After: The Shock Read Online Free Page A

and gore.
    Finally
Pete’s inane shouting coalesced into language. “Crap, man! Oh, crap.”
    Campbell touched his shoulder,
where the Zaphead had exposed his flesh to the air. It wasn’t a deep bite, but
electric fire radiated from it like a herpes sore from hell.
    “She
bit me,” he whimpered.
    Pete
gave the dead Zaphead a kick. “Man up, dude. You were attacked by a chick.”
    Campbell rose to his hands and
knees and looked at the creature that had attacked him. She was petite, about
the size of his mother, with the same black hair. For one horrible moment, he
thought it was his mother—her skull was so caved in that her features
were unrecognizable.
    By
the time he’d risen staggering to his feet, Pete had pulled a clean towel and a
roll of duct tape from the back of the van. “You can’t get through an
apocalypse without duct tape,” Pete said, clamping the towel against Campbell’s wound.
    He
gripped the protruding tail of the tape with his teeth and reeled off a
foot-long section. Campbell clamped his hand over the towel, holding it in
place as Pete applied the patchwork. Blood had trickled down the front of his
shirt, but most of the flow had been staunched.
    “Think
I’ll turn?” Campbell asked.
    “These
ain’t zombies,” Pete said. “Although it did get a little close to the throat.
I’m giving you the heads-up now. If I see fangs sprouting out of your mouth,
I’m punching a stake through your chest.”
    “Point
taken,” Campbell said, but the weak pun didn’t even elicit a grin. The wound
throbbed but Campbell had full movement of his arm. He gave one last look at
the woman, who appeared to be in her forties. Her lipstick was smeared, and a
flap of Campbell’s skin was stuck between her teeth.
    Pete
gave her one final kick, and her body lay there like a sack of mud. “One down,
a million to go.”
    Campbell didn’t like to think
about a million Zapheads crawling across the face of the earth, hiding in
shadowy crevices and waiting for something to kill. Right now, he didn’t want
to think of anything, much less whether his mom was somewhere out there jumping
survivors.
    Pete
rummaged in the back of the van and came away with a fat screwdriver. “You
risked your life to find out what’s in the briefcase, so we may as well have a
look.”
    He
jimmied open the briefcase, banging it with the bloody wrench for emphasis. The
lid popped open and loose cash fluttered out and settled on the highway. It
looked to be tens and twenties, stacks of it.
    “Whoopee,
we’re rich,” Pete said, kicking the briefcase so that more bills lifted in the
wind.
    “You
don’t need to save for the future.” Campbell patted the makeshift bandage.
“You’ll have a future in medicine after this is all over.”
    “Who
said there was an ‘after’?” Pete said.
    Campbell had no answer as they
collected their bicycles and headed west.

 
     
    CHAPTER
THREE
     
    Rachel
didn’t want to wait for sundown.
    While
the vanishing daylight carried a greater risk of exposure, she couldn’t bear
the thought of one of the Zapheads clutching at her in the dark.
    Or
a crowd of them creeping up on her while she dozed.
    Chain
Guy was far up the street. Stumpy had fallen from the bench, and Rachel
couldn’t tell if he’d been beaten or not. He didn’t move, and still, the flies
swarmed.
    Maybe
he died from the infection, or a heart attack, or sudden pneumonia. Something
sanely senseless. Please, God, let somebody around here die by natural causes.
    After
a moment, she added, Except me.
    The
Beard was nowhere in sight, and Rachel decided Chain Guy was chasing him, which
would take them both out of the picture. That sounded like wishful thinking,
but wishful thinking had not changed anything during the past week, so she knew
not to trust it.
    The
street was clear, at least as far as she could tell by sticking her head out
the door. The shadows of light poles and trash cans lay long across the
sidewalk, giving her