The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

by Michael R. Hicks

  “I don’t doubt it,” he chuckled. He dug into his pocket and passed her a stick of Orbit. Sharp spearmint. Her mouth watered around it. He grinned. “Good, right?”

  She blew a pathetic little bubble, cracked it between her teeth. “Best thing mankind ever did.”

  They stopped for the night at a motel on the road north of Bakersfield. The eastern mountains grayed as they prepped for bed. Tristan’s twin bed smelled musty and the room was cold enough to see her breath, but she piled the covers high, napping in fits and starts until the early afternoon.

  Awake, she was eager to hit the road. Colin snored on, shirtless, hair sticking up from his head. She got out some granola bars and Cheese Nips and crunched them as loudly as she could. He woke with a sharp intake of breath, blinking at the unfamiliar white ceiling. He saw her and smiled.

  “You chew like a gorilla,” he said.

  “Shared a lot of dinners with the larger apes?” she said.

  “Every Thanksgiving.” He rose, twisted his back, grimaced, and stripped down to his jockey shorts. He plopped beside her on the bed and scooped up a handful of salty orange crackers. She passed him a bottle of water. He swigged and scratched his chest. “Eating cheese crackers on the road with a pretty girl. My sixteen-year-old self would be so proud.”

  “This life has its moments,” she said.

  She packed up and waited for him to dress. She offered to drive, but he shrugged her off and pulled back onto I-5. The Prius thrummed up the endless valley. Snow rested on the peaks to both sides, but the valley floor looked better than the last time she’d seen it: the winter storms had brought it fresh water, returning hints of green and green-gray to the swaths of brown and yellow. The road climbed into the mountains. Patchy and half-melted snow covered the grass, a worn-out white blanket. She called their first stop a few miles south of Redding so they could use the bathroom and switch seats.

  “There’s bad people here,” she explained. “I know a way around.”

  Colin squinted up the desolate road. “You’re from here?”

  “Yeah.” She closed her door. “You?”

  “San Diego. Loved it. All this white stuff on the ground is kind of freaking me out.”

  She thought about asking him more, but there didn’t seem to be any point. It would be like asking about the life of a stranger. A stranger with nothing but bad memories of lost family and friends. She detoured around the city and rejoined the highway.

  Mount Shasta swelled to the east, its white heights painted pink by the sunset. Colin guided her off the junction at Weed. Sunlight disappeared from the road through the forest. The highway swooped and fell, embedded in a mass of primeval pines that blotted out all but a narrow strip of starlight. Up in the pass, snow obliterated the road. Tristan slowed to a crawl, heart thudding at every curve, frustration mounding with every minute they crept through the unkempt roads.

  The pass dropped. The snows receded, revealing beautiful black pavement. Wary of black ice, Tristan didn’t press past 50 MPH until they reached Bend, Oregon.

  “Why don’t we call it a day?” Colin said.

  “The day stops at midnight.”

  “Which is what, ten minutes from now? Hanford’s another 250 miles from here. Through two-lane highway. It’s going to be five o’clock before we get there. I don’t know about you, but I get cranky when strangers knock on my door at five in the morning.”

  Tristan slowed the car and clenched her teeth. “Fine. But we stop early, we start early.”

  “Good by me. I don’t want to get there after dark tomorrow anyway. I don’t know what this place is like. It could be just as crazy as Dashing’s.”

  She exited the highway and started looking for a quiet subdivision where they could break into a house. “What do you know about this place?”

  He gazed up at the cloud-skeined stars. “Not much. They’ve still got power, which is cool. And slaves, which is a lot less cool. But I don’t think they’re totally swinging from the chandelier. I’ve heard there’s a way to buy your way in to citizenship.”

  “With what? I doubt they care about cash. Unless they’ve got a shortage of toilet paper.”

  Colin shrugged. “I didn’t get the specifics.”

  “Is Alden a slave? What will they want for him?”

  “I’m as clueless as you are, Tristan. If they’re doing business with my friend, I’m sure they’ll do business with us.”

  She pulled into the driveway of a darkened home. The door was locked, but the neighbor’s wasn’t. She yanked open the empty garage and Colin guided in the Prius. Using a flashlight from the trunk, she scavenged the house, turning up a few cans of green beans and boxes of cereal. No milk, of course, but she’d gotten used to pouring water on her Rice Krispies long ago.

  Colin rattled around the den, emerging a minute later with a bottle and a grin. “Look what I found.”

  She turned the flashlight on him. A brown bottle of Jack Daniels glinted in his hand. She smiled with half her mouth. “How thoughtful of them to leave the liquor cabinet unlocked.”

  He raised his brows. “Fancy a party?”

  “We’ve got to get up early.”

  “Come on. We’re escaped fugitives. All the best criminals drink bourbon.”

  She snatched the bottle from his hand and showed him the label. “This is sour mash, not bourbon.”

  “Sounds even tougher.”

  She took a swig, eyes burning. He winked and tipped it back. His voice went hoarse. “God, I’ve missed that. Think the brewmaster survived? Or is the secret of JD lost forever?”

  Tristan found candles in the bedroom and brought them to the living room. They passed the bottle back and forth, discussing what to expect in the morning. He wanted to drive right up and talk their way in. She wanted to watch from a distance before exposing themselves.

  “You’re so cautious,” he said from beside her on the couch. “Sometimes you’ve got to just go for it.”

  “So cautious,” she said. “Like yesterday. When I broke us out of that Fellini-esque kingdom.”

  “We’ll creep up on it, then. But I’m telling you, it’ll all be fine.” He smiled at her. She could see it coming from a mile away. He let a moment pass, as if waiting for her to absorb his smile, then scooted next to her and took her in his arms. As he leaned in, she placed two fingers at the base of his throat and pushed. He jerked back. “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, Colin, I’m just not that sort of girl.”

  “It’s the end of the world. Who cares what kind of boys and girls we used to be?”

  “My uterus, for one.”

  He grinned in the darkness. “I’ve got protection.”

  She snorted. “That was optimistic.”

  “There are other things we can do.”

  “Like?”

  “Mouths can’t get pregnant.”

  She smiled, bringing her hands to the front of her chest, where she could strike quickly if needed. “You realize I don’t owe you anything, right?”

  He cocked his head. “For the ride up? I’m not doing this to put you in my debt.”

  “I’m talking about me.” She gestured at herself. “I’m not here for you.”

  “You have the wrong idea, Tristan.” He met her gaze, his eyes soulful and serious. He shook his head and reached for the bottle. “It’s not a demand. It’s an offer. If it came off otherwise, I’m sorry.”

  She mashed her lip between her teeth. “Me too. Look, these days, it’s tough.”

  “What?”

  “Letting down your guard.”

  “I think you just did.” He found his grin and handed her the bottle. “To peace.”

  She drank. “Peace.”

  They went to bed soon after, she on the couch, he in one of the beds. She stayed awake a while, pleasantly drunk, but he was snoring within minutes. She slept.

  He didn’t mention it in the morning. They were back on the road by nine. The pines shrunk, grew scrubbier. Hard blac
k rocks jutted from the weedy fields. Within a couple hours, they were back in the desert, where the sagebrush was the tallest plant in sight and tumbleweeds clustered the barb wire fences of forgotten farms and pastures. A bridge carried them over the wide Columbia into Washington. Colin stopped in the gray and snowless hills to have a snack and hit the bathroom.

  Tristan tromped into the dust and picked out a sage to take care of business behind. As she finished up, a muffled crackle drifted on the wind. She went still. It repeated twice more, staticky and brief.

  Back at the car, Colin leaned against the trunk, gazing north across the hills. “Ready to roll?”

  “Did you hear something a minute ago?” Tristan said.

  He shook his head at the hills. “Like what?”

  “Nothing. Probably just a coyote.” She got into the car.

  Not twenty minutes later, they crested a long hill and a city spread out before them. Single houses, strip malls, bands of green along the river. Brown circles of old farms. Two towers of steam rose from the river north of the city. Colin cruised along, slowing as the highway entered town. After several miles of lost civilization, the desert resumed. The towers of steam grew nearer and nearer. Colin watched the road. They curved around a spur of rock, revealing a striated gray building with a square white cap, dozens of industrial outbuildings, and mile on mile of fence. The road led straight to a gate.

  “Stop the car,” Tristan said.

  “What? We’re almost there.”

  “I know. Stop the car.”

  “What’s your problem?” he smiled.

  She whipped out her shiv and pressed it to his throat. “Do I need to tell you again? Or is the blade more convincing?”

  He blinked, slowed, guided the car to the shoulder. He put it in park, leaving the engine on. “You want to tell me what this is about, you crazy bitch?”

  Tristan tightened her grip on her shiv. “Where’s the radio?”

  “What radio?”

  She pushed the point into his neck until a bead of blood bloomed at its end. “The one you used to call ahead.”

  He cried out, lifting his hand to his neck. She dug in harder and he froze. “Under the seat!”

  “Is my brother really here?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then what aren’t you telling me?” She leaned into the shiv, peeling apart the skin of his neck. Blood washed onto his collar.

  “Stop it! Don’t hurt me!”

  “Then tell me the truth, motherfucker!”

  “I made them a deal!” he shouted, eyes wild. His chest rose and fell. His breath smelled like Cheese Nips.

  “What were the terms?”

  “A simple exchange: my citizenship for your slavery.”

  29

  Ness screamed. The alien lunged forward, limbs lost in the snarl of branches. A tentacle wrapped around his mouth and squeezed. Others grabbed his torso and lifted him from the ground. Something slithered into his pocket, groping. He struggled to free his nose. The tentacle smelled brackish, wormy.

  The alien set him down, jarring his knees. The tentacle uncoiled from his mouth. He gasped for air. A pincer stabbed at his face. Between its claws, Ness’ round metal luck charm winked in the wintry light.

  Another pincer produced a compact black pad. One of its tentacles executed a complicated dance above it, tip snapping. It lifted the pad, which was inscribed with a single white word:

  “WHERE”

  Ness fainted.

  It shook him awake, thrust the pad back in his face. Its tentacles squeezed the breath from his limbs.

  “Hanford!” he squeaked. “Washington State. I don’t know!”

  It spun one pincer in a tight circle, then performed another tentacle-dance. The text on the pad shifted: “WRITE”

  It let him go and jabbed a stick at him. Ness gaped. He pointed at the stick. Impossibly, the alien nodded.

  He reached for the stick, hand shaking so hard he nearly dropped it. After a glance at the alien’s goggle-eyed face, he lowered himself to a crouch and wrote in the dirt: “Hanford, Washington, USA.”

  It shook its bulbous head, flailed the metal charm, and refreshed the pad. “WHERE WHERE WHERE”

  Ness pointed downriver, then wrote in the dirt. “I got it from the man who runs the power plant.”

  “AND FROM WHERE”

  Ness frowned, swept the ground clear, and wrote again. “Where did he get it?”

  The alien nodded so hard he thought its eyes would roll loose like misaimed cue balls. It squiggled its tentacle, shifting the white text on the black pad. “YES FROM WHERE”

  “Why?”

  It stiffened its spindly limbs, looming above him, hideous and great. “GUTBROTHERS”

  A headache thundered over Ness’ thoughts. What the hell did that mean? He pointed at the metal charm in its claw.

  “YES GUTBROTHERS”

  Heart beating so hard he thought it might break his own ribs, Ness bent to the dirt. Drawing each line and loop with careful precision, he wrote: “Your gutbrothers were killed by a man named Daniel and his assistant Roan.”

  The alien’s limbs shook like a storm-tossed tree. Ness fell back, shielding his head. It shoved the pad in his face. “HERE TOMORROW”

  “Me?”

  “YES HERE TOMORROW”

  Hesitantly, Ness nodded. The alien whirled and trampled through the brush, fallen apple leaves speared on its pointed feet. Ness crouched there, glancing around for others. When he could no longer hear the alien’s thrashing, he dashed to the truck, slammed the door, and peeled out for home.

  He replayed the conversation over and over. It had been so quick. So—alien. Minutes later, he could no longer be certain he understood a word it had said. Typed. Whatever. In the moment, it had made its own peculiar sense, but now it felt as foreign as the logic of a lost dream.

  He pulled up to the northern gate, sure the guards would be able to see it on his face, to somehow smell it on him, but they buzzed him through without a second glance. He parked the truck and headed to his room to think.

  The metal trinket came from the aliens he and Shawn had killed. It could be an ID chip of some kind, a radio or a tracking device. It might have taken the others this long to hone in on it, or perhaps they’d been waiting for it to emerge from the compound at Hanford. Whatever the case, they had found it.

  And Ness had pointed them straight to his enemies.

  He couldn’t be certain, of course, they were here for revenge. They were squibbly aliens, after all. He couldn’t be sure they knew what revenge was. But he’d find out soon enough. He wouldn’t miss tomorrow’s meeting for the world.

  He drove back to the orchard under the glare of the mid-morning sun. He passed Roan on the way; she turned to watch him go by, her face as inscrutable as a trout’s. Ness pretended not to see her. Miles upriver, he parked beneath the apple trees and wandered around. Perhaps it had been waiting for him, perhaps his timing was just good, but the alien crackled from the trees not ten minutes later.

  “Hello,” Ness scratched in the dirt.

  It snatched him up, coiled him close, carried him to the river, and strode into the water.

  He screamed, managed to snatch a panic-shortened breath just as the icy water closed over his head. Bubbles swirled past his face, troubled by the creature’s thrashing limbs. Something gleamed in the murky water. The alien’s legs left the rocky bottom and it propelled itself along instead, tentacles whipping spirals of bubbles behind them. Ness’ lungs burned. The alien hauled him into a cave. Ness blew the air from his mouth, trying to trick his lungs into holding on just a few seconds longer. Machines whirred. The water flushed away, gurgling madly, draining through the slotted floor. Ness panted and shivered. Dusty-tasting water spattered away from his soaked clothes.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted. The alien trundled forward without a sign it had heard. It took him through a tight tunnel to an open room with a curved ceiling. Four other aliens were ensconced in alcove
s along the wall, like wasps in their comb, waving their tentacles as Ness’ captor carried him into the room. It waved back and set him down. The floor was rubbery and spongy and squeaky with water.

  It got out its pad, flicked its tentacle above it. “TELL”

  Ness gestured at the floor and spread his hands helplessly. Semitransparent lids flickered over the alien’s eyes. It turned to one of the others, tentacles gesturing violently. The other gestured back with equal fervor, disgorged itself from its hole in the wall with a quiet slurp, and disappeared down the tunnel. Water dripped from Ness’ clothes and was absorbed by the floor.

  The second creature returned with a notepad and a Bic pen.

  “TELL,” the first alien wrote on its pad.

  “Tell what?” he wrote back.

  “TAKERS OF GUTBROTHERS”

  “Daniel and Roan,” Ness wrote. “The ones who run the nuclear power plant.”

  The alien snatched the notepad away and held it to the others to read. They whipped and writhed their tentacles at each other for some time. After a consensus had been reached, the alien gestured over its black pad.

  “THANK YOU”

  Ness laughed and gestured for his notepad. “That’s it?”

  “WHAT”

  “That’s all you wanted to ask me?”

  “YES THANK YOU”

  He knit his brow. “Well, what are you going to do now?”

  The alien danced its tentacle over the pad. “KILL”

  Ness backed away, face contorted in horror. The alien wagged its head back and forth. “KILL DANIEL ROAN”

  “When?” Ness wrote.

  “NO”

  “What do you mean?”

  “NO”

  He rubbed his temple, staring at the googly-eyed thing. He bent over his notepad. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “YES ASK,” it wrote back.

  “Why did you kill us all?”

  It twirled a pincer in a quick circle. “NO DANIEL ROAN”

  Ness shook his head and tried again. “Why did you send the disease? Why did you attack us? Why did you come here?”

  It straightened, clacking several of its claws rapidly. Ness cringed. It turned to the others and wiggled its tentacles. Their conversation lasted even longer than the first time. The wiggles and whips of their limbs were far too fast for his eyes too follow. More often than not, they weren’t even looking at each other as they “spoke.” Were they somehow feeling each other’s movements? Reading the vibration or displacement of air the same way the pad translated the wormlike movements of their limbs into English?