by Olah, Jeff
Guilt wasn’t an emotion she’d ever allowed herself to feel. In her line of work, it was classified as a career killer, a nonsensical reaction to the whims of others, something for the weak, an excuse for losing. It wasn’t her, it never was.
Not until today.
Natalie felt like she was going to vomit.
“Lucas,” she said, “give me a second.”
She laid the weapon on the seat, lowered her window and put her head out. “CHUCK, YOU DON’T—”
Chuck was already halfway to the stairs. “JUST GET TO THE STREET!” He cut left, dodged a small female Feeder, and without turning, sprinted the last twenty yards.
Before she could respond, Chuck reached the third-floor landing. He used a discarded soda can to bang on the railing before calling to the incensed crowd. “LET’S GO, COME ON … I’M RIGHT HERE!”
From the driver’s seat, Lucas looked into the rearview mirror. His eyes were wide and nostrils flared. He looked like he might be about to hyperventilate. “Uh, what should I do?”
“Give me second.” She again checked the windows, looking right to left and then again through the rear. After a moment, she grabbed the Beretta, sat back, and pulled Noah in close. “Okay, same as before. You’re going to stay right and take down anything that gets in the way.”
Lucas took a second to watch the crowd. He let off the brake, slowly coasting toward the wall. “Ms. uh … Natalie?”
She held Noah close, kissed him on the head. “Just Natalie.”
Within thirty feet of the horde, Lucas pumped the brakes. “Are you sure?”
The majority had taken a hard left and followed Chuck toward the stairs. His plan had—for the most part—done what was intended. However, the number of Feeders still in a direct line with the SUV had her second-guessing the entire plan.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
She wasn’t.
As the horde started to thin, most heading off toward the stairs, they also began to bottleneck at the opening. Some lost their footing and careened head over heels down the first flight of steps, others pushing in from behind, climbed over those in front and in turn, dropped over the wall.
Natalie removed her sweatshirt, handed it to Noah, and quickly reclined his seat. She kept her eyes forward, watching as the crowd begin to separate at the middle, a few appearing undecided.
Then she remembered. It was only a flash, but it was everything.
“Lucas …”
“Yeah?”
“Forget what I said, just stay here for another few seconds.”
“What about Chuck?”
“He’ll be fine, we’ll catch up to him on the street.”
To Noah, she bundled the sweatshirt, and asked him to keep it over his face and head. Faking a smile, she said, “It’s going to be bumpy, so don’t move it, okay.”
Lucas moved his right hand from the wheel, turned back to her. “There’s still too many.”
She nodded. “There won’t be in a minute.”
“What do you—”
Natalie checked Noah’s seatbelt one final time and then hurried into the passenger seat beside Lucas. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen, why?”
“I need you to hum.”
Lucas cut her a look. He turned to glance at the horde and then back to her. “Hum, you need me to—”
She was speaking more quickly now, had an urgency to her voice that ran contradictory to her unusual request. “Just do it, I need to hear the pitch of your voice.”
Lucas slowly shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Natalie lowered her window, and asked him to lower his. She then reached for the Beretta and laid it in her lap. “Just do it, trust me.”
The teen looked confused, although he shrugged his shoulders and pressed his lips together. “Hmmm.”
“Good,” she said, “it’s got a twinge of baritone, but I think it’ll work.”
“What are—”
Natalie cut him short once again. She’d explain everything once they had a few minutes and weren’t running for their lives. “Okay.” She motioned toward the end of the ramp. “Get in close to the last pillar on the left, I mean within a foot or so. We don’t want any of them getting through. When you pull even, I want you to stop.”
“Stop, are you sure?”
“This is our only chance.”
“So …”
“Lucas, just drive.”
As the SUV started forward, there was a small group who took notice. Eight or maybe ten, she wasn’t able to get a good look. They had branched off from those heading to the stairs, but were moving much more quickly than she would have liked.
His head on a swivel, Lucas glanced from Natalie to the approaching horde and then over to the congested mess at the stairs. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but then didn’t.
“Good,” Natalie said, “speed up just a bit, get in real close.”
Twenty feet from where she’d asked him to stop, Lucas began to let off the accelerator. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked at Natalie. The group of ten was less than five feet from the hood.
Natalie leaned out through the passenger window and leveled the nine millimeter at the crowd. “Pull it in close and cover your ears.”
“But there are—”
“LUCAS!” She snapped at him. “DO THIS OR WE ALL DIE!”
Sighting the Feeder at the front of the pack, an older man wearing a blood-soaked hockey jersey, Natalie fired two quick shots. The first entered through the man’s left eye and exploded through the back of his head. The second followed the same path and struck the wall fifty feet back.
The hockey fan dropped first to his knees and then in a heap just inches from the front bumper. Lucas reacted by slamming the gas pedal to the floor. The SUV lurched forward and before he could break, slammed into the pillar he was attempting to avoid.
Lucas turned to Natalie, eyes wide, mouth open. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Natalie checked the mirror to her right, adjusted her aim, and fired another two shots in rapid succession. A fraction of a second later, a large metal dumpster at the far end of the ramp exploded in a deafening roar that sent shockwaves throughout the six-story parking structure, the echoes rebounding against the concrete walls.
The horde now appeared confused, disoriented. They began to move away from one another, stumbling off in every direction, no longer concerned with the SUV or the outside stairwell. It worked nearly as well as she remembered, and although they now had a much better chance at reaching the street, they weren’t completely out of the woods.
Natalie sat back against the seat, laid the Beretta in the center console and took a breath. They had maybe ten seconds. She peered down the ramp toward the second floor and then turned to Lucas. “Now I want you to stick your head out that window and yell as loud as you possibly can.”
34
It had taken Kevin almost ten minutes to convince him that his daughter would be better protected in the backseat with Zeus then slung over his shoulder running through the streets. She’d finally woken up as Kevin pulled the massive truck away from the sidewalk and now ran her hand over the thick coat of the seemingly docile German Shepherd.
“Dad, I think he’s snoring.”
Kevin chuckled. “He’s not sleeping, at least I don’t think so. That’s just his way of telling you that he likes you, he wants to be your friend.”
For the first time in the last five days, Owen had the pleasure of watching a smile slide across his daughter’s face. She looked like she did as a child, before the stress of being a teen and becoming a young woman began to take hold. She was and had always been his little girl, and now he was just happy for the brief glimpse of what had been.
“So,” Owen said, “you finally going to explain all of this?”
Kevin rolled slowly up to the intersection at the corner of Tenth Street and Radar Avenue. He looked out toward the horizon and let the midmorning sun w
arm his face. “It’s something you need to hear from her. Whatever you still want to know after talking with your wife, I’ll be glad to try and answer.”
Owen still held a smile, but shook his head. “I’m starting to think all of this is just some sort of bad dream. Nothing is adding up, nothing’s making any sense”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, “and I seriously doubt anything she tells you is going to help. This is just the way things are going to be for a while. We can try to fix it, but we need to get to your wife before we do anything else.”
A concentrated dose of reality.
The minute he began to feel better about his daughter, about the fact that she was safe, and for the most part unharmed, he was reminded that this hell that had become his life was far from over. Natalie and Noah were out there somewhere, and although the city was a big place, he had a job to do. They were the only thing that mattered, and for the moment, the only thing that should be occupying his thoughts.
Owen looked from Ava to Kevin. “Let’s backtrack to the Hummer, take whatever’s left … if we can, then head to Cecil’s. If I know Nat, she’s probably already there, just waiting to give me crap for taking so long.”
Kevin reached for a bottle of water, pulled off the cap and took a long drink. “Alright, but we stay together, no exceptions. Things start to get outta hand, we analyze first, and we do not overreact. Overreacting gets us killed.”
He wasn’t used to being told what to do—well, on occasion from his clients, but even then he always had a way of smoothing the waters. He knew exactly what they wanted, and simply gave it to them. Working deals and keeping people happy became an art form, but in this new world, he was going to have to adjust. “I’m ready, let’s go.”
Before pulling through the intersection, Kevin turned in his seat. “He giving you any trouble?”
Ava looked down at the German Shepherd. He rested his head on her lap, now opening his eyes and staring back at her. “No, he’s good.”
As they turned left on Radar and started east, Owen leaned into the door, and fought the urge to yawn. “If you’re not going to tell me what all of this has to do with Nat, can you at least fill me in on who you are? I mean who you really are. And I’m assuming that the story about getting home to the wife was a bit of a stretch?”
Kevin lowered his window a few inches, cleared his throat. “Yeah, never married.”
“So, who is it I’m riding into the apocalypse with?”
“Name’s Kevin Rodgers, worked for BXF Technologies. Was Head of Security for most of our West Coast operations. Hated nearly every single minute of it, but hey, it paid really well.”
“And?”
“Not much else to tell. I was sent to find your wife when everything went to hell, make sure she was okay and then report back. But then I found out that wasn’t all he wanted.”
“He?”
“Marcus Goodwin. He’s looking to locate someone who went missing six months ago, thinks that Natalie may know where to find that person.”
“How does that put you here?”
“Goodwin only wants the information from your wife. Once he has it, she becomes a liability. We need to find her before anyone else from BXF does.”
It didn’t matter the reason, only the outcome. Either way, he was going to get back to his wife and his son. And there wasn’t anything that anyone—including Marcus Goodwin—was going to do to stop him.
Owen let his head rest against the door, closed his eyes. It felt good, if only for a few seconds. He pictured Nat’s face, her shoulder-length auburn hair, her perfect smile, her blue eyes glinting against the sun. She was here with him, only it wasn’t what he remembered. She was younger, maybe three or four years.
Noah and Ava were with him as well. There was a beach, an empty lifeguard stand, and the waves, and the warm sand that went on for days. He watched as Natalie followed their son down to the water and splashed in the shore break.
Ava sat on the towel beside him. Her face twisting into an anxious scowl as she nudged his shoulder and pointed toward a boat drifting thirty yards offshore. As she spoke, his daughter’s voice was different, sounded much older, a whole lot like Natalie’s. “Dad, there are bad men out there, we have to go get them.”
Owen tried to turn his head, tried to respond to Ava. He couldn’t. It was as if every muscle from his sternum to the top of his head had been turned off, locked in place. His mouth sat open less than half an inch, his voice lost somewhere inside. He could only watch.
Noah ran from his mother. He broke out in laughter, hysterical and high-pitched, finally looked back toward Owen and waved. “Hi Dad.”
Natalie caught Noah as a small wave broke around their ankles. She scooped him up and held him in her arms. She kissed his head and ruffled his sandy brown hair. As she lowered him back into the water, she glanced toward the horizon and then quickly turned away, the desperate look of fear playing in her eyes.
Owen dropped his hands to his side, pushed away from the sand, and to his surprise, was able to stand. Four men now stood on the deck of the small boat, each shouldering semi-automatic rifles. As he called out to Nat and Noah, his voice caught in his throat.
He broke into a sprint, although his legs were heavy, not moving as quickly as his mind perceived. With each second that passed, he was drifting further back, the space between growing, their faces now a blur as he fought to speak.
The men on boat began to fire, round after round spitting from the ends of their rifles, muzzle flash like a wildfire lighting up the ocean in a wall of flames. A second later, the shallow shore break all around his wife and his son exploded, their shapes fading into silhouettes behind a curtain of whitewater and ejected sand.
Owen cried out, his mouth snapping open, but only one word broke free. “NOOOOO!”
Ava was at his side, reaching for his shoulder, pulling him back, urging him away. “Dad, come on, wake up.”
Owen looked back over his shoulder. Ava was smiling at him. She wrapped her hands around his arm and pulled him back. His eyes began to cloud over, his ears filled with a hollow buzz; he was slipping, falling away.
Now she was gone, but her voice was still there. “Dad, wake up. We’re here.”
35
Natalie pointed toward the exit, although Lucas was already looking in that direction. The teen with the bruised face and the sweaty hands maneuvered the oversized SUV through the last grouping of Feeders and then out into the street. He’d done what he said he would, and at the moment, she was impressed.
“Let’s go find Chuck.”
Lucas nodded quickly, looking as though he may be sick. He pulled his hood back up over his head and scanned the street. “I don’t …”
“Lucas, you did great.” She knew it was what he needed to hear, but she also wasn’t lying. In fact, the kid was more skilled behind the wheel than most people twice his age. His hand-eye coordination was exceptional, his spatial awareness unlike anything she’d ever seen.
And they had—for the most part—avoided the horde through all six levels of the parking structure. Well almost. There were at least a dozen glancing blows, whole groups of Feeders thrown violently to the ground, and a few direct hits, the SUV’s massive off-road tires proving useful in navigating the downed bodies and blood-soaked concrete.
Lucas continued to stare toward the end of Sixth Street. “I don’t see him.”
Natalie had turned to Noah, retrieved her sweatshirt, and had her son again sitting upright. “We’re okay.”
Noah looked around the cab, then out to the street.
“We’re going to find him.”
Lucas pulled to a stop along the curb, now turning in his seat. “Where is he?”
Natalie reached for the Beretta, dropped the magazine into her hand, and then quickly slammed it back home. She looked toward the outside stairwell, then to the abandoned animal shelter, and finally out into the street. Under her breath she said, “Where the hell did you go?”
&nb
sp; “Mom …”
Not turning away, she said, “Yes?”
“Is Chuck gone?”
“No, he’s out here somewhere, probably hiding.” She turned to Lucas. “Now we just have to go find him.”
Lucas motioned toward a crowd near the intersection a hundred yards west. Not more than a few dozen, it was the only grouping of substance within range. “It’s got to be that way, right?”
“Probably,” Natalie said, “but if it is, he would most likely double back and end up here anyway.”
“So we wait?”
Natalie shook her head. “No, we meet him in the middle.”
Lucas pulled away from the curb, turned the SUV around, and started back in the opposite direction. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He didn’t answer; instead he changed the subject. “How did you know those people … uh, those things would do that?”
“In the garage?”
The teen looked relaxed for the first time. Brushing the hair that fell from the front of the hoodie away from his face, he appeared younger than his sixteen years. “Yeah, it was weird, how did you know?”
She shrugged her shoulders, tried to match his posture, to become more relatable. It was something she’d used in court more times than she could remember, working to soften her edge. “I don’t know, it just seemed like it might work.”
She was lying.
Two right turns and finally out onto Pacific Avenue, Lucas turned to her and narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
“They’re drawn to sound and smell, so I figured if you overload one of those two things, they’d lose—”
Noah had twisted in his seat, and now had his face pressed against the window. “Mom, he’s over there. Look Mom, hurry.”