Scott Nicholson - The Shock

But it was the activity in the street that drew her attention. People— Zapheads —were walking up the street. Although they appeared nearly unaware of each other, all of them at least fifty feet apart, they were headed in the same direction. They moved with none of the uncoordinated sluggishness of a few days before, nor did they seem particularly intent on destroying anything.

“Weird,” she said. The scene was rendered even more surreal by their utter silence. If not for their transfixed, unblinking eyes, she would have thought they were fellow survivors. Even now, she wondered if maybe Zapheads and survivors were sharing the same street in relative harmony, perhaps coming to accept one another.

“Creepy as hell. Where they going?”

Rachel looked at the angle of the shadows that stretched from the sides of the buildings and the few cars in the street. “They’re heading east. Back toward the big fire.”

“So, maybe they’re not in hell, just heading for it.”

“It seems like there are more of them.”

“These sons of bitches ain’t coming back from the dead, are they?”

Rachel almost made a joke, but DeVontay clearly was simmering on the verge of exploding. “Whatever instinct is driving them, it’s brought them out in the open. Maybe a lot of them were inside before.”

“Inside killing people, maybe. Don’t forget what they done.”

“Well, maybe they’ve changed.”

“Yeah, right. Praise the Lord, they saw the light. Maybe they’re not even mindless killers anymore. Let’s run outside and start singing Dancin’ in the Street and see what happens.”

DeVontay had raised his voice so much that Stephen let out a plaintive, confused cry. “Mommy?”

Rachel shot DeVontay a venomous glare and hurried to the bed. She swept the boy up in her arms and held him tightly, the sheet swaddling his shoulders. Rocking back and forth, she whispered, “Shhh, honey. It’s okay.”

DeVontay began stuffing his things into his backpack as if preparing to leave. Stephen finally became aware of his surroundings. “Whu-where are we?”

“North of Charlotte,” she said.

He wiped at his eyes with a grimy fist. “Is that close to Mi’sippi?”

“Closer than yesterday,” she said.

“I think we better wait it out,” DeVontay said, again monitoring the street through the beige curtains.

“It’s not any safer traveling at night,” Rachel said. “They don’t seem to sleep.”

“They don’t eat nothing, either. You’d think they’d wear down after a while.”

Rachel didn’t like having this conversation in front of Stephen, but she didn’t see any way around it. “Well, let’s face it. We just don’t know anything. Right after the Big Zap, they were killing every living thing in sight, random destruction, acting mindlessly. Now they’re moving with more purpose, like they’re getting settled into their new lives.”

DeVontay pulled one of the curtains wide. “You call that shit ‘ life ’? It’s like somebody opened up their heads like a jack-o’-lantern and stuffed them full of poisoned cotton candy.”

“Cotton candy?” Stephen said, standing up on the bed and trying to see out the window.

Rachel pulled him back down into the bed and gave him a pack of crackers. “You better keep your strength up. We’ve got a long walk ahead.”

“Why is walking better than staying right here?” DeVontay said. “We can hole up, make a run to a store now and then, wait this thing out.”

“We have no idea what we’d be waiting for. You think the Army’s going to roll in and save us? We’ve already seen how that plays out.”

“Then we ought to find those guys from last night—Campbell and them—and band together so we have a better chance of fighting them off.”

“The Zapheads outnumber us. I don’t think we’ve gotten a good idea of their population. They’ve gone from random, individual acts of violence, where you might only see one or two at a time, to a more open, communal behavior.”

“This ain’t psychology class. This is war. Plus, you don’t even know what those things are thinking about. They might as well be puppets hanging on invisible strings.”

“I like puppets,” Stephen said with enthusiasm, spraying cracker crumbs from his mouth. Then, his face darkened. “But I don’t like Zapheads.”

Rachel again glared at DeVontay, who ignored her anger. “But Zapheads may not be our only problem. Look at The Captain and his storm troopers. What if they’re not an isolated case? What if there are pockets of military forces out there, armed to the teeth and making their own rules? They’re as likely to slaughter us as the Zapheads are.”

“That’s an even better reason to stay here, then. Those idiots might be shooting everything that moves.”

“No,” Rachel said, not knowing how to put it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Stephen even more. But perhaps the fantasy of reaching his father was enough to sustain him for now. “The fires are spreading. Imagine all those toxins in Charlotte. When that city burns, the smoke is going to be a killer.”

“So, our choices are choking to death, getting shot, or getting our brains bashed in by Zapheads,” DeVontay said.

“The one thing we can’t do is just sit here and pray,” Rachel said.

“Oh, is the holy roller losing faith?”

“Faith without works is dead,” Rachel responded, hating herself for reducing a complex passage from the Book of James into a catch phrase. “That means fighting the good fight.”

“Like chopping up Zapheads with that sling blade?”

“I plead self-defense,” she said.

Stephen scooted off the bed, tossing his cracker wrapper on the floor.

“Stephen?” Rachel said. “Did you forget something?”

“No. I got Miss Molly right here,” he said, turning the doll to face her.

She scowled and looked down at the wrapper. “Trash goes in the trash can.”

As Stephen bent to pick up the wrapper, DeVontay said to her, “You make the apocalypse so much fun.”

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Time to go.”

“Go where?” DeVontay said, sitting on the bed.

“Mi’sippi!” Stephen said.

“Stevie, you’re a little too eager to go out there,” DeVontay said to him. “Lots of stray bullets flying around.”

“We’ll be better off once we get away from the city,” Rachel said. “Fewer people, fewer Zapheads, fewer fires.”

“Back to nature, huh?”

Rachel was serving as sentinel at the window. The streets outside the motel were quiet. She hadn’t seen any Zapheads for the last hour or so. Distant bursts of gunfire had erupted intermittently, but Rachel didn’t believe that Captain America and his troops were on this side of town. For the one thing, the hunting wasn’t as good.

“We’re heading for Mount Rogers.” Rachel smiled at Stephen. “It’s on the way.”

“What’s up there?” DeVontay asked.

“Somebody who was ready for this.”

“What, you got ESP all of a sudden?” DeVontay asked. “The sun heated you up some new superpowers?”

“My grandfather has a compound there. He’s what you might call a ‘survivalist wacko.’ He got interested in self-reliant living back during Y2K fever, when some people thought the computers would go berserk and throw civilization back to the Stone Age.”

DeVontay scowled. “Well, we all saw how that one turned out.”

“Yes, but Grandpa Wheeler figured civilization had gotten too complex, that modern systems would inevitably break down for one reason or another. Like a motor that had too many moving parts and not enough oil. He also believes the world’s governments were serving the will of the very wealthy. At some point we’d have to learn to live outside the structure.”