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

  She looked around for something to help her dig, eventually finding a length of iron pipe. She jammed it against the chunks of concrete and levered her way into the pile, already feeling hopeless. Then she heard Kokona.

  “Rachel.”

  She was so excited to hear Kokona’s voice that she’d forgotten the risk of falling under the mutant’s control. She tried to return Kokona’s psychic message, but she had no way to discern whether the communication was delivered.

  So she spoke it aloud. “Kokona? Are the others with you?”

  She wouldn’t be able to trust the baby, but she needed to have an answer of some kind. She might be the only one left standing in the city, at least above ground.

  “We’re here. Get us out.”

  Rachel dug with renewed furor, kicking at loose stones and jabbing computers and office equipment away with the pipe, probing for a subterranean chamber that would mark the shaft. Kokona had known the explosion was coming. Her survival instinct had driven her down the elevator shaft, once again manipulating those around her.

  But she’d also given DeVontay and Marina a chance, too. And if Rachel hadn’t forced herself to part from Kokona, she might be down there under the rubble herself. It was only through the greatest of luck that she’d been shielded from the blast.

  “Is DeVontay alive?” she asked.

  Kokona made no answer. Rachel wondered if Antonelli and the others had found shelter before the blast. But there was no activity at all around her, aside from the settling of ruins and the drifting of trash in the wind. The near silence was almost as eerie as the previous whining and rumbling of the plasma sink.

  As she prodded the direction in which Kokona guided her, she began to fear what would happen if she caused a cave-in. She imagined the three of them crammed into a space the size of a closet, sharp edges all around, their oxygen supply dwindling.

  She didn’t want to think about bones pinned and crushed under tons of masonry and steel, or blood leaking out to mix with powder and soot. She attacked the pile with renewed vigor. Whatever abilities Kokona had infused while bringing Rachel back from the dead, she found deep reserves of strength and resiliency. Her bruises and scrapes seemed to heal as she worked, and even the smoky haze didn’t diminish her frantic pace.

  Within minutes, she stabbed the pipe down between two blocks and it slid into a hollow cavity. She wiggled the makeshift jimmy bar back and forth, widening the opening. Muffled voices seeped up from below.

  She dropped to her hands and knees. “DeVontay!”

  As she worked to loosen the pile, it began sinking. She was afraid she might be triggering a cave-in that would smother them. She pressed her face to the opening and yelled, “Watch out, I’m sliding a pipe in.”

  Rachel wriggled the iron until it penetrated two feet below the surface, and she wedged it against a large slab of wall so that it was stabilized and held several tons of weight. She scrabbled at the opening, moving the larger pieces to the side even as gravel and grit fell in.

  “I see you!” DeVontay said, and Marina shrieked with relief and joy. She could hear scraping sounds and realized they were digging their way out, apparently having enough space to store the material they removed. Stale air oozed up from the hole and she knew they were close.

  Then DeVontay’s brown hand appeared, fingers reaching along the grit. She touched him and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m getting you out of there, mister.”

  “Fine with me,” he said.

  “Get me out first.” Kokona’s words were simultaneously audible and originating inside Rachel’s skull.

  “No,” Rachel said. “Everyone together.”

  She could feel Kokona’s petulant fuming even though the baby said nothing. As the opening widened, the smoky green light poured down onto DeVontay’s sweating, filthy face. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  Besides Kokona.

  “Marina first,” DeVontay said. “She’s hurt.”

  “Me!” wailed Kokona.

  Rachel wanted Kokona. The baby’s eyes illuminated their makeshift cavern. She peered down into the cavity and saw how tenuous the group’s position was. They were lucky the steel frame of the elevator shaft held, since most of the upper floors had collapsed into the lower levels.

  “Give me Kokona,” Rachel said.

  “No,” DeVontay said, guiding Marina up through the opening. “Save Marina first. If you take Kokona, you might leave the two of us here.”

  She started to protest and then realized he was right. He understood the hold Kokona had on her. She was a carrier until Kokona decided otherwise.

  Marina barely fit through the opening, her sweater torn and her hair gray with dust. Her dark eyes widened when she saw Rachel.

  “What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.

  “Your eyes. They have the colors in them.”

  “What colors?” She hooked her hands under Marina’s armpits, sat for better leverage, and leaned back. DeVontay pushed from below and she wriggled up and out, wincing and moaning in pain as she emerged. “Where are you hurt?”

  “Legs,” she said. Her pants were ripped along one knee, blood soaking the cloth. Her other foot twisted to the side, dangling uselessly.

  “Can you walk?” Rachel asked, exploring the bloody gash. She wondered if she could use Kokona’s healing trick and mend the girl, but she didn’t think it was the right time to try. Until she understood her current condition, she was sticking with her humanity as much as possible.

  As much as Kokona would allow her, anyway.

  “Me!” Kokona gave a full-voice cry of anguish, her rounded face appearing in the opening, eyes burning with all the fury of a sun’s nuclear reactor.

  Rachel reached down and pulled the baby to her chest, instantly forgetting Marina and DeVontay.

  “We did it,” Kokona said.

  “Did what?”

  She patted her tiny hands together in pleasure. “We won.”

  How could she call this a victory? The city she’d plotted to conquer lay in ruins, and the Zaps she’d assembled and unified here had been wiped out. And even now the unknown energetic effects of the plasma sink’s detonation were invading their bodies and contaminating the soil, water, and air. Kokona herself might be getting poisoned by the fallout while she gloated with manic glee.

  “Hey, remember me?” DeVontay called.

  “Leave him,” Kokona commanded.

  “No,” Rachel said. She’d managed to extricate herself from the mad child’s influence on the sixth floor, and she could do so again.

  “I didn’t give you a choice, did I?” Kokona grinned with those two front teeth flashing against pink gums, a horrible mockery of innocence.

  Rachel clutched the baby close, feeling her warmth and smelling the sweet, comforting aroma of the child’s fine, wispy hair. Despite the arduous escape and confinement, the baby was as fresh and bright as always.

  “Rachel!” DeVontay called. “I need you.”

  “Not as much as I do,” Kokona said.

  Rachel began walking away, the gravel and filth crunching under feet.

  “Help him!” Marina pleaded, dragging herself forward a few inches before the pain overwhelmed her.

  “We don’t need them,” Kokona said as they waded through the ruins. A fine ash fluttered down like snow, the layer of smoke and soot circling slowly high overhead.

  Rachel didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The spider was easily the size of a house cat, only much broader in diameter because of its eight spindly legs.

  It was brownish-red and fuzzy, its back marked with zigzagging green streaks. Three small pairs of black eyes ringed the two larger main eyes. The cloven mouth featured two long, curved fangs. From each, a clear drop of venom swelled, glinting in the lamplight.

  It appeared to have crawled from a recessed niche in the building’s foundation. Antonelli could only imagine what the thing had been eating all these years
.

  “Shoot it,” Antonelli yelled. Colleen rolled for her weapon while Millwood’s legs kicked frantically and Squeak studied the arachnid with an unnerving calm. Colleen swung her M16 into firing position, but before she could aim, the spider’s segmented body flexed and it pounced, knocking over the lamp. The flame extinguished and the dome was filled with sudden, absolute darkness.

  “I can’t see it!” Colleen said.

  “Shhh,” Antonelli hissed, fumbling around until he found a brick. “Hold your fire.”

  Aside from the danger of shooting wildly in the dark, Antonelli wasn’t sure whether the dome material would set up a series of ricochets. On the other hand—a fucking mutant spider.

  Even worse, the spider had acted with intelligence, as if it understood the correlation between light and danger.

  The confined space was stifling and quiet, Antonelli’s pulse pounding against his eardrums. His ears still rang from the explosion and he couldn’t trust them to detect the creature’s scuttling.

  He heard Colleen’s boots making soft, sibilant sounds as she crept toward Squeak in the dark. To the child’s credit, she had reacted with far more bravery than Millwood, whose muffled grunts hadn’t changed. The hippie wasn’t making much headway in his rash escape attempt.

  And he blocked all of us in.

  If Antonelli could see, he’d kick the pathetic stoner in the ass. As it was, Millwood’s wriggling legs might serve to attract the spider, but Antonelli wouldn’t know until he heard the screams.

  “I heard it!” Squeak said.

  Antonelli felt foolish with only the brick, but it was all he had. His knife was in the rucksack along with the grenades the Zap had carried, and the grenade launcher was useless even if he could reload. Millwood’s double-barrel shotgun was somewhere in the rubble, covered during the explosion. It would make an effective weapon against a rapidly moving target, but in the dark enclosure, he’d be firing blind.

  He ran to Squeak’s voice, tripping over a rock and nearly falling. As he put down his hand to catch himself, something soft tickled his fingers—a texture much like whatever covered the spider’s abdomen. He drew back with a shudder and swung the brick.

  He missed and nearly lost his balance again. He thought he heard a faint skittering sound on the opposite side of the dome. Maybe the thing would crawl back into its hole.

  Colleen called his name. He answered, wondering how potent the creature’s night vision was. He didn’t know if spiders preyed by sound or scent, although he vaguely recalled that they responded to vibrations on their web if a trapped insect struggled to escape.

  This time, WE’RE the trapped insects.

  He eased over to Colleen and Squeak, poking the toe of his boot out before him with each step. When he reached them, he whispered to Colleen, “Give me your knife.”

  “What about the rifle?” she answered, the child pressed between them for protection.

  “Be ready. If I can get the lamp going…”

  But his lighter was also in the rucksack. Millwood had one, probably in a breast pocket that was currently out of reach. Colleen felt his arm and slid her hand down to his. He felt the handle of her KA-BAR combat knife. The blade was short, with a serrated section near the guard. He’d have preferred a machete or sword so he could keep some distance from the target, but this was much better than a brick.

  “Go over to the door near Millwood,” he whispered to Colleen, and then gave the side of the blade a deliberately loud scrape along the floor. The tactic was meant to cover their movements if the spider reacted to sound, but Antonelli felt silly.

  I just destroyed an entire Zap city, but I can’t outsmart an arachnid.

  He crouched and crept to the middle of the dome. He tried to orient himself based on his memory of the space, but he could no longer tell where he was in relation to the door. Millwood’s struggles were muted, as if he’d exhausted himself and was trying to relax his way out of the jam. Antonelli poked the darkness before him with the knife, even though he believed the creature had retreated.

  When he reached what he thought was the location of the lamp, he slid the sole of his boot along the floor, pivoting in an ever-widening circle. Frustrated, he called to Colleen, and when she answered back, he judged himself to be in the right general area. Summoning his courage, he dropped to his hands and knees and felt around, his throbbing shoulder leaking even more blood when he put weight on it.

  Blood. Can it smell—

  The arachnid hit him with stunning speed and force, spewing a milky, sticky substance that Antonelli immediately identified as spider silk. He was knocked backward into a sitting position, crossing his forearms before his face for protection. The spider scrambled onto him as if trying to pin him to the floor. It was incredibly strong despite weighing less than twenty pounds.

  Antonelli slashed with the knife, feeling it hit resistance and then slide across a rubbery surface, The spider was tougher than he imagined—he had the delusion that one simple prick would cause it to pop with an explosion of gooey fluids. Instead, its wiry legs scraped at the captain, coming at him from different angles as if there were two dozen appendages instead of eight.

  He jabbed upward, the blade bouncing off the tough shell of the creature. He almost wished its numerous eyes glowed—as horrifying as that would be, it would allow him to track its movements. For now he could only guess where its head was based on the location and function of the wriggling legs.

  Colleen called his name and he ordered her to stay there, stabbing again with the knife. He could feel little of the creature’s weight, so gracefully did it straddle him. Then he felt a soft brushing against his sodden bandage and realized the repulsive creature was drawn to the blood.

  His blood.

  He punched, kicked, and slashed, frantic to get the creature off him. It wasn’t just the flicking of the sticklike legs or the wet respiration coming off the thing, but its utter silence. Even the overgrown rodents squeaked and snarled, but this monster spider just took care of business.

  And its business was paralysis, death, and the eventual draining of every drop of juice from Antonelli’s body.

  The image of his desiccated husk trapped here in the darkness forever fueled him to manic rage. He clutched one of the spindly feelers and twisted, yielding a satisfying snap. Something odious dripped on his neck from above and he plunged his knife in that direction. The blade penetrated and goo poured onto him, wetting his shirt and causing his wound to sting.

  The legs twitched wildly, and Antonelli felt a surge of triumph as he stabbed again. He rolled, pinning the arachnid beneath him. Colleen and Squeak both screamed, and even Millwood joined in, apparently having extricated his body from the hole.

  “The lamp!” Antonelli bellowed, and there was a flash as Millwood’s lighter sparked and extinguished.

  In that split-second snapshot, Antonelli was bestowed with a horrible glimpse of the spider—greenish-gray fluid leaking from one of its eyes, the two fangs working back and forth and spewing a thin, clear fluid, and a thicker whitish substance roping from the spinet at the base of the abdomen and encircling Antonelli’s feet.

  He stabbed again, aiming for the other eye, wondering if the spider even registered pain. A sudden agony raced up his wrist and he tried to withdraw it, but it was clamped tight. Electric blue cool crept into the veins of his arm, followed by numbness.

  Millwood’s lighter made another futile strike, revealing the spider’s fangs sunk two inches deep into Antonelli’s wrist. His stomach surged with vomit, but he fought down his panic, knowing a racing pulse would only speed the spread of the poison.

  The other three yelled unintelligible syllables at him, but Antonelli could only focus on the immediate and most essential fact of his existence—that it was probably about to end.

  A brief metallic scraping was followed by the blooming of a small flame, then Colleen lighting the lamp to throw the horror into full view.

  “Sh-shoot it!” Antonell
i yelled, even though he was vulnerable to a miss. A bullet might be preferable to the unknown effects of the mutant toxin.

  Fuck. What if I become some kind of monster? A Zap Spiderman with eight glowing eyeballs and silky webs streaming out my ass?

  The M16 erupted with a percussive thunder that boomed in the hollow of the dome. The spider popped like a balloon full of green Jell-O, legs flying. Antonelli yanked free but the fangs had broken off in his flesh. He sat, head swimming, and plucked them out one by one, his vision already clouding.

  “Mark!” Colleen wailed, lifting the lamp to inspect the fresh puncture wounds. The skin around them was already turning gray and Antonelli’s entire arm was numb.

  Millwood resumed his frantic escape attempt, raking away debris while whimpering and muttering. Squeak watched as if this was just another episode of the world’s most nightmarish cartoon and someone would soon be kind enough to turn off the television.

  “The vibrations…” Antonelli wanted to explain the thing he remembered about spiders being drawn to it, but he couldn’t form the words. Fog swirled through his brain, and his lips seemed to be ten feet away from his face.

  “What?” Colleen said.

  “Get out,” he whispered, which was the loudest volume he could muster. “Get her out.”

  Colleen rested his head on her bosom so that he faced the bay door. A foul glimmer of mustard-colored light leaked from the opening where Millwood toiled. It grew brighter, and then was eclipsed as Millwood wriggled through and was gone.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Colleen said.

  “She”—meaning the girl—“won’t leave…save her.”

  Colleen opened her mouth to protest, then froze as she looked past him to the far side of the dome. Antonelli managed to turn his neck and wished he hadn’t.

  “Go,” he whispered with more urgency.

  Sobbing, Colleen started to kiss him on the mouth and then thought better of it. She kissed his forehead instead, gave a last stroke of his gritty, greasy crewcut, and left him.