Radiophobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 3) Read online

  “Right around the corner. Used to be a fire station but the Zaps wrecked it to build the dome on it.”

  “Looks like all the Zaps are gathered around the building, so we probably won’t have company,” Colleen said.

  “All right, move out,” Antonelli said. Bright Eyes slipped into the street and moved along the edge of the mutant horde, already blending in. Antonelli expected the Zaps to realize they had a traitor in their midst, but they just continued gazing up at the upper floors of the building.

  Millwood crept ahead, shielding his lamp with his jacket, Antonelli close behind. Colleen finally pulled Squeak from her near-catatonic state and urged her to follow, but the girl slowed them even more than before.

  When they reached the end of the concrete barrier, a chain-link fence marked the border of the construction site. Millwood led them behind a couple of Porta-Johns where there was a gap in the fence. The next property was a municipal lot filled with pick-up trucks and equipment. A small building with an office and attached garage had burned and collapsed, and the ruins provided good cover from the Zaps, even though Antonelli could still hear their low chant.

  The dome stood on the end of the lot, set between two decrepit red ladder trucks that bore the city’s name. Coruscating flashes of color strobed off the metallic shell. It was perched atop the brick foundation as if the fire station had been sheared off at six feet in height, and two bay doors for the trucks were now open spaces that harbored darkness inside them.

  “You first,” Millwood said when they reached the dome. “Might be some crispy critters in there.”

  Antonelli touched the smooth, curved surface of the dome, and then pushed his palm against it. The material was similar to the Zap suits, flexible yet apparently tough and highly durable. “What do you think they’re using these for?” he asked Millwood, expecting the zaniest answer possible.

  Millwood surprised him, although the lights from the plasma sink reflected off his glasses in a psychedelic swirl that made him look insane. “Maybe this energy beam isn’t just a power source or a starship beacon. Maybe it’s some kind of super-massive weapon. And this is where they go to hide when it destroys the rest of the world.”

  Antonelli wasn’t sure he liked that answer, even though it carried an unsettling plausibility. But if true, Antonelli planned to turn the tables on them and trigger it before they were ready. He tried not to think of Col. Munger’s unit advancing on the city and what effect the weapon might have on them. If the plasma sink was a weapon, it could deliver any number of damaging effects—a neutron bomb that minimized damage to buildings while proving lethal to living beings, a fission bomb that would melt the city to black glass, or a radioactive meltdown that would burn a contaminated volcano to the core of the Earth..

  The Zaps might even have applied their intellect to a destructive wave that was specifically targeted to human physiology. They hadn’t yet exhibited such an advanced level of engineering, but so much about them was a mystery even after five years of observation.

  Five years of WAR, you mean.

  The fully loaded grenade launcher weighed about fifteen pounds, but Antonelli hugged it with his left arm and drew his Glock. He ducked and crawled into the nearest opening, half expecting to find a fully outfitted factory crammed with 3-D printers, computers, and robotic machines busy crafting more surprises. But when Millwood followed and the lamp’s dim illumination filled the space, it was nothing more than a cracked concrete floor with piles of broken brick and masonry scattered around.

  Colleen and Squeak followed shortly as Antonelli took position with the launcher, squatting just inside the dome. From here, the plasma sink was barely eighty yards away, and Antonelli had been so intent on the journey he only now noticed how the ground subtly shook around him. He would’ve thought he was imagining it if powder didn’t fall from the stack of bricks beside him and drop down the back of his shirt.

  The sky beyond the plasma sink’s light was growing darker, the aurora’s green veins thickening among the clouds. The tableau was horribly beautiful, like a catastrophic storm brewing to a boil.

  He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he wanted this mission to end.

  “All right, everybody,” he said to the others. “Here comes the Next, whether we’re ready or not.”

  Colleen’s hand gripped his shoulder in either support or fear. “Do your duty, Captain,” she whispered.

  He fired the first grenade with a click and faint whump, and before it even ignited he cycled through the other five shots. He just had time to realize Bright Eyes had carried off the rest of his grenade cartridges when the blast came.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was Marina’s scream that pulled Rachel from her languor.

  She was disoriented. The last thing she remembered was walking in the tunnel with DeVontay and others, and here she was in—where? She glanced around amid the crazy, reeling lights of the plasma sink, only now she was looking at them from the side, not from below. There was a familiar weight in her arms and even in the dimness she knew it was Kokona.

  The baby giggled and kicked as if delighted with the world, and from somewhere far off, a multitude was chanting her name.

  Then she discerned the two figures struggling near the door of what looked like an office. One of them was short and slim, with long, raven-black hair. Rachel knew her, too, even if she couldn’t place her name right away. She didn’t recognize the Asian man in the military uniform, but his eyes glowed with Zap fervor.

  Their illumination revealed Marina’s face, her mouth open to scream again as the knife slashed downward.

  The blade was already wet.

  “Marina?” Rachel yelled, still trying to assimilate what her eyes were telling her, because her mind was doing a poor job of decoding.

  The soldier glanced Rachel’s way just as he swung and Marina dodged most of the blow, groaning in pain through gritted teeth.

  He’s like me—a half Zap. But he’s different, too.

  “Where are you going, Rachel?” Kokona said in a demanding, petulant tone. “Come back.”

  “She’s killing me!” Marina shrieked, and Rachel looked around, thinking there was someone else hidden in the shadows.

  Marina.

  It all came back—how Marina’s family had shown up at Franklin’s compound, how Rachel had killed Marina’s madly homicidal mother, how Marina had joined her and DeVontay and Stephen to live in the bunker—but Kokona’s voice issued tiny demands in her head as well, clouding her memory. But not the essential fact of Marina’s importance to her.

  Rachel stepped toward the soldier, realizing she was unarmed. “Leave her alone.”

  “Stay out of this, Rachel,” Kokona said.

  “He’s stabbing her! That’s Marina!”

  The soldier whipped the blade in the air to fling away the blood that coated it, and then closed in on Marina again. A deep, moist gash just above her biceps streamed fluid, and her palm bled from a defensive wound. Rachel was simultaneously horrified and shocked—it was as if she’d been instantly transported from one world into another and she didn’t know the customs and laws and physics of this one.

  But she didn’t want Marina to die in any world.

  She charged the soldier, who paid her little attention, intent on his gruesome task. He made little jabs toward Marina with the tip of the blade, swaying back and forth in a macabre dance, a low growl in his throat that was almost a musical hum.

  “Stop, Rachel,” Kokona yelled in her high, thin voice.

  Kokona would be in danger from the sadistic soldier, so Rachel set Kokona on the floor. The baby let out a mournful wail of anguish and abandonment that almost gave Rachel pause, but the sight of Marina’s wounds imposed a more powerful pull.

  “Give me the knife,” Rachel shouted at the soldier. If he was half Zap like her, he likely possessed above-average strength and endurance. She tried telepathy but his mind was a jarring, misfiring jumble of symbols.

>   “You’re my carrierrrrrr,” Kokona whined from the floor, and electric needles pierced Rachel’s skull. Kokona was trying to connect with her, but Rachel couldn’t afford to lose focus.

  She grabbed the soldier’s arm just as he slashed the blade in an arc toward Marina’s face. She defected the blow just enough that Marina was able to duck beneath it.

  The soldier seemed to have forgotten all about Rachel—indeed, about everything except his butchery. But her interference caused him to turn, his eyes boring fully into hers. Although she’d encountered plenty of Zaps, she’d never dealt with another half-Zap. Instead of a shared kinship, she felt only revulsion for her own condition.

  And rage. She felt plenty of rage.

  She clenched her fist and drove it toward his angular face, and they both were surprised when her knuckles smacked his cheekbone. His head snapped back a couple of inches, but he appeared unfazed by the hit. Pain raced up Rachel’s arm and she wondered if she’d broken some bones, but that pain was instantly superseded by the sharp, hot flare in her belly.

  She looked down to see the knife driven to the hilt in her stomach, the soldier grimacing with effort as he sought to bury it deeper. She clamped her hands around his, struggling to extract it even as dark spots swam among the psychedelic lights.

  Rachel slumped, already losing consciousness, and then came a sudden flash of yellow-orange and a thunderclap. The soldier’s face relaxed instantly and his eyes went onyx. He collapsed, losing his grip on the knife, and behind him stood Marina with a rifle.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Marina said, fighting off a sob. “You’re hurt.”

  Rachel tried to pull the blade from her flesh but she was too weak to grip the knife handle. She leaned against the wall, the pain easing, but that was even scarier because it started a tidal wave that threatened to carry her breath away as it receded. She slid to the floor, propped in a sitting position and watching with detachment as the pool of liquid spread around her on the cold tiles. The colorful glimmer on its surface was mesmerizing.

  Marina didn’t bother tending the wound. Instead, she sprinted to Kokona, and dragged the baby across the floor by one leg, still holding the rifle. She lifted the baby and settled it in Rachel’s lap, blood seeping in and soaking Kokona’s pink sleeper.

  “Fix her!” Marina yelled, poking Kokona with the muzzle of her rifle.

  “Put down the rifle, Marina,” the baby commanded with a smug smirk.

  “No. You don’t control me anymore. You chose Rachel, remember?”

  Rachel found this exchange amusing. Death wasn’t so bad—she’d crossed the line a couple of times, and each time it was more welcoming. Why would she ever want to leave this?

  Dull, dark, and quiet. I could stay here forever.

  “Fix her,” she heard Marina say as if through a wall of cotton. “You did it for Huynh, you can do it for her.”

  “But she’s already been—”

  “Do it, or I will kill you. I can do it now. Oh, sweet Lord, can I ever do it.”

  She sounds so grown up. Where did the years go?

  Rachel wanted to open her eyes to make a fleeting last appraisal of the teen, but the effort was too great. Then she felt little hands patting around the gore that leaked from her gaping abdomen.

  Patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man…

  She’d played that game with Kokona, trying to develop the infant’s coordination, but the Zap was permanently condemned to the physical form of a nine-month-old. Yet the silly nursery rhyme stuck with her, part of the swirling vortex that was flushing her down a bottomless hole in a black sea.

  …make me a cake as fast as you can.

  The little fingers played along her shirt, and then slipped through the tear in the fabric and caressed her slick skin. They were warm, and their touch became glowing points that slowed her descent. The darkness dissolved and she heard Marina talking, and then found herself sitting on the floor with Kokona in her lap, wondering how she’d gotten here.

  She took Kokona by the wrists and batted their hands together. “Patty cake, patty cake.”

  “Rachel!” Marina said. “You’re back?”

  She looked at the pretty, almond-skinned teenage girl holding the rifle. “You’re hurt.”

  Marina touched her wounds. “Yeah, but I’m not letting that little bitch touch me.”

  “You’re my carrier,” the baby said, eyes burning fiercely as she looked into Rachel’s face.

  “We’re done,” Marina said. “You fooled us all those years. Tricked us. And this is how you treat us once you get what you want.”

  Rachel didn’t understand. Why was Kokona soaked with blood? The poor baby wasn’t hurt, was she? The Zap infant gazed up at Rachel, grinning with its two front teeth protruding from red gums.

  How beautiful.

  “Put her down, Rachel,” Marina said.

  “I can’t. I love her.”

  “She just tried to kill both of us.”

  “I feel fine. But you’re cut.”

  Rachel saw the dead soldier on the floor, the back of his skull missing, shards of bone and flecks of gray matter spewed along the floor. She didn’t recognize him.

  Marina stooped and grabbed the baby by one arm, yanking. Rachel wrapped Kokona in a protective hug.

  “Let her go!” Marina said. “She’s messing with you.”

  “I’m her carrier.”

  From outside came a soft whooof, followed by several more in quick succession and the colored lights bloomed into a sudden blue-white storm.

  Kokona stiffened in Rachel’s embrace and mewled. “Oh no.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DeVontay was working his way around the horde of chanting Zaps when the explosion went off.

  Even though he was expecting it, the noise and flash were jarring. He’d hoped to be inside the building when the blast came. Antonelli had no idea what would happen, and even Bright Eyes couldn’t speculate on the fallout. If a chain reaction ensued, then nowhere in the city was safe, but DeVontay wanted solid walls between himself and the sink when the attack came.

  The explosion was actually a series of smaller blasts—a muffled whoooomp-KUSH, then a flurry of follow-ups, and the noise swelled into one harsh crescendo. DeVontay ducked behind a truck whose flat tires left the chassis sitting only six inches off the ground. Small chunks of debris and shrapnel rained down, shattering windows along the block.

  The swirling column of light solidified into one glowing hot tube that was so bright DeVontay could only look at it by watching its reflection off a large storefront. The settling night and emerging aurora vanished, and the dark clouds stood out in stark relief above the skyline. But the flash faded almost instantly as the reverberation of the shock wave echoed along the urban canyons.

  DeVontay eased up and dared a peek through the smudged car windows. All the Zaps were turned and facing the plasma sink as if a new god had alighted in their world to displace the old. The silver bowl at the base of the column of light was tilted askew, but appeared otherwise undamaged.

  Antonelli’s stupid plan was a waste of time, and he risked all of our lives for it. If I lose Rachel over this, I’m putting a bullet in his head.

  If I ever see him again.

  DeVontay eyed the thirty yards of open street between him and the entrance to the building. Since the Zaps’ attention was drawn to the chaotic sparking of light, this was his chance. But they were massed near the double doors in the main lobby. He needed another entrance.

  A section of wall had given way on one flank of the building, with plumbing pipes and air conduits exposed. It must have been a maintenance room, with a rear service entrance to keep blue-collar workers segregated from the people who ran the world back when money mattered. DeVontay had no problem using the back door. His people had spent centuries doing just that, even after Lincoln freed the slaves.

  He gripped his rifle for comfort, even though it would be worthless if the Zaps detected him. He held his breath and counte
d to three, and then dashed from cover toward the crumbling construction. His shadow was long and stilted beside him, moving with long, angular strides, but already the light was lessening again. He just hoped the show would last enough to get him back into darkness, like a rat making a sprint across the kitchen where the cats dozed.

  As the explosions died away, a low subsonic drone shook the pavement beneath him. DeVontay didn’t even look at the Zaps. He’d know soon enough if they spotted him. They’d fallen silent in the wake of the tumult, and the whining pulse of the plasma sink faded to a single high pitch, the only sound besides a few loose chunks of rubble dropping to the ground.

  DeVontay reached the rear of the building and caught his breath, sweat dotting his forehead despite the cool autumn air. The plasma sink radiated a wave of warmth, and small pockets of fire ringed the base of the metallic bowl. DeVontay took one last look to make sure the Zaps hadn’t noticed him, and then entered the building.

  The intense light from the plasma sink penetrated into the building enough for him to navigate through the maintenance room to the hallway. He soon found a metal door leading to a stairwell. The stairwell was mostly enclosed, with only a few high windows to allow light.

  He quickly adjusted to the spacing of the steps and sprinted up, keeping his right elbow against the metal railing to guide him. He’d counted the floors after seeing the figures in the window, and he slowed as he reached the sixth floor and looked through a pane of glass at the long hallway.

  DeVontay saw no movement among the flickering shadows leaking from open rooms. He was just about to enter when the building quaked and nearly threw him off his feet. Glass shattered, metal beams groaned, and huge sections of walls peeled away. He braced himself against the railing, sitting with his rifle across his thighs as debris thundered down around him.

  A section of the ceiling cracked and sagged, and he rolled to the door, reached up, and swung it wide. He crawled through just as the stairwell collapsed and fell away with a grating rumble. The floor of the hallway was askew and littered with wreckage—chairs, a desk, the shattered clay and dirt of a dead potted plant, and sheets of paper scattered like white leaves.