Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) (6 page)

“If I have to.” She knelt, put the gun to her shoulder the way her grandfather had taught her, pressed her cheek against the stock, and stabilized her elbow against the side of her knee. She focused on the sight so the target was just a shiny blur beyond it, clicked the selector switch from safe, and slid her finger inside the trigger guard.

Leave us alone.

She didn’t know she’d said the words aloud until DeVontay answered, “Maybe it’s going away.”

But the mutant still stood silently on the highway, the black trees and bushes rising around it and a low autumn mist seeping in. There was no hint of dawn yet, so it was impossible to tell the hour. Perhaps time had no meaning to Zaps, since they didn’t age.

“It’s waiting for something,” Rachel said. She maintained her sights on the mutant.

“Waiting on you?” DeVontay said.

“It quit talking in my head.”

“It might follow us if we go back to the bunker.”

“We can’t let—”

She was interrupted by a burst of movement from the trees to the Zap’s left. There came a deep, gargling roar and a sleek silhouette bounded out of the shadows. It galloped with its torso low to the ground, claws audibly clicking on asphalt. It was the same size as the Zaphead, although leaner and four-legged. Even from this distance, its slanted eyes revealed it as a feline, and its snarling mouth held rows of jagged yellow teeth.

The Zap broke from whatever stasis had consumed it and turned toward the rapidly approaching beast.

“What the hell is that?” DeVontay said. “Some kind of saber-toothed devil kitty?”

“That’s the world we live in,” Rachel said.

She half expected the Zap to scream, or push some kind of panicked plea into her mind, but all she heard was the stealthy predator’s low, purring growl. The big cat closed the distance in seconds, and the Zap didn’t flee from the attack.

The animal reached up with one mighty paw just before it reached the Zap, batting its prey to the ground. The Zap rolled onto its back, lifting its legs as if to kick the cat away but making no move to defend itself.

The cat’s whiskered jowls descended and snapped at the Zap’s torso, but the teeth couldn’t penetrate the material.

If it goes for the head…

Before she could think, Rachel shifted her aim to the aurora-dappled fur of the cat. She squeezed off a three-round burst that shattered the window and resonated loudly in the warehouse. The cat yelped in startled pain and tumbled to the pavement, then rolled and began dragging itself away as if its rear legs were broken. Two wet gashes glistened along its flanks.

“What was that all about?” DeVontay said, wiggling his ear with a finger to make the ringing stop.

“Instinct,” Rachel said. She only hoped she hadn’t followed some sort of tribal compulsion to help others of her kind. She wasn’t Zap. She was human.

No matter how many times she had to remind herself.

The silver-clad figure slowly rose to its feet and resumed its former stance as if already forgetting the assault.

“It was going to be Meow Mix and it acts like it doesn’t give a damn,” DeVontay said. “Whatever Zaps are like now, they’re still weird as hell.”

But before Rachel could answer, the Zap finally moved, turning its back on the warehouse and walking stiffly down the road toward Stonewall. It was soon swallowed by darkness.

Its parting words were heard only by Rachel:

Thank you.

CHAPTER SIX

The thunderstorm awakened Franklin Wheeler just as he was reaching a particularly salacious moment in his dream.

There had been no signs of a coming storm, since the worst ones often pushed in from the northwest and were heralded by a drop in temperature and rising winds. As he peeled aside the old patchwork quilt and placed his bare feet on the cabin floor, he tried to recall which woman had been his subconscious romantic interest. Certainly not any of his four ex-wives, because he’d actually been enjoying himself. Probably someone from his college days, when he’d been something of a poet-philosopher and armchair revolutionary.

Those interests led to no career paths at all, but they had impressed some sweet young things whose passion was often misplaced and confused for social justice. But they were as much a part of the past as his militia days, when he’d been convinced that preparing against the U.S. government’s aggression was a citizen’s highest duty. The trouble with being a leader, even though he was mostly an Internet rabble-rouser, was that you eventually got followers.

Those followers included some of the most deranged crackpots to ever invade a message forum, and their threats of violence and mass destruction had drawn the attention of a host of federal agencies. Franklin had quickly unplugged from the patriot scene and, after a few inconvenient tag-team interviews by the FBI, ATF, and Department of Homeland Security, he’d gone so dark he could barely find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight. And those co-ed honeys were nowhere to be found after that, only women who were unfortunate enough to wear his golden ring for a while.

Even though those dalliances of the past only came to him in dreams now, he was relieved to find the equipment still worked. Not that he had much use for it, but considering he was pushing north of sixty, he’d take whatever he could get.

The thunder came again and Franklin shuffled to the cabin’s only window, scratching at the stained armpits of his longjohn underwear. His compound was surrounded by a rusted chain-link fence that was thick with impenetrable vines and poison oak. Even though he couldn’t see much of the surrounding forest, a portion of the sky was visible and it was mostly clear aside from a skein of thin clouds and the ever-present aurora.

Maybe we got zombie weather to go with the man-eating monsters prowling the woods.

The ruckus had riled the goats, and they bleated and kicked the sides of their pen. Grumbling, he slid his feet into his boots, slid his night-vision goggles into place, tugged a ratty oilskin outdoorsman hat onto his balding head, and grabbed the twelve-gauge pump from its rack. At times like this, he wished he didn’t live alone, but his solitude was best for all concerned—especially him.

He exited the dark, cramped cabin to the relative agoraphobia of the compound. Since it was situated on the peak of a ridge, the enclosed half-acre almost seemed like it was built on a cloud, floating above the old world far below. But gravity was just as persistent here as anywhere, and Franklin felt the years as he slogged through the autumn mud to the pen.

The thunder boomed again, punctuated by a faint, distant glow on the horizon.

That’s not thunder. That’s some kind of military-grade ka-blooey shit.

Franklin immediately forgot about the goats and climbed the wooden rungs up into an elevated platform nestled in the branches of a gnarled oak. From there he had a slightly better view of the valley, but with the autumn foliage still stubbornly clinging to the trees, he couldn’t locate the origin of the commotion.

Explosions and detonations weren’t exactly rare. In the aftermath of the solar storms, those who survived the immediate Zap rampages eventually figured out they were in a war for the future of their race. So they banded together and collected what weapons they could, then destroyed as many mutants as they could. Scattered military units, like the one that had occupied the bunker Rachel and the others now possessed, wielded whatever armaments they could muster against the strange new enemy. Occasionally, those roving bands and the military fought each other or among themselves, so there was plenty of killing to go around on all fronts.

But as the population declined drastically and the Zaps congregated in the largest cities, the explosions and gunfire diminished. While a migratory hermit or small group might fire a weapon at one of the increasingly odd predatory animals that stalked the wild, Franklin couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard such a fight.

A civilian group likely wouldn’t own that much destructive power, anyway, especially this late in the game. Which promoted a less agreeable option: the military.

Franklin descended from the lookout post and returned to the cabin. Dropping a blanket over the window, he lit a lamp fueled by pig fat and connected the battery converter hooked to his solar array. He plugged in his short-wave radio, hoping Rachel and the others had stuck to established protocol.

He tracked the dial on his decades-old radio receiver until he had scanned all the bandwidths, picking up nothing but static. Most of the world’s communications devices were burned out, but the few that had been shielded from the sunspot activity were probably owned by the military and its surviving government. Franklin had made contact with a few paranoid hermits like himself, but they were as coy about their locations as Franklin himself, so he’d never established a wider network.

Still, the radio was a convenient way to contact the bunker when necessary, even though anyone within range and under the right atmospheric conditions could eavesdrop. His equipment was far too crude and dated for encryption.

Franklin figured he’d better risk it. No matter how many times he told Rachel, DeVontay, and the others, you couldn’t just instill sufficient paranoia. You either had the trait or you didn’t.

Besides, whoever was blowing up stuff and shooting guns on the other side of the mountain was far to busy to be squatting beside a speaker.

He triggered the mic. “Eagle One, this is Rhinestone Cowboy, you got your ears on? Eagle One, come in.”

Franklin waited. He couldn’t hear any more gunshots over the faint hiss. The party was over.

After thirty seconds, he tried again. “Eagle One, this is Rhinestone Copy. Talk to me.”

He heard Stephen on the receiver:
“Eagle One in the nest, Cowboy. What’s happening?”

“Trying to get some sleep and heard some shitterhawks flapping around. Got me out of bed, so I figured I might as well jabber. What about you?”

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

“How’s the weather down in your neck of the woods?”

“Georgia’s hot year round.”

On air, they maintained a fiction that Eagle One was in Georgia and Franklin was in Alabama, although in truth only five miles separated them. “Well, come on down and cool off in the swamp. We can net one of those atomic gators and eat for days.”

“Hard to get the family together for a trip like that.”

Franklin wondered why he mentioned the family. He didn’t want to use Rachel’s and DeVontay ‘s names, so he said, “Is Mom and Pop home?”

“In the kitchen.”

That meant they were on a supply run. This wasn’t good. Franklin used the code for spotting a stranger. “Are the neighbors behaving?”

“
Negatory, Cowboy. Definitely disturbing the peace.”

So Stephen and the others were aware of the nearby shooting. Which was also odd, because the packed earth and rocks surrounding the bunker muted any outside noise. There were only two ways Stephen could’ve known about the battle—either he’d been outside, or he’d heard something on the radio.

That was easy enough to determine. “Do you have mud on your shoes?”

“No, Cowboy, I’m clean enough you could kiss my feet.”

The boy was taunting him, knowing Franklin couldn’t freely scold or punish him. “Well, just maybe I’ll come over and do that. And bring a hammer to smash your toes.”

“If you hurry, maybe you can make it in time for breakfast.”

So Stephen didn’t expect Rachel and DeVontay until morning. “What’s Mom and Pop cooking?”

“Ham and eggs.”

That wasn’t a code, and it made Franklin hungry. “Brew up some coffee and I’ll accept your invitation.”

“Don’t kill yourself getting over here, Cowboy. Plenty of cups to go around. Three, in fact.”

So Marina and Kokona were in the bunker, too. Good. He didn’t think Rachel and DeVontay should be taking the kids out into this hostile land, but maybe they must learn to survive like everyone. Kokona, though…that bizarre child was a constant reminder of her kind, and her helplessness seemed a little too convenient for Franklin’s taste. In five years, she hadn’t grown an inch, but her gaze didn’t miss anything—she was rapidly absorbing and analyzing the world around her.

Possibly a tiny, drooling spy, but you can’t tell Rachel anything. Birds of a feather flock together.

“Okay, Eagle One, hope the bed bugs don’t bite. I’ll catch you on the flipside.”

“I read, Cowboy. Over and out.”

Franklin disconnected the converter so as not to prematurely drain the battery. He began dressing in layers both to ward off the cool night air and hopefully repel the teeth of surprise predators.

He collected a sidearm—an old-school Colt revolver—and clipped it to his belt along with a tactical combat knife. While most survivalists favored automatic or semi-automatic high-caliber rifles, Franklin liked the profile of a shotgun, as well as its absolute shredding power at close range. An M16 could knock down a target, but the twelve-gauge would turn it to soup.

He wasn’t looking forward to the night walk but he was ready for the job. He slipped a paperback copy of George Orwell’s
Animal Farm
into his back pocket for Marina—Stephen had told her so much about it, she’d made Franklin promise to let her borrow it.

We live on a different kind of animal farm now, Georgie Boy. The kind where the animals eat you.

Franklin patted the paperback. He appreciated the fringe benefit of having a little extra protection if some nightmarish critter bit him on the ass.

He wished he had some Kevlar body armor, but the few pieces stored in the bunker were heavy and clumsy—well, that and they wouldn’t fit around his belly. His garden, livestock, and the bounty of the surrounding forest all served to keep him well fed. Besides the chores around the compound, he didn’t get a whole lot of exercise these days. Running for his life was over.

Except there was no retirement for crusty old survivalists, not when it seemed nobody else in the world understood the gig. He’d shared as much knowledge as he could with Rachel and her friends in Eagle One, but you couldn’t just grant the gift of paranoia.

Franklin had no way of knowing how many humans were left alive, but the evidence suggested his kind was dying out. Even those unwelcome recon helicopters were few and far between.

But he knew just as little about the Zaps, or the mutated wildlife. Many of the animals were unchanged, or else exhibited only harmless new behavioral quirks. Birds migrated in all directions at once, fish beached themselves on the creek banks, and deer had so forgotten the threat of men and guns that they would practically walk right into the compound if Franklin left the gate open. But some of the animals had transformed into ravenous beasts that sported maws packed with sharp, gleaming enamel.

Franklin’s motto was “Live and let live.” So far, the Zaps, the creepy critters, and the military had all left him alone.

But he couldn’t isolate himself from his love for Rachel. Not only had she always been his favorite granddaughter, she was the only relic of that old life remaining to him that he cared about. He didn’t miss the partisan politics or the greed or the societal squabbling. He didn’t see human extinction as a loss, necessarily. But damned if he was going to let the world take away Rachel’s future, however dim and bleak that future might be.

Lock and load for freedom. Just like the old days.

As he unlatched the compound’s gate and peered into the squirming wilderness, his bravado faded like the patterns on the wallpaper of the endless night.