Rachel paddled forward, rolling onto her back to keep Kokona aloft. The baby spat and coughed, even though she required little oxygen in her lungs. The sudden plunge must have taken her by surprise before she could close her mouth.
“I still need air,” she said, her anger making the words loud inside Rachel’s skull.
But Rachel was more worried about the Zaps than Kokona at the moment. Goldberg waded over to her and grabbed her by one backpack strap, towing her toward the pipes.
“Look at that,” said the man in the gas mask, his rifle held before him as if he was expecting war.
Several small dimples appeared in the curve of the dome above them. Three drone birds—possibly the same ones that killed the crow—squirted into the sky and soared above the Zaps. They broke their triangular formation and made rapid, zigzag routes over the rampaging swarm. Instead of attacking, they reunited a quarter mile up and circled in a tight holding pattern. If the fire and smoke bothered them, they showed no sign.
“They’re communicating,” Goldberg said over the shrill noise. “Like they’re on a recon mission.”
“But they’re machines,” the man in the gas mask said. “Aren’t they?”
Rachel, still floating, gazed up at the silver specks set against the ceiling of aurora-streaked sky. The unctuous water lay in a film across her skin. “They’re synthetic, but Zaps operate them with their minds.”
Goldberg pulled Rachel to the pipes, where she regained her footing. She wiped water from Kokona’s face. The papoose and the mutant baby’s fuzzy-footed sleeper were soaked.
Goldberg looked inside the largest pipe, the center one of three. It was maybe five feet in diameter, with maybe a foot of relatively clear water running through it. It was passable, if difficult to navigate. The other two pipes produced offal of differing colors, iridescent and foul-smelling. Goldberg’s comrades looked reluctant to enter the pipe, but were equally nervous about the drone birds overhead and the rapidly approaching Zaps.
“How do we see once we get in there?” one of the men asked. He wore a wide-brimmed hat over his hood, as if desiring to block the sun as well as the lingering fallout.
Goldberg pulled a signal flare from one of his many pockets, like a magician full of tricks. He handed the low-heat device to the man. “Pop this, but wait until we’re well inside. Should last at least ten minutes.”
“That fire didn’t do much,” the other man said.
“We didn’t know we’d get a better distraction.”
“And now we’re stuck between the two of them,” Rachel said. The wildfire had spread behind them so it cut off their escape to the forest on the west. The Zaps poured from the hills to the east, hundreds of them, and would soon reach the dome.
“No escape but in,” Goldberg said. To the man with the flare, he said, “Go as far as you can until you run out of daylight. Then wait for us.”
“What if I run into something?”
“Kill it or boogie downstream. We’re out of options here.”
The man arranged his weapon and rucksack, and then crawled into the pipe with the fuse lodged between his teeth. Despite the obstruction, he managed to curse with great creativity. He was soon out of sight.
Goldberg checked to make sure the birds still circled overhead. He nodded at the second man, who shook his head in dismay and entered the middle pipe as well. Goldberg waded to the creek bank and climbed up the orange-colored mud until he could peer over the tops of the weeds.
Rachel joined him, despite Kokona’s warnings. The Zaps moved at maybe half the top speed of a human, their awkward gaits consisting more of a lope than a sprint. The vanguard wave was maybe a hundred feet from the dome now, their rigid, gaunt faces bright blue in the projected glow of the dome. That and their glittering eyes made them look like aliens out of a prehistoric nightmare, creatures from an impossible future where humans had never existed.
“What’s going to happen when they reach the dome?” Rachel asked.
Even though her question was intended for Kokona, Goldberg answered. “Either they’re going to punch right through like the drone birds, or they’re going to pile up and die.”
The first Zap slowed only a little before it reached the dome, as if confused by its translucence. Then it slammed into it as if it were a wall of water. At first Rachel thought it would slip right through, as its lower legs and arms penetrated the dome material. But then the Zap stopped, stuck halfway like a fly caught in honey.
The Zap tried to pull back, even as the next wave of its brethren rolled in from behind. Its head yanked back and its mouth yawned open as if screaming, but any sound was lost in the insect-hiss of its fellow Zaps. It seemed to sink deeper into the elastic surface. Then it was pushed out. And a tendril of bright blue lightning flicked down from the top of the dome and struck it.
The Zap’s arms stretched wide on either side of its rigid body, the torso still able to rock frantically back and forth. But its legs dissolved as they watched, turning into a thick jelly before being absorbed into the dome. The Zap sank as the lightning retreated, until finally its head was submerged in the blue fluid composite that shielded the city. It was gone in seconds, without even a ripple to mark its passing.
“What the hell just happened?” Goldberg asked.
“They were assimilated,” Kokona answered, without her usual smirk. She seemed as stunned as Rachel and Goldberg.
Another three or four Zaps slammed into the side of the dome, and again tendrils of lightning snaked down to melt them. As far as Rachel could tell, there were no bones or organs left after the dome absorbed them. It was as if the dome was a living creature, one engineered to protect the city. After another wave of a dozen or so Zaps were absorbed into the smooth blue surface, the rampaging horde slowed and became cautious. Despite their apparent mindlessness, they still harbored a rudimentary survival instinct.
Or perhaps they understood they couldn’t kill if they themselves were dead.
“So we know we can’t go through the bubble,” Goldberg said.
“They’re coming this way,” Rachel said.
The Zaps began spreading out around the base of the dome as if searching for a crack or weakness. They would soon reach the creek. Rachel didn’t know if they would understand the pipes would provide them access, but she suspected they would try them. They seemed determined to reach whatever was inside the city.
“Come on,” Goldberg said, sliding down the bank into the creek. He waited for Rachel and together they waded to the main pipe. The other two men were already out of sight.
“Do you think whatever created that dome would be dumb enough to leave an open hole into its playground?” Rachel asked.
“We’re trapped between a wildfire and a Zap swarm. I think we’re out of options.”
“What do you think, Kokona?”
The baby closed her eyes a moment as if listening. The soft trickle of fluids from the pipes, the crackling of flames across the brittle grass, and subdued hissing of the Zaps were like a constant wash of ocean waves. The smoke and mud mixed with the ozone stench of the lightning in a cloying stew.
“You know I want in,” the mutant said. “That’s why we came.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Rachel said to Goldberg. “One thing you can count on with Kokona, she won’t take foolish risks with her own life.”
“Sounds like she lets other people take those risks for her,” Goldberg said. They could now hear the Zaps tramping through the dry brush and dead weeds. “Let’s move.”
He helped Rachel slide into the pipe, and she crawled forward toward the claustrophobic darkness ahead.
“You know what’s waiting for us, don’t you?” Rachel said.
“I know what’s waiting for me,” she silently replied. “I don’t know about the rest of you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Smoke,” K.C. said.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” DeVontay said.
“Where
there’s smoke, there’s weed,” Millwood said.
Franklin gave the old hippie a pass because he’d exhibited such bravery in rescuing Kelly. The private sat pale-faced in the rear, blood soaking through the bundle of cloth that encased her injured hand. The three fingers still lay on the floor. No one had worked up the nerve to touch them.
They’d rumbled through the busted city of Winston-Salem, K.C. gunning the Humvee over mounds of rubble and pushing vehicles out of the way when their path was blocked. They’d encountered no more overgrown canines in the last fifteen minutes, although Franklin thought he saw some sort of spider-looking creature on top of the burnt-out building. Before he could alert the others, it skittered out of sight, and Franklin figured it was best not to alarm the girls.
Marina had taken Kelly’s rifle and kept watch from the other side of the vehicle. DeVontay and Rachel had trained her well, and Franklin felt a touch of pride in his role of raising her. She was practically his granddaughter. He’d had some blood-kin granddaughters back in the old days, but he rarely got to see them—most of the family besides Rachel disowned him when he drew federal attention for his patriot-movement involvement.
“That smoke’s near were the blue glow came from.” DeVontay, riding shotgun, stood up a little so he could peer over the crumbling urban skyline.
“Follow it,” Kelly said. She was pale, probably bordering on shock, but she refused to stop and let the others tend her. Franklin figured if she could stand the pain and didn’t get infected, she’d probably make it. She seemed tough.
That’s how Rachel turned, remember? Got bit by a dog, and when the Zaps treated her, here came the glittery eyes.
He wasn’t going to let that happen to Colleen Kelly. The private had helped save Rachel, kept Marina and Squeak alive, and was the sole survivor of an army attack on Wilkesboro.
“What do we do when we get there?” K.C. asked, smearing at the grimy windshield with the base of her fist. “We don’t have an army behind us.”
“This army of yours is hard as hell to join up with,” Franklin said, keeping it light to distract Kelly from her pain. “I’ve enlisted twice and I still can’t find a bazooka when I need one.”
“We might be all the army that’s left,” Kelly said.
Squeak crawled into Kelly’s lap, and the young woman let the child rest its head on her chest. She put her injured arm around Squeak, careful not to get any blood on the girl’s pink jacket.
“I don’t want you to die,” Squeak said.
Leave it to children to say what’s on everybody’s mind.
“She’s not going to die,” Franklin said. “As soon as we’re out of the city, we’ll stop and take care of her, all right?” To Millwood, he said, “Mind looking in those boxes for a first aid kit?”
Millwood shot him a glare and then nodded in understanding. Tension wouldn’t help the situation. They were stuck together, so they might was well work together. He rummaged through the litter in the rear, staying well away from Kelly’s fingers.
The Humvee rolled through a ruined stack of crumbled concrete, broken glass, and rusty, melted metal that looked so desolate that it could’ve been post-war Hiroshima. Much of the rubble was blackened, with paint peeled from the motor vehicles and the windows smashed.
Two skeletons hung from a snarl of utility wires that hung low over a side street. Of course, most of the corpses had long since withered or rotted away, although undoubtedly the Zaps had collected plenty for their nefarious organic-material mining. Skeletons were rare sights and a grim reminder of how this city that once held hundreds of thousands was now a graveyard without a tombstone.
“Streets are getting clogged here,” K.C. said. “This must’ve been the downtown.”
A multi-story parking garage was folded like an accordion, making a metal sandwich of several rows of cars. A UPS van stood impossibly on its nose, the rear doors open to each side like a pair of wings. A section of sidewalk was washed out as if a municipal water main had burst and carved a canyon of erosion through the business district. There was no sign of life, either mutant or human.
“Maybe we better get back on the highway,” DeVontay said. “We can make better time and scoot around a lot of this mess.”
“Highway leads away from the smoke, though,” Kelly said. “From what I remember of our unit’s maps, the highway heads nearly directly east toward Raleigh. The blue lights look slightly northeast to me.”
“Maybe we can hit the highway and cut back north at the next town,” Franklin said.
“The blue lights are getting brighter,” Kelly said. “And there might not be a ‘next town.’”
Franklin had to concede that point. He wouldn’t bet on the existence of anything beyond the edge of vision. The entire planet might’ve broken off and headed for another galaxy, with the Zaps piloting it like a giant spaceship. Given what he’d seen over the past five years, nothing was impossible. What had once seemed true and reliable were legends that now seemed to have been told by strange alien cultures.
“Straight on until we bump into something, then,” K.C. said, revving the diesel engine and scaling an incline of broken walls and crushed motor vehicles. The Humvee emerged on a plateau of sorts, a line of roofs of interconnected one-story buildings. They sat with the engine idling, contemplating the swathe of destruction.
The smoke was clearly visible in a black rising thread that grew into a billowing cloud overhead. It rose from a dismal copse of barren trees at the border where the rubble ended and the collapsed shells of scorched houses began. The blue glow appeared more intense, as if originated from something just below the tree line.
“Whatever we’re looking for, it’s just a couple of miles ahead of us,” DeVontay said.
Millwood came up with a kit that contained cotton bandages, antibiotic ointment, and white tape. A little sewing kit contained needles, thread, and a small pair of scissors. “Anybody know how to doctor?”
“I do,” Kelly said. “I need stitches, but we’ll just have to do the best we can. Not sure I can sew with one hand.” She called up to the front. “What about you, K.C.? Any good with a needle and thread?”
“I can barely even tie my shoes.”
“I can do it,” Marina said. “Momma taught me.”
“Cloth is one thing,” Millwood said. “Human flesh is another.”
“Let her do it,” Franklin said, relieved the task wouldn’t fall to him. He picked up one of the fingers, the sudden movement awakening the bruises and scrapes from his earlier encounter with the insect-monster from hell. “Should we try to sew these back on?”
“If we had a surgeon, a modern hospital, and the best pharmaceuticals, then maybe,” Kelly said. “But under the circumstances, that would just increase the chances of infection. Best to close it all off and hope for the best.”
Hoping for the best isn’t a strategy. It’s a prayer. And prayers haven’t done much good so far, have they?
DeVontay fished Kelly’s binoculars from a hook on the side of the cabin interior and began scanning the rubble and the trees beyond. “What’s that?”
“Let me see,” Millwood said, lunging from the rear and nearly spilling the opened first aid kit. “I got two good eyes.”
“And zero brains,” Franklin said, steadying the first aid kit until Marina could grab it.
She gently removed Kelly’s sodden bandage, causing the private to wince in pain. Kelly bit her lip to keep from grunting. Squeak could feel the tension in her body and said, “When Marina’s finished, I will kiss it and make it better.”
Kelly gave a wan smile and rested her cheek against the top of the child’s head. “That would be nice, sweetie.”
Franklin glanced at the red, raw stubs at the end of Kelly’s arm, and then looked away. As Marina tore open foil packs containing alcohol pads and cleansing agents, Franklin wondered what to do with the finger he’d picked up. It seemed disrespectful to just toss it back onto the floor. In the end, he set it in the
toolbox, determined to fish it out and bury it later, before it began to stink.
By now Millwood had successfully requisitioned the binoculars from DeVontay and swept the lenses slowly back and forth. Franklin checked their rear flanks, feeling exposed and vulnerable on the rooftops where they were highly visible from a distance.
“Something’s moving in those trees, but I can’t tell what it is,” Millwood said.
“Let me see,” K.C. said, reaching for the binoculars. “All the drugs you’ve taken, you’re probably seeing pink elephants and rainbow unicorns.”
Franklin grinned. Then he realized that K.C. was emulating his style. He wondered if she was hoping to impress him or else was unconsciously beginning to mimic him. Neither of those choices bode well for the day when they’d have to go their separate ways.
Marina was already working the needle and thread, Kelly making little gasps with each insertion of the needle. Franklin wondered how she’d found enough flesh to pull together to close the nubby gaps, but he wasn’t so curious that he’d risk a look.
Besides, K.C. was muttering under her breath at whatever vision the magnifying lenses had revealed.
“Zaps,” K.C. said.
“What?” Franklin said. “We’d see their silver suits from a mile away, reflecting the sun and the aurora.”
“These don’t have suits,” K.C. said. “Just wearing rags, or nothing at all. They’re like old-school ragers from the early days.”
“That’s what I thought, too, but I was afraid you all would think I’m crazy,” DeVontay said.
“Maybe they’re humans,” Millwood said. “A rogue group of survivors that went batshit crazy under the strain and started a back-to-nature movement.”
“These don’t look like happy campers to me,” K.C. said.
The confined, crowded interior suddenly got to Franklin. After the years of relative isolation in his mountaintop compound, where goats were his noisiest campaigns, the walls of the Humvee seemed to close in despite its size. Or maybe it was just the wet, spoiled aroma of Kelly’s wound.
Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 4) Page 9