They cut through the gym to seal off any other possible entrance. A window from the kitchen on the main floor looked out onto the spot where Larry and Jeffereys had been standing, a spot that was now empty. The yellow bus was beeping as it backed up, the men with guns hanging off the sides, covering their hasty retreat. Dana could see people onboard the bus in, what looked like cages, and the sight sickened and infuriated her. But it was the final thing she saw that made the blood in her veins drop by 10 degrees. One of the slavers lit the end of a rag stuffed into a bottle and flung it at the compound. The sound of breaking glass and terrified screams rang out from the somewhere on the main floor. Then came the smell of smoke.
The building was on fire.
Carole Cartright
Rainbowland, UT
The trail of swirling black smoke became visible the moment Carole and the others turned onto the road that led to Rainbowland.
“That can’t be good,” Finn said, feeling as though his jaw were touching the dash as he watched the smoke rise into the air.
Lou stepped on the gas.
“I’m sure Ethan’s fine,” Carole said, hardly able to get the words out without thinking of Nikki’s safety.
From the back of the truck, Dale moaned in agony. None of them were doctors, but it was clear enough to Carole that Dale’s chances of pulling through were slim. The cart at the airport seemed to have crushed several of his ribs and had more likely than not broken more than that. Blood ran freely from the corners of his mouth, and Carole used a rag to soak up what she could. Beside her, Tanner looked on with stunned helplessness.
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” the boy said.
It was clear his mind was still back at the airport. He’d fired his rifle into a group of men and killed a handful of them. These were the first words he’d spoken since they’d all piled into Lou’s truck and made a break for it. The boy’s jaw muscles flexed as he clenched his teeth, an act that reminded Carole of Aiden.
The thought of Aiden lying somewhere, alone and dying, was too painful to even contemplate. He had to still be alive. Had to be. Wouldn’t she know if he weren’t? Wasn’t there supposed to be a feeling mothers got when their children died? She hadn’t felt a single twitch of intuition telling her he was gone.
Dale coughed up a thick glob of blood. The crushing guilt she felt for what had happened to Dale was indescribable.
The truck was crossing the bridge, and it soon became clear to all of them that Rainbowland was in shambles. A long line of people stretched from the river to the main compound, passing buckets of water hand to hand as they battled the flames. A fire had broken out on the first floor, but that wasn’t all. Lou pulled the truck to a stop, and they got out. Groups of cult members and refugees were carrying dead bodies and piling them by the grassy field where the cars were parked.
What the hell happened here?
Carole scanned those shuffling the buckets of water along but didn’t see Nikki’s face among them. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. Their first priority had been to return to camp and get medical attention for Dale’s injuries, but for a blinding moment that pressing need had suddenly vanished.
“Nikki,” she called out, breaking into a run. Lou wasn’t far behind, calling out his son’s name.
Carole found All Father’s son, Simon, and another cult member, making ready to move the body of a dead woman in jeans and a sweat shirt that bore the picture of an arctic wolf.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, struggling to get the words out.
Simon let the dead woman’s torso touch the ground. The cut next to his left eye was still bleeding.
“They had a school bus and were shooting everyone who moved.”
Eyes wide, Carole’s hands held the sides of her head as though it might explode. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” He pointed to the compound. “They tried to burn us down.”
The fire itself was out now, and the bucket brigade snaked into the main building. They would keep dousing the flames to ensure they were out for good. From the looks of things, the damage wasn’t extensive, although it would have been far less if they hadn’t needed to drag water up from the river by hand.
“My daughter, Nikki,” Carole said desperately. “Please tell me she’s all right.”
“I haven’t seen her,” Simon replied and went back to moving the woman’s body.
Carole headed straight for the tent she and Nikki shared, but there was no one inside. She searched three more tents before she found the one housing the wounded. They were lying on bunks, some even stretched out on the floor, with horrible wounds. Whoever did this hadn’t just rolled in and shot the camp up. The nature of the wounds made that clear enough. Missing hands and arms. A teenage boy had his belly sliced from end to end. These guys had come in with medieval-style weapons to butcher people, and Carole couldn’t erase the image of savages on carts driving after them with knives and spears. What had Finn called them? Wipers. The wounded bore the unmistakable signature of their primitive savagery.
Carole scanned the faces of the people lying before her. None of them were Nikki. Her heart sank. A moment later, Lou came in and put his hand over his mouth. Yes, the awful smell of blood was strong, although she hadn’t noticed it before. Lou shuffled past two prone figures and collapsed next to a boy on the ground, weeping. It was Ethan, his head wrapped in a crude bandage.
“Oh no, Ethan,” Lou said in despair.
His son’s eyes were slits.
“I tried,” Ethan said in a barely audible voice. Lou cupped him into his great arms.
“Don’t waste yer energy, Son.”
Ethan swallowed hard. “I need water.”
“‘Course.” Lou searched around. A cult member was nearby, tending to a man on one of the bunk beds. “My son needs some water.”
The orderly turned, a long bandage ran down her own face. “Purified water and glasses are right outside,” she said, lisping from the bandages covering her lips where a knife must have slashed her.
“They took her.” Ethan whispered.
“Just rest yourself, Son,” Lou said before he laid Ethan’s head down and went to fetch some fresh water. Carole stepped forward, feeling the question forming on her lips and dreading the answer she might receive.
“Ethan?”
The narrow line of his eyes found her.
“Who did they take?”
Tears rolled from the edges of Ethan’s eyes. “Nikki.”
Jeffereys
Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City, UT
Two of Jeffereys’ men nearly tripped as they carried him over the Hotel’s threshold.
“Jeeesus,” he swore, biting down on his lower lip, against the pain.
Blood dripped through the hole in his leather pants where the bullet from Dana’s pistol had torn right through his hip. None of the bones had been fractured. Least he hoped to damned hell they hadn’t. But now Jeffereys wanted to be sure he was standing over Dana’s prone body when he returned the favor.
His men carried him through the darkened lobby. It had become something of a holding area for the groups of savages who were starting to trickle in from all over the city. Alvarez had stationed men on the hotel roof armed with red satin sheets. Their job was to drape the spreads over the side of the building and wave them back and forth to attract attention.
It was sort of like fishing. At least that was how Alvarez had explained it to Jeffereys. Except the goal here wasn’t to catch fish, but to draw in curious brutes.
Jeffereys winced from a blinding bolt of pain as his men made their way toward the ballroom, where Alvarez waited for news of their success. On his left, seated in what was once an expensive lobby chair, sat a well-muscled man with sharp features and wild-looking eyes. He was wearing the remnants of a dark-blue suit, although the tie was now around his head instead of his neck, trailing behind him like the tail of some strange animal. Streaks of blood had been drawn down his face, presu
mably a memento from the victims he’d killed over these last few days. He might once have been a lawyer or the bookkeeper for H&R Block, just as Jeffereys had once been a meter maid. The one notable difference, however, was that the minute The Shift had happened, this man’s biological hard drive had been wiped clean, transforming him into something else entirely. Which lead to a second observation. There weren’t many women in the lobby, and the ones Jeffereys did see looked far more like men than anything he would choose to spend an evening with. If this new, unbridled savagery was the way of the world from here on in, then the human race was surely in trouble. Kill or be killed. Jeffereys embraced the law of the urban jungle quite readily. The consequences were obvious. Only the most violent and vile would survive. That meant that the majority of women was either hiding or dead. Not that Jeffereys was getting soft in his old age; he was approaching the matter from an entirely economic perspective. Capturing and selling women was his business, one he hoped would make him a rich man as soon as he could find communities willing to pay handsomely for the sort of product he could provide. ‘Course part of that process required women to have children. What it meant was setting aside some of the captives Alvarez would allow him to keep, in order to breed. Not that he could rely on the natives for this. They were just as likely to abandon their offspring as they were to bash their brains in. Nor was it a question of ethics or morality, since those two words might never be uttered again.
Over the millennia, the nurturing cocoon of civilization had done a marvelous job of sheltering most of humanity from nature’s more unforgiving edge. Back then, people’s biggest concerns tended to be “What should I eat tonight?” not “Will I eat?” And the people who were eating in this new reality were the winners of an evolutionary battle royale, weren’t they? Those who cared more about killing and self-preservation than they did creating a sustainable future were somehow being rewarded by the rules of nature.
Jeffereys glanced behind him and saw the girl. Of all the captives he’d snatched from the compound, this teenage girl with the dark hair and the tears streaming down her face was the one he liked the most.
She said her name was Nikki.
They entered the ballroom, and there was Alvarez, sitting on a throne made from stained human bones, his hands curled over two skulls scrapped clean of flesh.
Flanking him was the one-armed brute who’d brought them before Alvarez the day before, and a woman with a shaved head and hardly any clothing. Jeffereys was suddenly not so sure he would be allowed to keep Nikki all to himself.
The expression on Alvarez’ face began to sour as the long trail of captives came before him.
“You’re hurt,” Alvarez said, with a hint of compassion.
Jeffereys wasn’t fooled by the gesture. Alvarez was trying to determine whether Jeffereys could still be of any use to him.
“Far as I can tell the bullet passed right through, so I’ll be on my feet soon enough.” Jeffereys’ men lowered his left foot to the ground so he could stand, almost to prove his point.
“Were there any casualties?”
Jeffereys nodded. “My closest lieutenant was killed. Another of my men was wounded in the chest and may die. One of the colonists had a handgun and put up more of a fight than we expected.”
Alvarez grinned politely. “I wasn’t asking about your men. Did you manage to kill their leader?”
Jeffereys lowered his head, trying to avoid looking at the throne of skulls as much as the man sitting on top of it. Alvarez had given them specific instructions to kill the leadership, that way the group would be easy pickings at a future time of their choosing.
“Once the shooting started,” Jeffereys said evenly, “we didn’t have much choice but to pull back. But I did bring you 23 captives”
Alvarez’ eyes scanned over the terrified men and women standing before him. They were lashed together like a gang of convicts out on road detail. “I count 24.”
Jeffereys put a hand on Nikki’s shoulder. “I’d like to keep this one for myself,” he said and upon hearing that, the girl began to squirm away until Jeffereys’ fingers cinched firmly around the back of her neck to hold her in place.
“That wasn’t our agreement,” Alvarez said. “The first batch was to be all mine.”
“Yes, but I was hoping you might allow me this one exception. Besides, she won’t be able to teach your men anything useful since her memories have been erased.”
Alvarez was looking at her intently now and the strange light in his eyes was making Jeffereys more than a little uncomfortable. “Erased yes, but she has an ability that’s far more valuable, don’t you, Dear?”
Larry Nowak
Compound basement, Rainbowland, UT
The faint hint of smoke was still noticeable in the compound’s basement, although Larry knew it was merely the residual odor left over after the fire. The bucket brigade had done a wonderful job and averted what might have been a calamity. Two adjacent bedrooms on the main floor were destroyed, but little else had sustained damage, apart from the pervading stench of smoke. There had been a fair amount of activity in the house, as cult members – of which he was now one, he needed to keep reminding himself – emptied the now-gutted bedrooms.
But Larry’s real purpose in coming into the basement was to check on Lou’s wife. Not to make sure she was OK – he couldn’t have given a rat’s ass about her health. Very shortly now he would be having a conversation with All Father about security and taking necessary measures to protect the colony. If Patty Mae had been moved somewhere for fear of discovery, then Larry would lose a big chunk of what he intended to dangle over the old man’s head.
Walking down the hallway, Larry ran his hands along the back of his head, feeling the place where his hair had been shaved. He was now dressed in the same dark-blue pants and white shirt the other cult members wore. Larry knew these New Age poseurs probably better than anyone. After years of selling them crate loads of “healing herbs” and listening to their ridiculous beliefs, he knew there was no one better suited to the monumental task he’d set before him. The first stage was infiltration. That had been the easy part. The next was to divide and conquer, and he was looking forward to it greatly.
The door to Patty Mae’s room remained unlocked and Larry walked in easily.
Everything was gone. The projector, the radio, the sheet on the wall and most important of all, Patty Mae.
Larry’s heart sank. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Although the room still smelled vaguely of shit, All Father must have come and moved her. But when and to where?
A clanking sound down the hall caught Larry’s attention. He wasn’t alone. There was someone down here with him. Closing the door, he made his way down the hall, toward the noise, expecting – no, hoping – to find All Father caught in the act of shoving Patty Mae into some dark closet for safe keeping.
Larry quickened his step, his feet whispering along the ground. The cult members all wore nurses’ shoes with thick soles. They were comfortable as hell, if you didn’t care about looking like a retard, not to mention the rest of this silly getup he’d been forced to wear.
As he approached, it quickly became apparent that the sound was coming from the office with the racks of clothes where Timothy had handed Larry the white robe for his ceremony. The room where he’d seen the safe and that metallic clank now took on a new meaning.
Larry peered in, and what he saw surprised even him.
A teenage boy in scruffy jeans and a dark sweater was rummaging through the wall safe behind the desk. The back of him was all Larry could see, but it was enough to know he wasn’t All Father or Timothy and definitely shouldn’t have his hands on whatever was inside.
“Find what you were looking for?” Larry asked.
The boy spun around, terrified. He was holding a large notepad, the kind kids used to take notes at school – back when there was such a thing.
“I-I was just ... ”
The kid wasn
’t bad-looking. Sharp features, olive skin, dark hair. He looked as if he would be more at home on a surfboard waiting for a wave or starring in one of those teenage romance movies with sparkly vampires, not cracking safes.
Larry laid his hands across the door frame in case the kid decided to make a run for it. He wasn’t done with him, not by a long shot. “Looking for cash?”
The kid’s eyes rose up to meet Larry’s. “Mountains of cash won’t buy you jack shit anymore,” he said.
Maybe this kid wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
“Jewels?”
“Maybe,” the kid said. “A gun woulda been nice.”
Larry laughed, and it made the expression on the young thief’s face turn sour. “There’s more chance of the Dalai Lama owning a gun than these people.”
“These people? Aren’t you one of them now?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“So what now? If you think you’re gonna turn me in ... ”
Larry cut the kid off with a raised hand. “First, let’s start with your name.” His piercing eyes dug into the kid. “Your real name. You don’t wanna fuck with an old bull like me. I been around the block, trust me.”
“Romeo.”
“I told you not to – ”
“I swear to God! My parents were hopeless romantics, and I paid the price.”
Larry grinned. He liked this kid. “Nice to meet you, Romeo.”
Romeo didn’t reply.
“I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t breathe a word of any of this, but you owe me.”
Romeo started to draw an imaginary zipper across his lips and stopped. “You ain’t a pervert, are you?”
Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 30