Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 4) Read online

  “I can’t give you the baby,” Rachel said. “She’s mine.”

  “You don’t act like a Zap,” the man said, his voice muffled by the wind and the folds of cloth around his neck.

  “Because I’m not. Not all the way. I got…contaminated.” She saw no need for a long explanation of how the Zaps had altered her physiology while healing her. Best to keep it simple, since she had difficulty understanding the truth herself.

  “Like some kind of virus?” the man said. “I haven’t seen anybody else change like that.”

  “Let me shoot her, Goldberg,” one of the hooded men muttered.

  Goldberg waved him away. “Hush until I tell you otherwise.” Then, to Rachel, “What about the baby?”

  “I found her,” Rachel said, which was the truth. Kokona was one of a group of babies ruling a Zap settlement at Newton, where the military and an organized civilian band wiped out most of the mutants. Rachel adopted Kokona as a kind of ambassador, hoping to learn more about the strange creatures and forge a peaceful coexistence between the tribes. Kokona’s betrayal had changed all that, but even now, Rachel’s instinct was to protect the child at all costs.

  “Finder’s keepers, huh?” Goldberg said, moving a few steps closer. Now twenty feet away, Rachel could see tufts of curly beard hair protruding from the hood. “Well, looks like I found her now, so she’s mine.”

  “Ask him what he wants with me,” Kokona silently said.

  When Rachel asked, Goldberg said, “Maybe for trade, maybe a hostage. Maybe something we just kill for fun.”

  That drew gruff laughter from a couple of the men. One whooped and said, “Throw her back in the fire.”

  One of the figures stepped forward. Goldberg reached out a gloved hand in restraint, but the figure brushed past and reached for Kokona. Rachel held the baby higher and turned away.

  The figure pushed back its hood, revealing a tangled spray of golden-white hair that glistened in the firelight. The woman’s face was mostly obscured by shadows, and she wore slim aviator shades and a nest of knitted scarves. She was as bulkily dressed as the others, which disguised the curves that might’ve revealed her middle-aged femininity.

  “I want it,” the woman said.

  “Back on away, Trudy,” Goldberg said. “You don’t know what it will do.”

  “It’s just a baby,” the woman repeated, her voice cracked and strained and aged.

  “You lost yours. You don’t need another.”

  Rachel retreated, but the burning van blocked her path. The circle of hooded figures closed in a little tighter. The wind stalled and the clouds above coiled into a seething black rag shot through with bright green veins of aurora. The first drops of dirty rain drilled down from above as deep thunder rumbled.

  The woman, Trudy, leapt at Rachel, clawing for Kokona. The baby silently implored Rachel: “Keep that lunatic away from me.”

  “Let me shoot her,” said the man whom Goldberg had already scolded.

  Goldberg growled like an animal and sprinted after Trudy, grabbing her by the jacket and yanking her to the ground. He was about to kick the woman when Rachel shouted, “Don’t.”

  She’d fished her Glock from her waistband during the struggle and now she shifted its barrel back and forth between the two hooded people.

  Goldberg spread his arms, his face expressionless and made bug-like by the oversize goggles. A raindrop spattered off one of the lenses, tracking a bleary streak down the dusty glass. “That’s a bad move.”

  The woman dragged herself to her knees, whimpering, “My baby…want…baby…”

  “You can kill me, all right,” Rachel said with as much steel as she could muster. “But I’ve got a full clip and if there are any beasts around, they’ll be on you before my body hits the ground.”

  “Don’t let them have me,” Kokona silently pleaded.

  Rachel was surprised by the mutant child’s sudden vulnerability. For all her power, Kokona had no control over humans and their threats. Rachel wondered if this was a way out—if Kokona was gone, Rachel could go look for DeVontay and the others. Perhaps with time and distance, her Zap attributes would fade and she could reclaim her full humanity.

  But she couldn’t abandon Kokona. Whether her love was involuntary or not, it was real. She’d have to fight for the survival of them both.

  But maybe fighting isn’t the right play.

  Kokona tensed in distress, fearing Rachel’s next move.

  “Just keep quiet and pretend to be a baby,” Rachel telepathically ordered.

  Kokona fumed, her eyes burning with rebellion, but she was helpless to protest. If the humans grasped her intelligence, she’d be in much greater danger.

  Goldberg held Trudy behind him with one arm, stepping forward as if to prevent any of the hooded figures from shooting Rachel. He was also putting himself directly in her line of fire. The goggles created an impression of cold menace, but his voice was calm and low. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Are you kidding? You just tried to burn us alive!”

  “I didn’t see you had a baby. And I didn’t know you could talk. You’re not just a Zap.”

  “Your friends don’t seem to care about the difference.” The flames at her back diminished a little, the fuel burning off and the smoke thinning as the rain fell more heavily.

  “You can come with us, or die right here. We need you. Your choice.”

  “I want the bay-beeeeee,” Trudy wailed, which elicited another strong shake from Goldberg.

  “Hush or you get left out here tonight,” Goldberg said to her. Then, to Rachel: “Throw down your gun. I won’t let anyone hurt you as long as you do what I say.”

  “Don’t,” Kokona silently implored.

  Rachel’s protective instinct was even stronger that Kokona’s telepathic hold over her. She flung her Glock to the ground, half expecting Goldberg to step back and give the command to open fire.

  Instead, he nodded and waved her toward a cluster of brick ruins across a cracked parking lot. “That way. Let’s get to shelter before the sky busts loose.”

  A couple of the hooded figures broke off from the circle and led the way. Goldberg motioned toward Rachel with his rifle. She clutched Kokona even more tightly to her chest and followed them, the other figures falling into line behind Goldberg. The rain was heavier now, the thunder shaking the ground and knocking loose chunks of masonry and broken glass around them.

  The two figures vanished into shadows ahead. Rachel took one last look at the burning vehicle and discordant skyline, then Goldberg was ushering her down into cool darkness.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What do you see?” DeVontay Jones said.

  Colleen Kelly lowered the binoculars and pushed tangled red hair from her face. The flame from the oil lamp glinted off her green eyes, exhaustion etching shadowed creases in her skin. “Not much of anything.”

  She passed the glasses to DeVontay, who looked through them with his lone good eye. The binoculars had no night-vision capacity, so he might as well have stared into a swirling puddle of oil.

  “Storm’s blowing over, but I don’t see no blue glow,” he said.

  “At least we’re headed in the right direction.”

  “We don’t know what direction is right,” DeVontay said. “But something’s happening out there, and Kokona wants to be where the action is.”

  They were on the second floor of a farmhouse set a hundred yards off the highway, one of the few standing structures they’d seen in the last two days. They’d followed Highway 421 East to Winston-Salem, based more on a hunch than any solid evidence that Rachel and Kokona had come this way. A faint blue haze had appeared on the horizon yesterday, which they believed was caused by some kind of Zap city or stronghold.

  The evening before, they’d seen a small flock of silver metallic birds cutting an erratic pattern in this direction, and DeVontay took that as confirmation that something big and strange lay ahead, just waiting to throw another shock
at them.

  “I don’t see any sunrise, but it can’t be more than an hour or so away,” DeVontay said.

  “Maybe dawn’s never coming again,” Kelly said.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  You get used to a screwed-up world like this, and then it goes changing on you. Why couldn’t Doomsday be like the Bible or the conspiracy kooks said it would be?

  DeVontay handed the binoculars back to Kelly. “I’ll go check on the kids.”

  She nodded, sitting by the window with an M16 in her lap. She’d lost her captain and lover in Wilkesboro, and DeVontay marveled at her strength and resolve. She reminded him of Rachel in a way, although she was younger and of course fully human.

  He left the door to the bedroom open, the lamplight barely illuminating the stairs enough for him to descend. A candle flickered on the coffee table, Marina and Squeak asleep on the couch. Marina had her arm around the five-year-old who clutched a cloth doll with yarn hair. They both snored softly, the only sound in the house besides the creaking of roof tin and old timbers.

  Marina’s rifle leaned against the sofa beside her, ready for action if necessary. She’d had to use it more than any fourteen-year-old should. DeVontay and Rachel had raised Marina after her parents died, but DeVontay’s fatherly pride was unearned—he had no idea what had happened to Stephen, the other teenager who’d lived in the bunker with them. Franklin, either, for that matter.

  I’m getting real good at losing people, but it’s not getting any easier.

  He tugged the blanket so that it covered most of both girls. DeVontay had no idea what the date was, but he guessed it was early November. The late-autumn nights had grown cooler, even though the days featured odd temperature fluctuations and turbulent weather. DeVontay wondered how the radiation was affecting them. He could almost feel it tingling inside him, carrying on the busy work of altering his genetic code and rearranging his molecular structure.

  DeVontay felt his way through the dark kitchen that contained tin cans and dirty plates from their dinner. He checked to make sure the back door was locked, and he peeked through the glass. Brilliant lightning flickered and revealed the barn, tractor, and fence, weeds and saplings grown around them. Just five years after the collapse, nature was already reclaiming its turf.

  After the flash faded, he studied the darkness for a moment. He wasn’t even sure what danger would look like—Mother Nature had transformed into a crazy bitch fueled by electromagnetic radiation and Zap plasma. House cats were feral panthers, dogs were overgrown coyotes, and even insects were large enough to suck blood like vampire bats. They’d seen no Zaps since the massacre at Wilkesboro, but DeVontay still searched for glowing eyes among the shifting shadows.

  Satisfied that nothing lurked, he went to the front door where Kevin Millwood stood guard. The unkempt, rebellious hippie helped their group survive the massive plasma detonation in Wilkesboro and joined them more from a sense of adventure than any social urges. Despite his spacey New Age philosophies, he’d proven durable and competent, caring for Marina and Squeak and deferring to Colleen Kelly as group leader due to her military experience.

  Kelly wants revenge, I want Rachel. What does Millwood want?

  DeVontay was surprised to find the front door unlocked. He called Millwood’s name and got no answer.

  He stepped outside onto the porch, his rifle at the ready. He was about to call again when he smelled the smoke.

  “What’s up, Cyclops?” came the raspy voice.

  DeVontay tolerated the older man’s nickname both for its nod to long-lost Greek mythology and the fact that Millwood never employed it in front of the others. Not that DeVontay was self-conscious about his glass eye—he’d worn the prosthetic since suffering a childhood accident and gave it no more thought than he did the scar on his shoulder or the blister on his big toe.

  “You’re supposed to be keeping watch,” DeVontay said, waving away the acrid tobacco smoke.

  Millwood drew a puff from his cigarette and the cherry lit his face, revealing his position sitting on the edge of the porch. He made a dramatic show of adjusting his rounded-lens spectacles. “I am. Watching, watching, watching.”

  “From inside the house. Something could carry you off and we’d never even know.”

  “Oh, I assure you, Brother, I’d scream like a school girl.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I try not to make them scream.”

  “Whatever floats your boat.”

  “You’re a weird one, Millwood.”

  “Call me ‘The Woodster.’”

  DeVontay sat on the steps downwind from the stale tobacco fumes, but he kept his M16 at the ready. “That’s dumb. Why not just ‘Woody’”?

  “They called me that when were kids, but ever since that stupid cowboy doll from ‘Toy Story,’ it’s kind of lost its shine.”

  “I can see that,” DeVontay said. “But I’m just going to call you ‘Millwood.’ No offense, but you’re not the kind of guy who goes by his first name.”

  “No offense taken. ‘Kevin’ is too serious. Makes me sound like a fucking investment banker or something.”

  “You’re far from that.”

  “A long, long way.” Millwood tapped his temple with the hand that held the glowing cigarette. “The only investment I ever made was in the experience of the mind.”

  DeVontay jerked his head to indicate the larger world. “You got your money’s worth out of all this, for sure.”

  “I’m looking at it all from an existential level. Like, drugs are fun and all that, but this shit’s like a twenty-four/seven freak show. You never know what’s going to happen next.”

  “You’re not worried about all this radiation?”

  “Change is the nature of existence, my friend.” Millwood ground out his cigarette and flipped the butt into the darkness.

  “We better get inside. I don’t want any ‘change’ to sneak out of the weeds and dig fangs into me.” DeVontay saw no need to scold the man for putting them all at risk. Millwood had no personal stake in their war, besides the self-interest that came with dodging extinction.

  “We’re cool. You can see their glowing eyes from a mile away.”

  “Yeah, but it’s the ones you don’t see that you have to worry about.”

  “True dat, Brother.” Millwood stood and stretched his tall, thin frame and tugged his scraggly beard. “Guess I better grab some Z’s before morning.”

  DeVontay made a final scan of the property before following Millwood into the house. Growing up in an urban environment, he’d never been comfortable out in the country until the solar storms filled the cities with danger. But he couldn’t afford the luxury of staying here any longer, even though travel was putting the kids at risk.

  They’re at risk no matter where they are. The bunker offered an illusion of safety, but the moment it got tested, it failed.

  Kokona had a lot to do with that failure, though. The baby’s betrayal wasn’t totally out of the blue—Franklin had warned them about the mutant, but Rachel chalked it up to her grandfather’s usual paranoia. DeVontay had gone along with Rachel out of devotion, just another fool in love. Now he recognized that neither of them wanted to accept the truth.

  Rachel had mistaken her bond with Kokona as that of a mother instead of a slave.

  He had to believe Rachel was still alive. Without her, he had no reason to continue in this cracked, contaminated world. He wouldn’t stop looking until he found her or learned she was dead. That meant staying alive himself.

  DeVontay checked on the sleeping kids again, and then took a post at the living-room window where he had a view of the highway and surrounding overgrown meadows. He watched the storm sweep in from the east, the night broken by streaks of green-tinted lightning. Soon rain drummed on the roof of the house, drowning out any sounds of approaching danger. As he squinted into the darkness outside for signs of movement, he wondered if the malformed monstrosities would hole up until the weather c
leared.

  When he saw the two yellow glints of light, he thought at first they were mutant eyes, glowing with radioactive menace. But they vanished so quickly he couldn’t be sure if he’d even seen anything. The candle still burned low on the coffee table, and maybe he’d seen its reflection in the double-paned window. Then it flashed again, definitely outside.

  He tightened his grip on his M16, wondering if he should wake the others. But there was no need to disturb their sleep until he knew for certain this was a threat. They’d sighted beasts in the distance before that just passed by without picking up their scent. Silence was probably the best defense, anyway.

  He waited for the lights to appear again so he could judge their distance. He assumed from their size that the creature was within a hundred yards of the house, prowling the fence line that surrounded the property. But when the twin lights shone steadily, he saw they were much farther away, perhaps half a mile.

  That’s one BIG son of a bitch.

  The lights steadily grew larger, not acting at all like the eyes of a beast—no looking around, no bobbing up and down, no blinking. Of course, given the variety of strange creatures crawling out of the biological soup of plasma fallout, he had no idea if the thing was mammal, insect, or reptile.

  Then he realized it was taking a parallel path that would bring it near the house. It was following the highway.

  A car?

  Now that he had the thought, he was amazed how obvious it was. His brain was no longer programmed to think in the images and symbols of human civilization—an ordinary visual stimulus from the former world now seemed alien and incongruent.

  But who was driving? The military had salvaged some vehicles that had been stored in shielded bunkers and protected from the destruction wrought by the solar storms, and no doubt some paranoid survivalists had preserved some forms of mechanized transportation. DeVontay had seen a number of them at the military camp before the Wilkesboro assault.

  He couldn’t rule out the possibility that Zaps had crafted or co-opted vehicles of their own design—they’d already begun manufacturing metallic birdlike drones and handheld weapons that collected and disbursed plasma rays. At their rate of intellectual evolution, they’d be building large aircraft and advanced technologies before the human race could even forge steel again.