Milepost 291

CHAPTER FOUR

Morning was probably the worst of it.

Dreams had become a refuge for Campbell Grimes, and the sweetest ones were of all the mundane things that now seemed so rare and beautiful. They were already distant artifacts of a lost culture even though it had only been two months since the solar storms.

Alien archaeologists of the future might one day make sense of the civilization that left behind little but a thin layer of poisoned plastic, but it was unlikely they would learn of Campbell’s drawings, addiction to Diet Coke and videogames, his casual obsession with Kate Upton, or his collegiate flirtation with Buddhism. The facts of his life weren’t his body-mass index and date of birth, but the wildly colorful fantasies and ideals that echoed in the boned curves of his skull.

Upon awakening, a shutter was drawn down over the past and the hellish light of After dragged him into its spotlight. He’d been dreaming again of Catawba Lake where his family had spent their summers. He’d been upstairs in their waterfront home, looking down on the neighbor’s dock, where a new ski boat was tethered. But the boat was the least eye-catching of John Hampton’s treasures—his wife Tamara wore that crown. She lay sprawled on a lounge chair in her bikini, skin glistening like oiled amber, the wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses adding just enough concealment that Campbell could objectify her without feeling too creepy.

He’d never masturbated during his little peep shows, but they’d given him an electric thrill all the same. And in his dream, she’d been flipping back a strand of golden hair that the lake breeze kept pushing across her face. The sun dappled the water, the ski boat bobbed, the muddy duckweed drifted, and her elegant arm lifted and nudged, lifted and nudged, fingers splayed, lips pursed, and she turned her head slightly and the sunglasses were aimed directly at the window where Campbell sat—

He awoke with heart pounding, a guilty erection throbbing inside his trousers. He’d had no relief in After, and he certainly wasn’t going to toss one off lying here on the carpeted floor of the farmhouse, surrounded by Zapheads. They were lying all around him, some snoring lightly, others awake and waiting for him to rise and shine, a phrase they’d learned from the professor.

Unlike the professor, Campbell had stopped sleeping in the bed because the Zapheads inevitably rolled into the sagging middle of the mattress during the night, creating a suffocating pile. He wasn’t even sure they actually slept in the usual sense—they might just have been imitating sleep as they imitated everything else.

Another day in paradise.

Dawn painted the windows yellow. From downstairs came the clatter of silverware and cookware. The house had no electricity, since the solar storms erased the power plants, but the stove ran off propane and there must have been gallons still stored in the tank. The home’s original owners had died at the dinner table during the apocalypse, and the Zapheads learned all about place settings from the grisly tableau.

Campbell did not look forward to breakfast, because the corpses were still around the table, and the Zapheads grew violently agitated whenever Campbell or the professor tried to remove them.

Campbell rose as silently as he could, but his activity was instantly imitated by three or four Zapheads, including a young girl in a sundress whose eyes burned like lava. Campbell had to urinate, and there was no chance for privacy, so he stepped over the rows of prone Zapheads until he reached the door.

The professor rolled over in his sleep, unconsciously flinging an arm over a wild-haired male who must have been in his sixties. The Zap mirrored the movement, and they snuggled like an old married couple. Campbell fought down the bile that threatened to crawl up his throat. The professor had grown too comfortable here, accepting his fate.

“Good morning,” said the little blonde girl, and the phrase was immediately repeated by the other Zaps, even some who were still lying on the floor. There must have been two dozen in the room, and the air was sour with their stench. The professor had yet to teach them about hygiene, changes of clothes, and even basic waste elimination.

“Good morning,” Campbell said. Just as the Zapheads had become like intelligent mockingbirds, they also expected Campbell to echo their behavior. He didn’t want to risk disturbing them, because the rest of the professor’s group had been killed in fits of rage. Since then, Campbell had remained subdued, because he was afraid the Zapheads would interpret them incorrectly and erupt in sudden violence. He had no way of knowing how their scrambled wiring might interpret any action or sound.

Campbell walked into the hall, his filthy socks muting his footsteps. Several Zapheads sat leaning against the wall just as they had been positioned at sunset. When he passed, they rose silently and followed him, along with the three Zapheads from the bedroom. The perverse parade continued down the stairs and out the back door. When Campbell unzipped his fly, all of the Zapheads imitated him. The females seemed startled to discover they didn’t have penises, but they urinated anyway, staining their clothes.

Campbell gazed at the forest at the edge of the pasture, and beyond it to the swell of mountains in the northwest. He thought of Rachel Wheeler and the compound at Milepost 291 she’d portrayed as a promised land. She’d offered few details, but her fervor had been persuasive. Especially when compared to all the other alternatives.

As he often did, he considered making a run for it, but Zapheads were already up and milling about in the knee-high grass surrounding the farmhouse. Only one cow remained, and the Zapheads were as fascinated by its behavior as they were with Campbell’s and the professor’s. The animal had grown used to their presence and chewed contentedly. Campbell wished he was as successful at ignoring them.

Why couldn’t the Big Zap have given me Mad Cow Disease?

He returned to the farmhouse, followed by the Zapheads. He held his palm over his face to suppress the smell of decomposing corpses inside. The Zapheads mimicked the movement, even though the odor didn’t seem to bother them. Perhaps they had no awareness of morality, and thus the corrupted rot carried no association with their own coming deaths.

The professor was already sitting at the table. “Good morning,” he said, with surprisingly good cheer considering he sat among four corpses and a room full of deranged mutants.

“Good morning,” Campbell said, and the farmhouse was filled with shouts of Zapheads repeating the words. A broad-faced woman whose gray eyes glittering with iridescent golden flecks moved in front of him as he approached the table, screeching “Good morning good morning good morning.” The phrase echoed in a seemingly endless loop.

“Fuck you,” Campbell said, and broad-faced woman segued from “Good morning” to “Fuck you” without taking a breath. As the chant rose around them, the professor grinned at Campbell and pulled out a chair for him. Campbell sat beside him and the room grew quiet. The silence spread throughout the house.

Each plate on the table was swimming with pork-and-beans. The farmhouse’s human owners, propped up in chairs and decaying in grotesque shades of green and purple, had apparently stockpiled only one type of canned food. The chickens couldn’t lay enough eggs to feed the whole congregation of fifty or so Zapheads that inhabited the farm, and the early frosts had devastated the garden. Soon they would all need meat.

“I’m going to kill myself,” Campbell said under his breath, so only the professor could hear. They’d learned that if they murmured, the Zapheads would also murmur and therefore not be able to hear the conversation.

The professor lifted his plate and lapped at the sauce. By unspoken agreement, they avoided silverware because they didn’t want the Zapheads to all simultaneously brandish sharp implements.

When those Zapheads who were close enough to the table also lifted plates and slurped, the professor said, “Not again. When are they going to learn some manners?”

“Seriously. You may like having your own little group of lab monkeys to play with, but I’m going nuts.”

The professor wiped the reddish-brown sauce from his lips with the back of his shirt sleeve. “If we can teach them how to hunt and gather, we’ll make it through the winter. They’re progressing. I’ve even observed some signs of initiative in a few of them.”

“Great. Creative new ways to kill and maim survivors.”

“We don’t even know how many survivors are left. For all we know, we’re the last two standing.”

Campbell pushed his plate away even though he’d only eaten half his portion. A stringy-haired Zaphead across the table glared at him as if Campbell had committed a hideous sin. The Zaphead was about his father’s age, with dark stubble and dirt-filled wrinkles on his cheeks.

Burn in hell, shitface. Campbell thought about shouting the insult at the top of his lungs, but he might start giggling, and then he would go mad during the Zaphead laugh track. But wasn’t madness preferable to acceptance of this new normal?

“So what’s your exit strategy?” Campbell asked as the professor swallowed the last of his beans.

“There’s no exit. I’m making the best of it. I’ve been here nearly three weeks and they haven’t killed me yet.”

Campbell couldn’t believe the man was serious. “You’re doing a good job of making them think you’re Jesus, but that didn’t end so well for him, if you’ll recall.”

“They’re learning, and if we can teach them not to make the same mistakes as the human race, then maybe we really can achieve those crazy ideals of peace, love, and harmony.”

And here I was thinking I’d feathered the cuckoo’s nest. But you’ve definitely been cracking some eggs. This is your brain, this is your brain on Zapheads. Any questions?

“Don’t you think maybe it’s a little arrogant to presume we know what’s best?” Campbell said. “There’s no blueprint for this.”

The professor grinned, bean sauce shiny on his chin. “Then we get to draw our own blueprint.” He nodded at one of the Zapheads, a twentyish woman with the ragged dark bangs of a Goth hairstyle and full lips, a small silver skull dangling by a chain from one ear lobe. “I think she likes me.”

Campbell shoved his plate away. The rotted corpses of the farmhouse’s original occupants said nothing. In some ways, they were the most stable and tangible facts of this new world. All else was postmodern surrealism.

And a new history waiting to be written.

“They’re all yours,” Campbell said, spreading his arms. “All God’s children.”

“God’s children!” said a grimy-faced woman and the Zap Goth in unison.

“God’s children!” shouted another Zaphead, and soon the room—and then the farmhouse—was filled with their shouts.