Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) Page 12

  The grimed windows muted any penetrating daylight, and Rachel depended on the glow of her eyes to guide her. If her mutant traits were indeed fading, that was one she would miss—portable flashlights that never needed fresh batteries.

  Now that she had crossed that ultimate line, she was just as much an enemy to the Zaps as any human. But that worked both ways. Now she was free to do whatever necessary to protect the ones she loved.

  She was so intent on the office door, expecting it to swing open with some new Zap surprise, that she didn’t detect the movement to her left before it was too late.

  “Run, Squeak!” the female voice shouted, just as a cabinet display of fishing tackle tipped over and knocked her in the shoulder.

  The display was made of pressboard and glass, and some of the shelves shattered as Rachel buckled under its weight. Shards of glass, fishhooks, sinkers, and rubber worms rained down as she kicked to free herself. Over the crash and clatter, Rachel heard small footsteps tapping across the floorboards.

  “Zap bitch,” the unseen woman hissed, and Rachel turned her head to find a blond woman in a blue headband raising a broken canoe paddle. As she swung, Rachel writhed away, shifting just enough so the cabinet covered her. The paddle thwacked against the pressboard, breaking again.

  Rachel’s M16 was pinned beneath her, but if she wriggled enough, she might be able to reach the trigger. The shots would be wild, but maybe she could amputate the woman’s feet.

  “I’m not a Zap!” she shouted, and she almost believed it. But all that mattered was that she convinced her attacked.

  “I saw your eyes.” The broken tip of the paddle jabbed toward her, punching into the fabric of her strap. The blow bruised her to the bone but didn’t penetrate her skin.

  This pack is going to win a Medal of Honor if we get out of this mess.

  “Stop. My name’s Rachel.”

  Then she heard DeVontay and Lars shouting from outside the shop. The woman hesitated, the paddle raised like a spear for a killing blow.

  “Your eyes,” the woman said, hesitating with her face twisted in a murderous leer. Rachel couldn’t imagine she looked less human than her attacker at that moment.

  “I can explain.” She slid her right wrist along the gunstock until her finger hooked against the trigger.

  We’ll see who’s the bitch when you’re hobbling around on stumps.

  “Tara,” Lars called, blustering into the room. Rachel couldn’t see him, but she guessed he knew this woman. “Leave her alone. She’s cool.”

  “Did you see her eyes?”

  “Yeah, I can explain—”

  “And you let her come in here? What if she hurt Squeak?”

  Rachel counted down, lifting the rifle barrel as much as she could, fighting to draw her next breath. She’d give this situation three seconds to resolve itself…

  “She saved me out there. From the Zaps.”

  “She’s one of us,” DeVontay said from the doorway. “But there are real Zaps around here, and if you keep raising hell like that, they’ll be on us in no time.”

  The woman stepped back, glaring at Rachel as if she were staring at some rare specimen at a freak show. “What’s the deal?”

  “Get this thing off of me…and…I’ll tell you,” Rachel wheezed.

  The woman dropped the paddle and stepped back while DeVontay and Lars knelt to lift the cabinet. It was so heavy it took both of them several seconds of straining to budge it, and then only enough for Rachel to squirm free. DeVontay helped her to her feet, brushing broken glass and fishing lures from her clothes.

  “You okay?” he asked. She nodded, even though her cheeks stung from several small cuts and her shoulder throbbed with deep rushes of agony.

  “Where’s Squeak?” the woman, Tara, asked.

  “She ran out the door like she was scared to death,” Lars said. “Nice job, Tara.”

  “What do you expect? There was a fucking Zap in here—”

  “I’m not a Zap,” Rachel repeated.

  Tara hopped over the fallen cabinet and dashed for the door. “Wait up,” Lars said, sprinting after her.

  “We really know how to pick ‘em,” DeVontay said to Rachel, giving her a quick hug and kiss. “You got some little cuts.”

  “Killer dogs, Zaps, and psycho moms, I can survive them all. Who is Squeak, anyway?”

  “Little girl, five or six. I almost went after her but I heard that woman shrieking like a maniac.”

  “Maybe we should help.” Rachel limped to the welcoming daylight beyond the shop.

  Before she reached the door, Tara shrieked again, this time an octave higher. Screaming.

  Amid a distant staccato rumble.

  Tara and Lars stood twenty feet outside the outfitter’s shop, Tara trembling and shaking her fists as she blared her anxiety like an emergency siren. Lars held his axe limply at his side as if not sure how to respond.

  Beyond them, in the middle of town fifty yards away, trash blowing around its ankles, stood the remaining Zap. In its arms was cradled a small child, limbs dangling as if she was unconscious. Or dead.

  “Put her dooooown,” Tara wailed. She tried to run toward the mutant, but Lars grabbed her jacket sleeve and nearly yanked her to the ground while restraining her.

  “Easy,” he said. “We don’t know what it wants.”

  “Look at those eyes,” she bleated. “You know what that means.”

  DeVontay shouldered his weapon and sighted, but then lowered it again. “Too far. I might hit the girl.”

  Rachel wondered if that was a hint that DeVontay wanted her to do the shooting. She had no qualms about killing the Zap, but a head shot was the only sure thing. She might try strafing its legs, the way she’d intended to cripple Tara during the attack, but would penetrate from this distance. The weapon certainly was effective at such range; she just wasn’t sure she was.

  The Zap waited like a gunfighter in a Mexican standoff, although it showed no concern over being unarmed. Its eyes glittered but weren’t raging storms, which Rachel interpreted as a lack of aggression. She wondered if their aspect would change if they charged, but that was even riskier than attempting a head shot.

  “What does it want?” DeVontay asked Rachel.

  “I’m under radio silence. Can’t pick up anything.”

  “Do something, or give me your damn axe and let me,” Tara said to Lars, struggling to escape his grip. “I’ll brain him like did that other one.”

  Rachel shot a glance at DeVontay. Mystery solved. So SHE’S the stone-cold Zap chopper.

  “Careful,” Lars said. “We don’t know what this thing’s going to do.”

  Rachel lowered her rifle and handed it to DeVontay. “Let me handle it.”

  Tara spun, frantic rage contorting her face. “You? What do you know?”

  “I’m a Zap bitch, remember?” Rachel regretted her sarcasm, given the woman’s fraught emotional state, but she was mostly human, after all.

  During their discussion, the mutant hadn’t moved in the slightest, as if it had lapsed into a state of suspended animation. Zaps didn’t really sleep, and they had deep reserves of physical energy, so Rachel assumed it could stand like that for days if no one bothered it, or no monsters came out of the woods and attacked.

  Or if nobody comes up to it and demands the child back.

  She felt the eyes of the others on her as she walked slowly toward the Zap. It was almost identical to the first two Zaps, with the same silvery, one-piece suit and smooth, pale facial features. The only difference was the hair color, which was a lighter shade of brown than that of the others.

  The Zap showed no reaction to her approach. She wondered if it detected her mutant half even though she couldn’t divine any telepathic signals from it. Perhaps they had developed the ability to shield their communications.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked when she was twenty yards away.

  A genderless monotone: “Yes, I can hear you, Rachel Wheeler.”

&n
bsp; It knows my name. It knows me.

  The bland mutant face showed no strain or emotion, and no real sign of interest. Its eyes might’ve sparked just a little more intensely, but that was difficult to tell in the sunlight.

  She could feel the eyes of the other people on her as she debated her next move. She believed she could win a physical struggle—after all, she’d just survived a wild animal attack and a crazy-woman freak-out, and the Zaps, while strong, had apparently lost most of their viciousness.

  From closer, she could make out the child’s parted lips and the fluttering eyelids. So she was alive, if unresponsive. She was thin and frail, her hair hanging in fine, dark locks around her rosy cheeks.

  One of her shoes was missing, the other a leather slip-on with a brass buckle, a dress shoe wholly unsuitable for apocalyptic life. She wore red stockings and a brown corduroy dress whose straps were held in place by ivory buttons. She appeared to be playing dress-up as if oblivious to the harsh conditions around her.

  Or maybe Tara’s made a baby doll out of her.

  She thought about sending a telepathic signal but since the mutant had already responded vocally, she decided to stick with what was working. “What do you want with the girl?”

  “Everything,” the Zap said.

  No menace or humor or apology. Just a fact.

  Rachel took another few steps closer. No reaction.

  “Her mother wants her. She’s worried you will hurt the girl.”

  “We don’t feel pain,” the Zap said, and Rachel wondered if the girl was included in that mutant trait.

  “This is a human child. Surely you can see that.”

  “It is ours.”

  Rachel noted the use of gender-neutral “it.” Maybe the mutant saw humans in the same way humans saw them, as all looking alike and interchangeable. Rachel tried to match the Zap’s emotionless delivery. “No, she belongs to her mother.”

  The Zap was unimpressed. “All of you belong to us.”

  “We’re not Zaps, or whatever you call yourself.”

  “We don’t have names. We’re us.”

  Rachel wondered if she could provoke the mutant into a response. Tara and Lars argued and struggled behind her, edging ever closer, and Rachel imagined someone would soon be tempted to solve the problem with a gun, the good, old-fashioned human way. “We killed some of your kind. I shot one down by the river.”

  “We will come back to collect them. We will repair us.”

  Then what are you waiting for? Why don’t you just leave with the child?

  The child jerked awake and stared wide-eyed up at the Zap and then began screaming and kicking. The Zap tightened its grip, almost crushing the girl, who only cried more frantically. Rachel feared the mutant would break the girl’s ribs or accidentally suffocate her. Only it might not be an accident.

  “Get out of the way, Rachel,” DeVontay yelled.

  “Don’t shoot,” she said, waving him off without turning. She kept her gaze fixed on the Zap, who stared right back, its lips set in a straight, impassive line and its eyes flickering more intensely. The struggle aroused some sort of reaction inside that pale head.

  She hurried toward the Zap, figuring this was the last try. “If you want a human, why don’t you take me? Just let the girl go.”

  “You’re not a human, Rachel Wheeler.”

  “So you know what I am.”

  “We know what you could’ve been. We don’t know what you’ve become.”

  Tara’s screams and pleas were in harmony with her daughter’s, their voices sure to draw out any hungry predators lurking around the town. Rachel had to act fast. “If we kill you, who will collect your dead?”

  “We collect our dead.” The Zap obviously didn’t understand. To its evolved mind, the individual death brought no separation from the rest of the tribe. But if they were so smart now, why did they want the girl? What else was left to learn?

  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 w
orld, 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.”