The Echo

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The bedroom allowed enough daylight that Campbell could see the blank faces of those gathered around him.

He was exhausted and defeated, lacking the energy to even despair. The horrors of Wilma’s death in the night were still fresh in his mind, her screams resonating off the inside of his skull.

And that can be you, too. All you have to do is stand and walk.

Campbell sat on the bed, the professor beside him. On a small bedside table were two plates of food for them, laid out much like the place settings on the obscene dining-room table. Fortunately, the food was not human flesh, but instead canned peas, raw dough piled in a sticky white lump, and a wilted carrot.

At least this bedroom was mercifully free of both the dead and the maimed. In the bedroom next door, Donnie emitted an occasional grunt of pain.

“We get a window,” the professor said. “And we get food. And we get to live. All in all, it could be a lot worse.”

Donnie’s muffled scream punctuated the statement.

Campbell ignored the fifteen or so Zapheads sitting cross-legged on the floor before them, their palms clasped. They stared up at a framed painting on the wall above the headboard. In it, Jesus held his own hands clasped in prayer, a globe of radiance around his long hair and beard. Jesus looked up to the heavens in much the same way the Zapheads gazed up at the painting—with intense adoration and solemnity.

“How did you end up here?” Campbell asked the professor.

“Just like you did, I imagine. We met Wilma on the road and she said she had food. Arnoff wanted to push on to Milepost 291, but Pamela bitched and then Donnie found out there were Zah—”

The professor caught himself and glanced at the assembly, but the Zapheads were intent on their sacred mimicry. “Donnie wanted to shoot some. For sport. He said he hadn’t had any target practice in days. I was ambivalent, and I thought Wilma was a little too eager, but I went along when Arnoff relented.”

Campbell used his fork to spear a couple of peas and shovel them into his mouth. One of the Zapheads nearest him, a granny with wispy white hair, imitated his motion and chewed air, although she must have lost her dentures long before. Campbell was no longer hungry but he forced himself to eat, knowing he’d need his strength.

At some point you’re going to run or you’re going to kill yourself.

“I got suckered by my own curiosity,” Campbell said. “When I saw the way she lived, I thought, ‘If this is what we’ve come to, then it’s stupid to even try. The human race is beat.’”

“That mangy dog of hers. Peanut.”

“It’s locked in the camper, but there’s enough food in there for weeks.”

“So how did she get you guys out here to the house?” Campbell asked. Through the window, he could see Zapheads out in the meadow. They had somehow surrounded a chicken and flapped their arms like children in imitation of its frantic wings.

“She said there were lots of supplies here. Guns and canned food and a survival shelter in the basement. That got Arnoff hooked. Just like with you, she brought us here just as it was getting dark. They were on us before we knew it.”

It felt weird to be here among them and talk about their deadly behavior while they sat as meekly as sheep. But everything since the solar storms had been weird. None of the fictional scenarios of Doomsday or any of his video games had prepared him for the reality of an extinct civilization.

Not just an extinct civilization, but a profane imitation of society rising to take its place.

“They took Arnoff’s tongue just to see how it worked,” the professor said, with a resigned equanimity. “All that yelling he did, I guess it drew their attention. They took turns playing with Donnie’s fingers, bending them and snapping them like they didn’t understand what they were for. And Pamela…”

“I don’t understand. If they are learning, where did they learn to tie ropes? Who taught them that?” Campbell bit into his carrot with an audible crunch. One of the Zapheads turned to look at him, and he quietly ground it between his molars.

The professor nodded at the Zapheads and then at the painted posture of Christ they imitated. “I believe they learned from pictures. When they…surrounded me…I had run into the other bedroom, and there were magazines and photographs all over the floor. It must have been a teenager’s rooms, because it had a lot of books. And some…uh…”

The professor lowered his voice. “Bondage porn.”

Campbell’s stomach curdled around its fresh contents. “Pamela?”

The professor removed his glasses and wiped the lenses. “I suppose.”

Campbell was glad he hadn’t gotten a good look at what had happened to her. Outside, the chicken had gotten away and now the Zapheads drifted aimlessly in the meadow.

“How did you figure out what they wanted from you?” Campbell asked.

“Same way you found out last night. When I yelled at them, they yelled some of my words right back to me. And I realized if I didn’t fight and struggle like the others had, they calmed down.”

“It’s creepy as hell when they’re standing all around you like that. I almost liked them better when they were trying to kill me. At least that, I could understand. But this…” Campbell waved at the Zapheads. Two of them in the middle waved back.

“In a strange way, I’ve come to accept it,” the professor said. “Even embrace it. I’ve always been a teacher and that’s all I really know how to do. Now here I am after the end of the world, still teaching.”

“But where does it end? Do we teach these things peace, love, and all that happy hippie horseshit? Look at them out there in the field. Like a bunch of flower children on drugs.”

“So far, all we’ve taught them is violence.”

“Because we’re afraid.”

“No wonder. I’ve seen them tear people apart with their bare hands. And enjoy it.”

The professor looked at the painting of Jesus, whose sad brown eyes seemed to reflect an understanding of the martyrdom that awaited Him. “I’ve never been a religious man, but maybe there’s a reason for all this.”

Campbell stood and stamped his foot. “No!”

Half of the Zapheads broke out of their reverie at the commotion.

“Easy, Campbell,” the professor said. “Don’t rile them up.”

“How long have you been their bitch? A week? Teaching them to eat, pray, love, and wipe after they crap, like they’re a bunch of senile patients in an old folk’s home? Excuse me if I don’t want to sign on for that.”

Campbell paced, eyeing the ten feet to the door and wondering if he could reach it before the Zapheads reacted. They were all watching him now, eyes glittering with whatever deranged fuel burned inside them. Even if he made it to the hall, he had no idea how many more would be waiting downstairs or around the house.

Campbell gave a bitter laugh. “‘Show no fear,’ Wilma said.”

“And she was right,” the professor said.

“Right,” one of the Zapheads said.

“Right,” said another, and then another.

“Don’t you see?” the professor said. “This is a chance to start over. To teach them—to program them, if you will—without all the old sins and failures.”

Campbell sat back down on the bed, its springs squeaking. He’d be sleeping here tonight. Would one of the Zapheads crawl in with him, maybe imitate the positions portrayed in the pornography? Or maybe he’d start snoring and they’d tear his throat apart to see where the noise was coming from.

Yeah, sweet dreams forever.

“They’re like children,” the professor said. “They become what you feed them, so act with care. It’s the key to your personal survival as well.”

“Nothing personal, professor, but you look like you’ve aged a hundred years since I last saw you.”

The man gave a tense smile. “I have tenure now.”

“Well, you can stay on the retirement track if you want. Me, I’d rather die.”

“Die,” said the granny, followed by several others, until the room thundered with their repetitive “Die, die, die.”

Campbell tried to shout over them and make them shut up, or at least mock a different word, but the chant continued. Campbell finally did the only thing he could think of, a way to silence them, the only option left besides actually dying.

He pressed his palms together, stuck his hands under his chin, and turned to face the painting above the bed.

Within a minute, the room had grown still and quiet again, all the Zapheads in their bizarre yoga positions with their hands once again clasped in reverence.

What the hell. Prayer works.