Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) (16 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Do you trust them?” Tara asked Lars.

They sat on the couch as dusk swelled around them and the shadows of the room grew out from the corners. Rachel and DeVontay had taken one of the bedrooms for the night, and Lars imagined they had chosen privacy for a reason—either sex or sabotage.

“He seems cool,” Lars said. “And he tried to help me at the river. I didn’t need his help. I knew the Zaps wouldn’t follow me into the water, but at least he had the instinct, you know? Good Samaritan and all that shit.”

“That glass eye’s creepy, but nowhere near as creepy as
her
eyes.” Tara sat on the far edge of the couch, leaving a few feet between them, a clear sign that Lars should keep his distance.

What does she think, she’s the last woman on earth and I haven’t been with a woman in more than a year?

Both of those things might well be true. But he wasn’t all that attracted to her. She was young, that was a plus, and she was kind of cute with that whole hippie look, but he’d never dated airheads before Doomsday and he saw no reason to start now. It wasn’t like he was going to donate his sperm at every opportunity to help preserve the human race.

He wasn’t so sure the race should be preserved. Too many of them were murderers.

“She’s not like the Zaps at all, though,” Lars said. “Besides her eyes. They have square builds with hardly any shape, and she’s got plenty of shape.”

Tara snorted. “So that’s all that matters to you, huh?”

“That’s just a scientific observation, Tara. I’m not cutting in on that action. She and DeVontay seem pretty tight.”

“And just what kind of man dips his wick into a mutant? You say he’s cool, but we don’t have any idea what kind of power she wields over him.”

Lars braced himself for more of her pseudo-Christian mysticism. “Look, I don’t understand this mutant stuff any more than you do. It looks like they can control those bird things, and they stopped us from going after Squeak. But at the same time, we killed some of them and it’s not like they’ve sent a Zap army in here to seek revenge.”

“Not yet.”

“No, I don’t think they roll that way. You saw them. Death is just not that big a deal to them.”

“And that makes me worry even more about Squeak. What if they took her as a guinea pig? What if they use her in some sort of horrible experiment?”

“Don’t think that way,” he said, regretting mentioning the girl. “Like we said, we’re going to get her back.”

He’d found a six-pack of Bud Lite under the bottom shelf of the pantry, and he’d waited until the couple went to bed to retrieve it. Six wouldn’t be much good split among all of them, especially light American beer, but one or two people could catch a buzz.

He fished one from the plastic ring and offered it to Tara. “Might knock the edge off,” he said.

She waved him away and chewed thoughtfully on a thumbnail like a chipmunk nibbling an acorn.

So much for the hippie act.

“Cheers,” he said, hoisting the can in a toast and then popping the top. Foam boiled over and ran down his arm, and the stink of hops wasn’t as inviting as he remembered. He took a drink. It was warm and weak. Apparently canned domestic beer didn’t age well.

“How did you and Squeak make it all these years?” he asked. “I mean, it’s hard enough to make it on your own, but you have my respect for getting her through it.”

“I haven’t gotten her through it,” Tara said. “My job’s not done until she’s settled with a family of her own. Carrying on, that’s what we have to do.”

“But you had to have a strategy. You gave birth in Greensboro, but now you’re a hundred miles west. It’s not like you took the train.”

“I guess it’s not too much difference from yours. Run, hide, eat, sleep, pray. Repeat every day for the rest of eternity.”

Lars took a big gulp of the beer, then a follow-up sip. It definitely got better as he went. Or else the piss-water had scorched his taste buds into tiny bits of coral.

“Did you ever have any encounters?” Lars asked. “With Zaps, I mean?”

“Sure. In the beginning, when they were running around tearing people apart and setting things on fire, I had to kill a couple to protect my daughter. But hiding was always the better option. Even six months after the storms, when they started congregating and moving in herds, I was always able to avoid them. If you watch them, you can figure out how they’re changing.”

“I never did that,” Lars said. “The people I was with, we always fought them. And they always fought back.”

“See,” Tara said, almost sneering in triumph. “That was your mistake. If you’d observed them, you’d figure out they changed during that first year. Instead of killing everything that moved, they only killed what attacked them. They were imitating what they observed in human behavior and speech.”

“So that’s why they’d repeat stuff, huh?” Lars was annoyed, and he wasn’t sure who to blame for it. He’d never thought to analyze Zap behavior, even though it was clearly changing. His mindset had always been to evade or kill, with no in between. He hit the beer hard.

“You hear how they talk now,” Tara said. “Almost like machines or computers. I don’t know whether that’s because they don’t get much human exposure and experience anymore, or whether they figure they’re better than us now and we’re not such good role models.”

“Then why bother with words at all? If they really do communicate with ESP and stuff, what’s so great about English? Maybe the bastards aren’t so smart after all, they just like spazzing around in disco suits with Moe Stooge hair.”

Lars was feeling good from the beer so he opened the second can, figuring he could feel even better. Tara rose from the couch and looked out the window, where the darkness had drifted from the forest to begin taking the house. “It will be full dark soon. Do you think his plan will work?”

“Sure,” Lars said, although he didn’t think any such thing. If he was a practical man, he’d want to stay right here for a while, because the pantry still offered a few days’ worth of canned food and some stale corn chips and dried macaroni that just might contain enough preservatives to be edible.

But what else did he have going on? Solitude was bearable, but it also brought monotony. Aside from occasional attacks from mutant animals and starved natural predators, Doomsday mostly offered the repetitive tedium that Tara had already mentioned: Run, hide, sleep, eat, although he’d not wasted any time on prayers.

He chugged the second beer, the last bit of it trailing down his beard. He belched and tossed the can across the room, where it
pinged
off the wall.

“You’re obviously not a believer,” Tara said.

Lars was in a good enough mood to challenge her judgment. He lifted his axe, enjoying its heft. “I used to believe in all kinds of things—the Easter Bunny, Bigfoot, the Ghost of Elvis—but now I just believe in the nature of things.”

“And just what
is
the nature of things?”

“It’s beyond us. Not to be understood. The sun blows a fuse here and shoots energy there, and here’s this small ball of rock minding its own business ninety-three-million miles away and suddenly it’s all turned upside down. The natural law gets rewritten and even the science goes to shit. Along comes a new science. New creatures, new people.”

Tara turned, anger deepening the shadows of her eyes. “They’re not people. Don’t you dare call them that.”

Lars waved his axe in the air as if dismissing her. “That’s all just rhetoric, dude.”

“I’m not a dude.”

“Whatever.” He popped another beer. His head swam a little, but he felt giddy and light. “We’ll get her back,” he said out of nowhere, and that set Tara off again.

“Like the Zaps are just going to let us walk into their castle and demand to see the king?”

“If you believe Rachel, their kings and queens are all like nine months old. I think we can handle that.”

He punctuated the sentence by driving the axe into the coffee table, cleaving the wooden surface nearly in half. The table folded with a great splintering and a jangle of empty cans and dirty utensils. He delivered a couple of sideways chops to shear off the legs as it fell.

“What the hell’s going on?” DeVontay said, appearing at the bedroom door, shirtless and with his rifle in hand. “I thought a monster was busting in.”

“Just getting psyched for the journey,” Lars said.

DeVontay saw the beer cans on the floor. “That’s not going to help. We need to be sharp.”

Lars ran a thumb down his axe blade and showed DeVontay the runnel of blood. “Can do, Chief.”

“Liquid courage, huh?”

“What if this is my last night on Earth?” Lars asked. He’d bought into DeVontay’s plan for Tara’s sake, but that didn’t mean he was part of his and Rachel’s team. He didn’t need a boss. He didn’t really even need a woman and a child dragging him down. On the other hand, what else did he have going on? “Might as well enjoy it.”

“It’s nearly dark,” Tara said. “Are we going or not?”

Rachel emerged from behind DeVontay, fully outfitted with her torn backpack and rifle. “Let’s saddle up.”

DeVontay tugged at her ragged and frayed pack strap. “Why didn’t you get a new one in the shop?”

“This is my good-luck charm. Already saved my life once.”

DeVontay left to finish dressing while Tara and Lars collected their gear. Lars was glad to be moving. If he’d sat around for much longer, he would’ve gone drowsy despite the anxiety of their looming mission. He slipped a couple of the beers into his pack when the others weren’t looking.

That’s MY good-luck charm.

Tara didn’t have a weapon, and she’d refused Rachel’s attempts to give her a hunting knife. Lars didn’t understand the woman’s sudden passivity—she’d shown plenty of violent tendencies in hacking that Zap to death. Maybe she was one of those holy rollers who talked the talk and lived by the Word until their own ass was at stake.

They could barely see each other’s faces in the living room, aside from the lambent radiance of Rachel’s eyes. They instinctively gathered around it like a prehistoric campfire, although Lars still didn’t trust their glittering turbulence. But now that he’d had a few beers, they were much more fascinating to gaze into.

When DeVontay was ready, they gathered at the door and DeVontay summarized the plan again. “I’ve done this before and it works. We’ll take two canoes, me and Tara in one and you two in the other. Stay to the middle of the river, and with any luck these bird things don’t have infrared or night vision, and we can slip right on downstream. The road hooks onto 421 and the river hits 421 just west of Wilkesboro.”

“So if the Zap keeps walking like it was, we have a straight shot and should get to the Yadkin River Bridge a good hour or two before it does,” Rachel said.

“That’s assuming the map’s right, the Zap’s headed that way, the birds are roosting, and no slimy tentacles slide up out of the water and yank us down for dinner,” Lars said.

“The other option is to get on our magic carpets and just fly in shooting space lasers from the holodeck,” DeVontay said. “Haven’t heard you come up with no better plan.”

“Let’s go,” Tara said. “Every minute we waste is some terrible new torture those demons might be inflicting on Squeak.”

DeVontay opened the door to the night, although the sky shimmered with the aurora’s alternating bands of iridescent violet and brilliant green. “Remember, straight to the shop to pick up the canoes, and then the river.”

What about her?” Lars said, waving his axe at Rachel.

“What about her?” DeVontay asked.

“Her eyes. The birds will see those lights from a mile away. Any monsters and Zaps will, too.”

Rachel pulled a pair of wraparound aviator shades from her breast pocket and put them on. “See no evil,” she said with a sarcastic smirk.

They headed outside, Lars mentally humming a drunkenly off-kilter version of that pop song from a long-ago era by some rock star that nobody remembered.

“Sunglasses at night...blah blah blah...Sunglasses at night…words I can’t remember, yeah…fuck it…”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“You’re our guests,” Franklin said to Captain Antonelli. “Unless you’re going back on your word and you folks really are the totalitarian assholes I’ve always said you were.”

They sat in the telecom room, the lights low to conserve power. The captain chewed on a stale cigar he’d found in the supply closet. The stogie had likely been the property of Franklin’s long-ago nemesis, Sarge Shipley, who’d seized power during a coup and then ran his own little dictatorship out of the bunker. Until the Zaps got his ass.

“But this changes things,” Antonelli said. “Civilians in the bunker, well, we can overlook that, because ultimately we’re all on the same team with the same mission. But when we come to find you’re not only
harboring
the enemy, you’re practically conspiring with them, then it’s hard to see the situation as anything other than treason.”

Franklin had moved fast when Kokona came on the scene, because several soldiers had drawn their guns and aimed at the baby. He might not have reacted the same way if Marina hadn’t been holding her. After all, he wasn’t completely sure Kokona didn’t have some connection to the shitterhawk attack.

Despite his doubts about the Zap infant, he wasn’t about to let the U.S. government serve as judge, jury, and executioner here. This was no longer their turf. And until Rachel rendered an opinion, nobody was condemning anybody on his watch.

Kokona was currently in Marina’s room, where Stephen stood guard. The teen was just as defiant as Franklin on the matter, and Franklin couldn’t help but feel a touch of grandfatherly pride.

The boy would be no match if the Goon Squad decided to destroy the little infant, but for now the soldiers seemed content to heal, rest, and enjoy the security of the various beds and cells. The bunker had an entirely different feel now, of thinner air and more unpleasant odors, reminding Franklin why he’d never liked crowds, cities, or people in general.

“How can you commit treason when there’s no government in place,” Franklin said. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole world’s unclaimed territory. And we just happened to plant our flag right here. We were here before you came along.”

Of course, that’s just what the Sioux said in the Midwest, and the Mexicans in Texarkana, and the Inca in Peru, but old flags got burned and new ones got planted.

“This isn’t just about our immediate security here in the bunker,” the captain said. “This is about winning our world back.”

Franklin looked at the door to make sure no was eavesdropping. Then he leaned forward. “Look, I’m not saying I’m crazy about her. But you know what they say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

The captain half smiled and then nodded. “Ah, so you’ve been scouting her out, huh?”

“Let’s just say I probably know more about the Zaps than your New Pentagon medal-polishers do.” Franklin summarized the battle in Newton and how Shipley’s unit had attacked the Zaps there, leaving the town a smoking ruin with few walking away. He even credited Kokona with helping his and Rachel’s group escape, which was probably true, although that part made their survival seem just a little too convenient.

“Maybe you’re not the only one keeping your friends close and your enemies closer,” Antonelli said.

“Or maybe things are exactly what they look like.” Franklin wanted to prepare Antonelli for Rachel’s arrival so he wouldn’t have to wade through this same bullshit again, but he wasn’t even sure she was still alive. The captain would likely deem her a “double spy” and issue a death sentence.

Maybe his defense of Kokona was just an advance battle over Rachel’s fate. Franklin had given up any illusions of a civilization restored to its former glory. He was at peace with the idea this was as good as it was going to get.

“Then you won’t mind if I interrogate her,” Antonelli said. “We’ve received intel that the mutant babies were their tribal leaders, but it sounded a little too incredible to believe. One of our assignments is to pass along any discoveries we make about them. We’ve had some helicopter flyovers, and even a few surveillance drones of our own, but we get limited visual contact. And of course sat-comms are blown to hell, so the CIA’s eyes in the sky are as blind as a headless bat.”

“Well, I can only tell you what I saw and what my granddaughter saw. The Zap babies communicate telepathically and then can kind of give orders to the whole tribe. But this was years ago, remember. Who knows how much they’ve changed since then?”

“Has this Kokona changed any? She’s obviously not grown physically.”

“Well, she’s smarter, for sure. She’s memorized every book in my library, and she remembers everything she learned from the other Zaps in Newton, where they were draining knowledge from every human they could find. So they’re like rocket scientists on supersteroids.”

Antonelli pushed at the fabricated bird on the table, which had been disassembled into components, although the covering material had proven nearly impossible to rend apart. The tubing, wires, circuits, and clear lenses suggested some kind of computerized operating system, although there was no real motor inside. And the materials were not really metals but some kind of synthetic amalgam.

“If they built this, then they’re geniuses beyond anything we can imagine,” the captain said. “Tidewater, my ordnance man, says the whole thing has an organic feel, as if this was a living creature. And the birds assembled and attacked as if following externally issued orders, but were clever enough to act independently once they selected a specific target or were cut off from the others.”

“Yeah, and they acted like they enjoyed killing a whole hell of a lot,” Franklin said. “That’s no machine.”

“If we go with the ESP theory, then they could very well have individual brains, but they were probably directed by a Zap.” The captain held up a flexible bit of dark red tubing that looked suspiciously like a fat artery. “I’m almost scared to touch it. If it’s organic, it might even carry disease.”

“Avian flu from hell,” Franklin said. “The newspapers would love that, if there were any newspapers left.”

He glanced at the monitors, grateful the screens carried no audio links. One of the cameras had been knocked out, probably from a collision with a bird, but the two remaining monitors offered up grim gray footage of the vultures indulging in a feast, lit only by the watery radiance of the aurora.

“About that interrogation,” Antonelli said.

“I don’t like that word. Sounds pushy. If you want to talk to the baby, that’s fine, but keep it friendly. And just you. I don’t want a bunch of dirty-faced thugs with blood on their hands playing ‘Good cop, bad cop.’”

“As you like,” Antonelli said. “It’s your party.”

Franklin led the way through the bunker to Marina’s room. The lights were dimmed almost to nothing in order to preserve the batteries. Many of the doors leading onto the hallway were open, and soldiers sprawled on the bunks, their boots off and their weapons leaning against the walls. Some of them sported red-spotted bandages, and a tall, hatchet-faced woman wore a sling on one arm.

Got our asses kicked by some wind-up rubber duckies, and yet we think we can march right into their cities and demand back the keys to the world. God help us all.

He knocked softly on Marina’s door. “Stephen, it’s me.”

The door opened a crack and half of Stephen’s face appeared there. His eyebrow arched when he saw the captain and he said, “What does
he
want?”

“Just a little chat with Kokona. No strong-arm stuff, I told him we wouldn’t stand for that, but just in the interest of keeping everything out in the open.”

Stephen turned as Marina spoke, then Kokona, but Franklin couldn’t make out the words. Antonelli paced impatiently behind him, tapping the cigar against his teeth. Finally the door opened and Franklin followed Antonelli in. Stephen closed the door and stood with his back against it, M16 across his chest.

Marina sat on her bed beside Kokona, who was wrapped in blankets and wore a one-piece sleeper with little pink booties that Rachel had knitted for her. Kokona looked barely a year old, although the age of Asian babies, and often Asians in general, was difficult for Franklin to judge. But Antonelli gazed down at her as if she had just popped out of the womb, a stranger that he wished he’d never met.

“Hello, Kokona,” the captain said.

“Where is your gun?”

Antonelli glanced at Franklin, startled by the high voice and clear diction issuing from that precocious little mouth even though he’d already heard her speak.

Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?

“I’m here as an ambassador,” Antonelli said. “Not an enemy.”

Kokona giggled. “How dumb do you think I am, Mr. Marine Captain?”

“We have a right to be here. This bunker was paid for and developed by the United States government on public property. We established that right under recognized laws long before your kind…uh, came to our land.”

Franklin almost giggled at that himself. “What the captain’s trying to say is we know the Zaps are powerful, and we know you could wipe us out if you wanted, and we’re grateful to have whatever land you’ve allowed us to populate. It’s understandable if we see you as a threat because we only exist through your forbearance. Also, we don’t know anything about you, and we’re scared of what we don’t understand. And, oh yeah, freedom and all that shit.”

“We all want peace,” Kokona said. “What intelligent being wouldn’t? But I’m afraid you’re talking to the wrong mutant. I don’t have any contact with the others of my kind. For all I know, I’m not even one of them anymore. They’ve likely evolved far beyond anything I understand.”

“Can you tell me what you know?” Antonelli asked. “Where are they? What are their defensive and offensive capabilities? And what’s their intent?”

“You want me to judge them based on human standards?” Kokona shook her head. “Our motives are not based on conquest or confrontation. Admittedly, when we were new—after the conversion due to a bombardment of electromagnetic radiation—we reverted to primal, violent states, but that was necessary. The slate had to be wiped clean so new truths could be written.”

“You killed thousands of us,” Antonelli said. “Maybe tens of thousands. You nearly drove us to extinction.” He balled his fists and took a step forward. “And you call that ‘wiping the slate clean’?”

Marina put a protective arm around Kokona, but the baby only giggled again. “I didn’t kill anybody, Captain. After all, I can’t even walk.”

I didn’t expect her to offer up any useful information, but now she’s just flat-out taunting him. That’s probably what she thinks of all of us, even Rachel.

Franklin wondered if he’d make a mistake by letting Antonelli in the bunker at all. Sure, he’d have a few dozen deaths on his conscience, but he would’ve justified it the way he always did: intrusive Big Brother, sticking its nose where it had no business, and getting that nose bloodied.

But Kokona was revealing herself in ways she never did when Franklin talked to her alone. He often had the feeling she was just playing a complicated game for her own amusement. Franklin didn’t necessarily suspect evil intent, just a childlike view of the stakes.

She would apparently get by just fine no matter who ended up running the world.

“What about these birds?” Franklin asked. “Do you know anything about them?”

Marina and Stephen shared a glance, as if they’d been talking about the subject before the men arrived. “She doesn’t know anything,” Marina said, too quickly.

That girl’s a very bad liar.

“Let her answer,” Antonelli said.

Kokona smiled at Marina, eyes dancing with curls of red and orange light. “I can speak for myself, Marina.”

Then, to the captain, “I don’t know anything.”

Franklin had no idea whether Kokona was a better liar than Marina.

“I lost twenty-three good soldiers today,” Antonelli said. “Right now they’re outside lying on the ground, serving as vulture bait. And when the vultures are done, who knows what will come out of the woods to clean up the scraps?”

“I regret the deaths, Captain,” Kokona said. “We view death differently than you humans. Of course, I can’t speak for my people, since I might not even belong with them anymore, but perhaps if you accept it as a simple state of transformation—even
transcendence
—then you won’t feel as much pain and guilt and sorrow.”

“Don’t you dare sit there and mock my people,” Antonelli said, his face reddening and twisting in rage. This time Franklin had to step between them to keep the captain from charging the bed. “What kind of sick little monster are you?”

Marina scooped up Kokona and held the baby protectively to her chest, glaring at Antonelli as if
he
was the monster here.

As Antonelli stormed to the door, Stephen stepped aside, shaking his head ruefully at Franklin.

“Captain!” Kokona called, just as he was about to leave the room.

Franklin braced for a fresh confrontation, but Kokona said, “Your man with the injured leg. Compound fractures of the tibia and fibula, with deep lacerations and possibility of blood poisoning, accompanied by high fever.”