“Maintenance? For all I know I could be the Queen of frickin’ Sheba.”
“Not with that tattoo you can’t.”
“What do you mean, Bob?”
“You didn’t just work for Tevatron. You belonged to them.”
Finn’s expression never changed, but the confusion must have been clear nonetheless.
“That tattoo. It means you were part of Project Arrow.”
Dana Hatfield
Rainbowland, UT
The sun had already set by the time Dana finally found the bridge that led to Rainbowland. It was something of an understatement to say this wasn’t what she thought she would find. She had driven across three states with the single-minded goal of catching up with Alvarez and seeing that he faced justice for murdering Keiths. Would he deny the charge and squeal for his life like the weasel that he was? Dana would be disappointed if he didn’t. Thankfully, the trip itself had been largely uneventful. Not that she hadn’t come prepared. Between the rucksack she’d stuffed with food and clothes, as well as the replacement SIG she’d grabbed from the armory, being prepared wasn’t an issue. That was where Alvarez had gone wrong. It was the reason Keiths had given her the key when he handed her the pistol. He knew Alvarez might try something stupid. Although surely he never could have imagined that thing would be murder. Not in the midst of a crisis.
She’d made it to Utah in record time. The docks at Fort Baker had a hose and nozzle they used to refuel the boats. Wasn’t anything fancier than a siphon, but it did the job marvelously. Whenever Dana found herself running low, she’d pull up next to a car, pry open the gas flap with a crowbar, slide the hose in, and start pumping. Fifty percent of the time, gas would gurgle up to feed her thirsty tank. Sometimes the cars had been left running until they were bone dry, a situation that nearly gotten her into a world of trouble on one particularly lonely stretch of Nevada desert.
The tall skinny thing in the white robe calling himself All Father was the first to greet her. Already, cars were parked at the end of the road three and four rows deep. To broadcast your location to the entire country, maybe even the entire continent, seemed to Dana either incredibly generous or incredibly stupid.
All Father, whose real name she discovered afterward was Peter, had spotted the SIG on her hip almost at once.
“Rainbowland is a gun-free zone,” he’d said. “I’m afraid you’ll need to surrender your firearm at once.” The old guy had even held out his hand as though he expected her to comply.
“I’m Coast Guard,” she’d replied, as though that were all the explaining she needed to do.
“Yes, but you’re in Rainbowland now.”
“I can assure you this is purely for self-protection.”
A thin crease of tension formed on All Father brow. “That’s what we’re afraid of.”
They’d stood “debating” for several minutes until the old guy had finally given up and stormed off.
After escaping from Jeffereys by the skin of her teeth, Dana had vowed she would never again allow anyone to tie her up or take away her ability to protect herself. All this Peter character wanted to talk about was love and peace, and frankly Dana was happy afterward she’d risked the insult by keeping her firearm.
But this was part of the problem with guns. More often than not, civilians saw one stuck in the band of some guy’s pants and freaked the hell out. That was assuming they weren’t from New Hampshire. It was only a question of time, she knew, before these tree huggers asked her to leave. But she had no intention of doing any such thing until she discovered whether Alvarez was here or not.
One of the other cult members, a ruddy-faced man named Timothy, showed her to the tent she’d be sharing with nearly a dozen other people. A mishmash of refugees was really what they were. Whichever natural disaster had done this, it seemed to have struck people at random. Most appeared shell-shocked and lethargic. Each had suffered some sort of loss, surely, either during the initial event or in the earthquakes that followed. But there were more changes to come. She’d seen the signs as she crossed the state line into Nevada. The ground had rumbled, and she’d heard a thunderous explosion. Took her a while to figure out it hadn’t been another aftershock, but the explosion of a volcano, perhaps Mount St. Helens, maybe just to add insult to injury at a time when humanity was already on the ropes and threatened with extinction.
The signs of loss were all around them though. For Dana, over the last few days she’d seen Keiths, her father, Coons, and everyone else at Fort Baker she once called a friend die, almost before her very eyes. There’d been enough death with no clear way of making it all right. The least she could do was stop Alvarez: a sorry excuse for a man who surely would kill again.
Dana was getting settled into her bunk, listening to the quiet chatter of strangers, thinking about how this wasn’t so terribly different from living in the barracks, when the man next to her tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hungry?” he asked, reaching out with an apple slice.
She took it and thanked him. He was a handsome older man, with slightly graying hair. The suit he wore was powdered with concrete dust.
“Dana,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Dana. My name’s Larry.”
His eyes seemed to scan her entire body, as though he were sizing her up. It felt far less sexual than it did practical. Hardly anyone here knew one another. That’s when she thought about the SIG and how she’d removed the gun belt after her altercation with All Father and stuffed it into her bag.
He offered her another piece of apple and she took it, savoring the juices as they ran down her throat with every bite.
“Where’d you get this?” she asked.
“They have an orchard.”
“Wow, fresh fruit. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
Larry smirked. “These people have such a great thing going here, it’s a pity they won’t do more to protect it. There’s a whole world filled with bad people just waiting to take it for themselves. But I don’t have to tell you that.”
Dana watched the warm light from a lantern hanging overhead dance across the deep lines in his face. He was right. He didn’t need to tell her. She’d seen enough insanity out there already to know Larry was speaking the truth. Dana would also be lying if those very same concerns hadn’t nagged at her the minute she crossed that bridge into Rainbowland or whatever the hell they called this place. Where were the armed guards? Or at least some kind of perimeter fence? The SIG in her bag came to mind, and yet the thought did nothing to settle that cold knot of fear forming in her belly. If they were attacked, there would be nothing to stand between them and certain death, apart from a single pistol and a handful of bullets. It made finding Alvarez and getting out of this death trap all the more pressing.
“You look like someone who can take care of herself,” Larry observed. “I don’t recognize the uniform. Navy?”
“Coast Guard.”
“Ah, a sailor.” Larry carved another piece off the apple with a pocket knife. “I’m surprised you didn’t head out to sea.”
“That’s funny. Maybe I should have, but the boats we used in San Francisco Bay weren’t nearly big enough, not to mention how much fuel they use. Besides, my assignment was something the Coast Guard doesn’t like to discuss.”
“Oh? Now you have me intrigued.” He was grinning at her and in the fading light she could see tiny dimples forming in his cheeks.
“I used to retrieve the bodies of suicide victims.”
Larry’s eyebrow perked up. “Golden Gate?”
Dana nodded.
“Grim. You must be used to all this death.”
“You never get used to it.” Dana picked lint off the wool blanket they’d given her. “What about you?”
“I ran a company in New York. At one point, you might say I was a rich man. Had nice cars, a closet bursting with designer suits.” He slid his thumb along the lapel of his gray suit jacket. “Now I just have the one.”
Dana smiled. “Guess it depends how you look at it. Now you can have any suit you want. All you gotta do is not get killed while you’re shopping.”
“Yes, gives shopping to death a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”
“This may seem like a strange-sounding question, but have any other Coast Guard sailors arrived since you’ve been here?”
Larry’s eyes went to the ceiling. “Can’t say that I noticed any. You looking for one in particular?”
The disappointment hit Dana like a slap to the face and she bit down on the pain. She nodded weakly. “Yeah, I was worried you were gonna say that.”
“With any luck,” Larry said, “he’ll show up sooner or later.”
Carole Cartright
All Father’s office, Rainbowland, UT
All Father’s office was in stark contradiction to the man himself. Small and colorful, although the brightness wasn’t a product of electrical lighting since Carole had quickly learned that such things were forbidden here. The walls were bright yellow, and behind him, painted in pastels, was a mural featuring a darkened outline of an androgynous figure seated in the lotus position. The figure was meditating, Carole could see, amid wisps of blue-and-green energy; it looked a lot like the sky outside. There was a series of orbs, too, each a different color in a line from the top of the figure’s head to a point below its belly button.
Chakras.
That was Carole’s best guess. She and Nikki were here to give All Father their names so he could put them in the ledger. He wouldn’t say how many people had trickled in so far from the outside world, but she guessed at least a hundred with plenty more on the way. They had arrived yesterday, in time to help set up the tents and get settled in. Although the compound was not at all what Carole had thought it would be, Rainbowland seemed like a quiet, peaceful place. A kind of Tibetan monastery nestled in the eye of a storm.
All Father was transcribing their names into the book, his long slender fingers swallowing the tiny schoolboy pencil in his hands.
“We picked up your radio signal from the airport,” Carole said to fill the silence.
Peter looked up, surprised. “What signal?”
Shifting with sudden discomfort, Carole smiled weakly. “On the radio. A man’s voice was reading a bunch of numbers and degrees. I hope you won’t take offense, but he sounded an awful lot like you.”
“We don’t use any sort of electronics here, Carole. I thought I already mentioned that.”
“You did.”
“So that couldn’t have been anyone here sending that signal. Not without me knowing about it. You must be mistaken. But you didn’t want to see me about that did you?”
Carole leaned forward. Neither she nor Nikki had washed yet since arriving, and she couldn’t help notice Peter’s nose twitching from their body odor. A week ago, she would have been mortified. Now, she barely gave it a second thought.
Go through what I have, and you might smell a bit, too!
Instead, she said: “Two people from our group are missing. My son and a woman we met after our plane crashed. I’d hoped to find them at my house, but now that we’re here, I’m sure they never left the airport.”
“Their names?”
“Alice ... her last name is Reed and Aiden Cartright.”
Peter ran his bony finger down the page. Once he’d reached the end he turned it over and continued until he’d run the full length of the list of everyone who’d arrived.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, I know they aren’t here. I must have spoken to everyone.”
“So what would you like me to do?”
“Help me form a search party, to go back to Salt Lake City Airport and rescue them.”
“Rescue?” All Father was reticent.
“Haven’t you seen what’s going on out there?” Carole snapped. “People are killing each other. They aren’t human anymore, they’re animals.”
“No, not animals, Carole. I can assure you they’re still human beings. It’s only their minds that have forgotten. There is no such thing as evil, only ignorance.”
“Well, those ignorant bastards are eating each other for Christ’s sake.”
Peter closed the book with a quick little snap and set it on the side of his desk, his lips drawn into a thin line. Barely a second later, his entire face lit up with a beaming smile. His eyes traced from Carole to Nikki.
“We’re in the throes of a shift in human consciousness, Ladies.” Peter’s voice was calm and reassuring, almost hypnotizing, and Carole felt her mind beginning to float away. She didn’t have a clue what a shift in human consciousness meant, but if it meant a change in the way people thought, then she couldn’t argue with that.
“Everything has a vibrational rate,” he went on. “The human race is being ushered into the fourth dimension. You have no idea how long we’ve been waiting. Isn’t it exciting?”
Peter was starting to lose her with his mumbo jumbo. An image of Aiden screaming for help echoed from somewhere deep inside of her.
“People are eating each other,” she repeated, not entirely sure if he’d heard her the first time.
The smile on All Father’s face never wavered.
“Listen!” Carole shouted. “I need a group of armed men to help me go back and find them.”
Peter laughed, and she saw for the first time that several of his molars were missing. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. We’re forbidden from hurting any living thing.” He opened a drawer and out came a sheet of paper, which he handed to her. At the top was Principles of All That Is.
“The hell is this?”
“Read it.”
Carole did so and didn’t get further than the title. “All That Is?” she asked.
“A more accurate and less anthropomorphic name for what you call ‘God.’”
She began reading out loud. “The First Principle: Hurt no living thing by either action or omission. The Second Principle: Technology separates man from his creator and should be avoided at all costs. The Third Principle: All men and women are equal under the Creator. The Fourth Principle: All members of the faith have the right to vote on Rainbowland affairs. The Fifth Principle: The consumption of drugs and alcohol corrupts the soul and is forbidden.”
Carole finished reading and handed the paper back.
“Do you understand now why I can’t help you?” he asked.
“Well, you can’t stop me.”
All Father folded his hands under his chin. “If you go there with the intention of harming others to save your son, then don’t bother coming back. I will not house murderers in Rainbowland.”
The contradiction was so glaring Carole couldn’t believe it. She snatched the paper off the desk and read him the first principle. “Hurt no living thing by either action or omission. Those are your own goddamned rules. If you don’t help me save my son, they’ll kill him, and that’s assuming they haven’t done it already. Allowing him to be butchered by savages would be a pretty egregious omission, wouldn’t you say?”
The contempt on Peter’s face was perfectly clear in spite of his attempts to mask his emotions.
But it was Nikki who spoke next, and this time Peter couldn’t hide his shock.
“Your daughter, Abigail, when was she killed?”
Finn
Tent City, Rainbowland, UT
Bob ran a shaky hand through his thinning hair. “Look, I’m not the best person to be asking.”
“Not the best, Bob? Take a look around you,” Finn said, feeling his pulse quickening. He hadn’t come all this way to be given the runaround. “You’re right, you’re not the best, you’re the only one right now who can help me.”
Just then, a petite woman and a teenage girl came in and laid down on cots at the other end of the tent.
Bob turned back to Finn and lowered his voice. “All I did was order parts for the lab in the Nevada desert. That’s where you were, a lab, not a power plant. The solar panels were designed to pr
ovide enough power for the experiment.”
“For Project Arrow?”
Bob nodded agreement.
“What was it for?”
“We weren’t told. All we knew was that the particle accelerator gobbled up a ton of juice, often more than the panels could handle.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A giant ring with incredibly powerful magnets designed to smash particles together. Except, they weren’t smashing particles. They were using the electricity to amp up the magnets.”
Finn leaned in and closed a hand around Bob’s arm. “Well, I can settle one thing for sure, Bob, they weren’t making fridge magnets. Listen to me real carefully, Bob.” And as Finn said it, the two men’s eyes locked. “I need every last scrap of information you have. Every rumor you heard, everything. Got it?”
Bob sighed. Up went his hands, running through his hair before resting in his lap. “They were trying to change polarities. You’re asking for rumors, well, that’s what was going around the office. You know, swapping magnetic fields. But that’s all I know. Keep in mind Tevatron’s contract with the Air Force was the smallest one we had. You want any more info, you’ll have to go find a guy named Harry Thomson. Fucking slave driver and certifiable nut case. That’s what he was. Always pushing things too far. He was breaking parts faster than I could supply them. Cooling towers don’t ship out overnight, do you realize that? We’re not talking about buying books online, here. These were industrial-sized components, made to spec.”
Finn couldn’t hide the sense of defeat that was slowly overcoming him.
“Maybe it’s better you don’t remember a goddamned thing.” Bob said. “Hell, no one out there knows their ass from their elbow anymore. I’d count yourself among the lucky ones.”
But it wasn’t losing his identity that was getting to Finn. Bob had been his only real lead, and now that looked like it was turning into a dead end.
Bob stood and headed for the tent flap. He stopped before leaving. “Listen, Finn, if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”
“Sure thing,” Finn replied, unable to look up as Bob left.
Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 24