Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

The Zap was alone, which struck Rachel as odd.

She looked past it for more mutants, but the hallway was dark. The glow of their eyes would’ve given them away.

DeVontay clutched the weapon he’d made from broken ceramic, concealing it beside his leg. They both stood and took a few steps toward the Zap, who’d left the door open. This might be their chance.

“Rachel Wheeler,” the Zap said in a toneless voice.

Rachel’s understanding of Zaps had faded due to a lack of exposure and experience, and aside from her relationship with Kokona, she had little knowledge of their evolution. Still, it was rare for an adult Zap to speak aside from repeating communal thoughts. Language appeared to have become the domain of their infant leaders.

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

“We all know you and what happened years ago. It is part of us.” The Zap was indistinct from others of its kind, of genderless build and wearing a silver suit, its smooth face topped by dark, rounded hair that seemed to have been trimmed by a machine rather than a stylist. Its eyes projected the typical flickering and sparking, but something about the whole impression added up to trigger a sense of familiarity.

“We’ve met before,” Rachel said, drawing closer as if curious. That allowed DeVontay to ease a couple of steps forward as well. The Zap didn’t appear to notice or care.

“We have,” the Zap said, and then repeated it mentally. Rachel at first wasn’t sure she’d received the message, since it was faint and she was convinced the talent was lost.

Telepathic voices didn’t have
tones
as such, because the words and thoughts weren’t produced by the shape of a throat or the movement of air or the vibration rate of sound waves. Zap thoughts were transferred almost as a monotonal chorus, where many voices were repeating the same thought at the same time even when the source was isolated, such as when Rachel communicated with Kokona.

But something about the Zap’s inflection added to the sense of familiarity

Then the Zap said, aloud, “Thank you.”

The Zap from Stonewall. The one I saved when that monster attacked it.

A dozen questions came to mind, but Rachel could only think, “Why?” Before she had a chance to ask any of them, DeVontay shoved her aside and raised his makeshift blade.

“Run for it!” he yelled, bringing down the blade.

The Zap leaned back with surprising speed and the ceramic blade shattered against the strong silvery metal of its shoulder. DeVontay grunted as a sharp chip sliced his thumb. As blood spouted, the Zap clutched DeVontay’s forearm, twisted it around his neck, and pulled him off-balance.

Rachel charged to defend DeVontay, curling her fingers to claw at the Zap’s face, but it shot her a mental command: “
No. I won’t hurt him
.”

The Zap used leverage to drive DeVontay to his knees, leaving DeVontay to punch ineffectually at the Zap’s legs. DeVontay grunted with each
thwack
of his knuckles, clearly inflicting more damage to himself than to his opponent.

“Stop it, DeVontay,” she said, dropping beside him and restraining his arm.

He turned to her, face twisted with effort. “Run for it, damn it!”

“I’m not leaving you.”

The Zap suddenly released DeVontay from the paralyzing grip. The mutant stepped back and held up its hands, palms facing them. Rachel had never witnessed such behavior in the mutants. They had changed much more she had imagined.

Still, this one seemed different from the others. Separate. Acting alone.

“I am not here to hurt you,” the Zap said in that emotionless voice.

DeVontay squeezed his bleeding thumb as Rachel helped him to his feet. “Well, you failed then.”

“You saved my life,” the Zap said.

“What’s he talking about?” DeVontay asked Rachel, choosing the masculine pronoun most likely because he wouldn’t admit he’d just been manhandled by a female.

“The Zap that was attacked in Stonewall,” Rachel said. “I killed the monster when—”

“—when you should’ve killed me,” the Zap finished for her.

Zaps don’t care if they live or die. They don’t even think in terms of mortality, except for the babies. They think of efficiency, homogeneity, and productivity.

“This is crazy,” DeVontay said, easing around the Zap and staying out of arm’s reach. At the door, DeVontay checked the hall in both directions. “If this is a trap, it’s a stupid one.”

“You saved my life,” the Zap repeated.

“Your kind doesn’t develop individual thoughts,” Rachel said. “Not ones driven by self and ego. Is your communal mind deteriorating?”

Rachel quickly considered a number of evolutionary theories. Perhaps the Zaps were decaying along with the environment, their progress stunted as nature grew more wild and unstable around them. Maybe the human foundation of their kind was too rotten from abundant flaws. Or maybe the electromagnetic fluctuations had run their course and the mutants had peaked before they’d achieved their common dream of a bold new world.

“I’m me,” the Zap said. “I don’t know why I’m not them anymore.”

“Do you have a name?” she asked. Babies were the only zaps with names, as far as she knew.

“I haven’t taken one yet. I can only think of myself as me.”

“Let’s get out of here, Rachel,” DeVontay said. “If this thing’s not going to kill us, that doesn’t mean his buddies won’t. They’re probably picking up on his thoughts right this very second.”

“If you run, where will you go?” the Zap asked. “The birds patrol the town from above, there are Zaps at ground level, and the hills around the town are populated by monsters like the reptile.”

“You!” Rachel said. “You’re the one who killed the reptile.”

“You saved my life,” the Zap said again, as if that were all the explanation necessary.

“Thanks and you’re welcome and all that,” DeVontay said. “Now come on, Rachel.”

She hesitated, half expecting the Zap to block her way. Why would it help them escape? What did it have to gain?

“Wait,” Rachel called to DeVontay. “He’s right, we’ll never make it out of town.” To the Zap, she said, “Will you help us?”

“There are no guards because they are able to detect your thoughts,” the Zap said.

“That’s just great,” DeVontay said. “So they already know we’re on the run and we’re not even out the door?”

“I’m shielding both of you. Just like the others were shielding Rachel so she couldn’t receive thoughts anymore.”

“Thoughts are energy,” Rachel said. “Electrical impulses in the brain. So you just jam the frequency.”

“We don’t have time for this science shit,” DeVontay said from the hall. He was already limping up the stairs.

Rachel shot a mental “
Thank you
” at the Zap and jogged after DeVontay. She was nearly to the door when the Zap said, “If you emerge from this dome, they will detect you.”

“Unless you come with us.”

The Zap cocked its head as if considering the consequences of her words. She could only imagine the complex programming and conditioning of its mind, rapidly evolving along with all the others of its kind. She didn’t even know how far their connections reached—was each Zap community a mind unto itself, or were all the Zaps linked worldwide?

She assumed from her own experiences and her relationship with Kokona that their connections were localized—that they were affected by distance and exposure. If the domes acted as a shielding agent, and if the Zap was also using its mind to repel the probing thoughts of the rest of its tribe, then she and DeVontay needed the Zap. But it didn’t need them.

Ego. It refers to itself in the first person, so it’s somehow developed an identity separate from the others. If only I can play on that…

“You used to be one of us,” Rachel said. “Before the solar storms, you were human. Part of you remembers that, just like I remember being one of you.”

“I am me,” the Zap said. “We are us.”

“It’s going to be morning soon,” DeVontay said in a loud whisper from the top of the stairs. She could vaguely discern his outline against the night. “We need to go
now
.”

Rachel took one more look at the Zap, whose eyes smoldered to a deep red. The deep, muted throbbing they’d heard earlier had renewed, seeming to make the whole town shiver at a nearly undetectable level. Then she hurried to join DeVontay, who was frantically scanning the sky.

“Don’t see any birds,” he said. “But if the Zaps can read our minds, we’re dead meat anyway. Can we believe anything that Zap says? What if it’s a trap?”

“We were already trapped, remember? What do the Zaps have to gain?”

“Another test, like with the lizard thing. Well, I’m tired of being their damned lab rat.” He waved to the west, where the buildings were less dense against the horizon and the trees seemed a little thicker. “That way.”

He tensed to spring from the cover of the stairwell when a hand clamped onto his shoulder. DeVontay turned, fists clenched, to find the Zap.

“This way,” the Zap said, pushing past them before DeVontay could take a swing.

The Zap headed into the street and toward the burned-out husks of commercial buildings, streaked sheets of glass in the windows reflecting the brilliant aurora.

“Do we trust it?” Rachel asked.

“I trust you,” DeVontay said.

She gave him a fleeting kiss and dashed after the Zap, crouching in anticipation of mysterious silver birds descending in a deadly flock. DeVontay was right behind her, limping but managing to keep up.

The Zap only turned back once, as if he could tell they were following without having to look. He slipped into a narrow alley where blackened brick leaned in precarious stacks and trash covered the asphalt beneath their feet. The destruction wasn’t complete, as if the Zaps had evolved beyond their savagery before they’d finished the task of destroying Wilkesboro.

Rachel tried once more to forge a telepathic link with the Zap but realized he wasn’t allowing her access. Perhaps all his attention was focused on projecting a shield to protect them all. The mutant was now just as much at risk as Rachel and DeVontay were, and it clearly had an awareness of its own mortality. The other Zaps surely would not tolerate a traitor in their midst.

We’re all in this together now. But we aren’t leaving town without Squeak and the others.

“We’re going into the heart of town, not away from it,” DeVontay said.

Even though the words were directed at Rachel, the Zap stopped long enough to say, “If we shut down the energy field, we improve our odds.”

“What energy field?” Rachel asked, crunching bits of charcoal and gravel underneath her feet. They passed the scorched hunk of a car that sat on rusted metal rims, stained bones sprinkled on the ground around it. Rachel wondered if the victims had died during the storms or in the Zap rampage afterwards, then decided it did not matter at all.

“Plasmacizer,” the Zap said. “We use it to run our three-dimensional printers and create our titanium fabric. We channel and concentrate the heightened electromagnetic energy of the sun, altering the behavior of electrons in short bursts.”

“Like that little hand device you used on the lizard?” DeVontay said.

“That is correct. We have a centralized plasma sink from which we’re drawing energy, but we still haven’t managed to fully control its ionization. You can see our successes—”

“Like the birds and the suits,” Rachel said.

“Yes. But we’re also noticing side effects that occur with our altering of electrons.”

“Side effects?” DeVontay said.

“I’m possibly one of them,” the Zap said, waving them through a row of dead cars in a parking lot. Rachel felt exposed because of the high ruins rising around them in the center of town, but she didn’t see any eyes burning in those blank windows.

Where are all the Zaps? Are they stacked in rows in some factory, or are they all sitting awake beneath the silver domes, sharing whatever thoughts Geneva delivers to them. Are they truly sentient, or are they just responding to the commands they receive?

She couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all some elaborate ruse. But what choice did they have?

And even though she couldn’t see any Zaps and had no telepathic bond with them, she could feel their presence all around, like the static charge building before a thunderstorm. The ruins ahead of them seemed to shimmer with fleeting bands of light.

DeVontay edged close enough to whisper without the Zap hearing. “I don’t like this. We could’ve been in the woods by now.”

“This might be important,” Rachel said. “If we can learn more about the Zaps, we can tell others. Maybe even beat them.”

DeVontay snorted. “I thought you wanted to make peace.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Not just for me, but for all of us.”

The Zap paused fifteen feet ahead of them, waiting at the corner of a building whose smoked-glass windows blocked their view of the next street. If it heard their whispers, it gave no sign. Daylight tinted the sky, the pinkish orange of the rising sun melding with the aurora. The kaleidoscopic hues shimmered against the Zap’s protective suit.