by Mark Tufo
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 thought 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 feet 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 independent design. Even assuming a suitable power source could be employed, 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 199
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.
The grimed windows muted any penetrating daylight, and Rachel depended on the glow of her eyes to guide her. If her mutant traits were indeed fading, that was one she would miss—portable flashlights that never needed fresh batteries.
Now that she had crossed that ultimate line, she was just as much an enemy to the Zaps as any human. But that worked both ways. Now she was free to do whatever necessary to protect the ones she loved.
She was so intent on the office door, expecting it to swing open with some new Zap surprise, that she didn’t detect the movement to her left before it was too late.
“Run, Squeak!” the female voice shouted, just as a cabinet display of fishing tackle tipped over and knocked her in the shoulder.
The display was made of pressboard and glass, and some of the shelves shattered as Rachel buckled under its weight. Shards of glass, fishhooks, sinkers, and rubber worms rained down as she kicked to free herself. Over the crash and clatter, Rachel heard small footsteps tapping across the floorboards.
“Zap bitch,” the unseen woman hissed, and Rachel turned her head to find a blond woman in a blue headband raising a broken canoe paddle. As she swung, Rachel writhed away, shifting just enough so the cabinet covered her. The paddle thwacked against the pressboard, breaking again.
Rachel’s M16 was pinned beneath her, but if she wriggled enough, she might be able to reach the trigger. The shots would be wild, but maybe she could amputate the woman’s feet.
“I’m not a Zap!” she shouted, and she almost believed it. But all that mattered was that she convinced her attacker.
“I saw your eyes.” The broken tip of the paddle jabbed toward her, punching into the fabric of her strap. The blow bruised her to the bone but didn’t penetrate her skin.
This pack is going to win a Medal of Honor if we get out of this mess.
“Stop. My name’s Rachel.”
Then she heard DeVontay and Lars shouting from outside the shop. The woman hesitated, the paddle raised like a spear for a killing blow.
“Your eyes,” the woman said, hesitating with her face twisted in a murderous leer. Rachel couldn’t imagine she looked less human than her attacker at that moment.
“I can explain.” She slid her right wrist along the gunstock until her finger hooked against the trigger.
We’ll see who’s the bitch when you’re hobbling around on stumps.
“Tara,” Lars called, blustering into the room. Rachel couldn’t see him, but she guessed he knew this woman. “Leave her alone. She’s cool.”
“Did you see her eyes?”
“Yeah, I can explain—”
“And you let her come in here? What if she hurt Squeak?”
Rachel counted down, lifting the rifle barrel as much as she could, fighting to draw her next breath. She’d give this situation three seconds to resolve itself…
“She saved me out there. From the Zaps.”
“She’s one of us,” DeVontay said from the doorway. “But there are real Zaps around here, and if you keep raising hell like that, they’ll be on us in no time.”
The woman stepped back, glaring at Rachel as if she were staring at some rare specimen at a freak show. “What’s the deal?”
“Get this thing off of me…and…I’ll tell you,” Rachel wheezed.
The woman dropped the paddle and stepped back while DeVontay and Lars knelt to lift the cabinet. It was so heavy it took both of them several seconds of straining to budge it, and then only enough for Rachel to squirm free. DeVontay helped her to her feet, brushing broken glass an
d fishing lures from her clothes.
“You okay?” he asked. She nodded, even though her cheeks stung from several small cuts and her shoulder throbbed with deep rushes of agony.
“Where’s Squeak?” the woman, Tara, asked.
“She ran out the door like she was scared to death,” Lars said. “Nice job, Tara.”
“What do you expect? There was a fucking Zap in here—”
“I’m not a Zap,” Rachel repeated.
Tara hopped over the fallen cabinet and dashed for the door. “Wait up,” Lars said, sprinting after her.
“We really know how to pick ‘em,” DeVontay said to Rachel, giving her a quick hug and kiss. “You got some little cuts.”
“Killer dogs, Zaps, and psycho moms, I can survive them all. Who is Squeak, anyway?”
“Little girl, five or six. I almost went after her but I heard that woman shrieking like a maniac.”
“Maybe we should help.” Rachel limped to the welcoming daylight beyond the shop.
Before she reached the door, Tara shrieked again, this time an octave higher. Screaming.
Amid a distant staccato rumble.
Tara and Lars stood twenty feet outside the outfitter’s shop, Tara trembling and shaking her fists as she blared her anxiety like an emergency siren. Lars held his axe limply at his side as if not sure how to respond.
Beyond them, in the middle of town fifty yards away, trash blowing around its ankles, stood the remaining Zap. In its arms was cradled a small child, limbs dangling as if she was unconscious. Or dead.
“Put her dooooown,” Tara wailed. She tried to run toward the mutant, but Lars grabbed her jacket sleeve and nearly yanked her to the ground while restraining her.
“Easy,” he said. “We don’t know what it wants.”
“Look at those eyes,” she bleated. “You know what that means.”
DeVontay shouldered his weapon and sighted, but then lowered it again. “Too far. I might hit the girl.”
Rachel wondered if that was a hint that DeVontay wanted her to do the shooting. She had no qualms about killing the Zap, but a head shot was the only sure thing. She might try strafing its legs, the way she’d intended to cripple Tara during the attack, but would the bullets penetrate the suit from this distance? The weapon might be effective at such range; she just wasn’t sure she was.