Radiophobia: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Read online

  Radiophobia

  (Next #3)

  A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

  By Scott Nicholson

  Copyright ©2016 Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books, Inc.

  “One of the most thrilling writers working today. Miss him at your peril.” – Blake Crouch, Wayward Pines

  Look for the rest of the series on Kindle:

  NEXT #1: AFTERBURN at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #2: EARTH ZERO at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #4: DIRECTIVE 17 at Amazon US or Amazon UK

  NEXT #5: CRUCIBLE

  NEXT #6: HALF LIFE

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  CHAPTER ONE

  As the helicopter veered east toward the morning sun, the pillar of multicolored light ascended from the burnt husk of Wilkesboro like a malevolent tornado.

  The black and gray ruins of the city made a grim contrast with the yellow and scarlet splendor of the October forests that surrounded it. The apocalypse had changed many things, but time still pushed the seasons forward and pulled the planets around in their orbits.

  Rachel Wheeler tightened her grip on the metal support bar welded to the Blackhawk’s cabin, hugging Squeak’s shoulders so the young girl wouldn’t shift and slide. The whir of the rotors was deafening and the hovercraft’s vibration threatened to shake the flesh from her bones. As much as she dreaded what lay waiting for them on the ground, she was ready for this ride to end.

  The helicopter’s other occupants made a bizarre menagerie she never would’ve imagined during her former life as a school counselor: DeVontay Jones, the one-eyed black man she loved dearly and who’d helped her stay alive the last five years; Bright Eyes, the enigmatic mutant who had helped her group escape from the Zap stronghold of Wilkesboro; and the girl she only knew as Squeak, whose psychotic mother had died in the mysterious and devastated city.

  The private in the unbuttoned camouflaged tunic and tan T-shirt bore the embroidered name patch Kelly across one breast pocket. She was about Rachel’s age of thirty, weariness creasing her freckled face. But her green eyes and wild tangles of red hair suggested a defiant spirit that wouldn’t easily succumb to the rigors of the apocalypse. Private Kelly glanced from face to face, her M16 tucked across her folded legs.

  Up front, Capt. Mark Antonelli sat in the co-pilot’s seat. He was at the back end of middle age, the iron gray at his temples matching his disposition. Antonelli had been given the mission of sabotaging the Zaps’ energy source, and he was willing to risk everyone’s life to get the job done.

  Not that the officer considered Bright Eyes to be alive, since he was a mutant. Antonelli likely considered Rachel disposable as well, given the mutant contamination boiling in her bloodstream and causing her to second-guess her humanity.

  The pilot, whose face was accented by mirrored aviator shades and a thick mustache, had fought Zaps with Rachel’s group at a crossroads. He’d taken them to a field base where Col. Munger had ordered them back to Wilkesboro. The pilot was named Torgeson, and he seemed to have no specific rank, but he took orders from Antonelli.

  “Why?” Kelly mouthed at Rachel over the roar of the blades.

  Rachel shook her head in confusion. The redhead pointed to her eyes, and then Rachel understood.

  She wants to know why I have Zap eyes.

  But “why” was a foolish question. Why had the sun erupted in massive waves of solar flares that swept the world with enough electromagnetic radiation to rewrite the biological imperative?

  Why did the molecular rewiring lead to violent mutants that rapidly evolved to form telepathically connected societies?

  Why did some of the animal species transform into vicious predators?

  Why was the human race being wiped from the planet it had ruled for thousands of years?

  Those questions were wasted on a God she no longer believed in. And they were wasted here in the chopper, too.

  “We’re on the same side,” Rachel shouted.

  Kelly’s rifle shifted so that its muzzle was pointed between Rachel and Bright Eyes, as if the private feared the enemy within more than the scattered hordes wandering the streets and forests below.

  Squeak shuddered and looked up at Rachel with wide brown eyes. Rachel gave the girl a reassuring squeeze. It seemed the Practical Joker in the Sky had given her yet another responsibility despite her lack of faith.

  The captain turned in his seat and checked his human cargo. “Easy, Colleen,” he said to the private. “These folks are going to save the world.”

  “Then the world’s in worse shape than I thought.”

  DeVontay looked out the glass panel of the cabin door. “What’s that?”

  Several small, bright objects glinted in the sky a hundred yards away. “Birds,” Rachel said.

  The metallic, drone-like birds were a fabrication of the Zaps, complete with an internal power source and built-in 3-D printer that could conduct self-repairs. They usually attacked in large flocks, but these specimens arced in the air with no pattern or direction.

  Antonelli tapped the pilot’s shoulder and pointed out the bogies, then ordered Kelly to operate the door gun. The private slid open a window and took position behind a machine gun with a feed tray full of belted high-caliber bullets.

  “Wait until they’re in range,” Antonelli said.

  “They’re no threat,” Bright Eyes said.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit. I saw them tear my unit apart up on the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

  “Because they had a leader,” Bright Eyes shouted over the thrumming din. “There is no leader in Wilkesboro.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I shot her,” Rachel said. “Like I told the colonel.”

  “Not sure I believe any of that,” Antonelli said. “A baby running a Zap community?”

  “You’re the one who blames Kokona for what happened at the bunker,” Rachel said, feeling a pang of guilt and loss over her separation from the mutant infant she’d tended the last five years. “You saw her intelligence.”

  “Why should we believe you?” Kelly asked. “You’re one of them.”

  “The birds aren’t in formation,” the pilot said. “And they’re staying out of range.”

  “Keep an eye on them, Colleen,” the captain said, turning his attention back to the front windscreen. The private closed the window and the cabin became quieter.

  The helicopter banked and descended in altitude, and Rachel could make out the abandoned houses and cars on the outskirts of the doomed city. Much of the downtown area was blackened ruins, and although Rachel had traveled at ground level, this altitude revealed the massive scale of the destruction. The swirling column of energy descended in a large silver bowl in the center of Wilkesboro, and even from half a mile away Rachel felt its subtle pulsing.

  “So that’s the plasma thing?” Antonelli asked Bright Eyes.

  “Yes, derived from the—”

  “No science lectures. Just tell me how to stop it.”

  “The bowl collects the electromagnetic radiation. I assume destroying the plasma sink would diffuse the energy.”

  Antonelli scowled. “What happens then? It just shoots out everywhere? It’s not like some nuclear thing, is it?”

  “No one knows,” Bright Eyes said.

  “You seriously going to believe…believe it?” Kelly asked, jabbing her rifle barrel toward Bright Eyes. “After what the Zaps did to our guys?”

  “The colonel gave me orders,” Antonelli said. “We’re going to see this through. Either way, we blow that thing up.”

  “Do you want me to go in with H
ellfires?” the pilot asked.

  “Save ‘em,” Antonelli answered. “Those missiles might be our last resort. Find a place to set down and we’ll make a scouting run.”

  Rachel leaned over to DeVontay, and Kelly’s rifle tracked her movement. Rachel kept her voice low so the engine noise would muffle her words. “Should we make a run for it when we reach the ground?”

  DeVontay shook his head. “We need to beat the Zaps sooner or later. This is our best chance.”

  Rachel nodded and sat back beside Squeak again. Her grandfather Franklin was a notorious survivalist who’d lived as a recluse in his remote mountaintop compound for a decade. He was prepared when the solar storms came, but like everyone else, he couldn’t have predicted the mutations that created the Zaps. Over the last five years, he’d gradually shifted from isolationism to the belief that the human race needed to step up and reclaim the planet.

  Where are you now, Grandpa?

  Rachel had lost the rest of her makeshift family, too. Stephen left the bunker with Franklin, and Kokona and Marina were apparently in Wilkesboro. She didn’t quite believe Antonelli’s tale of Kokona’s betrayal, but the army had obviously tracked her here. Rachel intended to find them before the army did.

  As the chopper descended, she could make out a few figures moving in the shadows below. The sunlight glinted off their silver suits. The Zaps were scattered, moving about with no apparent direction, just as Bright Eyes predicted.

  One of the mutants stopped and looked up at the sound of the helicopter, but from this distance Rachel couldn’t make out its features or the tell-tale glint of its eyes.

  “We could pick them off with the machine gun,” Kelly said.

  “No,” Antonelli replied. “We’d only get a few of them and the rest would know we’re coming.” He made a circling motion in the air with his index finger and said to the pilot, “Take it once around the city so we can get the lay of the land.”

  The chopper accelerated closer to the whirring column of light and the tall buildings around it. Then one of the twin engines skipped and sputtered, the hovercraft bucking wildly. The pilot wrestled with the cyclic stick and tiny squares of red lights began flashing on the control panel.

  “It’s the plasma column,” Bright Eyes shouted. “Knocking out your power.”

  Antonelli gave the mutant a suspicious glare and ordered the pilot to back away from the city. The blades groaned as the pilot wheeled to the north and in moments the engines fired smoothly again.

  “See?” Rachel said. “You can trust us.”

  “All that tells me is that you have a strong survival instinct.”

  The pilot took a wider loop around the city, and all of them—except Squeak, who had her head burrowed against Rachel’s chest—watched the ruins pass beneath them. Motor vehicles were coated with grime, some of them burnt and rusting, others jammed together in jagged piles. Large sections of walls had crumbled away, the charred layers stacked like ribs. But some were strangely intact, the windows unbroken and furniture visible behind the glass.

  A series of metallic domes stood among the brick and metal, set two or three blocks from the plasma sink and arranged in a circular pattern. Rachel and DeVontay had been held captive in one of them, which basically covered a damaged basement, but she had no idea what the other domes contained.

  More of the Zaps were sprinkled along the streets, some heading toward the plasma sink, others walking out of town in their stilted gaits. They seemed oblivious of one another even when their paths crossed. Rachel glanced at Bright Eyes and wondered if he had any telepathic connection with his mutant brethren. If so, he hid it behind an impassive face.

  Antonelli pointed to a large parking lot on the edge of town where rows of city buses, service trucks, and construction equipment were parked. The husk of a metal warehouse stood at one end of the lot, and a chain-link fence girded the property.

  “That should give us some cover until we figure this out,” the captain said.

  The pilot guided the helicopter to the pavement, the blades whipping grit against the dusty vehicles. The wildfires had been sporadic in this section of town, and a number of buildings were undamaged. But the hill beyond was a blackened hump where only a few chimneys and new-growth saplings stood, nature steadily erasing signs of human habitation.

  It’s not our world anymore, no matter what we try to tell ourselves.

  But as a half-mutant, Rachel might belong more to this distorted, evolving landscape than the one that had passed away forever. All she knew was that she wanted to be in DeVontay’s world, whichever one that was. And for now, the orphaned Squeak was part of her world, too.

  As the Blackhawk’s wheels touched down, the pilot asked Antonelli, “Do you want me to wait?”

  “No, rendezvous here at—” Antonelli checked his wristwatch “—eighteen-hundred hours. Should still be some daylight left.”

  “Affirmative. I’ll try to hook up with Col. Munger in the meantime.”

  “If we aren’t here when you come back, don’t land. Just hit that plasma sink with every missile you’ve got.”

  The pilot nodded and touched his helmet in a salute.

  As Kelly slid open the cabin door, DeVontay said, “You’re going to send us out there unarmed?”

  Antonelli jerked his thumb toward a metal foot locker. “You and the Zap can drag that out. Then we’ll see how it goes.”

  Rachel hopped from the cabin, Squeak in her arms, and ducked as she hurried away from the helicopter. The air turbulence from the blades ruffled her hair and clothes, but she concentrated on protecting Squeak from the flying debris. Antonelli rolled out of the cockpit and drew his sidearm, motioning them toward the warehouse.

  Bright Eyes and DeVontay strained under the weight of the foot locker, but they managed to haul it halfway across the lot before stopping to rest. By then, Antonelli had waved the pilot away and the helicopter lifted off with a droning roar.

  If any Zaps were in the vicinity, they had surely heard the noise. But Rachel had no idea how they would react. Without a leader to unify their energy, they might’ve reverted to the violent, primal creatures they’d been five years ago in the immediate aftermath of the storms.

  But the mutants now possessed hand weapons that directed energy from the plasma sink toward their targets—if their savage nature combined with an increased capacity for destruction, they were even more dangerous than if an organizing mind directed them in a coordinated attack.

  Kelly was the first to reach the open bay doors of the warehouse, sweeping with her weapon to make sure it was unoccupied. Rachel entered with Squeak, her glowing eyes illuminating the shadowed corridors of the vast building. Half the roof was missing and the interior was burned, with rusted metal frameworks and equipment scattered along the concrete floor.

  Rachel could still feel the strange energy radiating from the plasma sink half a mile away. It pulsed through her body like a faint electrical hum, tickling the top of her spine. Ever since she’d been imbued with mutant physiology, she’d felt unreal and unnatural, but over the years she’d come to accept her condition. Being back among the Zaps was a sharp reminder that she’d never be normal again.

  DeVontay and Bright Eyes slammed the foot locker down on the concrete floor, Antonelli right behind them and scanning the parking lot. Kelly finished her sweep and returned just as the captain opened the locker.

  “You sure about this?” Kelly asked Antonelli. Rachel noticed she didn’t add the “sir” that was expected when addressing a superior officer, and the captain’s use of Kelly’s first name suggested more to their relationship than military chain of command.

  Antonelli passed an M16 to DeVontay and said to Kelly, “If they try to shoot us in the back, then we know we can’t trust them. Until then, we need the extra firepower.”

  DeVontay took the weapon and magazine, slid the metal sleeve of rounds into place, and held it out to Rachel. “I can’t shoot worth a damn. No depth perception with one e
ye.”

  “One for each of you,” Antonelli said, pulling another rifle from the locker. Rachel took it and made sure it was loaded while Squeak looked on with an anxious face.

  The captain then pulled out a bulky, short weapon with a fat barrel and oversize cylinder in its middle. She recognized it as a grenade launcher from an earlier run-in with a military unit. Antonelli piled projectile grenades into a rucksack and slung it over his shoulder.

  “No weapon for you,” Antonelli said to Bright Eyes. “Nothing personal, since you’re not a person.”

  “I want to help,” Bright Eyes said.

  “You might be a spy. But you can be a pack mule in the meantime.” Antonelli gave Bright Eyes a backpack loaded with food, ammunition, and supplies, and the mutant slid his arms through the straps and let it settle on his back, his face just as bland, genderless, and pale as ever.

  “What now?” Kelly asked.

  Rachel couldn’t hear Antonelli’s answer, because another voice superseded it, skimming the crest of her mind like a surfer.

  “Rachel Wheeler. It’s been a while.”

  She looked around, almost certain the words had come from the echoing interior of the warehouse. But, no, they were born of the air.

  And that high, squeaking tone was unmistakable.

  Kokona.

  CHAPTER TWO

  High President Abigail Murray studied the tabletop map in the concrete bunker fifty feet underground.

  The former Secretary of State had been thrust into leadership when the rest of the administration died in the solar storms, and in the five years since, she spent most of time trying to figure out exactly how much of the country was left. The map showed the full expanse of the North American continent, but it was not just a historical document now—it was an image of pure fantasy.

  Washington, D.C., a hundred miles to the east had been overtaken and ravaged by the Zaps, and her top military commander, Gen. Arnold Alexander, had barely survived a recent attack against the mutants there. He sat on the opposite side of the table with his arm in a sling, drawing in heavy breaths of the bunker’s cool, fetid air.