by Mark Tufo
“Well, they’re gone. All gone.”
Chapter 209
“You’re the only one of them,” Kokona said to Colleen.
“What do you mean?” Colleen asked.
She gently unrolled the bandage covering Huynh’s shattered leg. The main laceration ran from just under his knee down to six inches above the ankle, but most of the damage was in the center of the lower leg. She hadn’t attempted to set any of the shards of bone, since that would require surgery, but the outer edges of the wound were already a shade of deep red going toward purple.
“All the others are afraid of me,” Kokona said. “Not you. You’re more curious than anything.”
Colleen was a little afraid, but she was glad it didn’t show. She credited her veneer of bravery to the knowledge that Mark was counting on her. So was Huynh. And maybe in a way, all the others were, too.
“We’re grateful you want to help our friend,” Colleen said. She arranged the few medical implements on the coffee table beside the betadine, alcohol, and water.
“Especially since he’s a human?” Kokona asked. The baby laughed, a melodic, gleeful sound that was in the same high pitch as her voice.
“She’s kind of blunt,” Marina said, sitting on the bunk across from Huynh and holding Kokona in her lap.
“I see that,” Colleen said. “I appreciate it, since we don’t have much time to spare.”
“He’s stable,” Kokona said. “So tell me about yourself. How did you wind up here?”
Colleen started to protest and insist they had to proceed right now, but she didn’t have any authority or power here. If she knew what to do, she’d already have done it.
“Recently, you mean?”
“Start with the storms,” Kokona said. “I don’t know anything before that.”
Colleen thought back to those days just before the world changed, utterly and for all time, and she almost panicked when she realized most of those memories were lost. Well, not exactly lost, just so buried that she had difficulty accessing them. Much of the past five years had been spent on moment-to-moment survival, and nostalgia seemed like a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Now you’re starting to think like Mark. Maybe you’ve been spending too much time around him.
But if the brilliant, mutant baby wanted a little entertainment before they got down to the task at hand, Colleen would do it. For her duty and for Mark.
“I was public relations rep for an airline,” she said. “Do you know what airplanes are?”
“Yes, she’s not a dummy,” Marina said. “She reads a lot.”
“Be nice, Marina,” Kokona said. “She can’t help it. I’m the first Zap she’s ever met, I bet.”
No, I’ve met, them. But none like you.
“I worked in D.C., lobbying federal agencies and officials for the airlines,” she continued. “On safety regulations and those kinds of things that add cost to business. When the solar storms started, we had major airline problems. The air traffic controllers reported regional communication outages, and then planes started dropping out of the sky. We didn’t know until later that the EMF bombardment had scrambled their navigation systems and fried the electronics that controlled the engines. Of course, shortly after that the power grid failed and we were all in the dark.
“I was actually at Reagan Airport when the worst wave hit, and a landing jetliner rolled off the runway and into the terminal. It exploded, and the jet fuel scorched dozens of people around me. I ran, but bodies were still dropping even when I was well away from the fire. That’s when I saw the first Zap.” She checked Kokona’s expression and couldn’t decipher any emotions. “It’s okay to call them ‘Zaps,’ right?”
“Narrative license,” Kokona said. “Feel free,”
“No offense. I don’t know what you call yourselves.”
“We don’t call ourselves anything. We just are. But we understand your need to categorize us and make sense of things. Please go on.”
“There were a couple of soldiers just in from Afghanistan, and one of them had a pistol. You’re not supposed to take guns on planes, but I’m lucky he didn’t follow the law. They saw Zaps attacking people and they basically saved me and a few others. I stuck with them until they found some other soldiers, and soon we were part of a new military force.”
“You joined?”
“I wasn’t forced to join, but it was the first sign of organized social behavior I’d seen since the apocalypse.”
“Strange that you consider it an apocalypse, but for us it was a genesis,” Kokona said, her hands clasped fetchingly under her chin, her eyes twinkling. “Omega for you, alpha for us, I suppose.”
“I suppose.” Colleen couldn’t tell if she was being taunted or not. She decided not to divulge any other information of their movements since, or anything that might give away their troop strength and strategic goals. “So that’s my story. I trained and was assigned to Capt. Antonelli’s unit and we ended up here. How about you? Why are you not with the others of your kind?”
“I volunteered, too,” Kokona said. “As an ambassador. I came with the humans so they would stop killing the rest of us. After all these years, they’ve probably forgotten me.”
“She’s part of the family now,” Marina said, giving the child an affection kiss on the forehead that made Kokona giggle with pleasure. “My little baby sister.”
“That’s sweet.” Colleen wanted to learn more, in case any of the information was helpful to Mark, but her immediate task was saving Huynh. “Can we go on with the surgery? How is this going to work, anyway, since your hands…since you can’t hold the instruments? Are you going to tell me what to do?”
“Surgery?” Kokona said with a laugh. “That’s so primitive.”
“Well, what do I do?”
“She does it with her hands,” Marina said. “You should’ve seen her heal herself when she got shot. It was pretty cool. Freaky, but cool.”
Healing herself? Hands? What exactly IS this?
Colleen had prepared herself to be ready for anything, but some things were just too incomprehensible to contemplate. Mark hinted the Zaps might have powerful weapons they couldn’t understand and that those horrible bird-machines might have been guided by some sort of mental power. If the Zaps could control matter, then why shouldn’t they be able to repair damaged tissue made of cells?
Huynh gave a deep gasp and lurched up slightly as if suffering a seizure. Colleen turned and placed a finger on his neck, checking his pulse. She didn’t have time to apply the blood-pressure cuff and check his dangerously low readings. It took all her energy just to pry his teeth apart and make sure he hadn’t swallowed his tongue.
She sensed Marina beside her, holding the baby down to the Vietnamese soldier’s leg. Her little brown hands reached out as if to play patty cake, never quite making contact with the scalloped flesh.
Huynh’s pulse jumped beneath her finger, giving a sluggish surge before trailing away. She put her ear to his chest, unable to believe he’d slipped away just that fast. She heard a couple of faint beats and was prepared to give CPR when she saw his eyes roll up and go completely blank, all spark drained out of them.
Even if she managed to revive his body, his soul was already gone. “Never mind, Kokona,” she said. “He’s dead.”
But Marina still held the baby in position, its tiny little eyelashes flickering. With the baby’s eyes closed in concentration, the room was much darker, illuminated only by a single small bulb. A hot, metallic odor filled the room. Colleen could’ve sworn she saw sparks fly between the baby’s plump palms and Huynh’s damaged skin.
Kokona’s eyes must have snapped open because the room suddenly filled with an intense brilliance that resembled the nightly auroras. Colleen blinked against the radiant green glare, trying to make out what was happening. Huynh jerked again, his torso nearly rising off the bed.
But he’s dead…
“Kokona?” Marina said, and she sounded as bewildered as
Colleen felt. Then the room went dim again and Kokona collapsed in Marina’s arms as if falling unconscious. Marina hugged the baby to her chest, murmuring “Are you okay?”
“Let me check her,” Colleen said, reaching for the mutant, but Marina turned away. She could see light leaking from the baby’s closed eyelids, so Colleen took that as a sign of life and energy.
But poor Huynh. She’d been a fool to think the baby could help, despite all of the Zap’s intelligence. Sometimes even the most gifted surgeons couldn’t salvage a patient, and here Colleen and Mark had hoped an infant could manage the job.
“You shouldn’t have,” Marina said to the baby.
“I know,” Kokona said in a high, clear voice. “But I did anyway.”
Colleen checked Huynh’s pulse once more, and it was still absent. She ascribed the jerking motion to a reflex, an early sign of impending rigor mortis.
“Is that all you need?” Kokona asked Colleen.
“Yes, I can handle it from here. Thanks for…trying.”
“I’d wrap the wounded leg so the others don’t see. They won’t understand.”
“Sure,” Colleen said. “Maybe you two should go get some rest. I’ll take care of things here.”
After Marina carried the baby away, rocking her gently, Colleen pulled the blanket over Huynh’s face. They would have to remove the body in the morning, but perhaps with the elimination of the birds, they could grant him a decent burial.
She was exhausted and suffering from claustrophobia. The room was oppressive, with the stench of Huynh’s wound and that strange burnt-hair electric smell cloying the air. She was putting away the tools and the antiseptic when she sensed a whisper of movement behind her.
The blanket rose, lumped in the shape of a head and torso sitting up.
The blanket slid down and Huynh’s face came into view, fraught with shadows in the poor lighting. He opened his eyes and stared at her as if not recognizing her.
“Private Huynh?”
His mouth parted in a long sigh, and his breath was foul, as if he’d taken a final lungful to carry into the coffin and now had to relinquish it.
Huynh leaned forward as if he didn’t have the strength to support himself. Colleen caught him, not quite believing he was back among the living. But his breathing was steady as she laid him back against the pillow. He stared past her at the ceiling with an expression of weary wonder as if he’d just returned from a long trip to a foreign land.
Colleen wasn’t sure Huynh could hear her, or if he was in a strange delirium, but she soothed him anyway. “Just rest now, Private. Help is on the way.”
She regretted the lie instantly. There would be no helicopter evacuation, no ambulance with siren blaring, no hospital emergency ward. No doctor. No recovery.
No hope.
You should’ve just stayed dead. Mutants may be intelligent and different, but they can’t play God.
She debated giving him a morphine injection. The shot might kill him, but was that the worst possible outcome? He didn’t seem to be suffering, though. His eyes closed again and he almost looked like he was smiling.
Someone knocked on the door. She remembered Marina had covered the window, and the room was likely so dim no one could see in anyway. She lifted the makeshift curtain and saw Mark.
She let him in and he gave her a fleeting hug. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Just some lights. From her eyes, I think.”
“She’s just playing games. Taunting us.”
Mark moved to Huynh’s bedside. “How is he?”
“His heart failed for a second, but it could’ve been seizures. I don’t know. I’m way over my head here.”
He squeezed her shoulder to comfort her. “You’re doing the best you can, and that’s all we can do. What do you think?”
“I’ll stay with him, but I need to get some sleep. I’m starting to get a little spacey. I can’t trust my perception.”
“Okay, honey. If he makes it to morning, then we’ll figure out the next step.”
Colleen sagged against him, wishing they were camped under the aurora-veiled stars instead of this suffocating concrete box. “I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too, Colleen. You’re more important to me than…whatever it is we’re doing here.”
Colleen felt a cheap glow of victory, followed instantly by a tidal wave of shame. Mark’s sense of duty was one of his most appealing aspects. It made him confident, reliable, and sexy. And she was emasculating him by poisoning his will, weakening his commitment to the ideals he held most dear.
What good would it do to survive if the world he believes in is gone forever? What kind of man could he possibly be?
She even doubted her own motives. She was afraid, yes—she’d been so frightened for years that her rib cage was squeezing her heart like a giant fist. And Mark was a warrior, a protector, a fighter. Was her love truly born of attraction, or was it desperation?
Colleen wanted him. But she couldn’t pull him into the opposite bunk and indulge her escape while Huynh lay here dying. That would be a blasphemous mockery. Mark would be horrified at the thought, although he’d likely be tempted as well.
Eve’s apple tastes even sweeter when it’s dangled over a cliff.
But she would be strong. For both of them.
“Help me wrap his leg,” Colleen said. “It’s already infected, but clean bandages can’t hurt.”
Mark nodded. “You’re the doc.”
She was engaging in the task purely to fight her own sense of helplessness. It was busy work but something she could handle given the available resources. She would even apply more betadine.
But when she peeled back the blanket, she gasped as ice filled her lungs.
“What is it?” Mark asked, bending over her shoulder.
“That.” She pointed to the long, serrated gash that ran up Huynh’s bare shin, a knotted volcano of raw meat puckering in the center.
“You’ve done a good job of patching it up,” Mark said. “Did you stitch it?”
“I’ve not done anything. It’s closing up.”
Mark squinted in the poor light. “The blood’s drying. And that clear stuff, the pus…there’s hardly any of it left.”
“Kokona,” Colleen whispered.
Chapter 210
“We need to get back to Eagle One,” DeVontay said.
“I don’t know,” Lars said. “This place seems kind of safe.”
They’d chosen a barn not far off the road, which offered little protection at first glance. But it was surrounded by knee-high pasture where the first saplings were just beginning to reclaim the turf for the forest. From the upper floor, they would be able to see any approaching threats from a distance.
The meadow undulated in the breeze like a frothy sea, the aurora casting an eerie glow across the landscape. Mist hung in patches at the edge of the woods like ghosts serving as silent witnesses. Rachel wasn’t so eager to wade into that floral sea after the monstrous encounter in the river, but she didn’t want to stay on the open road all night, either, especially given the rumbles and low growls that issued from the far woods.
“He’s right,” Rachel said. “We can’t risk traveling at night. Since the Zap is dead, the birds likely won’t be able to track us, but we’re too vulnerable to all the beasties roaming the night.”
Rachel wanted to add that Tara and Squeak would slow their progress, especially given the young girl’s inconsolable state and her mother’s unstable parenting techniques. But Tara was likely to take any criticism as persecution, possibly even driving her away. And then Squeak would be in even worse danger.
“What about you, Tara?” Lars asked, as if this was a euthanasia board where everyone got to vote on their own method of suicide.
“I just want to get her away from all of this,” Tara said, hugging Squeak even more tightly, if that were possible. The girl looked stricken, peering out from her mother’s crushing love like a drowning victim sinking slo
wly underwater.
“Fine,” DeVontay said. “It’s not that long until dawn anyway. We can make it back to Stonewall tomorrow and spend the night there. We’ll be back at the bunker in two days.”
“I’ll take point,” Rachel said. She’d given DeVontay his M16, but the machete gave her confidence. She stepped off the road and hopped the mucky ditch, then threaded through the barbed wire fence that ran parallel to the road.
She hacked at the weeds as she headed for the barn fifty yards away, but soon her arm grew tired and she stomped her way through the meadow. Her pants, already wet from the river plunge, had no hope of drying given the thick dew that coated the seed heads and leaves. The others trudged behind her, step by weary step, Tara maintaining her constant warnings to her whimpering daughter.
They were halfway to the barn when Lars gave a cry of alarm and the M16 spat a burst of bullets. Squeak’s scream rose in the night like a soprano delivering an operatic aria, a quivering note that served as a climax before a final curtain fell.
Rachel spun, her machete already raised overhead, as the great dark weight tumbled at DeVontay’s feet. The pale, coarse-haired creature lay in a curved lump, its triangular ears rising from a wrinkled face that ended in a slimy snout. The cavernous nostrils twitched twice and then fell still, blowing a fine spray of blood.
“What the hell is that?” Lars said.
“Looks like a wild pig,” DeVontay said, nudging the animal with the barrel of his gun.
Lars stood over the broad, wrinkled neck with his axe. “Mmm, bacon.”
“Yeah, right,” Rachel said. “If you want to risk turning into the human version of whatever that thing is, be my guest. Unless it comes out of a can, I’m staying a vegetarian.”
“Shame to waste good meat,” Lars said.
“Well, I’m not standing out here butchering it,” DeVontay said. “I could feast on a rack of ribs, but I’m with Rachel.”
“All this noise,” Tara said. “They’ll be coming.”
“Come on,” Rachel said. “We’re almost there.”