Free After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) by Scott Nicholson

sparking eyes might offer heightened
vision that would allow it to penetrate the gloom. But it seemed to be paying
attention to something farther up the street, out of Rosa’s sight.
    Why
is it acting that way? As if it is hiding.
    Cathy
whispered behind her, startling Rosa so much she almost swung the club. Then
she realized it hadn’t been Cathy who had spoken. It was Joey.
    “Bad
men,” Joey repeated, wriggling in Cathy’s embrace as if wanting to drop to the
floor and crawl around.
    But
the Zaphead wasn’t a man—it was a woman roughly Rosa’s age, with pale skin and
blonde hair, dressed in a yoga or dancer’s outfit with torn fabric revealing
knees scraped raw.
    Cathy
helplessly shook her head. “He made me come and look.”
    “Don’t
let her see you,” Rosa warned.
    “She
not see,” Joey said in his high, surreal voice. “She knows .”
    Then
another Zaphead came into view, a teen male, arms flailing in the air as he
ran, filthy sneakers flapping as he dodged between vehicles.
    He’s
running from something.
    This
Zaphead ran past the first one, apparently unaware of it, and Rosa expected him
to pass on the sidewalk just yards from them. But the Zaphead veered suddenly
to the right and ducked into the entryway of the shop across the street, a
lawyer’s or accountant’s office with ornate gold lettering in the window. The
Zaphead pressed into the shadows and went motionless, although like the one by
the Honda, he projected an air of taut anticipation.
    “I
don’t like this,” Rosa said. “Maybe we should all go upstairs.”
    Cathy
didn’t answer, but Rosa hadn’t really addressed the comment to her. No, she’d
been speaking to the baby. And she realized she was deferring to Joey, not
exactly giving him an order, but more like testing his limits. If his strange
powers allowed him to perceive things beyond their senses, he could help them
survive.
    Unless
he knew he was a Zaphead and that the last of the human race had declared
all-out war on his kind.
    “No,
no, no,” Joey said, and Rosa could have sworn those chubby cheeks dimpled with
a mischievous grin. “Wait.”
    Marina was back with her Lego, pretending to play with the
plastic blocks, but her neck kept straining to look at the front window. Rosa
should have sent her upstairs where it was safer, but she didn’t want to leave
her daughter alone with that corpse—especially given the way someone had
arranged it like a life-size Barbie doll.
    “There’s
more,” Cathy said, drawing Rosa’s attention back to the street.
    Two
Zapheads dashed into the open, coming from the same direction as the previous
two. One was an old man with only a few strands of wiry black hair stuck to his
bald head, his blue dress shirt featuring dark stains beneath the armpits, his
necktie knotted into a frayed snarl. His ample belly bounced with each step,
undulating with such watery weight that Rosa expected his skinny legs to snap
at any moment. But he kept running, eyeglasses askew across his nose and
dangling by one earpiece.
    The
other was a brown-skinned boy of maybe six, wearing only socks and dirty
underwear. His little legs pumped furiously, and he was somehow able to keep
pace with the old man, both of them approaching the Honda where the female
Zaphead was hidden.
    Then
a shout erupted, echoing off the concrete bones of the dead town.
    “Hold
still, you starry-eyed fuckers!”
    The
two Zapheads kept running. The thunderclap of a gunshot was followed by a
metallic ping , and the rear window of a pickup truck shattered. The old
man slowed a little, letting the boy run ahead. In the next instant, he jerked
violently, a red geyser spouting from his chest. He pitched forward and
collapsed on the asphalt, a pool of blood expanding around him.
    “Got
him!” yelled a second voice.
    Then
the shooter came into view, popping out from behind an SUV and jogging toward
his prey, his rifle at a forty-five degree angle. He wore blue jeans and a moss
green T-shirt,