Radiophobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 3) Read online

“I haven’t given it any thought, Mr. Army Man. Why don’t you—”

  Kelly swung her M16 around the door jamb and the room exploded with a burst of automatic rounds. “Drop it!”

  The walls behind the man were dotted with holes as he ducked out of sight behind the desk. Rachel fell to the floor, covering Squeak’s body with her own. The air was thick with the brusque stench of gunpowder.

  A moment later, the echo of the percussion still ringing, the man dropped his shotgun over the front of the desk. “Take it easy, man. Peace out.”

  A few seconds later he stood unsteadily, his arms raised, glasses even more askew. He adjusted them as he said, “Some people take everything so damn seriously.”

  “The nature of the beast, man,” Antonelli said, stepping into the room and collecting the shotgun.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Antonelli wanted to kill the damned hippie.

  He didn’t like having a gun pointed at him, especially in a world where humans were struggling for survival and there were plenty of other enemies to shoot. And he’d bet a million bucks this wild-eyed lunatic had never heard of Directive Seventeen. But the hippie was alive, somehow making it right in the heart of Zap Central, and that had to count for something.

  “What are you doing here?” Antonelli asked, as the rest of the group fanned out down the hall and checked the rest of the second floor while Rachel and Squeak sat in stiff-backed chairs and dug into a backpack for food.

  “Waiting for the mothership, like I said,” the man said, sitting on a desk. He reached for his shirt pocket, and when Antonelli lifted the shotgun to his face, the man showed both palms. “Easy, man. Just going for a smoke here.”

  Antonelli nodded, and as the man retrieved a pack of Camel Lights that was so rumpled he might’ve been carrying it for a year, he asked how long the man had lived in Wilkesboro.

  “I followed the pretty lights,” he said, striking a wooden match and applying the flame to his cigarette. The smoke was gray and stale when he exhaled. The smell was a welcome change from the man’s piercing body odor. None of the humans were in any way well-groomed, but this hippie seemed to take pride in his sour funk.

  “What’s your name?” Antonelli asked.

  “Millwood. Kevin Millwood. My friends call me ‘The Woodster.’”

  “You’re probably the only living human being within twenty miles of this place, Millwood.”

  “Hey, not everybody can tune in to the right frequencies.” Millwood squinted at Antonelli’s insignia and name patch above his pocket. “Sheriff Antonelli.”

  The captain briefly explained the new government, Directive 17, and his mission to destroy the plasma sink, which drew a horrified grimace from Millwood. Before he could protest, though, Bright Eyes walked into the room, eliciting a wild, frantic shriek.

  Millwood pointed at the mutant and blubbered, “Sweet jumping Jesus on a trampoline! There’s one of them, man!”

  Bright Eyes looked from Antonelli to the long-haired man without expression. Antonelli said, “This Zap is helping us.”

  Millwood flung his cigarette to the carpet and ground it out, then fell to his knees before Bright Eyes. He lowered his head and said, “I’m not worthy.”

  “Get your ass up,” Antonelli said. “Humans don’t cower before mutants.”

  “You can blow your seat on the mothership, Mr. Army Man, but I’m getting my ticket no matter the cost.” To Bright Eyes, Millwood said, “I dig the silver threads. Can I get a pair when we take the big ride?”

  “We have no ship,” Bright Eyes said. “We’re not aliens. We are you.”

  Millwood frowned in confusion. “I don’t catch your drift.”

  “He’s a mutant,” Antonelli said, annoyed. He’d hoped the man would serve as an asset and be able to provide useful information given his experience in the city, but evidently he was either a schizophrenic or had been pushed over the edge by the apocalypse. “Don’t you know anything about the solar storms and what happened after that?”

  “Sure, man, the Arrival,” Millwood said. “Me and some friends were camping up at Big Bear Lake when all that went down. Mondo freaked out and got all rager on us, but we thought it was just the drugs. You know how that goes.”

  Millwood paused until he realized that Antonelli, in fact, did not know how that went, then continued. “We had to put him down and sunk his body in the lake. Thought we were gonna be in deep shit, so we just stayed up there for months, until winter hit. We split up and I broke into a fishing cabin and stayed until March. I finally figured out what was going on and I’ve been watching them”—here he nodded at Bright Eyes—“ever since.”

  “So you’ve seen them change.”

  “They change the face they show the world, but they’re lizards on the inside. But I got to admit, these silver suits are groovy.”

  “They’re fabricated from a synthetic alloy drawing on power from the plasma sink,” Bright Eyes said.

  Millwood shook his head in amazement. “An alien. Standing right here in front of me.”

  “I’m not an alien.”

  Kelly came into the room with DeVontay following. “All clear. What’s his story?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Antonelli said. “It’s not important anyway. We’ve all got stories. The important thing is fulfilling our objective.”

  Millwood went to the window and motioned toward the turbulent stream of colors half a mile away. “It’s beautiful. How could you want to destroy it? That’s just like the fucking Establishment, feeling threatened in the face of awe and wonder.”

  “Not your call, Millwood. And they’re not aliens.”

  “We’re not aliens,” Bright Eyes echoed.

  “So you’re okay with this?” Millwood asked the mutant. “Just going to let him destroy what you’ve created?”

  “The plasma sink has been used to kill and destroy,” Bright Eyes said. “I can no longer be part of that.”

  “We’ve all killed. No big deal. We’re all just dust and energy in the end.”

  “We’re more than that,” Rachel said. “Look at my eyes.”

  Millwood squinted at her a moment, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Whoa. So you’re an alien, too. You look so normal I thought I was just seeing things. Where’s your silver suit?”

  Antonelli turned to Kelly. “Find a way onto the roof?”

  “No, just a fire escape ladder on the back of the building. We can climb it easy but we’ll be pretty exposed.”

  “What you want on the roof for?” Millwood asked.

  “To get a good look at the plasma sink,” Antonelli said, annoyed at the man’s intrusion. Directive 17 notwithstanding, the captain didn’t see how Millwood could provide any help even if he was willing. “I need to know if destroying it is worth the risk.”

  “So it’s not a done deal?” Millwood asked. “If you find out it’s really a beacon for the mothership, you’ll leave it alone?”

  “Of course,” Antonelli said, choosing to play along, although now he wished Kelly’s warning shots had sprayed a few feet lower and decapitated the man. “I mean, if this is really the Arrival, I want to get aboard myself.”

  “No man knows the hour or the day,” Millwood said, which Antonelli vaguely remembered as a biblical saying, but Millwood seemed about as religious as a brick.

  “Jones, you keep an eye on everybody,” Antonelli commanded, giving him the shotgun even though he already carried an M16. Even though his wounded shoulder was throbbing, Antonelli retrieved the grenade launcher from the floor and said to Kelly, “Colleen, show me this ladder.”

  Just as Antonelli reached the door, Millwood said, “If you really want to see it, I can get you a whole lot closer.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The death toll from the Zap attack stood at three, and while Abigail Murray mourned each of them publicly, visiting with the friends or families of the deceased, Helen Schlagal had no one else to bury her.

  As she address
ed the assembly in a natural stone cathedral inside the caverns, she let her own personal loss color her remarks. About a hundred people gathered to hear her, and even though most of the population had stayed in their tents or were outside on patrol, her words would spread throughout the rest of the community by nightfall.

  “I promised you shelter and protection here,” she said, her voice amplified by the slick limestone surfaces. “I promised we would make the best life we could under the circumstances. I promised we would restore our nation and the human race to its former glory. And I stand by those promises today.”

  An uneasy murmur rippled through the crowd. Gen. Alexander, standing beside her on a raised platform, tilted his head back so that his strong chin was the most prominent part of his face. Two kerosene lanterns on either side of her created a moody, dramatic effect, as if this were a staged ritual ceremony for a movie. Murray only wished their circumstances were the stuff of make-believe and that they could out walk out of the theater and go on with their everyday lives.

  “We’ve suffered our first real attack,” Murray continued. “And we’ve been hit hard. James Hanson, Arman Kahlil, and Helen Schlagal were important to our community, and we grieve their loss. But each of you is just as important, which is why I’m asking you to continue working toward our dream. These three gave their lives defending the freedom and peace we seek. Let’s not waste their sacrifice.”

  An old man in the front of the crowd, white-haired and stooped, yelled up at her, “You said we’d be safe!” Others approved of his remarks, and a couple of angry shouts followed. Murray held up her palms until everyone was silent again.

  “We’re doing what we can,” she said, wishing she had the capacity to lie like most of the politicians she’d known over the years. But sociopathy seemed doubly horrendous when society was on the ropes. She could calm the restless citizenry, but she wasn’t going to dull their senses with sweet, sugar-coated platitudes. “But the truth is, it’s a dangerous world. The threats are real. Zaps, monsters, starvation, extreme weather, even rogue groups of survivors who might envy our way of life and want to take it away from us.”

  “They can have it!” a woman in the rear shouted. “Huddled in tents inside a damp hole in the ground. What kind of life is this?”

  “It’s the life we have,” Murray thundered, trying to quell the crowd’s uneasiness. “None of us asked for this. But we have to stick together and fight if we want to make things better. Right now, hundreds of brave men and women are out there seeking the enemy and risking their lives. We owe them a strong foundation and a place to which they can return. They need a place called ‘Home.’”

  “Why can’t we get out of this damned cave, at least?” the woman said, encouraged by the supportive nods of those around her. “We should live and die out in the sunlight, as free people. This is our land. How can we call this planet ‘Home’ if we’re letting these mutant freaks walk over it?”

  The crowd seemed to push forward as one, their fear and anxiety almost like a palpable force in the cavernous space. Alexander signaled to two soldiers near the base of Murray’s platform, and they moved between her and the first row of people.

  Murray let them mutter and complain for thirty seconds before she continued. “This is bigger than you, bigger than me, and bigger than the three people we lost today. This is New Pentagon. This is the Earth Zero Initiative—”

  “To hell with those commies,” a curly-haired young man shouted, evidently someone unfit for military duty or else performing a job so essential his loss couldn’t be risked on defense. “Let them kill their own damn Zaps. You talk about the nation and freedom, but even if we win, you’ve already given this country away.”

  “I’ve always been upfront with you,” Murray said, finally having to raise her voice to drown out the protests. “And the reality is we can’t do this alone. We can rely on each other and protect this place, but if we ever want to take on this enemy—an enemy none of us could ever anticipate—it takes the entire human race. I know that’s not popular—”

  This drew a sudden roar, and Murray wondered how she would fare if New Pentagon ever did hold elections. She continued on before anyone in the crowd saw a crack in her resolve. “I know that’s not popular,” she repeated. “But the odds are against us. Even with the most modern weaponry preserved through the foresight of our former government, we’re outnumbered a hundred to one. As many of you have heard, the mutants are developing technologies we don’t quite understand, and that puts us in an even more vulnerable position.”

  Alexander narrowed his eyes at her, and she wasn’t sure whether he was approving of her coming statements. “We have limited radio contact with the outside world,” she said. “So we only have bits and pieces of the bigger picture. From what I can tell, we have it better than most survivors. We have a strong community, a structure, an army, and a culture. If we turn into a mob, then civilization is lost, and I’m afraid we’d never get it back.”

  The curly-haired man, emboldened by the restlessness, pushed forward through the crowd. “We have it better, but you have it best,” he said. “It’s fine for you. You can lock yourself inside a sweet little bunker, no doubt eating the best food the U.S. taxpayers could stockpile. You don’t have to worry about a Zap sneaking in and tearing out your throat while you’re asleep.”

  Murray had been dreading this moment. She’d sensed an undercurrent of resentment among some of the cavern’s population no matter how hard she integrated into their daily lives. That’s why she kept her own tent and why she took her turn washing laundry in the creek and cooking big pots of dried beans. She stayed visible in the military camp as well, sometimes placing herself at risk more than necessary just to show she wasn’t hiding from danger.

  “The bunker is a military asset, not a perk of office,” Murray said. She’d even considered allowing public tours of the bunker so others could see its simplicity, but Alexander strongly urged her against the idea. He considered such behavior a security risk that would only cause discontent, especially since the telecom room was on the same level. “It’s for government use only. I’ve never taken a meal there and I’ve never slept there. It was designed to serve all of us—”

  “Hanson would still be alive if you let us in the bunker!” a woman yelled.

  Murray’s cool façade slipped a little, which somehow seemed to be the right move to quell the rebellion. “I wouldn’t even let my Director of Homeland Security stay in the bunker,” she bellowed, which was only a partial truth. Murray hadn’t offered because Helen would’ve stubbornly refused. “I let my friend die instead of giving her special treatment. But she would’ve wanted it that way. Because what’s special is all of us, together.”

  The murmuring diminished to a few coughs and whispers. She let her words sink in a moment and then continued, firmly but more quietly. “Life isn’t fair. Life is just life. No matter our personal beliefs and differences, we all share a common wish—to walk in peace, to raise our families in safety, and to have our basic needs met. But we need war in order to earn peace. This is the world we have, not the world we want. It’s up to all of us to make this the world we want.”

  The curly-haired man broke from the crowd and rushed toward the stage, and for one horrified moment, Murray thought she’d be gunned down like Abraham Lincoln or Bobby Kennedy. But he was empty-handed as he shook his fist at her, the two soldiers stepping in front of him to stop his charge. “Not everybody wants that world,” he said. “You…you goddamned liberal.”

  Murray almost laughed. She’d been a Republican her entire life and seen how mass media and the Internet ravaged public discourse. One of the few bright spots of the apocalypse was the end of silly lines of red and blue, black and white, this or that. But maybe the human animal could never really change. Only the Zaps seemed truly capable of evolution.

  Alexander finally stepped in, snapping his shoulders back and broadcasting his most authoritative voice. “You’ll all get your say w
hen we rebuild the government and the nation,” he said. “Until then, we’re operating under Directive Seventeen. That means we all are disposable assets in the mission to reclaim the world. Any opposition shall be considered treason and is punishable by death.”

  The crowd fell silent, but the curly-haired man pushed free of the soldiers holding his arms. “Got it, Big Brother. Your way or else.”

  “My way or else,” Alexander said.

  “My way, too.” Murray said. “Make no mistake about that. It’s my duty to care for you and protect you, but if you put New Pentagon at risk or in any way hinder the success of the Earth Zero Initiative, you’re not just an enemy of the state, you’re an enemy of the people.”

  The curly-haired man sneered at her, his twisted face almost demonic in the lamplight, and then he headed toward the opening that led to the greater caverns. Several people followed him, not looking back. Murray wondered if she’d eventually have a mutiny on her hands.

  On the positive side, most of the crowd looked up at her with expectation. They still put faith in her, and she wouldn’t let them down. “Could we please have a moment of silence for our fallen heroes, followed by a prayer?”

  Murray closed her eyes, not caring whether the crowd imitated her or not. She offered a fairly generic prayer that avoided any mention of specific deities—just like a liberal, she mused—and her “Amen” was echoed by most of the assembly. As the people filed out rather desultorily, Alexander walked over to her and lowered his voice.

  “Good show, Abigail,” he said. “I thought we were going to have a riot for a second there.”

  “They’re just scared,” she responded. “Who can blame them?”

  “People make bad decisions when they’re scared. That one guy—we better keep an eye on him.”

  “I can handle his type,” Murray said. “All mouth and no backbone.”

  “Maybe we need to disappear him. Do it at night, make it look like he snuck off. We can even spread the rumor that he wandered off to form his own little utopia.”