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

  Yes I do.

  “This is no time to be planning a future,” he said, looking back at the activity around camp to make sure no one was obvious about watching them. “Minute by minute is the best we can do right now.”

  “Damn it, Mark, why do think we’re out here? What you even think we’re fighting for?”

  She was so goddamned cute, her green camo cap even complemented her shimmering red hair. Colleen wasn’t military in the old world, but she’d been part of one of the early rescue missions and was among the many persuaded to volunteer. These recruits had only a fraction of the training that a pre-apocalypse enlistee underwent, but bodies were bodies. Well, her body was a bit more exceptional than most.

  “We’re fighting to regain territory ceded to the enemy,” Antonelli said. “That’s the end result of tactical moves such as the one we’re currently undertaking. You don’t take Atlanta without going through Vicksburg.”

  “Sure, go for your precious military babble to keep from having to say anything real,” she said.

  Antonelli grabbed her sleeve and pulled her behind a jagged boulder. He put his face close to hers and said, “How real can you take it?”

  “Whatever you got,” she said, lifting her mouth as his descended. The kiss was brief but fiery, all their frustration and lust and fear sharing delicate nerve endings. Antonelli forced himself to break away far sooner than he wanted to.

  “We need to check out the bunker and find that kid if he’s down there,” Antonelli said. “Then we’ll wait for our next orders, but I’m feeling the big push is coming soon.”

  She grinned and crinkled her freckled cheeks, her anger forgotten as she playfully bumped against him. “Good. I could use a big push.”

  “You know what I hate?” he said.

  “That crappy yellow salt powder in the mac-and-cheese pouch?”

  “I hate when we’re on duty—especially in battle like last night—and I have to treat you like everybody else.”

  “Just one of the guys,” Colleen said.

  “But that means I might be put in a position to sacrifice you for the good of the unit,” he said, refusing to let any emotion creep into his voice.

  “Like you always say, ‘Do your job.’”

  She turned away as if tired of their military life. She looked out across the expanse of valley and the ridges that rolled like endless ocean waves whose surface was painted by the autumnal camouflage of ocher, red, and brown. “So beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes, you are.” He was just a sentimental old fool, unfit for command. At forty-five, he was old enough to despise weakness in others but not in himself.

  “This is still our world. As long as one of us remains, it’s ours.”

  “We’ll get it all back someday,” Mark said. “Or die trying.”

  “And we’ll get married then?”

  “Sure. In the biggest church in the biggest city we can find. But until then, don’t go getting killed on me.”

  She flashed her small, white teeth. “Is that an order?”

  “Yes, Private. Now back to camp before anyone reports you AWOL.”

  Antonelli watched her go, imagining her nude body lurking beneath that bulky combat uniform. Then he cursed himself. His sentimentality was dangerous, not just for the both of them but for the entire unit. But he couldn’t help it. If he wasn’t allowed to be human, then what was the whole point of this mission?

  He took a meandering path back to camp so no one would see him arrive from the same direction as Colleen. Below him, the parkway wound along the slopes like a dark gray river. The 469-mile road had been built to transport tanks and heavy equipment if necessary, connecting central Virginia to western North Carolina. Those states no longer existed except on maps, but the road was solid, an artifact of their civilization. It would help them stage for assaults on Atlanta, Charlotte, and wherever else in the mid-South the Zaps had established bases.

  By the time he returned to camp, the site was already returning to nature, all the gear packed. Cans and plastic bottles were strewn around, but that was typical. “Leave no trace” was an indecent motto when your kind stood on the brink of vanishing forever.

  “Saddle up,” Antonelli said, scooping up his own pack.

  The soldiers, aside from the ones on sentry duty, had been chatting in low voices, but they went quiet now that they were on to their next objective. Colleen helped Judy wrestle her pack straps onto her plump shoulders, the civilian grumbling loud enough for Antonelli to hear.

  Wouldn’t mind dangling her for beastadon bait.

  As they marched across the grassy bald, fanned out in three successive lines, Antonelli stopped to examined one of the creatures they had killed. Flies buzzed around its bloody snout, its tongue protruding outward. Its fur stood up in stiff bristles. The tusks gleamed in the sun. The heavy-shouldered physical profile resembled that of a buffalo but was smaller and had padded, clawed feet instead of hooves.

  Antonelli didn’t understand how such seemingly spontaneous evolution could have occurred. There was plenty of radiation in the atmosphere, from the thousands of abandoned and poisoned nuclear plants around the globe that had melted down years ago, but that alone couldn’t explain the changes.

  New Pentagon scientists theorized that a weird cocktail of radiation, sunspots, and a change of the magnetic poles had combined to create shifts at the cellular level. Antonelli didn’t even want to think of the changes taking place inside him. He half expected to wake up one morning with a horn sprouting from the middle of his forehead.

  A private named Mayer came over to look at the fallen monster. “Maybe we should slice that up and fry it,” the older veteran said. “Bet it tastes like chicken.”

  “Take your chances,” Antonelli said. “But if your eyeballs turn yellow, I’m putting you down.”

  “Come on, Captain,” Mayer said. “We’re going to need me in the gene pool once this is over. And I plan on spewing a lot of genes, if you know what I mean.”

  The private flicked his eyes toward Colleen, who was on the left flank. Antonelli couldn’t be sure if the man’s gesture was a taunt or some subconscious jealous reaction.

  Sexual relations among active-duty troops were technically forbidden by Directive 17. New Pentagon couldn’t afford to lose any numbers to pregnancy, even though females comprised only ten percent of the fighting force. Antonelli’s unit contained two gay men, who shared a tent and regularly broke the directive with one another. Fortunately for Antonelli, he didn’t have to render punishment because the prudish moralities of the old world were not even worthy of a snicker any longer, much less serious application.

  However, his dalliance with Colleen was like pulling the pin on a grenade and hoping it didn’t explode. He wasn’t worried about being reported by a subordinate who might want his command. His real concern was on the effect the affair would have on the unit’s performance in battle. He wasn’t sure if the troops respected him more for putting his dick before duty, or whether they saw his behavior as a sign that the directive was a joke.

  He didn’t agree with every principal of the directive, but he was damn sure the human race needed it.

  “Tell you what, Private,” Antonelli said. “Once we capture Charlotte, I’ll find you some chickens. And then you can play rooster for as long as you want.”

  Mayer gave a crooked-toothed grin and saluted, then drifted back into line. Antonelli led the unit to the parkway, where an advance team waited with Lt. Randall. The soldiers sat on the hood of an SUV, warming themselves under the morning sun. One of them had found an electric guitar and was quietly plucking the strings.

  “All clear,” Randall said to Antonelli, pointing to an incline where the pavement curved into the woods. “There’s a concrete marker up there for Milepost 284.”

  Antonelli checked his compass, but magnetic north had shifted between twenty and forty degrees, according to the pencil-pushers at New Pentagon, so it wasn’t much use except as a general gui
de. Even the sun’s position wasn’t quite trustworthy, but the parkway ran gently to the west-southwest and ended in Asheville, so getting lost wasn’t likely.

  “We should reach the bunker by afternoon,” Antonelli said. “Move your team forward and keep an eye out for the kid in the van. According to the map, there’s a rest area four miles ahead. Wait there, and don’t engage unless absolutely necessary.”

  “Do you really think there’s anybody left in the bunker?”

  “Shipley’s unit went dark for a reason. They could be dead, or they could be…something else.”

  “Then why don’t we just leave it? Head on down to Asheville and connect with the Fourth Division?”

  Antonelli couldn’t tell if this was a test of some kind. Randall knew perfectly well their orders were to investigate the bunker and commandeer whatever supplies they could use. Could Randall be secretly hoping Antonelli would defy orders, as the captain indirectly did by loving Colleen?

  Randall had never struck Antonelli as the ambitious sort, but these were different times. He might be looking for an opportunity to move up in the world. Once the human race regained its place at the top of the food chain, there would be plenty of turf to divide.

  Antonelli looked at the three grimy cars that had rolled off the parkway during the solar storms. The spoils of this war weren’t all that enticing.

  “Orders are to secure the bunker,” Antonelli said, aware the others were listening. “Until we hear otherwise, that’s what we do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Randall said, getting to his feet. The soldier with the guitar gave the instrument an affectionate, sentimental stroke and then opened the passenger door and tucked it inside the vehicle.

  “Let’s roll,” Randall yelled to his team, and as the four men headed up the incline, Antonelli peeked into the SUV’s side window.

  The guitar sat in the thin, frail arms of a skeleton, which seemed to grin at its good fortune.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Do you sense it?” DeVontay asked.

  “No,” Rachel said. “Not anymore. It was there, and then it wasn’t.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “I’d like to think that a Zap not putting messages in my brain is normal.”

  They were checking out an encampment where DeVontay had been held captive by a band of survivors years ago. They’d searched it before, along with every other store and shop in Stonewall, but DeVontay insisted the former slaughterhouse might be the best chance of finding overlooked food or supplies. His reasoning went that the original scavengers had picked the town clean, and that rats always carried their goodies back to the nest.

  “So, if you can’t pick up any signal, that probably means it’s gone,” DeVontay said, kicking over a five-gallon bucket that oozed sour syrup. The slaughterhouse had been ringed with chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire, with rows of tractor trailers used as walls along with a series of metal sheds. It was one of these sheds they now searched, but it mostly contained trash and dead people.

  “I don’t think I’d get off the hook that easily,” Rachel said. “And it’s possible that it senses me, but I can’t sense it. I’m only half Zap, remember, and who knows how much I’ve lost by being separated from the tribe.”

  That’s too much to hope for, that the “disease” will cure itself. But I can’t think of it as a disease. More like an involuntary possession.

  “But you’re around Kokona all the time,” DeVontay said.

  “We’ve developed our own bond, but who’s to say we’re not a tribe unto ourselves now? As fast as they’re evolving, maybe we’ve been left behind.”

  “Stuck with the humans,” DeVontay said. “A fate worse than death.”

  “Look at it this way,” Rachel said, raking through a sodden stack of collapsed cardboard boxes. “Zaps probably outnumber us a hundred to one. As far as we can tell, they’re organized and thriving while we’re scrounging for lizards under rocks.”

  “And hoping those lizards don’t bite back,” DeVontay said.

  “But if they wanted to wipe us out, they could do it at any time,” Rachel said. “We’re like lizards under rocks to them. Don’t turn over the rock, and we don’t really exist.”

  “I can live with that deal,” DeVontay said.

  “Don’t you want more? Has it been so long that you can’t remember walking down the street to get a cup of coffee, hearing the birds sing without worrying if they were going to swarm you, or jumping in a river without any clothes on?”

  “I never went skinny dipping, honey,” DeVontay said. “I’m way too shy for that.”

  “But you’re accepting the way things are.”

  “Yeah, because things could be waaaay worse.”

  Rachel sifted through the contents of a wooden shelf that contained tools, spools of wire, nuts and bolts, and various types of saw blades. She imagined the blades had once been used to butcher cattle, pigs, and deer. No wonder the Zaps considered her race barbaric.

  “Nothing here,” DeVontay said. “Maybe we should check the refrigerator units.”

  “Ooh, I bet those things smell really great.”

  DeVontay sniffed one of the armpits of his flannel shirt. “I don’t smell so hot myself. Maybe I could stand to jump in a river.”

  “I wouldn’t do it naked, though.” She rolled her eyes down the length of his body. “You might come up with something missing.”

  Despite the lingering chill of morning, Rachel had also worked up a sweat. As claustrophobic as life in the bunker had become, being beyond its concrete walls and steel door triggered a different kind of unease. In the bunker, they’d established a routine that allowed for some leisure and comfort. Outside, every breath might bring a new way to die.

  As they crossed the enclosure to a series of metal refrigerator units, Rachel glanced at the sky. The sun was bright enough to burn away most of the aurora. The sunspot activity was down. But Rachel didn’t need to see the sky to know. The background hum that constantly ran through her like electricity was diminished to a trickle.

  They were nearly to the first of the big refrigerator units when DeVontay said, “Didn’t you close the gate?”

  “I thought you closed it.”

  DeVontay leveled his rifle in front of him at waist height. “Well, one of us did, because we’d never be dumb enough to go into a place like this and not close the gate.”

  Rachel scanned the enclosure. “Looks pretty dead to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what the cows used to say, before they got turned into hamburger.”

  “I told you, I don’t sense any Zaps. And that one we saw last night didn’t threaten us at all.” Rachel didn’t mention that parting, silent communication of “Thank you.” She couldn’t explain the intent of the phrase, and he would just worry more about her potential for betrayal.

  “Lots of stuff besides Zaps can get us.” DeVontay headed for the chain-link gate and the short drive that connected to the road. “Let’s boogie.”

  “We’ve only found two cans of food, and one of them is turnip greens. The kids are not going to be happy campers.”

  “We should be getting back anyway. Whoever made those big-boy boomeroos last night might still be in the area.”

  Rachel eyed the refrigerator units, relieved to be spared the mystery of their contents. She hurried after DeVontay, her pack jiggling against her back. One benefit of a pathetic supply run was the load was lighter for the return trip.

  “Maybe they’re good people,” Rachel said. “Not everybody who has a gun is bad. Just look at us.”

  “Odds are against it,” DeVontay said. “And I’m not willing to play those odds.”

  “But we came to Stonewall looking for people.”

  “Yeah. We want people, not an army.”

  “Damn it, DeVontay, make up your mind. You think we’ll be safer in a bigger group, but you don’t want it to be too big. Probably because you’re afraid you won’t get to be boss anymore.”

>   He stopped at the gate and turned toward her. “You can have the crown any time you want it. But if I remember right, you didn’t like it so much when you were Queen of the Zaps.”

  “I didn’t have any control over that. There were so many of them, they just pulled me in. You wouldn’t understand, but they needed me so they could understand us—the humans they found themselves killing.”

  “‘You wouldn’t understand.’ I’ve heard that a thousand times. You’re right, I wouldn’t. Well, I’m sorry I saved you.”

  DeVontay went through the gate without waiting for her.

  Why am I blaming him? I wanted to be rescued. I had a choice, and I decided to be human. Why can’t I just be happy that I made the right choice?

  Rachel had been summoned to the town of Newton thirty miles to the west, where the Zaps had congregated and taken human captives. A rogue military group attacked the town, planning to destroy the mutant infants, whose telepathic intelligence was rapidly evolving. During the ensuing chaos, DeVontay and Franklin had rescued Rachel as the rest of the humans were wiped out. That had been four years ago, and Rachel still was saddened by the wasteful war.

  She’d been a relentless optimist at the time. She hoped her unique, half-mutant status would allow her to serve as a diplomat, but Zaps had no concept of peace and humans had no capacity to forgive the violent slaughter in the immediate aftermath of the solar storms. Now she knew her hope was futile. What she mistook for empathy was actually arrogance.

  She didn’t deserve anyone’s crown.

  As she caught up with DeVontay once again, she couldn’t evade the deep doubt that constantly plagued her: What if I made the wrong choice?

  “Something’s not right here,” DeVontay said, pointing his rifle along the road to a cluster of houses. “That yellow house there, the one that looks like some grandma’s cute little mountain cottage. The door’s open.”

  “So what? Lots of doors are open. Nobody had time for locks and keys when the storms hit, and nobody cared after that.”

  “We’ve been to Stonewall half a dozen times, but this is the first time that door’s been open. I know, because I always look at those brass wind chimes on the porch. I’ve been thinking about taking them back to the bunker, but the wind don’t blow underground.”