Primitive

by J. F. Gonzalez

  "This last attack," Tracy began. "They were throwing rocks at us, weren't they?"

  I couldn't lie about that. "Yeah."

  She looked worried.

  "We've got it covered," I said again. When she didn't say anything else I closed the door and looked west. Aside from dead primitives lying in the fields, I saw nothing but shrubbery and barren fields in either direction.

  Martin was right, though. Sound traveled very well in the high desert. Especially after normal civilization had ceased.

  The first signs of more trouble came about an hour later.

  Seven

  The heat was unbearable. It beat down on us like a sticky thing, relentless and stifling. As the sun began its descent in the west, I felt its full effect. At one point, Tracy rolled down all the windows of the SUV and even started the engine for a while to get the AC going. Emily was fast asleep in the front seat and we left her there, slumped across it with the doors and windows open for cross ventilation. Tracy joined me on the west side and eventually we all grouped together again. Only Heather remained near the front of the SUV, occasionally heading to the rear of the vehicle for a snack. For the most part, we all made a trip or two for snacks and water. The guys were able to relieve themselves in the field while the girls had to go behind the SUV for privacy.

  The time passed slowly. While we were definitely more alert and aware of our surroundings now, we started talking again. James sat on the ground against the rear of the SUV. He'd taken his shirt off, as did Martin. Both men's physiques were complete opposites: James the pudgy middle-aged professor, Martin's was rock solid, muscular.

  Heather noticed the second wave first. "I see more!" She said, rushing to where we were all huddled.

  We scrambled to our feet, weapons in hand. Sure enough, I saw about half a dozen trotting down the road toward us.

  "Nothing coming at us from the west or the east," Martin said behind me.

  "Nothing from the south, either," Lori said.

  I took a look at the road ahead of us. I tried to make out if there were others behind these half dozen, if perhaps more of them were sneaking up behind them. Martin and Lori were on my wavelength. "I don't see any sneaking up from any other direction," Lori said.

  When I was sure we would only deal with these six, I pulled my Sig. "We can deal with them."

  When the primitives saw that we'd noticed them, they stopped. I could hear them grunting, gesturing to one another. Were they communicating?

  "How far away are they?" Martin asked.

  "One hundred yards, maybe," I said. No problem. I raised my Sig, placed one in my sights and pulled the trigger.

  One primitive dropped. The others scattered. I calmly took down two more while Martin got two. One got away.

  "Fuck," I said. We watched the lone survivor grow smaller as he or she scurried out of range.

  "Those things were communicating!" Lori exclaimed. She looked surprised and shocked. "Did you see that shit?"

  "I saw it," I said.

  Tracy, James and Heather had watched us take down the five primitives and now they joined us. "Are you sure they were communicating?" James asked.

  I described the gesturing they made to each other when they saw us. James looked grim. "It's almost as if...whatever it is that causes people to revert to this stage...it's almost as if those affected are operating on a level not seen since the Neanderthal."

  "What do you mean?" Heather asked.

  "There was a report released a few months ago," James said, looking out across the horizon. "Scientists were able to trace the DNA strand of Neanderthals and they found out that humans share a good percent of that DNA structure. It suggests that at one point Homo sapiens and Neanderthals crossbred."

  "I could've told you that," Tracy snorted. "I read Clan of the Cave Bear, too!"

  James grinned. "Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed for thousands of years until Neanderthals eventually died off about twenty-five thousand years ago. It's almost like what we're seeing is a total reversion of not only our physiological selves but our sociological as well. It's like a giant reset button has been pressed, reverting us back to our most primitive state."

  "That's why I've been calling them primitives," I said.

  "I noticed that awhile back," James said. "Very apt." What I was seeing from James Goodman was the History Professor, the man who until a few days ago challenged young minds in college classrooms. "It fits, too. I mean, some of the news footage I saw showed cops dropping their weapons when they turned. It was like they'd lost their knowledge of the weapon's use."

  "Why were they attacking everybody then?" Heather asked. For the first time, she looked curious.

  "Out of fear. Territory. Food."

  I flashed on the scene of a primitive huddled over a dead man, tearing into the flesh of his arm, and grimaced.

  "You two were in the street when this happened, right?" James asked Lori and Heather.

  "I was at home," Heather said.

  "Yeah, I was trying to get to work," Lori answered.

  "And you said you saw them running in the street...like there was mass hysteria?"

  "Well, yeah..." Lori's forehead creased with thought. "Now that you mention it, I didn't see a whole lot of attacks. Just...they were all running and howling...making those weird ass noises."

  "Like monkeys being riled up in the monkey cage at the zoo," James said. "That's what we experienced yesterday. And those who didn't turn and were caught up in it were attacked because they were in the way. Rile up monkeys at the zoo, get them scared and be in the middle of it, you'd be attacked just like yesterday."

  "So what we're seeing now is their natural behavior?" This came from me.

  "That's what it seems," James replied. He motioned to the fields along both sections of the road. "Primitive man was very smart. Very cunning. He communicated with members of his own tribe and they were smart enough to hunt in packs and do a lot of things in their own little communities. Modern apes like chimps and baboons, even gorillas, share this trait. Now that they've calmed down after the sudden transition of their change or whatever it was that caused this, they're behaving normally." He regarded us with a frown. "And we're a threat."

  Nobody asked how we could be a threat to them. We all knew this was the case. We regarded the primitives as enemies and would kill any we came across.

  And somehow they knew this.

  "Different ape species regard one another as their natural enemies as do other animal species," James continued. "It's instinctual. What we're seeing now is no different. They see us as the enemy and they'll kill us if they can."

  "So you think that's why they snuck up on us today?" Tracy asked. "They saw us and just...coordinated this attack?"

  "Absolutely. We have to assume that packs or tribes have already been formed. The ones that attacked us? We were probably in their territory."

  "And those?" Tracy indicated the ones down the road we'd just killed.

  "They heard the gunfire and commotion from who knows where and were attracted to it."

  "I would think that a sound like gunfire would scare them," I mused. "Why would it attract them?"

  Silence for a moment. When James answered, his voice was grave. "The primitives we saw today were bearing weapons. Maybe they...recognized the gunfire for what it was."

  "What's that?" Lori asked.

  "A call to battle."

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later there was another skirmish.

  Tracy had retreated to the SUV to tend to Emily when I noticed it. "Something's happening," I motioned to Martin. We were standing near the rear of the SUV and I nodded toward the east field where a plume of dust was rising.

  Martin squinted into the distance. "Looks like a vehicle."

  "Is that Wesley coming back?" Lori heard us and came back from the west side where she'd been keeping watch. James and Heather joined us.

  "I don't know," I said.

  There was movement in t
he field, way off in the distance. For the first time I wished we had a pair of binoculars.

  The vehicle was drawing closer. Suddenly it seemed to stop.

  The sounds that came back to us were very clear and unmistakable.

  Gunshots.

  "That's got to be him," I said. I drew my Sig.

  The gunshots sounded like they were from an automatic weapon. They went on for about a minute and I heard faint screams and yells. It was definitely somebody firing on a bunch of primitives.

  A moment later the vehicle resumed heading in our direction from the secondary road.

  "It's him!" Lori said.

  "We've got more coming from the north," Martin called.

  I turned around. Sure enough, there was a bunch of them heading toward us from that direction. They appeared to be a good distance away.

  Wesley drew closer, coming fast. I went to Tracy and said, "Stay with Emily." She nodded and the rest of us met Wesley in the middle of the road where he pulled the jeep to a stop.

  "We got a bunch more coming from the west!" Martin shouted. He shouldered the rifle, ready to take aim.

  "I got more weapons in the back!" Wesley called out. He jumped out of the Jeep bearing a mean-looking black M4 and waited with Martin and me for the primitives to get closer.

  "Lori, cover the east!" I called out.

  I could hear James and Heather fumbling with something in the rear of the Jeep and when Heather said, "Now that's what I'm talking about!" I felt a nervous pang. For some reason knowing that girl was now arming herself made me nervous. I tried to put it out of my mind, to tell myself that she would be an incredible asset to our little clan and those thoughts were justified when she called out. "There's more coming from the north!"

  "Wait until they're within range!" Wesley called out.

  I stole a quick glance toward the rear of the Jeep. Heather had armed herself with a black pistol and stood in the standard firing stance, feet shoulder-width apart, weapon held out in front of her in both hands and pointing toward the primitives heading our way. James was still fumbling in the back for a suitable weapon and I felt a little more relieved to see that Heather appeared to know what she was doing. I checked the direction south of us. All clear.

  "Okay!" Wesley called out. The primitives were a good two hundred yards away and we could now see they were carting weapons—sticks, baseball bats, and shovels. Gunfire erupted from all directions, and amid the yells and screams as the primitives dropped I felt a sense of something that I still can't describe. The primitives were no match for our weaponry and we killed about thirty of them in the space of two minutes. Despite that fact, I felt that we'd turned the tide toward something else...something darker. Even though we could easily massacre the primitives, knew they were no match for us technologically, I had the sense they had something else on their side. Something larger than themselves, larger than all of us, something unseen and dark, a malevolent force.

  Like the previous bands of primitives, this newest batch not only had makeshift weapons, they threw rocks at us. None of them came close to their targets and within five minutes they were all dead. Heather came around the back of the Jeep, her face flush. "Got some of those motherfuckers!"

  "Good girl," I said. I ejected my spent magazine and inserted a fresh one.

  "Notice something about these?" Wesley asked.

  "I do," Martin said. He looked troubled.

  "They look like wetbacks," Heather said, matter-of-factly. I saw Lori frown at that statement.

  Wesley nodded, seemingly unaffected by Heather's comment. "Take a look. They used to be migrant workers."

  It was hard to see them from this far but Wesley had a pair of binoculars that he handed to me. How he could see them from that far away was amazing. The guy had eyesight like an eagle. I took a peek. Sure enough, the tattered remnants of their clothing, their dark, swarthy features, all suggested they were Mexican immigrants who'd been living in this area working California's ripe fields during picking season. I glanced at Martin, who met my gaze. It was obvious that gunning these people down bothered him.

  "There's farms about twenty, maybe thirty miles from here," I said, handing the binoculars to Lori.

  "And beyond those farms will be more," Wesley said. "I doubt we'll see any more primitives today. My guess is most of them are too far out of earshot to have heard any of this."

  Tracy called from the SUV. "Everything okay?"

  I called back to her. "We got 'em."

  I quickly told Wesley about our own battles during the period he'd been at Edwards and he nodded. "I came across a similar situation. I'll tell you more about that later. Is your daughter okay?" I'd told him about her panic attack.

  "Yeah, she's asleep. Come on."

  We reconvened near the SUV. Tracy got out and joined us.

  "To make a long story short, there's no normal survivors at Edwards," Wesley said. He looked grave. "If there were, they've left. I saw plenty of dead soldiers. Probably normals who were taken by surprise, and primitives who'd been shot. It wasn't a pretty sight."

  I could only imagine.

  "The security gate was open and I got through fine," Wesley continued. "I went to the main barracks, found that everybody was dead, and started looking for weapons. I've got a nice stash back at the jeep. Close to ten thousand rounds of various caliber ammunition, a bunch of military-issued rifles and handguns, even found a couple of shoulder-mounted missiles."

  "Damn!" Heather exclaimed.

  "I found something else, too. I don't know how else to describe it except...well..." He looked at Tracy and me. "You got a piece of paper and a pen?"

  "My bag, in the back," I said. "Hold on." I retreated to the rear of the SUV, found it, and handed it over to him.

  "After I rearmed I took a quick drive around the base," Wesley said. He started sketching something in the spiral notebook I gave him. "Didn't see anything but bodies. My guess is everybody scampered off when they turned primitive. Those that didn't were either driven away or killed. I only saw a few cases where those that didn't turn had stayed at their posts. In all cases they'd run out of ammo and were simply overwhelmed by primitives. Lots of bullet-riddled primitives and one torn up dead grunt, if you know what I mean."

  I nodded. We stood around watching Wesley draw and talk.

  "Anyway, I was rounding the north corner of one of the barracks and saw something weird. It was drawn on the wall and there was...well, there was a body lying there. Didn't think much of it at first but something about the way it was on the ground made me stop the Jeep. I got out and took a look and sure as shit, this guy wasn't just killed by the primitives. He was downright sacrificed."

  "Sacrificed?" James asked.

  "Yeah." Wesley finished sketching but kept the pad close to him. "This guy was sacrificed. There was a sketch of this on the wall."

  And then he showed us the sketch.

  When I saw it my heart stopped.

  It was almost identical to the weird drawing I'd seen on that wall in Hollywood last week.

  Picture a demonic-looking caricature. A thin, somewhat narrow chin. A thin maw for a mouth. Eyes beady and narrow, displaying a malevolent evil. A high brow with what appeared to be bony protrusions above each eyebrow well at the top of the forehead. Not much of a neck, a body that was hard to distinguish because of the blurry brush strokes, but the wings...those were the clincher. The wings stretched out from the body, and they were prominent.

  "It was drawn in blood," Wesley continued. "The dead guy's blood, I'm sure. He was lying on his back and there were these other symbols and drawings on the ground." He started sketching again. "It looked like he was a soldier who didn't turn, who'd stayed true to his honor and duty. He was still dressed in his fatigues but his shirt was ripped off. His chest had been torn open and the heart yanked out. It was lying at the foot of that drawing. Likewise, his eyes had been ripped out of his head and placed with the heart, along with his genitalia."

  "My God,
" Lori murmured.

  "There was a cup lying nearby. It looked to me like it had been filled with his blood. There was some left in it. Looked like a coffee cup." He finished with this second sketch and turned it toward us. "Anyway, he was lying inside this circle thing with these patterns drawn around it. Again, it was drawn in his blood."

  This second sketch showed a weird symmetrical pattern. Half circle, half parallelogram, it was a mixture of curves and straight lines with weird squiggly symbols drawn at various points. It looked strangely like some occult-symbol, albeit one that was unrecognizable to me.

  "He was lying in the middle of that?" James asked. He looked amazed.

  "Yeah," Wesley said. "The blood was still slightly damp. Sticky. Like it had only been done hours before."

  "What do you think it means?" Tracy asked.

  "Primitive man held spiritual beliefs," James said, looking at the sketches. "We know this from the archeological records. Artifacts like cave paintings, crude ceremonial daggers fashioned from sticks, and jewelry and idols made from bone suggest primitive man worshipped various gods. We still don't know the extent of what dogma they may have held but it's believed they were simple. Gods of fire, wind, water, and earth. They would have been very basic, primitive beliefs. You know, prayers and sacrifices to the god of earth to provide good fortune for hunting. That sort of thing."

  "What would something like this mean?" Martin asked.

  James shrugged. "Hard to say. The Aztecs are believed to have utilized human and animal sacrifice for a variety of purposes and gods. In many cases, warfare was the purpose for obtaining victims for sacrifices. It was considered an honor for war captives to be sacrificed to the gods. You said the heart was removed?"