First,” Campbell said, “give me my gun.”

“After we get back,” she said. “Trust me. It’s the best way.”

He wasn’t sure he could trust anyone anymore. “I can’t go out there unarmed. I’ve seen what they can do.”

“They’re like dogs. They smell fear.”

As if to punctuate the woman’s words, Peanut barked.

Campbell was torn between curiosity and frustration. Even after the night’s sound sleep, he felt wired and raw, exhausted to the bone but with a brain running at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. He knew something was off, but he couldn’t connect the dots. He desperately needed to learn more about the Zapheads, as if there was some deep and useful knowledge that would help him survive.

And perhaps a knowledge he could share with fellow survivors.

The price of that knowledge was trusting Wilma, who was as unpredictable and wild as the people whose behavior had been forever altered by the sun’s radiation.

“Okay,” Campbell said, looking at the growling mutt. “But the dog stays here.”

Jorge was a little ahead of Franklin on the trail, so he was the first to come upon the body.

The dead man was in his mid-twenties, wearing khaki pants and a green T-shirt. His combat boots were clotted with dried mud. He was freshly shaven, eyes closed and sunken, a camouflage cap laying upside down beside his crewcut head. He was sprawled on his back, lying in the ferns as if he were napping.

Jorge gave an urgent wave of summons as soon as Franklin rounded the bend. Franklin raised his weapon, looked around, and then jogged over to Jorge and knelt beside the corpse.

“You think it’s the sun sickness?” Jorge asked, keeping his voice low.

Franklin checked the man for wounds, and then rolled him half over. “Could be. I’ve never seen anybody change since the storms, but we don’t know the science behind it. For all we know, it could be sleeping inside us right now.”

Jorge pointed to a dark bruise behind the man’s left ear. “Somebody struck him there.”

Franklin nodded at the gray boulders surrounding the trail. “Or he could have fallen and cracked his skull. Either way, he ain’t been dead long.”

Franklin lifted the man’s arm and let it flop to the ground. “Critters would have been eating the meat if it was out here more than a couple of days. He’s black around the eyes, which shows he’s not too recent. Flies ain’t even found him yet.”

Jorge was disturbed by the casual nature of Death. It could come upon even a healthy man, or it could sweep across the sky and kill without discrimination. And again he felt a chill of gratitude roll through him. Even though these times were terrible, he was alive—and so was his family, by the mercy of God.

Franklin fished the chain from around the man’s neck and pulled the dog tags from inside the man’s T-shirt. He read the embossed name aloud. “Carson. Simon L.”

“Do you think Zapheads did this?” Jorge asked.

“Hard to say. That bruise is the only injury I see. Don’t hardly seem like the Zapheads’ style. They’re more likely to rip your arms off and beat you to death with the bloody stumps.”

“Where’s his gun?”

Franklin rose and made a quick search of the nearby woods while Jorge followed the man’s likely track to his final resting place. After a couple of minutes, they returned to the dead man empty handed.

“He could have been on a solo recon mission,” Franklin said.

“If the Zapheads took his weapon…”

“Yeah. That wouldn’t be good if they’ve learned how to shoot. They were dangerous enough already.”

“Why was he out here alone?” Jorge asked. “And why haven’t the soldiers retrieved the body? Isn’t that part of their code of honor?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions, Jorge,” Franklin said. “I got one answer: Just keep your voice down and your eyes open.”

“Maybe we should go back now.” Jorge was uneasy over this new mystery. Rosa could handle most situations, like she had back at the Wilcox farm when she killed a Zaphead that had attacked him, but no one could prepare for a danger they couldn’t understand.

Franklin peered into the woods, his gray eyebrows arching up into his creased forehead. “I got a better idea. Let’s hide up in that rhododendron thicket and watch for a little bit.”

“I have a family to protect.”

“And maybe you can protect them better by heading off danger at the pass.”

The old man was hardheaded. But Jorge had to admit the man’s judgment may have saved his family’s life. “Okay. Half an hour, no more.”

Franklin looked down at the corpse. “He ain’t going nowhere.”

“I wasn’t volunteering to bury him.”

“Is that how they do things down in Mexico?”

Jorge didn’t want to think of the friends and relatives he’d left behind and might never see again—assuming any of them were still alive. “Mexico may not even exist any more.”

“Good point.” Franklin led the way up a stretch of stubbled slope, among locusts with bright yellow leaves and jagged protrusions of granite streaked with white crystal. Jorge saw a hawk flying overhead and wondered if it was their chicken-killer. It was likely an illusion, but the hawk’s eyes had glistened as if reflecting the sun.

The forest seemed at peace, accepting of the new way of things. Even though the sun sickness had killed many animals along with humans, balance was quickly restored.

Nature kept on with the business of keeping on.

Jorge followed Franklin into a tangle of branches and soon they were hidden by the dark, waxy leaves of the rhododendron. The shadows grew, marking the sun’s descent into afternoon. Gnats flew around Jorge’s ears, annoying him and making him restless, but he kept as motionless as he could. Franklin’s head dipped, his rifle across his lap, and Jorge wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

But Franklin snapped alert and put a finger to his lips. Jorge wiped futilely at the gnats. Franklin pointed to the trail. A man came out of the woods on the other side and knelt over the corpse.

This man was of a similar age and dressed in the same fashion, except he wore an unbuttoned camouflage shirt over his T-shirt. He was unarmed and his clothes were grimy with the dark mud of the forest. At first Jorge wondered if he was a Zaphead, because of the skulking, uncoordinated movement of his limbs. Then he realized the man was exhausted and perhaps suffering some form of psychological trauma.

Franklin carefully raised his rifle and aimed down the sights at his target thirty yards away.

If you shoot, not only will the Zapheads know where we are, but the soldiers, too.

The soldier fell over his fallen comrade and pulled at his T-shirt. “Come on, Carson,” the soldier cajoled. “No time to be sleeping.”

The soldier looked around, his gaunt cheeks damp with tears. “Get up, you asshole, they’re coming!”

He drew back his right boot and kicked Carson in the ribs. The thunk and crack caused Jorge to wince. Franklin held his rifle steady, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

Phu-ziiiiiing.

A shot rang out.

Jorge thought for a moment that Franklin had fired—but the report echoed through the valley. The soldier dropped to all fours and scrambled toward an outcropping of rocks and vanished beneath the mossy trunk of a fallen tree.