CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Campbell was still searching the trees on the side of the road when Arnoff’s tribe caught up with him.
Campbell emerged from the woods to see Arnoff poking Pete’s backpack with the tip of his rifle. Pamela, Donnie, and the professor hung back a little, warily checking the vehicles on the highway. “Looks like your buddy chickened out,” Arnoff said.
“Somebody got him,” Campbell said.
“Hell, yeah,” Donnie said. “Zapheads.”
“It wasn’t Zapheads. There’s no blood.”
Arnoff knelt and plucked one of the warm beers from Pete’s backpack. “Well, he didn’t abandon ship, or he’d have never left this.”
“So, what do you think happened?” Pamela asked, fishing a cigarette from a pocket of her floral-print blouse. She was sweating from the heat, and the wind carried a faint whiff of the distant burning cities. Campbell thought about what the professor had said, about the four hundred nuclear reactors that would eventually melt down, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to live long enough to worry about radiation poisoning.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological strain,” the professor said. “He might have just snapped and wandered off somewhere.”
“Turned into a Zaphead, you mean?” Arnoff said.
“We’ve not seen any evidence of latent effects. The experts predicted the solar event was a one-time phenomenon.”
“Hell, some horny old bat might have roped him into the back of one of these vans for a go,” Donnie said, grinning at Pamela. “You know how women are.”
“Hush your mouth or I’ll hush it for you.” She glared back, taking a deep puff of her cigarette, but she seemed bored by her own threat.
Campbell’s guts knotted in frustration, but he forced himself to remain calm. He didn’t know these people. They were acquaintances of circumstance, and bleak circumstance at that.
The end of the world makes strange bedfellows.
Arnoff walked ahead to a BP tanker truck. The silver petroleum tanker reflected the sunlight, causing Campbell to squint. Arnoff shouldered his rifle and climbed a metal ladder on the tanker’s rear. Standing atop the giant cylinder, he scanned with his binoculars in all directions.
“Zapheads are going to see him,” Donnie said, checking the chamber of his automatic pistol. “This is a time to lay low, not play gold-medal dumbass at the Special Olympics.”
“Hush your mouth,” Pamela said, sitting on the hood of a green Mercedes. A man was slumped over the wheel, body swollen with rot around the confines of his suit jacket and tie. Campbell was grateful the car’s windows were sealed shut. The man likely had the air-conditioning going, probably some Eagles twanging on the stereo, on his way to rake in money off of other people’s work. And then life made other plans for him.
Big, big plans.
“See anything?” the professor called to Arnoff.
Arnoff lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “No Zapheads, no survivors, no Pete.”
“Too bad we can’t get a vehicle going. There’s enough gas to get us across the country and back a hundred times.”
“You’re the egghead,” Donnie said, banging on the roof of a Ford Escort. “Why don’t you hotwire one of these?”
“As I explained, modern vehicles have electronic ignitions, computerized operating systems, alternating-current batteries and—”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Donnie said. “Everything got zapped. I know all that. But the zap’s over, right? Why can’t we rebuild one?”
“Possible,” the professor said. “But we’d need newly produced parts, which means manufactured parts, because all the existing circuitry is fried. And it takes high-technology equipment and electricity to make the parts you need. Catch-22.”
“Sort of like needing a fish for bait so you can catch a fish, right?” Donnie said.
“Sort of like that, yes,” the professor said.
Campbell hadn’t thought that far ahead. Sometimes at night, before falling asleep, he’d had little fantasies of the world rebuilding itself, everyone pitching in like it was a community-pride clean-up event. But he always assumed “somebody,” either the government or people from some unaffected part of the globe, would eventually ride to the rescue and restore all the essential services. But what if they were on their own? What if they had to save themselves?
What if human civilization had come down to isolated clusters like Arnoff’s tribe?
Then we’re screwed.
“Zaphead at ten o’clock,” Arnoff said, dropping the binoculars so they dangled from a cord around his neck. He raised his rifle and sighted down the barrel.
Donnie jumped from the Mercedes hood and ran toward the tanker. “Save some for me. I ain’t killed a Zaphead in three days and I’m getting a little twitchy.”
“I’m not shooting it,” Arnoff said. “I’m observing it.”
Campbell eased over to where the professor and Pamela were standing. The tang of tobacco smoke overwhelmed the stench of bodies and distant fires.
“What do you make of all this?” Campbell asked the professor. He almost asked for the man’s name, but the group seemed to function better with anonymity. Names didn’t seem to matter now.
“Our tenuous situation as survivors, or the geological effects of the solar storm?”
Pamela pursed her lips. “I love it when you use them big words.”
“A little of both,” Campbell said. “I mean, it’s hard to separate them now, isn’t it?”
Donnie hoisted himself up on the tanker’s ladder and climbed toward Arnoff, who was still peering through the rifle scope.
“We can’t be certain of the long-term effects on the environment,” the professor said. “But short term, in human terms, we’ve lost our infrastructure. We’ve lost all the systems that connected us with food, safety, shelter, and companionship. And, as I said, manmade problems like the nuclear radiation and other pollutants add to the mix.”
“Doesn’t sound real good,” Pamela said. “Then again, I never expected there to be a ‘long term.’”
“But surely we can adapt,” Campbell said, although the argument sounded hollow even to his own ears. “We’re smart and tough and adaptable—”
“That’s how smart we are,” Pamela interrupted, pointing to the top of the tanker. Donnie had opened a little metal access hatch and was urinating into the opening.
The professor shook his head in grim amusement. “I think the Zapheads are in far better position to adapt. From what I can tell, they have none of the moral baggage and ten times the survival instinct.”
“Do you have any theories on why they turned violent?” Campbell asked, warily scanning the sides of the highway. Arnoff and Donnie were so transfixed with one distant Zaphead, they wouldn’t have seen any others approaching from the woods. And if Pete staggered out into the open, Campbell wanted to be the first to spot him so he could prevent Pete from getting shot by the trigger-happy Donnie.
“Electroconvulsive therapy is used to treat depression,” the professor said. “Everybody thinks of the Jack Nicholson movie, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ where troublemakers get their brains fried, but it has proven clinical benefits. However, the treatment also can cause severe personality change, memory loss, and cognitive impairment. So evidence suggests that exposure to cataclysmic electromagnetic fields could cause varying results, depending on the individual.”
“So, I guess this proves I’m lucky, huh?” Pamela said.
The professor dug into his backpack and pulled out a plastic water bottle. “In some ways, we’re better off,” he said, twisting the cap and taking a swig. “Fewer of us to consume the finite resources at our disposal.”
“What do you mean, ‘finite’?” Campbell asked. “I know we can’t build automobiles, but we can return to an agrarian society.”
“With what knowledge?” the professor said. “How do we save seeds and know which plants to eat? How do we know the
proper planting time? How do we build gristmills powered by water wheels to grind wheat into flour? We can’t just get on the Internet and Google it.”
“Dang, you’re a real bummer, doc,” Pamela said.
“I see no need to indulge elaborate fantasies. A realistic assessment of our situation gives us the best chance of survival.”
Campbell was reluctantly forced to agree. “I’d say the first job—after finding Pete, of course—is to locate others like us and form a bigger group.”
“That might not be so wise,” the professor said. “Look at the pecking-order problems we have just with a group this small. Put a dozen well-armed, desperate Alpha males in the same place at the same time, and I think they’d make Zapheads look like refined pacifists.”
“I don’t know exactly what you said,” Pamela said. “But if you’re saying it’s not too smart to put a bunch of Arnoffs and Donnies together, I’d say you’re onto something.”
The two men stood atop the tankers like statues. Arnoff was ramrod-straight, shoulders back, still holding his rifle barrel steady on his target. Donnie was hunched, but he’d also raised his weapon, pointing it in the same direction as Arnoff.
“If they shoot, every Zaphead within a mile’s radius will come see what’s going on,” the professor said. “They seem to react to stimuli like sudden loud noises and movement.”
“They can’t be that dumb,” Campbell said.
“You don’t know Donnie,” Pamela said. “He might do it just for the fun of it.”
A muffled ka-pow sounded to the west. Arnoff instantly shifted his rifle in that direction.
“A gunshot,” Campbell said. “Other survivors.”
Campbell started up the road toward the tanker, but the professor grabbed his arm. “Remember what I said. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. If there was any lesson learned in the Technological Age, it was that.”
Campbell shook free and walked away, imagining what the other group was like. Had Pete joined them? Did they have adequate food supplies or transportation better than bicycles or horses? Did they have any young women among them so the race could procreate?
Thinking of sex at a time like this. Sheesh.
Another distant gunshot sounded, and Arnoff scrambled the length of the tanker and descended the ladder. The professor and Pamela gathered their bags and went to meet him, but Campbell climbed astride his bicycle, determined to solve the mystery.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Arnoff said.
“I’m your scout, remember? Just doing my job.”
“You might want to stick with the winners. Sounds like things are getting hairy out there.”
“Hairier than a gorilla’s cooter,” Donnie said from atop the tanker.
“Just how would you know about that?” Pamela said.
“’cause I been sleeping with you, ain’t I?”
Campbell was tired of the prattle. “My friend’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”
“Your first responsibility is to the tribe,” Arnoff said.
Campbell glared at the professor. “What do you have to say about that?”
The professor shook his head. “Survival of the fittest.”
Another gunshot sounded, causing Donnie to whoop and jump from the tanker to the cab of the truck for better surveillance. If Donnie was the pinnacle of human fitness, then Campbell wasn’t sure whether he wanted to stick around. Evolution had just taken a stinking piss and washed away every grain of hope.
“I guess some of us have a different idea of what it means to be human.” Campbell pedaled in the direction of the gunshots.