Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2)

by Scott Nicholson

  A whirring, whopping sound came from the distance, like a great bird beating its wings. Bright Eyes stood staring in the direction of the noise.

  “Is that something you guys made?” DeVontay asked.

  “I don’t recognize the sound. I suppose it could be an effect of the plasma sink.”

  “We’re not that far from Wilkesboro,” Rachel said. “Not far enough, anyway.”

  The sound grew louder, as if the air were being chewed up. “Take Squeak into the station,” DeVontay ordered.

  “Without a gun?”

  “It’s clear,” DeVontay said, and then realized that he hadn’t really checked thoroughly. The restrooms, janitorial closet, the ice cooler—he didn’t even know if the back door was open. He pressed the Glock in her hand, already feeling naked without it.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Going to Bojangles,” he said. “If it’s a freaky owl the size of a house, I want it to follow me instead of you. We’ll see how much juice Bright Eyes can summon on his own.”

  After Rachel and Squeak were out of sight, he motioned Bright Eyes to follow him. The fast-food restaurant still smelled of old grease and rancid meat, and the corpses slumped over the orange Formica tables in the booths didn’t help the décor. The whop whop whop still thundered through the windows. Whatever it was, they were in its path.

  I hope that’s just a coincidence.

  The walls began to shake from the vibrations, even worse than the pulse from the plasma sink. DeVontay whispered, “You got your blaster ready?”

  “I am prepared to channel whatever energy I can assimilate.” His namesake eyes glinted and glistened with fire, as if he were powering up.

  But the arrival wasn’t some hideous new avian or deformed gliding animal.

  An olive-colored helicopter settled into the center of the crossroads, its spinning blades blowing loose paper, leaves, and small pieces of sandy grit against the restaurant windows.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lt. Randall picked up the trail of the deserters, but Antonelli wasn’t convinced it was the right one.

  There were only two sets of footprints, and Randall believed one was of a smaller person like Marina. Antonelli thought the footprints could just as easily belong to Franklin and Stephen, or even the two people who’d left the bunker days ago. The autumn air was dry and there was no way to tell the age of the tracks.

  Besides, Kokona had somehow commandeered three people: Marina, Huynh, and Andrews. There should be three sets of prints.

  “Helicopter,” Private Stankowitz exclaimed just as they reached the Blue Ridge Parkway and the open shelf of high ridges it followed across western North Carolina.

  Capt. Antonelli shaded his eyes and squinted, but he only saw a few dark birds winging south in a vee formation. “I don’t see it.”

  “Over yonder.”

  “You’ve spent too much time in the dark,” Lt. Randall said. “Why would HQ send helicopters down this way?”

  “Maybe they know something we don’t,” Colleen said.

  “Oh, I’m damn sure of that,” Randall said.

  “Gone now,” Stankowitz said.

  Since leaving Luray Caverns and breaking from Field Command in Wytheville six weeks ago, Antonelli had only seen one helicopter and two planes. He could never decide whether those brief sightings were morale boosters or depressing reminders of how truly futile their dreams of conquest were.

  Stankowitz, however, seemed to think this was the first wave of the Earth Zero Blitzkreig. “They’ll be kicking some Zap ass for sure. Ripping them up with fifty-cals and Hellfires.”

  The soldier had been fourteen when the solar storms struck, and he’d enlisted at fifteen, New Pentagon’s minimum service age. He was still barely old enough to grow facial hair, and his scruffy goatee was a comical attempt at projecting maturity. He’d survived horrors far worse than Antonelli had seen in Afghanistan, but he retained a boyishness that disguised his iron will to survive.

  Antonelli had trained the boy, as he had most of his post-apocalypse volunteers, and watching them die one by one was soul-crushing. He’d never been married or bore children, since he was devoted to his career, but he couldn’t imagine how a father might endure the loss of a child. Bad enough when you only had them for a few years rather than a prematurely interrupted life span.

  “HQ wouldn’t waste missiles on a minor target,” Randall said. “Maybe it was just passing through on the way to Charlotte or Atlanta. You know, the real objectives.”

  Antonelli ignored the taunt. “Stankowitz, take point and head west, see if you can pick up their tracks.”

  As Stankowitz nodded and walked ahead, his weapon at the ready, Randall said to Antonelli, “I’ll head east and check it out.”

  “Don’t go too far. We need to stick together.”

  Randall gave a curt nod. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and run into the Fourth like we’re supposed to.”

  After posting Matthews as a lookout, Antonelli removed his binoculars from his pack and scanned the ridges and valleys that rolled out below the parkway. He saw several distant columns of smoke, but he couldn’t tell if they were burning towns or wildfires. A smear of colors on the eastern horizon caught his eye. He focused the lenses and made out the glinting reflections amid hulking monoliths.

  A city. Looks burned to hell. But what are those colors?

  “What do you make of that?” he asked Colleen, passing her the binoculars and pointing.

  Colleen didn’t seem comfortable as an advisor, as if Randall might resent her even more than he already did. But she looked and then said, “Looks like auroras. But thicker, like they’re condensed layers.”

  Antonelli pulled out his map and compass. Adjusting for the suspected pole shift, he placed the city as Wilkesboro. It was in the opposite direction of their ultimate destination of Asheville, but the unusual activity convinced him mutants were the cause of it. That would be where Kokona would head.

  “Captain!” Randall’s shout nearly caused Antonelli to drop his compass. He folded his map and jogged to where Randall stood beside an abandoned RV that had run into the ditch. Colleen and Matthews were right behind him.

  Andrews’s body was splayed across the RV’s spare tire at the rear of the vehicle. He’d been disemboweled and a bloody trail into the woods suggested some predator had found his guts and carried them off for a meal. Written in the gray film of dust on the window were uneven letters that read “MAKE WAR GO HOME.”

  Richards, who was a year younger than Stankowitz, knelt in the ditch and vomited. The soldier had seen plenty of gore in his day, but apparently he’d reached the breaking point. Or maybe he figured he’d be next.

  “Get Stankowitz,” Antonelli ordered the private when he’d recovered. “We’re heading east.”

  “That’s not our orders,” Randall said.

  “Since we’ve lost communication with Field Command, I make the orders. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He could feel Colleen’s eyes on him as Randall weighed the options. In the end, the lieutenant either figured he didn’t want to wander the apocalypse alone or else mutiny wasn’t worth it. But a dark shadow fell over his XO’s face, and Antonelli knew he’d never be able to trust the man again.

  “No problem,” Randall said. “Sir.”

  As they returned to gather their gear, Colleen said to Antonelli, “This is crazy. We should go back to the bunker.”

  “That baby Zap dies before anything else happens,” Antonelli said.

  “Mark, nothing has changed. We still have a chance to live. A chance at us.”

  “Everything’s changed. Kokona mocked us. Look at what she did to Andrews. Like this is all some game to her.”

  “She’s just one Zap out of thousands. Even if you kill her, we can’t win this war.”

  He turned on her, so angry that a vein in his temple pulsed like a red-hot wire. He was losing it and he knew it, but he couldn’t stuff that deprave
d genie back in the bottle. “I don’t want to win the war. I just want to win one battle. Just one goddamned time.” He tilted back his head as if he were raging at a distant creator in the uncaring heavens. “Is that too much to ask?”

  Forcing himself to regain control, he caught up with the remainder of his unit, marching so fast that Colleen had to jog to keep up. Randall was already well ahead, vanishing out of sight around a bend in the road. Matthews and Stankowitz were on high alert, scanning the slopes both below and above the road for any movement, as well as checking any vehicles they passed.

  There was no question of stopping to bury Andrews. The dead would have to take care of themselves.

  “I wish that helicopter would come back and pick us up,” Matthews said. “Like those choppers in Nam.”

  “We’re on our own,” Antonelli said. “Better get used to the idea. Daydreaming will get you killed, and there aren’t any body bags in Zapland.”

  Antonelli kept up a brisk pace despite knowing they were all exhausted. He was driven by a thirst for revenge he’d never felt before. He should’ve been frightened to find this particular demon roasting away inside him, but instead he found it gave him renewed strength and determination. And, in a way, a sense of hope that was sick and selfish.

  If I’d have known this, I would’ve sold my soul long ago. Let’s rock-n-roll.

  The gunshots came ten minutes later, and the unit double-timed to find Randall firing into the woods. Antonelli waved the others into position along the ditch line. He aimed his M16 into the trembling trees and saw only shadowy shapes. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Randall said. “But they’re big. And there’s a lot of them.”

  Matthews shouted and unleashed a burst of semiautomatic fire. Then the woods erupted with thunder, and Antonelli couldn’t believe his eyes even as he sighted down the barrel of his rifle and fired.

  A herd of…deer?

  Colleen muttered, “Oh my God!” beside him and sprayed a hail of bullets at the mutant animals. Their hooves were thick and sharp, eyes glistening with bloody menace, and they charged with a relentlessness that shook the ground. One of them dropped and rolled several times, hooves slapping at the air. Several of the larger ones leading the charge sported massive and demented tangles of antlers.

  Stankowitz panicked and abandoned his post, heading back up the road. He was apparently making for a Honda fifty yards away. He flung down his rifle so he could run faster, and it clattered across the pavement.

  Antonelli shouted at the private as four of the deformed deer galloped after him. He fired a burst into one, but it must have been impossibly strong because it barely slowed down. Randall, Colleen, and Matthews kept a steady volley along the tree line, but few of the animals fell. However, they faded back into the woods only to renew their attack seconds later before the group could relax.

  Stankowitz reached the Honda and luck was with him—the driver’s side door was unlocked. He climbed in and closed the door. Seconds later the pursuing deer reached him, traveling in unison. They didn’t slow as they closed in, instead lowering their heads as they rammed into sheet metal and plastic and glass.

  WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP.

  The battered car turned over on its side and scooted into the opposite lane. Antonelli turned his attention back to the deer before him, which were now drawing dangerously close, but he was aware of the thumping and banging sounds behind him.

  “What do we do?” Colleen said. “Our ammo won’t hold out.”

  Antonelli knew what she was thinking: We could be in the bunker right now.

  He glanced back to the Honda and saw that the deer had nudged the sedan all the way to the opposite shoulder of the road. There was no guardrail and a sheer canyon yawned out below. He got a glimpse of Stankowitz’s horrified, wide-eyed face through the windshield just as the deer made a battering lunge that shoved the car over the edge. It tumbled down the rocky slope with a great rending and crumpling that seemed to last for ten seconds.

  Randall stood and made his own run for it, only he headed for the woods to the left of the manic herd. “Take cover,” he shouted behind him.

  The herd immediately turned and gave chase, even the stragglers that had busied themselves with the Honda. They raced after Randall, their hooves plowing up the grass, as Antonelli, Colleen, and Matthews pressed themselves into the wet mud of the ditch.

  The woods bristled with the snapping of branches and rattling of leaves as Randall lured the mutant creatures away. Occasional gunfire boomed, but only in single shots, as Randall was obviously preserving his ammo. The carnage drifted into the deep forest and then faded in the distance.

  Minutes later, they rose and peered over the ledge. The Honda was only barely visible in the scrub, its windows shattered and roof smashed like a beer can beneath a drunk’s boot. No chance of anyone surviving in that wreckage.

  “Randall saved us,” Colleen said.

  He was a better man than me.

  Matthews was nearly speechless with fright. “I don’t want to be out here no more, Captain.”

  “Then I suggest we get a move on,” Antonelli said.

  “Where?” Colleen gazed at him with desperate green eyes.

  He pointed toward the hazy, glinting circus lights of Wilkesboro. “There.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  K.C. had done quite well for herself in the apocalypse.

  She lived in a Colonial-style home two miles above Stonewall with high white columns on the portico and ivy climbing the lattice surrounding the porch. The black-shuttered house had a green tin roof and, aside from the peeling paint and the grid of metal bars over the windows, it looked like the well-appointed home of a Southern senator or industrialist. A brick wall surrounding the two-acre property was also covered in ivy, and wrought-iron gates at the front and rear entrances provided protection from two-legged and four-legged beasts.

  “Can’t do much about the birds, but the window bars at least keep them out of the house,” K.C. said as she unlocked the front gate and let them enter. Princess clopped along the brick driveway like a show pony before moving out to try the ankle-high grass on the lawn.

  “Somebody so rich they were afraid somebody would break in and rob them blind,” Franklin said. “Nice.”

  “I only had to clear out two deaders. I’m guessing one was a servant. The old man was probably the owner.”

  “Did you at least give him a decent burial?”

  “Oh, hell, no. I just dumped him over the wall. Let them eat cake.”

  Franklin had to chuckle at that. A little of the old subversive zeal still ran through both of them, and taking back from the oligarchs was a libertarian wet dream. Especially when you didn’t even have to shed blood to do it.

  A cherry-red Jaguar XJ sat in the driveway near the porch, lovingly polished and the windshield sparkling clean in the sun. “Sweet ride,” Franklin said.

  “I’ve always wanted one. Fact is, now that I have it all, I finally understand why rich assholes wanted to be rich assholes. Too bad it gets zero miles to the gallon, but I figure if all this is ever over, I got legal lien on it. Finders keepers, right?”

  “Seems to be the lay of the land.”

  “Princess should be just fine out here. If anything swoops out of the sky, she can hide herself in the garage. Come on in and make yourself at home.” K.C. spoke with a great deal of pride, like a nineteenth-century belle hosting a cotillion.

  Just as they were climbing the porch steps, they heard the helicopter thropping in the distance and moving away. As they glanced at each other, K.C. said, “Third time this week.”

  “You think the military’s on the move?” Franklin said.

  “More likely that’s the only one they got in the area. I ain’t seen much else.”

  “We ran into some troops on the mountain. Saved their asses and then they seized our bunker. And after we’d gone to all that trouble of stealing it fair and square from the government.”

&nbs
p; “Guess nobody told them about ‘Finders keepers’ yet, huh?” K.C. opened the door and led him into the foyer, which featured antique tables and sideboards as well as high mirrors positioned to enhance the natural light. Evidently she spent a lot of time housekeeping, a discovery that surprised Franklin, considering how she’d been perfectly at ease wallowing in the Tennessee mud for weeks at a time.

  “If they’re an example of what’s left, I’m guessing it’s going to be a short war.”

  “I see you didn’t enlist,” she said, leading him down a hall and into a living room with a vaulted ceiling. Plush velvet couches and settees projected a decadent Queen Anne feel, and silver candlesticks and urns were arrayed across the fireplace mantel. A large portrait over the fireplace featured a scowling old coot in a hunting cap who likely was an ancestor of the home’s owner. Franklin followed K.C.’s lead and leaned his rifle against the wall.

  “The only company I got these days,” K.C. said, seeing him study it. “I had a dog for a while, but some critter carried it off. What are you doing in these parts anyway, if you had a nice, cozy bunker?”

  “Long story.” Franklin held his watchman’s cap in his hands, nervously twirling it, as uncomfortable as if he were a delinquent sharecropper called to the master’s plantation house. “The rumor you heard was true, like they usually are. I built a compound and got by real fine, and then my granddaughter showed up—”

  He didn’t want to get into the whole half-mutant business. “Anyway, she had some people with her, and they ended up living in the bunker after a rogue unit abandoned it. Shielded, solar power, rations, weapons, the whole bit. She and her boyfriend came to Stonewall on a supply run and never made it back. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Well, I might’ve seen them.”

  “Serious?” Franklin anxiously tugged his beard. “When?”