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

by Scott Nicholson

  Instead, he drew, but way too slowly. Franklin drove the butt of his Winchester into Kleinmann’s stomach. When the man grunted and fell to his hands and knees, Franklin kicked him in the head. He collapsed and stayed down, flailing his arms back and forth as if wanting to crawl away.

  The first explosion startled Franklin, and he saw the flare of orange light in K.C.’s eyes. He joined her in watching the second. The helicopter was firing missiles onto the boulevard, taking down people and Zaps alike. With the birds all but vanquished, the machine guns turned their aim onto the ground, chewing up glass, metal, pavement, and flesh without discrimination.

  A laser beam arced wildly from the ground, passing through the tail section of the chopper. It left a smoky scar but didn’t penetrate the metal, and the helicopter banked less than fifty yards from Franklin. He fired an impulsive, angry shot at it before it descended for another run. Several vehicles went up in flames, their long-stored gasoline still potent enough to catch and burn.

  Two Zaps ran from the carnage, and K.C. pointed them out as she aimed. She squeezed off a short burst and one fell. Franklin fired at the other, kicked another round into the chamber, and missed again. K.C. released another volley and the Zap’s head exploded in a great burst of blood.

  The helicopter flung two more missiles into the melee, spit a last flurry of bullets, and then sailed west to the likely command post. Franklin wished he was on that chopper so he could look Munger in the eye.

  A distant female voice moaned for help, and other indistinct groans arose from the smoldering battleground.

  “Come on,” K.C. said. “We have to help them.”

  “We need to find Rachel first.”

  “So self-reliance and individualism basically means you get to be a selfish son-of-a-bitch?”

  He looked into her brown eyes, already defeated. Even his rage at Kleinmann dissipated, leaving him with an emotional hangover that he couldn’t afford. Could he really blame the officers? After all, their tactic appeared to work and arguably saved the lives of other soldiers.

  “All right,” Franklin said. “Let’s go. But as soon as we’re done here, we’re heading uptown.”

  K.C. nodded at the man wallowing on the belfry floor. “What about him?”

  “Let the Zaps have him if they want him.” He stepped on the man’s fingers as he left, and as they descended the stairs again, Franklin discovered a small cabinet built into the wall. He opened it and saw where the bell rope ended in a knot. With a grin, he tugged down on it with all his weight.

  The clangor seemed almost as loud as the helicopter and would alert any Zaps in the area. With luck, the half-deaf Kleinmann would be able to pick them off from his high vantage point.

  If not, well…he’ll serve as a distraction.

  They were crossing the churchyard when K.C. turned to her left and fired toward the small cemetery flanking the grounds. A Zap staggered toward them, slamming into a granite marker as bullets bounced off its silver suit.

  “Damn, that stuff is tough,” K.C. said.

  “Shoot it in the head.”

  “I’m trying.”

  The Zap fell behind a row of gravestones and emerged a few seconds later, again lurching toward them. It raised its right arm, and Franklin saw one of the cell-phone-sized weapons in its hand.

  “Zapper gun!” He dove onto K.C., knocking her to the ground as the laser swept wildly overhead. The ray was diffuse and weak, the equivalent of electromagnetic buckshot, raking a bare tree and tossing sparks but otherwise impotent.

  “Whatever motors those mutant bastards, it’s gone off the rails,” Franklin said.

  “The power source is screwed up. They’re all out of sync.”

  “Score one for the good guys.” Franklin propped onto his elbows and aimed the Remington. A gentle squeeze of the trigger was followed by a low boom just as a red hole blossomed in the center of the Zap’s forehead.

  “Nice shot,” K.C. said, pushing herself up from the ground.

  She was instantly blown back down as the sky ripped in half and a billion prismatic sparks rained down, the ground shaking and bucking beneath them. The shock wave rolled over them, hurling grit and loose debris against the walls and windows and cars. The church bell rocked back and forth with a raging peal, and a high whistling wind rolled and swelled just before the massive boom took down half the city.

  Franklin rolled onto his back and looked up at the crazy ceiling of the broken night, where auroras stitched dozens of quivering veins through the clouds.

  His last thought before sliding into unconsciousness was that Munger was right: he didn’t know a damn thing about war.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The blast had extinguished Millwood’s lamp and must’ve thrown debris against the bay doors, sealing them off. But the dome had protected them from the worst of the impact.

  “Are we dead?” Millwood asked.

  “If we were, I don’t think we’d all be in the same place,” Antonelli said. Aside from a mild headache and ringing in his ears, he was relatively unharmed except for the wound in his shoulder. He touched it and found it wet—he was bleeding through the bandages.

  The girl was crying softly somewhere in the darkness, and Colleen talked to her in soothing whispers. A lighter flared and Millwood held it aloft, looking around for the lamp. Its glass bell was broken but the metal base was intact, the wick protruding. Millwood lit the lamp and set it on the floor.

  Colleen crawled to the girl, whose tears made thin tracks down her dirty cheeks. She looked unhurt, but Colleen checked her over just in case. Antonelli pulled his weapon from the rubble-strewn floor even though it was useless now.

  “Did anybody see what happened?” he asked.

  “All I saw was this wild flash,” Millwood said. “That wind knocked me on my ass.”

  “It sounded like a mountain fell on top of us,” Colleen said.

  The girl gave a sob and said, “I saw…I saw Rachel. She climbed down from the building.”

  Rachel was surely dead. Like everything else out there, including Kokona. Antonelli felt a surge of pride that he’d gotten the job done even though it hadn’t gone according to plan.

  Mission accomplished. We haven’t had many chances to say that lately.

  Antonelli began removing loose bricks and chunks of concrete from one of the bay doors. “Help me dig out,” he said to Millwood.

  “Hey, I didn’t enlist. I was just doing you a favor here.”

  “Have I mentioned Directive Seventeen?”

  “Oh, that asshole thing where you get to make me your slave? Sorry, man. Free country. I got my rights.”

  “You have the right to die, too.” Antonelli didn’t even have to aim his weapon to make the point.

  Colleen gave Squeak a kiss on the forehead and joined Antonelli. He didn’t realize how small the space was until it was enclosed. Now it felt like the holding cell of a prison, one where the drunks and petty thieves passed their time waiting for processing. There seemed to be adequate oxygen, and Colleen’s rucksack held a couple of days’ worth of food and water, so he wasn’t worried about being trapped.

  But the dome instilled a strange claustrophobia, as if it radiated some kind of malevolent energy of its own. It was dented in places, presumably from large sections of debris falling atop it, but it maintained its structural integrity.

  “Line the material near the door,” Antonelli commanded. “We may need it later.”

  He didn’t want to add “if we can’t get out and need to fortify ourselves.” And he harbored another worry, one he couldn’t mention in front of Millwood and Squeak. Actually, he didn’t give a damn what the hippie thought, but they needed to keep the girl calm.

  What if there’s radiation?

  If the plasma sink was indeed a superweapon of mysterious origin, then it might have unleashed a whole new range of toxic effects. Nuclear weapons were replete with radioactive isotopes that could inflict fatal burns or destroy living cells
over the long term through cancer or poisoning. And they might be exposed even here under the presumed protection of the dome.

  After all, wouldn’t Zaps have designed the shelters for them and not humans? They could be getting bombarded with invisible rays or atomic anomalies even now. That thought made Antonelli dig even faster, even though his fingers were scraped raw and bleeding.

  “Man, I could go for a smoke,” Millwood said. “Been a long day.”

  “Make yourself useful and take care of the girl,” Antonelli said.

  “I don’t do kids. Lifelong bachelor.”

  “Gee, I wonder why?” Colleen said with disgusted sarcasm. “Any woman would love to bag a charmer like you.”

  “I gotta tell you, I loved it when everybody was dead. I mean, once I got used to it. Go into any house I wanted, free food, no boss to ride my ass, sleep as late as I felt like. The medicine cabinets of America are a treasure of the gods.”

  “Too bad the TV doesn’t work, or you’d be set for life, huh?”

  Millwood lit a cigarette from the lamp’s flame. “You stress too much. Gonna give you wrinkles. Take it from me, the more you stay away from people, the better off you are.”

  “The Zaps killed my mom,” Squeak said.

  “Huh?” Millwood didn’t seem to realize the girl was an intelligent being with a past. “That’s a bummer.”

  “The faster we get out of here, the sooner you can go back to raiding those medicine cabinets,” Antonelli said.

  “Well, you blew my whole mothership theory. How does it feel to crush a man’s dreams?”

  “In this case, it feels pretty damn sweet.”

  “Hey,” Colleen said, pushing a loose brick that sent a small avalanche of gravel onto the floor. “I think there’s an opening here.”

  Antonelli joined her, raking at the warm rocks like a mole. He wondered if this was the right move—if there was some type of fallout, they’d all be exposed to it. But staying was also a risk. He decided he’d rather see the sky one more time no matter what, even if that sky had become a glowing carnival tent of contamination. And at least he’d escape Millwood’s damned cigarette smoke.

  A small breeze wended though and dried his sweat, and he knew they were close to freedom. “Be ready for anything.”

  “I’ll bet the whole place got knocked on its ass,” Millwood said. “I could already see that tallest building shattering like Humpty Dumpty before the lights went out.”

  “They couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Squeak said.

  “We’ll put together a new building,” Colleen said. “You’ll have a nice place to live. I promise.”

  “And maybe all the Zaps are dead,” Antonelli said.

  “If they are, I guess they’re not aliens after all,” Millwood said.

  Antonelli paused and turned his back on the tunnel he was about to create. “Millwood, did you ever think that maybe we’re the aliens?”

  The bearded hippie’s mouth opened and his cigarette almost fell out. “Whoa. Heavy.”

  Antonelli looked into Colleen’s freckled face. Even in the dull orange glow of the lamplight, her green eyes shone with vibrant beauty, as dazzling as anything spawned by the plasma sink. If it had been just the two of them, he might’ve delayed their exposure to the outside world, content to pass a few days in anxious but intimate companionship.

  She gave a nod of approval, braced for anything. He drew her close for a kiss and whispered the words he’d been so afraid to say for so long: “I love you.”

  “I know,” she whispered back. “Let’s do this. Together.”

  They clawed into the sloping mound of rubble, the air thick with dust and a rising bitter odor. At first Antonelli didn’t realize they were through, because the darkness beyond matched the darkness inside the dome. He pushed aside a jagged section of sheet metal—likely a car fender—and fresh air poured in, nearly extinguishing the lamp.

  Antonelli exhaled and wondered if the next breath would be his last. He had to know if he’d succeeded in wiping out the Zaps. This was about more than just carrying out his duty, and there was certainly little honor to be had in a world without medals, parades, and triumphant televised victory celebrations.

  This was his chance to make a real difference not just for his nation, but for his entire race. The ideals he’d embraced as a career U.S. Marine had evolved in the face of extinction, and death was just a minor consideration now.

  Semper Fi.

  He shoved his arm through the opening and burrowed a hole wide enough to push his neck through, but two massive slabs of concrete jammed together to form an impassable crevice. He squirmed his shoulders back and forth, but the pressure launched a fresh bloom of blood and pain from his puncture wound.

  “Let me go first,” Colleen said.

  He pulled out and wiped the dirt from his face. “I can’t see anything.”

  “She can fit easier, with that skinny rump of hers,” Millwood said, extinguishing his cigarette and bringing the lamp closer to them. Even Squeak was curious, moving close to where they were digging while eating a candy bar Colleen had given her.

  “Might be dangerous,” Antonelli said.

  “Like every minute of the last five years?” Colleen said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Antonelli ran through a mental list—strange radiation, a Zap with a ray gun, a flesh-eating rodent, or an urban avalanche. Getting trapped and slowly suffocating seemed almost attractive compared to those. But before he could make a decision, Millwood uncoiled with a gasp and scrambled to the narrow opening, elbowing him and Colleen aside.

  “Holy shit,” Millwood muttered over and over, almost whimpering as he tried to force his lean frame through the tunnel. Before Antonelli could stop him, Millwood was in up to his waist, loose stones falling around him. He was stuck, his legs kicking wildly as they sought purchase. Antonelli thought he could hear the hippie’s desperate shouts.

  “What’s that all about?” Colleen asked.

  “Hell if I know.” Antonelli tried to grab the man’s ankles, but one foot knocked against his wounded shoulder, causing dark splotches to swim in his vision.

  “Maybe it’s about that,” Squeak said, pointing to one corner of the dome.

  Antonelli turned and realized he was going to have to add one more item to his list of horrible things that could happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The blast knocked Rachel onto her back, the recessed alleyway shielding her from the brunt of the explosion.

  A hot wind kicked up, pushing dust, smoke, and soot into the air, with various shades of gray replacing the blinding, variegated lights of the plasma sink. The massive, boiling cloud blocked the aurora, with shattered glass and large chunks of debris pouring down like hail. Rachel rolled and covered her head with her hands as the concussive wave pushed like an atomic tsunami through the city.

  The ground heaved underneath her, the concrete cracking. A fire escape fell from a nearby building and bounced over the alley in a jangling and creaking dance of metal. A panel van scooted on its side and hung over the lip of the alley, too large to fall in and crush her yet well placed to divert other falling materials.

  The initial thunderclap of noise had slapped her skull and set her ears ringing, but the follow-up was just as harsh—a high, keening wind, the grinding of pulverized masonry, the banging and flapping of loose metal, and the brittle breaking of glass combined in a teeth-grating cacophony.

  For a few seconds, Rachel wasn’t sure she could breathe. Her lungs were like bricks caked in ash, and her heart seemed to have sucked in a pool of turgid blood and was holding it until the danger passed.

  Although the ground settled a little, she could feel the small shivers as the shock wave spread out from Wilkesboro’s unnatural Ground Zero. A great groaning like that of large beasts rang above the clatter, the death cries of multistory buildings collapsing under their own weight.

  The wind changed direction, turning ba
ck in on itself like a tornado and kicking up more ash and grit. Rachel crawled beneath the van and looked at the street she’d just left. There was no sign of Bright Eyes except for the husk of his silver suit tangled around a fire hydrant. His ashes had been swept up into the churning storm.

  The site of the plasma sink was an earthen crater as big as a swimming pool. All the buildings along the block were leveled, with only some naked steel girders and white heaps of masonry and junk remaining. Vehicles were smashed together in tangles of steel, fiberglass, and plastic. Pockets of fire flickered here and there, whipped by the wind and snuffing out only to pop back to yellow life again seconds later.

  DeVontay…

  The office building was reduced to a mound of rubble a dozen feet high and spread out for hundreds of feet, a couple of corners still standing but ending in jagged triangles of concrete. Rachel dragged herself out of the depression, shook the dust from her shoulders, and stood on trembling legs. There was a sticky cut above her eye where blood clotted with dirt, but otherwise she was undamaged.

  If I died, Kokona’s not around to bring me back this time.

  She picked her way through the twisted signposts, utility wires, busted television sets, dining chairs, metal shelves, and hundreds of little cardboard boxes and plastic bottles bouncing along the broken streets, the finest products of the Consumer Age now nothing more than trash.

  No Zaps were around, although more empty silver suits lay scattered on the ground, some of them lumpy as if the wearers hadn’t been fully immolated in the blast. Despite the toughness of the alloy, many of the suits were shredded, revealing crumbling charcoal inside them.

  Rachel had a difficult time even locating the former office building. The black, swirling funnel cloud diminished a bit, letting some of the sickly green light of the aurora filter through. Eventually she found two metal posts protruding from the concrete, a rubber-coated threshold between them to mark the entrance. From there, she guessed the location of the elevator shaft and was dismayed to find a pile of smoldering cinder blocks and ceiling tiles.