CHAPTER THIRTY
From the camouflaged platform built into the branches of an oak tree, Jorge had a nearly panoramic view of the surrounding ridges and valleys. “Wheelerville,” as Franklin Wheeler called his tiny compound, wasn’t the highest point in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it stood apart from the towering canopy of Mount Rogers and smaller mountains that bore craggy granite faces topped with pine stubble. A hawk flew over the gray belt of haze that wreathed the valley, and Jorge wondered if it was the same one that killed the chicken.
In the distance, the threads of smoke from the cities blended into a charcoal smudge on the horizon. The air carried only the faintest tinge of the acrid odor, though, as if the mountains scrubbed the prevailing wind clean as it pushed from the northwest. He didn’t know anyone in those cities, but he felt a loss, nonetheless. Marina might have gone to college there, or he and Rosa might have found some better type of work.
Tightening the focus on the binoculars, he swept his view to the parkway that threaded through the trees below. The same abandoned vehicles dotted the road, some of them plowing into the grassy shoulders as their drivers had died instantly. One wooden guardrail was uprooted and splintered where a truck had barreled through and gone off the edge. A camper lay on its side, coolers, mattresses and a rotted corpse spilled from its rear.
He was about to climb down when he saw movement on the road.
Probably a deer. With nothing to scare them, they can reclaim the land.
He sighted through the binoculars and saw a woman running up the slope of the road. She wasn’t moving very fast, and her cheeks were streaked with filth, hair tangled. She looked exhausted, like a horse that had been ridden across a desert. She carried a cloth bundle clasped to her chest.
She doesn’t move like one of them.
“Franklin?” he called.
Franklin came out of the house, where he’d been fidgeting with the radio. After lunch, Franklin said he “needed some bad news,” so he went to his desk while Rosa cleaned the dishes from the meal. Franklin squinted against the sun as he looked up at Jorge. “What’s up, besides you?”
“Someone on the road,” Jorge said. “A woman.”
“Hell fire,” Franklin said, scurrying to the tree and scaling the makeshift wooden handholds that were nailed to the tree. He moved with a swift grace that belied his age, scurrying up like an old mountain goat. He took the binoculars from Jorge and Jorge pointed out the direction.
“Huh,” Franklin said. “Looks like she’s alone.”
“She isn’t a…what do you call it?”
“Nah, she’s not a Zaphead. Just a scared woman.” He gave the binoculars back to Jorge and turned to climb back down.
“Shouldn’t we go get her?”
Franklin looked around the compound. “I set up Wheelerville for a dozen people to survive whatever came our way, short of nuclear holocaust. And you punched three of the tickets when you wandered through the woods with a sick girl. I’m expecting more company, and I don’t think we’ve got room to spare.”
“You can’t just leave her out there.”
Franklin squinted. “What are you? Some kind of Communist? That what they teach you south of the border?”
“She’s young and alone—”
“She’s survived this long, so she’s not made out of cardboard. I ain’t in the business of saving the world.”
Jorge tried to make sense of the contradiction. Franklin had helped his family, yet now was denying someone else in need. Jorge gazed through the binoculars, tracking the woman’s progress. Her jeans were worn at the knees, her brown hooded sweatshirt matted and grimy. She twisted her head, wild blonde hair whipping out as she glanced over her shoulder.
Something’s after her?
Jorge swiveled the binoculars down the road, where the pavement disappeared amid the shadow of massive trees. Three of them burst from the woods, and Jorge had no doubt of their intentions.
“Them!” Jorge said, pointing. “Those Z things. Chasing her.”
Franklin snatched the binoculars away and peered through them for a moment. “Damn. She might be carrying a baby.”
Then he lowered them and started scrambling down the tree. Halfway down, he looked up at Jorge and said, “You wanted to play hero, here’s your chance.”
By the time Jorge reached the ground, Franklin had already grabbed a rifle and backpack, tossing Jorge a belt that held his machete. Rosa called to them from the door of the house. “What is happening?”
“Lock the gate behind us,” Franklin ordered, with a calmness that contradicted his haste. “There’s a gun on the wall if you need it. We ought to be back in twenty minutes.”
“Jorge?” Rosa said, eyes wide.
“Lock the gate,” he said. “Keep Marina inside.”
Jorge followed Franklin out of the compound, ignoring Rosa’s calls. Soon, they were winding down a forest path that Jorge never would have noticed, much less been willing to navigate. Franklin trotted with a sure-footed gait, and Jorge had difficulty keeping up, even though he was three decades younger. He measured time not in minutes, but in the huge granite slabs that jutted from the ground, the rotted stumps and silvery creeks they hurdled, and the streaks of golden sunlight that broke through the branches to dapple the ground.
Jorge had become disoriented, losing any sense of the locations of both the compound and the road. He focused on Franklin’s back, the odors of mud, rotten leaves, and pine sap assailing him with each gasp of air. Then the trail widened and became a stretch of scrubby meadow, a couple of abandoned cars visible beyond a low stone fence.
“Keep low,” Franklin said, motioning down with one hand while steadying his rifle with the other.
“How much farther?” Jorge said, sliding his machete from its sheath.
Franklin crouched and lifted the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel. “About a million miles.”
Then Jorge parted the scrub with his blade and saw the RV. The woman was about thirty feet from it, her pace slower than before, mouth parted as she sucked for air. Her bundle was tucked against her chest, one arm squeezing it even as she reached out for the door on the side of the RV.
Behind her, the Zapheads were gaining ground, maybe fifty feet to close the distance. She made it to the door and tugged on the handle, but it didn’t yield. Jorge realized he and his family might have been in the same position if they’d pursued his plan to camp in it.
The three Zapheads Jorge had seen from the lookout in the compound had been joined by two others. They could have been parishioners of one of the little churches that dotted the mountains, or customers of a barbecue restaurant, or the office staff at Marina’s school. Their clothes were filthy, and three of them were female. The one closest to the RV was a teenaged boy in a sleeveless T-shirt, knees pumping as he moved in for the kill.
The rifle roared and the teenager’s chest blossomed with red spray. He pitched forward and tumbled twice on the pavement and laid still, legs tangled beneath his body, one arm poking upward at an awkward angle.
The other Zapheads froze, looking in the direction of the sudden noise. Jorge wasn’t sure they were visible, but the woman hadn’t hesitated. She hammered on the door of the RV, shrieking in a broken voice. “Let me in! Let me in!”
As the kneeling Franklin leveled the rifle for another shot, the brush parted beside them. A dark face stared out, eyes wide, mouth gaping to reveal yellowing teeth.
“¿Hola?” Jorge said, startled, thinking it was one of Franklin’s friends. Then he remembered that Franklin had no friends.
The woman pushed through the scrub pines and high weeds, moving fast. Franklin, getting ready to fire again, must not have noticed her. She was barely three steps from him. Jorge lifted his machete, hesitating.
What if it’s not one of them?
She spat a rasping hiss, lifting her right arm. Her hand clutched a jagged, mossy stone. Jorge shouted a warning.
Franklin
turned, knocking the rifle barrel against her. She was heavy and solid, the metal thwacking off her flank. She swatted the gun away with ease and she lifted the rock again. Its weight caused her arm to tremble.
“Cut her down,’ Franklin said, his voice even.
“I…” Jorge looked at her, wondering if she had kids.
“It’s not human,” Franklin said. “Cut her!”
The rock descended and Franklin raised one forearm to block the blow. Jorge jumped forward and slung the machete at her wrist. The swing was high and the blade skidded off the stone with a metallic ping. One of her fingers popped into the air, streaming blood. She didn’t utter a sound.
She jammed the stone toward Franklin’s head. Franklin rolled away and Jorge gripped the machete handle with both hands and gave a roundhouse swing.
The blade bit into the back of the woman’s neck and the stone flew from her grasp, grazing Franklin’s cheek and thudding off his shoulder. Sickened, Jorge pulled the machete free of her flesh. The wound yawned open, showing white tendons and a chalky stitch of skull bone.
She emitted a red urk and collapsed. Franklin pawed at her, shoving at her round body, and Jorge realized the rifle was under her. He glanced back at the RV.
The woman was climbing a little access ladder on the back of the vehicle, struggling to keep her balance with one arm wrapped around her bundle. The four remaining Zapheads gathered around the RV, swatting at the air below her feet as if confused by the ladder.
“Go get her,” Franklin said, shoving at the dead Zaphead. “She is human. So is the baby.”
Jorge broke into a run, sweat beading his skin. He held the machete before him like Antonio Banderas as Zorro, although he hated Banderas because Rosa had called the actor “muy sexy.” Blood from the blade blew back against his cheek. A high-pitched, electric keening sang in his eardrums.
He leaped over the low stone wall, which was little more than a decorative border. The woman was now atop the RV, sitting and pushing herself backwards with her feet. A Zaphead dressed like a fisherman, right down to the knee-high rubber wading boots, put an experimental hand on the ladder, as if trying to divine its magic.
The nearest Zaphead turned when Jorge reached the shoulder of the road, and Jorge almost dropped his machete. He recognized the woman. She was the cashier at the farm supply store, a buxom, chain-smoking woman who always wore a field-green John Deere jacket. She had no jacket now, nor a shirt, and her breasts swung like sodden melons in the cups of her dirty bra.
Whenever Jorge bought a load of cracked corn, hay, or fertilizer for the Wilcox place, she’d averted her eyes as he filled out the bill of sale, careful to never make contact with the skin of his fingers. Now she had no problem looking at him: her eyes were like electric-blue drill bits boring into his skull.
“¿Señora?” He faltered but kept stumbling forward, hoping she would say something familiar so he wouldn’t have to cut her. Anything would do, even her side-of-the-mouth, “Back yer truck to the dock and the boys’ll load ‘er.”
But all she could do was hiss, and Jorge realized that was the source of his ringing ears. The others were hissing, too, like the chirrup of crickets in an endless night. But still, Jorge couldn’t strike her. She was a racist, one who almost certainly wished his kind would never cross the border, but she was a human being.
Wasn’t she?
But before he could decide, the top of her head exploded in a thunderclap of gunfire. Her head flew back, her breasts wobbled, and her knees folded as she collapsed on the pavement.
“Move, you jackass!” Franklin hollered. “They’re Zapheads, for Christ’s sake.”
The other Zapheads turned in his direction, although the fisherman had finally figured out how to lift his leg and place it on the bottom rung.
Four to go.
But Jorge realized he didn’t have to kill them. They weren’t acting aggressively, not like the ones back at the Wilcox place. Instead, they were eyeing him with wary interest, much like they had the ladder: as if he was something new and beyond their understanding. He didn’t want to risk it, though, so he chopped low and nicked a hefty wedge out of the calf of a young man in shorts and sandals. The man collapsed, the hiss from the back of his throat rising in pitch and volume.
Pain. So they feel it, despite what Franklin says.
The fisherman had scaled a few more rungs, but the two remaining Zapheads backed away, their eyes glittering like wet diamonds.
“Don’t shoot!” Jorge shouted at Franklin, partly because he wasn’t sure they were a danger and partly because he didn’t fully trust the old man’s aim.
The fisherman continued his climb, moving faster as he figured out the rungs. He was nearly to the top of the RV, where the woman sat in the middle of the roof, hunched as if protecting her baby.
“Hold on,” Jorge said to her, but she didn’t respond. Jorge ran to the rear of the RV and began climbing after him. Jorge gave one machete chop at the man’s rubber heel, but it lifted free just before the blade careened off metal.
The fisherman stood in his tan vest, head lifted as if sniffing the breeze. He put one hand on a small satellite dish to steady himself, then wriggled it back and forth. The steel bar holding the dish gave a grating squeak and tore free. The man lifted the dish like a weapon and turned to face Jorge, who was still three rungs down the ladder.
A shot rang out, whining over Jorge’s head. The Zaphead lifted the dish and Jorge thought about dropping to the ground. But he didn’t think he could climb it again before the mutated fisherman killed the woman and her baby.
Instead, Jorge launched himself forward and rolled. The fisherman paused, the dish still held high, as if he also hesitated to kill. Jorge swung out one of his workman’s boots into the man’s kneecap. The leg folded but didn’t collapse.
The Zaphead hissed in pain, or perhaps rage, and swatted the dish downward as if Jorge were an oversize fly. Jorge raised his machete—just like Banderas would, he thought—and blocked the blow, although the impact drove the back edge of the blade precariously near his face.
On his back, Jorge raised both legs and drove the bottoms of his boots into the Zaphead’s stomach. A chuff of air was driven from the man’s abdomen as the kick lifted him off the RV’s roof and sent him, arms flailing, over the edge. The body struck pavement below with a soggy splat, while the dish clattered a few feet down the road.
Jorge didn’t bother to check the damage. Instead, he went to the young woman, whose face contorted between expressions of fear and gratitude. A tear ran down one grimy cheek. Up close, she looked even younger, maybe seventeen.
This could be Marina in a few years, he thought, even though this woman had reddish-gold hair instead of Marina’s dark Latina features.
“Come,” he said, holding out one hand. “We have a safe place.”
She stared at the gore-clotted machete blade. Jorge looked down at it and wiped it on the leg of his pants. “Only when necessary,” he said.
“Get and come on,” Franklin shouted from the bushes. “Else, I’m going to have to start killing these others.”
Jorge looked down the road. Two more Zapheads had emerged from the forest, although they didn’t move with any sort of speed or menace. Jorge was struck yet again with the notion that they appeared more curious than anything, as if they’d been dropped into an unwelcoming world without a road map.
That, I can understand, mis amigos.
“Come,” Jorge said, more gently this time. “My wife will help care for your child.”
She relaxed a little and peeled back a fold of her bundle. Jorge saw just the tiniest stretch of pink skin before she closed it again and tried to stand. She nearly lost her balance, and Jorge steadied her. The two Zapheads at the rear of the RV had backed away another 10 feet, staring up as if watching a scene on the stage of some theater of the absurd.
“Don’t shoot,” Jorge shouted at Franklin, who now stood by the stone fence, the rifled aimed at the nearest Za
phead. “I don’t think they will hurt us.”
“Then what was Captain Ahab up there doing? Playing badminton?”
“They’re confused.”
“Well, hell, they ain’t the only one.”
Jorge went down the ladder first, offering to carry the baby, but the woman violently shook her head. So Jorge climbed down and stood guard while she made a cautious, awkward descent.
“Go,” Jorge said to the Zapheads, motioning with his machete. “Salir.”
They merely stood with their intensely glittering gazes, although the two new Zapheads kept approaching. When the young mother reached the pavement, Jorge guided her toward Franklin and the trail back to the compound.
“Took you long enough,” Franklin said.
“That is how we do it south of the border, old man,” Jorge said.
“Well, don’t be taking no siestas until we make sure these things don’t follow us, sí?”
It wasn’t until they were halfway up the mountain that Jorge felt his stomach unclench, and he knelt and vomited in the leaves while Franklin stood sentinel.
He didn’t feel very much like Antonio Banderas now.