Afterburn: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 1) Read Free

silver bird tumbled and bounced along the highway, scuffing to a stop just a few feet from Rachel. She stared at the dented, torn form and its one cold, round eye that faded and went black.
    DeVontay came on the run as Rachel picked herself off the ground.
    “You okay?” he said, checking her over as he kicked at the bird. Which didn’t seem to be a bird at all, or any kind of animal. “What the hell?”
    Rachel joined him, rubbing at a scuffed elbow, hoisting her machete in case the thing moved. “What is that?”
    DeVontay gave it a tentative nudge with the toe of his boot. “Some kind of drone? Maybe some kind of military surveillance thing? That looks like a camera lens in the front.”
    While the solar storms and the intense electromagnetic radiation had destroyed the power grid, computers, and electronic equipment, turning the technology of the early Twenty-First Century into useless clutter, some equipment had been protected via grounded and shielded Faraday cages. Her grandfather Franklin had salvaged a shortwave radio and a solar power system, and their own bunker contained an operating radio, gas-powered generators, and a solar array.
    They’d witnessed occasional helicopters and other gear that suggested the U.S. government had foreseen the cataclysm and made large-scale preparations against electromagnetic pulses. But Rachel had never seen such an airborne entity as this, which appeared to be either a complex imitation of an animal or else some type of synthetic mutation.
    As DeVontay bent down to retrieve it, Rachel grabbed his arm and pulled him back, struck by a sudden anxiety. “Don’t touch it.”
    “What, you think it’s a bomb or something?”
    “It’s alive.”
    “No way,” DeVontay said. “Looks like some kind of weird metal or plastic. And I see some wires there where its neck is broken.”
    Rachel scanned the sky. “Hope there’s not any more of these.”
    “I was more worried about the crows plucking one of your eyes out.”
    Rachel slid the tip of her machete under one crumpled wing and flipped the bird. Its two legs were bent like pipes, feet fanning out in tiny webs. “You hit it,” she said, pointing at a gash in the material of its underside where a turgid, milky fluid oozed out.
    “Looks like circuits and stuff in there. Where did this come from?”
    One of the legs twitched.
    “I told you it was alive,” Rachel said.
    “So birds are mutating into machines or something? That’s even crazier than Zaps.”
    With a whirring sound, a small telescopic arm extended from a tiny orifice. A pliers-like appendage on the end reached into the gash and deftly plucked at the inner workings, moving almost too fast for them to see. In a few seconds, the bird’s “eye” blinked on and the object rolled onto its legs.
    Rachel and DeVontay both jumped back in surprise. Rachel swung her machete at it, but it hopped away and the blade pinged off the asphalt.
    “Get back,” DeVontay shouted as the bird rose into the air, hovering unsteadily before them, the telescopic arm flitting around, conducting repairs. Another small articulated wand protruded from its head and carved at the damaged material, raining little bits of the silver material as it worked.
    “It’s rebuilding itself,” Rachel said.
    DeVontay raised his weapon to fire at the object, but Rachel put out her hand to belay him. “Don’t,” she said. “What if it explodes?”
    “I don’t care. It’s creeping me out.”
    But he had no time to aim, for the bird suddenly soared brokenly toward the south as if migrating for the winter.
    “What the hell just happened?” DeVontay said.
    “I don’t know, but it’s getting dark fast.” Rachel hurried to her bicycle. “I don’t want to be out here with God knows what dropping from the sky.”
    “Me, either.”

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
     
    “We’re just supposed to listen. In case Franklin calls.”
    “That’s the first broadcast we’ve gotten in two months,” Stephen