Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) Page 9

  “That’s something, then. There must be other ships out there. All we have to do is coordinate our—”

  “There’s only one thing to coordinate, Helen. The missile launches.”

  Schlagal blanched. “But that would kill us all. Maybe not from the blasts, but the radiation would wipe us out in six months. That’s not even counting the low-level exposure we’re already getting from plant meltdowns. Last time I checked the Geiger counter, we’re at four sieverts, meaning half of us are going to die of cancer within ten years.”

  “Directive Eighteen,” Murray said. She quoted from the document she’d helped draft and which Schlagal had endorsed, along with acting leaders in the remaining countries. “‘In the event of likely extinction, Earth Zero will use any means necessary to ensure there is no victory for the enemy.’”

  Schlagal could barely hide her dismay. “Why are you telling me this instead of Arnold?”

  “Because he will never admit defeat. But we can, if it comes to that.” Murray squeezed Schlagal’s hand in return. “You and I are strong enough to do that for our people.”

  “And NORAD? Are they the ones suggesting this?”

  “No. They’ve acknowledged my presidency and my authority. They’ve never even heard of the Directives.”

  “Then we can pretend they don’t exist.”

  “This isn’t some fairy tale where we get to write the ending that goes happy ever after.” Murray released Schlagal’s hand and stood gazing down at all that remained of the world’s mightiest superpower. “They say history is written by the winners, and we can’t let those Zap bastards have the final word on our story.”

  “But we still might defeat them. We’ve got soldiers out there ready to wage the biggest war of all time. If they knew you were plotting our mutual suicide, why would they bother fighting?”

  “I’ve not decided anything yet,” Murray said. “But it has to be my decision.”

  “Then why tell me?”

  Murray turned from the window and stared at the woman she loved. “Because I need you to tell me I’m right, if the time comes.”

  “Even if you’re wrong?”

  “Especially then.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “What the hell is that?” DeVontay said.

  He was talking to no one—indeed, he’d nearly forgotten about Rachel and the Zap, so awed was he by what he was witnessing.

  A blasted-out and scorched area in the center of Wilkesboro was occupied by a massive silver bowl, no doubt made of the same impermeable material as the Zap suits and domes. It was the size of an amphitheater, probably thirty feet deep, although the structure had an amorphous quality that made its size difficult to judge—even the air seemed to be distorted by the pulsing of energy. The effect was so powerful that DeVontay couldn’t be sure the sight was real.

  Plumes of light rolled up from inside the bowl before disintegrating in flickering bolts of lightning. A colorful column of air as vibrant as aurora flowed into the bowl from above like water. The subtle tension around them grew more intense, like an electrical charge building to the point of an eruption that would split the sky in half.

  A few dozen Zaps encircled the bowl, gazing up at the turbulence as if it were a new god created from the destruction of the old. The fluorescent rainbows glinted off the glass of the ruins, adding a carnival accent to the morbid, gray wasteland. The very dawn appeared to get sucked into the center of the bowl, the morning sunlight twisted and spit back out in a primordial steam.

  Rachel peered over his shoulder, gripping his arm so tightly the pain pulled him back to the present. “Their creation,” she said.

  DeVontay tore away his gaze with effort and drew back around the corner, leaning against a gritty concrete wall until he recovered his senses. He was pretty sure no Zaps had seen them. He’d be helpless if they had, because the scene had so overwhelmed him that his legs were numb and rubbery.

  The Zap said, “A plasma sink. What you would call cold fusion. The heightened electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere is compressed so that protons fuse into neutrons and accelerate the electrons. As more protons rush in to fill the void, the electric field vanishes and the cycle perpetuates itself. We’ve managed to siphon off some of the energy and employ it for our advancement.”

  DeVontay hadn’t gone past basic high school chemistry, so the Zap’s techno-babble might as well have been in an alien language. Whatever was happening, it was definitely creating a change in the solid matter around him. The wall at his back and the sidewalk beneath his feet felt malleable and liquid, and he wondered what effect the secreting energy was having on his brain and body.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  Both the Zap’s and Rachel’s eyes brightened and took on some of the vivid colors cast by the plasma sink. DeVontay wondered why the mutant had brought them here. Was it showing off the superiority of its kind?

  “It’s beautiful,” Rachel said, craning her neck to watch the chromatic display.

  Is this what it feels like to turn into a Zap? Is that son-of-a-bitch trying to convert me?

  He grabbed Rachel’s wrist, fighting off the wooziness that threatened to drag him to the ground. She struggled to free herself.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s going to be daylight soon.”

  “You need to see this.” The Zap motioned at them to follow and then entered the building they stood against.

  Rachel hurried after him. DeVontay took a quick glance around, fearing a trap, but he wasn’t going to leave town without Rachel. At least the building might block out some of those weird vibrations that made him feel as if his molecules were separating inside him.

  The building bore the non-descriptive name “McLellan” etched in a granite keystone above the door. It was a couple of stories tall and the interior featured a vast, open lobby. A different kind of thrumming filled the foyer, a sound of power and activity. DeVontay guessed the building had once been a financial or corporate office, but it had been stripped of any counters or desks. Light leaked from high openings in the walls that had once held glass, allowing DeVontay to see the rows of machines busily at work, robotic arms trimming and burning and shaping hunks of raw plastics and metals.

  “Three-dimensional printers,” the Zap said. “Powered by the plasma sink, each individually programmed to create a specific item.”

  “Where are the guards and workers?” DeVontay asked over the clatter.

  “Neither is needed.”

  Rachel approached the nearest machine, which was as tall as she was and featured a lattice structure about six feet square. One multi-hinged arm selected a cube of synthetic material about six square inches in size and shuffled it onto a small turntable. Four articulated, wiry fingers protruded up to hold the material in place. As the turntable slowly spun, two other arms alternately shaved it into a rounded, rectangular shape. Another arm descended with tip as red-hot as an ingot in a forge, burning an indention into the new shape.

  The two cutting arms rapidly changed their extensions so their tips were now fine slivers of metal. These “hands” reeled silvery metal from a small spool and fabricated it into a series of circuits, embedding it in the shape along with a mysterious seed-like stone that cast a faint, throbbing glow. DeVontay realized the stone was pulsing in time to the plasma sink outside.

  The hands scooped up some plastic shavings and piled them atop the rounded rectangle and the red tip descended again, melting the material so that its surface was completely sealed. The cutting tips returned and scraped the surface smooth. The original robotic arm then picked up the device as daintily as a chocolate bar and laid it on an adjacent metal table.

  The table was full of similar devices. They were the handheld weapons the Zaps had used against them at the barn, the same one their Zap companion had used to kill the reptile.

  The entire manufacturing process had taken less than thirty seconds, the arms working in a blur. Whatever en
gine drove it made only a soft whirring noise, and the several dozen machines in the open space combined to make no more noise than a sewing machine.

  “I want one of those,” DeVontay said, heading for the table.

  The Zap flung out a restraining arm. “You can’t use it. You don’t have the proper electrical charge.”

  “Well, then why don’t you get one? If you want to protect us like you say?”

  “I won’t kill us.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He means that he won’t kill other mutants,” Rachel said. “Even though he’s separate, he’s still one of them. Remember when I refused to kill him?”

  “I don’t want to die,” the Zap said. “I don’t want you to die.”

  DeVontay didn’t like feeling out of the loop. He still didn’t understand why the Zap was showing them this facility, especially since he could look but apparently not touch. Rachel seemed to understand what the Zap was trying to do, but she wasn’t exactly sharing the information.

  As the Zap led them deeper into the building, DeVontay saw the other machines in action. Some were weaving the thin silver wires into a fine fabric that seemed to become solid once merged—the metallic alloy used in the domes and suits.

  Two of them were busy crafting metal birds, embedding complex circuitry in them as well as miniaturized versions of their own robotic arms. DeVontay’s original impression was correct—the birds carried their own 3-D printers in order to repair themselves if necessary.

  Holy hell, how do we ever expect to defeat THIS?

  Other machines printed objects from synthetic materials that DeVontay had never seen before. He supposed the Zaps had created their own polymers that weren’t petroleum-based, but he didn’t want to ask the Zap for another science lecture. Not with the sun rising and the day coming on fast.

  “I don’t like this place,” DeVontay said to Rachel as the Zap led them through another door to a cooler, darker room devoid of windows. The only light in here was that cast by Rachel’s and the Zap’s eyes. DeVontay was dismayed to see that it was multi-colored light rather than the usual yellow-orange.

  Like that plasma sink stuff is routing through them.

  “You don’t have to hate what you don’t understand,” the Zap said.

  “I didn’t say I hated it, I’m just scared shitless—wait. What’s that smell?”

  The odor was subtle but undeniable, subdued by the cool air in the room. It was an organic, fertile smell that was both familiar and vaguely unsettling.

  As the Zap approached the nearest machine, DeVontay squinted to make sure his good eye wasn’t lying to him. The machine was a 3-D printer like those in the other room, but these arms were more delicate. One arm pulled at red material and stripped it into glistening, thin fibers that two other arms knitted in a complex blur of motion.

  The result was then passed to two other sets of arms that stretched the woven fiber into a thin sheet with ragged edges. The pinkish sheet was placed on top of a sheaf of similar sheets. Piles of the material covered a long, stainless steel table.

  The arm at the beginning of the process dipped into a metal bin and came away with a dripping red slab marbled with white.

  Meat?

  DeVontay ran to the bin, and even though it was dark inside, the smell confirmed his horrified instinct. He fought off a wave of nausea. Rachel joined him, and the light of her gaze revealed large chunks of wet meat, bloody and fairly fresh. The meat was sinewy and stripped of bone, but DeVontay recognized a swatch of leathery skin.

  “The reptile,” he said, his stomach turning another queasy flip as he thought of the recent dinner residing inside him.

  “We’re developing organic printing,” the Zap said. “It’s the same process as fabricating synthetic material, only we use animal tissue.”

  “That’s sick,” DeVontay said. “That’s…fucking inhuman.”

  “We utilize natural products,” the Zap said. “Is it any different than the human consumption of cattle and fish? Or even carrots and cabbage, for that matter? Humans were developing similar technology for organ transplants near the end.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know, but what do you use it for?” Rachel asked.

  “Repairs, for now.”

  For now.

  DeVontay shuddered at the Zap custom of corpse collecting and their ambitions to revive the dead. They’d even attempted to draw Rachel into their scheme. What had once seemed a bizarre and delusional obsession was now a nightmarish challenge to the laws of nature.

  “You don’t age, so why do you need repairs?” Rachel asked.

  “Sometimes we are damaged. By you or by the creatures. Or in accidents. Our technology isn’t infallible.”

  The next machine was similar to the first, but this metal bin had a different odor. And sounds arose from inside, skittering and scratching. The primary arm reached down and plucked at something in the bin, dragging out a squirming rodent by the nape of its neck.

  It was a rat, or at least had once been a rat, its pointed face framed by whiskers and two red, beady eyes glaring angrily at the world. Its paws wielded curving talons that swiped at the air, and it snarled with teeth that were yellow and sharp and way too large for its mouth.

  The arm plopped the animal on the turntable and the other two arms went to work, carving and skinning, using some type of laser beam to determine depth and distance. Blood poured from the squeaking and squealing animal, and despite its repulsive appearance, DeVontay cringed in sympathy as the remorseless machine followed its perverse programming.

  Rachel gave DeVontay a desperate embrace, sharing his revulsion at the slaughter. Despite the horror of the operation, DeVontay couldn’t look away, transfixed as the series of robotic arms systematically sliced and processed the animal’s tissue, spooling the intestines into strings and sloughing the skin to the side.

  Once the flesh and organs were processed, the bones and cartilage were swept into a smaller bin and a brush on rollers wheeled out from the machine’s depths and scrubbed away the blood.

  “Repairs, huh?” DeVontay said. “Looks like you’re just playing God for kicks.”

  “We do not play,” the Zap said. “We are God.”

  “You’re not God,” Rachel said.

  “I am not. But we are.”

  DeVontay didn’t see how anything else he learned here could help them defeat the Zaps. But he was more certain than he’d ever been that the mutants should be exterminated. He’d been willing to accept Rachel’s notion of peaceful co-existence, or even a wary détente, but now he saw Zaps for what they really were: an abomination that had no place in a sane and sensible circle of life.

  “Come on, Rachel,” DeVontay said. “We’ve seen enough.”

  “You will want to see the next,” the Zap said.

  “I don’t think so.” DeVontay considered grabbing one of those hand-blaster weapons, even though he had no idea how to work it. It didn’t have any buttons or trigger and lacked an apparent power source. But maybe he could scare any Zaps they encountered. Well, “scare” was probably the wrong word, since the mutants didn’t care if they lived or died.

  Blast a hole in them and they won’t give a shit. They’ll just patch it up with lizard meat or rat guts.

  “Why are you afraid of possibilities?” the Zap asked DeVontay. “Think of the medical benefits of organic fabrication. You can replace defective organs, cancerous tissue, and injured limbs. Eventually we could manufacture an eye for you.”

  DeVontay’s hand reflexively went to his glass prosthetic, touching his left temple as if to remember part of him was missing. “I don’t want your monster meat in my body,” DeVontay said.

  “But you ate it and derived the energy needed to replenish your cells,” the Zap said. “I don’t understand the difference.”

  “And you never will. Because you and your knob-head friends aren’t supposed to be on this planet. You’re an evolutionary mistake. A fuck-up of the first m
agnitude.”

  The machines continued their whirring and slicing as another animal was plucked from the bin. This one was a cat, with no visible mutations, a mottled tabby with wide, startled eyes. DeVontay charged for the machine to free it.

  “No!” Rachel said, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him back. “If you cause a malfunction, the Zaps will come see what’s wrong.”

  “Let them come,” DeVontay said. “I’ll show them what’s wrong. I’ll yank one of these arms off and beat them back to the Stone Age with it.”

  But before DeVontay could reach the yowling and hissing cat, a muffled voice came from the next room.

  A human voice:

  “Help!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rachel sensed what was behind the door before she heard the scream.

  This prolonged exposure to the Zap—or maybe it was the proximity to their massive energy source—had cut through whatever shield had blocked her telepathy. The signals weren’t distinct, but enough impressions burned through the fog for her to react.

  DeVontay was right behind her as she struggled with the doorknob. The Zap hung back beside the rows of machines, a gray shadow with burning eyes. “Open it!” she shouted at the mutant.

  There were other voices now, their words indistinct but their anguish loud and clear. DeVontay nudged Rachel aside and tried the door himself, to no avail.

  “This is what you brought us here for, isn’t it?” Rachel shouted.

  The Zap turned away from her and headed for the larger lobby and the three-dimensional printers. “He’s leaving,” Rachel said to DeVontay, who slammed his shoulder repeatedly into the thick metal door.

  “Look for something we can use as a crowbar,” DeVontay said. “If we can’t get the door open, at least we can knock that freak’s brains out.”