“I told you, I’m not a commie. I’m a socialist.”
“Well, go be social all by your own damn self. We got a job to do.”
DeVontay continued through the trees, this time with Marina behind him. Franklin waited another moment, eyeing the granny-glasses-wearing hippie in disgust, and then turned to catch up.
He copies John Lennon’s Jesus look, but ‘imagining’ the world living life in peace just gets your ass nailed to a piece of wood.
The dry crackling struck as sudden as thunder, like the mainmast of a great ship breaking against a wave. Splinters flew all around Franklin, powdering his shoulders and dribbling from the bill of his watchman’s cap.
Marina let out a cry and Franklin spun to see a tree falling toward her, its jagged branches wide like the black arms of a hungry witch. He raced toward her, but the distance was too great. She dodged backwards and fell sprawling on the matted leaves of the forest floor, her rifle sliding away. A branch struck her a glancing blow but didn’t appear to cause any real damage.
The thing that knocked the tree over, though…
If Franklin would’ve been watching a big-bug science fiction movie, where arrogant scientists meddled in Matters Better Left Alone and square-jawed alpha males had to clean up the mess, he might consider the creature a low-budget amalgam of rubber and copper wire. Something that drew laughs from the crowd as they munched popcorn and distracted themselves from the perverts in the church, the sociopaths in the halls of Congress, and the globalists squeezing their life blood with every breath. But this monstrosity was three-dimensional.
It looked like a millipede in form, its great segmented back rolling up and flexing like an accordion. Dozens of wiry arms clawed at the air, and then the front of the creature dropped and planted on the ground while the midsection lifted. The arms there wriggled frantically as the thing lunged itself forward like an inchworm—only instead of covering an inch, it covered twenty feet.
Franklin marveled at how such a large creature could slip up on them without presaging its arrival with a crash of dead trees. But this thing lived here and had adapted in that same rapid, profane fashion as every other living thing that walked, clawed, and paddled across the surface of the Earth. It seemed only humans were stuck in the same evolutionary niche, being left further and further behind every day.
But this hellacious arthropod could care less about the rules of biology or physics—its plated head probed the air, hooked antennae quivering. Its hinged mandibles clicked back and forth.
It didn’t know or care that its genetic ancestors lived on rotted vegetation and feces. This thirty-foot son of a bitch wanted meat.
As the monster undulated and its head lifted into the air, Franklin squeezed off a quick burst, but he was firing from the hip and only a couple of the rounds hit the target. He might as well have tried to punch a hole through steel. The bullets carved a shallow groove into the thing’s hard shell and ricocheted into the treetops with a whining skreee.
The massive mandibles dipped toward Marina, who tried to crab-crawl away on her back. Millwood and DeVontay fired, too, but their shots also skimmed off the creature’s back.
Then it rolled again, dozens of skinny legs digging into the dirt and pushing it along. It coiled and lashed forward, this time sending the weight of its front segments crashing down onto Marina. The teen shrieked in pain and tried to roll over, but the needle-like legs pierced her flesh and pinned her to the ground.
Franklin shouted unintelligible curses at the monster. Its antennae spread wide as the mandibles dipped, a charcoal sketch of forest reflected in the dry cold orb of its eye. The mandibles clamped closed on Marina’s throat and peeled up her head while still holding her body in place.
Marina’s scream died away to a wet gurgle, and a coarse gray tongue probed from beneath the mandibles and licked at the coppery sweet morsel it had discovered.
Franklin emptied half his magazine into the creature’s flank, not daring to shoot near the mouth that tore into Marina. But then the creature lurched up and away, shearing off Marina’s head with a sickening crack of bone and tendon.
For one horrible moment, the mutant millipede was silhouetted against the cerulean haze, blood trailing from Marina’s long, black hair in a red rain. The creature attempted to swallow its feast, hard-rimmed lips gumming at the girl’s beautiful face.
Franklin screamed so harshly that his throat was raw. He staggered beneath the creature, dancing away from the staccato flailing of the many feet. With a bellow of rage, he locked down on the trigger and swept the muzzle up the length of the thing’s soft, pale, undersides.
Thick yellow pus oozed from the puncture wounds, and the creature swayed in soundless agony for a moment. Yet it still clung to Marina’s head as if it were the top prize at the world’s most demented carnival. When Franklin’s magazine was empty, he jabbed at the nearest seeping hole with his rifle barrel.
Millwood took advantage of the creature’s exposed position and drilled its neck with a dozen holes. Finally, the invertebrate nightmare sagged toward the ground, its limp mass threatening to crush Franklin. He dove to one side, banged against a splintered gray stump, and tumbled to the brittle leaves that coated the forest floor.
Marina’s head bounced away from her body, making soggy sounds that Franklin would hear in his sleep for the remainder of his days. When DeVontay helped him to his feet, the millipede still twitched and undulated, its lower segments turned upside down, jointed legs seeking to crawl away on the air.
Millwood jammed the muzzle of his M16 into the thing’s eye, which sent black grue cascading into the air as it popped. Millwood fired two rounds, destroying whatever central nervous system the monster might have possessed. It gave one more shudder and lay still.
“You okay?” DeVontay asked Franklin, his dark face covered in sweat and his good eye as wide as a golf ball.
He glanced at Marina’s decapitated body leaking onto the blue-dappled leaves. “Better than her.”
DeVontay trudged over to collect the head while Millwood examined the fallen monster. Franklin sat down again on the jagged stump, ignoring the discomfort. He knew he should reload, since the cacophony was likely to draw Zaps and other monsters. But sorrow crept over him like a sodden black veil, and he let the tears come.
When he emerged from his self-indulgent wallowing, DeVontay had placed the head near its intended position atop Marina’s neck. The place nature and God had decreed was right for this child, one whose parents had traveled nearly four thousand miles from Baja California to deliver to this land.
Millwood, who’d been wise enough to keep his snarky trap shut while Franklin and DeVontay grieved, finally said, “Should we bury her?”
Franklin couldn’t even muster any anger for a comeback. “We can’t leave her out here. She’ll get eaten.”
DeVontay put a hand on Franklin’s arm. “We can’t spare the time. She’s gone. Every second we waste is another second Rachel might be getting closer to…this.”
Franklin wiped at his burning eyes and looked blearily up at DeVontay. “She was a good kid.”
“Damn right she was. And if we can dish a little revenge in her name, I think she’d like that.”
“A-fucking-men to that,” Millwood said, collecting her rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. Franklin ignored him as he fished the spare magazine from Marina’s jacket pocket.
At least now I don’t have to tell her Stephen’s gone, too. Times like this, I almost wish there was a heaven. Those two kids deserve to be together forever if anybody does.
“They’ll be coming,” DeVontay said gently. “They” included every mutant nightmare on the menu, plus some side dishes that no one could possibly imagine.
Franklin stood on unsteady legs. Sadness brought an exhaustion that was deeper than any battle or struggle ever could. But as those armchair patriots in the Wings of Eagles used to say, “Full speed and fuck it.”
The forest had grown darker while Marina died, and th
e cerulean blue glow was more intense, a beacon that promised even more wonders and horrors.
Millwood looked down at the cooling body. “Should we say something?”
“I don’t think there’s any religion left anywhere on this Godforsaken planet,” Franklin said. “But knock yourself out.”
“I’d normally go for something from Saint John, but I think Saint George works best here: ‘All things must pass.’”
Franklin searched those words for comfort and came away with nothing. Fuck George Harrison. He was dead, too.
Isn’t there anybody left alive worth quoting?
He didn’t know if Bob Dylan was still alive, and the nasally old bastard would probably sue Franklin if he was, but maybe he was a leathery Zap running around half-naked somewhere. That was close enough. So he went with Bobby D:
“Let’s move. It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rachel couldn’t judge how long she lifted through the pitch-black column, since time was another perception she could no longer trust.
She couldn’t see Kokona or Goldberg. The only sound was the soft hissing of compressed air and the deeper bass rumbling that seemed part of the domed city’s foundation. At one point, Rachel extended her hand to touch the smooth curve of the cylinder, and to her surprise found only a thin layer of frigid air. She pushed through it into more darkness.
She could walk through the cylinder wall into that darkness, letting her eyes illuminate whatever was there to be seen. But she had no idea where that darkness led. Was it some sort of parallel reality, a pocket of dark matter? Or was it more illusion? But leaving the cylinder would bring her no closer to solving the mystery of the Blue City.
Was she a prisoner? Or did the Conglomerate grant her the ability to be free if she wished?
Freedom is just another illusion, though. Escape from the cylinder, and you’re trapped in the dome. Escape from the dome, and you’re trapped in the world. Escape from the world, and you’re trapped in the universe.
In the end, she stayed where she was and waited. A pang of separation anxiety rippled through her—she’d been so intimately connected to Kokona that the loss left her hollow. She could only imagine how Kokona felt, helpless and alone.
But thinking of Kokona as helpless was a mistake. The mutant baby had manipulated her way into Rachel’s misfit family, tricking Rachel into being her carrier. Then she violently overthrew a military unit that seized their bunker. She’d forced Marina to carry her to Wilkesboro, where Kokona seized control and exterminated the intelligent Zaps living there. After reviving Rachel from a near-fatal knife wound, Kokona again assumed control of her and they set out for this strange city.
So Kokona had some idea of what they would find here, yet now the baby seemed overwhelmed, as if the Conglomerate was more powerful than she’d expected. Was Kokona, too, laboring under an illusion?
At last the hissing sound faded and her movement stopped. She was dizzy and disoriented as bright light washed over her. She closed her eyes to gather her balance. When she opened them, she blinked at the astounding sight before her.
A long fabricated counter ran across the center of the narrow room. Behind it sat three small infants with glowing eyes—Zaps. They were dressed in silver suits like the ones worn by the Zaps in Wilkesboro and were propped up in specially designed seats that resembled child safety seats of the human era. She couldn’t tell their genders, given their wispy hair and rounded cheeks, but she assumed they were intelligent like Kokona.
Behind each of them stood an adult with those familiar, sparking eyes. The one in the center was feminine, although her baggy outfit subdued any curves she might’ve had. The two flanking her looked male, despite their smooth cheeks and uniform haircuts of a cropped, bowled style. They wore human clothes, although the garments were ill-fitting and threadbare in spots.
They’re not quite Zaps. Could they be…like me?
“You are here,” the six of them said in unison.
She couldn’t tell to whom they were speaking. Goldberg immediately pointed his rifle at them and Kokona wailed her misery and abandonment. But Rachel wasn’t paying much attention to her fellow travelers. There were no alloy walls here, only clear continuous windows and ceiling that were likely made of the same evanescent material as the cylinders.
The room must’ve been thirty stories above the street level, because the top of the dome was visible just above them. The radiant lightning emanated from what would be the North Pole if the dome were a globe and crawled along the curved sides.
A thin conduit—one of the antennae Rachel had seen from outside the dome—led from the pole to the top of the building. The energy flowing through the translucent pipe was the source of the blue light—what she imagined was some sort of electron-harvesting process as was used in Wilkesboro’s plasma sinks.
They’ve refined and improved the technology so it’s in a closed loop. Likely more efficient and safer.
“You’re correct, Rachel,” Kokona said, writhing with impatience. “Now come and get me.”
She couldn’t tell if the clear cylinder still encapsulated her. And she felt the need to wait for permission from the three strange mutants.
“You may,” said the Conglomerate, and even though all six spoke, Rachel felt sure the words originated from the combined minds of the babies.
Before Rachel could move, Goldberg rushed forward and slammed into the cylinder wall. He obviously couldn’t see it, either, judging by how hard the blow was. He beat at it with the butt of his rifle. “Let me out of here, you little freaks.”
Rachel couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard a soft giggle. She pushed out with her hand as she had on the way up, and again she felt the cold thin layer of air but was able to pass through. She stepped out on the floor of the strange room and retrieved Kokona, again passing through a thin layer of cold air.
Rachel cradled Kokona for a moment and then gently rocked her. She searched the baby’s eyes for some hidden message, as if they might share a secret telepathic link to evade the watchful gaze of the Conglomerate. But Kokona shook her head with effort. Whatever powers she possessed must have been subsumed beneath the might of these advanced entities.
Then what did she want here? Did she truly expect she could pull off another coup?
But Rachel also couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Kokona was playing her own game here and was withholding both her purpose and her power. On the heels of that thought, she wondered if the Conglomerate could telepathically invade her mind, which would reveal both her fear and Kokona’s devious nature.
“What about the human?” said the Zap baby on the left, in unison with the carrier who stood behind it. The baby’s skin was of an olive complexion, making its original human nationality difficult to place. It could’ve been born to parents of any of dozens of countries.
FORMER countries. Borders don’t matter anymore, nor do nationalities.
If indeed Zaps could be considered Homo sapiens, perhaps their ascension had eliminated racism. In this new age, all that mattered was whether you were mutant or human.
Or, in Rachel’s case and those of the three other carriers, some of both.
Goldberg continued to hammer ineffectually at the cylinder, shouting his rage. Rachel slid Kokona into the papoose so she could better concentrate on the Conglomerate and its reason for allowing them into the city.
The Zap baby repeated the question, and Rachel realized it was talking to either her or Kokona instead of the other babies.
“He’s angry because he’s worried about his two companions,” Kokona said. “You know how humans are.”
“We know only a little,” the baby in the middle and its carrier said. “That is why we allowed you and Rachel into the dome. You’ve been among them longer than our carriers have. You can help us.”
Rachel knew exactly what Kokona was thinking even without reading her mind: Yes, but what’s in it for me?
“I can help with the human,” Rachel said before Kokona could speak. “Make him lay down his weapon and he’ll communicate better.”
“Yes,” said the Conglomerate. “A symbiosis we have observed. Combine a human and a weapon and you can’t tell which one is in control.”
“Surely you know why they want to kill us,” Kokona said. “Look at what we did to them after the solar storms. Look at how some of us still treat them.”
“We didn’t anticipate regression among our kind,” said the middle Zap/carrier. Rachel wondered if this one, a pink, cherubic child whose eyes seemed to contain a bit more blue sparks than usual, was the leader. “It’s not just humans and animals they kill. They’ve even turned against us.”
“We saw them attack the dome,” Goldberg said, somewhat more subdued since he realized how futile his escape attempt was. “What happened to them?”
“We prefer not to destroy,” said the Zap/carrier on the left. “But we don’t prevent them from destroying themselves through their own ignorance.”
“How compassionate,” Goldberg said with a sneer.
“Is it much different from the ways of humans? Judging from information we gleaned about your previous civilization, plenty of people suffered through your disregard, suspicion, and hate.”
“We weren’t perfect, but we tried,” Rachel said, before Goldberg could work himself into another rage. “And we were evolving, in our own fashion. Heading toward more freedom, more compassion, and more tolerance.”
“We achieved such an evolution in mere years,” the Conglomerate said.
“Then treat us as equals,” Goldberg said. “Let me out of this goddamned monkey cage.”
Goldberg began beating on the cylinder wall again but after the third blow his fist went through and he nearly fell to the alloy floor. He recovered and moved his rifle into a defensive stance, slowly approaching the counter and the three babies.
“Now where are my friends?” Goldberg said.
Rachel couldn’t believe the Zaps would let Goldberg threaten them. They must have some capacity for controlling his firepower or perhaps they considered themselves invincible.
Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 4) Page 14