Scott Nicholson - The Shock

There were three of them.

She’d stopped naming them a week ago. It had been an amusing distraction for a while—and the Good Lord only knew, she needed distractions—but then they’d all started blending together, the Black-Eyed Susans, the Raisinheads and the Meat Throats.

Now, though, Rachel Wheeler couldn’t resist looking through the grimy drugstore window as she waited, crouched in the litter of baby powder and cellophane.

Stumpy .

The one on the right, sitting on the sidewalk bench surrounded by a mountain of bulging plastic bags, was missing his left arm just below the elbow. The wound was swathed in a filthy towel strapped in place with duct tape, stained dark brown at its blunt end.

Stumpy was waiting for a bus that would never come. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was a Zaphead. He might just be another of the schizophrenic homeless, one of the underclass that hadn’t even noticed that the world had ended. Although gaunt, he didn’t appear particularly motivated to kill, obsessed instead with swatting away the flies that swirled around his stump.

He was fifty feet away, and she could outrun him easy. All she had to do was run as if her life depended on it. It wouldn’t be much of a challenge because her life had depended on it for days.

A hundred yards down the street, The Beard, the guy staggering back and forth, was almost certainly a Zaphead. His expression was hidden by the unkempt hair, but he was hunched and his fists were clenched, rage curling around whatever strange energy burned inside of him.

Okay, Beard, you’ve solved my little dilemma of whether I should head south or head north.

The mountains were her destination, and they lay to the northwest, but she wasn’t willing to risk The Beard.

The word “destination” sounded odd in her thoughts, because of the root “destiny.” Such abstractions were laughable now, but laughter was the only weapon against the fear that sapped the strength from her legs. And she needed her legs.

Oh, yes, Lord, give me stumps for hands, but please don’t mess with my legs .

In this scary new world, in this After, you had to run, dragging your guilt and fear and all the dark weight of Before.

Even if she’d wanted to head south, where not even hope was an option, Chain Guy had other ideas. He was moving through the smoky haze between a Volvo sedan cattycornered in the intersection and an abandoned police car, its doors flung open like the wings of a spastic, grounded bird as it perched with two wheels on the curb.

Chain Guy was dressed in a torn leather jacket, despite the late-August heat—and in Charlotte, the August heat grabbed your throat and scrubbed you with salt water—and he carried a knapsack. Clearly, he was one of the higher-functioning lunatics. The chain in his right hand trailed out on the asphalt behind him, its faint clink the sole soundtrack to a scene that had once featured rush-hour traffic.

She ducked lower in the drugstore window, clutching her backpack more closely. The pack was bulging, and she’d needed the dried foods she’d collected, but now, the comfort items felt more like indulgences that would slow her down and maybe get her killed.

Really, toilet paper and tampons, Ray-Ray? Why not grab some hemorrhoid cream and Viagra while you’re at it? You can’t beat these prices, so you might as well stock up.

She wondered if she should wait it out, to see whether The Beard and Chain Guy squared off. Maybe while they were busy, she could slip out and head down a perpendicular street. It was likely that one or two Zapheads would be on the prowl, but she didn’t want to stay there until dark. The store’s front door was smashed in, and other scavengers might show up for this unbeatable, once-in-a lifetime, going-out-of-business sale.

The sun was still high, but barely visible through the smoke that curled from the downtown high rises. She suspected a bonfire was raging in the football stadium, too—the wind carried the stench of charred meat.

Chain Guy wrapped loops of his weapon around his forearm until he had a four-foot length. He swung it back and forth, gradually picking up momentum until he was whipping the chain in a circle over his head. He was still about forty yards from The Beard, who still paced back and forth, apparently oblivious to the coming storm.

As the chain whirred like a slow helicopter blade, a dog bounded out from behind the police cruiser, snarling and yapping. He was a German shepherd—lean, dark and hungry. The dog made a beeline for Chain Guy, evidently smelling something he didn’t like. But the dog must have sensed the reach of the chain, because he halted and lowered himself onto his forelegs, haunches reared as if poised to attack.

Get ‘em, boy , Rachel silently cheered, thinking the distraction would give her an opening. She squeezed the straps of her pack, testing the weight and calculating how much it would hinder her speed.

The dog’s lips peeled back as he growled. Chain Guy’s expression didn’t change. He spun the chain faster, almost daring the dog as he headed for The Beard. The shepherd danced forward a few feet and snapped, but Chain Guy kept walking, not breaking stride. The dog apparently didn’t like being challenged, so he made a run for Chain Guy’s ankles.

The chain lashed out of its orbit and descended with stunning speed, the blow so sudden that Rachel wasn’t even sure she’d seen it. Then came the thwack as metal hit meat, the chain flaying the dog’s rib cage. It emitted one garbled yelp of pain and collapsed. Chain Guy still wore that blank, businesslike expression as he brought the chain around for another blow. This one took out a leg and the shepherd crawled away like a broken spider.

The sickening attack reminded Rachel they weren’t playing “Ring Around the Rosie” here. It was dog eat dog. And, they definitely weren’t playing. If it came down to it, she’d rather Chain Guy eat the dog than eat her.

If Chain Guy looked to his left, he might have glimpsed her hiding behind the shards of glass in the storefront. Her curiosity was slightly more compelling than her fear, and every bit of information might mean the difference between survival and its opposite. She wasn’t sure what the “opposite” was, but it was worse than death.

Chain Guy maintained his pace, but he let the chain slow again above his head. Stumpy hadn’t moved from his bench, and The Beard still seemed intent on whatever crack in the asphalt had consumed his entire attention for the past minute.

Or Jesus. Jesus in the oil stain, the rainbow warrior, the light of wisdom .

Rachel bit her lip to keep from giggling. Don’t lose it. Only crazy people lose it, and you know what happens to crazy people.

Something tumbled from the shelves behind her, near the prescription counter.

She hadn’t checked the aisles after seeing the corpse of a child, although the place had seemed dead. But “dead” had a new meaning now.

She tensed, but didn’t bolt, because the real threat of Chain Guy outweighed the imaginary threat spawned by a jar falling to the carpet. The Zapheads weren’t known for subtlety, so there was zero chance of one of them creeping up on her. No, a Zaphead would roll forward like a Cadillac out of hell, fueled by the frenzy zapping and hissing in its brain.

Chain Guy was busy bearing down on The Beard, so she crawled to the left a few feet and peered around a display of Hallmark cards. A hand stretched out on the floor beside the prescription counter, the fingers twitching.

Could be a Zapper in the last throes of internal combustion.