Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) Read online

  “So you don’t think there’s any chance for a peaceful coexistence? We’ve been out of contact with them for so long, we have no idea what they’re like now. If they’re still evolving as fast as they were, they might have some new ideas on the rights of the individual.”

  “All that ‘one mind’ stuff sounds like communism to me. Kokona always says ‘we’ like they’re all one organism. That’s hardly a celebration of individualism. That’s just a different kind of chains. Let’s get moving before you give me a headache.”

  Stephen chuckled, and Franklin realized the boy had successfully shifted the conversation away from Marina. Which said plenty.

  “We should reach Stonewall by morning if we make good time,” Franklin said.

  “What if they’re not there?”

  “Then we keep looking.”

  The path led into a stand of poplar whose thinning canopy allowed the electric sky to cast dappled patterns on the carpet of leaves beneath their feet.

  “You hear that?” Stephen whispered, swinging his rifle from his shoulder.

  Franklin figured the boy’s hearing was far better than his own, but Stephen was also imaginative. A rustle of leaves might sound like the approaching steps of a prehistoric monster. Or maybe it wasn’t imagination, and there really was a monster.

  “Which way?” Franklin whispered back.

  Stephen pointed his weapon uphill to his left. Franklin peered into the stippled lines of gray and brown tree trunks, scanning for movement. They could retreat to the rocks and have more range if anything came out of the woods, but they’d also be cornered, with no retreat besides a hundred-foot drop into whatever the valley offered. Franklin waved Stephen downhill, and they made swift but stealthy tracks away from the sound.

  Franklin didn’t hear much above his own heartbeat, and he spent most of the next few minutes twisting his neck to glance over his shoulder. He was thus occupied when he slammed into Stephen’s back, nearly discharging his M16.

  “What?” Franklin asked.

  “That,” Stephen said.

  Franklin couldn’t tell what “that” was. Its bulky shape blocked the path ahead, as thick as a cow. Two stubs of horns protruded from the top of the silhouette, the head blunt and nearly square. Its odor was like wet fur and fish, underscored with a sour musk that must have been the creature’s spoor. Even though he couldn’t discern its features—a fact for which he was grateful—he figured if he aimed just above the middle of it he’d hit the heart.

  But a shot would undoubtedly draw more predators. These monsters had no fear of humans. They’d begun appearing a couple of years after the storms, first as just little oddities like salamanders with teeth or birds twice as large as normal. But soon wholly new creatures walked the land, ones whose blueprints didn’t seem stamped by the eons of evolution.

  The creature stood on four legs about fifty yards ahead, neck bent low as if grazing. The size of its upper body suggested it was slow. They could probably outrun it. But that wasn’t the kind of bet you wanted to make in the middle of an apocalyptic wilderness.

  “Do it,” Stephen whispered.

  If there was just one creature, it would be better to outmaneuver it if possible. Franklin wasn’t familiar with the terrain here on the lower slopes of the Blue Ridge, since he rarely made supply runs and preferred to raise his own food. The trees were slender and widely spaced, as if the roots had difficulty finding purchase in the rocky soil.

  If they could make it to denser underbrush, the creature wouldn’t be able to follow. Stephen’s eagerness to take the fast way out showed a lack of experience that might get them both killed. Franklin didn’t have time to explain his strategy, so he just lowered his rifle a little and jerked his head to the side to indicate they should leave the path.

  Maybe it hasn’t even seen us yet.

  Stephen’s face puckered in defiance and he lifted his own weapon and aimed at the thing. Franklin let out a hiss of anger and pushed Stephen’s gun barrel. They struggled for a second, Franklin losing his balance and bumping into the boy. Stephen stepped backward and a branch snapped with a piercing, brittle sound. They both froze and gazed at the creature.

  Oh, shit.

  The creature lifted its head, the aurora pooling in its eyes and casting them as luminescent marbles. But that wasn’t the worst part. Two more sets of eyes came out of the trees behind it, the creatures sporting jagged racks of bone atop their heads. Franklin realized these things had once been deer, or at least had borrowed some of the genetic code of the ruminant mammals. He’d hunted deer for meat plenty of times, but now it looked like they were the hunters instead of the prey.

  This time Franklin didn’t hesitate, because there was only one real strategy. He squeezed the trigger, popping off a series of short bursts. The one on the path reared and issued a squeal, kicking at the air with its front hooves. Two dark dots glistened moistly along its flank, but it didn’t drop.

  The two other deviant deer-things lowered their antlers and charged, snorting and crashing through the brush. Stephen fired, but his aim was about as bad as Franklin’s. After half a dozen ineffective shots, he turned and dashed in the direction Franklin had originally indicated.

  Franklin stood his ground and waited for the creatures to come fully into the light of the path. They were barely twenty yards away when Franklin heard a muted thunder. Then he saw them—a whole herd, pouring from the forest and thundering up the slope toward him, the forest alive with their movement.

  He fled after Stephen, expecting to feel the sharp stab of those antlers in his spine at any second. His theory had been right—the vegetation slowed the predators a little, but they simply bulled their way through when grace failed. He lost sight of Stephen when he stumbled over a root and slammed against a charred oak trunk, nearly dropping his rifle. The deer surged toward him, the formerly peaceful night now awash with the destruction of their stampede.

  Franklin was out of breath, his heart slamming against his rib cage as branches slapped at his face. Turning and firing would be useless, since he only had half a magazine left. Even if he made every shot count—a big if—they would stomp and gouge and gnaw him into human sausage. His only chance was the stupid plan he’d been so sure about only a minute before.

  When you bet your life, you better make damn sure the odds are in your favor.

  He dashed between two looming pillars of granite that jutted from the earth. He dared a glance behind him. His pursuers ascended a wide gulley where the trees were thinner, dark shapes rocking back and forth as their legs churned, mud and debris flying from their monstrous hooves.

  Stephen shouted somewhere ahead of him, the sound quickly pushed away by the crashing of underbrush and the rattle of dry leaves as the wind shifted. Behind it was a low hiss of white noise that seemed to grow louder as Franklin ran. He thought it was his pulse rising, or his own breath boiling from his lungs, but as the ground grew rockier and soggier he recognized the sound as running water.

  Franklin staggered through some low branches that clawed at his face. One of them tangled in his beard and yanked him off his feet, and he hung there for a moment, neck muscles screaming in pain. He regained his footing and jerked his beard with one hand, tearing away gray hair and twigs. One of the predators clattered up the face of a boulder behind him and Franklin turned toward it.

  The deer-creature stood outlined against the hazy psychedelic sky, its eight-point horns jabbing the heavens. Its knobby forelegs led up to muscular thighs that clenched with rage. Its eyes glowed with a malevolence that seemed to draw on all the earth’s anger for human transgressions against nature, from poison to pollution to merciless extinction. Here was hell made whole, an organic fabrication of God’s secret nightmares.

  Franklin had a clear shot at it, but he was paralyzed more by awe than fear. The stag’s hooves clicked against granite and a plume of moist fog tumbled from its flaring nostrils. The rubbery lips peeled back to reveal teeth far sharper than those need
ed for browsing leaves and grass. Then it leapt from its perch and sailed toward him like an avenging angel.

  Franklin threw his elbow over his face and shoved his way into the underbrush, the wash of whitewater rising to a roar. Kicking at vines that threatened to peel his boots from his feet, he burst into a clearing to find Stephen looking over a precipice.

  “I thought you were dead,” Stephen said.

  “There’s still time for that,” Franklin said, sucking oxygen and crouching on shaky knees.

  They were on a rocky outcropping that gave way to a churning waterway forty feet below. The force of the falls caused the rock to vibrate. The riverbed was far too wide to hurdle. To their left was a slippery, steep climb that promised certain death. To their right was a thicket of doghobble, sumac vines, and rhododendron that would snare them like flies on a spider’s web.

  And behind them galloped the deer from hell.

  Franklin peered over the ledge again. The current sluiced past them in white torrents, bottoming out in a dark, rippling pool whose depth was unfathomable from their vantage point.

  “Can you swim?” Franklin asked.

  The boy shivered and closed his eyes.

  Not that we’ll get a chance. Most likely we’ll smash to bits on submerged rocks.

  Franklin tossed his rifle aside and shucked Stephen’s from his shoulder, along with his pack. “Don’t need that breaking your neck.”

  Franklin wanted to give Stephen some tips, such as landing feet first, but a rack of antlers poked from the nearby brush. Franklin pushed him over. “Go!”

  Stephen shrieked on the way down and Franklin waited until he heard a liquid ker-plunk. The deer broke free and burst onto the ledge, sweeping its rack of antlers at him and growling low in its chest.

  “So long, you son of a bitch,” Franklin said, hopping into space.

  The fall couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds but it seemed like days. Franklin felt himself turning, gazing up at the aurora and the deer head that protruded from the ledge. He didn’t want to land on his back. Dying was one thing, but breaking his spine and lying there helpless while all manner of carnivorous amphibians nibbled at him wasn’t his idea of a party.

  He tried to sit up so he could tuck his body over his knees but the water slammed him before he finished the maneuver. The impact drove the wind from his chest and the cold penetrated straight to the bone, mercifully numbing him so that he didn’t fully feel the pain of splashdown. His muscles threatened to peel from his geriatric frame. Bubbles roiled across his face as water rushed into his nose and mouth.

  His feet hit bottom and he kicked away, caught in an undercurrent that tried to drag him beneath the rumbling base of the falls. He finally burst free of the surface and gasped once before being tugged under again. He kicked, thinking some aquatic creature was wrapped around his ankle, but he discovered it was just a fallen tree whose sodden branches rose and fell with the surging water.

  “Stephen!” he called when his head bobbed to the surface again. The rapids pulled him downstream, and he slapped at jagged rocks trying to stop his momentum. He only succeeded in ripping his fingers open.

  He rolled onto his ass and braced his boots before him as he slid down the mountain a jarring drop at a time. At least the water was carrying him away from the deer, but he might be getting separated from Stephen, too. He didn’t have time to look, as all his focus was on taking the next breath and avoiding the next deadly obstacle.

  Franklin was several hundred yards downstream when the river leveled off to wide, sandy shallows. He dragged himself to the riverbank and lay there breathing mud and leaves until he’d somewhat recovered. Despite the heavy canopy of hardwoods overhead, he kept an eye out for Stephen in the gloom. He expected the boy’s body to come drifting past him at any moment.

  Fifteen minutes later, he crawled into the forest and assessed his condition. No broken bones, no major contusions, just a head-to-heel throbbing as if his body was one large bruise.

  He was unarmed, shivering, and alone in a forest full of predators.

  He began walking, or at least shuffling one foot after another in what was more or less a single direction.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The infant Zap was named Geneva, she told them.

  “Only the small of us are allowed to have names,” Geneva said.

  “I have a name,” Rachel said.

  “You’re not one of us.”

  Rachel didn’t want to argue that point. She welcomed all such affirming evidence she could gather. Since her telepathic bond had dissolved, her glistening eyes were the only visible sign of the mutant intrusion of her body.

  After the public spectacle with the reptile, a squadron of Zaps had led Rachel and DeVontay up the incline and onto street level, where charred concrete buildings were interspersed with crumbling edifices whose origins dated back more than a century. The streets were cracked with heat and the scattered wreckage of cars was blackened from fire. Broken glass reflected light back toward the sun that had indirectly caused the destruction.

  This was a small Southern town that had died as surely as those that were torched by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman as his army marched to the sea during a war that would soon be forgotten.

  Set amidst the ruins at infrequent intervals were silver domes without visible doors. They appeared to be large enough to house dozens of Zaps and whatever activities they carried on inside. Although a few masonry structures appeared undamaged on the horizon, there was no sign of human activity or life.

  Geneva said the town was Wilkesboro, which Rachel recalled from the map as being about thirty miles east of Stonewall. The Zaps must have carried them, unconscious, after the collapse of the barn. The trip likely took a full day. Even given the nearly tireless energy of the Zaps, they would be slowed by their human burdens.

  Just when Rachel was convinced the Zaps were escorting her and DeVontay to the edge of town to kill them and leave their bodies lying out for buzzards and other scavengers, they were led down a small flight of stairs to a wooden door. It appeared to be the basement entrance of a residential unit that was now nothing but splintered wood, warped plastics, and a leaning shelf of asphalt shingles. But they were led inside the door to discover a dome constructed inside the rubble, concealing it from anyone who might search from above.

  They were placed in a concrete cell with brick walls that apparently had once served as a laundry room, because hoses and faucets protruded from the wall. Blankets were piled on the floor, along with clothes of various sizes. There was a metal bucket in one corner, and judging from the rank odor in the room, they weren’t the first occupants.

  “We apologize for the lack of comfort,” Geneva said. “We are still developing our skills in fostering humans.”

  “I could’ve let that monster eat you,” Rachel said.

  “That would’ve been educational,” Geneva said, without the slightest concern that her existence might have been erased. She rested in the arms of an older Zap that stared straight ahead while the remaining Zaps waited outside the room.

  “Where are the others who were with us? Lars and Tara, and the girl Squeak?”

  “They are safe. We will bring dinner later, since we’ve learned the hard way that your kind needs food at regular intervals.”

  That had been hours ago, and Rachel and DeVontay were still lethargic from whatever weapon the Zaps had wielded against them. A tiny window high in the wall had allowed the last of the sunlight in, but now the room was completely dark when Rachel shut her eyes. They’d managed to drain a little trapped water from one of the old rubber hoses, but the faucets offered nothing but rusty creaks. The town’s water system was as dead as the rest of it.

  The distant droning of the engine returned sometime during the night, creating a faint tingle they felt in the floor and walls. After a failed attempt at sleeping, they talked over the events that had led them to captivity.

  “One of them saved us,” DeVont
ay said. “He pointed that little hand clicker thing at the monster and it dropped dead.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. “And he was definitely acting sneaky, like he didn’t want the other Zaps to know.”

  “But that’s impossible. If they’re all mentally linked like you say, the other Zaps would’ve known. I’ve never seen one act like that.”

  “Do we really know how they’re supposed to act? I’m not so sure I suddenly lost my telepathic ability. I think they took it away.”

  “Like, blocked you somehow?” DeVontay searched for her hand in the dark and held it like a lifeline.

  “Why not? If you think of thoughts as a form of energy, and it seems like they’re experimenting with it—”

  “Like all these metallic domes. Maybe they block certain signals.”

  “Or amplify them,” Rachel said. “They could be listening right now.”

  “We’re guinea pigs, we just don’t understand the maze they’re running us through.”

  “Maybe they’re not as all-for-one as we think. The babies always set themselves apart, like their intelligence makes them special. Better than the other Zaps. Even Kokona acts like that.”

  “‘Some are more equal than others.’ Like in Orwell’s Animal Farm.”

  “I never read that, but Stephen’s always talking about it. Anyway, why did that one save us?”

  Rachel put her head on DeVontay’s shoulder, comforted by the steady rise and fall of his chest. “Maybe it was saving the baby. That’s more likely.”

  “Then why did it—I think it was a ‘he’ but it’s so damned hard to tell them apart—run away after shooting that thing? And what kind of weapon is that, anyway? It barely makes any noise and it doesn’t seem to aim very well.”

  “If it’s the same weapon they used to make the barn collapse, they probably don’t know how to control it very well. Like a new technology they’re playing with.”