The Echo

CHAPTER SEVEN

Franklin Wheeler stared into the fire, poking the dying embers. Behind him, Rosa and Marina slept side by side on the floor, bundled in blankets. On the mattress curled Cathy and her mutant baby boy. She had the infant cradled against her bare breasts, as if the little monster demanded constant access to her human milk.

Disgusting.

Jorge was standing sentry in the platform, not trusting Franklin’s battery-operated alarm system. No one was around to stop Franklin from grabbing the infant and hauling it into the woods. Franklin could disconnect his alarms and pretend they had failed, that he had fallen asleep. The elements would soon take care of the remains, and Franklin could convince the others that the Zapheads had crept in and stolen the thing.

The others might question the Zapheads’ behavior and whether they were sophisticated enough to carry out such a raid—as well as the glaring problem of why the Zapheads wouldn’t kill them all in their beds—but no one knew exactly how these things operated.

Besides, would anyone be too upset if a creepy little Zap bit the dust? It wasn’t like they were in danger of going extinct.

The mother snorted in her sleep and twitched as if having a bad dream. Franklin turned away and filled a pot to put on the woodstove. In the morning he’d want coffee, even though the beans were old and stale. Caffeine was another of those comforts from the old world he’d soon have to relinquish.

But you can bet your ass the president and his world-banker buddies are sipping organic lattes in a luxury bunker right now.

Franklin wondered if Rachel was still out there, and if she’d be brave and tough enough to trust him. Perhaps he should have abandoned his compound and went out in search of her. He could only imagine how horrible the conditions must be in the cities, even though he’d spent much of his adult life preparing for and envisioning the inevitable.

But his highest function was here, operating the compound as a sane stronghold against whatever challenges the future held. He would wait here for his granddaughter, and he would survive for her. Because, to him, she was the future.

Although a devout loner, he was at the core a family man, which was part of the reason he’d allowed Jorge’s brood into the compound. And there was strength in numbers. While many in the prepper network had toiled away with an isolationist mindset, Franklin understood that simply surviving wasn’t enough.

At some point, after the nuclear holocaust or the viral epidemic or the worldwide civil war, people would have to live together. They would need to build communities and—at some unfortunate and messy point—construct a new social order.

Growing pains.

This whole game of human evolution brought with it eternal growing pains.

And only the strong could fight for freedom.

“Joe?” one of the women called from sleep. It was the mother, Cathy. She rolled over, nearly crushing the infant.

And that gave Franklin another idea. He could smother the baby. One minute with a pillow should do the trick.

Then he could tuck the corpse back under the mother and simply wait until morning. It would look like a case of nature taking its course. Why shouldn’t a Zaphead die in its sleep, anyway? Should anyone expect their bizarre biology to mirror that of living, breathing humans?

“Joe?” the woman called again, and this time it was more of a frightened moan.

Franklin held his hands to the open flame in the belly of the woodstove. The heat sharpened his senses.

Goddammit, she’s one of us. A human. A woman.

He crossed the narrow stretch of wooden floor and bent beside her, taking care not to look at the baby. In the firelight, her bare skin was golden, her blonde hair glistening with sweat.

What if this was Rachel?

Cathy was maybe a year or two older than Rachel. Different physically, a little heavier and with a milky complexion. But these were the women who’d be carrying on the race, the ones who would breed for the benefit of the new order. Could he afford to cast any of them out?

And what if Rachel didn’t make it? Indeed, what if Cathy was one of the few women left outside the government bunkers?

Franklin looked past her restless form to Marina and Rosa huddled together under a blanket. He didn’t even really care that they were Mexicans. The future had no borders. They were fit and healthy, good stock for the cause. And his job was to help keep them strong and to teach them.

In case Rachel didn’t make it here.

No, not “in case”…just “until.”

Cathy moaned again and her eyes flickered open. The fire glittered in them momentarily, almost eerily like that of her mutated offspring’s. Then it struck him.

The sun in their eyes…that’s what it looks like. A hundred little suns in their eyes.

He wondered briefly if she had somehow mutated as well, as if the little creature’s bite marks on her breasts had passed its sick strain into her. But then she blinked and the illusion passed. She was just a frightened young woman, staring wide-eyed at him as if not knowing where she was.

“You were having a bad dream,” he whispered.

He reached out to her but she flinched away. He realized his hand was passing distressingly close to her naked breasts and he pulled away, grabbing the edge of the blanket to slide it over the smooth curve of her shoulder. He gave it a paternal pat as she snuggled down into the blanket.

“Thanks,” she replied, moving the infant so that its head was exposed. So it wouldn’t suffocate.

Franklin kept his eyes fixed on her face. “Who’s Joe”?

Her eyes darted as if she expected to see him in the fire-illuminated room. Then sadness settled over her. “My husband.”

Franklin nodded. He didn’t want to wake the other two, but he wanted to understand her—to understand how someone could betray their kind and harbor the enemy like this.

“Did he…die?” he asked.

“Yes, but not in the burn.” She kept her voice low to match his. “I was a nurse at the Asheville hospital. I was on maternity leave but they were already getting cases of inexplicable behavioral changes, just after the solar storm first reached Earth.”

He didn’t realize she was a nurse. Yes, the new order would need her. Assuming she didn’t waste her talent and skill keeping the wrong types alive.

“And it all happened so fast,” she said. “My husband—Joe—was a police officer. He learned before most people what was happening, so he came home and said we needed to get out of town. I wrapped up little Joey while he packed, and we got in his patrol car. We didn’t have a real plan, but already people were dropping dead, the highways were clogged, everything was going crazy. He thought the parkway would be safer, and we’d just turned on it when we found the road was blocked with wrecks. And then they started attacking us.”

“The Zapheads?”

She nodded. He expected the memory would repulse her and make her shove the infant from her chest, but instead she only cradled it more protectively. “My husband shot three of them, but then they dragged him out of the car and—”

Her voice broke, and even though she swallowed back her sob, it was forceful enough to cause the infant to stir. Franklin reached over its head and stroked the side of the woman’s cheek, her tears wetting the back of his hand.

“We all went through some trauma,” he said. “The end of the world is never easy for anybody.”

Her face clenched and a few more tears glistened on her lashes. “I grabbed Joey and ran. We spent one night in an empty car. I didn’t know where to go. So we just…”

Franklin swallowed hard. The two females in the other bed stirred, and the fire hissed and popped with heat. “When did you know about…the baby?”

“Baby?” She hugged the tiny Zaphead closer. “What about him?”

“That he was different.”

Her eyes grew soulful and happy. “He’s my special boy.”

“Are you…” Franklin didn’t know how to approach the problem. He’d never understood women in the best of times, and under circumstances such as these, he was hopeless.

Then the baby startled, waving its little fists in the air. It made a chuckling sound, as if something vibrated in its throat. Its face was still turned away from Franklin, but he studied it for the first time.

With its eyes closed, it looked just like a human infant—tufts of downy hair, skin nearly translucent, limbs soft and plump. But that disturbing chuckle was like something from an animal, not a human.

Cathy smiled. “He’s hungry.”

Franklin was appalled to realize the infant’s throaty noises were a cry for milk. And even more horrifying was when the young mother pulled back the blanket and brought the infant to one of her creamy breasts. The baby opened its mouth and latched on, and the chuckling died away into a contented purr.

Franklin turned away, trembling. He rose from the makeshift bed and went to the fire. He drove a metal poker into the embers to drown out the horrible moist sound of the suckling.

Maybe the new order wouldn’t play out exactly as he’d planned it.