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

by Scott Nicholson

  “Kokona’s all right. She’s just a baby. She can’t hurt anybody.”

  “She knows too much. Wasn’t it just a little too convenient how Rachel managed to take her out of Newton when the town was going to hell? Like maybe the Zaps needed to keep tabs on us?”

  “You’re so paranoid, Franklin. For that matter, what if I’m really a Red Commie spy trying to overthrow the bunker? What if I’m just waiting for a chance to slit everybody’s throats in their sleep so that I can rule the goddamned skybox?”

  Franklin leaned back in his chair and looked at the monitors again. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Zaps haven’t come sniffing around? Why they’ve left us alone when, judging by the bonfires that used to be towns and cities, they’re doing a pretty thorough mop-up job everywhere else?”

  “No. Talking to you is making me crazy, too. I’m done with this.”

  As Stephen stormed to the hallway, Franklin said, “Well, it’s not done with you.”

  Stephen turned to find Franklin staring at the monitors and the clusters of soldiers moving into position on the three screens.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Objective in sight,” Lt. Randall said.

  Capt. Antonelli nodded to affirm the obvious. “Let’s circle it and stay low. Assume it’s occupied until confirmed otherwise.”

  “Yes, sir.” Randall motioned the small groups of soldiers into positions on the ridge. Antonelli had established a command post in a direct line with the steel door, which was a hundred yards away and almost hidden by the surrounding rocks and earth.

  The buried rear of the bunker offered the most difficult terrain, consisting of jagged granite shelves and few footholds. According to what little intel New Pentagon had given him, that rock promontory held the solar panels, craftily placed so that they were concealed from casual air traffic. That was important at one time, but now secrecy carried little value.

  He didn’t want to risk troops ascending those steep cliffs for no reason, so he ordered his staff sergeant to place troops around the base. The bunker had only one entrance, so he didn’t worry about a surprise escape from a hidden tunnel, but a full cordon was textbook strategy for a siege. If it came to a siege.

  He focused the binoculars. “Door’s closed. Can’t tell if it’s sealed.”

  “If the power’s down, it might be rusted shut,” Randall said. “Want me to take an advance team and check it out?”

  “Let’s monitor for a little bit. We’ve got time. We don’t have to be in Asheville for six more days.”

  “But, sir, the unit’s been sleeping in the dirt for weeks now. Nice cots and some meals cooked over propane might be a real treat. Not to mention, we could stand to re-up on ammo. We burned a lot of clips last night.”

  “Your concern is noted, Lieutenant.” Antonelli shifted the binoculars around the bunker’s perimeter and stopped when their lenses found Colleen. She was among a group of four, all the others male. She sat leaned back against a tree trunk, laughing and joking with the guys, her red hair shining under the rim of her camo helmet.

  She’s a lousy soldier, but easy on the eyes. Boosts morale pretty damned good, too. Especially mine.

  He’d have to talk with the other soldiers to make sure they took this mission seriously. No one expected any danger in the bunker, and they were relaxed and looking forward to some rest and recreation. Judging from their chatter and bubbling excitement, they saw the bunker as a luxury mountain getaway. They’d already forgotten the battle of the night before and the comrade they’d buried this morning.

  Pressure needed a relief valve. If it kept building, the cracks might appear at the most stressful times. The unit had pushed hard, repelled several animal attacks, and covered a hundred miles since breaking from the division in Wytheville, Virginia. The rest of the division split into two commands, one approaching Charlotte via I-77 with mechanized transports and armor and the other sweeping southeast toward Raleigh and Durham.

  The collection of vehicles and tanks had looked pretty pathetic compared to Antonelli’s Camp Lejeune post, but as High Command put it, “It’s better than hobby horses and cap guns, so quit your bitching.”

  Antonelli was resentful that he’d been given a foot patrol, but orders were orders and the other command officers were colonels. He had no real ambitions of rank, and he’d been fortunate to have Colleen assigned to his unit. He sometimes wondered if Command had literally tossed him a bone, but he equally wondered if any of his unit was expected to make it out alive.

  But men and women stood in similar boots all across the country, in little pockets of human resistance, all preparing to go on the offensive. His part was just a small one, and if they succeeded, even the Chinese and Russians would honor them for generations to come.

  The captain suspected those far-flung countries had their own fights, although he couldn’t resist a prideful suspicion that the U.S. would end up getting the job done where others failed. The rumored Earth Zero Initiative claimed that a worldwide uprising was imminent and the combined might of the race’s vestiges would take back the planet.

  Maybe High President Murray would fulfill her dream of the stars and stripes flying over every continent on the globe. Although in the mocks he’d seen, the New Pentagon flag had been reduced to single white and red stripes, with a lone star filling the blue field instead of fifty. And the word “united” wasn’t bandied about so much anymore.

  Orders, you asshole. Stick to the task at hand. Good people are depending on you. You can’t afford to think.

  He handed the binoculars to Lt. Randall, who was setting up the field radio with a corpsman. “Want us to try to make contact?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Sure,” Antonelli said. “Maybe we can pick up the kid again. See if he’s spotted anything.”

  “What are the odds of a working radio out here that didn’t come from the bunker?”

  “Slim, but not zero. Lots of survivalists back up in these mountains, and some of them were smart enough to do their EMP research. God knows the government dropped the ball on that one.”

  “The government did their research,” Randall said. “They just realized preparing for a widespread catastrophe was too big of a job, so they just tidied up their own backyard. They figured it would be the Arabs and low-atmosphere nukes, not solar storms. And nobody figured on these fucking mutants.”

  The corpsman connected the radio’s batteries, since they had to conserve their limited juice in the field and thus were often out of contact. He activated the transmitter and receiver, then donned headphones and twisted some dials and clicked some keys. He gave a thumbs-up.

  “Looks like everybody’s in position,” Randall said, lowering the binoculars.

  Antonelli keyed the mic as the corpsman adjusted the gain. “Alpha One Niner, this is Captain Antonelli, Third Battalion, Eighth Marines, do you copy?”

  He listened to the soft hiss of the receiver for thirty seconds, smelling the sweet fragrance of the dying autumn leaves and wondering if he’d get to bed Colleen on a real mattress, like an officer and a gentleman. Then he repeated his query and waited another thirty seconds.

  “We’re here to make contact, Alpha One Niner, so hold your fire. Copy?”

  Randall and the corpsman looked at him as if awaiting a decision. Antonelli glanced at the nearest cluster of troops, their weapons fixed on the silent steel door. He suddenly felt silly making a huge production out of what was a simple job.

  He handed the mic to the corpsman and said, “Hell with it, we’re going in.”

  “Sir?” Randall said, seeing Antonelli draw his sidearm. “Want me to take point?”

  “When I’m a casualty of war, then you can lead.” Antonelli’s show of bluster was designed to gird his own courage, and it never hurt to inspire the troops. Unless, of course, that hurt led to death.

  As he crept from his position and down between the towering gray hardwoods with their brilliant leaves, he imagined what the Native Americans th
ought as they hunted these lands. With their drumming, dreams, and ghost dances, perhaps they were closer to the elemental world that the future would deliver than the invading European immigrants who carried guns and bibles. He was struck with a sense that, no matter which tribe ended up dominating the planet, this wilderness landscape would remain forever immune.

  When Antonelli was twenty yards from the door, he dropped to his belly and wriggled into the concealment of a laurel tangle, from which he studied the bunker’s lock. The manual mechanism wasn’t as rusty as the rest of the door, which might mean it had received plenty of action and grease in the last few years. Or maybe it had been greased thoroughly just once and the job held.

  He rose up enough to scan the terrain around the door. The soil was so rocky he wouldn’t be able to detect any footprints even if a battalion had marched through. He was just about to stand and approach the door when he happened to glance up and catch a glint of light beneath an overhanging tree branch.

  He squinted until he could make out a clear, round lens maybe two inches in diameter, with just the smallest of camera housings behind it. He tried to visually trace the wire, but it was so expertly blended into the oak bark that he would not succeed unless he felt his way along the tree trunk.

  He watched the camera for a full minute, but it appeared to be as defunct as the bunker. Antonelli waved toward the command post, hoping Randall could see his signal through the binoculars. He gave the hand sign for “I am ready to move.”

  Pushing through the laurel’s waxy leaves and dense, thin branches, he approached the door, knowing the eyes of the unit were on him. He didn’t feel particularly vulnerable—the bunker’s empty after all, right?—and he didn’t want to show hesitation or fear.

  Just a man doing his duty.

  Up close, the door appeared to have some tiny scratches on the handle, where bright metal showed through. He tried the manual latch and it didn’t budge. Locked from the inside.

  That wasn’t a big surprise. He had the code for the electronic keypad, but HQ had assured him the pad was unshielded and thus had been fried by the solar storms. He wondered how many pounds of explosives he would need to blow the door and whether it was worth the cost of such precious resources to secure whatever munitions and food might lay inside.

  Cpl. Calvin Tidewater was the unit’s ordnance specialist, and he would get a kick out of rigging a show for the rest of the troops. Antonelli figured the corporal would overdo it a little rather than risk a failure that the others would later ridicule. The explosion would alert any party within forty or so miles of their location, but hopefully it wouldn’t collapse the bunker.

  Antonelli gave the “All clear” signal. He was returning to the command post to send Randall after Tidewater when he stopped in his tracks.

  Did that camera just move?

  He stared at its cold, clear eye as if looking at the person who might be on the other side of it and watching him. He was a little jumpy, that was all. After last night, and the knowledge of just how vulnerable Colleen was despite his best efforts, he seemed to sense danger in every quivering leaf and every rustle of wildlife in the forest.

  “Captain!” Randall shouted.

  Antonelli scowled toward the unseen lieutenant for breaking protocol, but he barely had time to register his disapproval before Randall shouted again. “Bogies at twelve o’clock.”

  Antonelli squinted against the noon sun that was so bright it washed out the constant aurora. What the hell is he talking about?

  Then he saw them, gathering in formation like tiny jets on a strafing run. He thought at first they were doves, but that made no sense, because doves didn’t congregate in such coordinated patterns and they were too far inland to be seagulls. He couldn’t judge their size or distance, so high and feathery was the cloud cover. Their silver silhouettes were barely visible—like the aurora, they were nearly lost against the sun.

  They appeared to be aligned in a vee. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn it was the Air Force in all its high-tech glory, but as far as he knew, that branch had only rescued half a dozen planes and a few Black Hawk helicopters from the Big Zap, and what was gliding along overhead numbered in the dozens.

  A spattering of rifle volleys erupted around the bunker, and Antonelli shouted, “Hold your fire!”

  But when the small silvery shapes broke formation and swooped down toward them, his command was ignored. Antonelli found himself drawing his Beretta, knowing the pistol was useless against a high-speed target. But even in the rush of fear and shock, he couldn’t help the curiosity that drove him to wonder about the origin of these tiny UFOs.

  After all this shit we’ve been through, if this is fucking aliens, I’m done.

  A couple of the shots found their mark, although almost certainly through accident and not skill, because the objects—he was pretty sure they weren’t birds, even though they featured flexed, angled wings—descended so fast that Antonelli could hardly track them. He was so overwhelmed by their quantity that he couldn’t estimate their air speed.

  But they dropped altitude soon enough, breaking off into twos and threes as if sniffing out the various groups of soldiers. Antonelli didn’t even know what command to give. Like the night before, there was no real strategy for what they encountered because it was so unforeseen and bizarre.

  So he went with “Open fire!” even though he was pretty sure everyone was already emptying clips as fast as they could, and no one could hear him anyway, and he no longer cared about chain of command.

  The birds that had been clipped tumbled and fluttered, some falling in oblique spirals and others gliding up and down in uneven waves, pushed by the wind. But too many of them survived the hail of bullets and sliced through the turbulence to attack.

  The unit didn’t have any airborne explosives besides grenades, and nobody in HQ had even considered the threat of an aerial assault. This was considered a ground war, which was why foot soldiers were so valuable, but here the world flipped reason on its head.

  Antonelli aimed his Beretta and squeezed off a couple of futile shots, but when the first screams arose, he accepted that these weren’t mutations or drones or guided missiles of some kind—the metallic birds didn’t fire any projectiles but instead seemed to operate as suicide bombers.

  He ran for the bunker door, thinking the rock overhang would provide cover until he figured a strategy. He glanced at a private hiding behind a tree just as a bird plunged into the man’s chest, burrowing deeply as if wringing out a worm from the dirt. The soldier dropped his gun and reached to pluck the strange invader from his torso, but he was dead before his hands closed.

  Antonelli’s chest burned with a flare of sympathetic pain, but most horrifying was the bird’s feet, three wiry toes scrabbling for a perch from which to drive its head even deeper into the target.

  The soldier dropped face-up in the clearing, eyes wide as if imploring some unseen power above to undo this blasphemy. But the gods evidently created death for a reason.

  Now that the bird was planted, Antionelli had the opportunity to examine it even as brilliant blurs darted around the ridge. Its wings appeared to be a series of three overlapping flaps, a mockery of feathers comprised of some synthetic material. A small, flexing wand rose from the base of what would’ve been its spine and planted against the corpse. When the bird-thing began quivering, Antonelli realized it was trying to extract itself.

  No, you don’t get away with that.

  Antonelli dashed into the clearing, ignoring the soft hiss of wings around him and the screams and clatter of battle. He jabbed the tip of his pistol against the thing’s body and fired three times, emptying his clip. The exterior material definitely wasn’t metal, as it shredded instead of dented. The smoking gaps revealed little gears and wires and chipboards.

  So it was a drone, but unlike anything Antonelli had ever seen. Its articulated limbs and flexible body suggested an obscene life form, and the birds appeared to act with inde
pendent design. Even assuming a suitable power source could be employed in a programming such a large-scale, cohesive attack would require supreme intelligence—

  Zaps.

  In that moment, Antonelli’s image of a triumphant New Pentagon and a human civilization arising from the ashes faded like so much fairy dust. The only thing to do now was survive, even if it meant burrowing into dark crevices like cockroaches.

  He ducked low and crawled back to his prior concealment, popping his last clip into the Beretta.

  Something groaned behind Antonelli and he thought one of the birds might’ve circled. He raised his pistol, ready to smash or fire or die, and turned.

  The bunker door swung open.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Rachel entered the outfitter’s shop—a site she’d scavenged twice before, so she was familiar with its cluttered aisles and ruined merchandise—she wasn’t quite sure what had led her there.

  The shop didn’t offer anything useful. She would need to replace her backpack, but there were already spares in the bunker. The shelves held a few rudimentary weapons such as bows, arrows, and hunting knives, but any guns or ammunition had long disappeared. Much of the camping equipment was gone as well, with only a few lamps and rodent-shredded sleeping bags remaining. Sagging inner tubes and deflated rafts hung on wooden pegs along the walls.

  But she suspected the remaining Zap was here, lurking in the shadows.

  Or maybe behind that office door.

  She’d been in the office before, too, and it was mostly just a desk, papers, and a bathtub-sized aquarium that contained only matted gravel and scum. But it was closed, and no looter would’ve bothered.

  Rachel let her rifle barrel lead the way, sweeping it back and forth. The loss of her telepathic connection to the Zaps had her almost in panic, as if it was some core part of her rather than an infused mutation.