Scott Nicholson - The Shock

Not that Campbell had ever made much sense of the world even before it had figuratively tilted on its axis. Grade school had been an indoctrination of sorts—“Go here when the bell rings, do this and this and this”—but Campbell had been bewildered by the anxiety of sitting in a room with twenty-five other kids. High school had been just as surreal, mostly because he’d seen those roles that adults were forced to adopt, and he didn’t see any role he’d be able to successfully fake. Because he was pretty sure everyone was pulling a mask, all characters straight out of Central Casting: the chisel-faced military recruiting officer, the tow-truck driver with the Popeye forearms, the gum-chewing waitress at the Waffle House, the I.T. nerd with the Batman fixation.

So, a world populated by Zapheads wasn’t really too much of a leap, was it?

Regardless, he was grateful that none of them were around. If the church offered what they needed, that was just fine with him, and God bless.

Campbell dashed between a Mitsubishi boiling with blue bottle flies and a Honda sedan with all four doors flung open and spilling the stench of corpses. He vaulted over a motorcycle lying on its side, nearly losing his balance, then came to Fat Freddy’s entrance. He peered through the oval glass set in the wooden door but couldn’t see much. He pushed his way in, squeezing the candlestick.

“Bro! Just in time for Happy Hour!” Pete’s voice came from the darkness somewhere near the back of the establishment.

As Campbell’s eyes adjusted, he made out the dim rows of tables, some of them occupied by dead people fallen face first into their moldering food. A few candles flickered, reflected in the bar mirror along with rows and rows of gleaming bottles. Campbell wiped his nose against the rot, still not accustomed to the sweetly corrupt odor.

But the smell of candle wax and alcohol were strong as well, creating a lurid mixture. Pete stood behind the bar, a half-full bottle of brown liquor before him, along with a water glass. At first, Campbell thought that Pete had somehow found some drinking buddies, because four other people sat at the bar, perched on high wooden stools with glasses in front of them.

“Pete, who are these guys?” Campbell’s heart turned into a frozen stone in his chest.

Pete merely grinned, tossed back a couple of ounces of whiskey, and slammed the glass back down with a brittle thunk . “Drinks on the house,” he said, slurring his words just a little.

Campbell navigated the tables, holding the candlestick before him as if it was a cattle prod and he might need to jolt some of these corpses out of the way. “Coast is clear, man. We can get out of town with no hassle.”

Pete waved to the row of bottles, his grinning eyes flashing in the candlelight. “Leave? I died and went to heaven. Beer’s warm, and there’s not any ice, but can’t complain. Nosirree.”

Campbell glanced at the bodies leaning against the bar. They were in stilted, swollen poses, the stools jammed under them to keep them erect. One, a biker wearing a sleeveless jeans jacket and a watchman’s cap, had maggots roiling in his eye sockets.

“Pete,” Campbell said warily. “Why don’t you just grab a bottle and come with me? You can drink it on the road.”

“No way,” he responded, sloshing some whiskey into the biker’s full glass so that the liquid ran along the length of the bar. The glasses in front of the other corpses were full as well.

“You…” Campbell didn’t know how to process the tableau. His best friend had lost it, finally cracked under the strain. And Campbell felt a chill deeper than fear: the deep, icy well of loneliness into which he was dropping.

“Party’s just started!” Pete bellowed to his patrons before tossing down another few ounces of straight whiskey. Pete wiped his mouth and beamed, the candles making his face look sinister and red, like a demon in a B horror movie.

Campbell ignored the stench of the desecrated corpses, which Pete had obviously dragged from the dining tables to create his impromptu drinking session. He leaned against the bar as Pete slammed a glass down on the wood.

“What’ll ya have, pardner?” Pete said. Then his face took on a sodden solemnity. “You know what really gets to me about all this? I just can’t wrap head my around a world without celebrities. Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Lindsay Lohan. I mean, inquiring minds want to know .”

“In Lindsay Lohan’s case, I don’t think it would make much difference.”

“LeBron James. Depp, man. A world without the Deppster.”

“You’re drunk,” Campbell said, preferring that diagnosis to the prospect of madness.

“Seriously. Did they turn into Zapheads? Is there a Brad Pitt Zaphead out there somewhere be-bopping along with a little soul patch?”

“Don’t dwell on it. Deal with what’s in front of you.”

Pete looked at his glass and grinned. But he quickly turned maudlin again and groaned with dramatic flair. “Taylor Swift. Not Taylor? She’s so cute and sweet and I got a Jodie Foster-level crush on her.”

“You can’t just sit here and wait for them to find you,” Campbell said, eyeing the front door. He wondered if any Zapheads were deeper in the building, maybe down in the basement or in the bathrooms. Pete didn’t have a weapon of any kind, and his backpack was tossed carelessly by the cash register.

“The more, the merrier,” Pete said, waving at the impressive array of bottles. “We got plenty for everybody. Zappers, survivors, and”—Pete gave a benevolent sweep of his non-drinking arm to indicate the corpses—“the stinking silent majority.”

Pete started to take another big gulp from his glass but Campbell caught his wrist, sloshing liquor onto both their arms. “Remember you told me to let you know if you ever hit bottom with your drinking?”

“I was probably drunk when I said that,” Pete said, bloodshot eyes narrowing. “You can’t hold people to stuff they say when they’re drunk. Otherwise, I’d have been married six times already.”

Pete laughed at his own miserable joke, but the sound was swallowed by the still, dusty space. Any mirth and merriment that might have soaked into the walls had long since evaporated, although the smell of booze, corrupted food, and bloated corpses did plenty to crowd the air.

Glass shattered somewhere near the front door, and Campbell swung around with the candlestick raised. “They found us.”

Pete didn’t seem to care. He drank straight from the bottle of Knob Creek, then wiped some of the liquor under his nose like a mortician applying menthol before digging in on the day shift.

“Get down,” Campbell said, snuffing the nearest candle. He crouched in the dark, discomfortingly near the legs of one of Pete’s dead clientele.

The front door swung open, flooding light into the bar. A figure was framed in silhouette, and Campbell wondered if Zapheads could see in the dark. Not that it mattered. Pete stood near the other candle, his face bright in the yellow circle of the flame.

Campbell tensed, waiting for the Zaphead to attack. Instead, the silhouette said, “Thought you might be in here.”

Arnoff!

From the camouflaged platform built into the branches of an oak tree, Jorge had a nearly panoramic view of the surrounding ridges and valleys. “Wheelerville,” as Franklin Wheeler called his tiny compound, wasn’t the highest point in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it stood apart from the towering canopy of Mount Rogers and smaller mountains that bore craggy granite faces topped with pine stubble. A hawk flew over the gray belt of haze that wreathed the valley, and Jorge wondered if it was the same one that killed the chicken.