“Do you sense it?” DeVontay asked.
“No,” Rachel said. “Not anymore. It was there, and then it wasn’t.”
“That’s weird.”
“I’d like to think that a Zap not putting messages in my brain is normal.”
They were checking out an encampment where DeVontay had been held captive by a band of survivors years ago. They’d searched it before, along with every other store and shop in Stonewall, but DeVontay insisted the former slaughterhouse might be the best chance of finding overlooked food or supplies. His reasoning went that the original scavengers had picked the town clean, and that rats always carried their goodies back to the nest.
“So, if you can’t pick up any signal, that probably means it’s gone,” DeVontay said, kicking over a five-gallon bucket that oozed sour syrup. The slaughterhouse had been ringed with chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire, with rows of tractor trailers used as walls along with a series of metal sheds. It was one of these sheds they now searched, but it mostly contained trash and dead people.
“I don’t think I’d get off the hook that easily,” Rachel said. “And it’s possible that it senses me, but I can’t sense it. I’m only half Zap, remember, and who knows how much I’ve lost by being separated from the tribe.”
That’s too much to hope for, that the “disease” will cure itself. But I can’t think of it as a disease. More like an involuntary possession.
“But you’re around Kokona all the time,” DeVontay said.
“We’ve developed our own bond, but who’s to say we’re not a tribe unto ourselves now? As fast as they’re evolving, maybe we’ve been left behind.”
“Stuck with the humans,” DeVontay said. “A fate worse than death.”
“Look at it this way,” Rachel said, raking through a sodden stack of collapsed cardboard boxes. “Zaps probably outnumber us a hundred to one. As far as we can tell, they’re organized and thriving while we’re scrounging for lizards under rocks.”
“And hoping those lizards don’t bite back,” DeVontay said.
“But if they wanted to wipe us out, they could do it at any time,” Rachel said. “We’re like lizards under rocks to them. Don’t turn over the rock, and we don’t really exist.”
“I can live with that deal,” DeVontay said.
“Don’t you want more? Has it been so long that you can’t remember walking down the street to get a cup of coffee, hearing the birds sing without worrying if they were going to swarm you, or jumping in a river without any clothes on?”
“I never went skinny dipping, honey,” DeVontay said. “I’m way too shy for that.”
“But you’re accepting the way things are.”
“Yeah, because things could be waaaay worse.”
Rachel sifted through the contents of a wooden shelf that contained tools, spools of wire, nuts and bolts, and various types of saw blades. She imagined the blades had once been used to butcher cattle, pigs, and deer. No wonder the Zaps considered her race barbaric.
“Nothing here,” DeVontay said. “Maybe we should check the refrigerator units.”
“Ooh, I bet those things smell really great.”
DeVontay sniffed one of the armpits of his flannel shirt. “I don’t smell so hot myself. Maybe I could stand to jump in a river.”
“I wouldn’t do it naked, though.” She rolled her eyes down the length of his body. “You might come up with something missing.”
Despite the lingering chill of morning, Rachel had also worked up a sweat. As claustrophobic as life in the bunker had become, being beyond its concrete walls and steel door triggered a different kind of unease. In the bunker, they’d established a routine that allowed for some leisure and comfort. Outside, every breath might bring a new way to die.
As they crossed the enclosure to a series of metal refrigerator units, Rachel glanced at the sky. The sun was bright enough to burn away most of the aurora. The sunspot activity was down. But Rachel didn’t need to see the sky to know. The background hum that constantly ran through her like electricity was diminished to a trickle.
They were nearly to the first of the big refrigerator units when DeVontay said, “Didn’t you close the gate?”
“I thought you closed it.”
DeVontay leveled his rifle in front of him at waist height. “Well, one of us did, because we’d never be dumb enough to go into a place like this and not close the gate.”
Rachel scanned the enclosure. “Looks pretty dead to me.”
“Yeah, that’s probably what the cows used to say, before they got turned into hamburger.”
“I told you, I don’t sense any Zaps. And that one we saw last night didn’t threaten us at all.” Rachel didn’t mention that parting, silent communication of “Thank you.” She couldn’t explain the intent of the phrase, and he would just worry more about her potential for betrayal.
“Lots of stuff besides Zaps can get us.” DeVontay headed for the chain-link gate and the short drive that connected to the road. “Let’s boogie.”
“We’ve only found two cans of food, and one of them is turnip greens. The kids are not going to be happy campers.”
“We should be getting back anyway. Whoever made those big-boy boomeroos last night might still be in the area.”
Rachel eyed the refrigerator units, relieved to be spared the mystery of their contents. She hurried after DeVontay, her pack jiggling against her back. One benefit of a pathetic supply run was the load was lighter for the return trip.
“Maybe they’re good people,” Rachel said. “Not everybody who has a gun is bad. Just look at us.”
“Odds are against it,” DeVontay said. “And I’m not willing to play those odds.”
“But we came to Stonewall looking for people.”
“Yeah. We want people, not an army.”
“Damn it, DeVontay, make up your mind. You think we’ll be safer in a bigger group, but you don’t want it to be too big. Probably because you’re afraid you won’t get to be boss anymore.”
He stopped at the gate and turned toward her. “You can have the crown any time you want it. But if I remember right, you didn’t like it so much when you were Queen of the Zaps.”
“I didn’t have any control over that. There were so many of them, they just pulled me in. You wouldn’t understand, but they needed me so they could understand us—the humans they found themselves killing.”
“‘You wouldn’t understand.’ I’ve heard that a thousand times. You’re right, I wouldn’t. Well, I’m sorry I saved you.”
DeVontay went through the gate without waiting for her.
Why am I blaming him? I wanted to be rescued. I had a choice, and I decided to be human. Why can’t I just be happy that I made the right choice?
Rachel had been summoned to the town of Newton thirty miles to the west, where the Zaps had congregated and taken human captives. A rogue military group attacked the town, planning to destroy the mutant infants, whose telepathic intelligence was rapidly evolving. During the ensuing chaos, DeVontay and Franklin had rescued Rachel as the rest of the humans were wiped out. That had been four years ago, and Rachel still was saddened by the wasteful war.
She’d been a relentless optimist at the time. She hoped her unique, half-mutant status would allow her to serve as a diplomat, but Zaps had no concept of peace and humans had no capacity to forgive the violent slaughter in the immediate aftermath of the solar storms. Now she knew her hope was futile. What she mistook for empathy was actually arrogance.
She didn’t deserve anyone’s crown.
As she caught up with DeVontay once again, she couldn’t evade the deep doubt that constantly plagued her: What if I made the wrong choice?
“Something’s not right here,” DeVontay said, pointing his rifle along the road to a cluster of houses. “That yellow house there, the one that looks like some grandma’s cute little mountain cottage. The door’s open.”
“So what? Lots of doors are open. Nobody had time for locks and keys when the storms hit, and nobody cared after that.”
“We’ve been to Stonewall half a dozen times, but this is the first time that door’s been open. I know, because I always look at those brass wind chimes on the porch. I’ve been thinking about taking them back to the bunker, but the wind don’t blow underground.”
“So, somebody’s been through this way,” Rachel said. “That could’ve happened anytime since spring.”
“Maybe, but if we’re checking things out, we’re checking things out, right? First the open gate, and now this. Something’s real funny.”
Rachel looked around to see if she noticed anything else different about Stonewall. The stalled cars seemed the same, and the ransacked shops were still cluttered and decrepit. A fire truck, likely scrambled during the original catastrophe, was angled off the road with its front tires in the river, white foam churning around the rubber. A skeleton leaned against a road sign that warned motorists not to pass on double-yellow lines.
“I think we should get back to the bunker,” Rachel said, but DeVontay was already bounding up the hill toward the house. He was getting careless in his desire to discover the human race wasn’t totally down and out.
Rachel watched the surrounding houses as she followed. Their policy was to never enter any building alone. She was confident the town was clear of Zaps, but she couldn’t even guess at the other hidden dangers. She half expected gunfire to erupt as DeVontay stumbled onto some new kind of deadly creature, a rabid dog or feral pig.
Instead, he called her name, and she gave the town a last scan before entering the house. DeVontay was in the back room, looking down at the floor.
“Now we know what happened to your buddy,” he said.
The Zap lay in a thick puddle of blood, its skull cracked open. Flies drank from the gore, their wings shiny green in the faint light. The blood was still wet, suggesting the mutant’s death was recent.
“I guess we’re not alone,” Rachel said.
DeVontay knelt to examine the body, careful not to touch its skin. Zaps were in no way contagious—they could only pass along their biological changes through reviving human corpses, although in Rachel’s case she was nearly dead from a gangrenous dog bite. But DeVontay wasn’t taking any chances.
He drew his tactical knife and poked the silver suit with the tip. “This material’s the same as what that flying bird-thing was made out of.”
“You’re saying the Zaps made that bird?”
“Look how tough this stuff is.” DeVontay jabbed the body several times with his knife. The material flexed and stretched but didn’t yield. “It might even be bulletproof.”
“Roll him over,” Rachel said. A wave of sadness and regret swept her, but she kept her feelings hidden from DeVontay. “Let’s see if this is the same one from last night.”
DeVontay looked around the room, then collected a floor lamp and used its long stand to lever the mutant onto its back. Its gender was still difficult to discern even up close, but there were some bulges in the crotch that suggested a male, although it also appeared to have slightly enlarged breasts. She didn’t think they would be able to remove the suit for a closer examination, because she saw no seam or zipper. Besides, no way would DeVontay want to see a naked Zap.
“Look at the face,” DeVontay said. “Smooth skin, no facial hair, the eyes are open but with none of the Zap lights. I guess this is the same one, but maybe they all look alike now.”
“They’ll be coming for it,” Rachel said “They always collect their dead.”
DeVontay looked out the window at the woods behind the house. “Maybe we should hide and watch.”
“That wouldn’t be such a good idea. They’ll detect me from a mile away. Besides, we might have a bigger problem. Who killed it?”
“Why is that a problem?” DeVontay said. “One down, a million to go. If you’d killed it last night when you had the chance—”
“The Zap didn’t attack us. So why did it attack whoever did this? It would take some kind of heavy instrument or weapon to inflict this kind of damage, because this blow was delivered from close range. Unless they’ve changed, Zaps only attack in self-defense. And they usually don’t lose.”
“So maybe they have changed, Rachel. What are you, the mutant justice of the peace?”
“What if they’re no longer a threat to us?”
DeVontay turned from the window and looked down at the thing that had once been human, then became a mutant, and now was so much meat for scavengers. Life was transformation, and dust was the final state of all living things, no matter how peculiar. The same Mother Nature that had spawned these mutants wouldn’t let them escape her final judgment.
“The only good Zap’s a dead Zap,” he said. “Whose side are you on again?”
A tingle raced up Rachel’s spine and a buzzing arose in her ear canals. She had a feeling DeVontay’s question was about to be answered.
“They’re coming.”