by Chuck Rogers
Ted got back on point.
"You said you were in town?"
"Yeah, I met a big Odin-looking guy named Luther. You know him?"
"Luther!" Ted grew incensed. "I used to give that fucker money every time I saw him! Bills not change! Son of a bitch throws a brick through my windshield and him and some of his buddies tried to drag us out our car! Word is he really is the Lord of the Flies down there."
"Not so much."
Ted gave me a look. "You ran into him?"
I decided to earn some points. "I beat him to death with a bike lock. Him and some of his buddies."
Eve's lovely gray eyes went wide. She looked at me and looked down the hall at my rifle. "Why did you use a bike lock?"
So much for points.
"Long story." I changed the subject. "No word from the government at all?"
Eve's face grew bitter. "Not one word."
Ted shook his head. "I have no idea about state of fed but local government tried. Malibu Urgent and Malibu Family Care were overwhelmed with the blind on the first day. Then the tsunami hit and there really wasn't any Malibu any more and no Pacific Coast Highway. It was Fall in LA. We hadn't had our rains yet and the Santa Monica Mountains were dry as a bone, as usual."
"The beam hit Southern California?"
"No, thank God, but giant chunks of the moon burning up on re-entry was plenty. I figure the whole state caught on fire. Probably the whole country. We had a week of fires with no one to fight them.
"Then the rain came."
"And the slides. A lot of the people who went out in the rain for any length of time got sick. Our canyon got lucky. Though the bottom turned into a lake. That finally drained off about a week ago but it was bad."
"You seem to have made out all right."
"Up here in the hills people mostly sheltered in place. There was some stealing and a few shootings, but most people just stayed until they ran out of food and then left. A few came back with nothing good to say."
Eve looked close to tears. "We have a friend, Jim Minuchi. He and his family packed up and took the back roads to LA. He came back . . ."
"He came back without his family." Ted finished. "Jim pretty much described thousands of Luthers with guns roaming the streets by day and then holing up while the burned walked the night. Real the living envying the dead kind of stuff."
Eve shook. "Then he hung himself."
"He said his family had been burned."
I remembered Jaiden's words. "Burned?"
Ted's shoulders twitched. "Yeah, word is you don't want to see it. He said he had to put them down."
"No National Guard presence?"
"We never saw any. Helicopters flew over. Lots of them. But they never stopped. But the PCH was washed out and a lot of the canyons were impassable. If the Guard deployed in LA they got overrun, went rogue, or if I had to bet just abandoned their posts to go take care of their own."
"Nothing over any of the emergency broadcasting systems?"
"Communications went out first day. I used to check the radio every day, but now?"
I knew the feeling.
I sipped my tea and knew it in my bones "They knew."
"Bastards!" Eve slammed down her teacup. "I knew it!"
I shrugged. "What could they have done?"
"I don't know! Saved untold millions of lives?"
Eve was right.
If I was a betting man, which I wasn't, I'd have put everything on Uncle Sam and his anointed ones drinking champagne in the bunkers while we the unwashed hordes up top sorted the ugly shit out. Then the anointed would emerge and start re-assuming control.
Bastards was right.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm a red-blooded, real live nephew of my Uncle Sam.
I love America, and wouldn't live anywhere else.
But I've got red-blood. I was from the trailer park when I wasn't from the rez and most of my experience with my Uncle Sam is that he's a vicious drunk with a belt.
God helps those who help themselves.
God bless the child whose got his own.
Ted gave me the I played a scientist on TV look. "How do you know?"
I played some cards. I told them everything Line had told me about unknown, dark, lurking objects in our neck of the cosmos, non-relativistic jets and unexplained cosmic phenomena that could only be explained by the terrifyingly predictable spokes of doom.
Eve hung on my every word.
Ted just stared. "Frame, how do you know this?"
Then it just lurched out of me and I couldn't stop it. I told them about meeting Line in the bar. Her feeble attempt at picking up on me. How her and her team had discovered the end of the world. About her team disappearing after they had contacted the government. I told them about me thinking Line was a card-carrying member of the tin-foil hat brigade and not caring because she was beautiful.
I told them about dancing.
I realized I was shaking
Eve's eyes were huge.
I had spent three months in the hole with the love of my life dead the night we'd discovered each other. Twelve weeks and change thinking about Line 24/7 when I wasn't thinking about how dying alone in the hole might be all there was, and all a man liked me deserved.
I hadn't done my three months in solitary standing on my head.
It had messed with me, and like I told you. Primates need other primates.
Even primates like me.
I told them about taking Line home. About how she told me she loved me and I told her that I loved her. I told them about the terrible, inevitable, conclusion of the evening that I hadn't bargained for and had been too love-drunk to figure it out and stop it.
That's where I stopped.
I came as close to crying as I had in a very long time, and both Ted and Eve could see it. Eve wept openly at the sight of it. I had to visibly control myself, but I battened down the hatches and clamped down on the waterworks. "Yeah, that's my tale of woe, and my insider info."
Ted gave me an appraising look. "You military?"
"I was." I went enigmatic. "The rest I don't want to talk about right now."
Ted nodded. He probably thought I was hiding Special Forces, James Bond kind of shit. Not that I was the kind of bastard he'd never let in his house.
Unless he needed my kind of help.
Sad fact was he probably already did and just didn't know it yet.
I changed the subject. "Anything else going on around here I should know about?"
"Like what?"
"I dunno. I think I heard a dog get killed real ugly down the canyon from Bobby's the other night."
Ted and Eve looked at each other.
"There may be a mountain lion." Eve looked a little pale. "But we're not sure. We heard it scream last night."
I hadn't but I'd been hiding in the hole.
Again.
Ted shook his head. "Didn't sound like any mountain lion I've ever heard, and except when I was off on film shoots I'm a child of Malibu. I've lived in these hills all my life."
"And incidents?"
"There have been some livestock losses. Some were clearly theft, but, Joanne, she lives a bit down the canyon from you. She kept chickens. She's half the egg supply around here. Last week something slaughtered every last one of them."
"Surplus killing," I nodded. "A lot of predators do that."
A lot of humans did it, too.
Eve grimaced. "Another friend, Kristine. She kept a beautiful pair of beautiful Nubian goats. Mostly for breeding and showing, and, last week . . ."
She couldn't finish.
I looked to Ted.
Ted made a face. "The billy's head was torn off. The nanny, well, actually, both had . . ."
"Both had what?"
"I don't know. I'm not a vet, and they'd been torn apart."
"And?"
"They looked like they'd been raped."
"God!" Eve shot to her feet and stormed over to the kitchen sink.
"Ted, I was in a
war. The only thing that rapes goats is people."
"All I can tell you is what I saw."
"What'd you see?"
"I don't know how to put this. Most mammals have a certain set of holes in their bodies, and theirs were, well, there just really wasn't any other explanation."
Christ on a crutch.
Eve whirled. "And no one's seen Carla in days!"
God damn it.
I didn't know any of these people. I had no idea yet whether this community was viable or whether I was staying. Regardless, I sure as hell didn't want to get in the habit of going John Wayne for them.
I get paid for that.
I was also sure that money wasn't worth anything anymore and I was already better off than they were.
Then again, I currently hung my hat here. If there was a dog killing, goat raping, Carla kidnapper in the neighborhood that was everybody's problem.
Besides, I hadn't rescued Ashley from Luther just to have some goat-raper break in and make off with her.
"You say this all happened down canyon?"
"Well, yeah. Now that I think about it." Ted thought about it and he didn't like it. "And the path is moving upward towards our road."
Fine.
"All right. It's getting late in the day." I looked out the window. I had no idea what late in the day meant anymore. "I'll hunt it tomorrow at dawn, whenever that is."
Eve stared. "You can track?"
"Tracked you."
"Oh."
"It's been a while since I've been hunting, (Animals anyway), but given the devastation on either side of us, this canyon is kind of an oasis. There's not that much real estate to hide in, and if it's big enough to tear goats apart then picking up its tracks and finding where it's denning shouldn't be too hard."
Ted was impressed. "Wow."
"Yeah, you coming?"
Ted blinked and looked to his wife.
I was pleased that Eve gave Ted a cold, gray-eyed you had better goddamn go look.
"You been hunting, Ted?"
"Ducks, but I haven't in years. I mean we live in the woods. So I have buckshot and slugs for the shotgun, but I don't know anything about stalking."
Gotta play the hand your dealt.
"If you can be reasonably quiet and keep an eye on my six that'll be enough. Load your first round with buckshot and everything behind it with slugs. Bring your pistol and a knife. Pack a lunch. Bring water."
Ted looked like a man whose fate was firmly spinning out of his control.
I threw him a bone. "I'll make coffee."
"Well, hell, negro! That's all you had to say!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
You're not here for the hunting, are you?
I'M A LIGHT SLEEPER in the best of times. When the motion detector vibrated in silent mode against the nightstand I was wide-awake with the Uzi in one hand and the security remote in the other. Normally I sleep naked, but this was post Armageddon and I had on a pair of OD ranger panties and my boots were right by the bed. I slipped on my boots, deployed the Uzi's stock and slipped my bandolier of spare magazines over my shoulder.
I crouched by the bed.
Bobby had a beautiful security system. I think I mentioned I installed it. But the coolest features were tied to his phone, his tablet and his laptop. None of which I had access to.
However F-R-A-M-E unlocked the remote.
I pressed the blue microphone button and spoke very softy. "Outdoor cameras. Thermal."
The remote screen was the size of a jumbo ravioli. I got a checkerboard of nine tiny squares of black and white footage from the nine cameras around the house. The motion sensors were tied to the cameras and there was a tiny exclamation point on one of the tiny screens.
Right by the hedge.
Right by the bomb shelter.
God, damn it.
I tapped the indicated screen and expanded it to full ravioli.
You've seen animals eyes reflected in firelight. The eyes of most woodland creatures also reflect infrared. The feed was a little grainy at the far edge of the house and the hedge broke up the outline of whatever creature was there.
But a pair of bright white spots peered through the hedge.
I moved through the house in a combat crouch watching the screen.
The bobbing white spots froze.
The fucking thing had seen me. Through the living area glass, the atrium and all the way back into the hallway. The remote screen was a tiny source of light, but night eyes that good meant a predator.
Two could play at this game.
First rule of home defense. If Charlie was in the wire?
Light up the wire.
Keep the house dark.
That way you can see out and they can't see in.
I pressed the voice button. "Flood the perimeter."
Bobby's banks of outdoor security Stalag lights snapped on and hurled the property into the lunar glare of 20,000 lumens apiece. They were the kind of lights they used to light stadiums.
Someone's night-vision got ruined and it wasn't mine.
I moved down the hall. The M-14, Bobby's .44 Magnum, my lunch and a few other odds and ends were packed and ready to go by the front door. If some beast of the field wanted to--
It was the most horrifying thing I'd heard up to this point in my life. It was a scream. It was the scream of something who's voice was so deep it had no business screaming and it ripped across the back of the property and echoed across the canyons.
It froze the blood.
It nailed me in place.
The hedge burst apart as it as it hit the back lawn moving far too fast.
The perimeter alarm went off again.
It wasn't a beast of the field.
It was a beast of the apocalypse.
The house alarm went off.
I was horrified to hear the dosimeter go off.
The thing came straight through the living area glass. It didn't understand glass and that startled it as it smashed through and its claws skidded on the hardwood floor. There was no running. It was going to beat me in a foot race to the front door. No chance at all to reach the shelter. Bobby had thought a safe room would ruin the Eichler esthetic. Fighting in the dark would be to its advantage. I had a brain, opposable thumbs and I wanted to know what I was dealing with.
I spoke to the remote. "All interior lights."
I slitted my eyes as every light in the house came on.
It blinked and caught sight of me.
It was a bear.
Have you ever seen a bear with no fur? They go from cuddly to gigantic, lanky, rat-looking things.
You ever seen someone in the Burn Ward with third-degree burns over most of their body that isn't going to make it?
Put the two together, with huge swathes of sick-looking pink, angry red and open running sores. It didn't matter whether it was a bear, a man or anything else that walked, flapped or crawled over the Earth.
Nothing that looked like that should still be alive.
We stared at each other across the atrium. Both atrium doors were open. It stood up.
I am well over six feet tall and it topped me by a head.
It was hung like a bear.
It had an erection.
It was drooling.
Remember when Ted told us you don't want to see the burned?
You don't want to see a screaming, shaved, non-relativistic energy beam burned bear with a hard on.
Ever.
Don't even think about the picture I just painted.
If you can.
The Bear looked at me with elastic strings of spittle dangling from its jaws. The red-rimmed eyes stared at me as its mouth opened. It made a sound that will haunt me to my grave as some horrid, pre-seminal something began dribbling from its summer sausage-sized pizzle and spattered on the floor.
I pushed the Uzi's selector switch to full auto.
It dropped to all fours and charged.
We forget how fast animals are. Hell,
a cow can outrun 95% of humanity. This was a motivated apex predator that was known to do forty miles per hour. It was halfway across the atrium before I could react. When I did, I reacted by pulling the trigger and holding it down. The Uzi ripped into life at ten rounds per second and I burned the entire magazine into the abomination.
Most animals don't just run faster than us. Their actions and reactions are faster. If a bear swats at a fly he does it about twice as fast as you or me.
He swatted me.
He swatted the Uzi out of my hand and I was fairly certain most of the right side of my face went with it. I didn't care. I'd left the hallway the hard way and was rolling to a stop on Bobby's kitchen tiles. Blood poured into my eye and mouth.
I don't know how I stood up.
The world wanted to go tunnel vision with the purple pinpricks sparkling around the edges. One advantage of serving in my beloved Corps is that sometimes in these situations you still hear the Drill Instructor screaming.
"Get up, Marine!"
The only thing going for me was the monstrosity decided to stand up on its hind legs again as it followed me. That gave me a couple of seconds. It was covered with blood. Like me, blood was dripping into its eyes. At least one of my shots had hit it in the head. I might have rung its bell but 9mm hollow points break apart on bear skulls. 9mm hollow points are designed to radically expand in human flesh. So neither do you get the primary penetration needed to reach deep into a bear's body cavity and blow apart something really vital.
It was a horribly wounded abomination and would probably bleed to death eventually. Right now it was the proverbial wounded animal. The most dangerous kind. It still had a hard-on for me, and now?
This was going to be hate sex.
In emergencies people do what they are trained to do.
I could hear my DI screaming "Adapt! Improvise! Overcome!"
Blood was streamed into my right eye and tears were smearing the left in sympathy. Bears toddling on their hind legs in the circus are ridiculous. When a four legged animal walks towards you on its hind legs with murder in its eyes and between its legs it is a cosmic obscenity.
I backed up.
Bobby had a lovely set of kitchen knives but that was a non-starter in a face-to-face fight.
Adapt-improvise-overcome.
Face was the word.
I ripped Bobby's kitchen extinguisher out of its bracket. Kitchen models are mostly filled with sodium bicarbonate but there are several other chemicals in there as well and if you read the warning label it says nuisance dust, irritant , and it was all under pressure. The kitchen went fog-of-war as I discharged the entire canister in Winnie the Penis's face. I managed to avoid a blind-bear haymaker and slammed the empty canister upside the horror's head.