CHAPTER SIX
Campbell slobbered over the pork and beans, which were heated in a tin can that had been resting in the embers. The fire was large and crackled with intense energy, and it could have been the primal fire, the first lightning strike that had forever changed the human race. It sent giant fingers of light stippling against the surrounding trees, creating a yellow wall against the black and unknown beyond.
There were four in the group. Donnie, a scrawny guy in a camouflage cap who’d challenged them when they’d entered the camp, had taken his turn at watch while shouldering a mean-looking automatic rifle. A woman named Pam was evidently asleep in one of the tents popped up in the clearing. The group must have settled there for some days, because of the clothesline strung between two trees and a stack of broken limbs piled nearby to feed the fire.
The man who’d stuck the gun in Campbell’s back was named Arnoff. He’d collected their guns after Donnie had demanded they drop them. Pete had been pissed at first, but now he was nursing a beer and gazing into the flames as if he were at a frat-house bonfire before the big homecoming football game.
Arnoff sat across the fire from Campbell, tenderly cleaning a disassembled rifle. “You boys made it all the way from Chapel Hill, huh?”
“We had bicycles,” Campbell said.
Arnoff nodded. “Yep. Saw you through the binocs.”
“That’s why we didn’t shoot you,” said the bald, thin-faced man with huge black spectacles that gave him the appearance of an insect. “We haven’t seen Zapheads exhibit such coordinated behavior.”
“I woulda shot you anyways,” Arnoff said. “Just for target practice. But the professor here said we need to gather as much info as we could.”
“He’s joking,” said the bald man, although Arnoff’s eyes held not the slightest hint of mirth.
“How long have you guys been together?” Campbell asked, eager to change the subject. His stomach wasn’t doing too well with the beans and he already felt bloated and gassy.
“I teach earth sciences at Wake Forest—I mean, I did teach, back when I had students,” the professor said, digging into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Absurdly, he still wore a tie, as if that one senseless symbol of civilization guaranteed that all the pieces would eventually fit back together. “My colleagues in the department were well aware of the approaching solar flares, which tend to come in cycles. Indeed, it was national news, but like most science stories, it was dumbed down for public consumption.”
“Yeah, we saw that on Yahoo!,” Pete said. “They were talking about the worst solar storm on record, sometime around the Civil War, but they said this one wouldn’t be that bad.”
Arnoff clacked a bullet into the chamber of his rifle. “They never get it straight. Goddamned media. Keep you so screwed you don’t know whether to sell your stocks or buy ammunition.”
“The 1859 solar flare, the Carrington Event, disrupted telegraph communications and burned some poles,” the professor said. “The aurora was spotted all over the country and as far south as Mexico.”
“Those freaky green and purple lights in the sky?” Pete asked. “That make you feel like you’re on a bad acid trip?”
“Yes, caused by charged particles. Other recent solar flares and sunspot events have caused power outages, but no one could have expected anything like this.”
“You mean Zapheads?” Campbell said.
“I mean, ‘all of it.’ Congress had ordered some research and contingency plans in the wake of massive solar disruptions, but that was mostly in the event of satellite problems and the like. Anyone presenting these types of doomsday scenarios would have been classified as Internet wackos and UFO conspiracy theorists.”
“I get the part where it knocked out power and electrical systems, even combustion engines,” Arnoff said. “Sorta like short circuiting the whole world at once. But I don’t understand what it did to people’s brains to turn them into Zapheads. And I sure as hell don’t understand why some of us are more or less still normal.”
“I doubt we’ll ever have those answers now,” the professor said. “Assuming the rest of the globe was affected like the United States, there’s no way to undertake the necessary research.”
Arnoff waved a hand. “Don’t get off on no lecture. Knowing won’t change the facts, and the facts is there are a bunch of Zapheads out there wanting to kill us.”
“You said they’ve changed,” Campbell said. “What did you mean?”
“They seem to be adapting,” the professor said. “You might have noticed yourself, if you’ve had repeated encounters. Just after the flares, the Zapheads”—his face curdled as he uttered the name, as if he found it distasteful and scientifically inaccurate—“engaged in violence at random, attacking any living thing in their immediate vicinity. But we’ve observed them engaging in communal activity, as if they are organizing.”
“That’s why I almost shot you,” Arnoff said. “Where there’s one, there might be more.”
“Great,” Pete said. “Nice to see us humans sticking together.”
Campbell gave a small shake of his head, trying to signal Pete to shut up. While Arnoff was a loose cannon, at least he was a cannon—Campbell hadn’t felt this safe since the apocalypse had started. He set the empty can of beans aside and licked the sauce from his fork.
“How many of us do you think are left?’ he asked the professor.
“It’s difficult to estimate. I met Mr. Arnoff between Winston-Salem and Greensboro, traveling east on Interstate 40. He was headed for the coast, figuring he’d find a little island and play Robinson Crusoe until things got sorted out. Thirty miles from here, we found Pamela and Donnie four days ago, hiding in a school bus. And now here are you two. It’s a small sample size, but I’d guess maybe one person in a million was immune to the electromagnetic disruptions.”
“Holy shit,” Pete said. “That’s sort of like winning the lottery.”
“Or maybe losing, in this case,” Arnoff said. “I always thought the world was too crowded, but I don’t like being outnumbered.”
“Which was my next question,” Campbell said. “We met a few other survivors, but we’ve seen a lot more Zapheads.”
He told them about their encounter with the Zaphead in the van, and Pete punctuated the story with sound effects to describe how they’d beat the woman to death. He didn’t embellish too many of the details, although he came off like the hero of the tale.
“Good for you,” Arnoff said. “I never woulda figured you had it in you.”
“Maybe we’re adapting, too,” the professor said, drawing on his cigarette. “Maybe the need to kill will turn us into Zapheads. The lingering magnetic fluctuations could be turning the kettle of our brains up to a boil as we speak.”
Campbell didn’t like the idea that his internal circuitry might even now be mutating into something treacherous.
“Don’t go getting all negative on me,” Arnoff said, leaning his rifle on a stump. “Things are bad enough already. Let’s keep it on the sunny side.”
“Ironic, given the fact that the sun is the cause of our problems,” the professor said. He flicked his cigarette butt into the fire.
“So, you guys have been walking?” Pete asked, slurring his words a little.
“I had a horse I found in a stable,” Arnoff said. “It threw me when it stepped in a pothole and broke an ankle. About broke my neck, too.”
“Let me guess,” Pete said. “You had to shoot it, but you didn’t get too down about it.”
Arnoff glared at him, and Campbell made a surreptitious slashing motion across his throat to signal Pete to cool it. “Some things just need to be put down,” Arnoff said.
The professor made a show of looking at his wristwatch, a nerdy wind-up model that had outlasted the planet’s digital watches. “Donnie’s time is about up.”
Arnoff stood and collected his rifle, walking to the nearest tent and lifting the flap, revealing the mesh screen over the door. “
Wake up, Pamela, it’s your turn.”
“So, what’s happening in the east?” the professor asked Campbell in a lower voice, to keep the conversation private.
Campbell shrugged. “A lot of dead people. A lot of Zapheads. Stalled cars. Nothing working right.”
“Any organization of emergency services?”
“Like, cops and stuff? No, they were as dead as everybody else. Once in a while, we saw people walking around off in the distance, but we were afraid to check them out. We didn’t know whether they were Zapheads or not.”
“Perhaps that was a good idea. I estimate the ratio of Zapheads to survivors is on the order of ten to one.”
“I just can’t believe it’s like this all over the goddamned world,” Pete said. “It’s like the zombie movie from hell.”
“It’s hopeless,” Campbell found himself saying. He had never given thought to the concept of “hope.” That was a word for a Hallmark card when a relative was undergoing chemotherapy, not a word that normal people worried about.
“We have food and supplies,” the professor said, keeping his voice at the same lecturing level as before. “If our bottled water runs out, we can filter water from this creek and boil it. This is our second day here, and we could easily last a week before making a foraging run into one of the nearby towns.”
“I don’t see no advantage in staying here,” Arnoff grumbled from his position by the tent. “How long before more of those Zapheads locate our camp?”
“That’s for the group to decide,” the professor answered.
Campbell had a feeling that opinions were divided and, for the first time, felt tension between the professor and Arnoff, whose eyes were like dark, wet beetles. And, Campbell wondered if he and Pete were now considered part of the group.
Safety in numbers, unless those numbers start shooting at each other.
Arnoff strode off into the trees at the dark perimeter of the camp. Campbell wasn’t sure whether the man was scouting or taking a leak.
“What about power?” Pete said. “These batteries won’t last forever.”
“Power might end up being the thing that kills us,” the professor said. “The sun is the biggest thermonuclear reactor in our corner of the universe.”
“All this talk about green energy, there have got to be some wind turbines and solar panels and stuff,” Campbell said. He’d known a guy named Terrence Flowers, a big energy hippie, who had always drawn up elaborate plans for off-the-grid sustainable systems. They could sure use Terrence now, unless he was a Zaphead.
“Most such devices have electronic components in their converting systems, so they are useless now. I suppose you could replace the damaged parts and they might work, but we can’t just order parts online and have FedEx deliver to our door, right? But the problem is even bigger than that. We could soon be looking at four hundred Chernobyls.”
“The hell?” Pete said, cracking another beer with an insolent hiss.
“There are more than four hundred nuclear power plants in the world. They use water circulated by electrical pumps to cool their reactor cores and spent fuel rods. Without electricity, it doesn’t take long for them to melt down.”
“Wait,” Pete said. “No damn way. The government wouldn’t allow that shit to happen.”
“Oh, the nuclear plants have back-up systems.” The flames tossed shadows across the professor’s impassive face, giving his words an even more sinister weight. “Diesel generators and other electricity-dependent systems. But if the geomagnetic storms wiped those out, too…”
“Like that Japanese plant in the tsunami,” Campbell said.
“Yeah.” The professor tossed his cigarette butt and it arced like a meteor into the heart of the fire. “The core overheated because the back-up systems failed. The plant was built to withstand a tsunami, and it did. The trouble was, the back-up systems weren’t build to withstand it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Pete said. “You mean we’re going to have to start worrying about giant mutant lizards, too? Like Zapheads aren’t bad enough?”
“Oh, no worries,” the professor said. “We’ll be dead long before anything has a chance to mutate due to radiation.”
“Scaring the children again, Professor?” came a woman’s voice from the opening of the tent. The flap peeled back and a wild mane of red hair spilled forth. The mane lifted and the tangles revealed a weathered but attractive face, a woman of late middle age without the benefit of makeup but with a fierce sparkle in her green eyes.
As Pamela stood up in a rumpled terrycloth robe, a blanket draped around her, Campbell was immediately captivated. She wasn’t beautiful, not by modern Photoshop standards, but she projected a vexing allure. She was a little younger than Campbell’s mother, slim but with a strong frame. Even Pete took notice of her, rousing from his drunken stupor to grin at her.
“I like to deal with facts, Pamela,” the professor said, lips pursing into a pout. “Eventually, we’re going to be living with four hundred Chernobyls. No one knows the effects of that kind of radiation exposure from multiple sources. You can’t really model that on a computer.”
“Sorry, I left my iPad in my other pants,” Pamela said, causing Pete to snort into his beer.
Campbell vaguely understood the danger of radiation, but it seemed as distant a threat as secondhand smoke or preservatives in Twinkies. Pamela was flaunting her charisma, which made the professor squirm a little on his fireside stump.
The professor fumbled for a cigarette. “All I’m saying is—”
They were spared a lecture by the booming report of a gun somewhere off in the night. Pete flopped backward in surprise, dropping his beer, and the professor grabbed for the rifle leaning beside him.
“Donnie!” Pamela shouted, heading in the direction of the shot.
“Stay here,” the professor ordered, not that Campbell had any intention of wandering off into the dark, especially with Arnoff out there, armed and dangerous.
After the professor and Pamela had both disappeared in the shadows, Pete said, “Man, what if the Zapheads come while everybody’s gone?”
“Maybe we ought to split. We can get back to the road and find our bikes and be out of here before they get back.”
“And then what? These people might be our best bet. At least they got some weaponry.”
Campbell couldn’t offer a better alternative. Arnoff made him uneasy, but at least the group had established some basic order. And Campbell found that he missed order. He liked clocks and homework and responsibility and a schedule. Maybe such things were useless in the new world, but he could find substitutes by belonging to a group with a common purpose.
And no common purpose was as compelling as survival.
“Okay,” Campbell said. “Let’s give it a couple of days.”
Pete opened another beer, and this time, Campbell joined him. Minutes later, Arnoff, the professor, and Pamela came back. Donnie had apparently been freaked out by a stray dog and shot it. Pamela found blankets for Pete and Campbell, who sacked out beside the fire. Campbell was just drowsing off when he saw Arnoff enter Pamela’s tent.
He hoped Donnie wasn’t the jealous type. He didn’t want to wake up to the sound of more gunfire.