Puffs of smoke and dust rose in the air above the streets below, Zapheads tumbling like sodden bowling pins made of clay. One of Hilyard’s soldiers stepped from around the corner of a building a block away and waved his arm over his head, making what Franklin figured was some sort of official military signal.
Hilyard raised his right arm from his side and dropped it, repeating the motion twice more as if he were flapping a wing for takeoff. In response, the soldier raised both arms and crossed his palms over his head, palms facing outward.
Hilyard raised his fist to shoulder level and pumped three times. The soldier then touched the tips of his hands overhead and pulled them vigorously apart before repeating Hilyard’s command to an unseen soldier on the next block.
“Walkie talkies would make life easier,” Franklin said. “What did you just say?”
“Gave new orders. We’re going in.”
“What about Rachel and DeVontay?”
Hilyard’s eyes were as blue and cool as the December sky. “This is war, Franklin. It’s bigger than one or two people.”
“Shit’s getting real!” Brock shouted, like he was jockeying up on the couch for a hot new video game.
“Well, I dodged Vietnam and I was too old for Iraq, but I’m not sitting this one out,” Franklin said. He headed between a smoldering heap of timbers and a blackened concrete wall.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Hilyard asked. “I didn’t give you the order to move out.”
“I never enlisted, Lieutenant. And I’m not about to get drafted.”
Brock moved to Hilyard’s side as if eager to replace Franklin as an informal second-in-command. Hilyard scowled at the shaggy hipster but focused on Franklin. “It’s a free country, but stay out of the way if you don’t want to get hurt. I can’t have my men worried about civilian targets. If it moves, it eats bullets.”
Franklin saluted. “Wouldn’t have it any other way…sir.”
The gunfire down below erupted in intermittent bursts, which suggested Shipley’s attack wasn’t as coordinated as Hilyard suspected. Franklin wondered just how much firepower Shipley had left, given the desertions and casualties. Not to mention being far from his home base and likely unable to carry most of his supplies.
He’d barely gone thirty yards through the rubble and was nearly down to street level when he heard the footfalls crunching behind him. He turned, his AR-15 at the ready.
He thought of that legendary Revolutionary War slogan, which history recorded as being issued at Bunker Hill but Franklin had come to believe was the same kind of propagandistic horseshit as the Boston tea party and the violent land grab of Mexican territory in Texas: Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
Or, in this case, the yellows and reds and oranges.
“Hold your fire, man, it’s me,” Brock said from the concealment of an archway. “I want in on the action.”
“Safer up there.”
“Look, Sierra thinks I’m a total noodle dick. This is my chance to earn my stripes, if you know what I mean.”
Franklin shook his head and sighed. The world of romance had been complicated enough when he was a youngster, but these days the pressure was really ramped up. You never knew when you’d be breeding for the future of the human race, and so you probably needed every edge you could get. DeVontay had certainly walked through the fire to earn Rachel’s trust, and maybe there was still some old-school chivalry in proving your worth.
“All right,” Franklin said. “I got the same deal as Hilyard. Don’t get in my way when it’s shooting time, or the best you can hope for is Sierra throwing herself on your flag-draped coffin.”
Or shooting you down like a dog after you get turned into a Zap.
Brock grinned like the fool he was and fell in behind Franklin. They negotiated two blocks, the volume of the gunfire swelling in intensity. They trotted to the corner and huddled behind a van with shattered windows. Some Zapheads moved in the direction of the gunfire. Before Franklin could say anything, Brock popped up, jammed his rifle barrel through the van’s cab and unleashed a series of three-shot bursts. The hot shell casings rained down on Franklin’s head, one of them singeing his cheek.
“Goddammit, hold your fire,” Franklin said.
“You heard Hilyard. No prisoners.”
“But those might be civilians. Since the Zaps put on clothes, you can’t really tell the difference from a distance.”
“They didn’t look right,” Brock said. “Not that it matters now.”
“We’re still going to have to be a human race after this is all over. And look at it on the practical side—you might shoot the woman who was going to carry your babies.”
“If she dresses like that, it wouldn’t work out anyway. When things get back to normal, I’m heading for the big city and Nieman Marcus. I’m tired of Hicksville.”
“Good for you. Me, I’m getting Rachel and DeVontay and heading back to my mountain compound.”
“It looks like a few hundred Zaps might be standing in the way,” Brock said, digging in his jacket pocket and swapping out his gun’s magazine.
“You got a point—”
Brock put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh. Hear that?”
At first all Franklin heard was gunfire popping, punctuated by the occasional discharge of a bomb. Then the soft wash of sound arose beneath it, like a stream cascading over high mountain stones. The churning froth of syllables fell into a consistent rise and fall that made words.
Killer, killer, killer?
“Kill her,” Brock said. “That’s some heavy shit.”
Franklin was afraid he knew exactly which “her” they meant.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The jail.
She had to reach the babies.
Rachel’s link with them fuzzed out like distortion on a telephone line and her only chance—their only chance—was to get close enough to reconnect. The static from the mutant mob flooded her from all sides, and without DeVontay’s presence, she undoubtedly would be swept away and drowned in white noise.
Kill her kill her kill her.
A supreme strength surged through her and she broke free of DeVontay’s grip. She hoped he would follow, but she had no time to spare. As she shoved her way through the grasping arms of the mutants, a geyser of blood spattered across her face and several bodies dropped around her.
She was no longer one of them. They had turned on her, but only because they were confused and facing extermination. Yet their aggression was muted, as if the early stages of their evolution had stripped them of their primal rage. They were dying because of what they had been, not what they were now.
And you’ll die with them if you don’t reach the jail.
DeVontay shouted her name, and she could barely recognize his voice. Soldiers on a nearby roof unleashed their fury, and others fired from windows. Small squads worked their way up the streets, strafing everything in their path. It was impossible to tell from where the greatest danger poured forth.
Bullets ricocheted off of cars, glass shattered, and chunks of masonry rained down from building façades. A panel truck erupted into a glowing torch as an explosion ignited its fuel tank. Shrapnel whizzed through the air, severing limbs and ripping into flesh, and through it all the New People didn’t utter a single cry of pain, although Rachel could sense their shared injury.
Their weakness made it possible for Rachel to claw her way to the steps of the jail, and she was grateful for her human half keeping her focused. A lone mutant wrapped her in a constricting grasp, nearly pulling her to the ground, but Rachel flung the woman off. She didn’t want to hurt the tribe but if she didn’t reach the committee, the damage would be catastrophic.
“Rachel!” DeVontay called again, and she turned to see him amid the red carnage, helping Jorge rescue the little girl in the green jacket.
“I have to do this,” she yelled, and the words were clipped by a staccato burst of gunfire.
The ja
il’s front entrance was open, the thick metal door hanging by one twisted hinge. She expected to find a mob of bewildered, raging mutants in the lobby, but it was unoccupied besides a few bodies sprawled on the floor.
From their dress, she couldn’t tell whether they were New People or humans, but it really didn’t matter. Dead was dead, and unless the killing stopped, they’d be dead forever.
A dynamic presence radiated from the next room. But it was weaker than it had been only moments before.
Perhaps she’d been wrong and the babies weren’t here after all.
No. They’d told her to come here.
The office door was barely ajar, the wedge of space around it darker than the lobby, which was illuminated by the fire-colored light of the dying day. The lettering on the door read “SHERIFF” with a decal of a badge beneath it.
There’s a new law in town.
She pushed open the door.
Her pulsing eyes suffused the room with a soft glow.
“Whee-LER, Whee-LER, Whee-LER,” someone said.
A woman, not a baby.
She heard a soft whimpering, and then the unmistakable cry of a baby, that hiccup of a sob that presaged a siren’s wail of discomfort.
Why can’t I see his eyes? And where are the others?
The woman sat in a chair, which was turned with its back facing the door, a wide metal desk in between them. Only her head was visible, a black silhouette against the lesser darkness.
“Who are you?” Rachel said, stepping into the room. The concrete walls nearly muffled the slaughter taking place outside and her voice sounded thick and strange. She had a hard time articulating her thoughts because all she heard was KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER.
“I knew you would come, Whee-LER,” the woman said. “They told me so.”
Rachel nearly tripped over a small pile of clothing in the floor. She drew her foot back and smeared the edge of the dark, gooey puddle spreading around the bundle. She reached out with the tip of her foot and touched the pile.
No.
There were more bundles scattered across the floor, some in darkened corners, two in chairs pushed up near the desk, all soggy with dark fluid that could only be blood.
“They wouldn’t take my hermosa hija,” the woman said. “My beautiful baby girl. So I did the only thing I could.”
“What have you done?” Rachel said.
The signal was there, but it was tenuous and broken, not the potent beacon that had guided her down from her grandfather’s compound and pulled her from the familiar human world. The many minds that made one had gone as dark as the far side of the moon, still there but deeply cold and forlorn and forever facing the void.
And as a result, the New People were rudderless, thrown out without direction or guidance, adrift in the sea of murder.
How could she have KILLHERKILLHERKILLHER
“Your babies could have saved us all,” the woman said. “But they didn’t.”
She hummed a low lullaby under her breath, lilting and off-key but recognizable.
Hush little baby, don’t say a KILLHERKILHERKILLHER
Momma’s gonna KILLHERKILLHERKILLHER
If that mockingKILL
Don’tHER
KILL
HER
“You’ve ruined it all,” Rachel whispered. “You’re a monster.”
The chair spun around.
The woman was gaunt, with high cheekbones and Hispanic coloring, dark hair hanging in wild, greasy tangles, eyes sunken and seeming to absorb the cosmic light that radiated from Rachel’s own eyes.
“I’m not a monster,” the woman said with a smile that was beyond joy or madness. “I’m something that they made.”
Then she looked down at the bundle in her arms. “Isn’t that right, Bryan? Who’s Mommy’s little bambino?
Rachel gasped, and the baby turned toward the sound.
But not toward the sight.
Because its eyes were gone, replaced with dark, shredded sockets that wept red tears.
The little mouth moved, and Rachel could barely make out the whimper of a whisper: “Kill…her…”
“If you say so,” the woman said.
That was when Rachel saw the pistol pointed at her.
She felt the impact before she heard the concussion, and then all sensation blurred into a haze of pain, despair, and KILLHERKILLHERKILLHER
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
By the time Franklin and Brock reached the quadrant bordered by the hospital, the jail, and the town park, the Zapheads had been thinned to a few dozen, and the last remaining ones milled aimlessly amid the hail of bullets.
“They’re not fighting back,” Franklin said.
“Hell, yeah,” Brock said, strafing a burst of bullets among them. “Payback’s a bitch.”
“Stop it,” Franklin said, slapping at Brock’s weapon. “It’s slaughter.”
“Bury my heart at fucking Wounded Knee, man. These are Zappers, in case you forgot.”
Franklin watched with disgust as several Zapheads toppled against one another, streaming gore as they slid to the ground.
He skimmed the skyline, which was maroon with approaching dusk as if a bruised universe was sagging down to smother the Earth. Silhouettes of soldiers dotted the rooftops, muzzle flashes winking slim bursts of hot light.
Other soldiers, and some people he recognized as Brock’s militia members, were going door to door, making a sweep of the immediate streets and working their way outward.
“Franklin!”
He looked around to see who had called him, expecting Hilyard, but instead it was—
“Holy mother of Pearl Jam. Jorge!”
Jorge looked a little haggard and worn but more or less intact. Little Marina was with him, bundled in a soldier’s tunic, and they sat on a bench near a monument of a bronze horseman. This block seemed relatively free of fighting, and much of the gunfire faded from the lack of targets.
“There’s Sierra,” Brock said. “Gotta go.”
“Make sure you show her the notches in your gun, hero.”
Brock apparently missed the sarcasm. “Will do, Wheeler. Keep your ugly head down.”
As Brock jogged down a side street, Franklin limped over to Jorge, unable to wipe the grin off his face despite the sickening carnage all around and his worry over Rachel. Jorge met him halfway and they nearly embraced, but at the last moment broke off into mutual shoulder-gripping and arm-squeezing.
“You found your girl,” Franklin said.
“I never thought I would see you again, gringo.”
“Where’s your wife?”
Jorge’s face darkened. “I’m not sure. Marina’s nearly in shock and doesn’t have her sense about her. I need to get her away from here.”
Franklin escorted Jorge back to Marina’s side and knelt to give Marina a grandfatherly hug and a kiss on the forehead. She giggled when his scruffy beard brushed across her nose, which he took as a good sign.
Then he saw the grenade launcher propped beside the bench. “What the hell—I mean, what the heck are you doing with that thing?”
“Borrowed it from a friend.”
“You sure make the right kind of friends, don’t you?”
“I met Rachel and DeVontay, too,” Jorge said.
Franklin glanced around. “Where are they?”
“Not sure. Lost them in the crowd. The last I saw of Rachel, she was fighting her way toward the jail.”
“Juh-jail?” Marina said, the word broken by a sob. “Juh-juh-juh…”
Jorge wrapped her in a hug. “What is it, honey?”
Marina closed her eyes and wailed in misery. “The babieeeeeeeeeees.”
Shit. That’s where Rachel would be, all right. At least the shooting’s moved to the south and east.
Franklin slid his gun strap back onto his shoulder, although he didn’t think he would need the weapon. The quadrant was heaped with bodies, only a few of them twitching or flailing, one or two of them struggling
to crawl away with shattered bones.
Then he saw a figure emerge from the jail, and at first he thought it was Rachel, but she was hunched over as if burdened with cargo.
“Babieeeees,” Marina moaned.
Franklin turned to Jorge. “Hey, isn’t that—”
But Jorge nudged Franklin aside, swept up the heavy gray grenade launcher, and pointed it toward the jail.
The figure ran with awkward, staggering steps, nearly losing balance and pitching over. It was heading north, away from the battle, and would soon be lost among the rows of patrol cars in the parking lot.
Human or Zap?
Before Franklin could react, Jorge squeezed the trigger again and again: Whump whump whump whump whump.
The first blast kicked up rubble and grit ten yards to the figure’s left, but the follow-up explosion threw dust and smoke at its feet. Before the figure even had a chance to fall, the other grenades burst in rapid succession, balls of fire slapping air waves and spitting shrapnel.
A dark, oval bundle tumbled from the figure’s hands and bounced away as the figure threw up its arms and flopped forward.
Franklin now had a good idea who the figure was, but when he looked at Jorge in stunned sympathy, the face he saw was contorted, deranged, and barely human.
“Babies,” Jorge whispered with a sick sneer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The jail was quiet, and with the sun sinking fast, DeVontay raced through the facility as quickly as he could, figuring to check the deepest recesses first and working his way back toward the better lighting.
When he reached the cell block, he found seven dead bodies sitting propped against the cold steel bars, bearing dark holes of congealed blood. They’d obviously been there for hours.
After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) Page 19
