The revelation came swiftly and was one more indication of what had become of nearly seven billion human minds. They’d forgotten how to use a can opener. Whatever had scorched the sky with those wacky colors which hovered in the air like something out of Woodstock, had spread farther than even Finn was ready to admit.
Finn reached down, snatched a can of beans off the floor and dropped it into a plastic bag he pulled from the pocket of his coverall.
He hadn’t come through things unscathed, that was for sure, but he still knew enough to unzip his fly before taking a leak. Jackson had also been spared, but why?
Does a virus kill every host? Maybe not, but the smell in here was about to.
Finn tossed in a few more cans, stepping over a box of fusilli pasta that had been torn open and spilled all over.
The noise behind froze his arm as it reached out for another can.
He checked behind him.
A slight figure stood at the end of the aisle. Was too hard to make out any features, but he was male with a head full of messy hair, that much was clear.
They stared at one another for almost ten full seconds before the sound of shuffling feet came from the other direction. Three more shapes appeared and now it was looking like they meant to box him in. Three more joined the first guy and now the game became as clear as day. Whoever they were, they meant to take his possessions or to take his life and Finn wasn’t ready to give up either one, not just yet.
They were approaching now, slowly, cautiously, the way lions ease up on their prey and suddenly Finn saw what he was up against. A black guy with a yellow shirt which read
‘Shit Happens’ was gripping what looked like a box cutter. Both of his hands were crudely bandaged and it was clear that there had been an element of trial and error to his discovery that the box cutter could slice through flesh with ease. Others carried broom handles and for a second they almost looked like a group of angry villagers, which meant that he was their Frankenstein.
But those guys didn’t frighten Finn nearly as much as the one decked out in chain mail gloves and a leather butcher’s apron, wielding a long pointed blade.
The little prick Finn had seen first let out a high pitched scream as he came at him.
The plastic bag in Finn’s hand didn’t hold more than four or five cans, but the extra weight was more than enough. Finn had just enough time to swing the bag one full rotation before bringing it down on top of the skinny man’s head. The sound of his skull breaking apart was all the man probably heard before his legs stopped working and his limp body went careening into the hard metal shelf.
Part of Finn’s plan called for a ruthless demonstration of force he hoped might scatter these yahoos, and make them think twice about messing with him.
But much to Finn’s disappointment, that wasn’t exactly how things were working out.
A savage cry erupted from the one wearing the butcher’s gear and soon, all of them were rushing in at him from both sides.
Finn tossed his bag of cans ahead of him and ran at the shelf that divided aisle one and two. His arms and legs scrambled to make it to the top before the men with the knives had a chance to start hacking away.
He wasn’t even at the top when he heard the soles of their shoes running back the other way. They were trying to race around and cut him off.
Finn staggered across the top of the grocery store shelf and jumped down. His chest was tight with fear, cutting off the oxygen trying to get to his muscles.
The Buy Low was their turf and Finn was little more than a trespasser who needed to be taught a lesson, or worse.
The last shelf before the fruit section was before him and he didn’t waste any time climbing that one as well. Two of them began climbing up after him, but that wasn’t the part that worried Finn the most. It was the three men with homemade weapons now blocking the front entrance, effectively trapping him like a rat in a maze.
Dana Hatfield
San Francisco
Dana was heading up Cortland Avenue in the beat up Nissan Cube when she came to the roadblock. Two men with AK-47s sat in the back of a pickup truck on folding chairs. They stood as her car approached and raised their rifles.
She stopped and got out of the car with her hands in the air and that was when she saw one of them was a teenage boy, floating in a heavy metal t-shirt three sizes too big for him. Next to the headbanger was a slightly older guy, well-built and somewhere in his mid twenties, handsome features, goatee, bright blue eyes. Clearly whatever it was that had transformed people into babbling idiots or savage animals had skipped them, just as it had skipped her.
Goatee lowered his weapon a touch when he saw she was a woman. “What’s your name?”
“S’cuse me?” Dana replied.
“Your name, what is it?”
“Dana.” She didn’t understand why on earth they’d need her name.
The kid leaned over and spoke to Goatee. “She’s clean.”
Goatee nodded and turned back to Dana. “Ma’am, this area’s been cordoned off.” The tremble in his voice was obvious and the last thing anyone wanted was to face off against a nervous man with a twitchy trigger finger.
Dana let her hands fall to her sides. “Cordoned off? By whom?”
“That’d be Mr. Jeffereys, ma’am. Traffic attendant who lives in the neighborhood.”
“Oh great, now meter maids are calling the shots.”
Headbanger snickered and Goatee elbowed him quiet. “Don’t let Mr. Jeffereys hear you say that.”
The blood was still smeared along the side of her Nissan from when she’d run over the guy with the pole and the contrast it struck with the car’s white paint job was hard to miss. All three of them seemed to be studying it at the same time.
“I need to get my father and after that I’ll get out of your hair.”
“What’s his name?” Goatee asked.
“Hatfield, Richard. Early sixties. Listen, I’ve come half way across the city just to get him, you have no idea what I’ve been through.”
A knot formed in her belly when she remembered the woman trapped in her car, how she’d had to leave her behind. Tears were welling up again and she choked them back.
“More than likely he’s probably dead already.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“We’ve been fending off looters since yesterday. Today they started hitting us in groups. They’re getting more organized, so we’ve started blocking the roads in here. Anyone who seems out of it or don’t know their name, we waste ‘em. Jeffereys is going house to house as we speak, rounding up anyone with shit for brains and if they show violence in any way, he puts ‘em down.”
Goatee’s words struck Dana like a closed fist. The urgency of reaching her father and bringing him to safety was now greater than ever.
The kid with the banger t-shirt next to Goatee spoke up for the first time. “You’re Coast Guard, aren’t you?”
Dana nodded, wondering if that might win her wiggle room.
“Then maybe since you’re part of the government you can tell us what the hell’s going on here.” He jabbed a skinny finger into the air. “Ozone layer’s trippin’ out with shiny lights, an earthquake trashes the city and now everyone’s gone frikin caveman on us. Government’s behind it, that much I know. Video on You Tube says how they’ve got bases deep in the earth, running all kinds of whacked out experiments. Mind control, weather manipulation.”
Dana couldn’t help sighing as she listened to the kid’s paranoid ranting. “Listen kid, I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. Frankly, the two of you are starting to sound like a couple of nuts.”
The kid nudged Goatee. “Hear that? We sound like nuts. Of course you don’t know a thing. And I suppose next you’ll tell us that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job.”
Gritting her teeth, Dana couldn’t take it anymore: “You wanna know what’s really going on you little shit? The goddamn world is ending. So go spread that on your cornflakes.” And wit
h that she got back into the Nissan, slammed the door behind her and put the car in reverse. She would need to find another other way to reach her father. And God help Jeffereys if he’d hurt a single hair on her father’s balding head.
Larry Nowak
Jersey City
The Holland Tunnel now behind him, Larry was pedalling along the Lincoln Highway, waiting for a clearing where the cars weren’t as gridlocked so he could grab one for himself. At one point, he passed a young black woman in her car, pounding against the windows with bloody fists. Wasn’t a chance he was going to risk stopping for anyone. It was impossible to tell who was out of it and harmless and who was out of it and eager to murder you. A city of desperate people on the best of days had now become a city of desperate, hungry people who didn’t care how they got their next meal. That thin, imaginary line between civilization and chaos had blurred so badly that Larry wasn’t sure any of them would ever find it again.
Sections of the highway had cracked open in yawning mouths during the earthquake, forcing Larry to climb over cars that spanned the gap, making him certain more than once that he and the bike he carried would go tumbling from the off ramp to their death.
Thick black smoke rose from half a dozen of the residential buildings just off the highway. Larry stopped his bike long enough to fish a bottle of water from the bag tied to the rack. He’d been forced to toss the loaf of bread, water had made it inedible when the bike had fallen over in the Holland Tunnel.
And here was another problem he hadn’t counted on. Several of the cars had been left idling since the disaster yesterday evening, as their owners had either fled or been trapped inside. It wasn’t more difficult than unlocking the door and pulling a handle – hell, more often than not the keys were still in the ignition – but it seemed like now most of the cars were either out of gas or running dangerously low. He’d need to get lucky if he was going to make it to Kenny’s lake house in Bethlehem.
Larry exited onto Hoboken Avenue, thinking about his investment portfolio and how most of his net worth was tied up in shares of Nutrilife and the other diversified stock investments he’d made. He wasn’t a property man. He was a gambler and Wall Street was as close to a casino as he’d come since swearing off dice. But none of that mattered much, since it was looking more and more as though his new net worth amounted to the clothes on his back and the dented bike beneath him.
He reached Palisade Avenue and squeezed both brakes only seconds before the Escalade roared by.
“Watch where you’re going, asshole!” he shouted in true New York style.
The SUV squealed to a halt, trailing long black lines through the intersection.
He didn’t have a gun. That was the first thought that fired through Larry’s head. He didn’t have a gun and now some gangbanger with sore feelings was about to waste him. He turned his bike around to flee.
“Hey!” the voice called out.
Larry was standing up on the pedals now, trying to build speed.
“Stop, I’m not gonna hurt you!”
He glanced back as he slowed to a stop, blinking twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. A man in a white lab coat was waving at him.
If this guy was packing heat and had any intention of killing Larry, then chances were good he would already be dead. Larry turned and pedaled back.
Under the lab coat, the man wore a dress shirt and pants that sagged, accentuating the impression of a young boy who’d raided his father’s closet; it didn’t take Larry long to realize the clothes he was wearing were from a man much larger than him. Larry approached and saw that the man’s skin was smooth and white, the pasty pallor accentuated by hair so blonde it was nearly white. A few stray hairs on his cheeks and chin passed for a sad looking five o’clock shadow.
He also smelled as if he hadn’t showered in a week. The wrinkle in Larry’s nose must have been obvious.
“You don’t smell so hot yourself, mister.” The stranger said, offering his hand. His fingernails hadn’t been cut in a few weeks. Larry took it after a brief hesitation.
“Larry Nowak.”
The man’s eyes fell to a mark on the asphalt where city workers had marked out sewer tunnels beneath the road.
“What’s the matter?” Larry asked, thinking how nice it would be to be driving that Escalade rather than hoofing it on this bike. If Larry still had his gun, the car would already be his.
They were still shaking hands and Larry finally pulled away.
“I know it’ll sound crazy,” the stranger with the blonde hair told Larry. “But I don’t know my name.”
Larry nodded. “There’s quite a bit of that going around. Listen, I don’t mean to be a party pooper, but it really isn’t safe to hang around and shoot the shit. I’m sure you’ve already figured it out, but half the city’s lost their minds.”
“Where you heading?”
“I’m trying to get my ass out of the city.” Larry said, not sure if he should say more.
“Well, I’m heading to a shelter, if you wanna tag along. It ain’t nearby though.”
“Anywhere but here,” Larry said smiling, pulling up short when the pain from his swollen eye made holding the expression got to be too much.
They loaded his bike into the back, laying it on top of a host of essential supplies. Cases of bottle water, granola bars, cans of beans similar to the ones tossed at his head right before he went through the tunnel and other boxes he didn’t recognize. There was enough in the back to keep a small family going for a week, and as Larry eased his sore ass onto the Escalade’s soft leather seats, he was sure he was floating on a cloud.
He tilted his chair back and turned to look as the pasty man got in and slid the car into gear.
“So where’s this FEMA camp you’re talking about?” Larry asked, watching empty streets flicker by.
“I never said it was FEMA.” The man pointed up to the sky and the strange lights dancing through thick clouds of black smoke. “Whatever hit us, seems to have taken out the whole country, maybe more.”
Larry sat up. “No shit.” He couldn’t say he was terribly surprised, but there was something disturbing about hearing the other man say it nevertheless.
The man shook his head. “No shit is right. Found a broadcast on short wave radio that said there’s a place for survivors in Utah. That was the only signal I could find. I’m sure with time others will pop up here and there.”
“Utah!”
“I know it’s far, but I can drop you somewhere along the way, if you’d like.”
Larry eased back into his seat. Utah was a hell of a far ways off. Did it make sense to travel half way around the country? He pictured himself alone at Kenny’s cottage, fending off scavengers stumbling onto his land looking to take what little he had. That was no way to live. Safety in numbers. That would be the mantra in this new world, he was certain of it. They’d make bumper stickers. He glanced up at the sky. Nor did this seem like the kind of thing that would just blow over. Deadly as it had been, Katrina was starting to look like an annoyance compared to what happened yesterday.
Larry sighed. “All right, I’ll stick with you for now.”
The man smiled. “We’ll need to look at that eye later. Don’t want it to get infected.”
“I’ll be fine,” Larry said, not wishing to relive what had caused the wound. “So what do I call you then?” He asked, trying to change the subject.
“Not sure,” the man replied, weaving between a station wagon and a mini van. “I did find some initials stitched into my boxer briefs. B. Hud.”
“How about Bud then?”
The man seemed to weigh the idea. “Bud sounds fine to me. At least until things start coming back to me.”
“Hit your head?”
Bud laughed, his Adam’s apple jumping up and down. “Nah, most of the head bumping happened after I woke up.”
There was a thin mark on Bud’s neck right below his right ear and even from where he was sitting, Larry thought i
t was too precise and carefully made to be anything but the incision from a scalpel.
“So, you a doctor?” Larry asked.
“Don’t think so, not that I can be sure, but I got this off a guy who was,” Bud said, indicating the oversized lab coat he was wearing.
Bud made a right hand turn and that’s when Larry noticed the tattoo on his wrist, just beneath his left palm. A series of eight numbers. Looked more like something out of Auschwitz than it did the kind of thing kids carved into their flesh nowadays. Larry wondered about the strange tattoo quite a bit as they made their way into the countryside, never bothering to ask, for the simple reason that Bud probably didn’t know what it was either.
Dana Hatfield
Bernal Heights
Dana didn’t need to go far to find a chink in their armor. A few streets over, several cars were parked bumper to bumper, blocking the road, but no one was manning the checkpoint. Wasn’t a surprise either; because Bernal Heights was mostly laid out in a grid, almost all of it built after the great fire of 1906, securing every street that led into the neighborhood would require an army. Dana left the Nissan around the corner and got out on foot. The family house was a quaint light blue deal on the corner of Bocana and Holy Park. The sound of gunfire in the distance made her jump. She thought again about what the two at the checkpoint had said.
Jeffereys is going house to house as we speak.
Dana quickened her step, turning the corner and found the front door to the family home ajar. Her pulse quickened. She unholstered the SIG and used it to nudge the door open.
“Dad, you here?”
No answer.
The house was a two floor job, with an old leather sofa set in the living room and a brown carpet, a frayed path worn between the couch and the kitchen. Since Mom had passed, her father spent most of his time watching 24 hour cable news channels and occasionally taking walks in the park across the street.
She made her way toward the bedrooms. Three in total, one on either side of the hall and the third at the end.
“Holler if you’re here, Dad,” she called out again, but the only response was gloomy silence.
Primal Shift: Episode 2 Page 5