Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Deep underground beneath Luray Caverns, High President Murray took a breath of the bunker’s stale air before she continued.

“We’ve got confirmed sightings of these columns in D.C., Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Wilkesboro, and Richmond. No doubt there are more. We’re checking with our radio network and feeding all that information back to NORAD, where there are still a few operating computer systems.”

“If what we saw in D.C. is any indication, we can’t beat them with conventional tactics,” Gen. Alexander said. He looked as if he’d aged a decade during the couple of days in the field. “Especially given our shortage of troops and firepower. If we even had a tank division and a bomber squadron, maybe we’d have a chance.”

“You’re talking all that just to take back one city,” Schlagal said. “There might be a hundred of these across the country. Maybe they’re all over the globe.”

“If we get telecom with Israel and London again, we can confirm that,” Murray said. “And with luck, the Kremlin and Beijing. If these are the destination centers and the accumulation points for the Zaps, then at least we’d have most of them in one place. That’s better than having them scattered everywhere.”

“We’re the ones that are scattered everywhere,” Schlagal said. “The few of us that are left, I mean.”

Murray shook her head. “Well, that might be our edge, our evolutionary advantage. The last extinction event created the Zaps and pushed them to the top of the food chain. Maybe it’s time to create another extinction event. This time it’s one we control.”

“Directive Eighteen is the ultimate end game,” Alexander said. “We’re not desperate yet.”

“We’ve been desperate for five years, Arnold.” Seeing a look of genuine agony cross his face that he couldn’t hide despite his stoicism, Murray added, “How’s your shoulder?”

“Just fine, considering a piece of shrapnel as big as a golf ball dug into it. I’ll live. Apparently only long enough to die in a nuclear holocaust, though.”

The steel-lined chamber was part of a small complex where heavy equipment and vehicles were stored, shielded from the effects of severe electromagnetic pulses. Although the main intention was to provide for a functioning government in the event of nuclear war, it also blocked the extreme solar wind that had swept over the planet and still fluctuated in sporadic bursts that could threaten their exposed equipment at any time. Radio communications were still spotty, and Murray’s fear was that all contact might be lost at any time.

No, your greatest fear is what you know you have to do.

Unspoken among the three of them was the knowledge that this bunker might grant them a reprieve from radioactive fallout. But that would only be temporary—there was no hiding from a nuclear world.

“We still don’t know what we’re up against,” Schlagal said. “Maybe the mutants are bored with us. Now that we’re no longer a threat, maybe they’ll leave us to our caves and compounds.”

“That’s not acceptable,” Alexander said. “And I think they haven’t come after us because they’ve been busy preparing. After what they did to us in D.C., I think they’re ready now.”

“That’s what we have to decide,” Murray said. “I know it’s my decision, but I won’t order it unless you two are both on board.”

“You know my reservations,” Schlagal said. “We’re already at low-level radiation exposure due to the nuclear plant meltdowns. Unleashing forty nuclear warheads would probably triple it. And that’s just generalized exposure, the kind that gives you cancer in six months or two years. Those near the blast zones would be at great risk of immediate death and localized fallout.”

“The point is immediate death,” Arnold said. “For the Zaps. We don’t even know how they will react to radiation exposure, so our best hope is to get them with the destructive force of the blast.”

“This is where it requires the entire Earth Zero Initiative,” Murray said. “Even if we manage to wipe out their nests in this country, what stops the Zaps from coming up from Mexico or eventually migrating over from Europe? As rapidly as they seem to be developing their new technologies, they’ll likely have planes and ships soon. We’ve already seen what they can do with those guided metal birds—what if they started making those at hundred times the scale and outfitted them with weapons? It would make our drone attacks look like water balloons. If they can create weapons of mass destruction ten times faster than the human race did, what will they unleash in a year or two?”

“It’s a gamble,” Schlagal said. “You’re betting we’re near the tipping point, that we’re the ones facing extinction.”

“No,” Alexander said. “Directive Eighteen wasn’t dreamed up by a poet. It was an agreement by all the major governments we could contact. If it looks like we have no chance, then we shut down the party.”

“And the last one leaving turns out the lights,” Schlagal said.

“I’m not asking for a final decision today,” Murray said. “We’re waiting for NORAD to collect the inventory of Zap cities. In the meantime, we’ll conduct our conventional strikes as planned.”

“We’re hitting Atlanta, Charlotte, and Wilkesboro today,” Alexander said. “With two of our best divisions. If they can’t make a dent, then it’s ‘go’ time.”

“Helen?” Murray asked.

“You told me to support your decision, even if you’re wrong. You’re wrong, but you’re the president.”

“As president, I want to fry those sons of bitches back to the heart of the sun,” Murray said. “But as a person, I just want to curl into a ball, sleep for twenty years, and dream that we’d never have to use poison as a tonic.”

“Try not to think of all those children getting cancer, not to mention any mutations you’re raining down on a world that’s already veered into a whole new biological mode,” Schlagal said. “No telling what monsters might wander out of your nuclear soup.”

“You’re a comfort to me in troubled times, Helen,” Murray said.

“I wouldn’t want to die by anyone else’s hand, Abigail,” Schlagal replied.

Alexander touched his wounded shoulder. “That’s as close to unanimous as it’s going to get. If necessary, the human race becomes its own extinction event.”

“It somehow feels like the path we were on all along,” Murray said.

CHAPTER THIRTY

As Kokona nestled in Marina’s arms at the highest remaining point in Wilkesboro, some six stories off the ground in an office that smelled of melted plastic and scorched metal, she experienced a strange moment of peace.

Life before the bunker had been thrilling, largely because of the newness of her condition and the rapid growth of her intellect. That was mirrored by the communal experience of sharing the evolution of her entire tribe, a promising genetic addition to the world. But that utopian ideal wasn’t universal among them.

Defectors or aberrations were easily dealt with among the adults. They tended to cull themselves. But the problem was with the other babies—all of them brilliant and willful and ultimately helpless because of their physical limitations. They could only achieve their aims through manipulation.

Kokona had hated sharing power with the other infants. That was much of the reason she had agreed to go with Rachel and live among humans. She had yet to develop the necessary cunning to seize the control she sought. Years in the bunker spent building her ideas and developing her talents had been well spent. But now she was ready.

And so was Wilkesboro, apparently. From scanning the minds of the Zaps here, she’d learned that her predecessor Geneva had once ruled as part of a triumvirate but had killed the other two babies. No, Geneva hadn’t personally administered the killing blows, but as Huynh had shown, there were always certain willing and pliable parties around to do the dirty work.

“What do you think of the city?” Kokona asked Marina.

“H-how long are we going to stay?”

“As long as we need to.”

“I miss Rachel and DeVontay,” Marina said. “And Stephen.”

“Perhaps we’ll see them soon,” Kokona said. “It appears all of heaven and earth flows here.”

And possibly hell, if one believes in theological layers of sin and punishment and reward. And if one believes, so shall others.

Huynh would serve as her bodyguard, at least until she could reassemble the several hundred mutants who had scattered after Geneva’s death. She mentally summoned them even as she carried on her conversation with Marina.

Marina provided a tenderness and comfort that a Zap caretaker could never match.

Kokona had a half-Zap protector, a human nurturer, and, soon, a Zap army.

She had the best of both worlds.

Too bad one of the worlds must die.

THE END

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Next #3: Radiophobia

When mutants develop technology that threatens the dwindling human race, the last survivors fight to regain control of their world.

Rachel Wheeler and her friends are dropped into the enemy stronghold of Wilkesboro as part of a desperate military operation. Their mission is to disrupt a new energy source that will give the mutants unlimited power. Little do they know that the remnants of the central government have launched nuclear strikes on all major mutant colonies, and they will be caught in the fallout.

Will the nuclear holocaust deliver a final victory to the human race, or will the survivors face their own extinction in a world overrun with monsters and strange new races?

Get Next #3: Radiophobia at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

See how the apocalypse started!

After #1: The Shock

A massive solar storm erases the world's technological infrastructure and kills billions. While the remaining humans are struggling to adapt and survive, they notice that some among them have...changed.

Rachel Wheeler finds herself alone in the city, where violent survivors known as "Zapheads" roam the streets, killing and destroying. Her only hope is to reach the mountains, where her grandfather, a legendary survivalist, established a compound in preparation for Doomsday.

Other survivors are fleeing the city, but Zapheads aren't the only danger. Rogue bands of military soldiers want to impose their own order in the crumbling ruins of civilization. When Rachel discovers a 10-year-old boy, she vows to care for him even at the risk of her own life.

And the Zapheads are evolving, developing communal skills even as they lay waste to the society they will eventually replace.

Get After #1: The Shock free at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

Zapheads #1: Bone and Cinder

An After spinoff series

By Scott Nicholson and Joshua Simcox

When Mackie Dailey survives a cataclysmic solar storm that wipes out civilization and mutates others into violent killers, he seeks out the one person he cares about most.

But when he returns to a college campus looking for Allie, he discovers she is a Zaphead—nearly unrecognizable as the human he once loved. Mackie becomes caught in a power struggle among a small group of survivors who turn the campus into a stronghold against the Zaphead threat. His old nemesis, Lucas Krider, has taken charge, but Krider’s vision of a new world is just as horrifying as the extinction they all face.

Will Mackie sacrifice himself so the group has a chance to survive, or will his demons turn out to be more dangerous than the strange, rampaging creatures that nature has unleashed?

See Zapheads #1: Bone and Cinder at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

***