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

  His father was a visiting professor of philosophy and religion at Georgetown University, where his militaristic genealogy was little more than idle gossip at faculty cocktail parties. Huynh was in the process of learning English in a continuing education class at a local community college while working as a cook in a Chinese restaurant. His dream was to attend Georgetown and pursue a degree in economics. The dream was ripped from his hands on that August day five years ago when the sun rewrote human history into a tragic thriller with darkly comic elements.

  On that day, Huynh was doling mung bean sprouts onto a plate of luo han zai when the screams erupted in the dining room. The room went dark, with the only light coming from the back door, which they left open so the thick smoke could dissipate. His partner at the grill was named Wei, a true Chinese, unlike the other assorted brownish people on the staff who merely satisfied the American demand for cultural appearances. Wei’s eyes widened as if he’d sliced his finger off with a chef’s knife, and then his body went slack and he pitched face-first into the deep-fat fryer.

  Huynh shouted for help and tried to free his friend from the oily vat of egg rolls. When Wei flopped backward onto the floor, flinging hot grease from his hair, his face was puckered with large yellow blisters. By the time Huynh stretched him out on the dirty floor tiles, the man was clearly dead.

  Huynh pushed open the swinging door that led from the kitchen to the serving area and saw two waitresses sprawled prone on the floor. Past the counter loaded with tea pitchers and bowls of crushed ice, the restaurant patrons shrieked and skittered across the room, upending tables and smashing the large aquarium near the cash register. It took Huynh half a minute to realize some of the people were chasing others and that most of the customers were slumped in their booths or collapsed on top of their kung pao chicken and Buddha’s Delight.

  Being in the United States capital, his first thought was “Terrorism.” And terrorism meant that non-whites were the first to die when the government forces arrived. He grabbed a cleaver and retreated to the walk-in freezer, closing the door behind him even though he couldn’t lock it from the inside and the interior was blacker than the soot from a napalm drop. He shivered against a stack of frozen pork until he could stand it no longer—he guessed he’d been hiding for an hour, although his watch had stopped and it could have been only fifteen minutes.

  When he emerged, the restaurant was empty aside from the plentiful dead. The plate-glass window was broken and the chaos had migrated to the streets, where car horns, gunshots, and screams built into a discordant symphony that grated his nerves. He spent the night in the kitchen, barricaded as best he could. The cutlery gave him little comfort—based on the glimpses he’d endured, he figured the rampaging killers were vigorously strong and immune to pain.

  But why would terrorists bother killing with their bare hands when they could use explosives and automatic weapons for maximum carnage? And terrorism doesn’t explain Wei’s sudden death.

  Perhaps nerve gas.

  The United States had used Sarin in Vietnam and Laos, and although officially the use was scrubbed from all military reports, the affected people had a long memory. That wouldn’t explain the power outages or why the entire surrounding blocks outside had been affected, though.

  Huynh spent two weeks in the kitchen, a moist towel over his mouth to mute the stench of spoiled food, living on wilted vegetables and dried noodles and relieving himself in the mop bucket. He tried Wei’s cell phone after stashing his co-worker in the broom closet, but it was dead. Each day he expected authorities to arrive, perhaps firefighters or police rather than soldiers. He feared their arrival only slightly less than he yearned for it.

  But when no rescue was forthcoming and his curiosity was greater than his fear—after all, he couldn’t reasonably expect to live the rest of his life on fortune cookies—Huynh ventured out the back door to find the world he knew forever changed. No lights, no cars, no phones, no people.

  At least at first.

  Then he saw people, or what looked like people. Something was wrong with them. For one thing, their eyes were bright and glowing like jewels backlit by fire.

  For another, they were wild and frantic, smashing glass, starting fires, and destroying road signs, newspaper racks, mailboxes, and other symbols of civilization with a fervor that seemed driven by a force beyond them. The streets were littered with clothes, trash, and bodies. Motor vehicles were jumbled in scrap heaps of torn metal and fiberglass. Distant plumes of smoke suggested the destruction was widespread.

  Huynh saw a woman dash from a clothing boutique, barefoot and wearing torn stockings beneath her stained skirt, apparently heading for a building across the street. Two of the flaming-eyed crazies took after her like wolves on a rabbit. Huynh’s instinct was to help her, but her cries brought more of them, until a dozen set upon her. They clawed and pounded until she was a still and hushed lump on the asphalt, blood spattering them all.

  Feeling like a coward, he laid low for several more weeks, moving cautiously and only at night, when their glowing eyes made them easier to avoid. Huynh imagined this was how the Viet Cong felt when slipping through the Mekong Delta for an ambush. He met another survivor and they headed west, away from the city, and soon he was part of New Pentagon and enjoying the possibly false security of a large group.

  Naturally, he enlisted once the revised government implemented a new social order. His poor English drew wary glances from the others, and he decided the best front he could adopt was one of rabid patriotism, wrapping himself under the revised flag. “Private Huynh” was a much safer identity than “Tan the Yellow Man.”

  But as he came awake in a military bunker in the Blue Ridge Mountains that night, none of those events lingered in his memory. His only thought was “Make war, go home.”

  There were three other soldiers bunking in his room. Two of them snored, and the third rolled over and farted. The lights were off, but Huynh could see just fine. There seemed to be a hazy glow emanating in front of his face that turned and shifted whenever he did.

  He drew his K-Bar knife and sliced the throat of the farting man first. He wiped his blade on the blankets and then drove it into the chest of the man on the top bunk. The third man stirred at the sound, blinking as if to make sense of the scene, and he reached for his eyeglasses. Huynh slid the knife under the man’s chin and drove it upward, causing blood to squirt from the man’s nose as he gurgled and choked.

  When the man quit struggling, Huynh exited the room. He carried his rifle as he was trained to do, although he wasn’t going to use it unless necessary. He instinctively understood the need for stealth as he continued his mission. Several of the doors were locked, including the room that contained the radio he had destroyed earlier. But he managed to kill four more enemies in one of the rooms.

  When he reached the end of the hallway, he discovered Corporal Calvin Tidewater sitting in a chair outside a closed metal door.

  “Yo, Tan Man, what up, dawg?” Tidewater was the only black man left alive in the unit, and during their tour of duty, the two of them shared an unspoken acknowledgment of their minority status. “That leg of your’n must be feeling better, you hoofing around in the middle of the night.”

  Huynh had always felt that Tidewater considered himself to be superior, a better American, because of Huynh’s inept language skills. Not that such genetic delineation mattered now. “See baby,” Huynh said.

  “The little freak? I ain’t supposed to let nobody in, but maybe if you got a cigarette, I can let you look.”

  “No smoke. See baby.”

  Tidewater must have realized something was odd about Huynh. He gestured toward the M16. “Why you locked and loaded? We safe in the bunker. That little baby ain’t no danger, I don’t care what the captain says. She just lays there and goes goo-goo-gah-gah and shit.”

  “Japanese,” Huynh said.

  “Maybe used to be, but now’s she’s Zap. Once you’re Zap, that’s all you ever was.”


  Huynh’s father might have mused on the diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Japan. While Japan had ravaged most of the Asian countries and fueled centuries-old enmity, the two countries largely shared a peace built upon mutually beneficial trade. During Hirohito’s rein of militarism and expansion in World War II, Japan had invaded Huynh’s native land but later repaid the injury with generous reparations. Friends before, friends still, bound forever by greed.

  Huynh peered through the small glass window into the room. The baby grinned at him, her two front teeth set against prink gums.

  “What about that smoke, Tan Man?” Tidewater said.

  Huynh reached into the pocket of his camo cargo pants. He had never liked tobacco, but he valued his rations. Or, rather, his fellow soldiers valued them. He fished his last cigarette from a wrinkled pack and passed it to Tidewater, who stuck it in his mouth.

  “Got a light?”

  Without turning from the window, Huynh gave the sentry a pack of matches.

  “Don’t you rat me out, hear?” Tidewater struck a match, twitched his nose against the sulfur, and applied the flame to his cigarette. “We only supposed to smoke in the mess.”

  “Big mess,” Huynh said.

  “Sure got that right, my man. One great big ol’ motherfuckin’ mess.” Tidewater exhaled a stream of gray smoke and peered through it. “Hey, what’s up with your eyes?”

  “I see.”

  “You see the baby?”

  Huynh turned and drove the knife so hard into Tidewater’s temple that the corporal’s jaw involuntarily clenched and his teeth snipped the cigarette in two. As Tidewater sagged to the floor with fluttering eyelids, Huynh opened the door.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” Kokona said.

  “Make war, go home,” Huynh said, sheathing his bloody knife and reaching into the blankets for the infant.

  “Indeed,” Kokona said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Zap was alone, which struck Rachel as odd.

  She looked past it for more mutants, but the hallway was dark. The glow of their eyes would’ve given them away.

  DeVontay clutched the weapon he’d made from broken ceramic, concealing it beside his leg. They both stood and took a few steps toward the Zap, who’d left the door open. This might be their chance.

  “Rachel Wheeler,” the Zap said in a toneless voice.

  Rachel’s understanding of Zaps had faded due to a lack of exposure and experience, and aside from her relationship with Kokona, she had little knowledge of their evolution. Still, it was rare for an adult Zap to speak aside from repeating communal thoughts. Language appeared to have become the domain of their infant leaders.

  “How do you know my name?” she asked.

  “We all know you and what happened years ago. It is part of us.” The Zap was indistinct from others of its kind, of genderless build and wearing a silver suit, its smooth face topped by dark, rounded hair that seemed to have been trimmed by a machine rather than a stylist. Its eyes projected the typical flickering and sparking, but something about the whole impression added up to trigger a sense of familiarity.

  “We’ve met before,” Rachel said, drawing closer as if curious. That allowed DeVontay to ease a couple of steps forward as well. The Zap didn’t appear to notice or care.

  “We have,” the Zap said, and then repeated it mentally. Rachel at first wasn’t sure she’d received the message, since it was faint and she was convinced the talent was lost.

  Telepathic voices didn’t have tones as such, because the words and thoughts weren’t produced by the shape of a throat or the movement of air or the vibration rate of sound waves. Zap thoughts were transferred almost as a monotonal chorus, where many voices were repeating the same thought at the same time even when the source was isolated, such as when Rachel communicated with Kokona.

  But something about the Zap’s inflection added to the sense of familiarity

  Then the Zap said, aloud, “Thank you.”

  The Zap from Stonewall. The one I saved when that monster attacked it.

  A dozen questions came to mind, but Rachel could only think, “Why?” Before she had a chance to ask any of them, DeVontay shoved her aside and raised his makeshift blade.

  “Run for it!” he yelled, bringing down the blade.

  The Zap leaned back with surprising speed and the ceramic blade shattered against the strong silvery metal of its shoulder. DeVontay grunted as a sharp chip sliced his thumb. As blood spouted, the Zap clutched DeVontay’s forearm, twisted it around his neck, and pulled him off-balance.

  Rachel charged to defend DeVontay, curling her fingers to claw at the Zap’s face, but it shot her a mental command: “No. I won’t hurt him.”

  The Zap used leverage to drive DeVontay to his knees, leaving DeVontay to punch ineffectually at the Zap’s legs. DeVontay grunted with each thwack of his knuckles, clearly inflicting more damage to himself than to his opponent.

  “Stop it, DeVontay,” she said, dropping beside him and restraining his arm.

  He turned to her, face twisted with effort. “Run for it, damn it!”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  The Zap suddenly released DeVontay from the paralyzing grip. The mutant stepped back and held up its hands, palms facing them. Rachel had never witnessed such behavior in the mutants. They had changed much more she had imagined.

  Still, this one seemed different from the others. Separate. Acting alone.

  “I am not here to hurt you,” the Zap said in that emotionless voice.

  DeVontay squeezed his bleeding thumb as Rachel helped him to his feet. “Well, you failed then.”

  “You saved my life,” the Zap said.

  “What’s he talking about?” DeVontay asked Rachel, choosing the masculine pronoun most likely because he wouldn’t admit he’d just been manhandled by a female.

  “The Zap that was attacked in Stonewall,” Rachel said. “I killed the monster when—”

  “—when you should’ve killed me,” the Zap finished for her.

  Zaps don’t care if they live or die. They don’t even think in terms of mortality, except for the babies. They think of efficiency, homogeneity, and productivity.

  “This is crazy,” DeVontay said, easing around the Zap and staying out of arm’s reach. At the door, DeVontay checked the hall in both directions. “If this is a trap, it’s a stupid one.”

  “You saved my life,” the Zap repeated.

  “Your kind doesn’t develop individual thoughts,” Rachel said. “Not ones driven by self and ego. Is your communal mind deteriorating?”

  Rachel quickly considered a number of evolutionary theories. Perhaps the Zaps were decaying along with the environment, their progress stunted as nature grew more wild and unstable around them. Maybe the human foundation of their kind was too rotten from abundant flaws. Or maybe the electromagnetic fluctuations had run their course and the mutants had peaked before they’d achieved their common dream of a bold new world.

  “I’m me,” the Zap said. “I don’t know why I’m not them anymore.”

  “Do you have a name?” she asked. Babies were the only zaps with names, as far as she knew.

  “I haven’t taken one yet. I can only think of myself as me.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Rachel,” DeVontay said. “If this thing’s not going to kill us, that doesn’t mean his buddies won’t. They’re probably picking up on his thoughts right this very second.”

  “If you run, where will you go?” the Zap asked. “The birds patrol the town from above, there are Zaps at ground level, and the hills around the town are populated by monsters like the reptile.”

  “You!” Rachel said. “You’re the one who killed the reptile.”

  “You saved my life,” the Zap said again, as if that were all the explanation necessary.

  “Thanks and you’re welcome and all that,” DeVontay said. “Now come on, Rachel.”

  She hesitated, half expecting the Zap to block her w
ay. Why would it help them escape? What did it have to gain?

  “Wait,” Rachel called to DeVontay. “He’s right, we’ll never make it out of town.” To the Zap, she said, “Will you help us?”

  “There are no guards because they are able to detect your thoughts,” the Zap said.

  “That’s just great,” DeVontay said. “So they already know we’re on the run and we’re not even out the door?”

  “I’m shielding both of you. Just like the others were shielding Rachel so she couldn’t receive thoughts anymore.”

  “Thoughts are energy,” Rachel said. “Electrical impulses in the brain. So you just jam the frequency.”

  “We don’t have time for this science shit,” DeVontay said from the hall. He was already limping up the stairs.

  Rachel shot a mental “Thank you” at the Zap and jogged after DeVontay. She was nearly to the door when the Zap said, “If you emerge from this dome, they will detect you.”

  “Unless you come with us.”

  The Zap cocked its head as if considering the consequences of her words. She could only imagine the complex programming and conditioning of its mind, rapidly evolving along with all the others of its kind. She didn’t even know how far their connections reached—was each Zap community a mind unto itself, or were all the Zaps linked worldwide?

  She assumed from her own experiences and her relationship with Kokona that their connections were localized—that they were affected by distance and exposure. If the domes acted as a shielding agent, and if the Zap was also using its mind to repel the probing thoughts of the rest of its tribe, then she and DeVontay needed the Zap. But it didn’t need them.

  Ego. It refers to itself in the first person, so it’s somehow developed an identity separate from the others. If only I can play on that…