The Echo

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A shark had her leg.

She turned in the murky water, still looking for Chelsea, but the pain was intense. She kicked, trying to shed the shark. Chelsea had already been under for, what, minutes? Oryears? Blooms of red colored the water around her, and the surface above sparkled with a thousand blue diamonds. She struggled for breath, fought to get free, fought the pull of the inevitable tide of gravity that pulled her to the center of the earth and into the ultimate darkness.

“Rachel?” Her shoulder shook, and she thought the shark had discovered a fresh morsel, but then she recognized Stephen’s voice.

What’s HE doing here? He didn’t come to the lake with us.

She opened her eyes to bright sunlight. Her leg still throbbed, but it was unencumbered.

“Whew,” Stephen said. “I was worried. You wouldn’t wake up.”

Rachel sat up. She was still in the driver’s seat of the Subaru, but the seat was both reclined and moved away from the steering wheel. One leg of herjeans was split up the knee, a bandage covering the dog bite on her calf. She didn’t remember wrapping it. The passenger door was ajar, letting in a fresh autumn breeze. The stench was present but no longer overpowering.

“It’s morning,” she said. Her throat was cracked and dry. As if reading her thoughts, Stephen held out a bottle of water. He was in the passenger seat, a comic book in his lap.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the water. “So you got our backpacks.”

He shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

“And you… cleaned out the car.”

“Well, that was easier than trying to move you. I’m just a kid.”

No, Stephen, you’re much more than just a kid.

She sipped, and then drank deeply and gratefully. The water was warm and tainted with plastic, but it was the best she’d ever tasted. Far better than the poisonous water of Lake Norman. Which, as far as she knew, didn’t contain sharks, but plenty of far deadlier creatures.

Like memories.

Like guilt.

Between the Subaru and the truck lay the dead German shepherd and golden retriever. “Where’s the other dog?” she asked.

“He took some of the meat and went into the woods.”

“You should have stayed in the car. He might be out there watching.”

Stephen shrugged. “It didn’t mean to hurt us. It’s just a dog. Just like the Zapheads are just people, right?”

“We don’t really know what they are.”

“Well, they used to be people, didn’t they? So they can’t be all bad. Somewhere inside them, they have some of the love and stuff, right?”

“It’s complicated.”

“What about the ones that Jesus saved? They’re not bad, are they?”

Rachel fidgeted with her bandage. Ointment squeezed out from around the cloth, as well as some nasty yellow-red fluid. “You’ll have to ask Jesus.”

Luckily for her, Stephen changed the subject, as boys will. “Can I have a dog? I mean, after this is over?”

It’s never going to be over, sweetie.

But she couldn’t tell him that, so she fell back on that timeless adult bailout. “We’ll see.”

“Will DeVontay catch up today?”

“Maybe. But he wants us to keep moving. I like the look of that Exxon station up there.”

Stephen grinned. “Maybe it has some Slim Jims!”

“Bet so.” She flexed her leg, wondering if she’d be able to walk. But she suspected if she sat there much longer, it would stiffen up and hurt even worse. The gas station would likely provide some antibiotic ointment and hydrogen peroxide, as well as some aspirin.

“Okay, let’s pack up.” She was eager to be out of the stinking vehicle, but by the time they were ready and she opened the door, she was already sweating with exertion, even though the autumn morning was pleasant. She hoped she wasn’t getting a fever from infection.

Stephen was waiting for her outside the car. She gritted her teeth and put weight on her injured leg. The pain came in a fresh rush, but she buried it so Stephen wouldn’t see it and worry. When she stood, she held onto the roof of the car so she wouldn’t sway.

“How are you feeling?” Stephen asked.

“I can make it.”

“You told me not to lie.”

“Okay, then. I feel terrible. But I’ll feel even worse if we sit here and the Zapheads get us. Besides, it’s only a mile or so. I can make it that far, don’t you think?”

Stephen pursed his lips, looking far too wise and mature for a boy his age. “We’ll see.”

She took a couple of hobbling steps and he ducked under her right arm to take some of her weight. At first she resisted, not wanting to seem weak and dependent, but soon she leaned into him and they fell into a rhythm, keeping on the shoulder of the highway so they wouldn’t have to weave between the occasional vehicles.

By the time they crested the hill, sweat was rolling down Rachel’s face. They stopped once for water, resting a moment in the shade of a jackknifed tractor trailer. Below was the exit ramp, with a Cracker Barrel, McDonald’s, and an Autobell car wash beside the gas station. Houses were visible along the side road, scattered across the wooded slopes. Farther ahead, the great swells of the Blue Ridge Mountains rose toward the dawn-tinted sky.

“Looks like people might be here,” Rachel said.

Stephen fanned himself with one of his comic books. “You mean Zapheads?”

“Yeah, them too.”

“Well, you know what they say. We’re not getting any younger.”

“How about McDonald’s? My treat.”

“All those burgers are yucky by now. Besides, it’s probably full of dead people.”

“All right, then. We’ll stick with junk food in plastic bags.”

“Can I have a Sprite?”

Rachel considered it. “Well, I guess you deserve a treat for taking care of me.”

“Time for a bread crumb.” Stephen ripped a page from his comic, walked over to the nearest vehicle, a rusty Toyota pick-up, and slid the paper under the windshield wiper. He shoved what was left of his comic into his backpack and zipped it, then returned and helped her to her feet.

Her leg throbbed worse than before, and the skin felt wet under the bandages. She wasn’t looking forward to the long hike down the incline. Looking at the truck, she got an idea. “Was there anybody in the truck?”

“I didn’t really look, but I didn’t see anybody.”

“Come on,” she said. “I know an easy way to get down there.”

The Toyota still had the keys in the ignition, not that they were any use. Like most survivors, in the days after the solar storms she’d tried to crank plenty of cars, only to find them all dead. The pick-up’s bed contained baskets of rotten peaches, and yellow jackets buzzed around the fruit.

“It’s a straight drive,” she said. “On old models like this, you usually don’t have power steering or brakes. All we have to do is get it rolling, and we can coast down the hill.”

“At least it’s pointed in the right direction.” Stephen didn’t sound convinced. “Can you steer around all those cars?”

“Easy. Look how spread out they are.”

“Okay, then. Let me move my bread crumb.” He plucked the ripped comic page from the Toyota’s windshield and ran it over to an SUV.

Rachel had already checked the handbrake—the truck’s driver might have abandoned the car when it lost power, heading down to the exit on foot and intending to return. Except the driver would have taken the keys under those circumstances. He’d probably mutated into a Zaphead and gone on an interstate killing spree.

“Okay, load up,” she said, tossing her backpack in the cab.

Stephen opened the passenger door and put his backpack on the floor. He climbed in the seat and looked over at her. “Well?” he said with impatience.

“These trucks don’t roll themselves. We have to push.”

“Oh.” He jumped out, ran to the back of the truck, and leaned against the tailgate. The shock absorbers squeaked as he pushed.

“Not yet,” she said. “I have to take it out of gear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Okay,” she said, after moving the gear shift to neutral. “Once it starts rolling, run and get in before it gains momentum. One, two, three!”

The truck was heavier than she’d imagined, and a fresh wetness leaked down her shin from the bite wound. She reached in to put one hand on the wheel as she leaned her shoulder into the door jamb. The truck’s tires barely budged, and she dug in her heels and pushed harder, ignoring the pain flaring in her leg. The truck gained momentum and now gravity was working for them.

She glanced back to see Stephen standing there as the truck pulled away. “Hurry! Get in.”

“Uh…Rachel?”

“What?”

He pointed down the road. Fifty yards in front of them, five figures formed an uneven line across the double lanes of the highway. The truck was picking up speed, Rachel limping alongside of it, hanging on to the driver’s-side door. “Come on, Stephen! Your comics are in here.”

That broke the spell, and Stephen raced to catch up to the truck. He yanked open his door and tumbled inside, one shoe still dragging on the asphalt. Rachel launched herself behind the steering wheel and the truck hurtled forward. She was surprised by its speed, and she worked the wheel to veer between two cars, narrowly missing the front fender of a little Nissan sedan.

The figures didn’t dodge or even really respond to the approaching truck. But Rachel already suspected they were Zapheads, and she silently berated herself for getting complacent and not paying attention to their surroundings.

“Who are they?” Stephen said.

“Guess,” she said. She tapped the brakes just to test them, and the tires grabbed at the road. She didn’t want to lose any momentum, though, so she let the truck accelerate as she cut around stalled van. The Zapheads were now thirty yards ahead, and they appeared to finally realize a hunk of rolling steel was headed their way—two men, two women, and a boy about Stephen’s age, dressed in ragged clothes.

“They’re not getting out of the way,” Stephen said, leaning forward and gripping the cracked vinyl dashboard.

Rachel instinctively pushed down on the horn, forgetting that the vehicle’s power system was fried. “Put on your seatbelt and lock the door,” she said, and Stephen complied without protest.

Instead of fleeing, the Zapheads actually headed up the road toward them.

Rachel considered driving onto the inside shoulder in an attempt to avoid them, but the grass median sloped inward to a central drainage ditch. If she lost control, the truck might roll over. And now she saw more Zapheads across the median, in the outbound lanes. The motion of the truck must have aroused them from whatever it was that Zapheads did during the day when they weren’t murdering survivors.

She had no time to pick an angle, but she couldn’t bear striking the boy. Even if he was a mutant, his condition wasn’t his fault. He was innocent.

“You’re going to hit them,” Stephen said.

She could almost hear God’s laughter in the whining of the tires. The speedometer didn’t work, but Rachel estimated they were going about thirty-five miles an hour. The Zapheads’ mouths opened as they ran toward the truck, but their voices were inaudible inside the cab.

“Hang on,” Rachel said, whipping the wheel at the last second. The right fender clipped one of the women and she tumbled onto the engine hood with a metallic dink. One of the unkempt men stared directly at Rachel, almost daring her with his golden-spotted eyes, and then the bumper and grille chewed him up and he went under the wheels. The truck bounced as it rolled over him like a fleshy speed bump.

Rachel glanced sideways at the boy’s face, just inches from the glass as she passed. The side mirror nearly slapped him across the cheek but he barely seemed to notice. When the truck rolled by, the remaining Zapheads, including the boy, took off after it. Rachel twisted the rearview mirror to confirm her hunch that the Zapheads in the opposite lanes were after them, too.

She didn’t have a gun, and with her injured leg she wouldn’t be able to run from them. The gap was widening but soon the truck would hit level ground and the next upward incline.

Stephen had turned in his seat, standing on his knees and looking through the back window. “They’re coming.”

“I know,” she said. “Got any ideas?”

“There was this really cool movie where Jackie Chan drove a car through the front of a department store.”

“Jackie Chan was a stunt man,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Well, he might be a Zaphead now. And you’re not.”

“Good point.”

She avoided the brake and let the truck max out its momentum as she took the exit. The gas station was on the left, across the intersection. She guided the truck in a straight line so it hopped up on a concrete divider, plowed through a stop sign, and rolled into the gas station’s parking lot.

“They’re coming after us,” Stephen said.

Rachel glanced in the side mirror. Dozens of Zapheads poured from the woods, staggering like refugees from a war zone. Their clothes hung around them in loose, dirty tatters. Some of them were naked, their skin as pale as grubworms in the morning light.

Some of the younger ones broke into a jog. One dark-skinned male carried a length of pipe, held aloft like a Persian general leading a charge against the Spartans. Shirtless, his muscles gleamed with sweat as his bare feet slapped the pavement. Others mimicked his enthusiasm and began jogging after the truck, some of them carrying hand weapons or tools.

“Look out!” Stephen shouted.

Rachel looked forward just in time to see the pumps looming ten feet ahead. She yanked the wheel to the right but it was too late. The left front tire struck the raised concrete island, then the truck sheared against them, popping two of the pumps loose from the ground and opening a sluggish geyser of gasoline. One of the hoses jerked free and twisted in the air like an agitated rattlesnake, spitting petroleum venom.

The impact flung Stephen forward, knocking his chin against the dashboard. Rachel jammed on the brake, the bite wound sending red rockets of pain up her leg. By the time she brought the pick-up to a halt, gas was spreading in a pool around the pumps.

“Quick, get out!” she said, frantically releasing Stephen’s seatbelt. He held his jaw in pain, a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth.

But he kicked his door open and dragged his backpack with him, not willing to abandon his comic collection even if it meant Zapheads might catch him. Rachel grabbed her own pack and followed out the passenger’s side and away from the powerful gasoline fumes.

Good thing the power’s off, or those pumps might have flooded the whole parking lot.

And good thing none of that grinding metal caused a spark.

“Nice driving,” Stephen said.

“Next time get Jackie Chan.” She grabbed Stephen’s wrist and hobbled toward the station’s shop. Only when she reached the door did she realize the lack of power was now a negative instead of a positive.

The door was automatic, opening via an electronic motion detector. And electricity was now the province of thunderclouds and nylon, not wires and switches.

“We have to break in,” she said.

“No way,’ Stephen said. “That glass is at least an inch thick. I think it’s bulletproof.”

The Zapheads must have been drawn to the populated area—perhaps this had been their home and they were operating on some sort of lingering memory or instinct. But whatever the reason, they were agitated by this sudden disruption. They had probably wiped out all the survivors in the area weeks ago, and now two humans had upset their routine and revived their need to destroy.

Because they were coming fast.

“I won’t be able to outrun them,” she said, pointing to the soaked red bandage on her leg.

“Sure, you can,” Stephen said, eyes wide with fright. “You’re Rachel.”

“No,” she said. “You need to run. As fast as you can. And don’t look back.”

Stephen was near tears. Rachel’s eyes were also stinging.

It’s the gasoline. Yeah. Right.

“I’ll distract them,” she said, pointing toward the McDonald’s restaurant. “I’ll go in there and get them to chase me while you run into the woods.”

“We need a distraction?” Stephen said, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling. “Then start a fire. That’s what that guy did back at Taylorsville, remember?”

Rachel recalled how the massive bonfires had attracted the Zapheads, creating a compelling, noisy, and colorful chaos that likely appealed to their sense of destruction. If devastation was their drug of choice, then Rachel could serve them up a hell of a happy hour.

The question was how to do it without immolating both her and the boy. She’d seen enough “dumb redneck videos” on YouTube to know that playing with gasoline and matches wasn’t the smartest move in the world. But she didn’t have time to craft a clever fuse that would offer a reasonable safety barrier.

Jackie Chan would already have this problem solved.

She dug in her backpack, tossing out cans of food and bottled juice, wondering why she’d hoarded so much while they were still in a civilized area. But that was the uncertainty of Doomsday—it wasn’t Doomsdays, plural. It was all now.

“Okay,” she said, drawing out a long wool scarf she’d filched from a department store. It was tan, accenting her chestnut eyes and dirty-blonde hair, and she’d grabbed it fantasizing about a future where fashion mattered. “Improvising here. Go dip this in the gasoline and be careful not to get it on your clothes.”

Stephen dutifully ran toward the shallow pool of fuel. Rachel dug into a side pouch until she found her Bic lighter.

Thank God for butane.

She realized it was the first time she’d thanked God for anything in weeks. If those shambling, scurrying mockeries of humankind cascading toward them were part of some divine plan, then she was perfectly willing to exercise her free will to destroy them.

Is killing only a sin if you know what you’re doing? Maybe these Zapheads are God’s truly blessed creatures, because they don’t suffer the pain of guilt. They’d nail Jesus to the cross and call it a favor, not a sacrifice they’d have to repay over centuries.

“Hurry, Stephen!” she yelled.

The nearest Zaphead was now about a hundred yards away. Two small bands of them approached from each direction of the side road, too, and Rachel realized for the first time that they now seemed to travel in groups, like pack animals.

She’d had a vague sense that their behavior was changing, but she’d been too focused on daily survival to question it. Like most “Ah-ha” moments, this one came in such a rush that she had no time to process, only react.

Stephen dragged the scarf back by holding the frayed threads of one end, inadvertently laying a thin trail of gasoline as he hurried away from the pumps.

“Good job,” she said when he returned, taking the scarf from him and laying it on the pavement. “I’m going to start calling you ‘Chan Junior.’”

“As long as you don’t call me ‘sweetie’ anymore.”

“Sorry. Just a habit from my counseling days.”

Which weren’t that long ago but were literally from another world, the world of Before. And those experiences hadn’t taught her one damn thing about setting a gas station on fire without blowing herself and a kid into a thousand pieces.

“I can’t light this until you leave,” she said, thumbing the Bic. “You might have some gasoline on your clothes.”

He sniffed his sleeve. “I don’t smell nothing.”

“Start running,” she said. “Behind the station and up the hill.”

“What if I get lost?”

The Zapheads were now close enough that Rachel could hear their strange hissing—it sounded like the spitting heart of a giant winter fireplace. “I’ll be along real soon. I just want to make sure you’re safe before I light this.”

Stephen nodded. “Maybe DeVontay will see the smoke.”

“Maybe so. Now get.”

She waited until he disappeared around the building, hoping more Zapheads weren’t descending from the surrounding hills. There was nothing she could do but hope.

And set their world on fire.

She flicked the Bic, lifted the frayed end of the scarf, and applied the flame. At first the fibers curled and shrank, and then fire spread along the length of fabric faster than she’d anticipated. She dropped the scarf and fled, wondering how big the explosion would be and how many steps she would get before—

KA-WHUUUMP.

Much of the force of the ignition blew straight into the air, lifting the metal canopy from the pump island. The windows in the front of the shop shattered inward, and the Toyota truck rolled over on its side, flames licking along the oily bottom of the engine. The force of the sudden combustion hit her in the small of the back like a fist. Rachel was thrown onto the ragged landscaping between the kerosene pump and dumpster, rolling in the sodden mulch and scratchy evergreens.

Holy hell.

She rose to her hands and knees, coughing and choking as black plumes of smoke roiled around the parking lot. She didn’t know how many pumps were yet to catch fire. She’d read somewhere—probably some wacky Web link her grandfather Franklin had emailed her—that gasoline stored in tanks beneath the surface couldn’t explode because of a lack of oxygen, but the tank openings would burn like giant flame-throwing Bic lighters until the fuel was depleted.

Rachel didn’t plan on sticking around to test the theory. She scrambled to her feet and limped up the hill in the direction Stephen had gone.