Proof that they’re not guided by a central intelligence. So it could be worse.
Three Zaps closed in on Marina, who was intent on protecting Franklin. DeVontay fired without aiming, knocking down one and winging another. The wounded Zap spun around, one arm dangling broken and red, and continued its attack. By now Marina had enough time to swing her weapon around and put a bullet into the abdomen of the closest attacker.
A rattle of broken gravel behind him alerted DeVontay to an attack. He jabbed backward with the butt of his rifle, but his blow missed. The Zap was incredibly quick, moving with a stuttering, simian grace, its upper lip curled back to reveal yellowed, cracked teeth. If it had howled, DeVontay probably would’ve wet his britches.
DeVontay gripped his rifle by the barrel and swung, hoping to club the mutant creature. The Zap danced backward, keeping its footing on the sharp rocks. Blood slicked its bare toes. One leg of its trousers was torn off at the thigh, the other consisting mostly of a giant rip along the inseam.
Millwood was nowhere in sight, but Franklin was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a Zap whose skull featured a few sparse but very long wires of hair. Franklin grabbed a handful of them and forced the hissing creature’s head back, and then punched it hard in the neck. DeVontay could hear the rubbery thwack from the blow, but still the Zap clawed at Franklin’s face.
But DeVontay had his own problems, as a second Zap closed in from the opposite flank. Despite their apparent lack of intelligence, they moved with a predatory purpose. DeVontay wondered how many shots remained in his magazine as he aimed from the hip and fired at the nearest. As it tumbled, he swung to engage the second one, but his trigger was locked—empty magazine.
No way would he have time to reach in his backpack and fish out a reload. With a deep bellow, he charged right at the Zap. The element of surprise paid off initially, as he knocked the Zap on its back, the serrated and chipped edges of concrete cutting into flesh. But still the mutant raked at his face, digging fingernails into his nose and carving red furrows.
The pain fueled a deep rage in DeVontay, and he pressed his rifle lengthwise over the thing’s head. Even though it didn’t really breathe, the noxious fumes pouring from its throat were so foul and metallic that DeVontay coughed. He pressed the rifle down harder and soon the steel barrel dug into the creature’s windpipe.
“Take it, you starfucker.” DeVontay shoved all his weight behind the strangulation, and the Zap’s eyes rolled up into its head. With those unnaturally glittering sparks gone, a vestige of the former human appeared in the gaunt features. DeVontay relaxed slightly in revulsion, but then the mutant swiped an arm up and clawed at DeVontay’s face.
DeVontay levered himself along the length of the rifle until he heard the Zap’s neck snap. The eyes immediately went dark and DeVontay backed away, sickened. But he couldn’t afford self-reflection. The chaos still raged around him.
The others retreated to the corner of a building that was blackened with smoke. It was an instinctive move that protected their rear, allowing them to focus their firepower forward. But one Zap managed to scale the fifteen feet of stacked bricks and loomed over them, bracing to leap. DeVontay steadied himself despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins and reloaded with trembling fingers.
He aimed, exhaled, and gently squeezed the trigger. The Zap flopped backwards, a spray of thick blood raining from its shattered chest. The hooded man stood beside Franklin, taking care with each pistol shot, recognizing there was no time to reload.
But the initial tide of Zaps was already thinning, and fewer than a dozen remained. Whether they had learned from the slaughter of the others or simply reacted on stimuli, they scurried between the battered cars and sagging signposts, getting closer but not fully exposing themselves to gunfire.
DeVontay eyed the eighty feet separating him from the rest of the group. He was reluctant to give up his high ground. If more Zaps poured from the woods or from the piles of ruins to the west, then Franklin and the others would be cornered.
He’d lost track of how many rounds he’d fired. He reached for the spare magazine in a pocket of his backpack and his hand found only nylon. He whirled, scanning the ground, figuring he’d lost it in the hand-to-hand struggle with the Zap. If it had fallen, it must’ve slipped into a crack, because he saw only the broken, bloody bodies of mutants.
“Cover me!” DeVontay shouted, and then scrambled down the incline toward the others.
He tripped over a protruding water pipe and pitched forward. He flung his M16 to the side so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot himself. When he stuck out his arms to catch his fall, muscle and bone in his shoulders jarred, but at least he didn’t land on his face. When he collected his rifle, his arms were numb and a sharp pain plagued his left collarbone.
Franklin fired a shot that downed a nearby Zap, and then the broken city grew quiet.
“Where did they go?” Millwood asked.
“Back into their holes like rats,” said the hooded man.
DeVontay joined them, masking the agony that throbbed along his shoulder. He secretly felt above his rib cage, searching for breaks, and decided he’d just separated his shoulder. He’d seen athletes pop their shoulders back into place by having someone yank them by the wrist, but the process had always looked painful. He decided to wait a couple of minutes to see if the pain eased.
“So what’s the deal?” Franklin asked the hooded man. “Where’s Rachel?”
“Who’s Rachel?”
“The woman with the Zap baby.”
“The Zap woman, you mean?”
DeVontay was about to protest and inform the man Rachel wasn’t a mutant, but such an argument was wasted breath. Besides, if the man managed to survive five years in this hostile landscape, he’d certainly developed his own truths. To him, Rachel was a Zap, and that was that. There was no room for philosophy in war.
Why can’t you admit it? She’s a Zap. Just because you love her doesn’t change the facts.
But love, like war, allowed for no philosophy.
“Where did she go?” Marina asked.
The hooded man wiped his bloody face with his kerchief, succeeding only in smearing a congealed brown mess across his beard. He waved vaguely to the east, where the blue glow and smoke spread over the treetops. “Into the domed city.”
“A city?” Franklin peered at the man. “There’s nothing on the map for miles.”
“A Zap city. It’s blue and it has a dome over it. Got lightning crawling all over the surface.”
Millwood jammed a wrinkled cigarette in his mouth and patted his pockets. The hooded man brought out a wooden box of matches and lit the cigarette.
“So how did they get in?” Marina asked. “Just walked right in and the Zaps welcomed them?”
“Goldberg—that’s our head honcho—took her inside with the baby and two others. I set the fire to create a diversion. We didn’t know about these crazy Zappers. Shit got real.”
“You live around here?” Franklin asked.
“On the west side.” The man’s bruised eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Secret hideaway.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Enough.”
“We could use some back-up and tactical support.”
“No way. We tried to team up before with others and it didn’t turn out so hot.”
“We gave you the pistol,” DeVontay said. “We saved your life.”
The man held the weapon, butt first, out to DeVontay. “Take it. I don’t owe nobody nothing.”
“Did they make it all the way inside the dome?” Franklin asked.
“As far as I could tell. I lost sight of them, but Goldberg planned to take them through a pipe.”
“Where’s the pipe?”
“Find the creek, and follow it.”
“You don’t want to come with us?” DeVontay asked. The pain in his shoulder had subsided to a bearable level. As long as he didn’t engage in any Olympic gymnastics events, he�
�d probably be fine.
The man pulled his hood lower so that it nearly shielded his eyes. “You crazy? Those Zaps are everywhere. I haven’t seen any of these wild ones in a long time. They tried to attack the dome but…kind of got zapped by the lightning, it looked like.” He shrugged. “Zap science. Who knows?”
“We’re going in,” Franklin said. “Don’t you care about your ‘head honcho’ and your friends?”
“I care. But not enough to get killed over it.”
DeVontay waved away the pistol and the man stuck it in his belt. “I’ll tell Goldberg you said hello.”
The man spat a red, gooey wad of mucus that clung to the dusty bricks for a moment before sliding down the wall. “When you see the city, you’ll turn tail and run, too. I don’t know why you care about those two Zaps. I told Goldberg he should’ve killed them while he had the chance.”
Millwood gave a sudden shout and tossed his cigarette aside. But before he could lift his weapon, Marina saved his life a second time. The Zap she shot slumped over the jagged lip of the wall, fingers quivering out the last of its strange life.
“I’m out of here,” the hooded man said, sprinting west toward the sinking sun.
The four stood looking at one another, grime and dust coating their sweaty faces. Millwood opened his mouth as if to deliver a sarcastic remark, and then thought better of it.
There was no philosophy in love, war, or suicide missions.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As the chopper circled the small encampment ten miles north of Wilkesboro, High President Abigail Murray asked her new second-in-command what they could expect when they touched down.
Ziminski grinned and shouted over the roar of the engine and the churning rotors. “As far as they know, you’re paying a visit to the front lines. To boost morale and all that.”
“So they don’t know about Munger’s mutiny?”
“Oh, I’m sure a few have heard him bitch about you. But from what I heard Munger and the general say, they played it close to the vest. They told just a few among their inner circle.”
Murray looked down at the ragged tents and the Humvee with its hood up, two soldiers tinkering with the engine. A third soldier walked over to a circle of dirt among the trees that served as a landing pad and helped guide the pilot to a landing. Several soldiers were patched up with makeshift bandages. A group of them sat around a campfire, barely paying attention to one of the human race’s last fossil-fuel machines.
“So how do I know I can trust them?” she asked as the chopper hovered in place, readying for descent.
“Because I sent them a communiqué this morning. As far as they’re concerned, Munger is gathering reinforcements and will be back in three days. Until then, you’re in charge.”
“So you knew this morning?”
“I made my plans parallel to theirs. The only difference is I kept mine to myself. Well, that, plus I know how to use the radio.”
Murray jabbed a thumb toward Torgeson and lowered her voice. “What about him? How do we get him to play ball?”
“Directive Seventeen. You can kill him if you want.”
“He’s too valuable.”
“According to Munger, there’s a fuel bladder here at the camp, maybe enough for two fill-ups. That’s seven hundred miles at the most. So he’s soon going to be as much of a dinosaur as any of us.”
Torgeson seemed to sense they were talking about him, as he glanced over his shoulder. Then he turned his attention back to the controls and concentrated on the Blackhawk’s descent. The engineer in the co-pilot’s seat clung to a safety strap hanging from the roof, his knuckles white. Apparently this was his virgin flight.
When they were safely down, several soldiers approached the chopper. Murray showed them the ammo and food that had been loaded at New Pentagon, feeling shame and guilt at their haggard faces and hollow eyes. True, she’d endured her own horrors, but she wasn’t fighting on the front lines.
No, that’s not true. We’re all on the front lines now.
While they unloaded, Murray took Torgeson and the engineer aside. “Gentlemen, as you know, we’re at war. We have only one enemy, and that’s the Zaps. Our only hope—and it’s a slim one—is to fight together, side by side, with a willingness to die for one another and the cause. You took a pledge when you enlisted in the Initiative, and I expect you to follow it.”
“I got no problems with you,” Torgeson said. “Orders are orders.”
“I’ll do anything you want,” the engineer said. “Just don’t make me go up in that bucket of bolts again as long as I live.”
“I thought you worked on them and understand how they work.”
“I do. And that’s why I don’t want to ride in one.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “You keep it in tip-top shape and we’ll let Lt. Torgeson here worry about getting it up in the air. And, gentlemen…I don’t know what you think happened in New Pentagon, but just keep in mind what these people here are going through. Let them have a little hope, okay?”
The engineer nodded vigorously. Torgeson was insouciant, trained for calmness or else resigned to his fate and beyond giving a damn. Murray told them to get some chow, and Ziminski escorted her to the command post, which was a sheet of ragged canvas stretched over a low tree limb and staked to the ground with nylon cords.
The man at the folding card table had a thick salt-and-pepper mustache that was compensation for his male pattern baldness. A tattered map and papers were spread out before him. Murray remembered him as one of the few career army officers who’d enlisted in the Earth Zero Initiative. She saluted him. “At ease, Lt. Charles.”
“Madame President,” he said, in a grand Southern accent. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“Col. Munger’s busy organizing and training reinforcements. I decided to go on the supply run and make a field visit. I understand you guys were hit hard at Wilkesboro.”
“I don’t know if they hit us hard or hit themselves harder.”
Ziminski interrupted, “Did you get my message?”
“Regroup and get ready to move out? I don’t see why the colonel would want us to do so before his return.”
“Because we have intel that the Zaps have moved east, and there’s a window of opportunity while they’re weak,” Murray said. “Whether that explosion was an accident or not, it knocked them on their heels. It’s never too early to win a war.”
“With all due respect, Madame President, move out with what? We’re down to one Humvee with a busted water pump and one transport truck running on fumes.”
“We’re doing air drops,” Murray said. “Old-school air cavalry like during the Vietnam War. Funnel troops in half a dozen at a time.”
“But we only have enough fuel for one trip to New Pentagon and back,” Ziminski said.
“We’re not retreating,” she said. “We’re finishing the mission.”
Ziminski looked at her with confusion. She was grateful for his support during the coup attempt, but she was no longer willing to worry about the opinions of others. She was the country’s final authority, but more importantly, she was part of the Earth Zero Initiative. Too bad Gen. Alexander couldn’t be part of this mission, but he’d taken sides and happened to back the wrong horse.
Charles stood and it was only then that she saw the soiled splint around his shin. “Wilkesboro’s a smoking pit of nothing but melted glass. You can plant a flag there if you have one, but that won’t bring back the hundred-and-forty-three good, honorable souls we lost.”
“I’m not concerned about Wilkesboro. I acknowledge the sacrifice of our fallen, but we can’t let their deaths be in vain. If the Zaps there are wiped out, we find the next bunch. We’ll chase them to the sea if we have to.”
“With one chopper?”
“We’re running recon patrols. Capt. Ziminski here will do the rest.”
Charles glared wide-eyed at the gawky, pimply-faced young man. “Captain?”
“Nothing
creates promotion in the ranks like war,” Murray said. “Especially a war with lots of casualties.”
“I need to touch base with Col. Munger and verify this,” Charles said. “With all due respect—”
“The fact that you keep saying that means you don’t respect me at all. Should I have the Captain recite Directive Seventeen for you?”
Charles sat heavily back down and nearly upended the card table. “No need, ma’am.”
“Fine. Then show me on your map any enemy activity you’ve observed.”
Several minutes later, she led Ziminski out of the tent. “Organize a platoon of half a dozen. We’re going on a scouting run.”
“Me, too?”
“No. You’re too important. Get your radio set up. If we don’t make it back, establish contact with NORAD and tell them to initiate Operation Free Bird.”
“Does that have anything to do with Directive Eighteen?”
“You’ll find out when the time comes.” She saw his crestfallen face and had to remind herself that if not for the solar storms, he’d be sitting in a dorm room playing videogames and drinking cheap beer. She touched his arm in a gesture that was more motherly than presidential. “Let me do the worrying for both of us, okay? And I want you to know I’m eternally grateful for your help. I know it was tempting to go along with Gen. Alexander and Col. Munger. I’m honored you chose me instead.”
His eyes grew a little misty with passion and sentiment. “Because I believe in Earth Zero. I believe we can take back our planet.”
And that’s why you can never know about Operation Free Bird.
“The chopper’s my eye in the sky, but you’re my ears on the ground,” she said.
“I’m sure I can get a better signal here. Fewer mountains. Depends on the solar activity, though.”
Murray saluted. “Work your magic. I’ll be back before dark.”
Twenty minutes later, they were airborne. Torgeson was the only one she knew. A young female corporal was in charge of the platoon, her camo fatigues hiding any feminine figure she might’ve sported. Murray smiled to herself. Even with the end of the human race drawing near, human sexuality refused to be repressed.
Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 12
