Using coordinates drawn from Charles’s map, Murray guided Torgeson east of Wilkesboro. The destruction of the city extended to the suburbs, with houses flattened or burned to the ground miles from the blast radius. Whatever this plasma sink was, its destructive powers were immense.
If only they could fathom the Zaps’ science and technology, they would have a fighting chance. But their investigation of the hand blasters and other captured artifacts revealed nothing of use. The apparent telepathic elements to their operation were beyond human understanding, aside from a rudimentary theory of electrical impulses in the brain being amplified and shared by hundreds of advanced creatures at a time.
They passed a lake and a river, then a four-lane highway running north-south that Murray pegged as I-77. Here the country was largely unspoiled, with giant pastures gone to weed, farmhouses set far apart, and occasional clusters of homes. The sun was like a bloody egg yolk in the sky behind them. From the co-pilot’s seat, Murray looked down at the ground for any sign of life. Aside from a herd of monstrous deer, she saw nothing to indicate Zaps had achieved domination here.
The ruins of Winston-Salem appeared just as she was thinking of setting down and launching a foot patrol. Despite the dangers, she thought they had to be missing something by staying so far removed from the land. But when she saw this city was just as devastated as Wilkesboro had been, she wondered if all the major human cities were similarly reduced to rubble.
Just as she despaired the recon mission was a waste, Torgeson pointed out the faint blue glow ahead of them. Smoke lay over the valley like morning mist, drifting across the ruins. The evening’s aurora was already out, imbuing the heavens with a sickly green cast. The sky was otherwise mostly clear, except for a few frayed clouds that held no promise of rain.
“Should we check it out?” Torgeson said.
“These wars don’t win themselves.”
The chopper beat air toward the blue glow.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A section of wall slid open before Rachel, the sheer alloy parting with a soft pneumatic hiss like that of elevator doors opening.
She didn’t trust any of her perceptions, so she wasn’t convinced by the recessed room revealed beyond the wall. The dimensions of the room were difficult to judge, since it was constructed of the same uniform silver alloy. There was no visible light source, yet the room was illuminated just as brightly as the foyer. The only features were three clear cylinders a few feet in diameter that appeared to extend through the floor and ceiling.
“Enter,” commanded the multitudinous voice. It originated from everywhere, as if the entire building was an amplified speaker. The walls and floor vibrated with each syllable.
“Who are you?” Goldberg shouted, his words echoing off the metallic surfaces. His rifle, so potent and deadly outside the dome, now seemed like a useless artifact of a long-ago era. But he waved it around as if its threat would make the unseen power quake in fear.
“We are us.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Come forward and find out.”
Rachel looked at Kokona, who wriggled in the papoose. “Should we do it?”
“That’s why we came,” Kokona said.
Rachel left the foyer, which held a veneer of human habitation, for the room, which was bare and unwelcoming. Now Rachel could see the blue light emanated from the clear tubes, as if they extended all the way up the building to the dome above.
“Don’t go in there,” Goldberg said. He didn’t follow them in.
Rachel wondered what the unseen voice wanted them to do next. She half expected the wall to close again and trap her with Kokona in a prison cell without bars. But Kokona was right—they’d been allowed to enter the city. Surely an intelligence capable of constructing such a marvel would have the ability to prevent intrusion if it wished.
After all, look what happened to those Zaps.
“The human, too,” the voice commanded, although the tone wasn’t particularly threatening.
“It wants you to come with us,” Rachel said. She wondered how the intelligence viewed her. Did it consider her a Zap, albeit one different from Kokona and the savage mutants that attacked the dome earlier? Or did it believe she and Kokona were the same?
“I’m not going in there,” Goldberg said. “Where are my men?”
“Enter and you will know.”
Goldberg fled for the door, which from inside the foyer looked like a modern commercial entrance made of glass in a steel frame. But when Goldberg slammed into it, it didn’t yield. He bounced off with a grunt and hammered at it with the butt of his rifle. The blows rang like steel thunder but the glass held firm.
Goldberg dashed to the nearest window and tried it, but it was just as impermeable. Once again Rachel wondered if the doors and windows were illusions crafted for their benefit. Surely Kokona didn’t have enough telepathic ability to control Goldberg, too. The unseen intelligence must be in charge of the visual fabrication.
“All right,” Goldberg shouted toward the upper levels. “I’ll play it your way.”
He entered the room where Rachel waited. Kokona said, “If it wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have made it this far.”
Goldberg pointed his weapon at Rachel and the baby. “Any funny business and you two are the first to die.”
“Oh, I assure you,” Kokona said. “This is not funny. Not funny at all.”
The clear cylinders slid open with a soft whisper of air, parting just as easily as the metal walls had when they’d approached from the street. The material seemed to be simultaneously durable and tough yet fluid, able to change its composition. Rachel couldn’t be sure if the transformations were organic or if they were driven by the owners of the conglomerate voices.
The Conglomerate clearly expected them to enter the tubes. Yet the tubes continued down through the floor. Entering them would mean stepping into dark space and falling.
But everything else is illusion. Why shouldn’t nothingness be just as fake? Like Kokona said, if they wanted us dead, why would they bother with all this?
Because all three cylinders had opened, Rachel assumed Kokona should take her own. The baby hadn’t sent her a telepathic message since they’d entered the strange building. But Rachel couldn’t be sure if Kokona had lost the ability or merely declined to exploit it. Maybe Kokona was afraid Rachel would achieve too much access and probe the mutant’s plans.
“I have to set you down,” Rachel said. “They want us to travel alone.”
“But you’re my carrier!” Kokona’s dark brow furrowed in what appeared to be genuine fear.
“I’ll be right beside you,” Rachel said. Despite the baby’s sadistic manipulation, Rachel felt a twinge of empathy for the physically helpless child.
Goldberg tested the cylinder material, keeping well away from the hole in the floor. “I wonder if this is bulletproof.”
Rachel pulled Kokona from the papoose and carried her to the middle cylinder. The baby flailed its chubby little arms and cried, “No, no, no,” but Rachel persisted. She’d willingly parted with Kokona the night before, letting Trudy hold the baby. Here her freedom was even more evident—Kokona’s control was diminished inside the dome. All the powers Rachel had assumed were Kokona’s likely issued instead from the Conglomerate.
When Rachel neared the open cylinder, she leaned inside and peered into the bottomless darkness. A faint oily, electric odor arose from the depths and the dull throbbing was louder. A waft of warm air rose and fluttered her hair.
It’s either a leap of faith or a fall of stupidity.
Goldberg and Kokona shouted in unison as she closed her eyes and stepped forward. Just as she figured, the “hole” was as solid as the floor had been. Satisfied that the Conglomerate wasn’t trying to trick them, she laid Kokona at the bottom of the cylinder.
“Don’t leave me!” The baby’s wide eyes and puckered mouth tugged at Rachel’s heart, but love wasn’t enough this time. The Congl
omerate ruled them now, for better or worse.
“She didn’t fall!” Goldberg exclaimed with wonder.
“I don’t know if we can trust them, but clearly they can lock us in if they wish. I don’t doubt they can control our movements or wipe us out on the spot. If we want answers, we’d better do what they say.”
Goldberg, his goggles tucked under his beard and his hood thrown behind his mane of greasy hair, said, “I don’t like getting bossed around. I came here to kill Zaps, not bow and scrape to some fucking oligarchy.”
“You’ve slaved under oligarchy all your human life,” the Conglomerate said. “Now you’ve become an oligarch yourself. Is that why you’re so worried about your two companions? Because they serve you?”
Goldberg spun slowly in place as he spoke, as if searching for a hidden camera. “You can kill us, but more will come. We’re born to be free. It’s in our nature. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Quite the contrary. Our nature is to set everyone free, including you.”
“Then why are you trapping us in this damned dome like bugs under a jar?”
“Because you would never meet with us voluntarily. As you freely admitted, you came here to kill us.”
Kokona tried to wriggle over onto her side, but her dirty sleeper scooted across the cylinder bottom. She didn’t have enough strength in her neck muscles to lift her head. Rachel turned away from the baby and stepped into the open cylinder to the right. She involuntarily flinched as she expected to plummet through space, but again the hole proved itself solid.
“You coming?” she asked Goldberg.
He cast a yearning glance to the foyer and the front door, and then eased the toe of his boot over the hole. When it held firm, he tested it with the sole of his boot. He stomped a couple of times, eliciting a metallic bung bung bung. Shaking his head, he stepped inside the circumference of the black circle.
Immediately all three cylinders slid closed, with barely a ripple showing in the clear material as it recombined and stretched. Now the three of them were encased in the cylinders: Goldberg gripping his rifle with clenched fingers, Kokona kicking her legs and waving her balled fists in the air, and Rachel looking up at the top of the cylinder, which appeared to harbor the same untrustworthy darkness as the floor did.
Nothing would have surprised her at that point. A hidden pump could suction the air out of the cylinders and leave them in a suffocating vacuum; the floor could indeed fall away and drop them into a hundred possible horrors below; or the blood of the assimilated Zaps could flood down from above and drown them like rats.
But despite herself, she was surprised when the floor began lifting beneath her. Not the entire floor of the silver room—just the round black circle beneath them as the three slowly lifted in unison. She rose toward the black opening above, fully expecting to be crushed like a carton of eggs in a trash compactor.
Instead, the darkness above her turned out to be nothing but darkness, and she was lifted into it with a steady hiss of air beneath her. Just before her head vanished into the roof, she saw Kokona’s angry, accusing glare. Rachel didn’t need telepathy to read the baby’s intent.
She’s going to kill me for this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The forest with its bare, spindly hardwood trees and low-hanging layer of smoke seemed to stretch on and on.
Franklin led the others forward, drawn by the hazy blue glow ahead of them that suffused the horizon. They’d been quiet since entering the endless rows of trees, braced for another Zap attack. Despite the number of savage mutants they’d killed, plenty more remained somewhere out of sight.
“Something spooked them,” he whispered just loudly enough for the others to hear.
Marina, creeping behind him to his left, asked, “How come they’re different from the ones that wore the silver suits in Wilkesboro?”
“They regressed, devolved,” Millwood said from his position at the rear. “Back in the good old days after the solar storms, they’d rip your eyeballs out and toss them in the air and eat them like grapes.”
“We were all there, remember?” DeVontay said. “That guy back there was scared, and not just because of the Zaps.”
“If he was part of a group that lives around here, he knows the territory better than we do,” Franklin said. “And he knows the threats. Too bad he flaked out on us.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know as much as he thought he did,” Millwood said. “Some people are incapable of keeping an open mind.”
“And some people are incapable of keeping a shut mouth,” Franklin said.
Without the blue glow to guide them, they could easily get turned around or wander aimlessly in circles. Franklin was uneasy leaving the Humvee behind, mostly because he worried about K.C. But they’d decided to stick to the plan—if the four of them were cut off and wiped out, at least some would survive.
For a while. We’re all on borrowed time here.
“That guy said Rachel was with them, and he had no reason to lie,” DeVontay said. “I’m not giving up until I find her. You guys can go back to the Humvee and get away from here. I’d understand.”
“And go where, exactly?” Franklin said. “I mean, K.C. has a pretty nice place and all, but it would just be a nice view to the end of the world. We’ve got to keep fighting this. Whatever it is.”
Franklin had aired the mounting belief that they were at war with more than just the Zaps now. Monstrous creatures roamed the land, exotic radiation tainted the air, and even the Zaps seemed to have divided into unpredictable factions. Their war wasn’t against just a single enemy—it was against the entire planet.
“Whoa,” Millwood said, whirling around and causing the others to stop. “Did you hear that?”
They fell silent, the only sound the faint creaking of high branches. There was little wind, which accounted for the smoke collecting like fog. If Zaps were around, their hissing would give them away. Since they tended to travel and attack in packs, Franklin figured the immediate vicinity was clear.
But I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Or DeVontay’s or Marina’s. Millwood’s, maybe.
“What did it sound like?” DeVontay asked.
“Like twigs snapping. But more than a snap. Like it was something big.”
“The trees are too thick for anything really big to roam through here,” Franklin said, more to dispute Millwood than in any real belief in the theory.
Marina coughed a little and tilted up her chin to listen. “I heard it, too.”
Franklin didn’t put much stock in Millwood’s drug-addled brain, but Marina was young and her senses were keen. They all tensed and instinctively drew together, positioning themselves back to back so that all directions were covered.
“What about the sky?” Millwood said. “What if some buffalope-buzzard flying fuck dropped down on us? We’d never see it coming.”
“A Zap ant could crawl through the sole of your boot and burrow into your skin,” DeVontay said. “If you waste time worrying about whatever crazy creatures this toxic environment is cooking up, you’d curl up in a ball and whimper yourself to death.”
“Shh,” Marina said. “I heard it again.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere,” she said.
Franklin looked behind him to see where Marina was looking and was dismayed to find her swiveling her head back and forth. But he couldn’t help feel a little pride in her assertiveness. The daughter of immigrants had come to this country and kicked ass. Not that the country existed anymore.
They waited for what seemed like minutes but probably was only thirty seconds. Franklin’s heart thumped hard and erratically. He breathed through his mouth in order to hear better, but his pulse filled his skull like a prehistoric drummer in a fire-lighted cave. The blue haze grew thicker, as if the cerulean shades had finally strangled out the grays of the world.
“To hell with this,” Millwood said. “That guy was right. It’s not worth ge
tting killed over.”
“Rachel doesn’t matter to you,” DeVontay whispered. “But I thought you wanted revenge.”
“Yeah, but I want it on my terms. Where I can see them.”
“Then you want Kokona,” Marina said. “But if we find her, you better hurry, because I’m going to kill her first.”
All the delusions of “family” Rachel and the others had embraced in the bunker had dissolved under the harsh light of reality. Zaps and humans couldn’t live together. Tribalism was as fundamental to the fabric of the universe as hydrogen was. Franklin even wondered if Rachel and DeVontay would be able to last, despite their obvious devotion to one another.
Hell, what am I talking about? NONE of us are going to last.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “If something’s following us, maybe we can lure it out where we have a fighting chance.”
“Sounds good,” DeVontay said. “It’s already getting darker. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to be out here when night falls.”
DeVontay led the way toward the blue glow to the east, Franklin following, and Marina falling in behind him. Millwood waited, leaning against a tree pocked with scabby bark and diseased knotholes.
“You going back?” Franklin asked Millwood.
“We don’t have any idea what’s up there.”
“I guess everybody’s got their limits. Good luck finding the Humvee.”
“Humvee? I think I’ll go look for that kerchief guy and join up with them. They’re making it.”
“Fair enough,” Franklin said. “That’s the thing about commies—it’s ‘all for one’ until the shit hits the fan, and then it’s ‘cover your own ass and to hell with everybody else.’”
“I told you, I’m not a commie. I’m a socialist.”
Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 13