Crucible: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 5) Read online

  If this is the city of the future, humans would never want to live here anyway. Not that they’ll get a choice.

  They turned a corner and encountered an urban block identical to the previous one. There were no street signs or signals, and of course no cars. Even the few features designed to suggest a human touch—benches, trash cans, a fire hydrant—served only to make the place more desolate. Beyond the dome, the sun had begun its descent into the western mountains, the red haze mixing with the lime green and violet aurora.

  “In here,” Kokona said when they were halfway down the block. The baby waved a tiny hand to the left.

  The building had no entrance or windows. But when Rachel stood before it, a large rectangle appeared on the wall, opening to a dark space within. A low pulsing sound poured forth, barely at the threshold of hearing. Rachel stepped inside, the combined illumination of her and Kokona’s eyes allowing her to see.

  This building also had a lobby, but it was devoid of any features. She took a dozen steps into the dark, cavernous space until Kokona told her to stop.

  She waited, the vibration beneath her feet in sync with the throbbing. Then the floor gave way—slowly, like an elevator descending. Bright light appeared around them as they were lowered to a subterranean level perhaps twenty feet down, noise and activity a jarring contrast to the quiet stillness of the streets.

  The dimensions of the facility were stunning. The expanse was easily the size of two city blocks, apparently running beneath a large section of the city. On one end a large plasma sink captured the energy channeled from atop the dome. A series of metallic boxes appeared to be some kind of condensing system that converted the energy into a usable form. A network of pipes distributed the energy to the various machines at work, and it was these that hammered out the pulse of creation.

  Along one wall were rows of liquid-filled chambers, and in each floated what at first appeared to be people, but their atrophied nature and wide black eyeholes revealed them to be the savage Zaps that had branched off from their hyperintelligent cousins.

  Electrodes were attached to the submerged corpses, tiny wires evidently conducting some sort of matter to a larger machine in the center of the expanse. Along another wall stood the silver-suited Zaps that served as the pawns of the Conglomerate. Rachel had killed a number of such Zaps, but she’d also shared telepathic communication with a few of them, including one that had helped her and DeVontay escape in Wilkesboro.

  Although such interactions had been rare, they also hinted at the possibility that the Zaps weren’t all of a single, unified mind. In many ways, those Zaps had seemed capable of reasoning and compassion—the sorts of human traits that the omnipotent infant Zaps were determined to wipe from the Earth.

  “What is all this?” Rachel asked over the clatter and rumble of machinery, which should’ve been much louder given the size and complexity of the operation. It was as if the manufactured material was diaphanous and flexible rather than solid as metal, sewn together rather than forged and stamped.

  “This is tomorrow,” Kokona said. “Our future.”

  The center of the facility featured large, framed devices with numerous multi-jointed arms. Rachel watched as one set of delicate, articulated pincers pulled a thin silver string from an opening. Other arms pulled it back and forth as if weaving tapestry on a loom.

  When the clotted material accumulated into a spheroid bulk, more arms descended that projected short, sharp blades. The blades flensed and shaped the material as it spun so rapidly that Rachel could barely detect the motion. But it was soon clear what the machine was crafting, for stacks of their creations stood against the far wall.

  The metallic Zaps were like the silver-suited Zaps across from them, except these had no human characteristics. Since Zaps had originated from a small subset of humans during the solar storms, they had rapidly advanced from primal, violent savages to communally connected creatures to powerful, intelligent entities. No matter what they were now, they had once been human.

  Yet the babies had mutated faster than any of them—physically stunted in their development, they’d absorbed human knowledge at a rapid pace, learning multiple languages, reading entire libraries at a sitting, and exploiting humans in order to learn even more about their former way of life.

  “You’re duplicating your own kind,” Rachel said in astonishment.

  “Not exactly,” Kokona said. “We’re not making more babies.”

  The horrible realization dawned on Rachel. “But how—?”

  “There are a thousand ‘hows’ and none of them matter,” Kokona said.

  “Why, then?” She could understand building more troops, if the goal was to attack the far-flung and desperate human settlements across the world. But evidently the Conglomerate planned to destroy the other, lesser Zaps and replace them with metal versions.

  “Why would you kill your own kind?” Rachel finally asked, gazing down into the baby’s smooth Asian features.

  If Kokona felt any emotion for the destruction of the tribe that had helped her gain power over the last five years, she showed no sign of it. “We don’t need them. Plus, they’re a danger. When we were telepathically connected, we could all work together for common goals. Now, though, we have the material itself to handle the task.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why try to control thousands of different units and combine that many minds when we can reduce it to just a handful?”

  “You and the two other babies.”

  “Well…for now,” Kokona said cryptically.

  “But how can you fight us—I mean, the humans—alone?” Even as she spoke, Rachel wondered how she might turn this new information to an advantage. But Kokona wouldn’t show it to her if the knowledge was exploitable. Despite her hubris, she was vastly clever.

  Then again, Kokona’s ego had exponentially increased alongside her intelligence.

  “Their minds are in the material,” Kokona said. “It’s living metal. It thinks, it feels, it reacts. Most importantly, it obeys.”

  As Rachel glanced about the massive facility and its million moving parts, she tried to comprehend the systemic functioning. It didn’t quite appear automated and no process was out of synch with another. It acted in concert, like a single machine, one organism.

  “But your other Zaps obeyed.” Rachel shook her head. The mutant part of her was angry at the needless destruction that seemed instilled in Zaps from the very beginning. Her human half searched for a hopeful sign that the Zaps would now prove vulnerable.

  “We still use some to perform various services such as defense. But soon we won’t even require that,” Kokona said. “They’re a danger. Some even dared to differentiate and originate their own thoughts.”

  “Is that why you exterminated them in Wilkesboro?”

  “Collateral damage. The same as your human armies used soldiers as bait, hoping to lure us out.”

  “But a few defections can’t hurt you. The rest are no danger if you’re telepathically linked to them,” Rachel said. She crossed the platform from which they’d descended and eased closer toward the mesmerizing looms. They were much larger versions of the three-dimensional printers she’d seen in Wilkesboro, where Zaps had extruded human flesh to craft the early iterations of their strange alloy.

  “Many minds are simply harder to control,” Kokona said, waving over to the chambers of liquid. “Look at those savages. They’re aberrations, missing a critical step in evolution.”

  “But you were just like them not so long ago.”

  Kokona’s voice rose in shrill anger. “I was never like them. I started out superior and proved it.”

  As Rachel examined the machines, Kokona said, “We’re replacing humans, too. Imagine a whole world of lovely, shiny creatures that think just like I do. But you don’t have to worry. You’re not like them. You’re one of a kind.”

  Then why did you make a copy of me?

  If Kokona read her mind, she didn’t answer
.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Abigail Murray didn’t like this.

  But Lonnie was right. They couldn’t sit around and wait any longer. Their rations were depleted and they’d found only a few tins of food in the rubble. Water was a problem, too. A couple of ominous thunderstorms had passed since they’d entered the city, but the dome prevented any of the rain from falling. But beyond the supply shortage, the psychological strain had reached the breaking point.

  She fanned the squadron out along the western end of the city, where the architecture continued its slow, fluid sprawl. She’d sent scouts into the streets, fearing more of the fabricated monsters that had poured from the city and attacked the savage Zaps. But they reported no sign of life, mutant or otherwise.

  “Stay together, and don’t shoot unless ordered,” Murray said. She glanced at K.C. and Squeak, the young girl. “You two keep behind me.”

  Murray wanted to leave the pair in their hiding place, but she couldn’t be sure the troops would return. Besides, a quick death might be preferable to the fate Zaps dispensed to their captives.

  The scar-faced corporal led four of the soldiers to the south, performing a sweep well clear of the encroaching silvery substance. The corporal’s orders were to patrol a cordon of four blocks and meet up in an hour.

  Murray was left with Delores Simms and Lonnie Green, the bearded, bible-loving private. K.C. was armed with an M16, a Glock in a hip holster, and a K-bar knife strapped to the inside of one ankle. She handled her weapon with confidence, and Murray was relieved the woman seemed capable of defending the child.

  For all her love of children, she couldn’t afford to babysit while shouldering responsibility for the entire human race.

  “This way,” she said, skirting the eastern edge of the city. They soon came to the border where the expanding metal scraped over the crushed concrete like an alien glacier. The metal had the ability to fill and level as it went, leaving a flat open plain that stretched to a high rise some hundred yards ahead.

  Murray scanned the skyline for any sign of activity. The constant flickering of lightning along the dome’s surface made it difficult to focus for any length of time, even with the sunset moderating the intensity of the flashes. She imagined creatures lurking in the shadows of the buildings, but then the light would change and she would see only more burnished metal.

  When they reached the border, Lonnie kicked at the lapping alloy with his boot. The metal recoiled a moment, and then leaped forward to make up for lost ground. Lonnie hopped back and shook his head.

  “Comes a terrible flood,” he said. “And no ark in sight.”

  “It’s like a liquid and a solid at the same time,” K.C. said, ignoring the religious reference. She stepped onto the silvery, gleaming plain and tested its firmness, then jumped up and down to show the others its solidity. She held out her hand and Squeak took it, joining her.

  Murray felt exposed as they crossed the expanse. Any Zap watching from the buildings could see them, and any hidden predator would have an easy time taking them down. As exhausted as she was, she forced herself to hurry to the nearest building, even though its cover offered only an illusion of safety.

  They’d lost visual contact with the other squadron. Delores took point, swiveling her weapon back and forth as she walked in a half-crouch. She and Lonnie took each step as if walking through a mine field, half expecting the thin layer of alloy to give way beneath them.

  When they reached the nearest building, its face a sheer plate of alloy rising ten stories high, they probed it with the muzzles of their rifles, testing the strength of the material. Nothing had changed in two weeks. The buildings were still impenetrable, their contents a mystery.

  “Maybe they’re all empty,” Lonnie said. “Maybe there’s nothing in here and we’re trapped.”

  “But we saw the dead man that fell from one of the buildings,” Murray said. “Something’s in here.”

  “Franklin’s in here,” K.C. said. “And the others.”

  “Maybe we should just get out of here,” Delores said. “Try to crack the dome somehow and escape.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be that easy,” Murray said. “Remember what happened to those savage Zaps that tried to attack the dome.”

  The Zaps had swarmed the city but when they reached the strange organic shell of the dome, their bodies had dissolved and then assimilated as if the dome consumed them. The dome material was like the alloy, combining qualities of solids and liquids, yet was as translucent as tinted glass.

  “Besides,” Murray said. “We’re at war. I’m positive one of those Zap babies is here, running the show behind the scenes like some creepy little Wizard of Oz.”

  “If I see one, I’m filling it full of holes,” Delores said. “Baby or not.”

  “They’re demons,” Lonnie said. “They don’t have souls, so killing them isn’t a sin.”

  “Killing them is a goddamned pleasure,” Murray said.

  “I’d bet a gallon of rocky road ice cream that Kokona’s behind this,” K.C. said. She’d told Murray about the mutant baby and how it had manipulated Rachel and the others, eventually wiping out hundreds of fellow Zaps.

  Murray almost admired the Machiavellian ruthlessness of the baby. Gen. Alexander, her longtime friend and ally, had eventually adopted that same naked lust for power. Never mind that he saw his usurpation as necessary for his people’s survival—all despots and dictators found a way to justify their terrible deeds.

  They worked their way down the rear of the building, coming to the corner where an avenue led to yet more of the buildings. The edifices were laid out with geometric precision, varying little in style although some were half the size of the rest. The shadows of the unnatural urban canyons were beaten back by the constant flash of lightning, and the rippling haze of the aurora cast party colors across the cityscape.

  As they came to the next intersection, a few more features appeared along the streets. Benches and blank signposts stood at intervals, all crafted from that same monotonous alloy. The buildings here bore the impressions of doors and windows, although they were little more than indented rectangles. The scene was like a hasty sketch an artist had left unfinished with the idea of fleshing out later.

  “You hear that?” Lonnie said, kneeling in the middle of the street.

  Murray heard only the faint crackling of the energy sluicing through the series of five large tubes from the dome overhead, anchored by a steady throbbing deep beneath the city. But she trusted the perception of younger senses. Age added the delusion of wisdom but took away a full experience of the world.

  Not that this world was one to embrace and enjoy.

  Delores knelt and put an ear to the street. “Like clicking and scraping.”

  K.C. pulled Squeak closer, wrapping one arm around the wide-eyed girl. “Might be more of those metal dogs.”

  “No,” Delores said, standing and rubbing absently at her cheek. “This is bigger.”

  Murray swallowed hard and checked the magazine of her Glock, then racked a round into the chamber. She had limited combat training, focusing her energies on organization and diplomacy instead. Leading the outpost at Luray Caverns, she’d maintained a strong, tough demeanor, but now she felt like what she really was—a woman in her fifties scared out of her mind in a world gone insanely wrong.

  You can’t let them see. You’re the High President.

  “Whatever it is, we’re meeting it head on,” she said, marching past Delores and Lonnie. She could hear the approaching cacophony now, the clatter echoing along the flat facades of the buildings.

  She expected more of the metal canines that had mauled the savage Zaps, but instead she encountered something even more horrible—a scene her eyes refused to believe, despite all the twisted science and unhinged evolution she’d witnessed since the solar storms.

  People.

  Oh holy Christ, they’ve made PEOPLE.

  But as the figures marched down the alley in a ri
gid phalanx, she realized they weren’t metallic copies of people—they were Zaps.

  More accurately, they were the same Zap, duplicated over and over, dozens of them all exactly the same.

  She would have described them as “robots” if not for the fluidity of their movements and the animated shifting of their faces. The machines bore the smooth, genderless forms of the more advanced tribe, as well as their sleek silver uniforms. It was their eyes that made them seem even more menacing than a flesh-and-blood Zap—instead of the brilliant yellow sparking, these eyes glowed with the same bluish shade as the plasma that flowed through the large tubes above.

  “What do we do?” Delores yelled, lifting her rifle and locking the butt against her shoulder.

  The metal Zaps were forty yards away, more of them appearing from around the distant corner. They moved steadily but without hurry.

  “We can outrun them,” K.C. said.

  “But then what?” Murray said. “We reach the dome, and then just go in circles until we collapse?”

  “I’m sick of this shit,” Delores said. “Metal monsters, metal mutants…does it even matter if we die now? Let’s just get it over with.”

  “If they wanted us dead, they could’ve killed us at any time,” Murray said.

  The metal Zaps kept up their steady march, filling the street. As dispirited as Murray was about the Zaps’ dominance of the planet, somehow this made it worse. Copying human cities and creating a new form of life was an insult and a mockery, maybe the ultimate blasphemy.

  If she had a big red button to launch the remaining nuclear arsenal, she would’ve pushed it at that moment.

  Instead, she clung to her original goal—to capture Kokona or whichever Zap baby ruled the roost.

  “We can’t win and they don’t want us dead,” Murray said. “Stand down.”

  Just then, gunfire erupted somewhere a few blocks over. The other squadron.

  Lonnie opened fire in panic, spraying the front row of metal Zaps with bullets. Small dark holes appeared where the bullets struck, the alloy puckering lewdly for a moment. Then the alloy flowed together and the holes closed. The Zaps continued as before.