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

by Scott Nicholson

  As Squeak and Rachel reached the catwalk, DeVontay clambered onto the lattice and followed them. Rachel looked down just in time to see a rodent launch itself at him. Rachel screamed a warning and DeVontay turned to discover the slavering jaws closing around his left boot. He kicked at it, but the creature clamped down, its two front teeth tangled in the laces. DeVontay’s weapon was strapped to his back and out of reach. Rachel swung her own rifle into firing position, but didn’t trust her aim given the poor light and the flurry of movement.

  The rodent’s claws slapped against the lattice, shaking the framework. A few of the welded joints popped loose and DeVontay slid downward. Rachel grabbed Squeak’s hands and curled them around the catwalk’s safety rail. She put her mouth to the girl’s ear and said, “Hang on and don’t look. I’ll be right back.”

  Rachel swung off the catwalk back onto the lattice, wondering if it would hold their combined weight. Crumbled masonry rained down from where the lattice was bolted to the wall. Rachel scrambled recklessly down to DeVontay, whose face was clenched with the effort of clinging to the wire grid, his lone eye imploring her to help.

  She reached him just as the rodent gave a vigorous wrench of its jaws and pulled him down another six inches. Another rodent jumped at him, swiping a paw that tore into the leg of DeVontay’s trousers.

  Bright Eyes rose from the floor, wielding a short, jagged length of steel pipe. He swung it in an overhead arc and brought it down on a rodent’s nose, causing it to squeal in pain. He jabbed the creature away from him, then raced over to DeVontay, who still kicked frantically at the rodent clamped to his foot.

  The second rodent had fallen to the floor but was already coiling for another leap. Just as Rachel’s palm encircled DeVontay’s nearest wrist, Bright Eyes swung the pipe in a two-handed grip at the rodent’s back. The rodent was in midair when the pipe struck—Rachel didn’t know if some vestigial memory of baseball remained buried somewhere inside Bright Eyes, but the blow would have launched a home run in even the largest major league park. The crunching impact was audible even over the soldiers’ gunfire.

  “You’re not getting off the hook that easy,” Rachel yelled, tugging at DeVontay even though her taut shoulder muscles screamed with agony. DeVontay pulled, too, and the rodent went tumbling down behind him.

  Oh God, it tore his foot off!

  But then she saw DeVontay’s dirty sock, the toe flopping as he scaled the lattice toward her. The rodent glared up at them, the shredded boot between its yellow teeth, eyes boiling in mutant rage.

  Bright Eyes hurled the steel pipe at it like a spear, and the projectile pierced its furry shoulder. The pipe quivered in the air, blood oozing from the puncture, but the rodent crawled toward him in that stilted, top-heavy gait that suggested the beast could rise and walk on two legs if it so desired.

  DeVontay shouted at him to join them, and in seconds the Zap clung to the lattice, scaling it with smooth, fluid movements. The rodent jumped up and snapped at him but already was weakening.

  Back on the catwalk, Rachel wrapped Squeak in a hug and said, “It’s okay, they can’t reach us up here.”

  Antonelli and Kelly were surrounded and had been forced backward until they were against the opposite wall. Antonelli’s magazine was empty and Kelly covered him while he tried to swap it out. The entire warehouse floor roiled and rippled like a black ocean as rodents poured out of hidden crevices and depths, their oily hairs glistening in the daylight that leaked through the broken windows.

  Antonelli dropped his magazine and Kelly fired with a steady pop, pop, pop. As DeVontay and Bright Eyes reached the catwalk, Rachel cupped her hands and yelled down at the soldiers. “Captain! Up here.”

  Antonelli looked around and then up, yelling something at Kelly. He flung his M16 aside, climbed onto a workbench, and drew his sidearm. He kicked welding gear and tools at the rodents that snapped at him. Kelly released a volley of automatic fire that knocked two rodents to the floor and she raced to join Antonelli.

  She slipped in the blood and nearly lost her balance, an act that would surely have led to her death. But she levered her weapon against the floor and recovered, sprinting to the workbench and rolling atop it, narrowly avoiding a gnashing set of wet teeth.

  Rachel and DeVontay opened fire into the swarm but it made no difference. Humped corpses lay scattered around the shadows, but more creatures took their places. Rachel wondered when they had changed and how long they’d been breeding here. Maybe their evolution had run parallel to that of the Zaps but took a monstrous detour into genetic abnormality.

  Antonelli emptied his pistol and turned to the wall, searching for a way up. A series of cable conduits ran up the stacked bricks, but there were no easy handholds. Kelly picked off rodents one by one as they poked their twitching snouts onto the bench, but it took several shots to dispatch each of them. Soon she, too, would be out of ammo.

  Antonelli shrugged the grenade launcher from his back. Even fully loaded with six rounds in the revolving magazine, Rachel didn’t see how the weapon would inflict much damage among the dozens of beasts.

  But Antonelli had a different plan. He leveled the bulky weapon and aimed it across the facility. Just as she heard the whump of the grenade sliding through the tube, Rachel realized he was firing at the acetylene tanks.

  She barely had time to shield Squeak before hell erupted.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Capt. Mark Antonelli had served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and was one of the few survivors of the Third Battalion, Eighth Marines in the immediate aftermath of the solar storms.

  He’d accidentally killed civilians during a firefight in Ramadi, lost his first lieutenant to an IED in Kabul, and gone through a divorce when he failed to fairly balance his duties between spouse and country. But the worst experience of his military career was gunning down members of his own unit who had turned into mindless, destructive mutants after electromagnetic radiation swept over the world.

  When he’d discovered remnants of the government and command structure still existed—migrating from D.C. to the Virginia Mountains where New Pentagon was established in a series of caverns—he was at first invigorated by the opportunity to fight back. But when the assembled might of the makeshift army revealed itself as only a few hundred men and women, most of them with no military training, he’d been overcome by depression.

  Still, when he’d been given a unit of a three dozen soldiers and ordered to split off and connect with a unit in Asheville, his discipline and resolve had returned. Futility and defeat weren’t the problem—inactivity was. Given a command and a duty, he was able to focus. If he died, that was honorable enough, even though there might not be a human race left to benefit from his sacrifice.

  But the mission wasn’t as simple as fighting the good fight. Somewhere along the way he’d fallen in love with PFC Colleen Kelly, a redhead with eyes so green he considered her a mutant of a mesmerizing, beautiful kind. He’d lost his soldiers in attacks by monsters and mutants, a personal failure that weighed on him constantly. The worst part was that Colleen had survived and he couldn’t be sure if he’d let all the others die in order to spare her.

  Of all the horrors of this world, a world his government no longer ruled and its military might no longer dominated, he thought these damned oversize rats were the worst. So when he fired the grenade launcher, he hoped he’d be lucky enough to kill half of them.

  Antonelli knew oxy-acetylene was highly explosive, but the building was so large and there were so many of them. He assumed the resulting fireball would scorch some of them and others would be sliced to ribbons by shrapnel.

  He was wrong.

  The half a dozen tanks exploded with a rush of light that was momentarily blinding, and then came the percussive whoooof as the volatile mixture combusted. The wave of heat slammed into Antonelli like a fist, knocking him against the wall. He was dimly aware of the chaos around him—the shattering of glass, the incessant clanging of loose me
tal, and the greasy, roasted-meat stench of flaming rodents.

  He managed to maintain a hold on the grenade launcher as he slid into a sitting position atop the workbench. He was disoriented, staring into the turbulent waves of orange, yellow, and blue flames that rolled over him. The fire spread to whatever combustible material remained on the floor. The initial blast quickly retreated, although its concussive force must’ve shaken the bricks loose. He almost forgot about the rodents until one lifted its steaming face toward him and stared sightlessly with poached eyeballs.

  Antonelli conducted a quick inventory of his health as he tried to stand. His face was warm and wet, and he touched his cheek and his fingers came away red. His leg throbbed, but it bent when he forced it to, and so was functional at least. He was searching his trouser pockets for another M9 magazine when he remembered Colleen.

  Funny how fast you can forget the woman you love when there’s a job to do.

  Actually, that’s not funny at all. You probably have a concussion, judging by the ringing in your ears.

  He crawled along the workbench to where Colleen had been standing only moments before. As he searched for her, he remembered the people on the catwalk—the girl, the half-mutant, the black guy, and the goddamned Zap—and wondered if they’d survived. He didn’t care so much about them, even though Col. Munger had considered them critical to the mission of destroying the plasma sink.

  But if he lost Colleen—

  He called her name but it was swallowed by the crackling of flames and the agonized shrieking of the immolated rodents. The pockets of fire threw coruscating ribbons of light around the factory, erasing the shadows and showing the haphazard junk piles on the concrete floor. The mutant’s 3-D printer had been overturned but appeared otherwise undamaged.

  Antonelli looked over the side of the workbench, sucking for breath in the contaminated air. A rodent lay on its back, paws upturned, smoke rising from his pale belly. Another rodent wriggled brokenly, a gray rope of intestine ballooning from a rip in its flank. At last he saw her, lying half buried beneath corrugated sections of drain pipe. Antonelli slid to the floor, not fully trusting his legs.

  Among the blackened husks of dead rodents were some that clawed the air or emitted forlorn whimpers of pain. Those that had been uninjured must have fled for their holes, because none charged him even though he was vulnerable.

  “Is she alive?” someone called from above.

  Antonelli squinted up into the rafters, where the black smoke was even thicker. His throat was dry and sore. “I don’t know.”

  “This thing might collapse on you.” The catwalk creaked as its occupants worked their way along its length. As far as he could tell, they were all alive.

  He took another look around to make sure the rodents were subdued. Satisfied, he began pushing the pipes to the side, careful not to put additional weight on Colleen. Antonelli called her name, not wanting to think about what he’d do if she were dead.

  One of her feet moved, and a surge of joy overcame him despite his injuries. He shoved the last of the drain pipes aside and she looked up at him, soot smudging her freckled face.

  “You really know how to knock a woman off her feet,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t do it for anyone but you.” He tried to hide his relief, trained to control emotions in front of his troops, and then remembered he didn’t have any troops. Only Colleen and a strange band of oddballs.

  “Permission to stand, sir?”

  “If you’re able, Private.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, hoping her spine wasn’t injured. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I breathe.”

  “Just keep breathing, no matter what.”

  “I’ll do my best.” She sat up, allowing herself to grow weak in his embrace. “Where’s my rifle?”

  “Around here somewhere.” Antonelli was dimly aware of rattling metal as the others descended from the catwalk. He allowed himself a moment of weakness. “I’m so glad you’re okay. If I’d lost you—”

  “Shh. We had our chance to skip the war, but duty calls.”

  He kissed her, not giving a damn if the others saw it. After a moment, he opened his eyes and saw he was still gripping his pistol. Colleen was right. This war would always be sleeping right between them.

  “What’s that?” Colleen asked after they parted. She pointed at his shoulder.

  He looked down to see a sliver of jagged metal in his flesh, a glob of blood surrounding the wound. “Damn.”

  Colleen sat forward, clutched the shard with both hands, and ripped it out. Antonelli let out a yowl of pain and grunted between his clenched teeth. “Why didn’t you give me some warning first?”

  “Because it was going to hurt.” She clamped a palm over the wound, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. “We need to get out of here so I can wrap this.”

  “I’m about tired of the stink of burnt rat anyway.”

  The others encircled them, DeVontay and Rachel keeping watch for another attack. Antonelli nodded at them, acknowledging his trust now that they’d all fought a common enemy together. Bright Eyes stood protectively beside Squeak while Antonelli helped Colleen to her feet.

  “You could’ve blown us to bits,” Rachel said.

  “Would you rather get eaten alive?” Antonelli glowered at her, masking the pain that laced his chest.

  “Any element of surprise we had is up in smoke now,” DeVontay said.

  Antonelli wasn’t used to having his decisions questioned by civilians. In fact, civilians no longer existed. “You ever heard of Directive Seventeen?”

  “We’ve kind of been out of the loop the last five years,” DeVontay said. “No TV.”

  “Under authority of the Earth Zero Initiative, all personnel and resources belong to New Pentagon for the purpose of defeating all current and future enemies. Since I’m acting under orders of New Pentagon, that means I own your ass until further notice.”

  “Chill out, dude. We get it. We want to help.”

  “We have to do this my way,” Antonelli said, picking his way through the rodent corpses as he limped toward the exit. Colleen collected her weapon and followed, a little wobbly but otherwise intact.

  One of the rodents gave a sudden jerk and its tail whipped out, snaking around Antonelli’s leg and nearly tugging him to the dirty, bloody floor. He kicked the beast twice but it only squeezed harder. Rachel rushed over and parked a bullet into its eye.

  It quivered and went still, but Antonelli had to forcibly unwind the constricting gray tail, which was as tough as leather. The danger inspired all of them to hurry out of the factory. Bright Eyes swept Squeak up into his arms and carried her firefighter style to protect her from potential bites.

  Once they were outside, Antonelli removed his shirt and allowed Colleen to patch his wound. While she worked, he took stock of their remaining ammo. They had six magazines left, besides what was already loaded in their rifles. He reloaded the grenade launcher and still had five remaining in Bright Eyes’ backpack. Counting the spare magazine for his Glock, they had enough weaponry to take on a small army.

  And it might just come to that.

  Thick smoke oozed from the broken windows, marking their location for anyone—or anything—that might be interested. The exploration of the factory had been a mistake, even though he learned a little about their technology. If Zaps were capable of manufacturing goods, weapons, and intelligent guided machines such as the drone-birds, they would be almost impossible to defeat.

  Antonelli took solace in Bright Eyes’ belief that all they had to do was kill Kokona and destroy the plasma sink. He wasn’t sure how DeVontay and Rachel would react to the murder of their adopted child, but he wasn’t going to let them vote on it. Directive Seventeen wasn’t a democratic principal.

  Sometimes a little fascism was necessary.

  After reloading, they shared some stale granola bars and bottled water, cleaned the worst of the grime and gore from their bodies, and treated the
ir various scrapes, burns, and scratches.

  “We’ve got company,” Rachel said, nudging her rifle toward the street beyond the fenced property.

  A Zap walked between dusty cars, not looking their way even though he was less than fifty yards from them. It vanished out of sight behind a panel truck bearing a Boar’s Head label and stylized pictures of deli meat, giving Antonelli time to order everyone down to the ground. But the Zap had no interest in them, if it had even detected them in the first place. It soon turned a corner and was gone.

  “Heading toward the plasma sink,” Bright Eyes said.

  “And so are we,” Antonelli said. “Saddle up.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Franklin Wheeler hadn’t slept on a foam mattress in years.

  And it had been far longer since he’d awoken on one next to a woman. But when his eyes snapped open, it wasn’t decadent pleasure and luxury on his mind—it was mild panic.

  He’d drunk too much whiskey and did too many other things out of his routine. He’d let down his guard, and now he was consumed by a pervading sense of danger, even though K.C. Carr’s two-story house with walled lawn and driveway gate was probably as safe as any residence within a hundred miles. She’d selected the house with survival in mind, and even though she and Franklin had previously spent some time together in a patriot group, he was struck with deep admiration at her ingenuity and practicality.

  As the sunlight poured between the curtains onto her face, she emitted a soft and endearing snore. There were fine lines around her eyes and mouth, and her hair was more gray than chestnut, but otherwise she was little changed from the woman he’d known two decades before. Finding her in Stonewall had seemed like something of a bizarre accident, but then again her strategy was right out of the Wheeler doomsday playbook—head for high ground and hole up.