Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller)

by Griffin Hayes

  He plucked one of the Nat Sherman cigars from the humidor in Al’s drawer, and that’s when Jeffereys spotted the envelope. He removed it casually, his eyes suddenly growing three times their normal size when he saw his name printed in red ink.

  To Jeffereys

  The urge to blink several times nearly overcame him, but when he looked again, his name was still there. Jeffereys clamped the cigar between his teeth and broke the seal. Inside was a piece of hotel stationary. He began to read.

  Dear Jeffereys,

  I hope this letter finds you well. If you are reading this, it can only mean that I’ve been taken by the enemy. No doubt, they intend to kill me. Perhaps they already have. Either way, I want you to know that everything is unfolding according to plan. Further instructions will arrive shortly.

  Eternally,

  Alvarez

  At the top was a date, and this was what messed with Jeffereys’ head the most. Alvarez had written it two months ago.

  Dana

  The silver briefcase with the C4 was still open when Tanner walked in. Dana snapped the case shut at once and slid it back into her desk drawer, where she locked it away.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Tanner asked, his gaze fixed on the disturbed expression on Finn’s face.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding Timothy?” Dana asked him.

  “I was until some of Larry’s paramilitary guys came and took him away.”

  “What?” She shot up. “When was this?”

  Tanner rubbed his hands together and then ran them through his short blonde hair. “I thought you knew.”

  “Where’d they take him?”

  “The compound basement.”

  Dana sprung to her feet and headed for the door.

  She could hear Tanner calling after her. “Did I do something wrong?”

  She was the sheriff for God’s sake, and Timothy was her prisoner. She’d pieced the clues together and set the trap that ultimately tripped him up. Those were the thoughts roaring through her head as she crossed the gravel road and yanked open the basement door.

  Three cult members were in the hallway. No sooner had Dana come barrelling through the door than they had their rifles aimed at her head.

  “Hold it right there,” the first one barked.

  Inside to her right came the sound of more guns being primed. Donavan emerged carrying a silver Colt 1911. The hammer was cocked.

  Why did it seem like everyone was at each other’s throats since Larry brought Alvarez back from his raid on the Grand America?

  “Where is he?” She demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Larry, that’s who. Where is he? I need to speak to him.”

  “He’s not here,” Donavan told her.

  “Bullshit.” She took a single step, and Donavan pointed the gun at her.

  “The whole compound is on lockdown, Larry’s orders.”

  “I’m the sheriff, dammit. Larry had no right to take my prisoner, no right. Larry, I know you’re here. Come out and talk to me like a man.”

  A hand reached out from the room and lowered the cult member’s rifles. Larry emerged a second later, a half step behind Donavan, looking like some Third World dictator. “Timothy tried to kill me tonight,” Larry said in measured tones. “He isn’t your prisoner, not anymore.”

  Dana could see he was trying very hard to control himself. Larry’s left hand was tapping the side of his leg in an odd rhythm.

  She pushed past both of them and into the room that contained the safe Romeo said he’d once picked. She’d expected to find Timothy huddled in a corner, but that wasn’t so. Strapped to a chair in the middle of the room was Charlie, the young man who guarded Larry’s office. He was surrounded by other cult members in military fatigues, his face showing signs of fresh bruises. They’d just started working him over.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “He left his post, which enabled Timothy to plant the bomb.”

  “So, you’re torturing him?” Dana asked in disgust.

  Larry laughed. “Don’t be naïve. He was part of the plot.”

  “But how do you know that?”

  “What do you mean how do I know that? It’s obvious, Dana, and I’m not going to waste my time explaining to you the ways of the world.”

  “There was a reason All Father wanted an independent policing force.”

  “Yes, there was. He couldn’t stand the thought of getting blood on his hands.” Larry’s own hand was still tapping his leg to some inaudible beat.

  “He was trying to avoid lynch mobs like the one you’ve created here. You may be able to beat a confession out of some poor kid, but you’ll lose the community’s support if you try the same on Timothy. You gotta get it down voluntarily, and not on a scrap of paper written in blood.” On a nearby desk was a pen and a stack of loose sheets. “Larry, I’m the one who brought you the evidence of Timothy’s guilt. If it weren’t for me, you’d be barking up the wrong tree, probably wondering who was out to get you. Give me a chance to get a proper confession from Timothy. That way, no one can accuse you of abusing your power.”

  Larry’s hand was tapping faster now. “You’ve got 10 minutes.”

  •••

  There was a certain amount of irony that Timothy was being held in the same room in which Lou’s wife had been bound and tortured – and perhaps even killed. After that grisly spectacle, that very room had become the place Dana’d used to examine her body, the place where she discovered that cyanide had been the murder weapon.

  Donavan unlocked the door and let Dana in.

  The place was bare, except for a table and two chairs. In one of them sat Timothy. He watched her enter, with a touch of relief that she wasn’t Larry or one of his cronies.

  She settled into the chair facing him. “You know why I’m here.”

  Timothy was rubbing the thumb and index finger of his right hand together in slow circles.

  “There’s an old saying in the crime world, I once read. Serial killers aren’t caught, they reveal themselves.”

  “Is that what you did, Timothy?” Dana asked. “Reveal yourself?”

  He laughed. “You helped the process along, I won’t take that away from you. But it was only a matter of time. That much was always clear. I thought I could control him, you know.”

  “Control him?”

  “Larry. He was never really one of us, a pure Rainbowite. I was arrogant. I thought I could bend him to my will. That was my first mistake.”

  “No, that wasn’t your first mistake,” Dana disagreed. “Your first mistake was killing Abigail.”

  Timothy’s shocked eyes rose to meet hers. The expression lasted only a moment before the veil descended again, closing her out, but it was more than enough to see she was right.

  “You’re dying to tell me why you did it, aren’t you?”

  Timothy stopped rubbing his fingers. “Larry found the holy transcripts of Abigail’s channeling sessions. There is a passage within that reads: ‘Your small, peaceful community will be led down a dangerous path by a corrupt leader. There is an enemy within what you have begun calling Rainbowland, a cancer that, if left untreated, will tear to shreds all that you have worked so hard to build.’ Larry was certain that corrupt leader was my brother, Peter.”

  “All Father.”

  “Yes, but Abigail wasn’t talking about Peter. She was talking about me. The spirit she spoke to, Aletheia, knows a man’s heart better than he knows it himself. Abigail told me herself Aletheia was becoming more vocal in her warnings about me. That the message needed to be recorded. The child was confused, and why wouldn’t she be? I was like a father to her. And so there she was, our very own oracle, getting ready to name me as enemy number one and thereby guarantee my banishment from the very community I helped to build.”

  Dana drew in a deep breath. “But your real enemy was Aletheia.”

  “Abigail. Aletheia. By that point, the difference was purely academic.
”

  “So, you poisoned her and threw the child’s body into the river before she could attach your name to the prediction.”

  “I turned her into a God, is what I did.”

  “You murdered a little girl, Timothy, your own niece, so she wouldn’t rat you out. She wasn’t the only one, was she?”

  That was when Timothy stopped talking.

  Dana drummed her fingers on the table. “You’re done, then? Should I send Larry’s boys in to pull the rest out through your nostrils?” She was hoping he’d say no.

  “What else do you need?”

  “Everything, Timothy. I need to know about every goddamned person you hurt, and I want the truth.”

  The door opened just then, and Donovan stepped in the room. “All right, Dana.”

  Dana gripped the table. “That wasn’t 10 minutes. I need more time.” Her voice rose. “Go tell Larry I need more time.”

  Donavan flashed her an ugly look before slamming the door.

  She sat back down. “You’re life’s hanging on by a thread right now, Timothy, and unless you give me everything, I won’t be able to do anything to stop them.”

  The fear was starting to show in his face.

  “Let’s start with the radio transmissions. All Father said that wasn’t him.”

  “If there’s one thing you should know, it’s that All Father didn’t lie. I was the one who set up the short wave radio. The signal was meant to draw people to Rainbowland. See, your problem, Dana, is you don’t know our divine scriptures. The two survivors they speak of, blessed by The Shift, one a key and the other a lock. Together, they possess the power to start a new age or destroy the world forever.”

  Dana paused, remembering the passage she’d read in Timothy’s room.

  “And Patty Mae’s torture, where does that fit in?”

  “What you call torture, I call identification. I was trying to find out if she was the one. She was only meant to be the first of many such examinations, but Larry managed to screw everything up and ... ”

  “You had no choice but to get rid of her.”

  Timothy cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  “Then you took care of All Father.”

  “A man with such a narrow, simplistic view of our teachings should not be leading the flock. Hurt no living being by act or omission. Quaint, isn’t it? Then he struck out the passages in Abigail’s work that contained references to evil. On that score, he believed Abigail must surely be wrong. Like the white robe he wore, my brother was convinced that evil was not a force in and of itself. There was only light or the absence of light. He thought if only his own light was bright enough it would clear away the shadow. Sounds sweet but maybe not when Wipers show up to rape and murder your people.”

  “If you wanted to rule this place so badly, why not take the reins yourself?”

  Timothy laughed. “The real power always hides in the shadows. The same was true before The Shift as it is now.”

  “And stealing what remained of the colony’s food supply and dumping that soil into the river was you exercising real power?”

  Another laugh from Timothy, this one showing the signs that her point had hit home. “I actually took a page out of Larry’s playbook for that one. He challenged All Father over the colony’s vulnerability, and I was going to do the same. Implicating your father, Richard, was simply an innocent byproduct of pitting you and Larry against one another. There’s nothing quite like dividing before you conquer.”

  “And I’ll bet killing Romeo was just more of the same,” she said with disgust. “You wanted us to think it was Larry.”

  Timothy was rubbing his fingers together again.

  “I guess that brings us to the assassination.”

  “Hard as it may be to swallow, I didn’t mean for anyone else to die.”

  “Coming from a man who’s already killed four others, I find it incredibly hard ... ”

  Dana slid the paper and pen across to Timothy and told him to start writing it all down. He took the pen and no sooner had he started than Dana heard the sound of someone approaching outside. She sprang up and gripped the door knob, feeling it struggle in her hands as the person on the other end tried to get in.

  “Hurry up, and don’t forget the part about framing my father. The least you can do is save one innocent life.”

  Timothy looked up and continued writing.

  From outside, Dana could hear Donavan telling her to open up. There was something she’d forgotten to ask. Her heart quickened, worried she wouldn’t have enough time. She reached into her pocket and flung Timothy’s Tevatron badge across the table. He stopped, studied it, and then looked up at her.

  “Finn says Tevatron has a facility somewhere emitting a pulse that’s keeping people from regaining their lost memories. You worked for those crooked sonsabitches. I need to know where it is.”

  “I haven’t a clue. I was only a low-level electronics supervisor.”

  Donavan was pushing against the door now. “You’ve got less than a minute.”

  “I can tell you this: Whatever Finn says he found,” Timothy said, “it shouldn’t be running, not after all this time.”

  More pounding on the door, and now Dana had her whole weight pressed against it.

  Then Timothy’s eyes went wide. “I do remember rumors about a project designed to tap into ley lines.”

  “Ley what?”

  “Power points,” he said impatiently. The sound of Donavan pounding against the door was freaking him out. “They form a circular grid ... like a wheel. The point where the spokes converge in the center is said to be a place of great power. Read the scriptures, it’s all in there.”

  The door burst open just then, and Dana was sent reeling into the table. Donavan and a handful of cult members with guns came in and pulled her out of the room. Outside, Larry was waiting for her.

  “He admitted to everything, including framing my father.”

  Larry’s fingers were still tapping his leg, and the sight made Dana wonder about the man’s state of mind. He nodded to the men holding Dana, and they began leading her to the exit.

  “I got you all the evidence you needed,” she called out after him. “But now you have to give him a fair trial.”

  Larry didn’t answer her.

  Nikki

  A single lantern hung from a hook in the center of the tent, drawing deep lines across the faces of the people lying in bunks. Not far away, came the sound of weeping. The attack on Larry had left everyone feeling terrified and vulnerable. Aiden and Nikki were huddled together in her bunk, shivering in spite of the heat. The truth was, only she was shivering. Her brother didn’t seem the least bit fazed, and Nikki wondered what horrors he must have seen to form such a hardened shell around his heart. He didn’t really know who Larry was, of course, only that a bomb had gone off and a young girl had been poisoned. Enough to rattle even the hardened citizens of New Jamestown, but not Aiden.

  She watched over his shoulder as he doodled in the palm of his hand with a pen.

  “Whatchu drawing?” she asked, perhaps more interested in distracting herself from seeing Margaret’s lifeless little face. They were on lockdown. Orders from Larry until he and his security guards got to the bottom of what had happened.

  “Not sure,” Aiden replied, closing the loop of a circle.

  He was drawing a face, Nikki thought. Maybe her own.

  Then her brother traced lines from the circle’s outer edge toward the center. Now she knew she was wrong. Aiden wasn’t drawing a face at all, he was drawing a bicycle wheel with spokes. The image took up his entire palm.

  “You’ve only got one wheel, where you gonna put the rest of the bike?”

  “It’s not a bike,” he said. “I’ve been seeing it in my head for a while.”

  Aiden’s hand with the pen opened briefly, and Nikki saw an identical image there, too. She tugged at the sleeve of his shirt and saw others, all the same: large circles with spokes.

  She
reached out and ran her finger along the drawing on his arm and as she did a burst of light hit the back of her eyes. She’d sensed there was a veritable ocean of memories locked deep within her brother, and now she was seeing one of them, up close and personal. A man rushing through a door in the side of a tall mountain. The feeling was almost like she was in this man’s body, distinctly aware of the way his trousers rubbed together against his thigh, the uncomfortable tightness of his shoes as he hurried along, the acute dissatisfaction he felt with the new paunch he’d found following the Christmas holidays.

  Nikki glanced down and saw he was wearing a white lab coat. He was fast-walking down a long concrete corridor toward an underground railway. There were others on board, dressed just like him, and somehow she knew they were waiting. As soon as he was seated, the train sped away. Propped up on his forehead was a pair of protective goggles, and he lowered them as they began to pick up speed. The shrill sound as they raced through the narrow tunnel was painful, and the man fought the urge to plug his ears. After a few moments, the train pulled to a stop in front of a set of metal doors emblazoned with a biohazard decal. They disembarked and gathered around a robust man in a purple lab coat, holding a clipboard.

  “Please use the protective eyewear we provided you and do not under any circumstances approach the glass shielding inside.”

  The man’s pulse began to quicken. His mouth felt dry and sticky. But it wasn’t from the danger inside that room, it was from what it represented. A new frontier of science.

  The man in purple with the clipboard pulled the doors open, and everyone shuffled inside. A set of stairs on the right led to a room with computer monitors. But it was the sight before them that was truly impressive. Many of them stood, slack jawed, trying to put mental words to what they were seeing. A giant glass tube with a pulsing white light that stretched out into bright shards. It looked like a massive welders arc.

  It looked like God.

  Nikki felt Aiden’s body tense. She was suddenly back in the tent, struggling to make sense of what she’d just seen. Then she understood the reason for her brother’s tension. Lou was standing at the entrance. Aiden sat up at once, and Nikki stood up in case she needed to protect her brother.