After: Dying Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 6) Page 15

  As she sat up, the gush of blood already slowing to a trickle, another round caught her in the cheek, shattering bone and teeth and peeling away half a pound of flesh. Rachel dutifully helped Kokona revive her again, and this time she stood and walked forward with her lower jaw hanging loose from her face.

  Kokona grinned up from Rachel’s embrace. “Doesn’t this feel like God’s work?”

  Does she know? Is she in my second layer?

  Evasion. Trick her.

  “I need to change your diaper.”

  “Oh, no. These quilted Pampers are wonderful. I can bring a hundred back to life between changes.”

  A bellow came from behind them, and Rachel turned to see a tall man charging, a machine gun spitting smoke and metal. He wore a uniform, and his hair was cropped close to his misshapen skull, an unlit cigarette crushed between his teeth. Then pain flared in her arm, and she looked down to see strips of muscle and white bone, reddish-pink flesh peeling away.

  The human layer felt the pain—hot acid lacing outward in an expanding network—but the New part of her responded by adjusting Kokona’s position in her good arm and clamping her opposite hand over the wound, warm blood trailing between her fingers.

  The man circumvented the center of the horde, instead trimming a few mutants from the edge of the crowd. Several mutants turned their guns toward him and fired, but their shots were wild. The man ran down the adjacent street, his weapon crooked in his elbow and pointed at the sky.

  “Are you hurt?” Kokona asked.

  Rachel took her hand away—the human part was lost in a red fog of agony—and studied the wound. Was she imagining things or was the wound smaller than it had been only seconds before?

  She placed her hand back on the ragged flesh and mimicked the process by which Kokona drew her power to resurrect the dead. Since the energy was going back to the same source from which it originated, the circuit completed itself in a closed loop, with no loss. Ten seconds later, she removed her hand and the skin was intact, although slick red smears coated her arm.

  I can heal myself.

  Kokona noticed as well, and said, “Good as New.” Then, perhaps realizing the wordplay, she giggled, heedless of the bullets whizzing by and the mutants dropping around them. “Maybe, when we form our society, ‘Good as New’ can be our motto.”

  The mutants cornered the man who’d shot her, backing him down an alley that ended in a high block wall, trash cans and power meters girding the rear of buildings on both sides. Kokona ordered Rachel to fall in behind the crowd of mutants crushing toward him.

  The man dropped his rifle and attempted to scale the wall, but it was far too sheer and featureless for handholds. He scooped up his weapon and turned, eyes bulging with hate. The human part of Rachel felt a surge of sympathy and an understanding of his anger, but the mutant part of her accepted the tribe’s need to remove a problem—a disease.

  He flung away his cigarette and sneered. “Go straight to hell, Zappers.”

  The soldier unleashed a barrage of bullets, but it abruptly faded and he futilely tugged at the trigger as the front wave of mutants stepped over the fallen and converged on him. Kokona implored Rachel forward to witness the man’s demise, which was accomplished with squeals and grunts and at last a long, hissing sigh of surrender.

  When the remaining mutants backed away with their trophies of metal and gore, Rachel bent to her task and revived the mutants who were killed or disabled in the standoff.

  “I wonder,” Kokona said, after the last one was repaired, “if you could bring me back from the dead.”

  The question isn’t “could,” the question is “would.”

  But Rachel kept that to her human self, while the mutant self answered, “I would try with all my power.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Franklin looked up from his position behind a Subaru SUV and studied the street ahead. He’d seen movement a block farther on, a shift of longer shadows as the sun approached the western horizon, but he couldn’t tell if the source was human or Zaphead.

  Zappers don’t scream.

  He didn’t know what was worse: imagining the hordes of mutants that surged through the outskirts of town, or to actually come face to face with the reality of them.

  DeVontay had taken Stephen to the second floor of the building on the corner, so they could cover two directions if necessary. But the real reason was to remove Stephen from harm’s way as much as possible.

  The Little Man’s got a heart the size of Montana. I hope he doesn’t waste it all on killing instead of loving somebody.

  Brock and two women were on the rampart of vehicles with Franklin, so he felt a little better about their odds. Brock outlined a plan whereby they would drop back and flee via a fire escape if Zapheads breached the line. Franklin was about to mention that Zapheads could climb stairs, too, but he figured the illusion of safety was just as good as the real thing. And he was just enough of a gentleman to feel a need to comfort the women, although they actually looked tougher and more combat-ready than he did.

  He closed his eyes and pictured his remote mountain compound, the garden frozen over, the solar panel filmed with dust and pine resin, the cabin whistling as wind tickled its cracks. He wondered how his goats were faring and whether they found enough forage on the bleak winter ridges. Would a survivor one day stumble upon its ruins and wonder about its builder? Or would a mutant note it as an archaeological reminder of a tribe that once plagued the planet before yielding to a stronger, more adept kind?

  From high overhead came a whoof, and Franklin looked up to see a tuft of bright red smoke, laced with sunset to make it seem on fire, and then the cloud trailed out and spread a hundred feet high.

  A signal flare? What the hell for?

  “Here they come,” said one of the women, a redhead with freckles and bright green eyes that were almost as piercing as a Zaphead’s.

  Franklin snapped alert and settled the elbow of his aiming arm across the hood of the Subaru, tucking the rifle butt against his shoulder. The percussive clatter of guns above told him the lookouts had drawn first blood. Several Zapheads rounded the corner, one of them a girl not much older than Stephen, her dress damp with blood.

  Franklin swallowed hard and shifted his aim away from her.

  I know it’s no time to be getting sentimental, but damned if I’m going to be the one.

  “Hold fire until they’re closer,” Brock yelled with a panicky voice, his adopted military bearing dissolving under the heat lamp of action. “Can’t afford to waste ammo.”

  But he ignored his own order and a moment later unleashed a hail of bullets, followed by the redhead. Franklin aimed carefully, not sure aiming even mattered since there were so many of them, and gently squeezed off one shot before aiming again and repeating the process.

  The Zapheads fell like soggy bowling pins, but others swarmed over them and continued on. That’s when Franklin saw what they were carrying. Metal dinged as if struck with tiny hammers and glass tinkled to the pavement.

  “Enemy fire!” Brock swapped out the magazine of his M-16 and wildly sprayed rounds before him, even though the Zapheads were about fifty yards away. Franklin saw only two Zapheads fall before Brock was forced to swap out his magazine again. The redhead was fairly steady, and the other woman acted totally unfamiliar with her weapon, checking it after every shot as if not believing it actually worked.

  Franklin drew a bead on a fat man in a business suit—he’d unconsciously settled on limiting himself solely to male targets—and fired. The job was easier if he pretended it was some government asshole, come to seize his unregistered gold or force him to vote Democrat. He knocked down three that way, although it took half his magazine, and he was about to accept that the damned government was going to win like it always did against a free man, because the government—

  Kuh-WHOOOMP.

  The explosion came from somewhere behind him, at street level, accompanied by a brittle rain of glass and ch
unks of concrete. Somebody shrieked like a rabbit taken by a hawk, and another man shouted in anger. Franklin glanced back toward the square, even though he was afraid to take his eyes off the fast-approaching enemy. A curling plume of dust caught the sunset and glowed with an angry orange hue.

  “That’s high-grade,” Brock yelled. “Don’t tell me these sons of bitches know how to shoot artillery, too?”

  Franklin didn’t think the explosive was of a high caliber, since its destruction was localized—although Franklin figured the casualty would probably say it was a total ass kicker, thank you very much. In fact, it sounded sort of familiar—it reminded him of the grenade Jorge had launched to murder his wife and the mutant baby she carried.

  Jorge had taken the launcher from one of Shipley’s men, and it was possible that Shipley had plenty more such weapons. Lobbing grenades at the stronghold while the Zapheads launched a full-scale frontal assault seemed too diabolical even for Shipley, though. So it was probably whoever had taken the launcher from the armory. None of it made sense. But the barricades now seemed a little foolish, like daisy chains trying to hold back an avalanche.

  “Grenade,” Franklin shouted at Brock.

  “Where’s it coming from? I didn’t hear the airstream.”

  “It’s got to be close, then. Maybe one of the roofs—”

  Then his lips went numb and his vision went white and his rifle felt like a rubbery eel in his hands. His teeth clacked in his skull. A tsunami of white noise pummeled his ears and gave way to a high-pitched whine. When he opened his eyes, he found himself underneath the Subaru, looking up at the rusted muffler.

  Bits of rubble and silver rectangles of glass rolled off the car. He tried to move his arms but couldn’t. All he could do was roll his head to one side to view the street. The redhead was propped along the frame of a motorcycle, her torso lacerated with shrapnel, skin already going white from shock. He tried to call to her, but he couldn’t hear if any sound came from his mouth.

  For a moment, he wondered if the blast had paralyzed him, but he could wriggle his toes. With the force of will, he slid his arm along the pavement to touch his face. Aside from grit and sweat, he couldn’t detect any damage, although the percussion still roared around his head like a lug nut in a hubcap. The keening in his ears eased and gave way to the sounds of battle. He scooted a few inches at a time, digging the heels of his boots into the ground for traction, until he was clear of the vehicle.

  Another explosion rocked the square, this time at the barricade two blocks down. Hilyard emerged from the plume of dust, gripping his shoulder with a pistol-fisted hand. Two bodies were splayed on the street near the cavalry statue, and a soldier tended to one of them, ignoring the blood running down his own scalp.

  “Brock?” Franklin called.

  The young man had abandoned his previous post and now pressed into the doorway of a shop, rifle clutched to his chest. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Inside job.” Franklin coughed and sat up. Although he felt as if his joints had been stretched and then snapped back into place, he didn’t think anything was broken. He wiped his nose with a dirty sleeve and it came away bloody, but not plentiful enough to alarm him.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Brock flitted from the recessed doorway long enough to fire at the mass of Zapheads and duck back again.

  “Traitor. Spy. Turncoat. Dirty double-crossing son-of-a-bitch.”

  Franklin elbowed his way to his rifle ten feet away. Bullets wailed overhead as the Zapheads poured on the barrage of small-caliber fire. Luckily their aim was poor, but if they drew much closer, then geometry would be on their side.

  Another explosion roared, this one on the parallel block, and Franklin mentally plotted the impact points of the different blasts. There was only one possible origin: directly above them.

  “Up,” Franklin shouted to Brock, who seemed more worried about the impending horde than the enemy within.

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  Franklin pointed to the rooftop above Brock. “Coming from inside the stronghold.”

  “We have sentries posted up there.”

  “They must be too busy mowing Zappers to notice.” Franklin used his rifle as a crutch to help him wobble to his feet. He ached as if he’d aged twenty years in two minutes.

  Well, I never figured on making it to the rocking chair anyway. May as well die on two feet.

  He limped to the fire escape that clung to the side of the building and scaled it one slow step at a time. From that height, he could see farther beyond the stronghold. Dozens of Zapheads massed, and that was just in this one section of town. There were probably hundreds surrounding Newton.

  At the first landing, he steadied himself against the rail and fired two shots at the closest wave of Zapheads, but he’d lost track of how many rounds he had left. He might need them.

  “Franklin!” came a voice from across the street. “Are you okay?”

  He turned and saw DeVontay’s dark face in the window, furrowed in concern. “Been better, but I’m still kicking. I found the rat, and I’m going to flush it out.”

  DeVontay scanned the roofline above Franklin. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Well, keep an eye out anyway.” Realizing what he’d just said, he added, “No offense.”

  “None taken. Watch your ass, old man.”

  Franklin dragged himself up another flight of stairs, coming to a metal ladder that led the final twelve feet to the roof.

  This is going to hurt.

  He slung his rifle over his shoulder and took the first few rungs with no problem, although his palms were sweaty and his ligaments shrieked. The rifle swung back and forth from its strap, the butt banging against the metal. A salvo of lead stitched itself along the top of the building above him, showering him with brick chips. At the halfway point, he glanced down and saw just how precarious their position was. With Zapheads approaching from all sides, it seemed like only a couple of dozen fighters were on the firing line to resist them.

  When he reached the top, he eased his head over the parapet.

  Jorge?

  The Mexican faced away from him, legs spread slightly as he balanced the grenade launcher in his arms. The fat barrel of the weapon tilted down into the square. Beside him was an open ammo crate, several green cylinders scattered around his feet.

  Why?

  But questions didn’t matter, and neither did answers. Franklin hooked his left elbow under a ladder rung and shrugged the rifle from his shoulder. He nearly dropped it before clutching one hand around the stock and bringing it under his chin to rest on the rounded concrete top of the parapet.

  Franklin glanced at the adjacent rooftops and saw no snipers or sentries. Jorge’s rifle lay beside him on the tarred surface, a litter of shell casings glinting golden in the sun. Maybe it was a jump, but only one conclusion made sense, and Franklin didn’t have time for any others: Jorge had turned against them all.

  Jorge squeezed the trigger and rocked slightly with the kick of the launcher, and its muffled release was followed by an explosion below—and a human scream.

  Franklin wriggled up high enough to bring the AR-15 to bear, sighting down the muzzle at the man who had been his friend—a man who had saved his life.

  Franklin owed him one last chance. “Jorge!”

  Jorge turned, startled, the launcher lowered beside his waist. His eyes were sunken, and the scruffy facial hair, cornered expression, and angled chin even made him resemble a rat.

  “Drop it,” Franklin commanded, calm despite the bullets crisscrossing the sky around him.

  Jorge gave a slow shake of his head. “We should’ve never left home, amigo.”

  “Drop it.”

  Jorge jerked up the barrel of the launcher and fired, and Franklin could hear the projectile whistle past his head—the airstream actually ruffled his beard. Franklin squeezed the trigger once, twice, and a third time as Jorge performed a spastic tango and dropped
the launcher.

  Franklin scrambled over the parapet as Jorge crumpled into a loose knot of pain. By the time Franklin reached him, Jorge had stopped quivering. Only two of the shots hit the mark, but they were close enough to the heart to finish the job.

  Now Franklin had time to ask that last useless question. “Why?”

  Jorge gazed at him through half-lidded brown eyes. “Muh—Marina…take care…of her…”

  Franklin knelt to retrieve the grenade launcher.

  How hard can it be to shoot this damned contraption?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  DeVontay peered through the binoculars, twisting the knobs although he could make use of only one set of lenses.

  “Whatdayasee?” Stephen asked, pressing behind him and peering over his shoulder.

  “Franklin’s gone.”

  Then Franklin’s head popped up over the roofline, followed by his torso. He held the bulky grenade launcher with its oversize cylinder. Franklin appeared to study the weapon, oblivious of the chaos waging below him.

  “He’s okay,” DeVontay said, passing the glasses to Stephen.

  The boy took a look in the direction DeVontay pointed. “Man, that’s an ass kicker of a bazooka.”

  “Grenade launcher,” DeVontay said. “Now let’s get back to work. We’ve got some Zappers to kill.”

  “Don’t think it will do much good,” Stephen said, passing the binoculars back to DeVontay. “They can bring them back as fast as we can knock them down.”

  But Stephen took up his post at the opposite window, aimed with steady assurance the way DeVontay taught him, and popped off one round after another, pausing between each shot to make sure none were wasted. DeVontay couldn’t help the rush of pride that surged through him, even though he’d never wanted to raise a killer. Stephen had come a long way from the shattered, nearly catatonic boy who’d clung to a baby doll in the wake of his mother’s death.