Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) (10 page)

Rachel angled the blade so the cut shifted from the guts into the heart.

I hope this bitch even HAS a heart.

Her waist was flooded with warm, viscous fluid. The animal slid down the blade and came to a quivering rest atop her, its neck snug against hers as if it was a precious pet nuzzling her in affection.

As the dog’s last breath drifted across her skin in a sigh of farewell to a world it never should’ve walked, Rachel resisted an insane urge to pat it on the head and say, “Good doggie.”

The giddiness of her adrenaline rush faded as a fresh volley of gunshots erupted. Survival wasn’t a one-time event.

She struggled and squirmed from beneath the dead beast, her clothes coated with blood. She retrieved her M16 and found enough of a clear patch of cloth on her jacket sleeve to wipe some of the grue from her face.

She pushed through the brambles and goldenrod to the riverbank. The bearded man stood waist-deep in the river, leaning against the current and trying to aim his pistol. The two Zaps stood at the water’s edge as if unsure what to make of the moving liquid mass.

Where’s DeVontay?

The Zaps didn’t detect her, and her crashing through the brush was muted by the river’s gushing roar. The man fired a wobbly shot and it
dinged
off one of the Zap’s suits. So the material was bulletproof, at least for small-caliber fire.

She dropped to one knee and steadied the rifle the way Franklin had taught her. She sighted at the head of the nearest Zap a dozen yards away.

No going back. If you kill, you’ve made your final choice.

If the Zaps will let you go.

But before she could slide her finger inside the trigger guard, a hand gripped her shoulder. DeVontay whispered, “They can’t get him. They’re afraid of the river.”

“Where have you been?”

“Where did all this blood come from?”

“The last thing that snuck up on me. Take that as a lesson.”

“Damn. I thought you were right behind me.”

Rachel lowered her weapon. “Too bad we don’t have ESP. You could have shared my near-death experience.”

“I’ve had plenty of my own.”

The man gave up taunting and firing at the Zaps and made his way to the middle of the river. At one point, he slipped and went under, and Rachel expected him to be swept downstream. But he emerged a few seconds later, apparently anchoring against an underground rock.

He flung the water from his hair and shouted at the Zaps again. “Come on, you starry-eyed fucks. Afraid of a little mud puddle?”

Maybe they’re more afraid of what’s UNDER the water.

But Zaps had never shown fear. They reacted when attacked, but otherwise remained coldly calculating and aloof. Their sociopathy only seemed like an aberration to those with a social sense—one based a human version of society.

Which made this behavior even stranger. The Zaps must have changed drastically in the years since Rachel had last encountered them.

“Why is he taunting them?” Rachel asked.

“Maybe he’s luring them away from something. Or somebody.”

“Looks like he’s smart enough to not need our help. The Zaps aren’t going after him.”

DeVontay pointed to the sky. “You sure about that?”

A small flock of metal birds came out of the air, streamlined wings gleaming in the sun. The Zaps turned their heads in the direction of the birds as if issuing silent commands. And those commands appeared to involve the man in the river.

Without thinking, Rachel aimed her M16, judging their airspeed and leading them by a few feet. She squeezed off a series of three-round bursts. DeVontay joined her, and sheer quantity of bullets made up for their amateur marksmanship.

Two of the birds shattered and dropped in smoking tailspins, and one was knocked out of formation but continued its descent, wavering unsteadily but still heading for its flesh-and-blood target.

The man saw the birds just before they arrived, and he dove into the turgid water. The birds swooped low enough to skim the foam and froth, but apparently they harbored the same aversion to water as their masters did.

As the birds gained altitude for another run, Rachel elbowed DeVontay. “Looks like we got somebody’s attention.”

The two Zaps tromped along the riverbank toward them, moving swiftly but with utterly blank faces. If only they showed outrage or anxiety, Rachel could have hesitated. But there was no sign of the humans they had once been.

DeVontay swiveled his weapon and leaned his shoulder against a slender locust tree. “Aim for the head.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Lars broke from the water a second time, he imagined his next gulp of air was as sweet as the first breath of any newborn baby’s.

The river’s bottom was slick, algae coating the stones, and the depth varied with every step. He wedged his boot against a corrugated shelf and glanced about for those damned birds. He knew the Zaps wouldn’t follow him into the river, but he’d forgotten about the birds.

And what if they’ve got metal FISH?

But he didn’t want to think about what swam in the waters around him. Tentacles, fins, and eels, oh my.

He stayed submerged below the neck, reducing the available target size. He didn’t know what kind of damage a bird could inflict if it struck him, but those beaks were as fat as a spear and several inches long. And they flew as fast as hawks, meaning the momentum would easily penetrate his skull.

He blinked the water from his eyes. The birds were hovering a hundred feet above him, three of them in a triangular pattern. One wobbled against the wind with a drooping wing. Lars braced for them to dive, ready to time his next breath and go under again.

But they circled as if unsure of their mission, so Lars risked a glance at the Zaps on the riverbank. The two people who had shot at the bird in Stonewall were barely visible in the brush, their guns poking out from red vines and yellow leaves.

No human contact for months, and now they’re all over the place. Maybe we’re breeding like rats.

The water had been bracingly cool at first, and then had gone to bone-chilling cold. Now numbness seeped into his limbs, and Lars worried that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his balance. He could just take a deep breath and float downstream, but he wasn’t sure he could float with the axe attached to his belt.

He’d lost his pistol during the last dive, but the axe was like a talisman. He’d almost rather drown than surrender it after the heavy weapon had kept him alive for so long.

The two people on the bank opened fire on the Zaps, who didn’t slow their approach. Lars made the connection between the directionless birds and the Zaps’ new target. Apparently the bastards weren’t so evolved that they could engage in multiple attacks at the same time.

The guns rattled in short bursts, and a geyser of blood and flesh spewed from one of the Zap’s skulls. It dropped onto the muddy bank and rolled toward the river, sprawling in a splash facedown in the water. Lars half expected it to melt away to vapor like the Wicked Witch of the West in the “Wizard of Oz,” but both of those images were mere fantasies. It bobbed on the surface for a moment and then was tugged away by the current.

The remaining Zap showed no response to the loss of its companion, although it turned its head toward the sky as if summoning the birds. The flock assembled into formation and dove.

Instead of shifting their aim to the birds, they fired at the Zap. Their heavier firepower seemed to do the job that Lar’s Glock couldn’t, and the Zap staggered backward. When it collapsed, Lars saw a scattered series of rips in the silver suit, red liquid glistening from the wounds.

Just like the one we de-skulled in the house. For all they’ve changed, they still bleed like humans.

Lars didn’t want to think about what would happen if they evolved beyond the need for blood. Maybe they would just make facsimiles of themselves as they had done with the birds. A million marching machines striving for ultimate efficiency, eradicating all obstacles.

The birds stalled in their descent like planes with sputtering engines. They wheeled in the air far from their targets and then drifted to the bare branches of a weeping willow. They roosted for a moment, and then rose in unison and headed south, their gleaming bodies quickly lost against the white clouds.

One of the humans—the black man—was yelling something, but Lars couldn’t hear him over the wash of current. The other, smaller one with the chestnut hair hung back, changed her clip with practiced precision, then swept her rifle barrel around like she was ready to take on the whole world if necessary.

Lars eyed the other shore, wondering if he’d be better off leaving this town and these people. He’d done just fine on his own, and in his experience, making friends, acquaintances, or enemies usually ended up with the same result—death and soul-crushing despair. The slow decay of solitude almost seemed preferable.

But these people had guns, and he’d already risked his life to save others. The sacrifice had revived in him a brief flicker of humanity, and he couldn’t surrender yet. The Zaps had stolen most of their attributes and sought to improve upon them, but humans had yet to cede the trait called “hope.” As long as that still existed, the world was still worth fighting for.

He made his way toward the people on the bank, fighting against the current. Something tugged at one of his pants legs, and he kicked weakly. He couldn’t defend himself against submerged assailants. The best he could do was to remain a moving target.

The faster, the better.

He pulled his axe from its double loops of leather and used it as ballast, dipping it into the water to hook rocks and drag himself forward. When the water was knee-deep, he blew the collected liquid from his nose and stood. The black man held out his arm to help him, although the man was smart enough to stand ankle-deep so his boots offered some protection.

Lars fell forward and grabbed the man’s hand just as his pants were tugged again. The man leaned back and pulled him the last few feet onto the bank, where they both lay panting.

“You’re crazy as hell,” the man said.

“No crazier than you guys.”

The woman leaned the butt of her rifle against her hip and let the barrel angle up to the side as if posing for a magazine cover. She was thirtyish and attractive, but her face had a hard edge as if hope in her had been all but vanquished. The he saw her eyes.

The man must have sensed Lars’s tension, or maybe it was the way Lars squeezed his axe handle. “Don’t worry. She’s one of us.”

She tilted her rifle down until it pointed at the dead Zap. “I did that for you. Any questions?”

Lars had a thousand of them, but a muddy riverbank in the high noon of Doomsday wasn’t the time and place for them. But he did have one: “That third Zap. Where is it?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” the man said, rolling to his feet. “I’m DeVontay, and that’s Rachel.”

“Lars,” he replied, again taking the man’s hand and letting him help.

As Lars stood, water dripping from his clothes, DeVontay pointed at his pants. “Good thing you weren’t wearing skinny jeans.”

Lars’ baggy cargo pants had two large gashes in them, with exposed pale skin showing. There was a nick just below his shin, a thin trickle of blood leaking down. “I guess it’s a good thing I got out of there before they smelled the blood.”

“When did you figure out the river thing?” Rachel asked.

“Three years ago. A pack of Zaps chased us back in Asheville, and we crossed a river to get away. They didn’t follow us for some reason, so I figured they hate water.”

“You said ‘us.’ How many are with you?”

“None of that crowd’s left alive, as far as I know. Things went bad and I high-tailed it out of there.” Lars didn’t want to detail his experiences of hope and betrayal. He was sure they’d gone through their own. He also wasn’t going to let them know about Tara and Squeak until he knew he could trust them.

They risked their lives to save yours, and you still don’t trust them? So you’re THAT guy, huh?

“That dead Zap in town. That was you?” DeVontay asked.

Lars lovingly tapped his axe blade. “Yep,” he lied.

“You might be useful. We haven’t encountered Zaps in years, and it sounds like we could benefit from your education.”

“And I guess I could benefit from your rifles, since I lost my Glock in the river.”

“We’d better find that other Zap before it summons the birds,” Rachel said, turning away and heading back up the path.

DeVontay saw her torn backpack and said, “Looks like somebody else had a close shave.”

“You’ll see,” she said, disappearing into the thicket.

DeVontay shook his head and motioned for Lars to follow her. Lars checked the sky and saw only a normal—well, an
apparently
normal, since that adjective was as near extinction as the human race—flock of sparrows flapping into the wind toward the west.

The two men lingered over the supersized canine that lay disemboweled along the path. DeVontay knelt and poked at the corpse and then plucked a swatch of fabric from its jaws. It matched the gray canvas of Rachel’s backpack.

“She could’ve died, and I didn’t even hear,” DeVontay said.

“Looks like she can take care of herself,” Lars noted.

DeVontay turned the animal’s head. “You’re not getting my glass eye, you son of a bitch,” he said to the dead animal, letting its head drop into the mud with a thump.

Rachel was already on the road and heading back into town by the time Lars and DeVontay emerged from the thicket. DeVontay called for her to wait, and when she ignored him, DeVontay muttered, “Hard-headed woman.”

“The best kind,” Lars said. In truth, that was the only kind that could survive under these conditions. Aside from the Zap in her eyes, she behaved like a human, and this one-eyed, bearded black dude seemed to get along with her okay.

But he didn’t like the direction she was headed. He’d left Tara and Squeak in the outfitters’ shop when the Zaps came, and if they had listened to him, they were still hiding in the dusty corner behind a counter full of fishing gear and lifejackets.

He didn’t know Tara much at all, but considering the way she’d cleaved that Zap’s skull, she might have a hard-headed streak of her own. Harder than the Zap’s anyway.

If Rachel and DeVontay forayed into the heart of town again, that might draw more Zaps and their fine fake-feathered friends. And one of the mutant freaks was still unaccounted for.

“Lars,” DeVontay said. “With a name like that, I’m guessing you’re not from around here.”

“Norwegian. That’s why I’m so white I can hide in a basket of laundry. But I’ve been in the U.S. since I was a kid, so I’ve lost the accent.”

“I have the opposite problem. Dark enough for midnight but still got the gangsta style. How did you end up here?”

Lars didn’t know whether DeVontay meant “here” as in “Stonewall,” or “here” as in the wild post-apocalyptic landscape. Rachel was coming distressingly close to the outfitters’ shop, and he wondered again about her glittering eyes. If she had some sort of telepathic sense, he’d never know. She could be leading them into a trap.

Never mind that she’d just killed a Zap and damaged their birds. Zaps would sacrifice for the good of their kind. Death to them wasn’t the end; it was the means to an end.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” Lars said. “No telling where that last Zap is hiding.”

“What’s the hurry? We can handle one of them. Besides, we need to find some more food, and maybe a firearm to go with that axe of yours. In case you haven’t noticed, the Middle Ages are over.”

“So what’s this, a New Dark Age?”

“Depends on which side you’re on, I guess. Zaps seem to be getting along just fine. Manufacturing those freaky-assed birdy things and those overgrown bullet-resistant sleepers. Who knows what else they’re cooking up?”

“And those hairstyles. Like something out of Dr. Seuss’s worst nightmare,” Lars said. Rachel was actually going
into
the shop. Like she knew Tara and Squeak were hiding there. What was her game?

“We’d better catch up,” Lars said, breaking into a jog, holding his axe so its handle didn’t bang against his thigh.

Soft thunder rolled across the hills, thunder that wasn’t caused by the atmospheric pressure increase and air expansion of lightning.

An unnatural thunder.