Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) (18 page)

“Chopper!” one of the soldiers cried, and DeVontay realized the guy was a teenager barely hiding his panic.

His announcement was followed by a barrage of high-caliber machine-gun fire. The rows of Zaps thinned dramatically, and now only a handful remained. Some of the fallen twitched and crawled brokenly, but not a sound came from their mouths. Then came a whooshing of air and an explosion ripped the pavement beneath them, knocking mutants against stranded vehicles and into the muddy ditches and spraying pebbles and shrapnel along the crossroads.

As the helicopter descended and settled on the road outside the restaurant, a second missile fired from one of its ports, the percussive explosion shattering windows in the nearby stores. Only a few Zaps remained, and they wandered aimlessly and off balance.

“Move out,” the officer said, waving to his troops as the chopper’s cabin door slid open. He looked at Bright Eyes, then at DeVontay and the others and said, “All of you.”

“He saved your life,” DeVontay said. “He’s an asset and an ally. Not a prisoner. Or no deal.”

The officer pursed his lips in thought. “Not my call, but I’ll put in a good word about what you guys did.”

“Good enough,” DeVontay said.

“That goes for all of us,” Rachel added, finally removing her dark, bulbous sunglasses. “Assets, not prisoners.”

The officer shook his head as if he couldn’t handle any more surprises. “I thought I’d seen it all. What a clusterfuck.”

He held out his hand and after a few seconds, DeVontay gave the man his Glock and took Bright Eyes’ device from him and surrendered it as well.

The officer waved them toward the helicopter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Explosions,” Colleen said.

“If they came from the Blackhawks we’ve been hearing, those would be Hellfire missiles,” Antonelli said. “See how the Zaps like some home cooking.”

“That’s good,” Colleen said. “That means we’ve got a presence in the region.”

She’d been cool toward him since leaving the bunker and enduring the animal attack. She clearly blamed him for risking their lives and abandoning the comfortable security of the bunker. She didn’t say anything in front of Private Matthews, who was shaken by the deaths of his comrades. But Antonelli could feel her resentful gaze burning in the back of his neck as he led them along the road.

“Good and bad,” Antonelli said. “That wasn’t part of the plan. Maybe it means things have changed.”

“You don’t know everything,” Colleen said.

“That’s right. I know what my orders are and what our main objective is, but I’m basically just a piece on the chessboard.”

“Maybe Wilkesboro’s become the objective,” Colleen said. “If those lights are caused by some kind of disturbance created by the Zaps, then it could be important.”

“We’ll find out when we get there.” Antonelli scanned the surrounding forest and the houses that sat near the road, their silent windows like eyes watching their passage.

They’d left the Blue Ridge Parkway and were descending east on a country two-lane which Antonelli believed led to Stonewall. His map showed only the major thoroughfares since he was supposed to follow the parkway all the way to Asheville. He’d lost track of the days but he wondered if the Fourth Division had already given up on his arrival.

“Getting late,” Matthews called from the rear, where he spent much of his time looking over his shoulder. “Maybe we should find a place to bunk down.”

“We need to cover as much ground as we can,” Antonelli said. “Best to do that while we can still see what’s coming.”

Colleen stopped behind him and Antonelli didn’t notice for a good ten steps or so. When he turned, she was standing on the shoulder of the road, looking in the high grass. She knelt and came away with a swatch of white cloth.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Bandage. Like the one Huynh was wearing.” She held it up and let it dangle, revealing the rust-brown splotch in the center of it.

Antonelli’s heart pumped with excitement. The bandage could’ve belonged to any number of people, but the bloodstain was relatively fresh. “It’s his.”

Matthews caught up with them and saw it, too. “I didn’t trust that guy. He never cared much about learning English. That tells you something.”

“Doesn’t matter what language he speaks now,” Antonelli said. “He’s going to be dead in all of them.”

Something stirred in the woods ahead of them and Matthews turned, clenching his rifle so hard his knuckles were white.

“Hold your fire,” Antonelli ordered. “Don’t give away our position.”

As they took cover in the trees at the edge of the road, Antonelli resented the delay. They’d covered maybe twelve miles since leaving the bunker, and aside from the deadly encounter with the monsters, the journey had been uneventful. He regretted the loss of Randall but was more troubled by Stankowitz’s death—that hadn’t simply been an act of predators seeking a meal. The monstrous deer had murdered him with devious intent.

When the animal emerged from the high weeds onto the road fifty yards ahead, Antonelli nearly shot it, unwilling to wait it out. Matthews broke from concealment and jogged toward it.

“Psst,” Antonelli hissed in a whisper. “Get back here.”

Matthews laughed and said with boyish delight, “It’s just a dog, Captain.”

“I don’t like this,” Colleen said to Antonelli.

Neither did he, but Matthews was already out in the open, exposed. The sun was touching the tops of the trees in the west and the shadows stretched across the pavement, making it difficult to discern what lurked among them.

The dog was tan and lean, its ribs showing. It looked like a retriever of some kind, about knee high, its ears furry and droopy, eyes a welcome shade of black instead of flickering yellow. Despite the leather collar on its neck, the canine looked scruffy and feral. It drew back from Matthews’ approach, tensed and lowering itself into a crouch.

“Here, boy,” the soldier said, holding out his hand.

“Might be good to have a dog with us,” Colleen whispered. “It will detect danger before we do.”

“I don’t want anything slowing us down,” the captain said. Something was wrong with this picture, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. A few families in New Pentagon had dogs and cats as pets, an attempt at holding on to the old way of life, but this was a war zone. Here, there were only allies and enemies.

Matthews knelt ten feet from the dog, which sniffed the air as if expecting danger. Colleen was right. Its instincts were likely much more refined than theirs.

Why hadn’t it barked?

Antonelli found himself tensing as Matthews eased closer to the animal, expecting it to leap at him or skitter away at any second. He was wound so tightly that when the shot rang out, he nearly pulled the trigger himself.

Matthews stood with a surprised look on his face as the dog sprinted off into the trees. He turned to Antonelli, seeming to grin. Then his eyes rolled up and blood blossomed from the hole in his chest. He went limp and collapsed on the road, his rifle banging against the pavement.

Colleen rose to rush toward him, but Antonelli restrained her. “No. Wait.”

After a couple of minutes, a short bearded man in a leather jacket and jeans came into view, holding a rifle. He was soon joined by several others, two men and a woman, all dirty-faced and gaunt, the dog trotting among them and wagging its tail.

They used the dog to lure him out.

Antonelli held his fire as the rogue band of survivors plundered Matthews’ corpse. One of them made a joke to another about the rifle, and they seemed to argue over its possession for a moment until the apparent leader yelled at them.

The woman dug through the backpack and removed Matthews’ jacket. When they’d taken what they wanted, they left the soldier bare-chested and lying on his back. The dog licked at the wound on his chest until the blood was gone, and then they packed up and headed back into the woods.

“Do we go after them?” Colleen asked when the sound of their conversation faded.

“We have no idea how big their gang is,” Antonelli said.

“They killed one of your men.”

“He disobeyed orders. That’s the price.”

“I don’t know what’s happened to you. You get crazy for revenge after a Zap baby kills your soldiers, but you don’t care if people do it.”

“Scavenger scum or not, they’re still numbers. They’re people who can kill Zaps. Matthews wasn’t any good anyway, not after all that happened.”

“So how long until you throw
me
to the wolves?”

He looked into her green eyes, wishing this was another place and another time, one where his duties were defined and his path clear. He’d sworn an oath to protect and defend his country unto death, and ever since that country had been lost, he’d been unmoored. He supposed that oath should now transfer to the preservation of the human race, but that was a murky proposition—it required him to respect those who had just killed a soldier under his command.

If the killers had been Zaps, there would be no question of his revenge. But these humans were now part of the defense force, even if they likely didn’t see themselves that way. But who knows how many of their own kind these scumbags had killed in their desperate quest for survival?

Dog eat dog. That’s what it comes down to in the end.

“Come on,” he said. “We can get in another couple of miles before dark.”

He’d gone twenty feet before he realized she hadn’t followed. “What is it?”

“Leave me here. I’m done.”

“That was an order.”

“Quit the bullshit. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s nobody left to hide our relationship from. Now it’s just you and me. No more games or disguises.”

“I was ready to stay in the bunker for you. Throw away everything I ever believed in. All for—”

“And in the end you chose yourself, Mark. And look how many people have paid for that.”

He wanted to slap her, but only because he couldn’t direct the blow at himself. It was the kind of senseless rage he loathed in other men—their ineptitude and impotence turned on the weakest immediate target.

But he was stopped by a sound so familiar but unexpected that at first he assumed it was some new kind of monster, maybe a genetic cousin of the dinosaurs that once roamed the continent. The roar was subtle and constant, the kind that could chew trees and spit sawdust—or grind bones to make bread.

As the sound moved down the valley toward them, Antonelli crawled to a tangle of wild rhododendron and peered through the waxy green leaves. The road wound alongside a creek between two steep slopes and followed the natural terrain. The roar built to a ground-shaking rumble by the time the transport truck rolled around the bend.

Like most such military trucks, it was painted in a tan-and-gray camouflage pattern designed for the sandy landscapes of old oil enemies rather than the lush greenery of Asian jungles or European farms. The M926 spewed a dark plume of diesel smoke as it rolled down the incline. The truck was full of uniformed soldiers, one of them standing behind the cab and scanning the surrounding terrain with binoculars.

Behind it was a Humvee with tinted windows, pulling a small trailer heaped with supplies. The government’s new flag flew from the antenna, its single red and white stripes flapping in the wind. A small-caliber machine gun was mounted on its roof.

Antonelli couldn’t be sure, but he figured this mobile unit had broken off from the Sixth Division. When Antonelli had split from the division in Wytheville at the end of summer, it featured nearly half of New Pentagon’s remaining mechanized resources. The division was supposed to have been in Charlotte by now, where the Zaps had gathered
en masse
. This route was a good eighty miles out of the way.

“What do we do?” Colleen asked over the growling engines.

“Wave them down without getting shot,” he said.

Matthews provided one final service as the truck slowed when it approached his body. Two men jumped out of the rear as the man with binoculars shouted orders. As the men checked the looted corpse, Antonelli cupped his hands and shouted, “Captain Antonelli, Third Battalion, Eighth Marines.”

The two soldiers dropped into a crouch and raised their weapons, but the man with binoculars barked, “Hold your fire.”

“We’re with the Earth Zero Initiative,” Antonelli said. “Heading to meet up with the Fourth Division.”

“You’re way off course, Captain.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“How many in your unit?”

“Just one. That man in the road was with us, but he was ambushed.”

“Zaps?”

“Civilians.”

The man mumbled something Antonelli couldn’t make out, and then said, “Come out slow and let us see your hands.”

Antonelli nodded at Colleen to follow, shouldered his rifle, and stepped out from the rhododendron with his arms wide and his palms open. Colleen did the same. The man from the transport truck climbed over the side and dropped to the pavement as the truck idled.

The man with the binoculars had a colonel’s bird attached to his collar. When he removed his cap, Antonelli recognized him even from a distance: Spanky Munger, second-in-command to Gen. Alexander and head of the Sixth Division. Munger sported a cotton-white crew cut and deep creases in his face that betrayed the hard, glacial youth of his blue eyes. He was brass balls all the way, career Army and destined for a desk in the old Pentagon before the shit hit the fan and assigned him a new mission.

They met at Matthews’ corpse, where the soldiers were checking his wound and making sure he was dead.

“Captain,” Col. Munger said, shaking his hand with such strength that Antonelli’s cartilage crunched. “Been a while.”

He nodded curtly at Colleen as she was introduced, openly dismissing her because of her gender. Antonelli then said, “Where’s the rest of the division?”

“We split off at the state line. Got some intel that there was a big Zap base in the region. Chopper recon confirmed it.”

Antonelli thought the unit was pretty puny given the size of the force when he’d left it in Wytheville. But his own ranks had been decimated, too, so he had no right to second-guess the losses of other commanders.

“What about your unit?” Munger asked.

“Long story, but basically we were hit hard and suffered heavy casualties. We found Hilyard’s bunker and—”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Got a transmission from HQ when the static was low. What happened to that Zap baby?”

“That’s why we changed course. We have reason to believe she’s headed this way. Probably to the base you’re talking about.”

“Doesn’t look like you’d be much good to the Fourth anyway.” To Colleen, Munger said, “Unless you got some nukes up your sleeve.”