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

  But until he heard otherwise, she was boss. And Antonelli had to play the cards he was dealt.

  That was, unless the situation changed in unforeseen ways. Which he figured was just a matter of time.

  “We’ve got a job to do,” Antonelli said. “We’re boots on the ground, not the eye in the sky. And it’s going to take all of us working as a team to exterminate the Zaps.”

  Antonelli pulled a cigarette from his pocket, indulging in one of his few perks of rank. He fished a stick from the fire and stuck its glowing ember to the end of his smoke. The tobacco was moldy and nearly flavorless, but the additives were as strong as ever. Perhaps the ingenuity of corporations was one thing from the past worth missing.

  “I’m on board, Captain,” Randall said, enviously eyeing the plume of gray smoke that trailed from Antonelli’s mouth. “No need for the ‘rah rah’ bullshit. I’d take a bullet for any single one of us.”

  “We’d all take a bullet. But would you throw yourself into the jaws of one of those beastadons, or tackle a dozen Zaps in a sewer tunnel?”

  Randall stared into the fire as if contemplating those options. “I’d pull a pin and let an M67 frag take care of business. Even if I had to sit on it.”

  Antonelli hoped Randall was never forced to commit sacrificial suicide via grenade, but he smiled at the lieutenant’s loyalty.

  A private emerged from the shadows and saluted. Antonelli cast about for a name but couldn’t come up with one. “Status?”

  “All quiet, sir. Recon of the perimeter complete, all present and accounted for.”

  “Good.” Antonelli nodded toward the C-rations warming on top of the stones that ringed the campfire. “Get yourself some chow and stand down for the night.”

  After the private retreated to the cluster of tents in the clearing below, Antonelli stubbed out his cigarette and tossed the butt in the fire. He checked his watch, tilting it toward the fire. He’d been issued a luminescent-dial tactical wristwatch by HQ, but the lingering sunspot activity must have erased it, and he was left to salvage a last-century wind-up watch. It read a quarter until midnight. Maybe he could use some sleep himself.

  “You’re on,” Antonelli said to Randall. “Wake me at oh-six-hundred hours.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  As Antonelli wended his way through the trees to his sleeping bag tucked under a granite overhang, he considered stopping by the tent sheltering PFC Colleen Kelly. The freckle-faced redhead was another of the perks in which he indulged. But that would mean disturbing her tentmate, a sour civilian who was another old-world dreamer. The pleasure was hardly worth the hassle of a lecture about the U.S. Constitution, civil liberties, and equal rights.

  As if anything is equal in a world where we grovel in the dirt while Zaps occupy our finest cities.

  Hell with it. One more stop, check on this Stephen kid, and then we’re off to war.

  He didn’t expect to find any survivors of Lt. Hilyard’s outpost, since no one had heard from them in years. But the bunker near Milepost 297 might turn up some useful supplies, assuming it hadn’t been contaminated or overrun by Zaps. They were as likely to find it was now a den for overgrown black bears as they were to secure food and ammunition.

  Orders were orders, and if the leathery old bitch Murray wanted it done, so be it. Hooray for the human race.

  He shook his bedroll, hoping to shed any contaminated spiders that might be hiding in the folds, and was removing his boots when the first scream sounded, followed by a three-round burst of semiautomatic fire.

  Antonelli jammed his feet back into his boots and sprinted downhill with the laces trailing out behind him. Working flashlights were scarce commodities doled out only for special ops, his unit was lucky to wield three of them. The soldiers on watch were all issued night-vision goggles, but Antonelli was forced to stumble through a dimness lit only by the hazy glow of the aurora.

  But the direction was easy because more weapons rattled in the night. Antonelli barked orders to the half-dressed soldiers rolling out of their tents. Lt. Randall was no longer by the campfire, likely already on the scene of the firefight. Antonelli drew his sidearm and held the Beretta before him, knowing the nine-millimeter rounds would have little effect against the largest of the monsters he’d seen.

  But we’ve got enough combined weaponry to turn a pack of beastadons into sausage.

  “Maintain position,” he ordered two privates who were armed with M16s. One of them was Colleen, whose green eyes were wide with fear. “Hold the camp.”

  He waved a couple of others to follow him. The percussive tatta-tat of small-arms fire echoed off the surrounding slopes. Yellow muzzle blasts pocked the darkness ahead. Someone screamed, a shrill, piercing alarm in the formerly quiet forest.

  Antonelli came out from beneath the canopy into an open grassy bald dotted with rhododendron and scrub. Dark shapes waded through the grass, rearing up now and then to reveal their wet mouths and teeth that glimmered with the greenish light of the aurora. The creatures—furry bear-like animals with short, curved tusks they’d dubbed “beastadons”—bellowed with a deep anguish that cried out against the profane divergence of nature that had spawned them.

  Tracers arced across the hill. An illumination flare exploded overhead, raining streamers of phosphorus. In the bright silver light, Antonelli saw a beastadon’s broad head take a hail of bullets. Fur flew and strips of flesh peeled away to reveal gleaming bone, but still it wobbled uphill toward its prey.

  Five more of the monsters charged toward the line of troops. The scream came again, and Antonelli located the source this time—one of the beastadons retreated with a human leg clamped between its jaws, dripping blood and slobber as it carried away its treasure.

  A flashlight beam blinked off and on, a signal from Randall. “The 240’s up, sir,” the lieutenant barked.

  “Light ‘em up,” Antonelli ordered.

  The machine gun spat metal hell all over the bald, rattling the rocks and knocking down several of the monsters. One galloped from the trees fifty yards to the left of Antonelli, and several soldiers brought their weapons to bear against it. The captain fired his Beretta even though he was out of range. The four-hundred-pound animal reared up on its haunches like a grizzly bear, its talon-tipped paws slapping angrily at the air.

  A couple of soft pops were followed almost immediately by muffled bursts that kicked up dirt around another of the beastadons. The grenade launcher heaved several more explosives at it, ripping great canyons of gore along its flank.

  It squealed and snorted and dropped to its knees, then tried to crawl toward its attackers. The M240 unleashed a fusillade in its direction, and it collapsed.

  The remaining monsters, perhaps just intelligent and cunning enough to realize their prey was formidable, turned and retreated, the humps of their backs rising and falling like those of dolphins in a saltwater bay.

  “Hold your fire,” Randall called, and a few sporadic shots rang out before fading away.

  Antonelli walked the line, praising the wide-eyed soldiers who’d held their positions in the face of such an unnatural assault. Smoke hung in the air, and so did the tension, as if the unit was braced for another wave of the monsters. In Antonelli’s experience, the beastadons employed sudden, savage attacks with no stealth, and when they were done they were done.

  Not that their behaviors can’t change. God knows everything else has.

  When Antonelli arrived on the scene where the wounded soldier writhed and moaned, the matted grass around him was already slick with blood. Antonelli knew this one, a Marine who’d served with him at Lejeune before the Big Zap.

  Thomas Hollister. From Abilene, Texas. Such a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team that he wore their blue star emblem as a tattoo on his neck. Loves country music—Merle and Waylon, not that “slick, modern shit”—and girls who can hold their whiskey. His big goal in life is to make sergeant, go back home, and join the local police force.

  His leg wa
s gone just below the hip, and there wasn’t enough left for a tourniquet. The medic packed white bandages against the stump, but blood gushed out with each dwindling beat of Hollister’s heart. Antonelli parted the ring of soldiers standing silently around their fallen comrade, and then ordered them back to camp except for the sentries.

  Antonelli knelt by the young man, who gazed up at him with bleary, wobbling eyes. His night-vision goggles had fallen around his neck, covering his “America’s Team” tattoo. They would remove the scarce and valuable goggles as soon as the soldier was dead. Antonelli held the man’s hand.

  Hollister licked his chapped lips. “Am I going to make it, Captain?”

  “We’ll have you on your feet in no time, son.”

  The medic jabbed a syringe of morphine into Hollister’s arm, blood painting his rubber gloves black in the gloom. The kid would die a thousand miles from home in a world that had all but forgotten him. A world where his kind might be forgotten before long.

  The medic gave a slight shake of his head, no longer pressing the bandages against the red maw of the bite wound. Some godforsaken creature would eat well tonight, and probably sleep with no conscience at all. While Antonelli’s conscience would haunt him all night long.

  “What…what next?” the soldier asked. He was pale and going into shock.

  Antonelli managed a smile. “I think the Cowboys are going to the Super Bowl.”

  The soldier’s eyes were glassy and diffused.

  “And I think they’re going to win it all,” Antonelli said.

  Hollister tried to smile but lacked the strength. He died before he even managed to lift one corner of his mouth. Antonelli patted the corpse on the shoulder.

  Maybe nostalgia isn’t so bad after all. It’s one of the things that make us human, right?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What’s that noise?” Rachel said.

  She’d been drowsing, fighting wild dreams of gleaming cities with airships zipping around the silver spires that were no doubt inspired by the strange synthetic bird that had attacked them. She pushed her way from beneath the musty blankets. As she opened her eyes, their glow illuminated the cluttered interior of the furniture warehouse. DeVontay stood shirtless beside a barred window, looking up at the sky.

  “Fireworks,” DeVontay said.

  “I’m not much on calendars, but wasn’t the Fourth of July a few months ago?”

  “Some kind of flare. And gunfire.”

  “Where?” Rachel slid into her jeans and grabbed a shirt as she joined DeVontay at the window.

  “Up on the ridge.”

  “Do you think it’s the kids?”

  “No. They’ll stay in the bunker like we told them. Even that hard-headed Stephen.”

  The distant pop-pop-pop was punctuated with muffled explosions. “That’s not my grandfather, either. Somebody’s got grenades or mortars or something.”

  “Hard to tell, but it looks like whoever it is may be eight or ten miles from the bunker.”

  “Probably military,” Rachel said. “Nobody else would have that much firepower.”

  “Maybe,” DeVontay said, squinting at the gloomy dark humps of the mountains. “But we’ve seen civilian groups that scrounged up some pretty kick-ass stuff. Turns out a lot of gun nuts had illegal military-grade stuff hidden away in their closets.”

  “Think we should go back?”

  “Are you kidding? They’re probably fighting something or somebody, right? The last thing we need is to step in the middle of a pissing match, especially when we’ve got the smallest hose.”

  Rachel gave him a gentle squeeze. “I’d go to war with your gun anytime. As long as the kids are safe, it’s no big deal. And Grandpa’s compound is even farther east.”

  DeVontay turned from the window, his dark beard and mustache girding his pursed lips. “Could be some survivors got attacked.”

  “By monsters, you mean?”

  “Either that or Zaps. At this point, I don’t know which is worse.”

  “If it was Zaps, I would have sensed them,” Rachel said, uneasy at being reminded of her mutation. But wasn’t every breath, every blink, every cold heartbeat a reminder?

  “We don’t even know that. It’s been years since exposure. We don’t know anything, really. All we know is what you and Kokona tell us.”

  After one last staccato spew of gunfire, the sound died away. The silence of the night settled around them like the dust that coated the dining tables and bureaus.

  “Maybe we should give up on Stonewall and try to make contact,” Rachel said.

  “No way. We need to build our own team. We’ve already tried the other way. If they’re military, they’ll kill you the second they see your eyes. If they’re an organized band, then they’re going to make the rules, and they’re probably not going to let us join.”

  Rachel knew what he was saying: because she and Kokona were mutants, most humans would be scared of them. “You must really love me.”

  DeVontay’s good eye narrowed with his smile while his glass prosthetic remained open, making his face appear slightly lopsided. “I don’t know why you keep requiring evidence.”

  She moved into his embrace and kissed him, looking over his shoulder at the psychedelic milieu beyond the window. The aurora, caused by the solar wind’s influence on the earth’s magnetic sphere, was even more brilliant against the darkness. Its shimmering bands of green and yellow cast the Blue Ridge Mountains in an iridescent glow that resembled an alien landscape. But maybe this was an alien land now—a planet whose native species had all but vanished as new life forms took their place.

  “Let’s stick with the plan, then,” DeVontay said. “No matter what, we need food and supplies for the bunker.”

  “One thing that worries me…” Rachel said.

  “Only one thing?”

  “Franklin said the Army might come to check on its abandoned installations one day. If they’re organized like he said, that day might be coming.”

  “So he’s seen a few helicopters,” DeVontay said. “That doesn’t mean much besides the bastards were smart enough to shield some gear. I doubt they still have an army. Besides, you know how paranoid he is.”

  “He credits paranoia for his survival so far,” Rachel said. “Maybe there’s something to it.”

  “But he’d still rather live alone than stay in the bunker with us.”

  “I think Kokona creeps him out.”

  “If he was around her more, he’d get used to her. He’s accepted you, hasn’t he?”

  “But I’m blood. You have to stick with family, no matter what. He knew me from before. When I was…you know, human.”

  “Well, we can go back to bed and try to make this family bigger, or we can get an early start and be in Stonewall by dawn.”

  “Some choice. No telling what’s out there walking the night.”

  DeVontay kissed her again and whispered, “No telling what’s in here, either.”

  Rachel had nearly surrendered when a strange humming arose. It was similar to the faint, almost-subliminal buzz a fluorescent light fixture would make when its ballast was going bad. But Rachel hadn’t heard that sound in five years, not since her last horrible day as a school counselor in Charlotte.

  And the noise didn’t seem to originate in her ears, either. It seemed to come from a point between them, just at the top of her spine.

  She dug her fingernails into DeVontay’s shoulders. He sensed her tension and leaned back to look at her. “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your eyes…they’re sparking hard, girl.”

  She could tell their intensity had increased because DeVontay was fully illuminated. Much of the warehouse was visible now, clear plastic covering cabinets, sheets draped over recliners, and mattresses stacked across the cinder-block walls.

  The hum grew louder. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  “All I hear is some crickets and that mouse or rat scurrying around i
n the back of the room.”

  The humming swelled and then broke from a drone into intermittent chirps and beeps. After a rush of static, the syncopated sounds settled into looping patterns, like a radio signal fighting through interference. The sounds articulated into syllables: “We’re here.”

  No. Not them. Not now.

  DeVontay must have seen something in her eyes besides the sparks, because he caught her as she collapsed. “Rachel?”

  She didn’t want him to know what it meant. She’d expected this day to come but wanted it to arrive on her terms—that was the secret reason she insisted on accompanying DeVontay on these supply runs. If she encountered the Zaps, she preferred to do so outside the bunker so the kids wouldn’t be at risk. But they were supposed to be far away, in the cities, where they would forever remain out of sight.

  And out of mind.

  Yet here they were.

  As she slid to the floor, her gravity interrupted by DeVontay’s embrace, the words came again, this time crystal clear.

  “We’re here.”

  It was so much louder that she was sure DeVontay had heard, but his only reaction was one of concern for her. The communication was different from her early encounters with the mutants. Those original rumblings had been conveyed in a chorus of many voices, as if the combined minds of thousands had decoded the English language and contributed their myriad accents. That first telepathic intrusion of “WHEE-ler, WHEE-ler, WHEE-ler” had been a compelling chant, a decree, a summons.

  In contrast, this solo voice was thin and genderless. Not delivering a command, just stating a fact.

  “We’re here.”

  “What is it?” DeVontay asked.

  Her throat was dry, and her body felt electric with tension. She’d fooled herself into thinking time had made her immune to their influence, like a virus whose existence created antibodies that eventually vanquished it.