Milepost 291

CHAPTER THREE

Rachel limped through the forest, straining her ears for any sounds of leaves scuffing from Stephen’s footfalls.

The boy must have a snake phobia, or perhaps his post-traumatic stress had merely been sleeping beneath the surface and waiting for a chance to erupt. But with dusk settling in, the dark forest offered even more horrors than a venomous snake could.

She was afraid to call out in case any Zapheads were nearby. Rachel wondered if the Zapheads could smell her—the infection in her leg, her sweat, the watermelon-scented shampoo she’d used by a creek in a futile attempt at normalcy. At least the Zapheads had quit yelling. Although the noise allowed her to track their locations and movements, she preferred the silence, even if the calm was only an illusion.

A branch snapped somewhere ahead.

She crouched low and leaned against a tree, peering into the darkness. She heard a soft female voice: “Do you see it?”

That doesn’t sound like a Zaphead.

Rachel waited, guessing the speaker was maybe fifty feet away. Another female said, “Over there.”

The gunshot was like a thunderclap in the night calm of the forest and a whine overhead clipped through branches and leaves. Rachel instinctively ducked lower. In the brightness of the muzzle flash she’d made out a small collection of silhouettes among the tree trunks. Two adults and a child. One of the adults, the one not pointing the rifle, carried a bulky bundle.

“Did you hit it?” said the first voice.

Zapheads didn’t use guns, as far as she knew. And they didn’t speak in sentences.

“Who’s there?” said one of the women.

Definitely not a Zap.

“Rachel,” she answered. “Don’t shoot. I’m…normal.”

Which also didn’t sound like something a Zaphead would say, so she was probably safe. Still, she kept the tree between her and the rifle.

“What are you doing out here in the dark?” asked the woman.

“Looking for a boy. Have you seen him?”

“You know what’s out here, don’t you?”

“Zapheads.” Rachel walked toward the group. She sensed more than saw one of the women pull the child protectively close. She thought for a moment it might be Stephen, but this child was shorter, and Stephen would have called out. “They heard the shot. They’ll be coming.”

As she drew closer, Rachel saw a soft radiance emanating from the bundle of blankets held by the woman. Rachel dug two of the glow sticks from her backpack and broke them, casting a circle of sickly green light that was barely bright enough to reveal the group. One of the women was probably early thirties, hugging a girl slightly older than Stephen. Judging by their similar straight black hair and nut-brown skin, Rachel judged them to be mother and daughter. It was this woman who held the rifle, its barrel now pointed at the sky but held with an easy confidence, as if the woman could bring it to bear in a heartbeat.

The other woman hugged her bundle to her chest. She was Rachel’s age, maybe two years younger. She was blonde and dirty-faced, a long red scratch across one cheek. She looked scared and tired and brittle, as if a sudden wind might cause her to collapse in a heap of bones.

“Do you have a camp?” Rachel asked the woman holding the rifle, who was obviously their leader.

“We came from one,” the woman said. Her tone was neither welcoming nor threatening, as if she were feeling out Rachel’s potential for danger. “But we had to leave.”

“We were about to bed down in a cave, but Stephen—he’s the little boy I’m looking for—saw a snake and ran. Now he’s lost.”

“They have him now,” said the blonde woman carrying the bundle.

“I haven’t seen any lately,” Rachel said, assuming she was referring to Zapheads.

“They have him,” the woman repeated with cold conviction.

“Well, then I’ll just have to get him back.”

Rachel had no idea which way to go. She was also reluctant to leave the group of females. Besides Stephen, she hadn’t seen a human since they’d split with DeVontay two weeks ago. She didn’t want to think about him; he’d sacrificed himself to lure away Zapheads so she and Stephen could escape. He was probably dead, despite what she’d told Stephen.

Stephen might be dead, too.

No. She’d lost her sister and she wasn’t going to lose Stephen. “Where are you guys from?”

“Up on the mountain,” said the woman with the rifle. She spoke clipped, clear English but her accent was Spanish.

“That’s where I’m headed. As soon as I find Stephen.” Her leg was killing her, but Rachel didn’t dare sit down. She flicked the light among the surrounding trees, checking for the reflection of glittering eyes.

“Milepost 291,” said the blonde woman.

“What?” Rachel couldn’t believe it, even though the location couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty miles away.

“A compound. We were holed up there, but…” The woman clasped the bundle more snugly to her chest. “Joey told us to leave.”

The bundle wriggled and emitted a soft cry.

A baby?

But if this woman was telling Rachel the baby was talking to them, then perhaps they’d been affected by the solar storms. While billions had been killed and others mutated into becoming Zapheads, the intense electromagnetic field fluctuations could have caused a wide range of effects on the human brain. It wasn’t like anybody was studying this stuff in a lab, and she’d had little opportunity to observe them. She’d been too busy surviving.

“This compound,” Rachel asked, scanning the forest around them once more. “Was Franklin Wheeler there?”

“Mr. Wheeler,” said the woman with the rifle. “Yes. He saved us.”

He survived!

Rachel’s heart started pumping faster, and the pain in her leg surged in giant waves. And she realized that her hope had been only that—she expected him to be dead and the compound a fantasy land. “Can you show me how to get there?”

“No!” shouted the woman with the baby. “Joey told us to leave. Bad things are happening.”

A regular little Nostradamus there. That’s a pretty safe prediction.

Rachel addressed the woman with the rifle, who now seemed like the sane one of the bunch. “Franklin’s my grandfather. I’m trying to find him.”

“He wasn’t there when we left,” the little girl said. “The baby made us go.”

“Go,” the baby said.

Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. The bundle thrashed and a small arm poked out, pale fist balled in indignation. “Go,” the baby repeated.

Judging from the size of the arm, the infant couldn’t have been more than six months old. No way should it be able to speak. Then the fingers splayed curled. The baby seemed to be waving them downhill into darkness.

The haggard young mother stepped outside the yellow perimeter of the glow stick’s haze. The woman with the rifle nudged her daughter to follow.

“Wait,” Rachel said. “That’s crazy. Babies can’t talk.”

The mother turned, and the bundled shifted. In its folds was a scattering of small bright sparks.

Its eyes.

“You don’t understand,” the mother said.

You’re right about that.

The Spanish woman said, almost in apology, “We have to follow. You are welcome to come with us.”

“Not without Stephen.”

The woman nodded and glanced at her own daughter as if she understood. Her dark eyes were solemn but determined, and Rachel saw she would make whatever sacrifice was necessary in order to survive.

“How far is the compound?” Rachel asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or twenty miles. Top of the mountain.”

“The Zapheads are here,” the mother said. “We have to go.”

“Go,” the baby blurted. They did.

As the group shuffled downhill, kicking up the scent of mud and pine, Rachel almost shouted after them. Instead, she shoved the glow sticks in her pocket and waited for her eyes to adjust to the faint haze of starlight leaking through the bare forest canopy. They’d come from her grandfather’s compound, and he was still alive. She figured her odds were better with Franklin Wheeler than with a group of delusional women who thought a baby was bossing them around.

Or maybe she was growing delirious herself. The infection in her leg might be poisoning her nervous system, slowing her reaction time and disrupting her senses. She didn’t like feeling helpless, but walking twenty more miles on her own was a demoralizing challenge. She listened until the group was lost in darkness, their footfalls faded, and then she continued up the slope in the direction Stephen had fled.

“Rachelllll.”

It was Stephen, somewhere in the darkness above. She almost yelled back but was afraid Zapheads might hear. Instead, she hobbled faster, stumbling over a damp, fallen log.

Stephen didn’t sound panicky, although he must have been terribly frightened. He repeated her name, almost in a whisper.

Coming, honey. Just hang on tight.

She guided herself from trunk to trunk, judging distance by the branches overhead, which were like black bones etched against the gray sky. The only sound besides her feet in the muddy leaves was the wind whining through the forest.

“Rachel,” he said again, and she saw his silhouette among a cluster of large boulders. She was surprised he’d venture near them after the encounter with the snake.

“It’s me,” she said.

She pulled the dimming glow sticks from her pocket and held them in the air.

Only it wasn’t Stephen.

It was a young girl, barely teen-aged, and her eyes glittered in the glare of the flashlight beam.

“Rachel,” she said, perfectly imitating Stephen.

Shadows separated themselves from the surrounding trees and walked toward her.

“Rachel,” they said. “Rachel.”

And their eyes winked and danced like a thousand radioactive fireflies.