Half Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 6) Read online

  Franklin nearly tripped but managed to seize Zminiski by the jacket collar. “Don’t you fucking joke about that. Don’t you dare.”

  K.C. grabbed him from behind and struggled to pull him away. Other people shouted, but Franklin was only barely aware of them. He succumbed to a tide of emotion that was fueled primarily by rage, although regret and sorrow were also in the mix. Rachel’s loss was so deeply imbedded in him that cruelly joking of her survival triggered a psychic break.

  Ziminski shook free and shoved Franklin to the ground. He wiped the blood and dirt from his mouth as he rolled to his hands and knees. Before he could rise, he heard her.

  He looked up to see Rachel standing above him, dressed in Kevlar body armor, her eyes sparking the yellows and reds of miniature suns.

  “I thought you were dead,” both of them said at the same time.

  “There’s still time for that,” Ziminski said. “But not here and not now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gen. Arnold Alexander strode through the underground depot that was likely one of the largest remaining human settlements on the planet.

  The shielded bunker system in Luray Caverns two hours west of Washington, D.C. had originally been designed in anticipation of a Russian nuclear strike over the capital. The electromagnetic pulse from repeated nuclear detonations was expected to cause a secondary crisis by rendering all electronics, telemetry, and communications obsolete. Only the most conspiratorial-minded in Congress foresaw the possible threat from massive solar flares, but it turned out the shielded bunkers had largely fulfilled the mission.

  However, in the five years since the solar storms, much of the equipment had broken down through regular wear and tear. Likewise, petroleum fuels had degraded, even with special additives to revive their potency. So dozens of transport trucks, Bradleys, and MRAPS now served as domiciles for the hundreds of people under Alexander’s command. Tents and canvas sheets were slung among the scrap, providing minimal privacy for those who still clung to such luxuries. Trash was heaped in the corners of the depot, and the rank odor of urine and sweat blended with rust and oil in a sorry testament to the race’s downfall.

  While most of the population was now part of the army, dozens of children and elderly women carried out civilization jobs to help keep the base operational. As Alexander moved among them, he wondered how long they’d have to live in caves like rats. Campfires were forbidden in the depot, since the air flow was minimal, but the ban didn’t prevent people from cooking over open flames. Discipline had broken down, along with law and order, and if Alexander didn’t tighten up the ship, he’d lose chain of command as well.

  Just like I lost my arm.

  He’d been attacked by a mutant overgrown wildcat two weeks back, and one swipe of the creature’s massive paws shattered his left arm. The camp doctor, who was in his seventies like Alexander, removed the useless limb with a hacksaw. Luckily, morphine and antibiotics had got him through the worst of it, but he still found himself trying to reach for things with his phantom limb.

  But so many others had paid with their lives. The Zaps weren’t even the main danger right now, although savage offshoots of the evolved mutants roamed the forest in packs of ten or twelve. The beasts in the forest had grown larger and more aggressive over time, taking on ever more horrible forms. No one was allowed to travel outside the caverns alone, since even a simple water run to the nearby streams was dangerous.

  A grimy-faced woman of about thirty saluted him. He would’ve taken her for a civilian, given her ragged blouse and denim jeans, but she wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. He didn’t know the names of many beyond his military staff, although this woman’s face was familiar. Her belly was swollen, revealing she’d spun the roulette wheel of post-apocalyptic genetics and sexual escape.

  Alexander saluted back. “Looks like you’re bringing a new soldier into the world.”

  “Yes, sir. Doc says three weeks if all goes well.”

  “I’m sure it will.” The words were soothing but utterly hollow. Only about one out of ten births were viable, but at least so far the usual result was miscarriage or stillbirth and not the hatching of some monstrous abomination. Or, heaven forbid, a Zap.

  The woman’s expression was veiled by the dim light in the depot. “When will my husband be back from his mission?”

  “Which mission is that?” The general abhorred gossip in the ranks, but that was to be expected when you drafted civilians with no formal training.

  “He went out with Colonel Munger ten days ago.”

  That mission is top secret. What else does everyone know that they shouldn’t? Do they know NORAD is keyed up to unleash nuclear hell on the continent?

  “I’m afraid that’s classified,” he said. “But I promise to personally give you a report as soon as I can clear it.”

  She stroked her bulging stomach. “I just…it would be nice if he was here for the birth.”

  “Yes, of course,” Alexander said, already looking past her to the gray-green daylight beyond the depot’s rocky opening. “I can guarantee you he will be.”

  There were no guarantees in this hostile world. But the veneer of civilization required them to maintain hope. Breeding in the face of certain destruction required a perverted kind of faith. Alexander intended to complete the dream by restoring the United States of America to its full former glory, despite the Earth Zero agreements that created a global alliance against the Zaps. This mission drove him more than any pledge he’d made to the former government.

  The woman’s eyes grew moist in pitiable gratitude. “Thank you, General.”

  He brushed past her, disgusted by her weakness. There would be a culling as soon as the Zaps were vanquished. He obsessively fantasized public executions of the deposed president and the traitorous signal officer Ziminski. And Munger, too, would have to be dealt with—the man’s combination of cunning and ambition meant that he would eventually set his sights on Alexander’s throne.

  Two sentries bookended the depot opening, their sandbagged posts equipped with Browning machine guns. Alexander acknowledged their salutes as he passed, welcoming the relatively fresh air of the wet morning. The mist over the valley below was primordial, as if dinosaurs might clamber out of the gray soup at any moment. Such an appearance wouldn’t even be a real shock, given the strange things that writhed and wriggled and stomped in the Virginia forests.

  The soft rumble in the distance might even be the roar of a great beast, but Alexander wasn’t one for imagination. Instead, he recognized the engine of a Growler, one of the fast-attack vehicles in the fleet. Since Murray had seized the last functioning helicopter, the army counted on the light utility four-wheelers for reconnaissance. The mission wasn’t supposed to end until tomorrow, so this was bad news.

  Alexander limped down the trail to the forward base where the motor pool was. One of the sentries started to follow but he waved the soldier back into position. With dozens of outposts scattered along the hillsides, he felt safe enough, even without a weapon. Maybe his bravery was foolhardy, considering how he’d lost an arm, but he had confidence in the troops stationed near the depot entrance.

  He passed the series of latrines dug into dark soil, the sweet, foul odor of decomposition clinging to the droplets of mist. Hygiene was a constant battle, and bouts of typhoid and cholera had rippled through the camp at times. Reverting to Nineteenth Century living conditions would’ve been challenging enough in the best of circumstances. Considering the Zaps were building domed cities, developing strange technologies, and concocting exotic poisons, death by disease was way down on the list of worries.

  By the time he reached the clearing where the fuel tanks and mechanic bays stood, the place was in chaos. A dozen troops ran back and forth, and the Growler was splotched with fresh mud and a darker, redder color. The windshield was shattered and the roll bar and safety frame were crumpled. The 50-cal machine gun atop the frame was scorched into black slag, a half-empty ammo belt dangling fr
om its casing. The tires held so little air the rims almost touched the ground.

  “Where’s Sgt. Epperly?” Alexander bellowed, searching for the squad leader amid the chaos.

  A corpsman pointed toward the back of the Growler, where a pair of bloody legs poked out from the tailgate. “KIA.”

  Another body was slumped in the passenger seat, unseeing eyes staring at the heavens. Shards of a bright silvery metal were scattered along the dented brush guard at the vehicle’s front. Alexander touched a piece of it and it yielded like mercury. “Who brought them in?”

  The corpsman pointed to the perimeter of the clearing, where a man sat on a rotted log. He slurped water from a tin cup as two soldiers tended to his wounds. Alexander strode over to the man, gamely hiding his limp and fighting back a wave of wooziness. The doctor had ordered him confined to bed rest for another five days due to the amputation, but Alexander was the one who gave orders at Luray, not old pill-pushers.

  “At ease, soldier,” Alexander barked when the man gave a tired salute and attempted to stand. “Status report.”

  “They…” The man looked wildly about the compound, on the edge of shock.

  “They what?”

  The man’s voice dropped to a dry wheeze. “They’re coming.”

  “Zaps?”

  “Zaps and…more. New things. Metal, like robots. But ugly as hell.”

  One of his attendants dug a syringe from a first-aid kit and pushed the air bubbles from the cylinder. The other attendant wrapped a strip of rubber around the man’s left biceps and pushed the ragged shirt sleeve up the man’s arm. The syringe penetrated the crook of his elbow and the man sighed. He suffered from half a dozen wounds, a deep furrow clawed into one cheek.

  “Morphine,” the attendant said to the general. “It’s dicey if he goes into shock, but he should be coherent for a couple more minutes.”

  “Did you reach D.C.?” Alexander asked as he knelt before the wounded scout.

  “No.” The rush of the painkiller seemed to bring the man alert, because his eyes focused on Alexander. “We ran into a Zap city near Manassas when we hit I-66. The buildings were made of metal, and it was covered by a clear dome. And the dome had green lightning crawling all over it, like some kind of energy field.”

  “Did you engage the enemy?”

  “More like they engaged us. They came out of nowhere. Like a pack of wolves.”

  “Savage Zaps, you mean?”

  The man shook his head. “No. Metal dogs. But big. They snatched Willis out of the back and tore him to shreds before he could react. The sergeant poured half a belt of rounds into the fuckers.” The man’s eyes grew wild again with the memory. “Little bits of metal flying off of them where the bullets hit them, but they just kept coming.”

  “You said there were Zaps, too?”

  “Yeah. Only a couple. One of them was carrying a baby.”

  A hyperintelligent mutant. Probably ruling the city, just like Munger said.

  “Did you see how these robots operated? Were they mechanized or rigged up for wireless remote control?”

  The man shook his head back and forth, his face going slack as the drug kicked in. “No, General. It’s like they were alive. But they all moved together, like a pack. Like they had one mind.”

  “How far did they chase you?” Alexander asked, knowing the man would soon be unconscious. He gave the man a reassuring pat on the knee.

  “Uh…” His eyes rolled. “All…all the way.”

  Alexander stood and shouted, “Battle stations! Be on high alert for any enemy activity. Don’t wait to confirm your targets. Fire at the first sign of movement.”

  Then he turned to the two men who were lowering the injured soldier to a canvas stretcher. “Not a word about this, understood?”

  “Aye-aye, General,” said one and the other nodded and snapped a salute. As they transported the casualty toward the depot inside the caverns, Alexander figured the whole camp would know about the strange new threat within the hour. The tight-lipped code of secrecy he’d known during his military career was as dead as Sgt. Epperly.

  But that didn’t matter. If the report was true, he had bigger problems than gossip. Especially since Murray and Ziminski refused to abort the nuclear strikes. He could only hope they could hold out here until Munger succeeded in his mission to snatch Murray and drag her back to Luray Caverns.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “We could always just ditch the plan and head for the mountains,” Franklin said.

  “You’d have to kill me first,” said Pvt. Cone, the soldier who’d escorted Franklin, K.C., and Squeak to Ziminski. The captain had assigned her to the mission since she was familiar with the area, having grown up just over the Virginia border in Galax.

  “Nobody’s killing anybody,” Rachel said. “We’ll leave that to the Zaps.”

  As they rolled north up N.C. 52 with K.C. at the wheel of the Humvee, Franklin was perched in the passenger seat, claiming shotgun. Cone and DeVontay were in the rear seats, monitoring each side of the highway for threats, while Rachel and Squeak sat in the back storage area amid a pile of blankets, duffel bags of supplies, and ammo cans.

  Rachel had argued for leaving Squeak at the camp, but Franklin insisted on accompanying her to the Zap city. K.C. said she wasn’t about to lose Franklin after putting up with the ornery old bastard for so long, and Squeak didn’t want to be left behind with strangers. Ziminski was against any change in plan, arguing that additional personnel would only add complications and jeopardize the mission. When Rachel took an all-or-nothing stand, though, Ziminski reluctantly acquiesced, muttering under his breath about moody humanoids and their strange families.

  Rachel had assumed command by default, even though Franklin made a half-hearted attempt to play the patriarch. DeVontay either had complete confidence in her abilities or was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He grinned at her now, his dark face sporting the weird silver orb of mutant metal in his injured eye socket. Ziminski had returned the souvenir to him, dubbing it useless for military purposes. Rachel suspected another motive, but she didn’t want to alarm her lover.

  “This Hummer’s in better shape than the one your army stole from us,” K.C. said to the private. “The transmission’s a little tighter and the engine isn’t knocking.”

  “Nothing but the best for suicide missions,” Cone replied.

  “What’s ‘suicide’?” Squeak shouted over the churning of the engine and the whine of the big wheels on asphalt.

  The grown-ups looked at one another, except for K.C., who kept her eyes peeled straight ahead as she dodged between abandoned vehicles. Finally, DeVontay spoke. “It’s when you visit a place that you’re not sure is safe.”

  The child hugged her doll more tightly to her chest. Rachel cupped her palm over Squeak’s small hands. “He’s telling a fib. ‘Suicide’ is when you want to die because life seems too hard to keep going.”

  Squeak’s eyes widened in surprise. “But life’s always too hard to keep going. You just have to do it anyway.”

  Rachel’s heart ached because this child had known nothing but hardship and danger. She was barely more than a toddler when the solar storms hit, so most of her memories were of the world as it was, not how it had once been. But in a way, the child was fortunate, because she didn’t know what was lost. She had a clearer view of reality than any of them.

  “That makes a lot of sense, when you put it that way,” Cone said.

  “Damn,” Franklin added. “Now I don’t want the nukes to blow us all to hell. So let’s get the job done.”

  Rachel pulled Squeak into an embrace and leaned against a duffle bag that contained tents and rain gear. “Zaps want to live as much as we do. They’re driven by the same biological imperatives. They came from us, remember?”

  “Only the babies,” DeVontay said. “They control the other Zaps and the organic metal. And the babies will sacrifice everything to hold onto their power.”

  “I have no p
roblem killing Zap babies if it saves the human race,” Franklin said. He twisted in his seat to look at the passengers behind him. “I’ll kill anybody or anything to save my family.”

  “Does this mean I’m adopted?” Cone said.

  “Since you won’t let me steal your Humvee, I guess you’re in.”

  “Does that mean I get more lollipops?” Squeak asked.

  “Sure, honey,” Cone said. “But we’ll have to stop at a candy store along the way.”

  The playful mood soon faded, though, as the landscape grew more rural. Fewer vehicles littered the highway and the forest seemed to have reclaimed the small towns that were marked only by warped and grimy exit signs. Occasionally a gas station stood on one of the hills above the road, along with fast-food joints and the occasional strip mall. The overpasses were clogged with stalled traffic, and the smoky sky and its irradiant aurora cast a green glow that reflected from the sullen windows. This was the ghost of a planet that didn’t yet know it was dead.

  Rachel wondered how she would see the world if she wasn’t half Zap. Like Squeak, her life now seemed defined by all that had happened after the solar storms. The part before the apocalypse, all twenty-eight years of it, was like a dream. But since her mutations, she had changed emotionally as well as physically and mentally.

  She felt DeVontay’s one-eyed stare on her and she blushed. Love is different, that’s for sure. You might never have known it this deeply if you’d stayed human.

  But that was a chicken-and-egg argument she wasn’t ready to confront. It was about as useful as debating whether God had caused the apocalypse to punish sinners or to offer humans a chance at redemption by encountering a more advanced version of themselves. Rachel no longer had patience for theologies. Life was a pass-fail test and God never graded on a curve.

  “Did you see that?” Franklin said, disrupting the monotonous drone of the vehicle.

  “See what?” Cone said, reflexively racking a round into the chamber of her M4.