Scott Nicholson - The Shock

“I should follow them,” Campbell said. “See what’s going on.”

“No,” Rachel said. “How can that help us? Right now, we need to save DeVontay and get out of here before your fire scorches us alive.”

“We can all be superheroes!” Stephen said, apparently becoming so engrossed in the comic book that he’d blurred the line between fantasy and reality. Rachel almost envied him.

“Sure, kid,” Pete said. “A super-duper ray gun will do the trick.”

As if to punctuate Pete’s words, a brittle crack resounded from outside, drawing Rachel’s attention. At first she thought it was the popping of wood from the heat of the fire, but the Zaphead in the white T-shirt was sprawled in the street on top of the corpse he’d been helping to carry. A dark stain spread across the back of his shirt.

Gunfire.

Another short rang out. The last Zaphead ducked and peered into the smoky murkiness, then fled out of the street into a side yard.

“Bet it’s The Captain and his goon squad,” Rachel said.

“Or maybe Arnoff’s group,” Campbell said.

Pete joined them at the window. “Sweet. Let’s team up.”

“At this point,” Campbell said, “I can’t tell the Zappers from the humans. And I’m not about to get shot to find out.”

“He’s right,” Rachel said to Pete. “But you guys do what you want. I’m going to get DeVontay.” She called to Stephen in the darkness of the living room. “Get your stuff, honey, and meet me at the back door.”

At first glance, the ranch house appeared to be abandoned.

Rachel parted the waxy leaves of the rhododendron that bordered one edge of the yard. The windows were dark, although the glimmer of the distant bonfire reflected in the windows. Campbell’s act of arson had spread, rimming the twilight sky in the east with an angry red-orange. Flames leaped and flickered above the treetops, casting striations of light across the land. The air stank of smoke, and breathing was difficult, but Rachel couldn’t help thinking of all the cremated corpses whose fine ash now floated into her lungs.

“Dang, Campbell,” Pete said, crouched behind her on the property adjoining the ranch house’s yard. “That’s some bonfire you built. You’re doing your part to wipe the slate clean, huh?”

“Maybe these guys have already left,” he said.

“No,” Rachel said. “I don’t think they’re all that interested in survival. They’re more interested in the war.”

“The war against who?” Campbell said. “I think we’ve all pretty much lost this one.”

“You don’t understand soldiers. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than get your butt kicked.”

Stephen squeezed her hand, the little guy curled into a ball beneath the foliage of the shrubbery. “Don’t go in there.”

“I can’t leave without DeVontay. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, these guys will take you to your dad. Right?”

“Uh…sure,” Pete said. “We’re headed that way anyway.”

“Okay, then.” Rachel said. “I’ll start the fire on the end near the garage. That will give everybody a chance to escape before it gets out of hand.”

“Got any accelerant?” Campbell asked.

“I saw a charcoal grill in the back yard before it got dark. There was a can of starter fluid beside it.”

“Another weenie roast,” Stephen said.

Rachel chuckled, although the sound of reassurance was more like choking on a chicken bone. “Need some paper, though.”

After a moment, one in which something large popped and exploded inside the distant conflagration with the whoosh of an airliner at liftoff, Pete said, “Damn it. Well, so much for the investment potential.” He unzipped his bag and shoved a stack of comics in her hand. “Bye, Spidey. It’s been real.”

“It’s for a good cause,” Campbell said.

“Sacrifice is for suckers,” Pete said, “but this better get me some serious brownie points in heaven.”

“I’ll put in a good word,” Rachel said, hoping she didn’t sound too sanctimonious. She’d been praying fervently in the past hour but had kept it to herself.

Well, yourself and God . Because you’re not in this thing alone .

She checked to make sure her lighter was still in her pocket, then tensed to push her way through the rhododendron. “I’m going with you,” Campbell said.

“We’re more likely to be spotted that way,” she said. “Besides, you need to look after Stephen.”

She felt a strong hand gripping her forearm. She turned and saw wildfire rippling in Campbell’s eyeglasses, and behind that, his gleaming, earnest eyes. “If you go in there, I have to go with you,” he said.

Anger burned inside her, as hot as any fire. “This isn’t the time for some stupid post-apocalypse man-code. In case you haven’t noticed, the codes are pretty much erased. So don’t pull your macho bullshit, because I’ve made it this far without you.”

Stephen drew in a shuddering gasp, and Rachel immediately regretted her outburst. She stroked Stephen’s hair and whispered. “It’s okay, honey. I’ll get DeVontay and be right back. I promise.”

Pete let out a snort of disbelief but Campbell stayed silent. Rachel clutched the small stack of comic books in one hand, her pruning shear held in the other. The ludicrous nature of her position struck her. If she’d seen somebody outfitted like this in a viral YouTube video, she’d have dubbed the viral star a demented supergeek, doomed to a life of cat memes and celibacy.

Just call me Joan of Arc. Hopefully, without the “burned at the stake” part.

A shiver of stray light, perhaps made by a flashlight beam, tracked across the inside of the ranch house. At the same time, a gust of wind pushed the distant fire into a swollen mass of heat, illuminating twisted columns of smoke that boiled up into the heavens.

Rachel thought she heard someone’s voice through the shattered picture window. The corpse had been removed from the sill, although a dark heap lay in the shadows of the flowerbed near the edge of the porch.

“Okay, wish me luck,” Rachel said, bracing to sprint along the perimeter of the lawn. Given the darkness, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be spotted, but she didn’t trust Captain America’s little A-Team. They might just be a little trigger-happy now that one of their number had been killed by the Zapheads.

“You don’t need luck,” Pete said. “You need a shot of booze.”

“Good luck,” Campbell said, giving her arm a squeeze of encouragement. “If anything happens, we’ll create a distraction so you can escape.”

“Mancode?” she asked.

“Nah,” he replied. “Just good, old-fashioned outsmarting-the-bad-guys strategy.”

“Wait,” Stephen said. “I thought those…Z things, the Zapheads…were the bad guys.”

“And your job is to take care of Miss Molly,” Rachel said to him. “Okay, I’ll meet you back here with DeVontay, if everything goes according to plan.”

“Nothing ever goes according to plan,” Campbell said. “Or this wouldn’t be After.”

“Yeah,” she muttered under her breath, and then she launched herself from the shrubs and ran, crouching and keeping an eye on the house, her broken pruning shears held before her like a jousting lance.

The strange glow on the horizon swelled into a perpetual sunset, and Rachel was afraid she was too exposed to make it to the end of the house without being seen. However, she quickly cut across the yard and soon dropped to her knees at the end of the house from which she’d escaped. Above her was the black rectangle of the access from which she’d made her escape—the lack of windows on this side of the house gave her confidence.