Larry brought his hand to his mouth and coughed. The smoke from fires was starting to burn his eyes. Through the twists of black smog, Larry spotted something that surprised him. Hard to tell from here if they were male or female, but the person was riding a bike. The half-wits he’d watched stumbling around from the relative safety of the BMW for most of the night hadn’t ridden a thing besides each other, when a half naked couple had started banging like a pair of animals in the middle of the street. But that was one hell of an idea. Bikes were all around, weren’t they? Of course those city rent-a-bikes wouldn’t do. Those were locked up tight and besides, they looked like they weighed a thousand pounds. He would need something light and with a basket, so he could carry some necessities.
Didn’t take him more than five minutes to find one. Dark blue and lying in a heap on the ground, it certainly wasn’t a $10,000 Madone like the one Larry had back at his apartment on Fifth Avenue. The bike also didn’t have a basket, but it did have one of those racks above the rear wheel. He rolled it up onto the sidewalk and leaned it against a street light. Beside him was a fruit market. The baskets out front were mostly empty. Larry removed the gun from his pocket and walked inside.
“Anyone in here?”
No answer.
The darkness seemed to swallow the light from outside. Narrow aisles of canned goods, most of them on the floor. Someone had definitely been in here, and perhaps they hadn’t left. He only needed a few bottles of water, some bread and maybe some bananas for the potassium. A bang from the back of the store made him flinch. It sounded like someone had kicked a can in the dark, and now he watched it come skidding down the aisle. It stopped at his feet.
Larry reached behind the counter for some plastic bags. He would take them all.
A bottle of pickles sailed passed his head and connected with the shop’s front window, bringing it down in a deafening torrent of shattering glass. Splinters pierced Larry’s right cheek. He brought the hand with the gun to his face and dabbed the wound with his knuckles. This asshole had drawn blood, and now Larry was going to kill him. A can of beans came out of the gloom and hit him square in the chest.
Larry doubled over.
His brain was telling him to retreat, but his body needed another minute so he could catch his breath. Larry raised the Glock and fired off three rounds, one for each darkened aisle. A can of tomato paste was next, and it missed his head by less than an inch. Gun or no gun, Larry had had enough. He ducked out with a plastic bag filled with bottled water and a loaf of white bread and made a bee line for his new bike.
Screw the bananas.
When he was a safe distance away, he used the bungee cord to secure his things to the bike and began heading for the Holland Tunnel. There were only two more things he’d need to find before descending into the inky darkness. A flashlight and bigger pair of balls.
Finn
Las Vegas, NV
Finn was heading down Rancho Drive when he geared down the Ninja, slowing it to a crawl. Planting his feet on the hot asphalt, he scanned ahead. The engines of a few of the abandoned cars that littered the road continued to purr. The street had two lanes, and on either side were large chain stores, punctuated by small neighborhoods with houses that might have looked new yesterday, but after the quake were now leaning to one side or the other. Many of the roofs were missing tiles. Sad and frightened figures sat huddled under the occasional palm tree. Others were scavenging among the scattered cars. It was hard to tell from here whether they had all their memories intact, if they were suffering from a total mind wipe or if they were somewhere in between.
When Finn had transferred from the Land Rover to the bike, a decision that hadn’t been an easy one, he took everything he could carry. There were parts of the road, even on one this wide, that were impassable to any vehicle larger than a motorcycle. He was trading security for maneuverability.
A Home Depot on his right was in the process of burning to the ground, and there wasn’t a single cop or fireman in sight.
Shouldn’t be in the city, Finn. It’s far too dangerous.
That little voice again. He knew it was probably right, and he couldn’t deny that part of him wished he’d ended up like everyone else. Wiped from the neck up. Sure, denied the basic common sense people learned in childhood, they probably wouldn’t last more than a few days, but at least they didn’t know any better. He removed the letterhead with the address to Tevatron’s regional office that he’d snatched from the power plant.
It read 950 Owens Avenue, Las Vegas, NV
And then studied the map.
Not much farther now.
He arrived only a few minutes later. Three dead bodies lay in the middle of the road, their heads split open, red mush spilled all over the asphalt. Most of the blood had already been boiled away by the sun, leaving a dark-red crust in its place. Torn shopping bags and jars of baby food were scattered around them.
Tevatron’s regional headquarters was in a kind of strip mall, wedged between a lawyer’s office and a health clinic. Across the street was a Buy Low grocery store; Finn would swing by for some supplies as soon as he found what he could at Tevatron.
He brought the Ninja right up to the office door and killed the engine. The building itself was small and industrial. Aluminum roofing ran the length of the structure with a small overhang so people could hide from the scorching sun. The bars on the windows and doors told him he might be out of luck.
He pulled on the office door, and to his surprise, it swung open easily. Inside, the air was hot and stale. The AC had been off since yesterday, and Finn found himself sweating in his coveralls. In his right hand was the pipe he’d carried since waking up underground with no memory of who the hell he was or how he’d gotten there. Thin strips of light bled in through the front entrance, just enough to make out a desk against the far wall and a bookcase that had fallen over during the quake. Other rooms or offices branched off on his right and left, but this was where he would start his search. First, he needed to find out if anyone here still had their wits about them.
He called out, his voice returning to him sounding dull in the dead air.
He glanced down at the eight numbers tattooed along his left forearm. 92574301.
The answer to that little riddle was in here somewhere, he was certain of it.
On the desk was a computer and behind that a four drawer file cabinet. The power was off so the computer wouldn’t be any good to him, which was a real shame since that was where most of the good stuff was probably stored.
A back window lit the papers scattered across the desk, and Finn began to search through them. Purchase orders for solar panels and heat exchangers, disciplinary action on employees who had missed three days’ work this month, the need for more panels to keep up with the growing power demand. The irony wasn’t lost on Finn that the office for a company that made their livelihood building solar plants hadn’t thought to install panels on the roof.
All seemed rather run of the mill. Nothing too different from the crap he’d found in the trailer before leaving the plant.
He went to the file cabinet and opened the top drawer. More work and purchase orders. Toner for the fax machine, reams of paper for the printer and then ...
A memo, dated July 1, 2017.
To: All departments
From: Dr. Harry Thomson
Subject: Release form submittal
Please be advised that all release forms procured from test subjects have yet to be remanded to my office. The deadline is no later than the end of the month.
Subjects:
Blackwood, Joanne (received)
Inn, Francis (received)
Johnson, Silvia (still outstanding)
Signed,
Dr. Harry Thomson
Head of Research and Development
Tevatron Industries
Finn read the paper over twice, and each time his eyes caught on the second name.
Francis Inn.
He unzipp
ed his coveralls and looked at the tag on his underwear.
F.INN
Francis. My name is Francis.
No sooner had the thought formed in his mind than he realized how much he hated the name. Francis. Sounds like someone with a speech impediment who wears loafers. No, I’ll stick to Finn, thank you very much.
With one problem solved, he turned to another. The consent forms. The memo said his had been received, which told him two things. First, at some point he must have signed a paper allowing him to participate in whatever landed him in the vat full of K-Y Jelly. Second, his consent form probably wasn’t here anymore. Nevertheless, Finn took the next few minutes to leaf through the file cabinet for anything else that may proven useful, but came up empty. The Head of Research and Development for Tevatron. Harry Thomson. This was the guy he needed to talk to.
A noise from the other room made Finn’s head snap in that direction. It was coming from an office on his right, and he picked up the pipe and headed slowly in that direction. There was no way someone in here hadn’t heard him riffling through the company’s file cabinets.
Finn nudged open the door where the noise had come from and stopped dead. Standing before him was a woman with long stringy hair, dirty and slicked forward, covering her face. He could see her chest heaving with fear. She was wearing a skirt and blouse, both torn and marked with dark stains that might have been blood. She didn’t look like someone who had wandered in off the street. Finn guessed right away she must have worked here, but the way she was breathing and that hair, well, she looked scared shitless.
She’s trying to puff out her chest. Make herself look threatening. Running on instinct, that was what it looked like.
Finn held up his left hand, palm flat to show he wasn’t going to hurt her. His other hand, the one with the pipe he slid behind his back.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The noises emanating from the back of her throat were guttural and reminded Finn of how the man in the white lab jacket had behaved when the two came face to face in that narrow underground corridor.
“Do you know your name?”
She glared at him without blinking.
“Did you work here?”
Her eyes darted around the room, like a rat, searching frantically for a way out of a steel cage.
“You were trying to be quiet weren’t you?” Finn said. “Listen, I need to ask you some things.”
Then that little internal voice again: You’re wasting your time, Finn. Right now she’s got less sense than the lid of a garbage can.
Without thinking, he used the hand holding the pipe to roll back the sleeve of his coveralls to show her the tattoo. He was going to ask her if she knew what the numbers meant, but the moment her eyes saw the lead pipe she charged and ploughed right into him.
Finn stumbled backward.
But tearing him to pieces wasn’t what the woman in the skirt and blouse was after. She was simply trying to get away, like any feral creature that felt trapped and threatened.
She burst through the front door. It swung wide, smacking the metal cage that covered the outside windows and then slowed on its way back as the hydraulic door eased it shut.
Finn spotted the piece of paper taped against the inside of the door, flapping in the soft breeze as it closed. A note he had missed in his excitement to get the answers he so desperately needed.
He snatched it off the door and read it.
Heading for survivor rallying point Uintah, north of Salt Lake City. Get the hell out of Las Vegas as soon as you can.
The name Bob was scrawled below it. Bob had probably written the note so that his fellow co-workers would know where to go once they snapped out of whatever was wrong with them. Clearly, that hadn’t happened. But Bob worked for Tevatron, and that meant he might have answers. Finn folded the paper and slid it into his pocket, wondering where in the hell Uintah was anyway. More importantly, he was wondering how long it would take him to get there.
Dana Hatfield
San Francisco, CA
A marina next to Pier 42 offered a safe place for Dana to dock the MLB while she headed inland to find her father. Even as she sped through the Bay, it was hard not to stare at the black smoke that hung over the city like a death shroud. One more sobering piece of evidence that first responders and perhaps even the National Guard were nowhere to be found.
The AT&T ballpark sat empty at the end of the pier. In the distance, the slight rise of Bernal Heights was barely visible through the smoke.
The straps from the pack she was carrying cut into her shoulders. The weight from the SIG on her hip wasn’t helping either, but both items weren’t luxuries, at least if the chaos she had seen already was anything to go by. Dana double timed it up the boardwalk.
It was only when she reached King Street that the full extent of the damage became apparent. Many of the buildings had sandwiched during the earthquake, compressing what had once been three floors into one. Some of the steel structure of the AT&T stadium had collapsed and crushed a handful of people and vehicles unlucky enough to be passing beneath it when the shit had hit the fan. Corpses lay scattered in every direction, and Dana felt her hand cover her mouth, more in an act of shock than a need to block out the smell of death. The toll of human life in the city was staggering, and the realization opened a stark window into her greatest fear. Her father was all she had left now. If she lost him, she would truly be alone. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she wiped them away.
Keep it together, Hatfield. This time it was Keiths’ voice she heard.
Once you find your dad, then you can deal with that lowlife Alvarez.
Roger that.
Something else she hadn’t quite counted on was the number of derelict cars. The engines of at least half of them were still purring softly, as though the drivers had double parked to pop into a store. A Nissan Cube caught her eye, and she’d already made up her mind to hop in when she spotted the face watching her through the windshield of a Volvo station wagon. It was a woman, her hands pressed up against the glass, which fogged with each breath. She looked like a mime, trapped in an invisible glass box.
Dana approached her, and the woman dropped down.
Peek-a-boo.
There was something almost infantile about the woman’s actions. Incessant staring that had morphed into fear of being seen. Something a child would do, and the thought struck a chord with her. In a way, Coons had acted the same way, cowering in the corner when the lights in the sky had filled the air around them with death and destruction.
Dana reached the car, pulled at the handle, and found it locked. She tapped on the glass, but the woman inside wouldn’t look up at her.
If I can’t see you, then you can’t see me.
Dana knocked again.
“Lady, I can’t help you unless you unlock the door.”
Something tugged at her peripheral vision. Dana glanced over and saw a man, standing in the middle of the street, staring. Inside the car, the woman skittered to the far side and curled into a tight ball. Now only a single eyeball glared back at her from between strands of stringy doll’s hair.
Dana glanced over again, and suddenly buddy standing in the street wasn’t alone. Now there were two of them. The second man had an object in his hand, a stick or a metal rod and he banged it three times on the hood of a car. The noise echoed up and down the street, reverberating off the surrounding buildings.
They were dressed in casual clothes, jeans and T-shirts, which wasn’t surprising given that the world had gone haywire on Independence Day. For all she knew, a few hours ago they were playing catch in the park with their kids, or grilling hamburgers and hotdogs. Now they were standing in the middle of the street, getting ready to do something very stupid. Dana’s heart was skipping wildly in her chest as her hand fell to the SIG at her hip. But feeling it against her palm didn’t offer her as much comfort as she’d hoped it would. Did these men mean to attack her? And if so, what did she have th
at they could possibly want? Heart hammering in her chest, Dana decided she wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
By the time she made it back across the street to the Nissan, the group of three had swelled to over 20. They were beating on the roofs and hoods of the cars around them as they began heading in her direction. From where Dana was standing, no one appeared to be in charge. They were just a motley group of men with something in common.
Hunger? Desperation? Rage?
She thought of Nash and how Alvarez swore the sailor had gone wild and killed Keiths.
Dana was about to hop into the Cube and tear off when she locked eyes with the woman in the Volvo across the street. She must have seen the men, too, because she was banging on the window, desperate to get out.
Maybe I don’t look so scary after all, do I?
She slid the pack off her shoulders and threw it onto the passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition, and the gas warning light was on, but thankfully the ugly little car still had a few gallons in her. More than enough to get her to Bernal Hill and then back to Pier 42.
The men were about 50 yards out, and Dana dashed to the Volvo. She yanked on the handle and swore.
“How the hell can I help you if you can’t open the door?”
A quick glance over her shoulder sent shockwaves of fear through her body. Some of the men had broken into a run. She would need to move swiftly or risk being surrounded. Dana removed the SIG and waved the woman back.
“I’m gonna shoot the window, get back.”
But the woman continued pounding her fists. She was oblivious to even the simplest of hand signals.
The men were 50 feet away, and Dana knew now she wasn’t going to make it, not unless she left right away. A white guy with a dirty crew cut and a wife beater was running her way, the metal rod in his hand cocked like a Samurai going in for the kill.
Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 11