George ran back outside again, looking excited.
“Doctor Post,” he cried, “it’s okay! She’s alive. It was the most amazing thing. She wasn’t breathing. Didn’t have a pulse. And then all of a sudden, she sat back up again. My daughter is in with her right now.”
Before Al could respond, screams erupted from George’s house. The startled neighbor hurried back inside, yelling his daughter’s name. A moment later, his own screams joined hers.
Then, both their shrieks were drowned out by a sound coming from the beach below. Al gripped the rail and stared out into the surf as the noise drew closer.
CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!
Malibu, California
Thirty miles up the coast, Augustus and Marion, sat down to a late dinner of spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing with grilled mahi tuna overlaid on it with his wife, Marion. For the first time in years, they had the news turned on. Augustus was distressed by what he was hearing from the talking heads. It wasn’t so much on what they were reporting, it was from what they weren’t saying. Their coverage of the strange deaths of beach goers along the west coast by the strange lobster-creatures was subdued, as was the coverage of the riot in San Francisco. He got the keen sense that there was a wealth of information behind both but that the media were forbidden to elaborate on it. This was unusual for the news media, especially mainstream news media journalists, who tended to dwell on the same subject for hours at a time whenever there was a hot topic. But with no celebrity poop to gossip over—they’d grown tired of Charlie Sheen preaching evangelical Christianity on Praise the Lord and the reports of industrial black metal singer Justin Bieber’s live performances on his most recent world tour that was out-shocking Marilyn Manson—they weren’t fixating on anything. Surely the deaths of innocent civilians by strange creatures coming out of the ocean were more newsworthy, right? Even stranger, he had gone online earlier, hoping the social media networks would offer a clue as to what was really going on. To his dismay, he’d found that most of them were offline.
“Maybe we should charter a flight to our cabin in Vail tonight,” Augustus said to Marion. “I’m getting a very ominous impression about the west coast.”
“You mean other than what the news is showing?” Marion asked. Her expression was fearful.
Augustus nodded. “Much worse. I don’t want to call it a vision yet, but—”
Marion laid her hand on his, stopping him. “Let’s just do it. Now. We can leave tonight.”
Augustus saw the urgency in her eyes. He nodded. “You’re right. Call the kids. Get everybody rounded up. I’ll call the private jet company and arrange to leave out of Thousand Oaks in an hour.”
Dinner was finished quickly as they made their plans. And as Augustus confirmed that a private plane and pilot would be waiting for them within an hour, he felt a strange sense of urgency. He couldn’t help but feel that he was experiencing his last moments in this house, that he and his wife would never see this beautiful place again.
Aliso Viejo, California
Rick was glued to the news on TV and the Internet. He sat on the living room sofa, laptop in hand, trying frantically to keep up with the news reports regarding the creatures. Before, there had only been a brief news story regarding an incident on Catalina island from earlier in the day, and various theories on conspiracy-theory websites and various message boards. Now, the reports were everywhere, and on every channel. Worse, something new had been added to the chaos—a so-called zombie outbreak.
He picked up the phone to call Jeanette, but the service was out. Then the lights flickered and his internet connection went down. The lights blinked again, and then the power died. Princess looked up in concern.
“Shit.” Rick patted the dog, reassuring both her and himself.
The house seemed more silent than usual.
“Jeanette,” he whispered, “please be okay.”
Then, with his pulse quickening, he scrolled through his contacts list and tried to call his son.
“Pick up, Richard. Pick up…”
San Pedro, California
Richard didn’t really want to go to Sunken City, but he was outvoted.
They’d just slipped through the wrought-iron gate at the end of Paseo Del Mar, a coastal road that wound around the southern edge of San Pedro. They’d parked across the street and up a ways, near Point Fermin Park. It had been Paul’s idea to go to Sunken City. Ever since Paul and his sister, Mary, had moved to Palos Verdes, he’d been wanting to venture into Sunken City and hang out. The way he and Mary described it to Richard and Melody, Sunken City was the place to go to if you wanted to party. That didn’t make sense to Richard. “I just thought it was an old part of San Pedro that’s condemned due to the fact that it’s sliding down the cliffs into the ocean.”
“It is,” Paul had said. “But it’s more than that, too. It’s said to be a magical place. That’s why it’s a cool place to go to if you want to get high.”
Richard could think of better places to get high. A few weeks ago, he’d casually asked his father if he’d ever heard of Sunken City. His Dad used to live in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, and had told him that when he was in high school, Sunken City was the place where underage stoners went to get high. Richard didn’t pursue the matter with his father any further, and he wondered why Paul would want to even chance a visit, especially at night. Paul and Mary just weren’t the stoner types. They came from upper middle-class families like his. In fact, when their father got promoted to Senior VP at his company, the promotion necessitated a change in corporate buildings. This required a move north, to be within closer commuting distance to Torrance, where Paul’s dad now worked. They’d exchanged their well-to-do home in Mission Viejo for a similar well-to-do home in the foothills of Palos Verdes, a rural community south of Torrance and west of San Pedro.
So now they were at Sunken City, trudging down the steep, broken-concrete sidewalk that lined what was left of a street that had all but started sliding down the rocky cliffs into the ocean.
Street lights from the road above cast sufficient light. Richard cursed himself for allowing Paul to talk he and Melody into coming down here. Paul was leading the way. Mary and Melody were in front of him, whispering and giggling to each other. Paul’s friend Max was slightly ahead of Paul, leading the way. Max was a tall, total blond hair blue-eyed surfer boy. It had been his idea to head to Sunken City tonight.
“What are we going to do when we get to the bottom?” Richard asked.
“I got some weed,” Max said.
“Hear that? Max has some weed!” Paul turned around and grinned at Richard.
“We could’ve smoked weed in your car!”
“What fun is that? Besides, we’re in a magical place. Sunken City!”
“Yay for magic!” Richard’s tone was slightly sarcastic. Weed, he could handle. He just didn’t understand the attraction of going to what was essentially ruins. Didn’t Morlock’s lurk in such places? Judging from the neighborhood they’d driven through to get here, that was highly likely.
“Don’t be grumpy,” Paul said. They were nearing a somewhat level section of Sunken City. “Cops don’t come down here at night anyway. Right Max?”
“Cops have more important things to do, Ritchie,” Max said. “There’s donuts to eat, niggers and spics to harass, and old people to help cross the street.”
Richard frowned. If Max ever found himself stranded in the eight block stretch they’d driven through to get to Sunken City, he might not be so quick to use those kind of racial epithets so freely.
“Besides, we’re just going to hang for a little bit.” Paul eased over to the side of an old dilapidated building. The doors and windows were shuttered over. Graffiti dotted the walls, criss-crossing over each other with arcane symbols and barely illegible writing. “I mean, just look at this place! Isn’t it cool?”
Richard admitted it was cool, in a way. They were standing on what remained of what
had probably been a beachside street before shifting tectonic plates had caused this section of San Pedro to become unstable, forcing city officials to declare the area as unlivable. As the years passed and mother nature did her work on the area, the street, sidewalk, and various buildings had begun a slow slide down the cliffs and into the ocean. Richard figured the place had been condemned for over thirty years, if not more, especially when you considered his dad had been there when he was a kid.
In the distance, they heard a police siren. It grew louder as it neared them, but then faded again. Richard shivered.
“What about all that stuff on the news?”
“You see any Clickers here?” Paul scoffed. “I heard that was just on Catalina Island. And that zombie stuff is bullshit. You watch. Twenty bucks says it’s a hoax. Some kind of viral marketing campaign for a movie or something.”
Richard shrugged. A fire siren wailed in the distance.
Melody turned to her brother. She was younger than Richard by about a year and a half, and was more daring. She cocked an inquisitive eye at him. “Bet you anything, Dad got stoned here when he was a kid.”
“He probably did,” Richard admitted.
“So why not continue in the family tradition?” Max grinned. He pulled a clay pipe and a baggie with a sizable chunk of weed from the pockets of his baggy shorts. He began to fill the bowl. “This a nice spot, too. You can see Catalina Island from here.”
Paul, Mary, Melody, and Richard turned toward the ocean. Sure enough, Santa Catalina island was awash in twinkling lights about a mile out to sea. As Max finished tapping the weed down into the bowl and getting the pipe lit up, Mary said, “You hear any more about that shit that went down over there earlier?”
“You mean those creatures?” Paul asked. “Like I said before, just what was on the news.” The sweet smell of marijuana drifted in the air. “You’d think they’d evacuate the island, or something.”
“Especially if somebody was killed,” Melody said. Max passed the pipe to her and she took a drag. Richard felt a sudden well of guardianship for his little sister. Max had been making moves toward her all day, and Mary and Paul weren’t really doing much of anything to discourage it. Max seemed like an okay enough guy to hang out with, but he was clearly not in Melody’s league for boyfriend material.
Melody passed the pipe to Mary, then down to Paul, who passed it to Richard. As it was passed around, the Catalina incident was discussed more in depth. “I heard they were able to kill some of those things,” Paul said, taking a hit. “Apparently they’re being studied.”
“Wonder what they are?” Richard wondered aloud.
“Alien hybrids?” Max said.
Richard took a hit. He frowned. Skunk weed. He hated skunk weed. He passed the pipe back to Max. “Where’d they come from?”
Max shrugged. “The ocean?”
“No shit, they came from the ocean, dumb ass!” Melody said. Richard grinned. Maybe Melody wasn’t warming up to Max after all.
“No, I mean, maybe they came from some hidden cave or something.” Max took a deep hit, held it in for a moment and exhaled pot smoke. “I heard about this shit today on the internet. Lots of weird shit is happening in the ocean, ever since that earthquake in the South Pacific. Maybe it opened some secret cavern or something and spilled all these things out.”
Richard frowned. “Where’d you hear this from?”
Max passed the pipe to Melody, who took a second hit. “I don’t remember. Some website or message board. It was some crazy shit. Just like those zombie reports.”
“I’m telling you,” Paul said, “that’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as zombies, outside of Hollywood.”
As Melody passed the pipe to Mary, Max looked down the street toward another section of Sunken City and frowned. “Well, that’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” Melody asked.
“How come we’re the only ones here?”
Paul shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Hey! Hey, you over there!”
They turned toward the voice. Richard tried to see where the voice was coming from, but it was hard to make out in the dark. He felt Melody tense up beside him.
About thirty feet down the road, a shape moved in the dark recess of an old, abandoned building. “Are they gone?”
Max stuck the clay pipe back in the baggie. All five of them subconsciously drew closer together, as if seeking protection from each other.
The shape became more distinct. It was a head, with long, stringy hair. Just a head, with the body beneath it concealed in the shadows. From where Richard stood, the head appeared to be looking down the road, toward the rocky shore far below.
“They’re gone,” the figure said. “They’re gone. We’ve got to get out now, while we still can.”
The teens glanced at one another and then back to the head.
The shape materialized out of the abandoned building and they saw it for what it was: a man, dressed in threadbare jeans, a ratty-looking button-down long-sleeve shirt and tan oxfords. His jeans were short—they came up to his shins. As the man drew closer to them, it became clear to Richard what they were dealing with. The man’s threadbare clothing, his long, gray, matted hair, his thick beard, the smell of body odor and alcohol; it was a tramp, a hobo.
“They’re gone,” the bum muttered. “We gotta get out of here!”
As the man drew up to them, they shrank back involuntarily.
“Who are you?” Mary asked. “Why do we have to get out of here?”
The man’s eyes were wide, red-rimmed, crazy. When he spoke, Richard could see the rotting remains of his teeth.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Roy…Roy Conklin. And we have to get out of here.”
“Why do we gotta get out of here, old man?” Max said. What brief fear Max had was gone now. He was no longer trying to hide his clay pipe. He’d taken it out of the baggie after deciding the old hobo wasn’t a threat.
“There’s things coming out of the ocean!” Roy said. He pointed a jagged finger toward the ocean. “I seen ‘em. A few hours ago, there was a few dozen people. Kids like you, taking pictures and hiking over the rocks and drinking beer. And then the monsters came out of the ocean and ate ‘em!”
Paul and Max were chuckling. Mary was regarding Roy Conklin with a look that said you’re off your rocker, old timer. Only Melody and Richard seemed to be taking the hobo seriously. Richard turned to Paul. “Maybe we should take his advice and leave.”
Max dismissed it. “Fuck him. He’s just an old wino who’s had too much firewater. Isn’t that right, old timer.”
“I’m telling you, I saw it!” Roy said. The tone of his voice, his expression, all conveyed alarm. “They swarmed over the beach and just started tearing into people. Tearing them apart with their claws, stinging ‘em. But that ain’t the worst part. Some of the folks that got killed—the ones that didn’t get dissolved—they didn’t stay dead for long. Some of ‘em started coming back, but that didn’t stop the monsters. They just kept cuttin’ em up with those big lobster claws of theirs and—”
“Lobster claws?” Paul asked. “Did they look like those things everybody’s talking about on the news?”
“They ate everybody, even when they started coming back from the dead!” Roy cried out. “Don’t you get it, kid! They ate everything! Just look at it.” And with a sweep of his arm, he indicated the vast expanse of broken cobblestone and sidewalks that comprised Sunken City. And for the first time since arriving here, Richard noticed something about the cracked cement sidewalk they were standing on.
It was sticky. And large portions of it were stained a dark maroon color. There was also dark, glistening globs of what looked like decaying flesh scattered here and there. Then he noticed something else—a round shape, about the size of a football, half-hidden beneath the graffiti-covered rubble. Squinting, he stared harder and realized that it was a decapitated head. Richard blink
ed.
The severed head returned the gesture.
“What the fuck?” Melody said. She clutched Richard’s arm. She’d seen what he was seeing.
The head smiled, flashing bloodstained teeth. It moved its mouth, forming words even though it lacked vocal chords or lungs with which to speak.
Melody grabbed her brother’s arm and squeezed. “What is it?”
Before Richard could answer, gunshots erupted from nearby. Judging by the sound, they were only a few blocks away.
“Lets get out of here,” Mary whimpered.
A low moan answered her. Richard turned to see a woman crawling toward them. She emerged from beneath a jumble of boulders about twenty feet away and pulled herself toward them with one arm. Richard was amazed that she could move—amazed that she was alive at all. Her left arm had been severed halfway between the wrist and elbow, and a splintered bone jutted from the ragged tatters of flesh. Both of her legs were missing, too. One had been cut off mid-thigh. The other below the knee. The rest of her body was mangled, as well. Through what little scraps remained of her clothes, he saw horrific gashes and lacerations.
“Guys?”
They turned to look at Richard and he pointed.
“Help me,” the injured woman groaned. “Please help me…”
“Holy shit,” Max exclaimed, rushing toward her.
Richard grabbed him and pulled him back.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Something’s not right.”
Max shoved him away. “She’s hurt, you asshole. We’ve got to do something.”
“That’s right,” the woman called, her voice loud and strong despite her condition. “Come help me. Come closer.”
Richard’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the display, and saw that it was his father calling.
“Who is it?” Melody asked, still clinging to him.
“It’s Dad. Should I answer?”
“Call 911,” Max told him, and then started toward the injured woman.
More gunfire and screams echoed from the streets behind them. A car horn blared. A dog barked, then began to howl. Richard’s cell phone continued to buzz.
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