Scott Nicholson - The Shock

Perhaps that is the definition of “wicked”: pure selfish destruction.

“I need you to be very quiet, Stephen,” she said calmly, in her regular voice. “Can you do that for me?”

He opened his mouth and caught himself, then nodded. He looked at DeVontay and saw the gun.

“We’re going to Mississippi now,” she said.

“I’ll be good,” Stephen whispered.

“This way,” DeVontay said, waving them into the scrub vegetation that dotted the top of the slope. Rachel nudged Stephen toward DeVontay and collected their backpacks. On the highway below, one of the Zapheads pounded an iron bar against a car hood. The brutal thwack was an intrusion on the pastoral serenity of a few moments earlier, and Rachel was reminded that After was not paradise.

It was a land where the wicked walked.

When three of the four Zapheads disappeared from view behind a tractor-trailer rig, Rachel hurried into the bushes to join DeVontay and Stephen. Glass shattered below them, followed by a strange inhuman cry that might have been glee.

They hurried without speaking, DeVontay beating back the branches and briars with the arm that held the gun, Stephen hunched low so that the bill of his cap hid his face, and Rachel repeatedly glancing behind her. They were still moving roughly parallel to the interstate, although they’d put more distance and vegetation between them and it. The morning coolness had given way to an intense heat that had burned away the dew, and the air held all the promise of an oven.

After ten minutes, they could no longer hear the crazed vandalism, and DeVontay slowed a little, tucked his gun in his belt, and picked up Stephen. He must have noticed the dark circles of exhaustion under the boy’s eyes.

“I know you’re big enough to walk, but I want you to rest so you can tell me bedtime stories,” DeVontay said.

“Are you going to shoot the wicked people?” Stephen said, letting the doll nestle between them. It must have been uncomfortable for DeVontay, but he said nothing.

“No wicked people are going to get you while we’re around, okay, little man?”

“Okay.”

Rachel peeled away Stephen’s backpack to help lighten DeVontay’s load. The act caused the doll to fall to the ground, and Stephen gave a bleat of alarm. She hurriedly collected it before he could scream and alert the Zapheads. They continued through the vegetation, which had thinned considerably and occasionally allowed them a view of the cluttered highway.

After a few minutes, Stephen was asleep and DeVontay slowed to reduce the bouncing of his gait.

“Did you see what I saw?” Rachel asked.

“’fraid so. But tell me anyway, so it’s not my imagination.”

“The Zapheads were moving in a group. They weren’t doing that before.”

“Maybe it was random. They just happened to bump into each other and said, ‘Yo, muthas, let’s break some shit together, whaddya say?’”

“Either way, I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like any of this. Things were bad enough without no wicked-ass gangbanger shit.”

He’d reverted back to his street persona. She didn’t blame him. Maybe it was a useful survival mechanism, and they might need all such mechanisms they could find.

“You were good back there,” she said. “With Stephen.”

“So, I’m one of the good people for a change,” he said. “Don’t be getting used to it.”

Campbell was dreaming of Gina Bellinari, the first girl he’d ever kissed. In the dream, they were behind the bleachers at the Idlewild High School football stadium, and it must have been a school day, because he could hear kids running and laughing on the practice fields. Gina was saying people would notice they were missing, and she couldn’t afford to get sent to the office again, and Campbell knew her reputation and figured just a kiss was being cheap. But when he went in again, his lips puckered out like he was about to suck down a sour gummy worm, she kicked him hard on the shin.

“Fuh,” he said, knowing he looked uncool, and uncool didn’t cut it when Gina had her choice of any straight boy in the school, except the artists and the geeky band students who’d probably be virgins all the way through college.

“We’re moving out,” Gina said, but her voice was gruff, cracked, and masculine, and she didn’t look all that happy about being kissed.

Campbell opened his eyes to find Arnoff standing over him, dressed in camouflage overalls. The encounter with Gina had given way to an ROTC nightmare and all the chisel-jawed goons in high school who’d waved their flags in his face and had strutted around spouting word like “duty” and “honor.” But this wasn’t some high-school faker, this was a grown man, although his cheeks were shaven as brightly pink as a teenager’s.

Then Campbell remembered the camp, and the solar storms, and the world with six billion dead people. And his back was killing him from sleeping on the ground. “Hell,” he groaned.

“Yep, same as yesterday,” Arnoff said, walking away to the fire, where the professor was tending a blackened coffee pot.

Campbell peeled back the thick blanket and the stench of his rumpled clothes crawled over him. He hadn’t changed since they’d left Chapel Hill, and he’d only bathed once, half-heartedly swabbing his armpits with creek water. If the Zapheads didn’t get him, flesh-eating fungus eventually would.

He glanced over at Pamela’s tent. Donnie was helping Pamela break it down. Donnie was slender and had bad teeth, like an ex-con who’d been deprived of decent hygiene. His black, greasy hair was combed straight back over his head, and he wore a sleeveless denim jacket and his arms were covered with crude tattoos. In high school, Campbell would have called him a redneck, but never to his face.

“Make sure you shake the leaves out,” Pamela said to Donnie. At least Pamela had taken the time to brush her red curls, and Campbell couldn’t be sure, but she apparently was wearing mascara and foundation. In the firelight, he’d taken her for thirty-ish, but the harsh morning sun added a good decade to her face.

“A little bit of dirt never hurt nobody,” Donnie said.

“I didn’t say it would hurt, I just said I didn’t want them.”

“It’s my tent, too.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“I push what I want, where I want.”

“Enough of that, lovebirds,” Arnoff barked. “I’m making a scouting run and I want everybody ready to roll when I get back.”

Roll? On what, bicycles? Some armored column you got here, Rambo .

Campbell crawled out of the blanket and looked around the camp. It was shoddier in daylight than it had appeared last night, with filthy clothes flapping from a sagging piece of twine that was stretched between two trees. Ten feet behind the professor was a mound of cans, plastic bags, and coffee grounds. Pete lay bundled up on the edge of the clearing, apparently having rolled away from the fire during the night.

Campbell stood and stretched the stiffness from his spine. Pamela glanced his way with a smirk and said, “Is this the best Generation Y has to offer?”

Donnie scowled, not passing up a chance to bicker. “Dead weight. I don’t know what the hell Arnoff thinks he’s doing.”

“Pissing you off, Donnie. And just maybe saving your life.”

Campbell nodded at the professor, who focused all his attention on making the perfect cup of coffee under the most trying circumstances, as if the apocalypse was just a crude chemistry lab. The bespectacled man was perched as if he’d spent the entire night gazing into the flames. Campbell would never be caught dead in such company under normal circumstances. But normal was a distant memory.