Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) (13 page)

Little Squeak twisted and flailed in the Zap’s firm grasp but the mutant’s strength was too great and she was very small. Rachel thought of Stephen and Marina and the other children tossed into the cauldron of the apocalypse and rage surged through her. It was the kind of rage that buried her Zap self and became utterly primal.

The girl’s eyes pleaded to Rachel for help, and then must have recognized the same yellow glints in Rachel’s eyes as the Zap’s, because she drew back in horror as Rachel charged.

DeVontay called her name, but Rachel barely heard it, so intent was she on her manic assault. But something shimmered above her and caused her to tilt her head before she launched herself into the Zap.

Silver birds.

Dozens of them.

Hovering at low altitude above the town, lined in formation. There were probably seventy or eighty of them, far more than DeVontay could shoot down. The Zap hadn’t flinched from Rachel’s charge, and she instantly understood who had summoned the birds.

She stopped five feet from the Zap, waiting for the fabricated birds to strike and tear her to pieces. But the birds just maintained position as if waiting for a command.

“The child is ours,” the Zap repeated in the same monotone.

If the Zap had been human, it might’ve cackled like a villainous madman in a movie and delivered the aerial destruction anyway. But Rachel sensed the Zap didn’t desire to waste resources. Just the threat would do the job.

“Squeak!” Tara broke free of Lars and headed for her daughter. A squadron of the birds instantly broke formation and darted toward her, stopping only when she did. All of Stonewall was so quiet Rachel heard only the wind caressing the crisp autumn leaves and the river bubbling between stones.

The child sagged in surrender at this new horror, whimpering, and the Zap cradled her once more. Then it turned and headed south out of town.

Tara took one step forward, and the birds closed an equal distance as if tracking her movements.

“Stay,” Rachel said.

“My baby…”

“We’ll get her. Just not this way.”

The woman who only recently tried to kill her now looked at her with tragic, hopeful eyes, and Rachel hated herself for making a promise she couldn’t keep.

Yes, still human after all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“You coming in or not?” Franklin shouted at the officer. “This ain’t a standing invitation.”

The officer hesitated, glancing at the carnage around him, and then stepped into the cool, dank air of the bunker. Franklin and Stephen shoved the door closed and Franklin swung down the arm bar that fitted the latch.

“My unit…Colleen…I can’t leave them out there,” the officer said, his face vacant as if not processing what he’d just witnessed.

“You have no choice,” Franklin said. “What can you do for them except die? That won’t do them any good.”

From the two silver bars pinned to the man’s collar, Franklin judged him a captain. For all his hatred of the military and all things government, he was smart enough to know the enemy. And on the scale of enemies, the U.S. Marine Corps was several pegs down from Zaps and silver shitterhawks and yellow-eyed woods weasels.

A faint, muffled
dink
came from the other side of the door. “I’d guess that was one of them. Lucky you decided to live.”

The captain’s face went even paler. “Colleen!”

He spun and clawed frantically at the latch. Franklin wrapped him in a bear hug from behind and said, “Nobody’s going out.”

“Have to get her…”

“You wouldn’t make it ten steps,” Franklin growled into the man’s ear. The captain was twenty years younger, but Franklin’s extra weight gave him a slight advantage as long as the man didn’t start throwing punches. “Stephen, take his gun.”

The captain didn’t resist as Stephen took the Beretta, and he relaxed enough that Franklin released him. “She’s my…all my people. I can’t just let them die.”

“You’re not letting them do anything. You didn’t invent the world, and you sure didn’t turn it into the balls-up clusterfuck it’s become in the last five years.”

The captain faced them as if seeing them for the first time. He eyed Stephen, whose M16 was pointed at his chest from five feet away, and then studied Franklin’s grizzled visage. “You took the bunker?”

“Yeah,” Franklin said, not wanting to get into his experiences with the bunker’s former occupants. “Nobody else was using it, so we considered it a tax rebate.”

“You have weapons. You can help me save them.”

“I’m not sure there’s any saving to be done,” Franklin said. He was glad the bunker’s thick earthen cocoon blocked out any screams. Judging from what they’d seen on the monitors, there were plenty of them to go around.

“What the hell are those things?” Stephen asked.

“No idea,” the captain said. “They behave like they’re alive but they’re fabricated. I blew one open and saw circuits and wires and—hey, you were the one on the radio yesterday?”

Stephen nodded. “Yeah. Sorry I lied a little. You know how it goes.”

The captain’s face twisted in bitterness. “If you’d told the truth, we might have saved thirty-four lives.”

“And maybe lost
mine
,” the teen said. “You’re not the only one with people to protect.”

Although only one of you got the job done
. But Franklin saw no need to antagonize the man while his pride was crushed, even if he was government issue.

“Look,” the captain said. “I’m not asking you to go out with me. Just give me one of your M16s and let me slip through. You can lock the door behind me and I’ll never come back.”

“Captain going down with the ship, huh?” Franklin wiped at his crusty beard. The officer’s first instinct had been to save his own ass, which was a pure and human thing to do. But a little reflection had allowed those psychological marketing strategies, the duplicitous tricks of honor and duty and courage, to cloud his emotions. His career brainwashing required him to die for no reason.

“What’s it to you?” the captain said. “You can just sit in your hole until it’s all over, and then come out and scavenge our corpses. I’m sure you’ll find a few cartridges and pocket watches and gold teeth.”

“Hey, we’re on the same side here,” Franklin said. “The best way to beat these shitterhawks is to figure them out. And I don’t see how getting killed by them gets us any closer to winning.”

“It’s not your war.”

“It’s everybody’s war,” Stephen said, shaking his head at Franklin as if rescuing the man was a bad idea. But Franklin had been ready to sit in the telecom room and watch them die until Stephen demanded they do something.

Well, actually, that had been Marina. Stephen just went along with her. And the whole time, little brown Kokona just grinned and grinned.

“Colleen’s out there. And my lieutenant. I owe them.”

Franklin slid his shotgun from his shoulder and offered it as a token of support. “If you’re going out, this scattergun will be more effective than a rifle. Double-ought buckshot ought to knock some of the fuckers from the sky.”

“I’ll go with you,” Stephen said, stepping toward the door.

The boy was just showing off for Marina. Next to honor and duty and courage, whatever was going on in that hard noggin was a hundred times worse. But Franklin wasn’t Stephen’s boss, as the boy so often reminded him.

“You promised DeVontay and Rachel you wouldn’t talk on the radio, and you promised them you wouldn’t go out of the bunker,” Franklin said. “What other promises have you broken?”

“He’s doing what he thinks is best.” Marina came out of Kokona’s room, carrying her M4 carbine. Franklin was glad she’d left Kokona in the room. The captain would have a complete breakdown if he saw a Zap inside a bunker once occupied by the army.

“How many people live here?” the captain asked, not even listening to his own question. He checked the shotgun to make sure a shell was loaded in the chamber, and turned to the door. “All right, open it.”

As Stephen crowded behind the officer, Marina called him. “Don’t go out there.”

Franklin expected a dramatic showdown as Stephen argued his obligation to help his fellow humans, but the boy surprised him.

“I’m bored,” he said to her.

Franklin couldn’t argue with that. He wrenched the restraining latch and swung the arm bar. Grabbing the metal handle welded on the back of the door, he leaned his weight against it and it groaned on its hinges like an arthritic giant waking from a century-long slumber. “Better get back to your room, Marina.”

The captain eagerly gripped the edge of the door and forced the gap wider, then slipped through when the opening reached eighteen inches. Staccato gunfire, shouts, and muffled groans spilled from beyond it. Stephen gave a wave to Marina and said “Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” and then he agilely scooted out of the bunker.

“You’re just going to let them go?” Marina asked Franklin.

“Free men make their own decisions.”

She hurried to the door just as he was swinging it shut again. “What about free women? Or don’t they count?”

“You’re not going out there, little lady.”

“Just like I figured, you
viejo sorompo
. You don’t like rules unless you’re the one making them.”

“I’m not sure what you just called me, Marina, but you should learn respect for elders. It’ll help you get along in the world.”

“I don’t live in your world. I don’t want to live like a
cucaracha
.” She elbowed past him, all five feet, three inches, and ninety-eight pounds of her.

“All right, all right,” Franklin said. “I always heard Spanish people had hot tempers, but I figured it was just a racist stereotype.”

“I’m angry because you’ll let Stephen die to save yourself.”

Franklin sighed. “All right. Damn it, I hope I live to regret this. Give me your gun.”

When Marina didn’t respond, he jerked the carbine from her hand. It was lighter and shorter than the M16s used by everyone else, offering less kick and more maneuverability, especially for someone as slight as Marina. “Loaded?”

“Full clip.”

Trained ‘em well.
“Shut the door behind me and don’t open it come hell or high water.”

As he forced his squishy belly through the narrow gap, Marina touched his arm. “Thank you, Franklin.”

“Don’t mention it.” He popped outside like a cork sliding from a greasy bottleneck, dragging the M4 into position as he oriented himself. He waited until the door was closed—despite her stature, Marina was wiry strong—and then emerged from the protective alcove of rocks at the entrance.

He didn’t know how many soldiers the captain commanded, but judging from the reduced gunfire, at least half of them were dead or disabled. He didn’t see Stephen, but the silvery shitterhawks still swooped and swerved among the treetops. Some of them dribbled blood from their metallic beaks. Franklin shot at a couple, but he might as well have been tossing rocks at hurricanes.

Better find some of these troops and fight with them. And keep Stephen’s nose clean, because he won’t pass up a chance to play hero.

He heard the captain yelling from the forest, and Franklin headed that way, assuming Stephen would stick with the combat vet. The trees likely limited the birds’ navigation, and the survivors must’ve realized their best bet was to dive for cover instead of fighting out in the open.

Someone answered the captain from farther up the ridge, in the rocky outcroppings on the north side of the bunker. Such a vantage point likely offered both protection and a wide view of any possible attacks. The numbers of birds also seemed to have shrunk, meaning the humans weren’t the only ones suffering casualties.

But only one side bleeds.

Franklin came to his first corpse barely fifty feet from the bunker door. She was lying facedown, blood matting her hair, body pocked with puncture wounds. She was dressed in civilian clothes. Franklin’s stomach roiled as he imagined the woman watch the captain enter the bunker and make a run for the same shelter.

Sorry, miss, even God wouldn’t let everybody on the ark.

He stepped over her, wondering if she was the “Colleen” the captain had been so dismayed about. She didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon, so she might not even be part of the unit. Either way, her troubles were over now.

“Franklin!” Stephen called, and he peered through the shifting, sun-dappled forest until he saw the boy. Stephen was amid a group of four soldiers who had formed a ring, using the thick trunks of oaks for concealment as they spat bullets into the sky. The captain was among them, the shotgun delivering a thunderous belch of pellets that knocked two of the shitterhawks to the forest floor.

“Cover my ass,” Franklin said, dashing for them, bracing for a sharp jab to the back of his skull.

If only the damned things would screech or chirp or caw, it wouldn’t be half as creepy.

“Down,” someone shouted, and Franklin didn’t know who said to whom, but he pitched forward into an awkward roll. His bones jarred as he extended his elbows to protect his rifle and avoid shooting himself in the face. He sprawled awkwardly on his back and looked up to see one of the birds skim just a few feet over where he’d stood moments earlier.

Franklin studied the underbelly of the bird as it zipped over him
. The creepy little shitter even has feet. At least it didn’t dive-bomb me with cyberguano.

The shotgun roared again and the bird teetered and then drifted sideways, slamming into a tree and dropping to the ground. As it skittered spastically in the dried leaves, Stephen ran to it and slammed the butt of his rifle against it again and again. “This one’s for my mom.”

The bird shattered with a soft crunch, pieces of it flying. Stephen continued pounding it even as it sank into the mud, one clear miniature eye gazing up at its destroyer as if acknowledging defeat. Franklin had to yell at the teen to break him out of his blind rage.

One of the soldiers leaned against a tree trunk, wiped sweat from his face, and swapped out his clip. Brass jackets lay scattered around him.

Franklin took the man’s place and scanned the sky for a target.

A fierce shriek ripped the air like a dropping warhead, rising in pitch as it drew closer.

What now?

A large shadow passed over a break in the canopy above, and the shriek swelled in intensity. Then the creator of the terrible sound came into view—a vulture, a real one. Or, at least, it had gray feathers and flapped its wings and bobbed its bald head. The rest of it…

Son of a bitch is as big as a winged pig.

“What the hell is that?” the captain said.

“Dead,” Stephen said, raising his rifle.

Franklin lunged forward and pushed his elbow to alter his aim. The single shot sailed across the mountains. “Wait a sec. Let’s see what happens.”

The buzzard-thing flapped into a small squadron of the fake birds, dipping its hooked beak against one of them and snatching it from the air. Pieces glittered in the sun as they fell from the yellow vise of the death grip. The vulture opened its beak and let the ruins fall away, turning toward the next.

It maneuvered even faster than the birds, and despite its ungainly size, it caught them easily, crushing them one by one. Throughout the attack, the buzzard maintained a high-pitched screeching.