Primitive

by J. F. Gonzalez

  "Twenty meters at 28500," Wendy answered. "Ask for Bob Atkins. He used to be a US Senator."

  "Thank you. I'll be back shortly." Wesley quickly disconnected from that frequency, turned off the equipment and turned to me. "We need to get out of here. Gather everybody together and get as many weapons as possible. Pack only a few days worth of food. Tell Martin to remain at his post—you'll have to gather his things, too. Meet me in the garage at 0600 hours. We'll be taking the Hummer that's in the garage."

  "The Hummer?" We'd never used the Hummer that the previous owner of this cabin housed in the garage, aside from the one time Wesley managed to get it started. Lori had later found the keys to it and they were now sitting on the kitchen counter. "Why?"

  "Last time I checked, that Hummer had a radio in it," Wesley said. I immediately knew what he was getting at; a high-frequency radio to monitor communications and keep in touch with our new surviving comrades.

  I glanced at my watch. Miraculously, it wasn't broken. It was a quarter after twelve.

  "You don't think we should leave sooner?"

  "It's been over two hours since the last attack," Wesley said. "And I think the one thing about us that hasn't changed since we were like them is that they're more active during the daytime."

  I nodded. Made sense. That first attack had happened during twilight, when they'd probably spent a good portion of the day on the journey to reach our compound. "Emily felt the next attack could happen soon," I persisted.

  "Yeah, and I believe her. That'll probably be early this morning. But you need some rest, and so does Tracy and Emily."

  "What about you and Martin?"

  "I'll get an hour of sleep in the Hummer. Martin can sleep on the drive over."

  "The drive over to where?"

  Once again there was that glimmer of hope in Wesley's features. "I don't want to jump the gun on this yet...but I think I have a plan."

  Twenty Three

  I couldn't sleep. Try as I might, I barely got two hours in.

  After giving Martin a quick recap and assuring myself that he was okay to stand watch all night, I quickly gathered some provisions and personal belongings. I stowed them in the garage carefully by the Hummer. As I worked I heard Wesley in the radio room talking to somebody. It wasn't Tim, or Wendy, or any of the people from our previous conversation, so he must have been talking to Bob Atkins, ex-US Senator in Washington DC. And that got me to thinking.

  Years ago, when I was just starting out as a writer, I supported myself by writing a series of men's action-adventure novels under a pseudonym, among other things. Over a period of three or four years I probably wrote ten of the things (along with movie and TV tie-ins and other writer-for-hire books). You may have seen books like that on the racks in department stores like Wal-Mart, or at truck stops. You know the drill: The Specialist. The Executioner. The Destroyer. The Penetrator. MIA. They all had a central character who carried the series, usually a guy in his late twenties or early thirties who was ex-military, maybe CIA or Special Ops, who was a killing machine and skilled at all kinds of weaponry and martial arts, who also possessed other talents like cryptography, or computer intelligence, or whatever. Think James Bond and you'll get the picture. Thanks to Ian Fleming's character, the publishing industry milked that particular genre by buying and creating numerous imitations, some created by other writers wanting to cash in, others created by the publishing firms themselves, hiring writers to churn the things out under what is known in the industry as a "house name." I think before the world as we knew it ended there had been something like three hundred or more volumes of The Destroyer series, with one book appearing every month or so for the past thirty years.

  Thanks to those brief sojourns into writing quick pulp work for rent and food money, I became familiar with things most people never think about, much less pay attention to about our government.

  One of those things was knowing that there were numerous underground bunkers and bomb shelters beneath Washington, D.C., Virginia, and parts of Maryland.

  Of course, I didn't know their exact location. I remember when working on the first few books in the series I was writing, Black Ops, I asked the creator, a grizzled pulp veteran who'd penned the first three books in the series and later went on to become a best-selling author of military suspense fiction, how he'd found out about these secret bunkers. "Careful research and asking the right people," he'd told me over the phone. "I just needed to know enough to make it believable so I can make everything else up!"

  So I didn't know their exact location, but I knew they existed. Therefore, it made perfect sense for those in government who were unaffected during those first chaotic forty-eight hours of the change, to high-tail it to those secret bunkers where they'd be safe from nuclear or ground assault, where they would probably be fortified with high-tech communications equipment as well as food and other supplies.

  Which meant there was the possibility that there was some form of government left and they were trying to restore order out of all the chaos that had erupted.

  Now that glimmer of hope was growing.

  When I was finished I went upstairs and did a quick survey of the grounds. The fires had died down, or were close to it, and I could see Martin outside, rifle ready to shoot at anything that moved as he ensured all the primitives were burnt to a crisp. I headed to Wesley's wing of the house and did a quick survey of our things to make sure I'd packed everything. Then I slid out of my dirty clothes and climbed into bed with Tracy and Emily.

  Tracy stirred as I slipped into bed beside her. She came awake with a start. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

  "It's okay," I whispered. I kissed her shoulder. "Go back to sleep."

  "Everything okay?"

  "Yes. They're all dead."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. We're leaving at the crack of dawn."

  "Leaving?" Tracy made to sit up but I gently pushed her back down. Emily stirred slightly beside her and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  "We need some sleep," I said, gently but forcefully. "Martin is standing watch, and Wesley is getting everything ready. We'll get up tomorrow and leave at six. I've already got things packed for us."

  "Where are we gonna go?" Tracy obviously understood why we were leaving so quickly.

  "I don't know yet." The urge to tell her what I'd learned was strong, but I also knew that if I gave one hint of it she'd demand to hear more and that would keep us up longer. We needed to recharge our batteries and that meant getting to sleep. "We need to get some rest. Come on."

  Tracy allowed herself to lie back down. I scooted close to her, swung my injured arm around her waist. It still throbbed despite the aspirin I'd taken.

  The throbbing of my injured arm kept me awake for at least another forty minutes. Tracy dropped back off to sleep within a minute.

  I listened to her labored breathing, watched mother and daughter snuggled close together in sleep, mother draping a protective arm over her child, hugging her close. I silently settled into position on my right side, my arm around Tracy's waist, a symbolic gesture of my own attempt at protecting my clan, my tribe, my family. Part of me felt helpless, but another part of me was ready to do anything to protect Tracy and Emily. I knew that if it came between the three of us and the rest of our clan, I would fight harder for their lives. That instinct to protect, to keep them from harm's way, was part of my reason for agreeing with Wesley that we should leave this area. I did feel the threat of more primitives heading our way—and not the normal ones, as Tim was calling them.

  Yet I also sensed dread.

  Fear.

  Call it a sense of anxiousness of not knowing what would happen when we left this place, and being uncertain as to where we would go that was the root cause of it. Another was the look in Wesley's eye when he asked for the frequency and call location of Bob Atkins and instructed me to gather our things together in preparation of our departure. For the first time since coming together, Wes
ley was withholding something from me. He had come up with a plan and he wasn't telling me. For some reason that burned me. While I could understand the nature of our predicament—we surely didn't have the time for him to tell me his plan—I still felt I should be included for my own peace of mind.

  Because not knowing made it more difficult for me to decide what to do, what I felt was best for my family and myself.

  So I lay awake and worried. My arm throbbed in pain. I worried if it was infected, if it would heal properly. At some point tomorrow Tracy was going to have to stitch the wound up properly; I'd packed the first aid kit and enough medication in one of the canvas bags I'd placed in the garage. For now medical treatment would have to wait.

  Eventually sleep overcame me. And with it came the nightmares.

  In the first one I was still asleep and was jostled awake by Tracy, who was screaming. "Emily! Oh God, it's got Emily!"

  I sprang awake to the sight of Emily flying over the bed. Her cute four-year old face was transformed into a grinning, demonic visage. Wings sprouted from her shoulder blades. Her skin had turned dark and leathery. Her eyes rolled up to show the whites and she opened her mouth. Hanbi's voice issued from it. "Worship me, Daddy! Worship me!"

  The second one was even worse. In that one, Heather caught Emily and leaped onto her, tearing her from Tracy's grasp. She grabbed Emily's head and battered it against the wall, all the while screaming, "Take that you half-breed mongoloid brat!" She bashed Emily's head against the wall over and over while Tracy, who was clearly possessed by the demonic Hanbi, sat on the opposite corner of the bed and watched, laughing.

  I came awake with a yell from both dreams, flailing my arms around in an attempt to fight the evil Hanbi off me, who I felt was hovering over me, waiting to take control of me.

  Both times I came awake, Emily and Tracy slept soundly.

  I lay back down next to Tracy and cradled her in my arms. I'd never felt so helpless in my life.

  For the first time since this whole terrible ordeal happened I cried myself to sleep.

  Twenty Four

  It took two days to reach our destination just outside of Lawrence, Kansas.

  An hour before dawn, on the day we started out, Martin shook me out of sleep. "It's time," he said, retreating into the shadows. I sprang out of bed and proceeded to wake up Tracy.

  An hour later we were pulling out of the compound in the Hummer. I had mixed feelings of apprehension and regret as we pulled away. Prior to the events of the last two days, I'd been entertaining thoughts of spending my remaining years here, of seeing Emily grow into a woman, of Tracy and I living our sunset years in that Montana luxury cabin, in a world that had moved on.

  It was like leaving our home in Pasadena, in a way.

  I drove. Wesley sat up front with me while Tracy, Emily, and Martin sat in the backseat. Martin slept for three hours while Wesley maintained a silent and caffeine-fueled watch from the shotgun seat, rifle cradled in his lap.

  By the time the morning sun was burning bright in the sky we'd made fifty miles and Wesley had given me the lowdown of his conversation with Bob Atkins and several key government figures he'd talked to.

  It came as no surprise that the US government was still functioning, albeit in a very stripped-down manner. Wesley explained to me that decades ago, in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear attack on the US, the government had built a labyrinthine system of underground bunkers for key government officials, that were fully equipped with state-of-the-art generators that would power the country's missile defense and communications system. When civilization fell, certain engagements took place. People assumed certain roles and duties. Chain of command was shifted, re-shifted, and put forth. Proper defensive and offensive measures were initiated. And a week after the dust settled, those few who were left remained sequestered in their hidden underground bunkers, secretly monitoring everything going on above via hidden cameras and spy satellites (thanks to a largely still functioning monitoring system) and quietly planning and debating the next move.

  It came as no surprise that the Executive Branch and every member of the House and Senate, with the exception of Bob Atkins, was dead. That made Bob Atkins the de facto President of the United States in accordance with the US Constitution. In addition to Bob Atkins, holed up underneath the DC area were surviving members of the FBI, the CIA, and the Pentagon. Wesley said he was surprised to hear that his former CO from his earliest days in the military, Colonel Henderson, was now in command of all branches of the military. "The resources are spread very thin," Wesley said. He leaned against the door and I could see the fatigue in his eyes, but he was very animated, very much awake. "The total population of the US is probably what it was shortly before the Revolutionary War and spread out in a much greater range. But we're in command. And those in government that survived have been quietly making preparations and making contacts with those on duty around the country. This virus wiped out a lot of people, David. A lot of guys on various bases didn't make it. We saw that back at Edwards. But those who did make it kept hold of their posts and have managed to remain there. Others have been dispatched to secure locations."

  "What about overseas?" I asked. Tracy listened quietly in the backseat. Emily was still asleep, her head resting on Tracy's shoulder.

  "Communications have been established with England, Germany, France, Sweden, Russia, Japan, and Australia. They're reporting massive casualties. All of them except for Sweden suffered massive casualties of their government. In fact, Sweden's prime minister went so far as to say that what happened was America's fault and that we should be held accountable. Atkins was quick to clamp down on that bullshit. I don't think he had any idea of what happened in the weeks that preceded the outbreak, but I'm sure he has his theories."

  "So what's going to happen?" Tracy asked.

  Wesley was silent for a moment. We'd seen no huge gatherings of primitives so far on the drive south, just a few scattered here and there. Those we did see immediately ran away. "There's a facility outside of Lawrence, Kansas. It's a nuclear missile silo. Henderson brought up my credentials in the system when I verified my identity and dispatched me there. I didn't tell him about you guys, and he has no knowledge I'm being accompanied by civilians. If he knew, he would have ordered me to leave you back at that cabin."

  I felt my body stiffen at the implications. "Thank you," I managed to say.

  Wesley acknowledged my thanks. "It's quite possible we'll run into trouble at Lawrence. I'm to meet with two members of the 41st Division at the silo. I'm sure Henderson has briefed them. In addition to myself, a hundred other survivors with my background have been dispatched to other missile silos around the country. Twenty of them didn't make it. Primitives probably got them. Once I arrive, I'm to make an inspection and report back to Henderson. Then, I'm to await his signal."

  "Signal for what?" Dumb question, because I knew what the order was going to be, but I had to hear it from Wesley's lips.

  "On Henderson's signal I'm to launch a nuclear missile at Kansas City." Wesley's voice and features were grim. "Ten other facilities are to launch at various other locations in North and South America. Likewise, England is to launch a missile into Jordan, and Germany is to hit Pakistan and India."

  "Why?" Tracy asked from the backseat. "Hasn't there been enough bloodshed already?"

  "It's the only way to eliminate as many primitives as possible in order to stop Hanbi's influence," Wesley said.

  I let the implications sink in. "So Atkins believes...he knows..."

  "We all know, David." Wesley swung a gaze at me. "Even the most atheistic among us is facing the reality of what's happening. Atkins himself told me that one of the Pentagon members, a staunch atheist, was the first to make the recommendation after numerous conferences with people around the country and the world. Professor Campbell has been instrumental in providing a lot of archeological and historical background as well. We heard enough of what she had to say last night."

/>   There was no use in arguing the point. I knew he was telling the truth. Believed it in my heart, in my mind. Unlike creationists who would not accept the science of tectonic plate theory forming continents, or the science of carbon dating because it flew in the face of the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days, I had to admit that, based on the evidence, and from what I'd witnessed, Hanbi was not only very real, he had to be destroyed.

  For once it seemed like reason was beginning to prevail among mankind.

  "This is bad," I said, the implications running through me.

  "No shit, it's bad," Tracy said. She drew her legs up, hugging her knees. Tears were streaming down her face. "Who knows how many innocent people might be caught up in this."

  "For the past week the military has been sending a signal through as many radio channels," Wesley said. "They're warning those who are still normal and are able-bodied to leave various cities immediately. According to the existing intelligence, the message is getting through, and those lucky enough to have lived through the initial primitive onslaught are doing everything they can to get out. We're continuing the message, though, and I think it's safe to say that within a week—which is the deadline they've been given—the cities in question will be largely devoid of normal people."

  "That's when we'll strike," I said.

  "Yes," Wesley confirmed. "That's when we'll strike."