Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) Read online

  The captain half smiled and then nodded. “Ah, so you’ve been scouting her out, huh?”

  “Let’s just say I probably know more about the Zaps than your New Pentagon medal-polishers do.” Franklin summarized the battle in Newton and how Shipley’s unit had attacked the Zaps there, leaving the town a smoking ruin with few walking away. He even credited Kokona with helping his and Rachel’s group escape, which was probably true, although that part made their survival seem just a little too convenient.

  “Maybe you’re not the only one keeping your friends close and your enemies closer,” Antonelli said.

  “Or maybe things are exactly what they look like.” Franklin wanted to prepare Antonelli for Rachel’s arrival so he wouldn’t have to wade through this same bullshit again, but he wasn’t even sure she was still alive. The captain would likely deem her a “double spy” and issue a death sentence.

  Maybe his defense of Kokona was just an advance battle over Rachel’s fate. Franklin had given up any illusions of a civilization restored to its former glory. He was at peace with the idea this was as good as it was going to get.

  “Then you won’t mind if I interrogate her,” Antonelli said. “We’ve received intel that the mutant babies were their tribal leaders, but it sounded a little too incredible to believe. One of our assignments is to pass along any discoveries we make about them. We’ve had some helicopter flyovers, and even a few surveillance drones of our own, but we get limited visual contact. And of course sat-comms are blown to hell, so the CIA’s eyes in the sky are as blind as a headless bat.”

  “Well, I can only tell you what I saw and what my granddaughter saw. The Zap babies communicate telepathically and then can kind of give orders to the whole tribe. But this was years ago, remember. Who knows how much they’ve changed since then?”

  “Has this Kokona changed any? She’s obviously not grown physically.”

  “Well, she’s smarter, for sure. She’s memorized every book in my library, and she remembers everything she learned from the other Zaps in Newton, where they were draining knowledge from every human they could find. So they’re like rocket scientists on supersteroids.”

  Antonelli pushed at the fabricated bird on the table, which had been disassembled into components, although the covering material had proven nearly impossible to rend apart. The tubing, wires, circuits, and clear lenses suggested some kind of computerized operating system, although there was no real motor inside. And the materials were not really metals but some kind of synthetic amalgam.

  “If they built this, then they’re geniuses beyond anything we can imagine,” the captain said. “Tidewater, my ordnance man, says the whole thing has an organic feel, as if this was a living creature. And the birds assembled and attacked as if following externally issued orders, but were clever enough to act independently once they selected a specific target or were cut off from the others.”

  “Yeah, and they acted like they enjoyed killing a whole hell of a lot,” Franklin said. “That’s no machine.”

  “If we go with the ESP theory, then they could very well have individual brains, but they were probably directed by a Zap.” The captain held up a flexible bit of dark red tubing that looked suspiciously like a fat artery. “I’m almost scared to touch it. If it’s organic, it might even carry disease.”

  “Avian flu from hell,” Franklin said. “The newspapers would love that, if there were any newspapers left.”

  He glanced at the monitors, grateful the screens carried no audio links. One of the cameras had been knocked out, probably from a collision with a bird, but the two remaining monitors offered up grim gray footage of the vultures indulging in a feast, lit only by the watery radiance of the aurora.

  “About that interrogation,” Antonelli said.

  “I don’t like that word. Sounds pushy. If you want to talk to the baby, that’s fine, but keep it friendly. And just you. I don’t want a bunch of dirty-faced thugs with blood on their hands playing ‘Good cop, bad cop.’”

  “As you like,” Antonelli said. “It’s your party.”

  Franklin led the way through the bunker to Marina’s room. The lights were dimmed almost to nothing in order to preserve the batteries. Many of the doors leading onto the hallway were open, and soldiers sprawled on the bunks, their boots off and their weapons leaning against the walls. Some of them sported red-spotted bandages, and a tall, hatchet-faced woman wore a sling on one arm.

  Got our asses kicked by some wind-up rubber duckies, and yet we think we can march right into their cities and demand back the keys to the world. God help us all.

  He knocked softly on Marina’s door. “Stephen, it’s me.”

  The door opened a crack and half of Stephen’s face appeared there. His eyebrow arched when he saw the captain and he said, “What does he want?”

  “Just a little chat with Kokona. No strong-arm stuff, I told him we wouldn’t stand for that, but just in the interest of keeping everything out in the open.”

  Stephen turned as Marina spoke, then Kokona, but Franklin couldn’t make out the words. Antonelli paced impatiently behind him, tapping the cigar against his teeth. Finally the door opened and Franklin followed Antonelli in. Stephen closed the door and stood with his back against it, M16 across his chest.

  Marina sat on her bed beside Kokona, who was wrapped in blankets and wore a one-piece sleeper with little pink booties that Rachel had knitted for her. Kokona looked barely a year old, although the age of Asian babies, and often Asians in general, was difficult for Franklin to judge. But Antonelli gazed down at her as if she had just popped out of the womb, a stranger that he wished he’d never met.

  “Hello, Kokona,” the captain said.

  “Where is your gun?”

  Antonelli glanced at Franklin, startled by the high voice and clear diction issuing from that precocious little mouth even though he’d already heard her speak.

  Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?

  “I’m here as an ambassador,” Antonelli said. “Not an enemy.”

  Kokona giggled. “How dumb do you think I am, Mr. Marine Captain?”

  “We have a right to be here. This bunker was paid for and developed by the United States government on public property. We established that right under recognized laws long before your kind…uh, came to our land.”

  Franklin almost giggled at that himself. “What the captain’s trying to say is we know the Zaps are powerful, and we know you could wipe us out if you wanted, and we’re grateful to have whatever land you’ve allowed us to populate. It’s understandable if we see you as a threat because we only exist through your forbearance. Also, we don’t know anything about you, and we’re scared of what we don’t understand. And, oh yeah, freedom and all that shit.”

  “We all want peace,” Kokona said. “What intelligent being wouldn’t? But I’m afraid you’re talking to the wrong mutant. I don’t have any contact with the others of my kind. For all I know, I’m not even one of them anymore. They’ve likely evolved far beyond anything I understand.”

  “Can you tell me what you know?” Antonelli asked. “Where are they? What are their defensive and offensive capabilities? And what’s their intent?”

  “You want me to judge them based on human standards?” Kokona shook her head. “Our motives are not based on conquest or confrontation. Admittedly, when we were new—after the conversion due to a bombardment of electromagnetic radiation—we reverted to primal, violent states, but that was necessary. The slate had to be wiped clean so new truths could be written.”

  “You killed thousands of us,” Antonelli said. “Maybe tens of thousands. You nearly drove us to extinction.” He balled his fists and took a step forward. “And you call that ‘wiping the slate clean’?”

  Marina put a protective arm around Kokona, but the baby only giggled again. “I didn’t kill anybody, Captain. After all, I can’t even walk.”

  I didn’t expect her to offer up any useful information, but now she’s just flat-ou
t taunting him. That’s probably what she thinks of all of us, even Rachel.

  Franklin wondered if he’d make a mistake by letting Antonelli in the bunker at all. Sure, he’d have a few dozen deaths on his conscience, but he would’ve justified it the way he always did: intrusive Big Brother, sticking its nose where it had no business, and getting that nose bloodied.

  But Kokona was revealing herself in ways she never did when Franklin talked to her alone. He often had the feeling she was just playing a complicated game for her own amusement. Franklin didn’t necessarily suspect evil intent, just a childlike view of the stakes.

  She would apparently get by just fine no matter who ended up running the world.

  “What about these birds?” Franklin asked. “Do you know anything about them?”

  Marina and Stephen shared a glance, as if they’d been talking about the subject before the men arrived. “She doesn’t know anything,” Marina said, too quickly.

  That girl’s a very bad liar.

  “Let her answer,” Antonelli said.

  Kokona smiled at Marina, eyes dancing with curls of red and orange light. “I can speak for myself, Marina.”

  Then, to the captain, “I don’t know anything.”

  Franklin had no idea whether Kokona was a better liar than Marina.

  “I lost twenty-three good soldiers today,” Antonelli said. “Right now they’re outside lying on the ground, serving as vulture bait. And when the vultures are done, who knows what will come out of the woods to clean up the scraps?”

  “I regret the deaths, Captain,” Kokona said. “We view death differently than you humans. Of course, I can’t speak for my people, since I might not even belong with them anymore, but perhaps if you accept it as a simple state of transformation—even transcendence—then you won’t feel as much pain and guilt and sorrow.”

  “Don’t you dare sit there and mock my people,” Antonelli said, his face reddening and twisting in rage. This time Franklin had to step between them to keep the captain from charging the bed. “What kind of sick little monster are you?”

  Marina scooped up Kokona and held the baby protectively to her chest, glaring at Antonelli as if he was the monster here.

  As Antonelli stormed to the door, Stephen stepped aside, shaking his head ruefully at Franklin.

  “Captain!” Kokona called, just as he was about to leave the room.

  Franklin braced for a fresh confrontation, but Kokona said, “Your man with the injured leg. Compound fractures of the tibia and fibula, with deep lacerations and possibility of blood poisoning, accompanied by high fever.”

  Antonelli jabbed his cigar between his teeth and clenched his jaws around it as if to keep himself from screaming. “So what?” he grunted around the soggy tobacco.

  “I can repair him. As a token of good faith.”

  Franklin almost wished he’d stayed at his compound on the remote ridge top, where his biggest worry was whether the goats would eat his longjohns when he draped them over the fence to air out.

  This is going to be good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “How much farther?” Lars asked Rachel.

  “Hard to tell,” Rachel answered from behind him. She worked the paddle only to keep the canoe pointed downstream, since the current was strong enough to carry them. The water was like green glass under the aurora, its surface shimmering in a reflection of the sky. With the lack of electric lights, they might have been traveling the river as it was ten thousand years ago.

  “Your boyfriend said an hour, and it feels like twice that already.”

  Lars had finished two beers since they’d set out, tossing the empties into the river as if littering was acceptable now. Once, he’d unzipped his pants and leaned over the bow to urinate, nearly tipping them. DeVontay and Tara’s canoe was a good thirty yards ahead, so they missed the circus sideshow.

  “Just keep your voice down and keep your eyes open for the rocks,” Rachel said. “We’re lucky enough that the birds didn’t see us, but we still have to get there.

  She wondered if she should have led the procession, given that she could remove her sunglasses and light the way if necessary. But that would have revealed their passage to anyone along the riverbank.

  “So how did you guys end up together?” Lars asked, evidently bored with their nature outing.

  “We ran into each other in Charlotte right after it happened, and we just ended up surviving together.” She debated how much to tell him, and then decided if they were going to be allies, she could share part of the truth. “We were headed to my grandfather’s compound in the mountains near the Blue Ridge Parkway. He’s old-school survivalist, pre-Y2K. Even got in trouble with the Feds for a little dalliance with the Patriot Movement in the nineties.”

  “So the compound worked? He made it?”

  “Yeah, he’s still alive.” As far as I know. I haven’t seen him in a week, and things change fast these days.

  “So if the compound’s working out so well, why do you need to come to Stonewall for supplies?”

  “I told you, we’re looking for other survivors. My grandfather’s not too crazy about it, says it’s just more mouths to feed, but me and DeVontay believe if we want to be real humans, we need a civilization of some kind.”

  Lars laughed, which harmonized with the gurgling, rippling current that carried them east. “What does your grandfather think of…you know…that?” Lars waved to indicate his own eyes, and then hers.

  “He accepts me for what I am.”

  “Man, I need to work on being more open-minded, I guess. I’ve always thought the only good Zap is a dead Zap. Nothing personal.”

  Rachel didn’t answer, intent on guiding the canoe down a narrow channel between two walls of rock. Even though the river had grown wider, the boulders were more frequent, creating chutes of foaming rapids that opened onto cold, deep pools. Ahead, DeVontay’s canoe bucked and dipped as it entered a corrugated stretch of turbulent water.

  “Hang on,” Rachel said, digging her paddle into the riffle and angling hard to turn the bow away from the shore. “Let me take it.”

  But Lars ignored her, due either to drunkenness or macho defiance, and jammed his paddle into the water on the same side she was working. The canoe spun sideways and the current jammed it against an upward slope of mossy stone. They were stuck for several seconds, taking on cold water that made Lars howl in shock.

  Maybe we should have left his drunk ass.

  Rachel finally wedged her paddle handle in a cleft and maneuvered the boat into steady water. “Let me take it,” she said.

  Lars rested his paddle across the gunwales and leaned forward, looking into the water. Ahead, DeVontay and Tara floated idly in a pool, waiting for them to catch up.

  Rachel used her paddle as a rudder, turning the canoe to starboard. The boat dipped as if they’d hit a little waterfall, settling with a splash.

  “Whoa,” Lars said. “I’m going to puke if you keep that up.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  The rear of the boat rose, pitching her forward, and then the bow dipped enough to take on water. Lars bellowed a curse while Rachel struggled to keep a grip on her paddle. Her rifle slid along the bottom of the boat into the collected water.

  Lars turned. “Do I have to make a joke about women drivers—”

  The tentacle rose up behind him, wrapped him in a serpentine coil, and plucked him over the side before Rachel could even shout a warning. The tentacle had been as thick as her wrist, dull gray under the aurora glow, and glistening with tiny suckers. She yelled his name, which caused Tara and DeVontay to start yelling.

  Rachel didn’t take the time to consider that Lars had annoyed her to the point she wished they’d left him, or that he likely wasn’t going to end up joining them at the bunker. All she knew was that he was in danger.

  If she was going to be human, she’d be human all the way.

  She dove into the brisk water, which chilled her almost to t
he point of numbness. She was careful not to strike her head on a rock, since she didn’t know the water’s depth. But she figured if a creature that size could live in it, it was probably over her head.

  Rachel touched bottom and spun, squinting into the murk. The water stung her eyes, but they projected light below just like they did above, only with diminished range. A froth of bubbles trailed away to her left, and she kicked and stroked ferociously after it.

  Then she saw it, clinging to its prize. It perched on the sandy bottom, four long arms supporting it, two others clutching Lars, who struggled and shook his head, his wild hair flailing in the current. His arms were pinned to his side, but he kicked for all he was worth against the bulbous head of the river-squid.

  The aquatic beast sported jiggling gelatin eyes on each side of its head and prominent beak that looked as hard as a mollusk shell. Its two unoccupied arms wafted along the currents as if daring Rachel to come closer.

  She drew her machete from its sheath and took the dare.

  The machete wasn’t the best weapon for the situation, since resistance would slow her swing, but she didn’t have time to surface, collect her rifle, and hope it would fire ten feet underwater. She’d had time to fill her lungs, but Lars would be out of air if she didn’t act now.

  One of the gray arms swept out at her, the tip curling toward her neck, but she ducked and slashed the blade along its length. A dark, inky fluid billowed out and clouded her vision before it was swept downstream. The other arm came in low, and she allowed it to wrap around one leg and pull her toward the gleaming beak.

  She gripped the machete in both hands and skewered the river-squid between the eyes. The blade penetrated the rubbery skin and she worked the blade like a lever, opening the wound and causing a damaging and probably toxic leak.

  The creature released Lars, who immediately drew his axe and pinned one of the arms against a rock, wiggling the blade back and forth until the limb severed. Then he kicked toward the surface, and Rachel followed him, undulating between the listless tentacles.