But the capital was just one of many cities that appeared as dots on paper even though they no longer existed. Operating as New Pentagon, Murray and her small staff achieved limited contact with humans beyond their enclave deep in the bowels of Virginia’s Luray Caverns. Chronic radio interference was only one obstacle. The larger problem was a lack of survivors to respond to their transmissions.
“We’ve got units attacking Charlotte, Atlanta, and Wilkesboro,” Alexander said. “That’s as far as we can maintain field communications.”
“What about these columns of energy you saw in D.C.?” asked Helen Schlagal, who served as Director of Homeland Security in addition to Abigail’s occasional lover. “If they’re the source of power for the hand weapons the Zaps use, wouldn’t it make sense to attack them far away from those sites?”
“We tried that, Helen,” Murray said. “It worked in the early days, when we could send out scouting missions and the Zaps were isolated. But now they’ve congregated around these powers sources and constructed new technologies. We need new strategies.”
“They’re replacing our cities, for all practical purposes,” Alexander said. “We don’t have a handle on what they’re doing out there. Photo surveillance shows those weird silver domes popping up everywhere, and we can’t get radar readings or any data because of the electromagnetic flux.”
“I hope we have more success here than in D.C.,” Schlagal said, shooting an accusing glare at Alexander. “We’re going to run out of sacrificial lambs, and we don’t have a lot to spare.”
The general’s face folded into a mass of wrinkles, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. They were all exhausted from the stress of near extinction, but Alexander’s pride placed an additional burden on his shoulders beyond the weight of his silver stars. “I hate losing men more than anybody,” Alexander said. “But that’s the price of admission. Not everybody can hang around the caverns all the time.”
Murray let Alexander’s old-school sexism pass. The “men” made up only two-thirds of their small, makeshift army. Plenty of females had volunteered and were among their most skilled assets. The apocalypse had broken gender barriers faster than politics ever could.
But Schlagal’s criticism was unwarranted. Her priority was in protecting whatever small enclaves the survivors could establish, and she saw assaults against the enemy as a waste of already-scarce resources. As usual with their disagreements, Murray was caught in the middle.
“Take it easy,” she said. “There’s no blueprint for this. If we sit and wait for them to come to us, we lose the element of surprise. Plus we’ve got no fallback plan. We can’t dig fast enough to escape if they overwhelm us.”
“You’re just looking at one settlement,” Alexander said, tapping an ink pen on the map to indicate three other places in western North Carolina and Virginia. “We’ve confirmed outposts here, here, and here. We don’t know much outside the Southeast, except through our limited contact with NORAD.”
“They’ve been dark for a week,” Murray said. “We don’t know what atmospheric conditions are like in Colorado.”
“Everybody’s dark,” Schlagal said. “We had London and Israel for the Earth Zero Initiative, but we don’t even know if there’s a world left out there beyond the caves.”
“All the more reason to hit them now,” Alexander said.
“And if we lose?”
“Then we stick with Directive Eighteen,” Murray said, referring to the protocols established in hasty diplomatic negotiations. The few surviving governments maintained contact via shortwave radio, but communication dwindled over time and now the Earth Zero Initiative was running on hope.
And hope is worthless when the Zaps outnumber us a hundred to one and are cooking up all kinds of crazy new toys.
“We have to think about more than just the Zap threat,” Schlagal said. “With the wildlife mutating, we’re going to lose more of our people to predators.”
Murray frowned. Two children had been taken last week while playing in the nearby creek. The mother had been gathering water, heard a scream, and turned to find them gone. All that remained was one soggy tennis shoe, its rubber toe coated with a strange slime.
“If we enact Directive Eighteen, that problem is solved,” Murray said.
“That would solve all our problems,” Alexander said. “Except the judgment of the Maker.”
“Let’s hope heaven is a Zap-free zone, huh?”
Schlagal frowned at Murray in disapproval. While they all maintained the illusion of a “Christian nation” to provide comfort to the survivors, Alexander was the only devout one of the three. For all of Schlagal’s rankling of the man, she disliked Murray’s pointed barbs about religion.
Murray didn’t care. She figured God had abdicated the crown on that August day five years ago when He let the sun deliver its harsh retribution. Maybe this was Armageddon, for all she knew. If so, the Whore of Babylon needed a new tube of lipstick.
“I don’t want to think about the fulfillment of prophecies,” Murray said. “I’d be the one ordering the nukes. Believe me, I’d rather not be the one playing God here.”
“If NORAD’s right, we only have forty warheads available,” Alexander said. “We haven’t had contact with the USS North Carolina in a while. And their telemetry and photonic systems are likely disrupted by the flux. We don’t even know if the submarine’s missiles can fire, much less be delivered with any accuracy.”
“It’s one big lab experiment and we’ll be pouring everything into the test tube,” Murray said.
“How many warheads will it take to trigger nuclear winter?” Schlagal asked. “We’ve already got radiation leaking from four hundred abandoned power plants, not to mention research and military reactors.”
“Conventional wisdom says a hundred Hiroshimas would throw up a layer of smoke, soot, and ash that would block sunlight and cool the planet by as much as twenty degrees.”
Murray snorted. “Hey, we can solve global warming at the same time.”
“That would just about secure your re-election,” Schlagal said, and even Alexander chuckled at the grim gallows humor.
“That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” Murray said. “Cancer, starvation or death from firestorms, take your pick.”
“I hate to be a downer,” Schlagal said. “But what if Zaps are immune to radiation and extreme cold? What if they survive it all?”
“Them and the cockroaches, huh?” Alexander said. “Well, then we just keep ending the world until the job’s done.”
There was a knock on the steel door that echoed off the hard walls. The bunker could only be accessed by a narrow set of winding stairs, since the elevator required more electricity than their array of solar panels could generate. There were two other rooms on the bunker’s level, including a telecom room and an armory. Under Murray’s orders, the level’s only other occupant was Ziminski, the rat-faced radio technician.
“Must be news,” Murray said.
“Or wolves at the door,” Schlagal said.
Alexander pushed away from the table with his good arm and walked to the door with a stiff, stooped gait. He’d taken a beating during the D.C. battle, the only survivor besides the helicopter pilot who’d transported him back to New Pentagon. Murray watched with some sympathy. Like Alexander, she was in her late fifties, and even the younger Schlagal had wearied under the stress of their circumstances.
Ziminski saluted Alexander and entered, giving Murray a curt bow that annoyed her. “We’ve got an open channel with NORAD,” he said.
He fingered his scraggly goatee as if lice were nesting there. Like most survivors, he’d let personal hygiene slide down the priority list, but he seemed to revel in his untidiness. His dark hair hung in greasy strands and his clothes were rumpled and stained.
This is the future of the human race standing before us. We’re screwed.
“Thank you,” Murray said, taking one last look at the depressing map before following him to the tel
ecom room. It was small, with barely enough space for a desk, two chairs, and the equipment. Most of the computerized gear had been fried in the initial electromagnetic pulse, despite the sophisticated shielding measures employed to protect it. Even if most of it still functioned, there was no fiber-optics grid or satellite link to connect with other systems.
The radio was an analogue throwback that looked like surplus from the Vietnam War. It was a bulky metal unit with a big boxy speaker, glass dials, and a microphone that featured a finger switch like a gun trigger. The speaker hissed as she entered, then the male voice came through distinctly: “Command, this is NORAD, copy.”
Ziminski motioned for her to trigger the mike and she spoke into it. “New Pentagon, do you read?”
In her old life, encrypted messages and veiled codes were the norm, but now there was no concern over espionage. She supposed the Zaps might have the technology to intercept broadcast messages, but nothing they’d discovered suggested such a capability. If anything, the Zaps seemed to communicate without the need for wires, sound vibrations, and speakers.
“Is this HQ, copy?”
“President Murray here.
Ziminski said, “You’re supposed to say ‘copy’ to let them know you’re—”
She clicked the mike again. “Copy.”
“Madame President. Is the channel secure, copy?”
“Good enough for government work, copy.”
“We’re operational on Directive Eighteen, just waiting for instructions, copy.”
Alexander, who stood in the doorway with Schlagal, said, “We should’ve developed code names for this. Ask them how many targets are confirmed.”
“NORAD, what sites have you confirmed?” Murray said into the mike. “We only have the six we reported earlier, copy.”
“We have thirteen on the West Coast, eight in the Midwest, two in either Texas or just over the border, four in the Northeast, plus yours, copy. No reports from the Florida panhandle or the Great Lakes region, copy.”
“So we already have more targets than available missiles, not even counting the enemy positions we don’t know about yet.”
“Affirmative, Madame President. Copy.”
“How many missiles are operational at this point, copy?”
“All twenty-four. We’ve lost contact with the USS North Carolina so if we want to coordinate an attack, we’ll have to stand down for now. We can manually program the warheads, but since we have no in-air guidance capabilities, we’ll just have to hope there’s not too much atmospheric interference, copy.”
“‘Close’ only counts in horseshoes and nuclear weapons,” Schlagal mused.
“Okay,” Murray broadcast to NORAD. “Work up a priority list of known targets, and include Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Wilkesboro, Atlanta, Richmond, and D.C., copy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” There was a pause, then, “It’s a little strange to aim a warhead at our own capital, copy.”
“We’re getting used to the strange. How many personnel do you have on site, copy?”
The only response was a hiss that changed pitched into a high, whirring shriek barely at the threshold of hearing. Murray covered her ears as Ziminski loomed over her, his body odor wafting as he turned various knobs. Finally he stood straight. “Lost it,” he said.
Murray nodded. Nuclear annihilation might come down to messages lost in translation. She hoped she’d made clear that the targets should be developed and that NORAD wouldn’t take it as a command to launch. There was little she could do if the signals were crossed.
“I hope they don’t burn Cincinnati,” Alexander said. “I grew up a Reds fan.”
“It’s probably already burned,” Schlagal said before Murray could shut her up.
CHAPTER THREE
“Rachel is here,” Kokona said.
Marina Jiminez perked up with the mention of Rachel’s name, eager to see the woman who’d cared for her after her parents died. The teenager rose from where she sat in the corner of the littered office. She was hungry and tired from the long journey from the bunker on the Blue Ridge Parkway to this smelly, crumbling city. She wished she could sleep for a hundred years. But Kokona needed her.
And what Kokona needed, Kokona got.
The mutant baby lay atop a desk in a nest of blankets, looking through a grimy, cracked window into the streets below. From the vantage point six stories up, the city rolled out in blackened spires and collapsed roofs. Here and there, small threads of smoke wended into the sky from wildfires that struggled to find fuel. The weird colored lights from that massive energy beam in the center of town reflected off the remaining windows and billboards.
Marina didn’t see why Rachel would come to this forbidden, bleak city. And for the first time in their five years together, Marina was beginning to distrust the tiny mutant. After the deaths and escape from the bunker and the massacre of the human campers they’d encountered on the way here, Marina wasn’t sure how much of Kokona’s behavior was due to survival instinct and how much was driven by something else.
From the window, Marina saw only a few isolated Zaps staggering without direction between the stranded cars and piles of rubble. “I don’t see her.”
“Of course you don’t,” Kokona said in her high, petulant voice. “You’re not one of us.”
“I am,” Marina said. “We’re a family.”
“We used to be a family. But now everybody is dead or lost.”
The baby’s mouth curled into a pout. “We can make new families.”
Marina glanced at Tan Huynh, the former soldier who’d killed people at the bunker so Kokona could flee. The Vietnamese man stood by the office door as if drowsing, but his open eyes glinted and sparkled like Rachel’s had. He killed on Kokona’s command, and he’d not threatened Marina, but she definitely didn’t want him as a family member.
“I want Rachel back,” Marina said. “And Stephen and the others.”
She was in love with Stephen, but even now she tried to disguise and deny it. Her feelings were weird. Even though they weren’t related by blood, they’d been raised together from adolescents to teens. So even thinking of him as “family” seemed a little creepy, but then again, everything about this new world was unreal. Who could blame her for creating her own rules and morals?
“I don’t know where the others are,” Kokona said. “And I only know Rachel is somewhere near the city. Even though we’ve been separated for weeks, our bond is still strong.”
“Then she knows you’re here, too.”
“I would assume so.”
Marina looked down on the baby, who grinned up with cherubic joy. She was beautiful, with a dark Asian complexion and mysteriously glimmering eyes, and once again Marina fell under her spell. She loved Stephen, and she loved Rachel, but she loved this special child even more. Once again she felt a surge of wonder that she’d been chosen out of all the survivors in the world to tend and teach and carry this tiny miracle.
“Will you help me find her?” Kokona asked.
“Of course.” Marina lifted the baby and cradled her. Kokona hadn’t aged physically in the time since they’d met, but Marina had. Yet Kokona had evolved in other ways, and Marina didn’t have to face the uncomfortable task of nursing the infant. She required very little sustenance and had even stopped wearing the diapers that Marina and Rachel had patiently changed for years.
Under normal circumstances—in Before—she might’ve said, “Our little Koko is growing up!”
But the only things about the Japanese baby that were growing were its intelligence, shrewdness, and appetite for influence in the wider world. Marina suspected the mutant was manipulating her, but when you loved someone, what could you do? You were owned.
Marina rocked the child gently as it closed its eyes. Without those sparking, glinting twin volcanoes burning into her soul, Marina could study it more objectively. She wondered about its biological parents and whether they had died in the solar storms or been killed later by Zaps, as Marina�
��s own parents had been.
“She might’ve come on that helicopter we heard,” Kokona said, opening her eyes again as if she’d just been concentrating instead of napping. She never slept.
“I don’t know why she would be with the military.”
“Every human is with the military, whether they sign up or not. You saw the people that invaded our bunker.”
“We let them in because those metal birds were killing them.”
“And look how they acted. Locked me in a room, took over, and kicked out Franklin and Stephen.”
“No, they left to look for Rachel and DeVontay,” Marina said, although now she wasn’t sure if she remembered correctly. Kokona had a way of clouding Marina’s judgment and memory.
“We had to kill the soldiers,” Kokona said softly. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t kill anyone…all I did was carry you.”
“It’s okay, Marina. They didn’t like you because of what you’ve done for me all these years. They would’ve killed both of us.”
“No.” Marina moaned, tears welling in her eyes. She looked out the window at the bleary ruins. She didn’t want this life. She wanted to be back in the bunker again, joking with Stephen, talking with Rachel, and planning for supply runs with DeVontay. She wanted people.
And all she had were Kokona and Huynh.
“Don’t cry,” Kokona said. “I’ll protect you. We’ll all protect.”
Marina blinked. “All?”
“Look out the window.”
The streets were now occupied by more Zaps—maybe ten or twelve. They were heading toward the office building, their faces turned up to the window. The colored light reflected off the silver suits of those not in shadows, and the faint, pulsing hum of the energy source accentuated the silence that hung over the city.
“Why are they coming?”
“The one who was here before me was killed. They need a leader and I need followers.”
Radiophobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 3) Page 2