Milepost 291

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Rachel heard her name as if across a vast gulf.

But it wasn’t until Campbell shook her awake that she realized she’d been asleep.

“Rachel,” Campbell said. “Are you okay?”

The question again irritated her. For all his explanation of how her echolalia was a Zaphead trait, he sure seemed to repeat that same phrase a lot.

“I was dreaming,” she said. “I can’t remember what, but I’d rather be there than here.”

“You were calling out. I was worried about you.”

The fire had burned low into a pile of deep red embers, giving the room a golden hue. Sometime in the night, Campbell had snuggled up against her back, spooning her with his arm around her waist. She had to admit, even through the blankets, his body heat was nice.

I must still be human after all. What a relief.

“Looks like I didn’t turn into a raging maniac and eat your liver in the night,” she said.

“So far, so good.” Apparently encouraged that she hadn’t wriggled away from his embrace, he scooted closer so that his face was near the back of her neck. His warm breath tickled her.

“So what was I calling out?” she asked, still drowsy.

“You were just saying ‘Why why why’ over and over again.”

“It was just a dream. Random brain sludge trying to form patterns.”

“But it might be important. If you have the least bit of Zaphead inside you, everything could be a clue.”

“Yes, Dr.—hey, you never told me your last name.”

“Grimes.”

“That’s some name.”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I didn’t like the other one.”

“Look, even if we make it to your grandfather’s compound, at some point we’re going to have to deal with the Zaps. I don’t know if that means going for the military option or just co-existing, but the one luxury we won’t have is pretending they don’t exist.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they have a built-in burnout in their brain circuitry. An expiration date. We wake up on a Monday and they’re all dead.”

“And where do you fit into that? Do you become only half-dead?”

She rolled up on one elbow so that she faced him. “I just remembered the dream. We were…me and a bunch of people…were looking at this girl who was maybe fifteen. She had a couple of gaping holes in her chest, and her skin was pale and marbled. She was obviously dead. And we—”

“Who is this ‘we’?”

“I don’t know. Just all of us. Anyway, we started tearing this girl open, just dug our fingers into the wounds and peeling back. Trying to see what was inside her. Because we couldn’t figure out why she died.”

“Jesus. That’s what happened to the people at the farmhouse before I got there. The professor said the Zaps just took them apart like they were trying to make sense out of them. Like a kid pulling the legs off a granddaddy long-legs spider.”

Rachel shook her head. She didn’t want to remember any more. Because she was pretty sure the “we” with her in the dream were strangers. Zapheads. And the girl had been so young.

Worse, she hadn’t been the only one. There were piles of corpses, laid out in rows, dozens, maybe hundreds, in a big field. Some were long dead and rotted, like those who had died instantly in the solar storms while trapped inside their homes or vehicles. Others, like the teenaged girl, appeared freshly dead.

Still others showed signs of mutation—the filthy clothes and greasy, tangled hair common to Zapheads—and their bodies commingled in the same piles. The dream hadn’t offered the sense of scent, but Rachel had the impression of an overpowering odor of death and corruption rising from the charnel field.

She fought her way out of the blankets, pulling away from Campbell.

“Hey!” he said. “Where are you going?”

“I have to be with them.”

“I thought we were heading for Milepost 291.”

“No. This is…hard to explain.”

That strange tingle emanated through her body again, and she turned away so that Campbell couldn’t see her eyes. Because she knew they would be sparking like crazy. They almost cast their own light before her.

“Rachel, come back!”

She was nearly to the door when Campbell caught up with her. He wrapped his arms around her, dragging her back to the bed. She kicked and struggled, but he was too strong.

“Let me go,” she cried. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand you’re having weird thoughts, and the worst thing you can do is go running off in the middle of the night with no destination in mind.”

“Who says I have no destination?”

“You don’t even know where we are.”

“I know how to get there,” she said. It wasn’t far, and the psychic pull was like a beacon in the night—all she had to do was tune out her other senses and she could follow it. But she had no way to explain the signal to Campbell. Or even to herself, really. But she didn’t need explanations, because the tug was a compulsion, a force that hinted it could tear her apart bone by bone if she didn’t heed it.

She wrestled with him but he refused to release her. “Calm down,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere until you start making sense.”

“No! I’m one of them, not one of you.”

“That’s not true. You’re Rachel. What you were saying earlier—”

She elbowed him in the ribs and he flung her onto the sofa. She landed hard, nearly snapping her neck, and he jumped on her before she could scramble away. The sofa tilted over and banged against the floor, causing them to roll toward the kitchen. Rachel clawed at his face, drawing blood, and his sudden violence set off something inside her. Strength and rage surged through her, and she saw him not as a person but a black silhouette whose outline shimmered with the most hellish of fires.

“Your eyes!” the silhouette said, and she couldn’t help repeating the phrase as it overwhelmed her senses. Her rage intensified—now she wanted to smash the source of the noise, to wipe out its never-ending resonance.

She grabbed a kitchen chair and swung it wildly at the top of the silhouette, where the flames were brightest.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy!” it said, jumping back and only angering her more.

She raised the chair over her head and was about to bring it crashing down when the flames around the silhouette eased into a darker hue, their intensity fading. The silhouette was unmoving, the black of its form merging to cobalt blue.

“Easy, Rachel,” it said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Rachel.

She recognized the word and tried to say it. Then she said it three times.

“Yes, that’s right. That’s your name.”

Now the flames around the silhouette vanished altogether, and the cobalt blue took on shades of detail.

Only a man, not a monster.

She recognized him. Then she remembered his name. “Campbell?”

He nodded. He stood with his palms up, arms held apart to show he was no threat. “Sorry I threw you down. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I became one of them.”

“But you’re back now.”

“No. Not all the way. I don’t think I’ll ever be all the way back.”

That scared her more than she could say.

“Are you okay?” he asked yet again, helpless.

“No, I’m not.” He came to her and she welcomed his embrace.

She wondered if Zapheads could cry. At least she was still human enough to do that. It might be her last human act, but she was going to try her damnedest to flush every little glint and spark out of her eyes.