Scott Nicholson - The Echo

“They’re acting weird, all right. Can’t trust ‘em. I liked them better when they were crazy. At least then, a fellow knew what was what.”

Franklin pressed a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the surrounding ridges. “Smoke.”

“Where?”

Franklin passed the glasses and pointed into the distance. Jorge adjusted the lenses until he saw the thin plume of gray rising about five hundred yards to the south. “Think it’s Zapheads?”

Nah,” Franklin said. “I’d bet it’s a recon patrol from the army. I told you they had a bunker up here.”

“And you haven’t found the bunker?”

“They hid it good. Your tax dollars at work.” Franklin gave him a half-lidded look, the leathery skin of his forehead crinkling. “If you ever even paid taxes, that is.”

Jorge didn’t like the man’s implication that Jorge was an illegal alien instead of a worker on an agricultural visa. “I even have private health insurance.”

“Cheating on taxes is the purest form of patriotism,” Franklin said. “But I guess that don’t matter much anymore. Neither does your insurance.”

Jorge was glad the man had changed the subject away from the infant. Jorge himself was conflicted by the baby’s presence. The Zapheads that attacked him on the farm had been intent on killing Jorge and his family, and he’d suffered no remorse about killing them.

But the ones that had pursued the woman, Cathy, and her baby had acted less with malevolence and more with a cautious curiosity. He wasn’t able to articulate the difference, and he doubted Franklin cared.

The baby was much too small to be harmful, and Zapheads didn’t appear to carry an infection that could change those unaffected by the solar storms. Still, the baby’s presence might somehow attract other Zapheads, and that would place Rosa and Marina at risk. They were in the cabin right now with Cathy and her sparkle-eyed little creature.

Jorge was about to ask Franklin what he thought they should do about the baby, but the old man raised an open palm to silence him, and then pointed into the forest.

At first Jorge saw nothing, but then the golden-brown foliage began to shimmer, the pattern broken. He thought at first it might be the horses, which they’d ridden from the Wilcox farm into the mountains. They’d had to turn the animals into the wild because the compound couldn’t generate enough feed for them.

But this movement wasn’t the flick of a tail or the stomp of a hoof.

A human form moved silently between tree trunks, taking slow, deliberate steps as if to avoid scuffing the carpet of leaves. A patch of red-checkered flannel was visible for an instant, and then the figure was lost in the shadows.

“One of them ?” Jorge said in a low voice.

Franklin raised his rifle and sighted down the barrel. “Either that, or some hippie sure picked the wrong place for a nature hike.”

“If you shoot, they will know where we are.”

Franklin grinned with yellow, crooked teeth. “Well, the federal troops already know we’re here, and the Zaps are going to find us sooner or later.”

“I thought you didn’t like to kill.”

Franklin held the barrel steady for another few seconds and then lowered it. “Can’t get a half-decent line of sight.”

Jorge studied the southern slope, where giant ropes of poison sumac wrapped the trunks of beeches and poplar, their leaves a startling shade of brilliant red. Another figure moved, again with measured stealth. Jorge didn’t point this one out to Franklin, but Franklin whistled under his breath.

“Damn if there ain’t another one.” Franklin pointed to the east, and Jorge could clearly make out a woman in a tan trench coat, her bare legs descending to the moss beneath her as she padded across a rocky heap. She was moving parallel to the compound’s fence, although she was at least fifty yards away.

Jorge checked the south, and noticed another figure.

“They’re circling us,” Franklin said. “Although I’ll be damned if I know why.”

“Then they already know we’re here.”

Franklin nodded. “So it’s open season.”

“You don’t know what they want.”

“And finding out might get us killed.”

“You said they can’t clear the fence.”

Franklin frowned down at the compound’s interior, where his vegetable garden was still flush with green. The cabin and shed were built against trees and were difficult to spot from a distance, even in the undressing of autumn. The lower portion of the surrounding chain link fence was thick with vines and briars, shielding the structures even more.

“I dragged the materials up with a four-wheeler,” Franklin said. “Took me two years to build this place. And I ain’t giving it up without a fight.”

Jorge was exasperated. “Why would the Zapheads want your compound? They don’t care.”

“Maybe they know the baby’s here.”

“But you said they didn’t follow us.”

“You saw how the Zaps were acting. Right after the sun spit in our eyes, I saw one down there on the road chasing a guy out of his car after they crashed into each other. The Zapper—although at the time I thought it was just some nutball pissed off because somebody damaged his wheels—jumped on this big, heavy guy and took him down like a wildcat takes a doe. Pounded his head into the pavement until it was like a watermelon dropped from a forklift.”

“And you didn’t help him?”

Franklin flashed a one-eyed squint beneath his thick gray brow. “You kidding? I don’t get involved in other people’s business. Besides, it was over before I could even think. Don’t you remember what it is like in the beginning?”

The beginning. Like this was Genesis, a new creation myth. “All people on the Wilcox farm dropped dead. Except for us.”

“So you didn’t see any crazies?”

“Not for days. And then…” Jorge recalled discovering Willard, a fellow laborer on the Wilcox farm, in the barn loft. The man’s fierce grip and mad, sparkling eyes had been shocking, then dangerous, and Jorge had to sever the man’s arm at the wrist to free himself. But Jorge didn’t care to recount the story, because then the vivid details would rise from the sleep of memory. “Yes. We discovered the change.”

“Yeah,” Franklin said, satisfied by the dismay on Jorge’s face. “Change. Remember how the dumbass politicians always had ‘Change’ as their campaign slogans? Then, when they got elected, the slogan became ‘Don’t change.’ Well, we got change, all right. I hope every last one of those squirrel-eyed bastards has been scorched straight to hell. But I got a feeling they’re bunkered up like their Army buddies and living in luxury.”

Jorge scanned the forest and saw movement amid the sumac. It was another Zaphead, circling the perimeter, keeping the same distance as the others. “What are they doing?”

“Looks like they’re putting us under siege.”

“But they’re not attacking and they’re not closing in.”

“If they got any brains, maybe they’re trying to wait us out.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until we do something stupid. Go out there where they can jump us, or get cabin fever and make a run for it.”

“Then they don’t realize you have food and supplies enough for years?”

“Well, that was assuming they had a little brains. It could be they’re as stupid as they look, and they can’t figure out how to get in the front gate.”

Jorge didn’t think the gate would withstand three or four of the Zapheads slamming against it. But Franklin didn’t appear too concerned.

“Do we have enough ammunition to hold them off?” Jorge didn’t relish the thought of shooting them. It would be too much like slaughter. But if Rosa and Marina were threatened, he would joyfully gun down anything that walked into the compound.