The Echo

CHAPTER TWELVE

Campbell awakened to the odor of fried ham.

Before he opened his eyes, he thought he was back at the summer house on Lake James, where the Grimes family went for Dad’s annual Fourth of July vacation. Mom, who was generally not a morning person, made it her duty to rise before daybreak and cook a big country breakfast, featuring enough cholesterol to choke a T. Rex. Bacon, sausage, salted ham, grits swimming in yellow margarine, scrambled eggs, dirty gravy, and toast dripping with butter, all washed down with orange juice and coffee.

Those breakfasts were one of the few times the family actually sat together and talked. Dad was a workaholic but, like Mom, he donned a new persona for that vacation week, relaxing and showing interest in the people he loved. Even his sister Caroline wasn’t totally an annoying brat at the lake. Campbell always thought they were acting like a television family during those times, that the whole thing was a sham.

But when he opened his eyes and realized where he was, and when he was, his heart longed for even thirty seconds of that long-ago mirage.

“You hungry?” Wilma asked, her voice as rough as if she’d already smoked a pack of cigarettes to celebrate the dawn.

After a steady diet of Beanie Weenies and Cheez-its, Campbell’s belly growled at the thought of a home-cooked meal. Even if the “home” was a filthy and cramped camper trailer in the deep woods.

Something rough and wet scraped across Campbell’s cheek and he turned to meet the wrinkled face of Peanut, who’d climbed into the bed.

That explains the stink. Well, part of it.

Campbell sat up, nearly bumping his head on the camper’s roof. Wilma had taken off his socks and boots while he slept. The sun was fully up outside, streaming through the gaps in the treetops to illuminate the tiny windows and reveal the extent of the clutter. Wilma hovered over the gas stove in the kitchenette, where a blackened iron skillet popped and spat.

“I haven’t slept in a bed in a week,” Campbell said. “I’m usually up and moving by now.”

“You been on the road since the sun sickness started?”

“I slept in a couple of houses, but there were too many ghosts.” Campbell reached for his boots and found that Peanut had gnawed the leather. “Even in the ones that didn’t have dead bodies in them, I felt like an intruder.”

Wilma turned from the stove and studied him, her spatula angled at her hip like a weapon. “Well, you can stay here as long as you like.”

“Thanks, but I better keep moving.”

“Scared of all the Zappers around here?”

“I’m scared of everything.” He recounted the brutal attacks in Taylorsville and how the soldiers there had been killing at random. He grew solemn after telling how his friend Pete was gunned down in the street as they were leaving town. “I like to think he was accidentally shot by friendly fire, but that doesn’t make him any less dead.”

Wilma slid some ham onto a ceramic plate that Campbell was glad he couldn’t see. “It’s dog eat dog out there, right, Peanut?” She flipped a piece of shiny gristle to the floor, where the mutt rooted it out from the folds of a filthy towel with lip-smacking glee.

Campbell navigated the stacked boxes of food and supplies until he reached the counter. He plucked a slice of ham from the plate and crammed it into his mouth, relishing its salty warmth. Wilma watched his face as he chewed.

Up close and in daylight, her wrinkles were even deeper, although her eyes were green and clear and intense. Her hair framed her face in wild, oily tangles, as if she’d given up grooming in the wake of the apocalypse. Campbell had a suspicion that her lifestyle had been much the same even before the sun had let loose with a vicious tsunami of charged particles.

“So what’s your plan?” she said, taking one of the pieces herself and chewing it in the side of her mouth that still had most of its teeth.

“Heading to the mountains,” he said. “Somebody told me there’s a compound there, at Milepost 291.”

He immediately regretted telling the truth. What if she wanted to come with him? He couldn’t imagine making any time at all with her dragging along, a mangy mutt trailing at their heels.

Maybe survival’s not a zero-sum game. Isn’t this woman a survivor? Maybe not the most shining representative of the human race, but she’s making it. And, you have to admit, she knows the territory.

“That don’t sound like much of a plan,” she said, still chewing, the scab on her lip greasy with pork fat. “Sounds to me like more of a hope.”

“Hope is something I can’t wrap my head around right now,’ Campbell said. “Mostly, I just need something to do.”

“Like I said, you’re welcome to stay here.” Her eyes narrowed. “As long as you want.”

“I…” Campbell didn’t want to disrespect her generosity and hospitality. After all, who knew what other tools and tricks she had to offer?

For all he knew, she was better situated than the people in the mythical Milepost 291 compound—assuming there were any people waiting at all. But he knew for certain that Rachel and her traveling companions were headed that way, and he had thought about her often in the days since Taylorsville.

He knew the obsession was silly, about on par with the crush he’d had on the married woman in the house next door at Lake James—a woman he’d spied secretly sunbathing topless but to whom he’d rarely ever spoken.

“Well, maybe I’ll rest here for a day and think about it.” He took a second slice of ham and fished a peach half from an open tin can. “I appreciate the offer.”

Wilma nodded, not entirely pleased, but she wasn’t giving up, either. “I can show you the Zapheads.”

Campbell didn’t comprehend her. “I saw them…last night.”

“Where they live.” She gave a distant smile.

“Live?” Campbell still couldn’t put it together. Because he couldn’t think of those mutant creatures as “alive.” But they had to sleep someplace, assuming they slept. And they probably ate. And they cared for their dead…

The ham in Campbell’s mouth now tasted like cardboard. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know more. Zapheads were violent and deadly things. They were the enemy.

But he couldn’t not know.

“Show me,” he said.

“After breakfast.”

“Now.”

Campbell went to his backpack. It was open, the contents rifled. He thrust his hand in and groped around, then dumped the contents on the floor. “Where is it?”

“No guns,” she said. “I haven’t had a gun, and they haven’t bothered me.”

He flung the empty backpack across the camper’s interior. Peanut started yapping in distress. “I want my gun.”

The closet above the liquor cabinet had a lock on it. Campbell kicked at the cheap plywood, causing it to splinter. Wilma ran at him, but he shoved her away. He was in a panic, feeling helpless without his weapon.

His boot finally shoved through the wood and the door fell from its hinges. Inside the closet were more cardboard boxes. He pushed them over, digging through their contents. Nothing but soup, dried milk, bags of rice, round pasteboard cartons of oatmeal.

“Calm down, or they’ll hear you,” Wilma pleaded from her knees.

After searching the lowest box, Campbell sat on it, drained and embarrassed. Peanut yapped until Wilma tossed him a piece of ham. The dog snatched it up and proceeded to its milk crate, where it savored the meat with a great slobbering of lips.

“Sorry about the mess,” Campbell said.

Wilma laughed, a horrible, broken noise that could have passed for a death rattle. “You think you’re the first? I’ve had men. None of them lasted long. Because they all thought Zapheads were something to be killed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

“Those soldiers—they shot that Zaphead and lived to tell about it.”

“For now. Don’t think their day ain’t coming.”

“I’m not leaving until I get my gun.”

“Let me show you, Campbell. Then you decide whether you need a gun. And whether you want to leave.”

Campbell’s anger threatened to return. He felt claustrophobic, and the grease in the air caused his stomach to roil. He needed fresh air. But when he reached the door, he discovered the padlock was keeping him imprisoned.

“You—” he shouted at Wilma, who sagged in the corner of the camper like a beaten boxer riding the ropes until the end of the round.

“I couldn’t let you leave. Not like the others.”

Others?

He could probably kick in the hollow metal door, but the noise might arouse the Zapheads. His anger melted to acidic pity. “Tell me all you know about them. And I’ll decide which one of us is craziest.”

“I… I’ll show you.” She moved toward him. Peanut growled.

“First,” Campbell said, “give me my gun.”

“After we get back,” she said. “Trust me. It’s the best way.”

He wasn’t sure he could trust anyone anymore. “I can’t go out there unarmed. I’ve seen what they can do.”

“They’re like dogs. They smell fear.”

As if to punctuate the woman’s words, Peanut barked.

Campbell was torn between curiosity and frustration. Even after the night’s sound sleep, he felt wired and raw, exhausted to the bone but with a brain running at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. He knew something was off, but he couldn’t connect the dots. He desperately needed to learn more about the Zapheads, as if there was some deep and useful knowledge that would help him survive.

And perhaps a knowledge he could share with fellow survivors.

The price of that knowledge was trusting Wilma, who was as unpredictable and wild as the people whose behavior had been forever altered by the sun’s radiation.

“Okay,” Campbell said, looking at the growling mutt. “But the dog stays here.”