The bridge rose maybe forty feet above the water, its pillars mighty enough to support multiple lanes of traffic. The bordering forest was equally dense on both riverbanks, so DeVontay paddled to the side where Lars sat gasping and catching his breath.
“I guess…I need to say thanks,” he said to Rachel as she climbed out of the canoe onto shore. “Saving my life’s getting to be a habit, huh?”
“I’m not keeping score,” she said. “But I lost my sunglasses. Think you can handle it?”
The horrifying plunge seemed to have sobered him up. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Hey, there’s a path over here,” DeVontay called, and Rachel hoped it wasn’t a corridor for Godzilla beavers or some other mutant atrocity. Tara followed him, and Rachel helped Lars to his feet. His forearms bore a series of circular splotches from the suckers, and she hoped they weren’t the harbingers of a venomous swelling.
“Your pistol and DeVontay’s rifle are the only firearms we have left,” she said. “I hope we don’t run into an army.”
He held up his axe, which glistened with water and the viscous leakage from the tentacle. “Don’t worry. It’s my turn to save you. You might not keep score, but I do.”
Rachel followed with her machete, and shortly they were alongside the road, which looked silver under the aurora. They decided to wait beneath the pines just off the highway, since DeVontay figured they’d made good time and were well ahead of the Zap who had taken Squeak.
“What if it stopped, or else went in another direction?” Tara said, repeating her worry about the flimsy plan.
DeVontay was both patient and confident. “It will come. We’ve dealt with Zaps before. They don’t stay separated from their kind for long.
Except Kokona. Thinking of the mutant infant led Rachel to wonder how the others in the bunker were faring. They were probably worried sick, since she and DeVontay should have been home that afternoon at the latest. Now it was likely near midnight.
If Stephen listens and does what we told him, they’ll be all right. But that’s a big if.
They’d only waited twenty minutes or so—Lars had dozed off sitting against a sticky tree trunk, but Tara was wired and anxious—when Rachel spotted the tiny twin specks of light in the distance. She nudged DeVontay, who rested against her with his eyes closed although his breathing didn’t indicate sleep.
When he saw what she was pointing at, he woke Lars. “Showtime.”
The lights grew larger as they moved closer, flickering yellow and orange and red, casting a halo against the darkness. Soon they could discern the Zap’s outline, as well as the angular burden in its arms. The glow of its eyes reflected off the silvery suit like molten metal.
They also heard it.
The sound rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern, and then Rachel realized it was speech. In the early post-Doomsday era, Zaps learned by imitation and echoing, but they likely knew so much more now, after five years of assimilating and sharing knowledge.
The voice carried a precise pitch, although the quality of the sound was hollow. It was a song, but oddly lacking in any musical or poetic quality. It hit all the right notes, but it had no soul.
They all recognized the centuries-old lullaby:
Rock-a-bye baby
In the treetop
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall.
Down will come baby,
Cradle and all.
It timed its steps to the rhythm of the song, and even rocked the listless Squeak back and forth in its arms in a mockery of motherhood. The little girl’s eyes were open, but she stared glassily off into the distance.
The Zap was perhaps forty yards from them now, coming up on the bridge, keeping a steady pace and showing no sign of exhaustion. After it finished the lullaby, it talked to the girl. “How are you, honey?”
The words were chilling because of their aloof blandness. But the girl responded, looking up at the blunt face with its ugly haircut and uttering a short burst of ululations—the “squeaks” for which her mother had named her.
She’s talking to it!
Tara nearly burst from their hiding place, whimpering in fear for her daughter. DeVontay held out an arm to block her. “It hasn’t hurt her,” he whispered.
The mutant then imitated her peculiar series of squeaks, which delighted the child. She even laughed a little, and the Zap’s passive face creased in a pathetic, almost frightening attempt at a smile.
As if it’s learning emotions on the fly.
Or at least learning to fake them.
In her old life, she’d known more than a few people who could fake their emotions. She’d been fooled by some of them, including a couple of men. Somehow the talent seemed like it should be reserved for humans only. It was a kind of lying, a kind of sin, and only a cruel God would allow that sin to be dishonored.
The Zap stopped walking and stood in the middle of the road, rocking the girl whose face looked beatific in the radiance of its eyes. It sang the first line of the lullaby again.
Then it repeated the word “Baby” very slowly.
Squeak uttered her throat-rattling sound and then said, “Buh.”
“Yes. Baaaay-beeee.”
“Bub,” the girl said.
“Babeeeee,” the Zap said.
“Baaaa.” Squeak paused a moment, biting her lip as if piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of air. “Bee!”
“Yes,” the Zap said. “Baby.”
“Baby,” the girl said, triumphantly.
Rachel realized with horror what was happening. The Zap was teaching the child to speak, a girl who’d been deprived of any real, human communication her entire life by a psychotically overprotective mother. Even more horrifying, the child was responding to the nurturing.
Tara couldn’t contain herself, as she must have recognized what was happening, too. She emitted a choking sound and ran from the forest into the road. “Squeak! Squeak!”
Both Squeak and the Zap watched her approach, the girl’s face scrunched in uncertainty. The Zap remained as impassive as ever.
“Damn it,” Lars said, sprinting after her, his axe swinging by his side.
“What should we do?” DeVontay asked.
“I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t summon the birds.”
Tara reached the Zap and tried to rip Squeak from its arms. The Zap pulled back but made no violent moves toward the frantic mother.
“Buh!” the girl yelled, apparently hanging on to the word she’d just been taught as if it were a lifeline. “Baby!”
When Lars arrived with the axe, the Zap must have recognized the threat, because it released the girl who wobbled unsteadily on her feet but made no move toward her mother. Lars bellowed a Viking battle cry and stormed in, chopping at the Zap, which deflected the blows with its forearms.
Tara leapt into the fight, almost getting her arm severed by the wildly swing blade. She grabbed Squeak and dragged her away, crying and pleading. Squeak mostly seemed overwhelmed by the whole matter, as if the creature in the silver suit had been a fun friend who had slipped out of a fairy-tale book and taken her for a walk.
The Zap dodged Lars’s blade and came up underneath him, grabbing for a throat hidden under the unruly beard. With its other hand, the Zap caught Lars’s forearm and squeezed until the axe dropped.
“Shoot it,” Rachel said to DeVontay.
“I don’t know if—“
She plucked the M16 from his grip, knelt beneath the branches of the pine, and steadied the sights. She took a breath and exhaled, then gently caressed the trigger and felt the recoil. Three muffled pops punctuated Tara’s shouts.
The Zap’s head jerked, a great red dot at its temple, the far side of its face ruptured. The eyes smoldered and went dark. It gradually relaxed its grip on Lars and folded to the ground.
The girl let out a mournful yowl, and Tara nearly smothered the child, yelling “Hush,” only as a command and not a lullaby.
When Squeak couldn’t be consoled, Tara shook her and screeched, “Bad girl. You have to be quiet. Bad.”
DeVontay noticed the look on Rachel’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I might have blown up the wrong head.”