Milepost 291

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

“Die,” Rachel said.

“Huh?” Campbell had been asleep, and she repeated the word several more times before his drowsiness leaked away. He thought he heard a distant percussive sound, like popcorn popping, but it was drowned out by Rachel’s voice.

She rose from the bed and walked around the living room in the dim light of the embers. “Die die die die…”

“This isn’t good,” Campbell said, hurrying after her. She’d become increasingly detached, almost catatonic, since they’d fled the farmhouse. He’d hoped the symptoms were temporary, that whatever strange quantum-level healing the Zapheads had imparted would soon fade, but he could no longer lie to himself.

She was turning Zap.

He wondered if he should startle her back to awareness. He’d read that sleepwalkers were not supposed to be awakened. But there was no handbook for this sort of thing. So he simply followed in her wake as she paced around the room, repeating that horrible word over and over.

Once, he stepped in front of her, hoping she would recognize him and respond. But she only stared at him with eyes that glittered like the forge of the universe, two seething holes that spat the birth of stars or maybe struck the flint and steel of hell over and over.

And what scared Campbell even more than her condition was the idea that he’d lost her—that they could have grown together over time, become friends and eventually lovers. The two of them building a family and a new society.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of the Zapheads. Yeah, right. What a goddamned fool.

“Rachel,” he said, and she paused, the sparks dulling in her eyes.

“Die,” she said.

For a moment, he was frightened, because her face was as placid and emotionless as a robot’s, as if she could will him to die with the power of her mind. And that she wouldn’t suffer so much as a tinge of remorse.

He was afraid to restrain her, lest she launch into another violent rage. He repeated her name, hoping it would trigger some sort of memory of her former self. She cocked her head as if listening to something outside his range of hearing.

What if they’re calling her?

And what can I do about it?

Campbell believed they could use Rachel’s symptoms as a means to understanding the Zapheads, but that idea had been foolish as well. There was no inner struggle here, no rational human glibly controlling and conquering an unnatural mutation. The Zaphead won. Just like in the real world.

He wondered about the Zaphead sleeping inside him, and how it was some cosmic stroke of luck or maybe a simple genetic fluke that had prevented him from being affected by the radiation. What if he was the last surviving human in the world? His existential doubt would be God’s greatest private joke.

Rachel, now silent, stepped past him and walked toward the door with sliding, shuffling steps. She stopped before it and stared out through the black glass at the world beyond.

At the farmhouse while a captive of the Zapheads, Campbell had observed that Zapheads rarely used doors. Most of the time, doors were left open as the Zapheads traveled freely in and out. But apparently the professor had taught them how to work doorknobs, even though they had difficulty retaining the memory. They were like severe Alzheimer’s sufferers who had to rebuild their memories anew with each moment.

“Rachel, don’t do this,” Campbell said, standing behind her. Even her scent had changed, from a faintly attractive aroma of soap and clean, outdoorsy sweat to a bright, metallic odor.

She leaped forward and banged into the door. Her forehead bounced against the glass and she staggered back but didn’t fall. She flung herself forward again. This time the glass cracked but held in its frame. Rachel drew back to launch herself at it again, but this time Campbell grabbed her by the shoulders.

She shook him off with surprising strength and assaulted the door again. It rattled and a large shard of glass fell free. Campbell was afraid she’d cut herself to pieces and shatter her bones if she continued slamming against the door.

He called her name but she was oblivious. He could see her eyes reflected in the window, six billion stars winking and dying over and over again.

I can let her destroy herself or let her go.

He wedged his hand between her and the wood and grabbed the door handle. He twisted and yanked it backward, allowing fresh, cold air to pour in. But Rachel hurled herself again and the door slammed shut, the noise reverberating through the house. As she drew back once more, he tried again and this time managed to swing the door open while simultaneously lowering his shoulder and driving it into Rachel’s abdomen.

She was knocked off-balance but kept her feet, bumping into him so hard that he dropped to his knees. She shoved him aside and exited the house, fleeing into the night.

“Rachel!” he called after her, clasping his injured arm against his chest.

He heard her repeat “Rachel Rachel Rachel,” the sounds growing fainter with each second as she vanished into the forest.

Maybe her radiant eyes imparted night vision, but Campbell had no such characteristic. However, if he let her go now, he’d never see her again. And this might be his only chance to discover what strange force drew her into the night.

If I want to learn what makes Zapheads tick, I’d better roll with it.

He didn’t delude himself that he would be able to make any use of the knowledge. He didn’t anticipate sharing it with anyone. Even if he continued on to Milepost 291, the Zapheads were likely to keep changing as they had since the solar storms struck two months ago.

And what if he was one of the last survivors? What good would it do him to just keep living until his time ran out?

He grabbed the backpack he and Rachel had jammed with food and supplies, took a last look around the house and the warming glow of the fireplace, and then headed outside. The night wasn’t fully dark, since the moonlight painted a chrome swathe overhead.

A gap in the trees revealed mist in the valley below, like a thick, gray ocean that almost seemed solid enough to walk across. A mile or so away, a frothy red and orange swirl boiled underneath the fog, suggesting a distant fire.

Are the Zapheads destroying buildings again, like they did in the cities?

He moved as fast as he could in the direction Rachel had gone, adjusting the pack so the straps didn’t dig into his shoulders. Every thirty seconds, he would call Rachel’s name, and she would echo it. He tracked her using a clumsy game of “Marco Polo,” only instead of swimming in water, he clawed his way through the forest.

Rachel slowed enough for him to track her by her movements. She emerged from the forest onto a moonlit gravel road, heading downhill into the valley. He occasionally called to her, but she didn’t change pace or direction. A faint haze in the east suggested a hidden sun that would soon dawn on a world it had forever altered.

Campbell struggled to keep Rachel in sight. She walked with relentless precision, her feet skating over the gravel and mud and weeds as if powered by something outside her body. They passed more houses along the way, but Rachel took no notice of them, and Campbell only had the opportunity to give them cursory glances. No sign of life showed itself, and Campbell was sure he was the last soul in a Zaphead world.

But he hadn’t yet given up hope on Rachel. Perhaps this was a phase and she would soon burn through it like a fever destroying a virus, and he planned to be there when she returned to her senses. He could only imagine her gratitude toward him—that kind of loyalty was rare enough in Before, and nearly unfathomable in After, where humans practiced survival of the fittest even as they surrendered the top of the evolutionary chain.

The terrain leveled out somewhat and the mist burned away under the dawn, and they came to a paved road that ran along a river. The water was silver and green in the morning light, frothing where it tumbled over stones. The trees thinned as the land gave way to open pasture and meadow, farms and houses lining the waterway, vehicles stalled in the road or axle-deep in ditches, seat-belted corpses rotting inside them.

Invigorated with the false hope of a new day, Campbell burst into a jog until he caught up with Rachel. He spoke to her but she stared past him with wildly glittering eyes, focused on something outside his perception.

And then he saw the line of figures trailing out of the trees a few hundred yards down the road.