Radiophobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 3)

by Scott Nicholson

  He found he could control his descent, even though his rifle was jammed at an awkward angle against his spine. It seemed like he struggled for minutes, but it was likely mere seconds, and when he looked up at the dim gray rectangle from where the others watched, he found he’d already lowered himself ten feet.

  “Like this,” he called. “Use both cables.”

  He waited until Marina swung out and duplicated his freestyle gymnastics, only then realizing that if any of the others fell, they’d take him along for the ride. And he’d land first.

  He descended another five feet and paused again, his muscles already screaming in protest from the effort.

  “What are you stopping for?” Marina asked.

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “I don’t see her.”

  He called her name, and it boomed along the length of the shaft. His view was blocked so he couldn’t see her in the opening above.

  “Keep moving,” Kokona said.

  The building quivered with a groan of pulverized masonry and something in the elevator shaft whanged like a giant, out-of-tune guitar string. DeVontay couldn’t climb back up even if he wanted to.

  Damn. I keep losing Rachel. And she keeps getting killed.

  She kept bouncing back, though, and DeVontay wasn’t confident he could accomplish the same feat. He would just have to trust her. He worked one hand over the other, his knees locked together against the cable, his spinal cord sending red flares to the top of his skull.

  He was in full darkness now, and it surrounded him like water. An unwholesome breeze wafted up from below, carrying dust and a foul, charred aroma. If it were warmer, he could easily imagine he was on an endless climb to hell, where the punishment for his sins was not the arrival but the continual, torturous journey filled with dread.

  “How are you doing?” he said with a grunt. He wasn’t really concerned about Marina, since she was vigorous and agile despite the extra bulk of Kokona. He mostly said it just to hear a human sound amid the grinding rumble of the structure’s pending collapse.

  “Save your breath,” Kokona said, stating the obvious.

  “You know where Rachel is, Kokona. Tell me.”

  “She can take care of herself.”

  DeVontay wasn’t so sure about that—the old Rachel certainly could, but how had she changed this time? Judging from the variegated facets of her eyes and her strange demeanor, he had no idea how much of Rachel was still in there.

  He had other problems, too, besides his cramping hands. What if they reached the bottom and were trapped? Climbing back up would be impossible. And although the shaft seemed to be well-constructed and girded with a steel frame, the building might crumble from above and drop down on them at any second.

  The weird shrieking of the plasma sink was somewhat muted here in the shaft, and the groaning and cracking of the building nearly drowned it out. But the pitch was clearly changing and swelling louder, suggesting acceleration as the power built up. He wasn’t sure how much Kokona controlled it, or how she might direct it for destructive use by the Zaps outside, but clearly things had moved beyond her influence.

  Unless THIS is what she wanted.

  He’d probably slithered three stories by now. He looked down, hoping to see light or some other sign of possible escape. Even as he mulled the hopelessness of his situation, he was planning how he might find Rachel again. Was there another set of stairs? Could he find a gap where the building had torn apart enough for him to scale it like a mountain climber?

  The cables stretched taut as the building gave a giant heave, and DeVontay waited for them to snap and shoot him like an arrow through the night. The shaking lasted only a few seconds, but it inspired DeVontay to ignore his aching muscles and scramble faster.

  He wondered if he was close enough to the bottom to drop, and then realized the building likely had a basement and maybe even a second subterranean level. The elevator cab was probably beneath him as well, and he had no idea how much junk was heaped atop it. He’d hate to survive a seventy-foot descent only to get skewered on a rusty piece of rebar.

  Marina’s grunting and panting directly above him suggested she was keeping pace despite struggling with the additional weight of Kokona. They’d all come a long way to end up back in the same place—even though he had no idea where Stephen and Franklin were, their fates seemed bound together for whatever little time they had left.

  The building rocked and the cables went slack and then snapped taut again, nearly pinching DeVontay between them.

  “Hurry up,” Kokona implored in her high, demanding voice.

  She’s not the baby we’ve tended all these years.

  Maybe Franklin was right. Rachel had always resisted the old man’s suspicions and questions about Kokona’s motives, considering him a paranoid xenophobe. DeVontay always backed Rachel, mostly because he couldn’t help seeing the mutant child as a helpless but intensely brilliant creature. He felt almost like a father to her even though they had little in common besides mutual survival.

  Now, though, she seemed not only a stranger but a real threat. He didn’t know what had happened in that office, or who had harmed Rachel. But if Kokona had indeed saved Rachel’s life again, she couldn’t be all bad, could she?

  His feet finally hit bottom, and he was pretty sure he was below ground level. Before letting go, he swung the toes of his boots around to make sure he had solid footing. The floor of the shaft was covered with crushed concrete and rubble, but it held firm as he stood. He had no idea whether the cab was beneath him or not.

  DeVontay waited until he felt Marina’s feet, then bore some of her weight as she wriggled down beside him. Kokona’s glowing eyes were the only light in the shaft. Even their point of entry far above was now dark, likely sealed by falling debris.

  “What now?” DeVontay asked, more to Kokona than Marina.

  “I think you’ll want to wait here,” the Zap baby said.

  “I’m not waiting anywhere. I’m looking for Rachel.”

  He ran his hands along the wall until he found where the elevator doors met in their rubber tracks. He dug his fingers into the opening and pulled in either direction, but the metal didn’t budge.

  “Turn her this way, Marina,” he said, intending to use Kokona’s eyes as a flashlight.

  The baby shut her eyes, throwing the shaft into absolute darkness, and said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “How did you get here anyway? Antonelli said you killed his men.”

  “That was Huynh,” Kokona said.

  “I carried her here,” Marina said. “I…I don’t really remember much of what happened. But Huynh tried to kill me up there and Rachel saved me. Huynh stabbed her, and she was going to die. Then Kokona—”

  “I take care of my carriers,” Kokona said, opening her eyes and illuminating the teenager’s face. “Always. That’s why you love me, right, Marina?”

  “I…I could’ve killed you.”

  “I forgive you. We’re all out of sorts here.”

  “But why didn’t Rachel follow us?” DeVontay said, not sure he was getting the whole story. Something even weirder than usual was going on, and he didn’t have time to sort it out. Not while they were all in danger of getting crushed by thousands of tons of concrete and steel. “How do we get out of here?”

  “You don’t,” Kokona said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They encountered the first Zaps about two miles outside of Wilkesboro.

  Franklin heard the shots, but Sgt. Kleinmann hadn’t ordered the troops to unload, so they sat grim-faced in the crowded truck bed, smelling each other’s nervous sweat and the mildewed canvas canopy. Somebody lit a cigarette, but the militiaman beside Franklin plucked the cigarette from the smoker’s mouth and tossed it out the back of the truck.

  “What do you think it is?” somebody whispered.

  “War, you dumbass,” came a gruff reply before someone hissed a sharp “Shhhh.”

  The fi
ring soon died away and the truck resumed its slow, grumbling journey. Darkness had settled, but the strange tower of lights from the city cast a sickly pall over the landscape. A Humvee drove past them going the other way, its headlights cutting a yellow path until it vanished. Minutes later the Humvee returned, passing them on the right.

  “That’s the colonel,” K.C. said.

  “Good thing he came back,” Franklin said. “This crew’s pathetic enough even with a leader. Imagine what we’d be like if we were just winging it.”

  “I don’t give no shit about no army,” said a buxom woman whose hair was in tight braids. “I just wanna kick me some Zap ass for what they done to my Reginald.”

  “They don’t even have asses,” said a man in a cowboy hat.

  “And just how much time you spent lookin’?” the woman said, which drew some too-loud laughter.

  The laughter died when the truck rolled to a stop again. A helicopter thrummed high overhead, and a distant explosion sounded. Kleinmann appeared out of nowhere at the back of the truck.

  “All right, you bunch of hard-luck heroes,” he barked. “Time to earn your pay.”

  “We’re getting paid?” Franklin whispered to K.C., who elbowed him in the ribs. He was stiff from the long hours sitting in the truck but he flexed and stretched as soon as he hit the ground. They were close enough to downtown that the road was thick with cars and there were houses and businesses visible just above the road on both sides.

  The unit had about thirty people, and none of them looked particularly dangerous. All were armed with rifles, mostly military-grade semi-automatics although a couple carried twelve-gauge shotguns.

  The column of light had gotten even stranger and now filled the surrounding hills with a cascading color show and a high, penetrating hum. The cloudy October night was a cosmic carnival.

  None of the other platoons were visible, but occasional isolated shots rang out on each side of them. One of the militia members asked Kleinmann where the enemy was, and he answered, “All around you.”

  The already-tense mood grew even more somber, and some of the more careless recruits straightened up and swiveled their heads back and forth. Franklin checked his rifle magazine and said, “We’ll stick with them until we get the lay of the land, then you and me are breaking away.”

  “How will we find them?”

  “If I know Rachel, she’s going to be right in the middle of it.”

  “You mean we have to go…” she pointed to the weird, dizzying light “…toward that?”

  “Got any better ideas?”

  The ground trembled a little beneath them. Kleinmann ordered everyone to lock and load and get ready to move out, and soon he coaxed the first few soldiers along the highway toward the dense buildings ahead.

  “Put on your game face,” Kleinmann said. “The Zaps have little hand blasters that can cook you like a microwave burrito.”

  “Don’t forget the monsters,” Franklin said.

  “Gee, thanks,” said the buxom woman, whose polyester pants were stretched to their limits around her thighs. “I almost forgot.”

  “Don’t think you’ll be outrunning them devil dogs, Big Mama,” said the man in the cowboy hat.

  “I’ll make sure they save a piece for you, handsome.”

  “Tighten up,” Kleinmann said. “Or half of you won’t live to see morning.”

  “What’s the objective?” somebody asked.

  “To make the world safe for sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll,” Kleinmann said. “Why did you think we were here?”

  “To kill Zaps.”

  “That’s just a fringe benefit. Now shut up and fan out.”

  Franklin and K.C. let the main part of the platoon get ahead of them. A couple of the more experienced soldiers—guys who’d been around at least long enough to earn camo shirts—led small squads down side streets to the left and right. This was largely a residential area of townhouses and apartment buildings, as well as a school and a couple of churches, but some restaurants, shops, and light commercial businesses were mixed in as well. The road was congested with vehicles, but not enough to completely block their path as they crept toward the city.

  “Something feels off about this,” Franklin said, once he and K.C had managed to isolate themselves in the middle of the sprawling platoon.

  “Besides being near that freaky-as-hell light and heading toward a zillion Zaps?”

  “No, I mean being dropped off here in the middle of nowhere when the rest of the action sounds so far away.”

  “You’re still that paranoid after all these years?”

  “Hey, it’s kept me alive, hasn’t it?”

  K.C. adjusted her hat lower on her eyes. The light had grown visibly brighter. “So why are we here, then, if it’s not some strategic ploy? Surely they did some recon with those helicopters.”

  “I can’t shake the feeling we’re disposable.”

  “Well, we kind of are. A bunch of volunteers who don’t seem to know their asses from a hole in the ground? Just give them weapons and drop them in Zap Central. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “That’s what I mean. They don’t have a whole lot of troops to spare. So why does it feel like we’re bait?”

  “Maybe Kleinmann knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “So why don’t we stick with him? He doesn’t seem like the type who’d go down with the ship.”

  “I don’t even know where he is anymore.”

  K.C. started jogging. “Keep up if you can.”

  Franklin cussed under his breath. Damn. This woman’s going to give me a heart attack yet. But at least I’ll die with a shit-eating grin on my face.

  As they passed a trio of soldiers who were creeping from vehicle to vehicle, one of them asked, “Gunning for glory?”

  “I forget to put money in the parking meter,” Franklin said, his lungs already burning with effort. They passed the schoolyard and continued up the boulevard where they’d last seen Kleinmann. The ground shook again and the tall buildings of downtown swayed in the distance. One side of a building peeled away and dropped, dust and smoke rising across the swath of brilliant, multi-colored light.

  A helicopter swooped in from the south, a dark speck against the swirling clouds, a single red light winking off and on as it approached the center of the city. The whirring blades changed pitched and the helicopter pitched and yawed, the engine sputtering. It turned away and veered east, the blades again beating the air at full speed.

  “It can’t get near that thing,” Franklin said. “Probably throwing off a lot of radiation or static.”

  “And you want to walk right into it.”

  “I’m going to feel like an idiot if Rachel’s safe and sound in a bed somewhere miles from here. But I got a feeling this is what Kokona’s been waiting for all these years.”

  “I can’t believe you let them live with a Zap baby.”

  “Rachel’s a Zap. I mean, say what you will about ‘us versus them,’ but family is family.”

  “You never had to take a stand until now,” K.C. said. “You put off taking care of business just because the job sucked. And now it’s ten times harder. Sometimes I wonder if you ever learned anything from the Wings of Eagles and all those other patriot assholes.”

  “I learned that I work better alone,” he said.

  K.C. laughed. “Oh, is that supposed to be an insult? I could be in a warm bed myself right about now, but instead I’m out here on Zap patrol looking for your people.”

  Franklin stopped to catch his breath, and then reached out and pulled her into an embrace, even though some of the others would undoubtedly see them. “You’re right. I’m sorry, honey. And I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Apology accepted, mister,” K.C. said, giving him a quick peck on the lips. “Don’t you forget it.”

  They saw a small group ahead of them and they hurried to catch up. The four soldiers were spread out, moving forward in unison, sweeping their weapons left and r
ight. They appeared better trained than the rest of their reluctant comrades.

  “Any of you guys seen the sergeant?” K.C. asked.

  A bearded man wearing sunglasses scratched his nose in contemplation and said, “I think he’s up ahead about a hundred yards. Said he was looking for high ground to get a radio signal.”

  “Well, that narrows it down,” Franklin said, scanning the multi-story buildings all around. “Thanks.”

  He and K.C. went another block, wondering if they’d missed a turn, when K.C. said, “Ah ha.”

  She pointed up to the skyline and Franklin squinted at the cross outlined against the strange light like God’s middle finger flashing the blasphemy of the mutants. The belfry belonged to a Methodist church and was open to the air, and a figure was plainly silhouetted under the arches.

  “He can see a mile in every direction from up there,” Franklin said.

  “Well, he’s not a sniper, is he?” K.C. asked. “We’re on the same team.”

  “I hope so.”

  They crossed the church grounds and neither a bullet nor a shout came from above. The church door was open and they entered, finding a set of stairs immediately inside the foyer on which the belfry sat forty feet above. They climbed the stairs, Franklin leading the way. The church smelled musty and corrupt, as if some parishioners might’ve gathered there in the wake of Doomsday to die pleading for salvation.

  Franklin didn’t pass judgment on such people. Maybe they’d died in peace. But in his belief system, you made your own salvation and saved each other where you could.

  Each turn of the winding staircase featured a plate-glass window that allowed them to see the boulevard below. They were nearly to the top—both of them instinctively keeping quiet even though stealth might get them shot—when they heard the unmistakable squawk and hiss of a handheld radio.

  “What’s the status, Sergeant?” came a slightly distorted voice soaked in static.

  “Nearly in position, Colonel, copy.”

  “Good deal. Just hold your position. The Zaps should be hitting any minute now.”