Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller)

by Griffin Hayes

  “Dale,” he said, pushing out one of his large hands.

  “You drive a rig?” Lou asked, his eyes lighting up.

  Dale rocked back hard on his heels with phlegmy laughter, his slightly pear-shaped body bouncing jovially. “Oh, hell no. Don’t let the hat fool you. I used to crunch numbers for a living, not miles.”

  “I found two others to join us,” Finn said.

  Just then, Ethan came running up to them.

  “Son, I already told you I need you to stay here.”

  “No way, Dad.” Ethan’s face was sunburned or maybe just red, Carole couldn’t tell which.

  “Would you be willing to look after Nikki while I’m gone?” Carole asked.

  Now it was Nikki’s turn to be surprised. Although they still had a long way to go to rebuild their relationship, Carole was the closest thing she currently had.

  Ethan looked at the ground and slapped the side of his jeans. “All right, but how long you gonna be?”

  Finn looked at the sky, as did Carole. It was still early in the morning, and those lights, the Earth’s magnetic field she’d discovered at the elementary school and again during All Father’s speech today, were weaving overhead.

  “We shouldn’t be more than a few hours,” Finn said.

  Lou agreed and so, too, did Dale.

  They were about to leave when a man Carole recognized as Bob walked up to Finn with a black woman by his side.

  She was a large woman, muscular but not fat. She had a cold glare in her eye that Carole found unsettling.

  I wouldn’t wanna meet her in an alley.

  “This is Johnson,” Bob said. “She came in this morning from North Dakota. I was helping her get settled in when I saw this.” Bob looked at her, and Johnson rolled up the sleeve of her left arm. On it was a tattoo similar to Finn’s, only the numbers were different.

  Carole gasped, but Finn was the one to say the words that were on the edge of her tongue.

  “Holy Crap!”

  Jeffereys

  Outside Rainbowland, UT

  Jeffereys adjusted the strap on the binoculars and brought the rounded edges to his eyes. In the foreground, two rows of mobile homes were lined up end to end along a dirt road. Beyond that was a long two-story structure with aluminum siding that looked like a fairly recent construction. Opposite the building was a collection of large green tents. They seemed to have been erected in a circular formation with some type of communal space in the middle. But the tiny shapes he saw flitting past the narrow gaps between the tents was all he really needed to see.

  People who hadn’t been touched by the change. Lots of them.

  It was the beaten-up wooden sign, tussling in the wind just past the bridge that put a smile on Jeffereys’ face.

  Rainbowland

  “This will be easier than I thought,” he told Paul, who was crouched beside him, scratching a dirty goatee that made the guy’s face look like the crotch of a ‘70s porn star.

  “When you gonna shave that fucking thing?”

  Paul was used to getting an earful from Jeffereys and put his hand out.

  “C’mon, lemme see. Anything good?”

  Jeffereys dragged a hand along his scalp to flatten his greasy hair.

  “Looks that way.”

  If anything, Jeffereys knew full well Paul was a shit-for-brains punk who was lucky to be alive. The night Trevor was killed trying to recapture that twat Dana had done plenty to prove to Jeffereys that these kids didn’t have a clue what they were doing. Wasn’t much of a shocker, of course. He hadn’t exactly handpicked them, they were all that was left. Same with the other men he’d found back in San Francisco.

  The absence of law and order can do funny things to a man. It cowers some and makes others feel invincible. Then there was that heavy metal freak, Trevor. He’d been a cocky young punk who hadn’t paid attention, and when those savages beat his skull in, he’d barely seen them coming.

  Jeffereys and his men had actually headed to Fort Baker with the intention of teaching Dana a very valuable lesson about stabbing people with forks and punching them in the face. He looked down at the bandage covering his right hand and scowled. Funny thing was, when they got there, the fort had been empty. A few Coast Guard bodies were bobbing in the water by the boats, but that wasn’t a big surprise, given how most people’s common sense had flown right out the window. The boys had been out back, searching for a generator and anything else they could pillage, while Jeffereys headed through the main building. The faint crackling of the radio caught his attention right away, and when he listened closely, the sweet message he heard then was like finding the X on a treasure map. Suddenly, teaching Dana manners didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Jeffereys had discovered what sounded like a settlement. In a topsy-turvy world like this, it was about as close to winning the lottery as you could get.

  The end had been kind to Jeffereys. A week ago, he’d been a Parking Control Officer for the city of San Francisco. Being hated was nothing new for him. A guy gets out of his car in a no-park zone to grab a coffee from Starbucks and thinks ‘cause he leaves his flashers on, he can’t get a ticket. Jeffereys drove around practically hunting for assholes like that, just so he could watch them bitch and moan before getting back into their Mercedes and peeling away.

  How’s that 50- dollar coffee taste now?

  Life sure has a funny way of shaking things up, doesn’t it? One day you’re a fucking meter maid begging for a fight, and the next you’re rounding up slaves for a small Hispanic guy who seems a few cards short of a full deck.

  Paul was still scanning with the binoculars when he ducked down.

  “We got a car leaving the compound.”

  Jeffereys, Paul, and three others were well concealed in the thicket of trees on this side of the river. Even the yellow school bus they’d driven over here was hidden on a narrow, tree-lined road. But the truck coming their way certainly caught Jeffereys’ attention. Big, black, and wrapped in a kind of metal grate. He had to admit, it sure looked all kinds of badass, and he was happy as hell that whoever was in there wouldn’t be around when the shit hit the fan.

  Alvarez’ instructions were simple enough: He wanted people. And so did Jeffereys. A business arrangement, that’s all it was. ‘Course, he tended to gloss over the inconvenient fact that Alvarez would have killed them flat if they’d said no. He had control over those savages in a way Jeffereys didn’t understand. Imagine the power one would have from mastering a skill like that.

  That car that looked more like an armored personnel carrier rolled over the bridge and out of sight.

  “Should we hit these fuckers now?” Paul asked.

  The kid looked so clean cut, it almost brought a smile to Jeffereys’ face to see the psycho emerging from deep inside. “We will. Soon as Chuck’s ready with the diversion.”

  Larry Nowak

  Compound basement, Rainbowland, UT

  “What’s in there?” Larry asked, pointing to a wall safe tucked away behind a desk. He and Timothy were in the compound basement, a hallway that led onto a series of rooms stuffed with the cult’s most prized possessions. He and Timothy had just been in a room that contained racks of the boring white shirts and blue pants Larry would be expected to wear once he was inducted into the cult.

  “The safe?” Timothy said, eyeing what Larry was motioning to. “It’s empty.”

  “That where the cult keeps its psychedelic treasures?”

  The two men laughed, the whole while Larry searching for some glimmer in Timothy’s eyes that might betray the truth. He didn’t see any.

  “True richness is in the soul,” Timothy said.

  “How right you are,” Larry responded, rubbing the back of his head where he expected to shortly have the hair there buzzed off. That was their ritual. Dunk you in water and then shave the hair at the back of your head and wait for it to grow back. Was sort of like resetting the calendar, as Timothy explained. As the hair grew, so did the student’s wisdom.
Once it grew long enough, it would be collected into a pony tail. So the idea was, the longer your rat tail, the wiser you were. Not that it meant a Goddamned thing to Larry. They could have told him he needed to sprinkle honey on his nutsack and dip it in corn flakes. If it meant finally gaining the respect and a sympathetic ear for his ideas, then he’d do just about anything.

  Adapt and survive, baby.

  In one arm, Timothy was holding the clothes Larry would eventually wear once the ceremony was complete. In his other was the white flowing robe he’d don for the conversion.

  “I think you should go and put this on,” Timothy said, beaming with excitement as he handed Larry the robe.

  Timothy’s puffy little face. The minute Larry saw he wasn’t a skeleton like the others, he knew there was something different about him, that Timothy could be persuaded. He was a man who didn’t deny himself. That’s what his pudgy face said. While the other cult members were off smiling at each other like a bunch of whacked-out airline stewardesses, Timothy was probably in the pantry stuffing his face. He wasn’t fat, but he liked food, that much was clear. In his own defiant way, he did what he wanted to, and Larry couldn’t help but respect that. Also, that All Father had allowed Larry’s conversion wasn’t nearly as surprising as it seemed. Damned right Peter had stormed out of the meeting in the gymnasium, probably more pissed than he’d ever been. Might even have cursed Larry’s name, wishing he’d never let the bastard in to begin with. But there was an old saying in politics and business: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That was why Larry knew his request would be almost immediately granted. The old guy surely thought that if Larry were one of them and bound by their codes of conduct and principles of nonviolence, then he’d be so much easier to control that he might even drop these silly attempts to beef up security. Hell, for all Larry knew, maybe converting everyone who’d arrived over the last few days was part of All Father’s master plan. Spread the faith, right?

  “Everything OK?” Timothy asked. The rosy shine on his cheeks was starting to fade.

  “Where should I go?” Larry said, trying to look bashful.

  “There’s a room down the hall on your right.”

  Larry left Timothy in the office and did as he was told. Down the hall on the right.

  See, I could follow orders. Someday, I’ll make an excellent drone.

  He was thinking about the safe and what might really be in there when he found the room he was meant to change in. Larry was about to step inside to get dressed for the ceremony when he heard a sound coming from across the hall. A muffled sort of noise, almost like a moan, but the tone and character didn’t sound like the kind of moan he often heard from the strippers he called into his office back in the good old days. No, this wasn’t a moan of pleasure. It was filled with fear and pain.

  He ducked his head back into the hallway. Timothy was still in the office. He listened, and it wasn’t long before he heard another sound.

  What the hell’s going on here? Maybe these guys aren’t a cult at all but a bunch of out-of-work porn actors.

  Larry crossed the hall, his robe still tucked under the curve of his arm, and he tried the room where he’d heard the noise. The handle turned easily. Whatever was in here was either not important enough to lock up, or they weren't worried about getting ripped off.

  Do people who aren't worried about thieves keep a safe?

  The door swung open, and Larry gasped. There was someone inside, seated in a chair, and right now all he could see was clumped and matted hair from the back of their head.

  Even from his vantage point in the doorway, he saw they were bound to the chair, a series of IVs drip feeding a clear liquid into their veins. But that wasn't the freakiest part. At the back of the room, a projector rattled away, powered by a 12-volt car battery. It was splashing eerie images against a bed sheet that had been pinned to the wall. Images of people dancing in a circle, grinning robotically at one another like a home movie reel from hell. Didn't take him long either to figure out he was watching a group of stock footage hippies playing Ring Around the Rosie. The film was spliced with words like obey and submit.

  Another cord from the 12-volt battery led to a ham radio and an ‘80s-style tape deck.

  What in fuck’s name is this?

  And after no more than three steps inside the room he had his answer. The person in the chair was a woman, and the lids of her eyes were being splayed apart by tiny metal fingers, attached to her head by some metallic headband. Her features, although distorted by fear and the string of drool that ran from her lower lip, somehow looked familiar. Ninety-nine percent of the country had either died or taken a noticeable step down the evolutionary tree, so how was it possible he had seen her before?

  Light flickered across Larry's face from the projector, and suddenly he knew. In the earliest stages of Lou’s frantic search for his wife, he had peeled open his wallet and showed her picture around. She was a heavier woman, with a dopey face, and now Larry knew she hadn't fallen into the river and drowned. She was here, strapped to a chair, having her brain reprogrammed.

  “What on Earth?” The shocked voice behind him was Timothy's, and Larry turned to see the disturbed expression on the man’s face. “What is this?” Timothy squealed, as though asking the question a million different ways might somehow make sense of the messed-up visual before him.

  Larry flicked off the projector, and the room went dark. “I was hoping you could tell me. When that Neanderthal Lou hears you've kidnapped his wife and tried to melt her brain, I'm quite sure he's gonna tear this place to shreds.”

  Timothy looked at a genuine loss for words. “None of this is supposed to be here. This room is a storage closet.”

  “Not anymore,” Larry said, noticing that Patty Mae was trying to look at them, but the funky metal helmet had immobilized her head. “Looks like All Father’s into some pretty kinky shit.”

  “No one can know we’ve seen this,” Timothy said gasping. “Especially Peter.”

  Larry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re leaving this woman tied to a chair?” The ripe smell of human waste assaulted Larry's senses. He glanced down and noticed that a plastic bag was tied beneath a hole cut in the seat of the chair.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Larry said holding his nose. “Hey, I'm no humanitarian, trust me, but this makes Abu Ghraib look like a fun day at the circus.”

  All the talk of peace and doing unto others that had been spewing out of All Father’s mouth over these last few days was utterly destroyed by this tableau of horrors before him. The cult’s refusal to utilize any form of technology, albeit a seemingly minor infraction when compared to the brainwashing, nevertheless seemed to stick in Larry’s mind more than anything else.

  Lou’s wife was still struggling against her restraints when Timothy spoke:

  “All Father can’t know we’ve found this place. If he’s capable of something like this, then there’s no telling what he might do.”

  Larry knew the man was right about not letting on that they knew, but not for the reasons Timothy gave. In the political arena they had a name for it: leverage. He would tuck this juicy morsel away and wait for the perfect opportunity to unleash it.

  Larry flicked the projector back on. The white sheet before Lou’s wife came alive with images of hazy-looking hippy drones obeying their overlord. They backed away, closed the door, and stood in the hallway, eyeing one another.

  “You ready?” Larry asked.

  “Ready for what?”

  Larry raised the robe that was still draped over his arm.

  Timothy looked frazzled. “I don’t know.”

  “You and I both want the same thing,” Larry said, putting on his best PR smile.

  “Of course.”

  “Then snap out of your funk and let’s get going.”

  Timothy’s gaze wandered over the door. The pulsing light from the projector inside was visible along the crack at the bottom. Larry coaxed him back gently b
y the chin.

  “Forget about her for now. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  •••

  The ceremony would take place in the center of Tent City, and everyone in the compound was in attendance. The picnic tables that made up the eating area had even been shuffled over to make room. A tub of water, very much like the watering trough used for livestock, was placed in the center, ringed by a circle of cult elders. Each was seated in the lotus position, eyes shut in quiet meditation. Standing next to the trough was Larry, wearing the white gown, feeling a touch self-conscious at the way the breeze was tightening his scrotum. A male cult member stood on either side of him, each clutching an arm. Before him was All Father, this time wearing a purple robe. Already Larry’s hair at the back of his head had been shaved. This was the first part of his rebirth. The second would be immersing him in water.

  The dreary-looking refugees of Rainbowland looked on with mixed emotions. A few giggled and shook their heads at the silliness of the ritual. Others seemed disturbed, as though their own religious beliefs were being threatened by the ceremony about to take place.

  “The wise entity, Aletheia,” All Father said, “the spirit channeled by my daughter, Abigail, was very clear about the purpose of this ritual. ‘New members must be pure of mind and spirit,’ she said. A theme common to most of the world’s great religions. But this process isn’t only symbolic. Aletheia was very clear that our auras needed to be strong in order to resist the coming changes. How fitting then that the very process by which new members joined our group, was also what saved their minds when the end of the world began. For it was through immersion that we were saved.”

  All Father motioned, and Larry felt the grip on his arms tighten.

  “Water is the strongest natural force on Earth, capable of shattering mountains and carving the land to its will. This process normally occurs over millions of years. But sometimes it occurs rapidly and with great destruction. We are in the midst of such a change. May this water cleanse and strengthen you, Brother Larry.”