Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) (20 page)

“You’re a Zap in a human world. Only one side’s supposed to be here.” He waved them out of the post and headed for the radio.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tan Huynh had never had so much energy.

Despite carrying Kokona and sometimes the girl when she grew tired, he had no desire to stop and rest. He also felt no hunger at all. He dimly remembered marching as a soldier with the humans, and how often they would halt for breaks and how little progress they made as a group. Now, traveling virtually alone, he could cover miles at a time without rest.

During the day, they had stopped once so the girl could drink some water and eat from a foil pouch taken from Huynh’s backpack. Huynh saw no advantage to having the human girl, but Kokona insisted that only Marina could care for her. She silently spoke to him, sometimes in Vietnamese and occasionally in Spanish but usually in English. She rarely spoke aloud.

Huynh had enjoyed killing the soldiers in the bunker, the very people who had been his friends before the battle with the birds. Now he realized they weren’t truly friends, just strange, selfish creatures who would have chosen their own lives over his if the circumstances required. When he was mortally injured, wasn’t Kokona the only one who had helped him?

So he owed Kokona his life. More than that, he owed her for these new opportunities.

Let me kill her. Please.

“
No
,” Kokona answered inside his head. “
I still need her
.”

You have me.

“
You don’t know me like she does. And she’s been mine for a long, long time
.”

The girl—actually, she was a young woman with a figure that was just beginning to bud with curves—had skin not too much darker that Huynh’s, and the same jet-black hair. She didn’t speak Vietnamese like Kokona did, so Huynh had difficulty communicating with her. He understood English well enough to get along with his former human friends, but he couldn’t convey the complex ideas that now consumed him.

Only when Kokona talked in his head did his own words make sense.

Will you let me kill her when the time comes?

“
Yes
,” Kokona said. “
As my gift for your service. But until then, she’s mine
.”

So Huynh had sheathed his knife and waited while the girl drank her fill from the swift stream along the roadside. When he looked over her shoulder, he saw his own strange form rippling in the water. His eyes were on fire. He didn’t recognize himself.

“
You’re us now
,” Kokona said.

Huynh had only a vague understanding of what that meant. As a human, the soldiers had attempted to build camaraderie through training and fighting. But ultimately all of them acted in their own self-interest. Any time they engaged in battle, whether with mutants or monsters, they sought to preserve themselves above all, even at the risk of losing comrades or failing at the objective.

Such a system wasn’t of highest efficiency. The best should be protected and preserved, just as he would gladly give his life for Kokona. They—the Us—needed Kokona more than they needed him.

Besides, he wouldn’t really die. His raw material would be recycled and put to use for the greater good.

Kokona helped guide him with a subtle directional pressure that was effective without words. As dusk settled, he no longer needed even that guidance, for he could see the pulsing, swirling column of color in the distance.

Make war go home
.

Home lay beneath that tumbling, brilliant column with its violet and yellow lights. To others like him.

Us.

“I want to go back to the bunker,” Marina said, her voice thin and weary. She was straggling a few steps behind Huynh. She’d never tried to flee, which he didn’t understand—she must’ve known he’d killed those soldiers in the bunker—but Kokona assured him that she and Marina were inextricably attached. Not linked the way Kokona and Huynh were, but with a bond that Kokona had carefully nurtured over the years while Marina thought she was nurturing Kokona.

“You’ll be able to rest in the city,” Kokona said. “And Rachel and DeVontay are going to be there.”

“Nice,” the teen said. “What about Stephen? Is he there?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to say ‘probably.’ All roads lead to the city. We flow like water.”

Kokona guided them off the road and into the forest, fearing the presence of humans. The route through the forest disrupted their view of the colorful column of light, but Huynh could sense its pulse now, like an embryo feeding from a mother’s heartbeat. Kokona stayed in his head, even as she spoke encouraging words to Marina.

They had just crested a hill when Huynh saw the campfire below, with several silhouettes sitting around it. The river ran by the camp, swift and frothing, reflecting the aurora in its rippling current. The outline of a tent was visible beneath a giant oak tree, and the reflection of flames glinted off tin cans strewn on the ground.

“
Go around them
,” Kokona told him.

We would have to cross the river. I can no longer swim.

“
We can find a bridge
.”

“What is it?” Marina asked.

A dog barked, and one of the silhouettes stood. He was holding a rifle. As the dog’s barking grew more frantic, Kokona told Huynh to return to the road.

“What are you doing in the woods this time of night?” said a deep, scratchy voice behind them.

Huynh turned to see a man in a hunting vest and knit cap pointing a pump shotgun at them. Huynh’s own weapon was slung on his back because of carrying Kokona. He’d never be able to wield it in time.

“We’re lost,” Huynh said, the words coming to him from Kokona, who had her tiny eyes clamped shut.

The man stepped closer, his eyes and nose the only facial features visible amid thick facial hair. “A soldier, huh? Where’s your unit?”

“Dead,” Huynh answered. His English was much better now that Kokona controlled his thoughts and voice.

“A young girl. She sure don’t look like your daughter. Is that her baby?”

“No, it’s mine,” Huynh said. “We’re looking for Wilkesboro.”

“You don’t want to go to Wilkesboro, friend. Nothing there but Zaps and ashes.”

The man reached for Marina, who flinched and backed away. “She’s tired,” Huynh said.

Huynh wanted to jump on the man more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. The compulsion was so intense that he was almost literally seeing red.

“What’s with your eyes, friend?” the bearded man said. The dog was closer now, and Huynh was sure the people from the campfire were headed this way.

“Too much sunlight,” he said.

“You better come get some dinner. Not safe to be traveling out here at night.”

“No, thank you,” Huynh said, with a politeness he didn’t feel. “We really should be going.”

“Kind of rude to turn down an invitation. We all need to stick together now. The Bible says whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deeds.”

“The Bible says many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Huynh had been a Mahayana Buddhist before moving to the United States, and he’d never opened a bible in his life. But Kokona had read the King James version several times in the bunker, enough to memorize most of its passages, with Marina turning the pages for her and helping with the clumsier words.

“Well, I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.” The man waggled his shotgun barrel at them. “Drop that rifle and get moving.”

Kokona suppressed Huynh’s rage and ordered him to obey. The man had nearly forgotten Marina, who eased away into the dark shadows of the forest. Huynh switched Kokona to his other arm and shucked the rifle to the ground.

The man picked it up and draped it across his shoulder, then yelled to the others in the camp. “Got us some company. A man, a baby, and a girl.”

The dog barked wildly as they headed toward the campfire, Huynh calculating an opportunity to jump the man but Kokona preventing him from acting.

“If you try, he will kill Marina.”

“How old’s the girl?” an older man shouted back.

“Old enough,” the bearded man answered. This drew a drunken laugh from the camp. “Also got a soldier. Must be from the same unit as that one we bagged earlier.”

“I hope he’s got some C-rats. I’m sick to death of these canned pinto beans.”

As they drew closer to the camp, Huynh made out two women sitting on the ground near the tent. The dog charged at him, snarling and growling, drawing more laughter from the two men.

“He must not like Chinks,” said the older man, who wore a military cap and jeans jacket and had a bulbous red nose. Even from twenty feet, Huynh could smell the sour stink of liquor. “Or Chink babies.”

“The girl looks Mexican,” the bearded man said. “Ever had one of them?”

“Not for free.”

“She’s just a child,” one of the women said. She was plump and wore a shiny vinyl jacket that featured some kind of sports logo Huynh didn’t recognize. Her blonde hair was tangled and hung about her shoulders in thick, oily strands. The other woman was hollow-cheeked and sickly, her eyes big amid the shrunken skin wrapped around her skull.

“Shut your trap, Marlene, or I’ll shut it for you,” the older man said.

Huynh could see bundles of clothes and trash lying around the tent, as if the group had been there for several weeks. Several military uniforms were loosely folded in a pile, and two M16s leaned against the trunk of the oak. There were moist, dark stains on the clothes that Huynh recognized as blood.

“Warren!” the older man shouted.

The tent shook and seconds later, a teen emerged, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He pushed at his bushy hair and said, “What?”

“Got you a present.” The bearded man shoved Marina in the back with the shotgun, nearly causing her to fall. Huynh tensed but Kokona urged him to be still, even as the dog growled and bumped its snout against his leg.

“
Be like the Buddha
.”

“The girl’s worth keeping for a few days, but we don’t need these other two,” the older man said, slapping his rifle barrel impatiently against his thigh.

“You can’t kill no little baby,” Marlene said.

“That’s funny. I can do anything I want to, at anytime, to anybody.”

“You shoot and every man-eating monster in a hundred miles will come running,” said the sickly woman.

“Or maybe just the
woman
-eating monsters,” said the older man. He drew a pint bottle from his back pocket, removed the screw top, and gurgled down the last few inches of amber liquid. He tossed the empty bottle into the fire.

“I’m going back to sleep,” the teenager, Warren, said. He looked about eighteen, sullen and pinch-faced. Huynh wanted to peel his scalp from his skull.

“Boy ain’t got no appreciation for the finer things,” the bearded man said. “Gets it from your side of the family.”

“
The one with the shotgun is more dangerous
,” Kokona silently told Huynh. “
Take him first
.”

When?

“Soon.”

The older man drew his knife. “Marlene’s right for once. Shooting’s probably not a good idea. Better take them to the river and get rid of them.”

Huynh went still like Buddha, waiting for whatever Kokona was planning. When the man with the knife was three feet away, the dog leaping around his legs in delight, Kokona opened her eyes and the flickering glare lit up his drunken face.

“I’m Japanese, not Chinese, you racist fool,” Kokona said in her high, startling voice.

The older man’s mouth gaped open in shock. Huynh tossed the baby to Marina, who somehow was ready, and then whirled toward the bearded man with the shotgun. This man must’ve been as drunk as the other man, because he swayed and the barrel of his shotgun wobbled in the air, his reaction impaired. Huynh launched into a kick, springing from coiled muscles, no longer like the Buddha at all.

The shotgun exploded and the older man bellowed in pain and dropped his knife. A couple of pellets struck Huynh in one foot but he didn’t feel the pain, only the impact.

Marina ran toward the woods with Kokona, the two women screaming for Warren. As the bearded man tried to pump another shell into the chamber, Huynh drew his own knife from inside his boot and plunged it into the man’s chest. The victim squealed and then choked as ropes of blood spurted from his mouth.

Huynh turned toward the older man, who had fallen near the fire and was holding his belly. A red splotch spread along his jean jacket. He tried to sit up when Huynh approached. The dog launched itself toward him, but Huynh was fast. He kicked the dog in the ribs and it tumbled and then crawled off into the forest, whimpering. The two women had already fled and were out of sight.

Huynh took his time slicing the man’s throat, letting the blood drip into the fire where it boiled away with a hiss. Warren crawled out of the tent, saw the carnage, and blubbered, “Duh-don’t kill me!”