Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by Nicholson, Scott

  DIRECTIVE 17

  (Next #4)

  By Scott Nicholson

  Copyright©2016 Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books, Inc.

  “One of the most thrilling writers working today. Miss him at your peril.”

  – Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

  Look for the rest of the series on Kindle:

  NEXT #1: AFTERBURN at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #2: EARTH ZERO at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #3: RADIOPHOBIA at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #5: CRUCIBLE at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #6: HALF LIFE

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The storm came boiling out of the east electric blue and molten gold, as much a monster as the things that followed them.

  Rachel Wheeler hurried through the rubble, clutching little Kokona to her chest. The sudden wind threw grit against them, dust rising in a dark wall above the crumbling street.

  Kokona’s glowing eyes shone through the veil of the blanket, fierce and dazzling, the only visible mark of her mutant constitution. Rachel’s own eyes radiated a halo of light before her, pushing back against the rapidly descending darkness.

  “They’re coming,” Kokona said in her high, thin voice that barely carried above the storm. But Rachel didn’t need to hear, because the words penetrated directly into her mind. As did the unspoken and unnecessary command that followed: “Hurry!”

  “How many?” Rachel asked.

  “Three. Maybe four.”

  The hulking ruins around them might offer shelter from the turbulent weather, but they were too devastated to protect them from the creatures that followed. The nine-millimeter handgun Rachel carried was nearly impotent against the feral beasts. She wasn’t even sure whether they wore fur, feathers, or scales—she’d only seen glimpses of their lithe, predatory forms. But one thing for certain, they didn’t belong in this world.

  Neither do I, but here I am.

  “Over there,” Kokona said, somehow sensing the vehicle before Rachel saw it. The rectangular shape rose out of the billowing darkness, brilliant lightning reflecting against the windshield. It was a snub-nosed panel van that sat low to the ground on collapsed tires. The passenger door was open, and Rachel made for it, bending into the howling gale.

  Rachel dove into the van, half expecting to find a desiccated corpse or yellowed skeleton behind the wheel. But the cab was empty, so she tumbled Kokona into the driver’s seat and wrestled the door closed behind her.

  Small pebbles and raindrops drilled off the van’s chassis with staccato, metallic pings. The rear of the van was steeped in darkness but she could make out an array of pipes, hoses, brass fittings, and tools. This had been a work vehicle, probably for a plumber or maintenance service.

  “We should get in the back,” Kokona said.

  “Do you think they can smell us?”

  “Our scent is probably lost in the wind.”

  Rachel peered through the windshield at the gloom outside. The occasional flashes of lightning revealed collapsed buildings, cars coated in grime, and twisted utility poles snaking across the cluttered streets. The van was one of the few cars with its glass intact, and she wondered if it was strong enough to keep out their pursuers.

  Winston-Salem lay in ruins, just like Wilkesboro. She guessed a radioactive blast from a mutant plasma field had demolished them both. If the Zaps were truly intent on driving the human race to extinction, then likely dozens of cities had been leveled by the same strange power.

  Maybe hundreds.

  Maybe all of them.

  The creatures that had been chasing them for the last half mile were nowhere in sight, but they could easily conceal themselves in the ruins. Even though Rachel wasn’t sure of their nature, she’d heard their footfalls and glimpsed their massive silhouettes. She had no doubt they could eat Kokona in one bite and her in three, giving her only enough time to scream.

  “Your eyes,” Kokona said.

  Rachel closed them, following Kokona’s lead. The glittering lights would give them away otherwise. She climbed between the seats and squatted, pulling the mutant baby into the rear of the van. The space smelled of rust, grease, and rubber, but it afforded enough cover to grant a sense of security. Rachel unrolled the blanket from Kokona’s torso, draped it over the both of them like a tent, and then opened her eyes again.

  “We’re safe for now,” Kokona said.

  “They might hang around. Depends on how hungry they are.”

  “Plenty of easier meat around.”

  Rachel didn’t respond. Kokona and her kind considered humans a loathsome annoyance that deserved extermination.

  “Her kind.” I’m more like her than I am like humans now.

  “Yes,” Kokona said, in answer to her thoughts. “But you’re not quite one of us, either.”

  Which was true. Rachel had changed a lot since the solar storms five years ago, but the most dramatic transformation occurred when a group of Zaps healed her serious wounds and altered her physiology forever.

  In Wilkesboro, Kokona had revived Rachel from death’s door and deepened the mutation. Now Rachel was bound as a carrier to the mutant child, serving as arms, legs, and protector—a slave whose chains were telepathic, not steel.

  Worst of all, Rachel held a deep affection for the child. After years of teaching and caring for her, Rachel couldn’t even summon any resistance. She’d passed up several opportunities to kill the child and free herself, although she couldn’t be sure if that was just another manifestation of the Zap’s power.

  Perhaps even love was mind control.

  Rachel shrugged her backpack from her shoulder and rested it on the cluttered floor. She prowled through a toolbox for something useful, but nothing justified the additional weight. Cardboard boxes of copper fittings and drain valves were stacked among the mess of pipes, and Rachel wriggled to get comfortable.

  Something brushed against the van, but it was likely just windblown debris. Rachel wanted to look out the windows but her glowing eyes might give away their location.

  “What do you think they were?” Rachel asked aloud, mostly to hear the reassuring sound of her voice.

  “Difficult to tell. Some form of insect, I would predict. Animals with the shortest reproduction rates would be the quickest to mutate.”

  “Then we wouldn’t be their natural prey.”

  “There’s a new nature, Rachel. Our plasma radiation has ensured that.”

  “You’ve made the world inhospitable for humans. But you’ve also made it dangerous for yourself. You’ve poisoned the well you’ll be drinking from.”

  “We’re adapting. Humans are not.”

  “But you still need us,” Rachel said.

  “Not all of you. And only for a while.”

  For the hundredth time since leaving the contaminated wastelands of Wilkesboro, Rachel wondered about the fate of those she’d left behind—her boyfriend DeVontay, her grandfather Franklin, and the two teens she’d been parenting for years in their remote Blue Ridge Mountain bunker. The military’s attack on the Zap stronghold must have ended in disaster after the mutants sacrificed themselves to trigger the massive plasma eruption.

  No, Rachel reminded herself. That was Kokona’s decision. She wiped out her own kind in order to win.

  She had to constantly remind herself that this infant with the cute Asian features and fine black hair was hyperintelligent and cunning, able to manipulate those around her to ensure her own dominance. Even holding a conversation with her was bizarre, despite Rachel’s having cared for Kokona for the la
st four years. Now she could see that Kokona had indeed learned and grown—not in stature, for she was still as small and frail as ever, but in her ruthlessness.

  “What are you going to do with me when you’re done?” Rachel flung a hand to the world beyond the van. “When you get wherever you’re going?”

  The tiny child grinned with bare gums, only the tips of two lower teeth pushing though the pink. “You surprise me, Rachel. I love you.”

  Rachel had just enough willpower left to shield her deepest thoughts from the mutant. So when she closed her hand around a short length of lead pipe, murder wasn’t in her mind. But it must’ve shown in her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Kokona asked, glancing at the makeshift weapon.

  “I…thought I heard something.”

  “That’s useless against those creatures. What about your gun?”

  Rachel wondered if that was a taunt. Rachel was too weak to free herself from Kokona’s control, especially if it meant killing the uncanny child. The Zaps were a wonder, changed by the cataclysmic solar storms first into savage, primal creatures and then into communally minded beings guided by infants.

  While Rachel, Kokona, and the others passed years in a bunker, the Zaps tapped the lingering electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere, drawing it down into massive plasma sinks that fueled their burgeoning technologies.

  Now Kokona wanted to take her place in this new world, however much destruction was required. Rachel had no illusions of a happy ending. She’d considered suicide and engaged in reckless behavior, but once she’d met DeVontay, the nihilism shifted into a relentless desire to live. Franklin had imprinted her with his fierce libertarianism, but her compassion compelled her to care for the younger and weaker.

  Kokona’s taken that compassion and perverted it. Turned it into a sick form of slavery.

  Rachel placed the pipe on the floor of the van, careful not to make any noise. The vehicle swayed with the force of the wind. Somewhere above the roiling clouds, the permanent auroras reached long, shimmering fingers across the heavens in a cosmic massage.

  “It will be morning soon,” Rachel said. “We should get some sleep.”

  The baby smiled, glittering eyes set among light-brown skin. “You know I don’t sleep.”

  “Sorry. Habit.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned against the side of the van, Kokona in her lap. She was drowsing, sliding into the first flickering images of a dream, when the pounding on the back door began.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What should we do?”

  Even though she could reply telepathically, Kokona whispered back, “Nothing.”

  The air in the van grew warmer, thick with the smell of forged metal. Beneath the blanket, the darkness weakened, a dull illumination suffusing the space around them. Rachel flung the blanket aside and saw the outline of the rear door flickering yellow. Rachel wrapped her arms around Kokona.

  “We have to get out of here,” Rachel said.

  “Why?”

  “They’re burning us alive.” Chemical fumes rose from the solvents in the back of the van. Rachel didn’t know where the gas tank was, but she imagined it was near the rear of the vehicle. Sudden sweat dotted her face and her lungs clenched, ears ringing with a faint, oscillating hum.

  “If we go out there, they’ll kill us,” Kokona said.

  “And if we stay in here, we die.”

  “Not if we wait.”

  Rachel was annoyed at the mutant baby, but still she couldn’t rebel against Kokona’s influence. “You know what’s out there, don’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The pounding spread along both sides of the van in a deafening metallic cacophony. Rachel could hear frantic murmurs and shouts. “People!”

  She wrestled the pistol from her backpack and scrambled toward the passenger area, Kokona tucked under one arm. The baby flailed weakly and demanded that she stop.

  “You forget what we are,” the baby said.

  “What you are,” Rachel said. “I’m not there yet.”

  “Like they care about the difference? If you’re not like them, it doesn’t matter what you are. One look at your eyes and you’re as dead as I am.”

  The van shook as someone tugged on the driver’s-side door handle. Rachel had locked it out of instinct when they’d entered, even though she considered monstrous creatures the biggest danger. It hadn’t occurred to her that human survivors might still be living in the scorched husk of Winston-Salem.

  The fire outside was now brisk enough to reveal stooped shadows beyond the front window. The side panels rumbled under a series of heavy, dull blows. The driver’s window cracked and jeweled pieces of safety glass tumbled into the seat. A second blow shattered the window completely and a dark, hooded face appeared there.

  Not a Zap. No glittering eyes.

  Rachel leveled the pistol. “Who are you?”

  The figure grunted and reached inside for the door handle. Rachel twisted awkwardly in the cramped space between the seats, driving her foot onto the gloved hand and jamming it against the arm rest. Another grunt, and the hand withdrew, but more blows soon landed on the passenger window.

  “Kill them,” Kokona commanded.

  “I can’t. They’re people.”

  The fire now engulfed the rear of the van, metal ticking and paint popping in wet blisters. Rachel could see half a dozen hooded forms fanned out around the front of the van, several of them holding automatic rifles, others holding blunt clubs. They backed away when one of them grunted orders.

  Why didn’t they just shoot us?

  She was now convinced they’d been spotted entering the van and their eyes had indeed given them away. She and Kokona were greatly outnumbered, even if she were inclined to fight. Her best chance was to confront them and figure out what they wanted.

  “Don’t shoot!” she shouted through the broken window, even though she didn’t release her own weapon.

  “Burn, you freaks,” bellowed one of the hooded figures.

  Rachel assumed he was the leader, since he stood nearest and the others stood a little distance behind him as if awaiting his lead. The fire cast large, twin reflections in his face, and Rachel realized he was wearing goggles of some kind.

  The others were awkwardly bundled, wearing hoodies or knit caps, and in one case a thick parka with a furred hood tugged nearly closed. Someone came around the side of the van holding a flickering torch that dribbled fire as if swaddled with petroleum-soaked rags.

  Rachel sat the protesting Kokona in the passenger seat and perched on her knees in the driver’s seat. She stuck her head through the shattered window, knowing she risked getting it blown off. After a quick glance in the side mirror that revealed flames curling up the sides of the van as well as six or eight more shadowed forms, she shouted, “I’m one of you guys.”

  A gunshot thundered and Rachel flinched back, intuitively understanding that if she’d been shot, she’d be dead long before she heard the delivery system of her demise.

  The man in the goggles growled and said, “Don’t shoot, you fools. You’ll draw them from miles around.”

  They’re afraid of the beasts. That’s why they’re trying to burn us—noise will attract them, but flames will probably keep them away.

  The fresh air coming through the window offered only a few breaths before the acrid smoke trailed after it. The van was like an oven. “Shoot them,” Kokona hissed. “It’s the only way.”

  “I doubt I’d get more than one or two before they shot me,” she said. “I don’t have enough bullets to get them all.”

  “You don’t need to kill them. Let nature take its course.”

  Rachel looked into the grinning, cherubic face of the sweating child. The evil intent was plainly imprinted, and despite Rachel’s lingering and involuntary loyalty, she couldn’t hide the wave of horror and revulsion that washed over her.

  “You want me to lure th
e beasts here to slaughter them,” Rachel whispered.

  “You make it sound like I’m giving you a choice,” Kokona answered. “Besides, you want to do it. We’re so much alike, Rachel.”

  “If we draw the beasts, then we’re still done for.”

  “Why do you think the beasts will eat us?”

  Rachel touched her sweaty cheek. “Because we’re meat, too.”

  The child’s reply was almost chilling enough to push back the mounting heat, her words made worse by her tiny size. “Don’t underestimate my powers.”

  But the rising temperature and dwindling oxygen gave them no choice. They couldn’t stay in the van any longer. Coughing, Rachel levered open the driver’s-side door and wriggled out until her feet touched the ground.

  She jammed her pistol in the belted waistband of her jeans. Bracing for an executioner’s volley of gunshots, she pulled Kokona to her chest and eased away from the blistering heat of the bonfire.

  The twenty-foot flames threw orange and yellow flashes against the crumbling husks of the city, skyscrapers sheared halfway down the middle, churches stabbing unholy crooked spires at the turbulent heavens, houses fallen in dusty heaps. Fire glinted off broken windows, ash fluttering in the wind like gray snow. The hooded figures stood waiting, guns at the ready.

  “What do you want?” Rachel yelled, moving away from the burning shell of the van.

  The goggled leader of the group took a step toward her, jabbing the muzzle of his rifle toward her. “The baby.”

  Rachel looked down at Kokona, tucking her against her chin in a protective gesture. She gave Kokona a telepathic command: “Don’t say anything. Let them think you’re just a baby.”

  They’d see Kokona’s eyes, of course, but maybe Rachel could convince them of the child’s innocence. Rachel was certainly capable of acting human. Maybe she could buy some time, or at least prevent their immediate deaths. Given the humans’ evident fear of using their guns, she decided to keep her distance while she argued.