Scott Nicholson - The Echo

Campbell couldn’t complete the sickening thought and fought down a rising gorge of nausea. He couldn’t afford weakness, so he backed out of the room, reeling with the possibilities.

Did Wilma do this? She’s nutty enough about the Zaps to do such a thing.

But that was impossible, because they’d been together since the Zapheads had retrieved the corpse. He recalled her cryptic words: “I’m not welcome there anymore.”

“So, wonder what joys are waiting upstairs,” he whispered, mostly to hear his own voice and be reassured that he hadn’t, in fact, gone mad along with Wilma. Except he might be talking to the Pete-guy in his head, and that wasn’t a good sign. “Maybe one of those hillbilly orgies, a necrophilia wet dream.”

Something pounded on the front door. And again.

“Nobody home,” he said, giggling.

The pounded grew insistent, and then multiplied, a rain of wooden blows. Campbell covered his ears and fled to the end of the hall, climbing the stairs. The back door might be open, and the Zapheads would get in sooner or later anyway. None of that mattered. All he cared about was flight, movement, the illusion of escape.

During his Psych 101 class, he’d learned all about the house as a metaphor for consciousness and the mind. It made sense on every level—the dark basement where the bad things lurked in shadow, the ground floor of habit and routine and comfort, the stairs to measure spiritual and emotional ascension.

And the attic…

Which usually had only one narrow access door, easily blocked or defended.

“What do you think, Pete?” he said, reaching the second-floor landing and facing several doors. “Do we take Door Number Two with the all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, or do we stay practical and go for Door Number Three and the brand-new Buick Skylark?”

If Pete were alive, he’d want Door Number One, which likely contained dope, booze, and wasted teen-aged girls, with Death Cab for Cutie on the jambox and a carton of cigarettes on the coffee table.

If only, Petey. If only.

Campbell tried the nearest door. He could only endure one glance before he killed his penlight and vomited.

Franklin and McCrone reached the compound an hour after dark.

But “dark” was the wrong word, because the aurora cast a green radiance across the sky, like cheap mercury vapor streetlights above an empty parking lot. Although eerie, Franklin had come to enjoy the lack of pure darkness, although the star fields were cloudier and harder to follow.

He’d often wondered if the lingering aurora signaled that the solar radiation was still affecting the planet in ways no one could measure. Did birds still know how to fly south for the winter? Could bees find their way back to the colony? What about dolphins and whales and aquatic life that counted on subtle shifts in tide and temperature?

There weren’t many eggheads left to come up with answers. All their instruments and formulas hadn’t done a bit of good when Doomsday arrived.

He supposed humans hadn’t been the only living creatures affected by the radiation. But the chickens acted much the same as before. The goats—well, you could never tell with goats, because they were already peculiar as hell. Franklin had always enjoyed them, finding more in common with them than with his fellow humans. They were quirky, clever, and often downright ornery, which is why he kept them even though they ate more than they produced in milk.

Franklin stopped before the gate, winded from the long climb through the forest.

McCrone jabbed him in the spine with the tip of the rifle. “Where is it?”

“Right here.”

“Damn, oldtimer. All those years in the survival network must have paid off. We would have never found this place without satellite surveillance and GPS.”

“There used to be a thing called ‘American pride.’ Then the government made it a catch phrase to brainwash folks like you.”

“I told you, I didn’t enlist because I loved my country,” McCrone said. “I signed up because my unemployment ran out and your generation shipped all the jobs to China. Now get us in there. I’m tired.”

Franklin parted the nest of vines and dug for the gate latch. “Locked.”

“Right. And I don’t suppose you have the key. What a coincidence.”

“I got a key, all right. But it’s on the inside.”

“You locked yourself out of your own compound? I thought you preppers were supposed to be smart.” McCrone paced a few steps, feeling the fence himself, marveling at the natural camouflage Franklin had installed. “It’s only ten feet or so. Should be able to climb it easy enough.”

“Topped by barbed wire. Be careful you don’t catch the family jewels.”

“I’m not the one doing the climbing. You are.”

Franklin considered his options. He could climb over and then just leave the gate locked, but first he’d have to deactivate the alarm system. If the woods were crawling with soldiers and Zapheads, they’d zoom in soon enough. But once inside, he’d have the advantage. McCrone had both his rifles, but he still had two pistols, a sawed-off shotgun, several military-grade incendiary devices, and some hand weapons like knives and hatchets stored in a strongbox. He’d also be on his home turf. And if McCrone became impatient and climbed over the fence himself, Franklin would have the element of surprise.

But he was worried that none of the others had reacted to their approach. If Jorge had come back, he would know to be on high alert. And if Jorge hadn’t made it—if the Zaps or the equally brain-dead citizens of Army Nation got him—then Rosa or her daughter should have been on lookout.

Franklin had been uneasy leaving them there alone with that young woman, Cathy, and her Zap brat. He was pretty sure that the solar sickness wasn’t spread by human contact—or else the mom would have gone all mutant long ago, the way that thing gnawed at her milk glands—but maybe the evil was more insidious. Maybe its mere presence contaminated the compound, just the way all the older Zapheads had blighted the planet.

If he was a religious person like his granddaughter Rachel, he’d pray that the Zaps and the army wipe each other out. But a casual glance at the heavens revealed that God viewed this place as nothing more than a carnival sideshow. Maybe His whole purpose for creation was to enjoy the Doomsday. Then He wouldn’t rest on the just the seventh day; He could rest the whole week long.

“Are you going to stand out here all night?” McCrone said.

Franklin shook the gate, rattling its metal framework. “There’s an alarm system. If I climb over, the whole compound will light up and a siren will wail.”

Franklin was exaggerating the power of the system, but if McCrone had swallowed the legend of Franklin Wheeler, Internet Survivalist Guru, maybe he’d fall for it. But McCrone laughed.

So much for respect. I keep forgetting, he’s been brainwashed by the best.

McCrone peered through the fence. “Hey. Something’s moving in there.”

There was a pop and whir in the distance, shrieking like a banshee across the night sky. Then an explosion high above them triggered a shower of sparks that hung in the air. The illumination flare was bright enough to erase the aurora and cast the forest into sudden day.

“Looks like your buddies want you pretty bad,” Franklin said.

In the bright glare of burning nitrate and magnesium, McCrone’s face looked drained of blood. “If they get me, they get you, too,” he said, no longer laughing.

Something bumped Franklin’s foot, and he realized the gate had eased open. He glanced at McCrone, who was still squinting up at the trace left by the flare.