"And she would have killed us if we'd let her walk out of here," Wesley said. Gone was the calm, cool, and calculated tone and demeanor we'd met earlier that day. In its place was one of control. His expression was harsh, grim. "Believe me, I've seen her kind before. She was a weak link and she needed to be eliminated permanently."
"You know, that kind of thinking is the same kind of fucked-up shit people like her spouted!" James was clearly angry. He was practically standing nose to nose with Wesley. "Racism is racism no matter if you're a Nazi Ku Klux Klansman or a black—"
"And I'm telling you she was a weak link!" Wesley roared. Veins bulged from his forehead. "She had to be eliminated! The world has changed Dr. Professor whatever-you-are. So pull your head out of your ass and wake up! Her attitude was a liability to our survival. If she hadn't shown her true colors now, she could have acted on her feelings at another time and killed you!"
"But she..." James sputtered. I could tell this was happening too fast for him to process. Eight hours ago he was standing at the side of the road with Heather, talking with her, joking around with her. She was teaching him how to use a gun. It was obvious James had no way of understanding how Heather could harbor such racist feelings against people of his own kind—Jews—when she'd been pleasant enough to him on the surface hours before.
"But she was nice to me!'" Wesley jeered. "Big fucking deal! People who meet David Duke say he's a wonderful guy too, but he's from the same cloth. She would have waited until you were asleep and then slit your throat without blinking an eye, and she would have done the same to Lori and Martin and probably David if she had the chance. And she obviously had it in for Tracy for what she saw as a perceived racial betrayal. Trust me, we're better off without her."
James had no comeback for that. He stood there, still stunned by what had happened.
Wesley's head snapped toward the windows and now I was hearing what he was. Howls. From outside.
"Shit, I was hoping this wouldn't happen," he muttered. He drew his weapon. "They're onto us now." He glared at James. "Thanks to your little girlfriend, the primitives are on their way."
Nine
We armed ourselves quickly and waited, listening to the howls outside.
From downstairs, Martin called up. "I hear them, but they sound far away. I don't see anything yet."
"Then we need to stay down and stay quiet," Wesley said.
And we did. While Wesley ordered Lori to cover the staircase, he darted downstairs to cover the rear of the building. I headed down the hall to the lone open bedroom to make sure Tracy and Emily were okay. Emily wasn't screaming anymore, but she was clearly upset and crying. Tracy was holding her on the bed, rocking her. "We'll be okay," I said quickly. "Just try to keep her calm."
She nodded, and I headed back to the top of the staircase and stood well away from Heather's corpse. Lori stood at the top of the stairs, holding her gun firmly in both hands, a look of expectant waiting on her features.
The howls and gibberish continued. They sounded like they were coming from far away and all directions. They'd probably heard the gunshot, some of them might have heard the arguing as well, and they'd started toward the sound, hoping to do whatever it is they do with normals—kill us and eat us, sacrifice us to their strange god, whatever. I caught a glimpse of Martin hiding in a darkened corner near the lobby doors poised in silence and the air seemed suddenly still as we waited with bated breath to see if they would find us. James had retreated to the conference room and was pacing around. He wasn't saying anything, but I could tell he was upset. I was upset too, but not for the same reasons. Wesley's simple act of killing Heather had shattered James, had destroyed all chance of hope and decency he was still desperately clinging to. Part of me understood that, but another part of me was glad Wesley had taken Heather out. That part of me understood his reasons, his motivations, and I think everybody else understood and approved of his decision. There was only one thing that bothered me.
Suppose Wesley was hiding something? Suppose his explanation for what he did was a smokescreen to cover up his real reason for killing Heather?
Suppose he'd killed her for the pleasure of it?
I thought about this as the sounds continued outside. With the exception of Tracy and Emily, I didn't really know the rest of the clan. I had impressions, sure, but impressions could be proven wrong. What did I really know about Wesley Smitts? The display of emotion over the loss of his family notwithstanding, how much did we really know about him? Suppose that had been an act to catch us off guard?
I couldn't think this way. Not now. I had to rely on my gut instinct. And my gut instinct told me Wesley had done the right thing.
I felt myself tense up as they came closer to the building. I couldn't hear Emily's cries anymore, and there was complete silence within the hotel as we all hunkered down, vigilant to what was going on outside. I listened as I heard their fumbling footsteps circle the building, heard hands slap at the windows—Martin later told me one peered inside the lobby, unaware of him hiding in the shadows. I heard them outside near the vehicles and I heard some hoots and hollers and then the sounds began to recede. Some continued east. The rest simply headed back where they came from.
The danger had passed. For now.
Wesley stole upstairs, light-footed and stealthy. "We need to get this out of here," he said, indicating Heather's corpse. He rested his rifle against the wall, bent over Heather and looked at me. "We can put it in the kitchen. Can you take its feet?"
And without thinking I did as he asked. And as I helped Wesley carry Heather downstairs and stowed her in a corner of the kitchen, I wondered again if we did the right thing in letting Wesley into our group. I believed he did the right thing in killing Heather. A week ago if she'd threatened to kill my daughter I would have resorted to a more legal remedy. Now, with civilization completely gone, there were no police, or courts, or judges to maintain law and order. We had to fend for ourselves. No matter how much one could philosophize about it, killing Heather was a necessity. She would have done something murderous, something awful, and simple banishment from our group would have been out of the question. She would have followed us and waited for the right moment to strike. Killing her eliminated the problem.
Still, it bothered me that Wesley had made that choice so quickly.
And that her killing didn't seem to bother him.
But it was the way he referred to disposing of her body that really bothered me. We need to get rid of it, not we need to get rid of her.
As if she were nothing.
Now is not the time for moral debate on this, I thought as I grabbed Heather's legs.
* * *
We left the hotel the next morning.
Wesley and Martin followed us in his Jeep as I drove the SUV and began our ascent into the Sierras. Travel was pretty much as it had been the day before and we only saw a handful of primitives. We were beginning to see more dead bodies, though, and I wondered if there were any normals like us in this area. If there were, we didn't come across any.
We picked our way carefully around stalled vehicles and I wondered aloud if we would be forced to abandon our vehicles once we started up the mountain passes. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess," Lori said. She'd remained quiet through most of the morning, and the few times I saw her through the rearview mirror she looked troubled. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was, about Wesley's sudden move to kill Heather without batting an eye. I have a feeling that if Lori had killed Heather herself in that fight, she would not have acted so calm and cool about it afterward despite the racial abuse she suffered at the younger girl's hands.
The one thing that had not changed, though, was the presence. That eerie feeling we all felt yesterday.
That something was watching us. Or something was there...waiting.
Wesley mentioned it as we were packing the last of our things in the vehicles. "It's stronger this morning," he said to me.
&nbs
p; "Yeah." I'd felt it that morning over our quick breakfast of cereal and milk in the dining room.
Even Emily felt it. She was sitting between Tracy and me at breakfast and at one point asked us, "Is it okay to go outside? Those wild people aren't there but..."
"But what, honey?" Tracy asked.
"Something else is." Emily looked afraid. She had a calm knowledge in her four-year-old features that spoke volumes of truth. Even she felt it.
Whatever it was, we could neither hear it, see it, nor smell it. Yet despite that there was this brooding sense of something. While faint, it was definitely stronger today than it had been yesterday. It almost felt like being in a room, hiding from somebody, and having the person you were hiding from enter the room and look around but not find you. That's about the closest I can describe it.
We came across a narrow part of the road that was partially blocked by several crashed vehicles. On one side was a sheer rock wall. On the other, about five feet of gravel and beyond that a deep pit that would plunge us over two hundred feet to land atop some tall Redwood if we weren't careful. After stopping the vehicles in the middle of the road and surveying our options, it was decided to move one of the vehicles as far against the rocky wall as possible and have one of us guide each vehicle between the wreckage and the side of the road.
Emily saw the drawing on the rock wall on the other side of one of the crashed vehicles. She pointed at it. "Look at that!"
It was an exact replica of the drawing Wesley showed us, the one he'd seen etched on a wall at Edwards. It was big, at least fifteen by seven feet, and it was hard to tell what it was drawn in. Blood by the look of it. Tracy saw it too, and was looking around, probably to see if there were dead bodies lying in the road when we heard Martin cry out a warning.
James had stepped outside to guide the vehicles through the pass. I slipped through pretty easily and was pulling over to the side of the road to wait for Wesley when we heard Martin, who'd stepped out of our SUV earlier to help in the effort. I looked over at James and that's when I saw a rock smash into his head and bring him down.
"Primitives!" Martin shouted.
Their howls came next. A barrage of rocks was hurled like missiles. They hit the SUV's roof and hood and one smashed against the right rear window. Emily screamed in the front seat.
I had my Sig armed and ready. A rock crashed onto the hood of the SUV in front of me. I put the SUV in Park and looked around, trying to find their position while Tracy screamed and tried to wrap Emily up in her embrace to protect her. "They're ambushing us!"
From behind us, Wesley shouted: "Kill them!"
I heard gunfire erupt. And then I saw over a dozen primitives swarm the area we were in, yelling and hooting madly. They were throwing rocks. Some bore thick, stout branches. Others bore heavy chunks of wood and baseball bats. One was carrying what looked like a makeshift spear. The closest one was seventy-five yards away and they were sprinting toward us quickly.
I didn't even think. I just pointed the Sig and sprayed bullets. I hit two that were close to me as I ducked out of the driver's side of the SUV and made my way to the rear of the vehicle. Rocks crashed down around me, some coming dangerously close. As I reached the rear of the SUV, I got it open just as I ran out of bullets. I pulled out one of the M4s we'd loaded into the vehicle earlier, flipped off the safety, aimed and let loose with another barrage of gunfire, mowing down another wave of primitives that were making their way down the rocky embankment.
Amid all the yells and shouts I didn't discern Lori's cry of pain. At some point there was a lull in the fighting and I saw that she'd run out of bullets and was grappling with one of the primitives. He held a rock over her head. I could see the muscles of her arms tense as she held him off. He might have been a biker in some past life. Most of his biker garb was missing and what remained hung in tattered remnants around his hulking figure. He looked like a caveman, his eyes wild, face streaked with blood and grit, his long hair dirty and matted. He leaned toward her, mouth open, ready to rip her throat out with his teeth. "Aooarrragha maawwwooo!"
I rushed over and brought the stock of the M4 down on the side of his head. The primitive staggered and Lori sprinted away. That gave me enough of a target to cut him in half with half a dozen shots.
And then as suddenly as we were attacked, it was over.
My ears rang with gunfire, but even through the humming I could hear more howls far off in the hills. I saw Wesley bend over James's crumpled form. "Shit, he's dead."
Adrenaline was surging through my system. I felt like we were sitting ducks.
Wesley got up and dragged James over to the side of the road. "We have to get out of here," he said. He looked stressed. Lori looked scared for the first time since I met her. She was standing by Martin, who still bore the look of surprise I'm sure we all had from being attacked so suddenly. She leaned her head against his shoulder and he put one big arm around her, cradling his M4 in the other. His eyes met mine, conveying a simple message: it's getting stronger.
He was right. That presence was stronger somehow. It felt like something leaden, something tangible and wholly malevolent, like some dark giant was casting its gaze over the landscape, searching us out.
Lori was breaking down emotionally for the first time since our ordeal began. "Oh my God, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!"
Wesley was back in his vehicle, moving it through the narrow pass. He made it through, and the howls in the valley below grew louder. The primitives were getting closer.
"We've got to go," I said. I headed back to the SUV where Tracy was trying to calm Emily down. I slipped into the driver's seat. We had another forty miles to go until we reached the cabin. "Come on, let's get out of here!" I shouted to Martin. Somehow he got Lori into the back of the vehicle and we set off again.
And God help us, we left poor James Goodman back there. Alone. Discarded. For some reason I felt terrible about that. I hadn't felt bad about leaving Heather's body back at the hotel, but I felt bad about leaving James without doing something, honoring him in some way. Maybe it was because I knew he was a decent human being, one who rose above the bitter hatreds we all harbor inside ourselves and tried to see the good in everybody, no matter how angry and hateful they were—like Heather. To me, James struck me as one of those wise and forgiving leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center who accepted former racist skinheads and forgave them for their past sins. In other words, James had seen hope in Heather when the rest of us hadn't.
But there was no time now to properly mourn James Goodman. Now we had to get the hell out of there and put as much distance between the primitives and us as possible.
Ten
We heard the primitives on our ascent into the Sierra Mountains. Who knows how many people in the area they killed outright, but the California Sierras were not densely populated to begin with. My guess was that there were thousands of primitives roaming the densely populated remote forests and mountains of Northern California. I had a feeling as we headed closer to my family's cabin that some roving packs of primitives would eventually stumble upon us and when they did, what then? Ammunition could only last for so long. How long would it take before endless attacks from wave after wave of primitives depleted our ammunition and we were forced to engage in hand to hand combat? Sure, we could probably pick up more ammunition from some discarded gun store—that shit was just lying around now waiting for anybody to pick it up. What bothered Wesley and Martin more than the primitive threat was the threat from people like us, those who were immune to whatever chemical agent the government had introduced into the atmosphere that turned people. Eventually societies would form and many would be run by dictators, power-crazed individuals who would roam the countryside like the Mongols and Goths of old to slay and rape and pillage other settlements, enslaving those they didn't kill.
The primitives would run the show, of course. They would form their own clans, their own societies.
And they would have their god to guid
e them.
We saw more of the drawings etched into trees and stones as we drove up the winding paths of the mountains. I was awestruck by their simplicity, by how similar each one was to the others. How all the primitives could accurately portray this thing—their god, which I was calling it now—when they had great distance between them told me that they were either on the same spiritual wavelength or they'd seen this thing, either in their dreams or for real. They were tuned into it somehow, and their drawings were some sort of praise, some form of primitive worship.
I thought of the soldier sacrificed to this strange god, the one Wesley reported seeing, and wondered how many others like him had been similarly staked and dressed out on some makeshift altar, butchered to a god unknown to modern anthropology.
These were the things I was thinking as we made our way up the winding mountain pass toward my family's cabin.
I had no idea that there would be a clan of primitives at the cabin when we arrived.
I had traveled only halfway up the private dirt road that led to the secluded cabin when I saw movement in the trees ahead. I stopped the vehicle and that's when we heard the running feet and howls. I could see the cabin through the trees and made out more than two-dozen primitives. They must have made my cabin their home—after all, it would have been empty—and they were now running toward us, shouting war cries, bearing sticks and stones and other makeshift weapons.
I stopped the vehicle, told Tracy to protect Emily, and brought the M4 out. Martin leaped into action, as did Wesley. We met the primitives' onslaught with twenty-first century technology and weaponry, and when it was over and the primitives were all dead, and others who'd been hanging near the cabin having fled, we piled back in the vehicles and resumed our drive to the cabin.
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