Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller)

by Griffin Hayes

  Dana Hatfield

  Main Compound, Rainbowland, UT

  When Dana finally found Larry, he was hunched over a table, inspecting a hand-drawn picture of some kind. One of the cult members had come to fetch her while she was breaking up a dispute between two men over an alleged theft. For the most part, the refugees here were largely sleeping on cots in tents, with virtually no viable way of protecting their possessions. It was little wonder that in the uncertainty after All Father’s death tempers would flare and people would start taking matters into their own hands.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Larry asked, before Dana even had a chance to get a proper look at what it was he’d drawn.

  She peered down and scanned the pencil outline. It looked like a series of small rectangles and boxes with a larger box around it.

  “What exactly am I seeing?”

  “The new and improved Rainbowland.” Larry pointed to a sad rendering of the Green River and the bridge that spanned it. “The first line of defense will be a gate. We’ll need to make it strong enough that a car won’t be able to knock it down.”

  Dana brought her finger to the middle of the bridge. “Then you need obstacles, like they used in Iraq, to create a maze a car will need to navigate before arriving at the gate. That way no one will be able to ram it at full speed.”

  The light in Larry’s eyes brightened. “All Father was right to make you head of security.”

  “I still can’t believe what happened.”

  “About All Father?” Larry asked.

  Dana nodded, still studying the shaky lines of Larry’s battle plan.

  “But he was a bag of bones. He didn’t eat well.”

  “I just hope Timothy will run things fairly and not start going draconian on our asses.”

  “Draconian, what a fantastic word.” That light in Larry’s eyes was twinkling now. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Dana. Timothy won’t be the one running Rainbowland, at least not on a day-to-day basis.”

  There was a pregnant pause, and Dana’s eyes widened. “You?”

  He nodded, and his smile reminded her of two old women gossiping about neighborhood scandal.

  “But we’ve only been here a week or so.”

  “Let me assure you, he made the right choice, but it won’t be forever. Once we’re safe, then I’ll step down, and Timothy will take over.”

  “Safe. With a city, no, forget that, a country full of Wipers. Hell, we may never be safe.”

  “And that’s the risk I’m willing to take, even if I need to do this for the rest of my life.”

  Dana was still reeling from the implication when the knock at the door came.

  “Come in,” Larry said.

  A teenage boy entered, his dirty hair pulled back against his skull. Dana had seen him skulking around Tent City, but he kept mostly to himself. Awkward and a touch slimy was the best way she could sum him up.

  Larry slung an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “This is Romeo.” Larry turned to Dana. “Meet your new deputy.”

  The shock of Larry’s statement hit Dana like a shot to the solar plexus, forcing a giggle past her lips. She didn’t mean to laugh, but she was sure Larry was playing a practical joke on her. “Are you kidding?” But even as the words came out, she could see he was dead serious. Even the look on Romeo’s face confirmed her worst fears. Not to mention the fact that the kid looked like he was boiling with rage.

  Dana regained herself. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, it’s just, he’s so young. I mean, what are his qualifications?”

  “Uh, my dad was a cop in Phoenix,” Romeo replied with bravado.

  She turned to Larry. “That hardly counts.”

  “It’s no less of a qualification than plucking corpses out of San Francisco Bay.”

  She ignored the cutting edge of Larry’s comment and turned back to Romeo. “Have you ever fired a weapon before?”

  Romeo hesitated before shaking his head. “But I hit Brigadier General in Call of Duty.”

  The disbelief on Dana’s face was too great to hide. “Call of – ”

  “It’s a video game,” Larry interrupted, stepping in for a bit of damage control. “The important point here is, he’s young and a quick study. I’ve agreed to give him a two-week trial run and if after that he can’t hack it, then we can find someone else.”

  “Oh, I can hack it.”

  “Do I have your word on that?” Dana asked, and Romeo was about to respond, before he realized she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to Larry.

  “You have my word. Now, can we get back to the plans?”

  She watched Larry trace his finger along the outer edge of the compound. The line he’d drawn ran from the edge of the river, around Tent City and even the apple orchard.

  “You plan on building a wall,” she observed.

  “Not just a wall, but a wall with towers manned by armed guards. A wall ringed with anti-personnel traps, hidden pits with spikes, and a dry moat filled with enough sharpened sticks to gut a squirrel. I’ve modeled it after Julius Caesar’s siege of Alesia. After a conversation I had with Timothy, he showed me his personal library, and I started reading.”

  “But where are you gonna get all the material for a wall this long? Let alone the expertise to build it?”

  Larry didn’t look thrilled by all of Dana’s questions. “We’ll make the wall from trees. The bloody things are going to waste all around us. And judging by that podium in the gymnasium, I’m sure we have at least one carpenter among the mass of hungry mouths out there. Speaking of hungry mouths, we’ll also need a second group to forage for supplies. We’ll have men, women, and children working day and night on this wall, so we’re gonna need a lot of food to keep them going.”

  “What about water and electricity?” Dana asked.

  “We’ll place buckets on the compound roof to collect rain water.”

  “No, too cumbersome. We need to build a windmill.”

  Larry’s eyes lit up.

  “We stick it on the roof,” Dana suggested, “and attach it to a battery bank. With a lawnmower engine and a few hoses, we can start drawing water up from the river and directly into a giant filtration system. The windmill should also give us enough power to light the place.”

  Larry was so overcome with joy he grabbed Dana and kissed her forehead. “That’s a brilliant idea! And you know what the best part is? I won’t need to convince a single one of them to move their asses. That attack might have been the best thing that ever happened to Rainbowland. Now these people know the threat they’re facing and what needs to be done to prevent this place from being overrun.”

  Dana knew Larry was right about that last part. She’d seen the crowd chanting for additional security and had wanted more than anything to give it to them, even if that meant going against All Father’s wishes. And now everything she’d hoped for was happening. Why then did she feel so uneasy?

  “I nearly forgot the goddamned pièce de résistance,” Larry spat, looking like a kid with an armful of candy, trying to decide which one to eat first. “If the shit really hits the fan and we think those assholes are about to break through the main gate, it’ll be the last mistake they ever make. Why? Cause we’re gonna rig it with enough C4 to blow the whole thing to kingdom come.” Larry was giggling now, along with Romeo, and for the first time she noticed black stains between Larry’s pearly-white teeth.

  “Where the hell are you going to get C4?” She asked, not entirely sure she would believe his answer.

  “I told you Bud was dangerous, didn’t I? Well, now, I’m going to prove it.”

  Larry took the two of them down to the Escalade in parking lot. Outside the medical tent, a few dozen people were milling about. Larry popped the rear hatch and froze. The trunk area was a mess, as though someone had thrown things around haphazardly. But the more Dana saw, the more she wondered if it didn’t look like something else. As though someone had been in here, rifling around, sea
rching for something.

  Larry turned, and the fear on his face was the first clue that she’d been right. “The C4,” he said. “It’s gone.”

  Finn

  Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT

  Finn, Johnson, and Bud came upon Carole’s Ford Escape shortly after turning onto Main Street. Smashed windows, the hood dented to all hell. Someone or a group of someones had really beaten the crap out of it. Lou and Tanner pulled up behind them in Lou’s behemoth, just as Finn was getting out to see if Carole was still inside. Bud and Johnson jumped out to do the same.

  Finn wasn’t sure what they would find, but he was thankful Nikki wasn’t here to see this.

  Peering in, he sighed with relief. There was no sign of Carole, which meant she had either escaped or been dragged away. Crouching beside the SUV, Lou touched the pavement with his index finger.

  “Doesn’t look like she was taken against her will. My money says she's hiding in the ruins of one of those buildings nearby.” Lou stood and clapped Finn on the back and motioned to the behemoth. “Tanner and I will stay and keep searching on our own. You three go on ahead and do whatever it is you need to do.”

  “You sure about that?” Finn asked, noticing Tanner didn't seem nearly as confident as Lou about the prospect of sticking around.

  “Positive. Fifty to one says we’ll find her hiding under some table waiting for the cavalry to show up.”

  A good leader always knew when to delegate, a truth Finn was coming to understand well. He’d discovered something of a Superman complex lurking within him. An inexplicable impulse to save others from themselves. Sometimes letting go and allowing the ones around him do what they did best was the wisest course of action.

  Tanner and Lou would stay behind and continue searching for Carole while Finn, Bud, and Johnson would head toward Nevada and Tevatron’s lab, which awaited them there.

  All five shook hands, wished each other good luck, and drove away, unaware that before the day was done, at least one of them would be dead.

  •••

  Finn, Bud, and Johnson arrived at the lab deep in the Nevada desert in a little under five hours. They'd brought enough food and water for a handful of days. Not that they had any intention of staying that long. It was more of a precaution, in the event that Finn’s Land Rover broke down during the journey home. Extra gas was the only other major provision they’d loaded in beforehand, apart from a silver briefcase Bud brought along, which he said he needed to access Tevatron’s mainframe.

  The Lab’s exterior looked identical to when Finn had left it only a handful of days before; the beige shipping crate that doubled as an office, the hundreds of mirrors spread out in ever-expanding rows.

  “This look anything like the labs where you all came from?” Finn asked.

  Johnson shaded her eyes from the sun as she peered up at a giant heat exchanger. “Not one bit.”

  Finn turned to Bud, who also shook his head.

  The three of them entered the main building and stopped when they came to the elevator shaft. The row of emergency lights was still working, although they were weaker than when he’d last seen them.

  “Nowhere but down,” Finn offered with a smile

  The others didn't think it was funny. Especially Bud, who would need to descend with that briefcase, throwing off his equilibrium.

  Finn reached for the case. “You want me to take that?”

  Bud hugged it to his chest and grimaced. “No, I'll be just fine.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  They began the long climb down and it was only when they reached the next floor that Finn caught a strange odor. Smelled like burned plastic and rotting meat. Only Finn knew that it probably wasn't spoiled food. It was the smell of JP, the maintenance guy with the crushed skull, whom Finn had discovered crumpled before the vending machines.

  To their right was a bank of touch-screen monitors recessed into wall, not far from where Finn had been ejected from his capsule.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say the battery room should be one or two floors below us,” Bud said. “You two wait here and let me know if those screens flicker on. I'll head down and try to reroute the emergency power. I'll shout up to ya when it's done.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Johnson said, marveling at her surroundings. “The facility in North Dakota wasn't nearly this high-tech.”

  For a brief moment, Finn almost felt a surge of pride over Johnson’s wonderment. But in truth, there wasn’t anything to be proud of here, especially given that much of this high-tech gear had probably been used to do God knows what to him.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Finn saw the door to the room where he’d been kept in stasis. A hole in the ceiling marked the improvised exit he’d used to escape. On the door itself was an engraved nameplate: F.INN. Except, that wasn’t the part that made the breath freeze in his lungs. It was the door next to his, one he hadn’t noticed before, because the guy with the torn lab coat and the bloody fingers had done one hell of a crack-up job distracting him from seeing the nameplate hanging there.

  J. BLACKWOOD.

  Finn pulled the well-read paper out of his pocket, if only to confirm what he already knew. Joanne Blackwood. The third name on the list.

  “Johnson,” he called out to the muscular black woman who had wondered off into the cafeteria. She poked her head up. “Now I know where that smell is coming from,” she said, jabbing a thumb behind her. “There’s a dead guy in here without any clothes on.”

  Well, not exactly, Finn thought. She was referring to JP, but now wasn't the time for explanations. She came to where he was standing and when she saw the name on the door, she reacted in a way that mirrored his own.

  Johnson reached down, turned the knob and pushed open the door. The dim, emergency lighting was on in there as well, and it made the sight before them all the more shocking.

  Joanne’s capsule was intact and not just that. Judging by the digital readout below the porthole, she still had vital signs. They were weak, but they were there.

  “Holy shit!” Finn said, not entirely able to articulate the magnitude of his surprise.

  Johnson wiped a thin layer of condensation off the porthole, revealing the face of an attractive, middle-aged woman. “What are the chances we can get her out of there without killing her?”

  “High ... I hope.”

  Just then, the neon lights overhead flickered on and exploded in a burst of fiery sparks and shattering glass. Finn and Johnson shielded their faces. When it was over, the tips of Finn's fingers went to the top of his head and came away bloody.

  Johnson flashed a look of concern.

  “It's nothing,” Finn said, meaning it. “Light must have exploded from the power surge.” But truth be told, he couldn’t have cared less about being cut by the spraying glass. Bud had managed to turn the main power back on, and already Finn could hear the computer terminals in the hallway coming back online.

  “You ready to find out what these sick bastards were up to?” he asked Johnson.

  She didn’t answer, and something told him she wasn’t sure she wanted to know anymore.

  “What if it’s bad?” she asked.

  He stopped and raised an eyebrow.

  “I mean, really bad.”

  “Don’t see how it could be any worse than not knowing,” Finn replied. “I’ve run through a million scenarios, each one crazier than the last. I’m sure the truth will seem tame by comparison.”

  Together, they went to the terminal. The screens were cycling through a startup process. Reams of data rolled by. Soon, the checks were complete, and the main screen flickered on. In the top left corner was the Tevatron logo – a circle with a splash of light at the top. What had looked to Finn like a wedding ring with a bead of sunlight blinking off the edge – and right below that the words: Tevatron: Building the Future, Today.

  But it was the background image he saw next that suddenly made Finn wonder if Johnson hadn’t been right. Maybe some things we
re best left in the dark. He glanced over and watched the significance of what they were seeing slowly sink in to Johnson’s awareness.

  It was an image Finn has seen play out in his mind many times over the last few days. A field of flowing grass, touched by a light breeze and the sun’s radiant warmth overhead. And he wasn’t the only one. Johnson had seen the same thing, along with Mary Beth at Nevada Joe’s. But why would his only memory be the background image from Tevatron’s computer interface? Even Johnson was utterly shocked by the realization.

  In the upper right-hand corner of the screen was a section to input search parameters, and Finn began by entering his name using the touch screen.

  F.INN Enter ...

  Please redefine search parameters.

  Francis Inn ...

  Please redefine search parameters.

  Finn glanced down at his wrist. Of course.

  92574301 ...

  Please redefine search parameters.

  “Ah, come on!” he shouted.

  On the monitor next to his, Johnson had tried the same thing with equally disappointing results.

  Think, Finn, think!

  He was drawing a blank when it suddenly hit him. With a burst of enthusiasm, Finn’s fingers danced across the screen.

  Project Arrow ...

  One file came up. A video. Finn held his breath and touched Play.

  On the screen, a man in a white lab coat entered from the right and sat on the corner of a desk. “Nature versus nurture. What causes us to be the way we are? This debate has raged on for decades, but we here at Tevatron aren’t arguing anymore. After years of research and development, we think you’ll see the results speak for themselves. It all begins with the biomagnetic field; all living creatures have one. In fact, so does the Earth.” The silhouette of a man and the Earth appeared, side by side, both surrounded by what looked like layers of magnetic waves. “Using the magnets from a particle accelerator, we at Tevatron have been able to create a strong enough magnetic force to reverse an individual’s polarity. Like all great scientific inquiries, we hadn’t set out to erase the contents of a human mind; it happened, you might say, by accident.” The man smiled, and a shard of light winked off one of his front teeth. “Accident or not, the positive applications for this technology are far-reaching. Imagine a world where traumatic memories could be wiped away forever.