Scott Nicholson - The Shock

“DeVontay?”

“Rachel’s friend.”

“Can you show me the house?”

Stephen shook his head, squeezing the doll. “I don’t want the Zapheads to get me.”

“I promise I won’t leave you like Rachel did.” Campbell wondered if he was doing the same thing Arnoff had done to him and Pete, forcing him into servitude.

“Will you take me to Mi’sippi if I show you?”

“Sure, Stephen. Anything you say.”

“Okay, then. But you have to take Miss Molly, too.” Stephen held out the doll, as if testing Campbell’s commitment.

“Sure, all of us. Even DeVontay if he’s still there.” Campbell looked around the garage for a weapon. On the bicycle, he’d felt relatively safe because he could easily escape a Zaphead, even though they seemed to be faster and better coordinated now. If he was about to travel on foot, he wanted a way to defend himself.

But the garage offered nothing in the least bit deadly. The Cadillac’s owner was as meticulously ordered as the car’s condition suggested. Old issues of Car & Driver were stuck in plastic organizers on a set of metal shelves. Electric power tools were arrayed in a line along the wooden work bench, their cords neatly coiled around the handles. Bottles of motor oil, windshield washer fluid, and antifreeze stood at one end of the shelf, as well as a gasoline can. Campbell shook the can and it sloshed.

Great. Now all I have to do is toss this on a Zaphead, light a match, and walk away. Ridding the world of Zappers, one human torch at a time.

Campbell put down the gasoline can, and then remembered what Arnoff had said about the Zapheads loving to watch stuff burn. Maybe something in their short-circuited brains loved the simplicity of destruction, or maybe it was some deeply buried desire for purification that lived in the ghosts of their human selves. Either way, he might have a way to distract the Zappers until he figured out his next move.

You guys like to play firebug, let me get it started for you.

He twisted the lid from the gas can and poured it all along the bench. The fumes of the gasoline stung his eyes and made his head swim. He flung a trail of gasoline over to the Cadillac, wondering if it would blow like in the movies.

“You ever had a weenie roast, Stephen?”

“No, but my dad likes to barbecue.”

“Okay, then, think of this as one big backyard barbecue.” Campbell moved a few feet away, wondering if he’d spilled any gasoline on his clothes. He didn’t think he’d impress Stephen much if he managed to accidentally immolate himself.

He pulled one of the issues of Car & Driver from its rack. The cover featured a decked-out muscle car that looked like a ’69 Chevy Camaro. Campbell ripped a few pages from the interior and pulled a lighter from his pocket. He lit the corner of the twisted, makeshift torch.

“Okay, let’s roll,” he said to Stephen, tossing the torch onto the wet stream of gasoline, which had now soaked into the concrete. It immediately swelled into a thick, bright flame and spread outward in both directions, but they were out of the garage before it reached the Cadillac.

Campbell led Stephen across the backyard of the house, wondering if the Cadillac’s owner was taking the big sleep inside the house. Perhaps he should have checked. It wouldn’t have been right to burn another man’s car without asking, even though the big gas-guzzler was just another dinosaur now.

“We’ll follow the street from over here, then come around to the house from the back way,” Campbell said, the bonfire now crackling behind them as thick smoke roiled into the sky. “Think you’ll be able to find it again?”

“Yeah,” Stephen said, tugging his hand free from Campbell’s. “I’m not a baby, you know.”

“Well, I’m just a little scared.”

“But you’re a superhero.”

“Yeah, but I’m in my secret identity right now.”

“See that big tower? That way.”

Through the trees, Campbell could see a bulbous water tower framed against the scattered iron-gray clouds. The town’s name was spelled out in black letters across the circumference, but the first part was hidden, so Campbell was left to wonder where in the hell “-iston” was.

They climbed over a waist-high fence, Campbell boosting Stephen over after first transporting the baby doll. The rows of houses faced the backs of similar houses, and the gaps in the landscaping and fencing revealed yet another street, as if the neighborhood was just another homogenous suburb, with American flags, lawnmowers, and the occasional corpse lying facedown in the grass.

Campbell saw movement behind one of the sliding-glass doors and wondered if he should check for other human survivors. But then the glass shattered and a Zaphead staggered outside, a half-naked man wielding an aluminum baseball bat. Campbell pulled Stephen into the concealment of a boxwood hedge, covering the boy’s mouth so he wouldn’t call out. The Zaphead passed within twenty feet of them, headed toward the burning garage.

“Bad guy,” Stephen whispered after the Zaphead had vanished from sight.

“Yeah.”

They continued to pick their way across the yards. They came to a dead dog tied to a length of chain. Flies buzzed around the bloated body and the stench was overpowering.

“Why did Rachel leave you?” Campbell said, drawing Stephen’s attention away from the grisly scene of death and the blunt reminder of what was waiting for all of them.

“She went into the Army-man house to get DeVontay.”

“Why did DeVontay go in?”

“He thought there were people like us. You know, good guys.”

Campbell wondered about the wisdom of finding other survivors. So far, his luck had been pretty bad, and he wondered if humans under duress could truly work together for the common good.

Nothing like a good, old-fashioned apocalypse to blow that peace, love, and understanding horseshit to the moon.

“There’s the shed she put me in,” Stephen said after they’d crossed another yard that featured an unkempt vegetable garden. “She promised she’d be back. But the Army men came and let me out and told me to run or die.”

The door to the shed was open, and Campbell warily scanned his surroundings, wishing he had a gun.

“Somebody’s been in there since I left,” Stephen said. “They threw tools all over the ground.”

“Maybe Rachel came back.”

“Or maybe the Army men did.”

They heard a shout to their left, from the direction of the street. Campbell dropped to his belly and crawled along the ground until he saw the fight. A woman in military garb was fending off a Zaphead, and two bodies were piled around their feet.

“I’d better help her,” Campbell said. “You stay here.”

Stephen grabbed the back of his shirt as he tried to stand. “No. She was one of the ones who told me the Zapheads were going to get me.”

“But she’s one of us .”

“If you help her, she might give me to the Zapheads again.”

Before Campbell could make a decision, the soldier solved the dilemma by plunging a knife deep into the Zaphead’s abdomen, ripping upward in a flash of silver and gush of crimson. The soldier’s high-pitched curses were likely to draw the attention of any other Zapheads in the vicinity.

The boy stared transfixed as the soldier shoved the dead Zaphead away and wiped her knife on the leg of her camouflage trousers. His face showed no real shock or surprise. Campbell wondered if this was how children reacted to warfare, after the repeated exposure ultimately gave way to numbness.

Welcome to the new normal .

“Where’s that house?” Campbell asked him.

“Ruh-round the corner, I think.”