Alvarez could feel his heart pounding in his chest. What the hell was he doing here? He’d wasted the old bastard who killed his wife and had started listening to the strange voices rattling off in his head. And now he’d committed the greatest folly of all. Walking into a group of these crazy fucks the way Harry had in San Francisco, only this time, he was about to get his brains splattered against the door’s beautiful brass plating.
The group of men and women was thumping weapons on the ground, daring him to approach.
Why haven’t they attacked already?
Perhaps they were more afraid of him than he was of them. Perhaps they were waiting for him to get closer so they could make a hole in his skull.
Alvarez swallowed the fear bubbling up within his gut like bile and planted one foot in front of the other. Seconds later, he stood before them, and his eyes traced the full height of the man with the sword. He stood at least a foot and a half taller than Alvarez and outweighed him by half. Alvarez stepped forward, intent on entering the hotel and claiming the prize that was his by rights. The savages parted as though his mere presence pushed them back. They seemed calmer in his presence. On some primitive level, they knew Alvarez was their master, the way dogs could instinctively recognize the leader of the pack. Except the man with the sword didn’t budge, even though a pathway to the door had opened up behind him. He wasn’t like the others. Wasn’t ready yet to relinquish control over his new realm. Alvarez couldn’t blame him. But as the fear within Alvarez began to morph into something closer to anger and then white-hot rage, he knew for the first time that he had become more than a mere man. Harry was within him, along with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, and the total was always greater than the sum of its parts. There was evil inside Alvarez and it was only now, standing in front of the giant man with the sword, daring him to enter, that he finally realized the truth. Killing Harry had transformed him into something far greater than he’d ever been in the short, pathetic thing he’d called a life. Whatever Harry had been, it had morphed Alvarez into an angel of death, a grim reaper, and these mindless savages would soon become the scythe he would use to mow down what was left of the human race.
But first, before all that, he would take care of the brute blocking his way. Alvarez reached out a hand and laid it on the man’s forearm. Suddenly, the skin there began to shrivel, and the muscles around the man’s wrist contracted into thin, wispy cords. Under Alvarez’ touch, his flesh browned and then became gray, as the decaying skin crept up his forearm, the brute’s eyes tracing its path in disbelief as it headed for his elbow. Alvarez removed his hand before the rot had a chance to kill him, satisfied only when the man’s arm fell to the ground and exploded into a puff of dust, to be blown into the faces of the nearby savages, gawking in awe. After that the newly one-armed brute stepped aside. Alvarez entered the Grand America Hotel, realizing then that he’d been wrong. Dogs didn’t always know their place in the pecking order. Sometimes they had to be told.
Finn
Interstate 15, NV
Lou was facing Finn in the backseat, his hands in the air, palms out.
“Hold on a second would you, it’s not what you think.”
Finn had his fingers curled around the door latch, ready to pull, but he hesitated, wondering if this was where Lou or Ethan pulled out a gun and shot him in the back.
Sweat was running down Lou’s forehead, which was pink and peeling from the sun. Back, that is, when there had been a sun. Fat drops of rain thumped against the roof and hood like tiny hands drumming against sheet metal.
“You’ve got a woman tied up in your car, Lou,” Finn said as calmly as he could. “I’m opening the door and heading back to my car now ... ”
“It’s my wife, for God’s sake. I done told you before how she fell right into the swimming pool after the change. What I neglected to mention was how Junior and I pulled her out, barely conscious, and tied her to a chair.”
Ethan’s gaze rose over Finn’s shoulder toward the boy’s mother in the back, still struggling against her straightjacket.
“It’s all right, Patty Mae,” Lou said. “Finn here’s a good man. He ain’t gonna hurt you.”
Finn turned and saw the bound woman’s eyes lock on him and then skitter back to Lou, where they seemed to calm a little.
“She doesn’t understand a word you’re saying, does she?” Finn asked.
“I’d like to think she does, but she don’t speak no more, so I can’t exactly be a 100 percent. Patty Mae’s still in there. Her spirit, I mean. Even if her mind’s been wiped clean like a chalk board after recess.”
Finn opened the door into the rain. “You should have stayed with the others.”
“Not after what Ethan and I seen at the grocery store, we shouldn’t. That was more than enough to convince me that staying in Vegas was just about the worst thing I coulda done. I saw the writing on the wall, Finn. Wasn’t gonna be long before the gangs controlling the food stores ran out of supplies and came looking elsewhere. Wasn’t gonna risk anyone’s life on a hope that we could stay outa sight and keep a low profile.”
Cold rain splattered against the tattoo on Finn’s forearm. He pulled the door shut. “Explain this to me then. Back in the grocery store, you were the one trying to talk me out of going to Utah.”
“And for good reason. That place north of Salt Lake City you were talking about. Well, if it’s the same one I saw on 20/20 last year, they’re a bunch of liberal tree-hugging hippies, waiting for the end of the world.”
“So why then is my friend, Bob from Tevatron, heading there?”
Lou ran a hand down his face. “They’ve been broadcasting a signal with their coordinates. And don’t ask me why, ‘cause I haven’t got a clue. Maybe they’re doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I thought of taking a chance and heading up there myself, soon as I heard the message, but the idea of leaving everyone behind ... ”
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Finn said and no sooner was he done than Ethan spoke up.
“They might be able to fix my mom,” Ethan said. “Maybe if she can learn to speak again ... well, maybe her other memories will start coming back.”
“And the people you left behind? What about them?”
“I told them where we were heading, and they refused to come along. My brother-in-law, Phillip, was the only family we had left, and he died right in front of the grocery store not long after you left. At the end of the day, the only two people I’m responsible for is Ethan and Patty Mae. Those others can go fuck themselves.”
Outside the rain was starting to let up.
“Go ahead and eat,” Finn said, stuffing the can of beans back in his pocket. “We leave in an hour.”
After that time, they continued in two cars, with Finn staying slightly ahead. Along the way they stopped twice at pileups and pillaged what gas and supplies they could find. No doubt, many of the abandoned cars that dotted the highway were left running after the amnesia made people forget what they were doing in those boxes on wheels in the first place. A handful had crashed so hard they’d killed the engine, along with themselves. Others had stayed trapped in their cars or fled off into the desert. Either way, the result was the same. Death.
The rain stopped about an hour later, and it wasn’t long after that Finn had seen the clouds begin to part, revealing a sight in the heavens he thought might never go away. It was a strange sight indeed, watching the sun low in the sky with an almost angelic green-and-blue halo flickering about it.
The wind picked up as they crossed the border into Utah.
Before long, they were in Salt Lake City, and Finn spotted the top of a tall white building that stood out like a twinkling star against an increasingly gray background.
Street signs rocked back and forth violently in the wind. In some places, telephone poles had been knocked over, blocking entire streets. What was beginning to look like a worldwide earthquake had shaken more than one ho
use clean off their foundations.
The direction they were heading in was north of Salt Lake City, although the car’s compass told them they were pointing south. Lou had said it himself back at the Buy Low.
You know things are really upside down when north reads south and south reads north.
Yeah, talk about understatement of the millennium.
Soon after, they came to a gravel road and a bridge with a funny little sign
Welcome to Rainbowland.
And Finn knew at once that Lou had been right. They’d found some kind of hippy commune. Any desire to seek help for Lou’s wife, Patty Mae, or peace of mind for his son, were now pushed firmly toward the back of Finn’s mind. He’d come here with a purpose. Locate Bob from Tevatron and get the answers he’d crossed hell itself to find.
Carole Cartright
Salt Lake City, UT
The family home was a disaster. Carole and Nikki surveyed the damage from the driveway as the wind sent their hair wiping into their eyes. Before the quake it had been the most modern house on the block. Jim was in construction and had poured most of his considerable skills into building them the perfect home. Two stories. West Coast-style veranda, supported by heavy timber beams. Carole felt tears struggling to surface when she thought of Jim and looked at what was left of his handiwork. With tremendous effort, she swallowed them back. It was difficult, considering the house wasn’t even a shadow of its former self. Part of the roof had collapsed. So, too, had the overhang that covered the front veranda. Nikki’s head was tilted ever so slightly, and Carole knew exactly why. The entire structure was listing to the left. Although it was clear Nikki didn’t remember this as the place where she’d grown up, both of them knew exactly why they’d returned. To find Aiden.
The lack of any car out front was a disturbing omen that Carole couldn’t quite ignore. She glanced in the living room window as they approached, noticing the curtain rod hanging at a weird angle, and for a moment, Carole thought she saw a face. Tiny white features with blood smeared across its mouth, just like at the elementary school. Then she blinked, and it was gone.
She couldn’t help thinking about what was going on inside the young, twisted minds of the children back there.
The front door hung ajar, and even from outside, it was clear that the interior of the house was in bad shape. Sewage water had burst upward from the toilets, spraying the ceiling as though the porcelain gods had decided to play a joke and send back all that had been offered. The fridge had fallen forward, laying rotting food across the kitchen floor.
Nikki was walking ahead of her when Carole called her back. Finding the front door wide open hadn’t worried Carole as much as seeing the food on the kitchen floor. Had someone come here to pillage or, worse still, to claim this place as their own? On the front door, the frame was cracked right where the bolt connected with the groove, but it was too hard to tell if that had happened naturally when the world was shaking apart, or whether someone had pried it open.
“Stay close, Honey,” she said softly.
Carole tiptoed into the kitchen and stepped over a carton of spilled milk, heading for the drawer with the cutting knives. She handed one to Nikki and kept the longest one for herself, not entirely able to help feeling a hint of surprise at the way her daughter gripped the blade firmly by the handle. No so long ago, if she’d handed Nikki any kind of weapon, her daughter would have held it between her thumb and index finger as though it were a dirty diaper.
“Aiden?” Carole called out suddenly, causing Nikki to twitch with fear.
No answer. Over the next few minutes, they searched the entire house from top to bottom, calling out for Alice or Aiden and finding neither of them. The weight in Carole’s heart was growing heavier by the second. She’d fought tooth and nail in that airport to keep her family together, to keep them safe, and it hadn’t been enough. There was another possibility, of course. That he and Alice had bypassed the family home altogether and driven directly for the FEMA camp.
Both of them went upstairs to throw some clothes into a bag. They wouldn’t take anything fancy. Fresh underwear and casual clothes.
Riffling through her top dresser, Carole came upon the album where she kept the photos of her and Jim. Pictures from the early days, before the kids, when staying in bed all weekend wasn’t just a product of wishful thinking.
The album was pink with lace flaps, and Jim hated how girly it looked, cursing whenever he’d caught her leafing through its pages nostalgically.
“Oh, not that old thing,” he would say with mock disgust. “When you gonna throw that ragged thing in the trash?”
“Soon as you leave me,” she’d reply, knowing full well such a thing would never happen. Leaving for another woman was what she’d been thinking when she said it, and she was right. If there was one thing about Jim she always treasured it was his loyalty. And perhaps because of his physical and emotional strength, the thought of losing him to some disease or accident seemed impossible to fathom. But here she was, struggling without him, wondering how the world had gone so terribly wrong.
The tears were flowing freely as she slid one of the pictures out from its clear plastic casing. An image of the pair of them skating at Rockefeller Center sometime in the mid-‘90s. They’d asked someone skating by to take their picture, and the person had chopped the top of their goofy winter hats off, but still it was evident how happy they were. This had always been Carole’s favorite, and seeing it now made her feel as though she might be utterly consumed with anguish and despair.
She was sliding it into her bag when Nikki burst in. Her daughter was holding a purple dress. “Tell me I didn’t used to wear this?”
Carole looked up from the bag she was zipping and smiled, hoping Nikki hadn’t noticed the tears. She had to stay strong, for both of them. Carole swallowed hard. “Not only did you wear it, but it was like a second skin. In fact, when you first brought it home you told me ‘Mom, I wanna be buried in the forest in this dress like Snow White.’”
Shaking her head, Nikki’s arms fell, crumpling the dress on the floor.
“Honey, you’re gonna ruin it.”
“I would never be caught dead in this thing. I really hope I used to wear jeans, because I can’t find a pair anywhere.”
Not long after, Nikki did find a pair of jeans, and the two of them packed up the car and headed out. Carole was pulling out when she blew a kiss to the house. There was so much of her husband in every angle that she found it hard to look back and not think of him.
I miss you so much.
She pulled away, certain she would never be back.
Nikki turned to her. “Who’s Billy Taylor?” she asked.
Carole gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “Where did you get that name?”
“I don’t know. I just saw a picture in my mind. I was kissing a man named Billy Taylor, and he kept saying, ‘I love you. I want to be with you forever.’”
Carole pulled the Escape to the side of the road. Tears tumbled down her cheeks. “I haven’t heard that name in years,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “You must have found some old letter ... ”
“I swear, I didn’t.”
“Oh goodness. Billy was a man I met before your father. We were going to get married, and then one night a state trooper knocked on my door and told me Billy had taken a turn over by Farmington-Loop road. He was going far too fast and had gone right over the edge.” Carole laid a hand on Nikki’s knee. “He was a wonderful man, but then so was your father, and if I hadn’t met Jim, then you and Aiden would never have been born. Gosh, I’d totally forgotten about Billy.”
“I could see you loved him very much.”
“You saw all that in your mind?”
“Yes, it looked like a ... memory.”
“But not your own.”
“No,” Nikki said. “Somehow I knew it belonged to you.”
Larry Nowak
Rainbowland, UT
Simon
Wallace narrowed his sunken eyes. “I’m not sure I understand your question.” Like the others Larry had met so far in Rainbowland, Simon was sickly thin, his hair pulled back into a pony tail. Larry guessed he was in his mid-teens, but the gauntness of his face made him look far older. Even his eyes had a bulging, almost crazed look to them. What set Simon apart, however, was his relation to All Father, otherwise known by his Earthly name: Peter Wallace. Simon was the man’s son, and yet Larry couldn’t find much of a resemblance between them, apart from the skeletal frame and their pallid complexion.
“I asked you if the compound had ever been attacked,” Larry responded. The two were down by the Green River, not far from bridge that spanned it. A car filled with newcomers was just beginning to cross. Larry and Simon sat by the bank, water twinkling up at them in the fading light.
“For the life of me, I can’t imagine who would wish to harm us,” the boy answered. “We keep to ourselves here. We get along just fine with our neighbors. Father says our thoughts are pure.”
It was that last part that really caught Larry off guard. “What do you mean, your thoughts are pure?”
“Sure,” Simon explained. “See, in the universe, like attracts like. If your thoughts are filled with light, then it raises your consciousness and brings more of the same into your life. The same holds true with negative thoughts. They can send your soul down a dark path with nothing but misery.”
The crazy thing was, the time Larry spent bilking airheads out of their hard-earned money through Nutrilife had exposed him to all manner of whack jobs. You create your own reality. Raise your consciousness. Even that last bit about filling your thoughts with light. None of it made a stitch of sense, but this was the lingo these people used, and as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans, right?
Larry threaded his fingers, touching his thumbs together in a pose he’d seen the Dalai Lama use once on TV. “I like to consider myself something of a spiritual man,” he said. “Meditation and yoga were big parts of my daily rituals. No man is perfect. Let me be clear about that, but I can assure you my thoughts are as pure and honorable as they come.” Larry waved a hand before him. “The world out there isn’t anything like what it once was. Something has happened to people’s minds, and it’s turned them all into savage fucking animals.” The look of surprise and embarrassment on Simon’s face made Larry pause. “I told you I wasn’t a perfect man. Sometimes the passion in me ... ”
Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 22