Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dawn pinked the eastern ridges by the time Lars Olsen found himself among the buildings clustered beside a two-lane road that bordered a river.

The water gave the air a moist, muddy odor and served to push away any lingering odor of decay. Lars knelt and drank from the river, careful to scoop water into his palm and bring it to his mouth. He’d known a woman who lost her nose while putting her face to running water to slurp. Refreshed but still hungry, he entered the little town.

The convenience store was clearly ransacked and its supplies depleted. The windows were broken, trash strewn all around the parking lot. The peeling sign at the corner of the lot said “Gas Xpress,” and below that was a stack of tires with vines curling along the cracked rubber. The gas pumps had been ripped from their concrete pads, and the metal access cover for the underground tank was missing, leaving a round black hole in the pavement.

Lars knelt and peered into the darkness, then dipped his face to the opening and sniffed. A cloying petroleum smell lingered, but it was faint. He dropped a pebble into the hole and it dinged off metal far below. Someone had siphoned whatever fuel the tank offered, not that Lars had any use for it.

He was more interested in food, but the store’s interior was just as barren. The shelves and racks contained only useless items like brake fluid, phone cards, batteries, magazines, and energy drinks. The floor was ankle deep in discarded packaging. The cash register had been smashed, and bills of numerous denominations lay scattered around the counter.

The chaotic tableau likely made a philosophical statement on the futility of human ambition and capitalism, but Lars no longer had the refined sensibilities required for such judgments. To him, this was just another pit stop on an eternal detour. The most basic truth was represented by the hollow-eyed skeleton sitting propped in the corner, cloth rotting from yellowing bones.

He crossed the road to the brick Methodist church, its doors flung wide. The pews were full of corpses, most of them gone to bone but some still clinging to desiccated flesh. A heap of vestments at the altar suggested proof of a last communion, but Lars wasn’t blessed enough to find either bread or wine there.

The only other buildings visible were a small post office and an outdoor outfitter’s shop. A van parked beside the shop was stacked with kayaks and canoes, and Lars wondered what other surprises might be waiting inside. Perhaps he could find some camping supplies, and maybe he’d even get lucky enough to score a bicycle. But he hadn’t reached the door when a scream pierced the stillness of morning.

Lars couldn’t tell the direction at first. He yanked his ax from its leather loop on his belt, preferring the sure heft of steel over the seemingly puny weight of the bullets in his Glock handgun.

“Help!” came a high female voice.

After Lars’s disturbing experiences at Memorial Mission Hospital, his white knight days were done. But he was startled that someone still possessed a concept of the word “help,” given how their race had devolved to savagery. He was just as startled that he recognized the word. And that awareness triggered an instinctive response that overpowered his common sense.

And so he ran.

Toward the pleading screams.

They came from somewhere among a group of houses that sat behind the church. Lars perceived blurry impressions of the landscape as he ran: An old school bus sunk to its hubcaps in a garden plot. Rotted rags flapping gently on a clothesline. A mangy, scrawny dog slinking beneath a front porch. Charred timbers ringing a stone chimney.

Lars narrowed the location of the screams to one of the cottages on the hill, although the sound was now more like a despairing wail. Lars was encouraged. In the twenty seconds since he’d sprung into action, the woman had not yet died. That probably meant the danger wasn’t from something big and ravenous.

He considered shouting in reassurance, but that would be foolish. More foolish than what he was already doing.

By the time Lars identified the occupied cottage, the sounds had faded. The house was built on a cinder-block foundation that raised the first floor several feet off the ground. A warped set of stairs led up the porch, but Lars veered around the side of the structure to peer into the windows. He had to hook an axe-blade onto the windowsill and drag himself up to see inside.

The living room was devoid of life, as dim and gray as Doomsday. He figured she was already dead, and that he should just move on before her killer picked up his scent, but prowling through more abandoned houses wasn’t all that enticing.

Better to glimpse a warm corpse and its reminder of what they all had once been than to accept that they were all inside one big charnel house whose ceiling was the sky.

The back of the cottage featured a little pump house that covered the well. Lars hopped onto it, glancing around to make sure no creatures lurked at the edge of the surrounding woods.

There were three windows across the span of the rear wall. The highest and smallest in the middle was glazed, undoubtedly that of a bathroom. The one to its left sported thick, drawn curtains, but the opposite window was open and covered by an aluminum screen.

From it leaked a soft whimpering.

She’s still alive.

He couldn’t see into the room, but he didn’t detect any movement in its shadows. Forcing himself not to rush madly into danger, Lars dropped to the ground and moved in for a closer listen. The whimpering articulated into soft, broken phrases:

“…please don’t…”

“No…”

“HelpmeGodhelpme…”

That last utterance, the invocation of a higher power, was what finally caused Lars to snap. Although he’d long given up what little religion he once professed, and his recent excursion into the church had aroused no divine feelings of any kind, the woman’s simple, desperate plea cast the entire ludicrous morality play into the spotlight.

What kind of merciful, all-loving, all-knowing God would allow all this to happen, and then be so psychotically cruel as to let one of the victims cling to faith?

With a bellow of rage, he launched himself at the window, punching through the screen and grabbing the sill with his free hand. He scaled the rough-hewn siding and angled his ax against the inside of the window, hauling his upper torso into the dank room.

The woman screamed again, regaining whatever wind had gone out of her sails. He must have looked like a demented, wild-eyed savage to her. He didn’t care, because that was what he was.

Lars wriggled forward and tumbled to the floor, nicking his forearm with the axe blade. He kicked the shredded window screen from his boot as he rolled to his feet, banging against a wooden dresser as he did so. A mirror atop the dresser slid off and shattered, but as it fell, Lars was afforded a disorienting glimpse of a silver man on the far side of the room.

The woman was huddled in a corner, her knees folded up and her arms crossed, although she was peering between them. Lars could see her wide, frightened eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“It’s not okay,” she replied in a cracked voice, looking past him.

Lars turned and saw it.

It was a Zap, although not like any mutant he’d ever seen.

It looked human, aside from those characteristic glittering eyes. The hair was cut in a bowl-like tonsure, although the thinnest section on top wasn’t completely bald. The Zap sported no facial hair, and its cheeks were smooth and supple-looking. The silvery suit disguised the features so well that Lars couldn’t identify its gender, but he tagged it as a male in his mind.

That judgment was likely made in order to more easily justify killing it, but…whatever got the job done.

Lars growled like an animal and raised his axe. He’d killed Zaps before, especially in the early days of the aftermath, but those had been snarling, violent man-mockeries intent on destroying every living thing. They were almost a pleasure to put down.

But Lars hesitated, as if reluctant to cross the ten feet of stained carpet to his target. Not because he was afraid, but because he wasn’t. The Zap didn’t seem alarmed or aroused in any way, as if oblivious to the menace it faced. Lars hadn’t even seen a Zap in two years, and either he’d forgotten how they behaved, or this particular specimen was a new version of its kind.

“Are you hurt?” he asked the woman, without turning his head.

“Look at it,” she whispered, still huddled. “Those
eyes
.”

As if she’d never seen a Zap before. Lars supposed that was possible, but no way could she survive five years without being aware of the threat.

“How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know. A week, maybe?”

“How long has
this
been here?”

“A few minutes.”

Throughout the clipped conversation, the Zap didn’t move, and Lars wondered if it had somehow fallen asleep while standing. But those eyes were still open, not brilliant but bright enough to project a soft glow in front of its face.

Lars took a moment to study the mutant’s suit. It seemed to be made of a single piece of material, like an infant’s sleeper, although Lars saw no sign of a zipper or buttons. It was almost as if the material had been sprayed on, or else the Zap had been dipped into a vat. But the suit didn’t cling closely enough to reveal sexual organs or body features.

Even the age of the thing was difficult to guess, although Lars would put it at around thirty or so just on first impression, not from any visual cue. Just as he’d mentally decreed it a male, so he thought of it as an adult on the edge of middle age.

“How did it find you?” Lars asked the woman, lowering the axe just a little but keeping a two-handed grip on the weapon’s handle. The mutant held no weapons of its own, and its hands dangled open-palmed at either hip. The fingers were slender and free of wrinkles.

“I was…it followed me here.”

The woman no longer sounded so terrified. He risked a glance back at her. She was dirty blond, her tangled hair streaked with gray. She wore a dark blue headband, a tan leather jacket, and frayed jeans—in another world, she might have been a hippie following the Grateful Dead on a concert tour. Lars sensed a hesitation in her words.

What does she have to lie about?

He reached for her, hoping to comfort her and assure her that he wasn’t just another murderer.

The Zap moved with stunning speed, crossing the room before Lars even had time to whip his head back around. The Zap plowed into him with a shoulder, knocking him back against the dresser again and sending the axe spinning to the floor.

Wood gave way with a crack that Lars hoped didn’t include his spine. Even as he struggled, Lars noticed the mutant’s body temperature was as cool as the surrounding air of the room.

The material of the suit was so slick that Lars couldn’t get a grip on it, so he grabbed the only handle he could find—the mutant’s hair. Lars yanked, torqueing the Zap’s head backward so he could send a fist into its face. He half-expected the Zap to open its mouth and chomp, but its features were as impassive as before.

Like a goddamned machine.

But its flesh was soft, as determined by Lars’s fist, and there was bone beneath it. When he reared back for another blow, he saw that the first had left no mark or bruise, nor had it drawn any reaction of pain, anger, or surprise from the mutant.

He was so occupied by the struggle that he didn’t hear the woman.

But he heard the whisper of wind and then the
kerrr-dunk
as the axe blade found the back of the mutant’s neck. Blood—thicker than a human’s, but just as red—oozed out of the gash.

Even this elicited no facial response. The Zap continued to grapple with Lars even as the axe lifted for another swing.

The woman grunted and sobbed with the effort of her next chop, and it cleaved the top of the Zap’s skull. The lambent eyes blinked and their light faded, and for just a moment, Lars could see the human it had once been. Something like regret and remembrance flitted across those two pupils, although Lars might easily have projected those responses out of sympathy.

The Zap collapsed against Lars and they stood together for a moment like intimate partners sharing a slow dance. Lars stepped back and let the sagging weight slide against him and down to the floor. Lars was treated to a close-up of the mutant’s pink brain, blood seeping from its ruined crenellations as if the heart had no pumping capacity.

He poked it with his boot, making sure it was down for the count.

If it has a soul, I hope it’s burning in mutant hell.

He looked at the blue-eyed woman who had saved his life, or whose life he had saved, or maybe both.

She rested the axe handle on her shoulder, letting dark blood drip from the blade in plump, welling drops.

“Maybe we should introduce ourselves,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Capt. Antonelli organized a burial detail for PFC Hollister while the unit broke camp and jammed down some cold breakfast from plastic pouches.

Antonelli didn’t like spending the time and energy digging a hole into the rocky Appalachian soil, but part of the unspoken agreement of military service was that they took care of their own. You couldn’t just leave your soldier out for the buzzards, crows, and coyotes, especially one who died in the line of duty. The others had to witness Antonelli’s compassion and to understand that they were respected and valued, or the whole illusion of obedience crumbled.

With the sunrise, he was able to scan the valley and surrounding ridges with his binoculars. He saw no signs of the beastadons or any other predator. Intel had listed twenty-seven different deadly species, and although some New Pentagon pencil-neck had given them pseudoscientific names, the foot patrols had come up with their own names in each region.

From what Antonelli could glean from scraps of orders and rumors, the eastern mountain region faced mostly mammalian threats, while those along waterways might encounter slithering things with tentacles and scales. HQ had not yet re-established a navy, so God only knew what swam beneath the waves. The few small towns populated and defended by humans were plagued by vicious smaller predators—rats, lizards, and even deformed pigeons—that weren’t necessarily deadly but could take a chunk out of you in the blink of an eye.

Someone came up behind him, but he continued glassing the valley, looking for smoke. When he didn’t turn, PFC Colleen Kelly came up beside him holding a tin cup of black slop that passed for coffee.

“Did you get any sleep, Private?” he asked.

“More than I wanted, if you know what I mean.”

“We can’t do anything with your best friend Judy snoring away beside you,” Antonelli said, still not looking at her. But he could smell her—sweat, wood smoke, and regulation soap.

“She’s not my friend and you’re a son of a bitch for putting her in my tent.”

That Irish temper. I love it.

He tried not to grin. “That’s no way to speak to your commanding officer.”

“That’s no way to speak to your whore.” She was only half joking. She was sensitive about the nature of their relationship and how they had to hide it, however unsuccessfully, from the rest of the troops.

He finally let the binoculars drop to his chest and turned to her. “What, you want us to get married or something? Maybe after Corporal Downey finishes his eulogy for Hollister, he can consecrate us.”

Her green eyes flashed defiance. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

Yes I do.

“This is no time to be planning a future,” he said, looking back at the activity around camp to make sure no one was obvious about watching them. “Minute by minute is the best we can do right now.”

“Damn it, Mark, why do think we’re out here? What you even think we’re fighting for?”

She was so goddamned cute, her green camo cap even complemented her shimmering red hair. Colleen wasn’t military in the old world, but she’d been part of one of the early rescue missions and was among the many persuaded to volunteer. These recruits had only a fraction of the training that a pre-apocalypse enlistee underwent, but bodies were bodies. Well,
her
body was a bit more exceptional than most.

“We’re fighting to regain territory ceded to the enemy,” Antonelli said. “That’s the end result of tactical moves such as the one we’re currently undertaking. You don’t take Atlanta without going through Vicksburg.”

“Sure, go for your precious military babble to keep from having to say anything real,” she said.

Antonelli grabbed her sleeve and pulled her behind a jagged boulder. He put his face close to hers and said, “How real can you take it?”

“Whatever you got,” she said, lifting her mouth as his descended. The kiss was brief but fiery, all their frustration and lust and fear sharing delicate nerve endings. Antonelli forced himself to break away far sooner than he wanted to.

“We need to check out the bunker and find that kid if he’s down there,” Antonelli said. “Then we’ll wait for our next orders, but I’m feeling the big push is coming soon.”

She grinned and crinkled her freckled cheeks, her anger forgotten as she playfully bumped against him. “Good. I could use a big push.”

“You know what I hate?” he said.

“That crappy yellow salt powder in the mac-and-cheese pouch?”

“I hate when we’re on duty—especially in battle like last night—and I have to treat you like everybody else.”

“Just one of the guys,” Colleen said.

“But that means I might be put in a position to sacrifice you for the good of the unit,” he said, refusing to let any emotion creep into his voice.

“Like you always say, ‘Do your job.’”

She turned away as if tired of their military life. She looked out across the expanse of valley and the ridges that rolled like endless ocean waves whose surface was painted by the autumnal camouflage of ocher, red, and brown. “So beautiful,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” He was just a sentimental old fool, unfit for command. At forty-five, he was old enough to despise weakness in others but not in himself.

“This is still our world. As long as one of us remains, it’s ours.”

“We’ll get it all back someday,” Mark said. “Or die trying.”

“And we’ll get married then?”

“Sure. In the biggest church in the biggest city we can find. But until then, don’t go getting killed on me.”

She flashed her small, white teeth. “Is that an order?”

“Yes, Private. Now back to camp before anyone reports you AWOL.”

Antonelli watched her go, imagining her nude body lurking beneath that bulky combat uniform. Then he cursed himself. His sentimentality was dangerous, not just for the both of them but for the entire unit. But he couldn’t help it. If he wasn’t allowed to be human, then what was the whole point of this mission?

He took a meandering path back to camp so no one would see him arrive from the same direction as Colleen. Below him, the parkway wound along the slopes like a dark gray river. The 469-mile road had been built to transport tanks and heavy equipment if necessary, connecting central Virginia to western North Carolina. Those states no longer existed except on maps, but the road was solid, an artifact of their civilization. It would help them stage for assaults on Atlanta, Charlotte, and wherever else in the mid-South the Zaps had established bases.

By the time he returned to camp, the site was already returning to nature, all the gear packed. Cans and plastic bottles were strewn around, but that was typical. “Leave no trace” was an indecent motto when your kind stood on the brink of vanishing forever.

“Saddle up,” Antonelli said, scooping up his own pack.

The soldiers, aside from the ones on sentry duty, had been chatting in low voices, but they went quiet now that they were on to their next objective. Colleen helped Judy wrestle her pack straps onto her plump shoulders, the civilian grumbling loud enough for Antonelli to hear.

Wouldn’t mind dangling her for beastadon bait.

As they marched across the grassy bald, fanned out in three successive lines, Antonelli stopped to examined one of the creatures they had killed. Flies buzzed around its bloody snout, its tongue protruding outward. Its fur stood up in stiff bristles. The tusks gleamed in the sun. The heavy-shouldered physical profile resembled that of a buffalo but was smaller and had padded, clawed feet instead of hooves.

Antonelli didn’t understand how such seemingly spontaneous evolution could have occurred. There was plenty of radiation in the atmosphere, from the thousands of abandoned and poisoned nuclear plants around the globe that had melted down years ago, but that alone couldn’t explain the changes.

New Pentagon scientists theorized that a weird cocktail of radiation, sunspots, and a change of the magnetic poles had combined to create shifts at the cellular level. Antonelli didn’t even want to think of the changes taking place inside him. He half expected to wake up one morning with a horn sprouting from the middle of his forehead.

A private named Mayer came over to look at the fallen monster. “Maybe we should slice that up and fry it,” the older veteran said. “Bet it tastes like chicken.”

“Take your chances,” Antonelli said. “But if your eyeballs turn yellow, I’m putting you down.”

“Come on, Captain,” Mayer said. “We’re going to need me in the gene pool once this is over. And I plan on spewing a lot of genes, if you know what I mean.”

The private flicked his eyes toward Colleen, who was on the left flank. Antonelli couldn’t be sure if the man’s gesture was a taunt or some subconscious jealous reaction.

Sexual relations among active-duty troops were technically forbidden by Directive 17. New Pentagon couldn’t afford to lose any numbers to pregnancy, even though females comprised only ten percent of the fighting force. Antonelli’s unit contained two gay men, who shared a tent and regularly broke the directive with one another. Fortunately for Antonelli, he didn’t have to render punishment because the prudish moralities of the old world were not even worthy of a snicker any longer, much less serious application.

However, his dalliance with Colleen was like pulling the pin on a grenade and hoping it didn’t explode. He wasn’t worried about being reported by a subordinate who might want his command. His real concern was on the effect the affair would have on the unit’s performance in battle. He wasn’t sure if the troops respected him more for putting his dick before duty, or whether they saw his behavior as a sign that the directive was a joke.

He didn’t agree with every principal of the directive, but he was damn sure the human race needed it.

“Tell you what, Private,” Antonelli said. “Once we capture Charlotte, I’ll find you some chickens. And then you can play rooster for as long as you want.”

Mayer gave a crooked-toothed grin and saluted, then drifted back into line. Antonelli led the unit to the parkway, where an advance team waited with Lt. Randall. The soldiers sat on the hood of an SUV, warming themselves under the morning sun. One of them had found an electric guitar and was quietly plucking the strings.

“All clear,” Randall said to Antonelli, pointing to an incline where the pavement curved into the woods. “There’s a concrete marker up there for Milepost 284.”

Antonelli checked his compass, but magnetic north had shifted between twenty and forty degrees, according to the pencil-pushers at New Pentagon, so it wasn’t much use except as a general guide. Even the sun’s position wasn’t quite trustworthy, but the parkway ran gently to the west-southwest and ended in Asheville, so getting lost wasn’t likely.

“We should reach the bunker by afternoon,” Antonelli said. “Move your team forward and keep an eye out for the kid in the van. According to the map, there’s a rest area four miles ahead. Wait there, and don’t engage unless absolutely necessary.”

“Do you really think there’s anybody left in the bunker?”

“Shipley’s unit went dark for a reason. They could be dead, or they could be…something else.”

“Then why don’t we just leave it? Head on down to Asheville and connect with the Fourth Division?”

Antonelli couldn’t tell if this was a test of some kind. Randall knew perfectly well their orders were to investigate the bunker and commandeer whatever supplies they could use. Could Randall be secretly hoping Antonelli would defy orders, as the captain indirectly did by loving Colleen?

Randall had never struck Antonelli as the ambitious sort, but these were different times. He might be looking for an opportunity to move up in the world. Once the human race regained its place at the top of the food chain, there would be plenty of turf to divide.

Antonelli looked at the three grimy cars that had rolled off the parkway during the solar storms. The spoils of this war weren’t all that enticing.

“Orders are to secure the bunker,” Antonelli said, aware the others were listening. “Until we hear otherwise, that’s what we do.”

“Yes, sir,” Randall said, getting to his feet. The soldier with the guitar gave the instrument an affectionate, sentimental stroke and then opened the passenger door and tucked it inside the vehicle.

“Let’s roll,” Randall yelled to his team, and as the four men headed up the incline, Antonelli peeked into the SUV’s side window.

The guitar sat in the thin, frail arms of a skeleton, which seemed to grin at its good fortune.