Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 10

  At double time, she hurried back to the mess hall and assembled a tray full of canned goods and a jug with a gallon of water.

  Alvarez was standing now, leaning against the bars with his forehead when she arrived. He looked up, and his face dropped when he saw the backpack she was carrying.

  “You’re bugging out, aren’t you?”

  She laid the food on the floor before his cell. Included was a can opener. The bigger cans couldn’t fit between the bars, but with a bit of effort he could manage.

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “Fucking kidding me? Something happens to you, and I’m a dead man. Tell me you’re just messing with me.”

  Didn’t take a psych major to see Alvarez was shitting his pants.

  “I’m doing this for your own protection. Rogers is still out there somewhere. He and Nash weren’t the only ones who put up a fight when we rounded them up yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I don’t buy it. You just gonna leave me here to die, aren’t you?”

  Dana didn’t answer.

  Alvarez was pacing his cell now, holding his head as though his skull were about to explode.

  “I didn’t touch Keiths, you gotta believe me.”

  “I do,” she lied.

  “So then let me out.”

  “I will, when I get back.”

  “And if you don’t make it?”

  Dana hesitated. “I will make it.”

  Alvarez was shaking his head in disbelief, his eyes alive with fear.

  After a deep sigh, Dana removed the keys to the cell and laid them on the desk by the radio. Too far by several feet for Alvarez to reach an arm out and snag them.

  “I’ll leave these here. If help comes while I’m gone, or I don’t come back, they can let you out. I’m leaving a note that’ll explain everything.”

  “Ah, great, she’s leaving a fucking note. I knew you were a bitch the second I laid eyes on you, Hatfield.”

  The hand holding the keys stopped an inch before laying them down. She was about to change her mind and leave him to rot. He must have read the thought in her eyes.

  He was blinking away tears. “Please, don’t do this.”

  Dana plopped down the keys and scratched a few words on a torn scrap of paper.

  To Whom it May Concern:

  The man in this cell is named Alvarez, and I’ve locked him away for murdering the base commander, Robert Keiths. If I fail to return, do with him as you wish.

  Signed,

  Dana Hatfield, Seaman Apprentice

  Less than 10 minutes later, Alvarez’ angry pleas still echoing in her head, she was onboard the MLB. Coons was long gone, herded in by Alvarez the day before only to escape when Keiths was killed.

  She was backing the boat out when she saw them. Six bodies in blue CG uniforms, rolling up against the end of the dock like drift wood. One of them was face up, his face swollen and discolored. The name on his chest read Coons. Dana closed her eyes tightly, hoping that when she opened them again, the bodies would morph into something far less horrific. Her eyes opened, and the corpses were still there, bobbing gently with the waves.

  Must have run into the water and drowned, just as Stratton and Stokes had.

  It was as if people had lost all common sense. Those sacred rules they’d all learned as children.

  Stay away from that stove, it’ll burn you!

  Don’t play in traffic!

  Keep away from the edge of the pool!

  The mistakes that hadn’t resulted in death helped to form a new awareness of dangers that seemed to lurk behind every corner. Dana recalled those people who had jumped off the bridge yesterday. Or had they stepped off, without fully understanding the consequences, the way young children seemed to do, as if they had a sort of death wish?

  She was careful not to get the bodies of her fallen sailors caught in the props as she backed away and straightened out. An image of her father came to her then, arms outstretched, his normally chubby face gaunt and pleading. He was sitting in his favorite chair parked in the front of the flatscreen TV she’d recently bought him, his clothes dangling like loose rags. She opened the throttle all the way and held on as the boat powered through the choppy water.

  Hold on, Dad, I’ll be there soon.

  Carole Cartright

  Salt Lake City International Airport, UT

  A hand nudged Carole awake. She knew at once she’d been dreaming. The whole family had been packed into their minivan. For once, Jim was in the passenger seat, but the car kept rolling back and forth no matter what she tried.

  “Don’t worry, Darling,” Jim’s dream self said, smiling. “You’ve got a body under the front tire. Just gotta hit the gas real hard.” Then those masculine dimples in his cheeks disappeared as the skin on his face began to look like the bottom of an old frying pan. “Why didn’t you save me ... ”

  Carole clutched at the form before her.

  “Mom, keep it down.”

  Aiden pressed an index finger against his lips. Alice was behind him, her mouth flapping open and closed as though she were having trouble breathing.

  “Someone’s trying to get in,” Aiden said.

  Carole glanced over his shoulder toward the doorway stacked with furniture.

  The door rattled again.

  They’d driven through the tangle of forms yesterday, some screaming, others cowering in terror. Finally, after becoming hopelessly lost in the maze of airport corridors, Nikki had spotted the security center: a counter with a window that looked more like a currency exchange booth than it did a safe haven. The glass door stood slightly ajar, and they’d scrambled inside, quickly stacking the front window and entrance with anything they could find.

  In the back of the security center, a narrow hallway led to a small lunch area and a series of rooms. One of those rooms was furnished with nothing but a table and a couple of chairs. Carole had seen enough cop shows in her day to recognize this was where they might have once held suspected terrorists; a group that, less than 24 hours ago, had represented the free world’s greatest threat. How quickly things changed.

  The door handle rattled again, and the sound startled her.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “In one of the back rooms, why?”

  Carole got up. The security office had the vague smell of new furniture, most of which was now piled against the door and window. She made her way to the room with the flashing light.

  She stopped at the door. Nikki had a flashlight in one hand and was doing her best to pry open a cabinet with a broken metal chair leg.

  She tried again. “What are you doing?” Carole asked.

  “We nearly died last night.”

  “Yes, I know,” Carole said, crossing her arms. “More than once.”

  “Those people outside keep trying to get in. We can’t stay here.”

  “I never said we would, but heading off in the dark yesterday didn’t seem like the wisest idea. You never answered my question. What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking for a weapon.”

  “Weapon? Like what, a gun?” The look of surprise on Carole’s face only seemed to infuriate Nikki.

  “Of course a gun. Even you can’t run them all over like you did last night.”

  Nikki was always quick to strike back when she felt challenged. That had been one of Carole’s biggest pet peeves about her daughter and yet, in a weird way, Nikki’s little broadside brought her a small amount of comfort. The idea that some things hadn’t quite been erased was somehow comforting.

  “Your father tried to take you hunting with him a few times, and he eventually gave up. Cooked up a deer steak once and told you it was filet mignon. You ran to the bathroom and threw up.”

  The lock on the cabinet jiggled as Nikki continued to pry.

  “You don’t remember any of that, do you?”

  Nikki stopped and shook her head. Her body spasmed ever so slightly, and Carole laid a hand on her back.

  “Don�
��t worry, Honey, it’ll come back to you.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on. What’s wrong with everyone? Have they gone insane?”

  “I don’t think so,” Carole replied pensively. “But something has happened to their minds. They seem to have forgotten who they are, like you, but only worse.”

  “But those men who attacked us?”

  “You remember when we used to drop Aiden off at daycare before I took you to school?”

  Nikki buried her face in her hands.

  “No, of course you don’t, Honey. I’m so sorry. Well, I’ll tell you anyway, and maybe the telling will stir something inside of you. First thing Aiden would do is run for a chubby kid named Patrick Yates.” Carole smiled. “Imagine a 3-year-old built like a third-grader. God love him, he wasn’t the brightest thing, but he was cute as a button. Anyway, Aiden never liked him, for a reason I could never understand, and always seemed to want whatever Patrick was playing with. Every morning like clockwork, he’d head straight for poor Patrick and smack him across the face. Didn’t matter that Patrick was more than twice his size. I was horrified, and thankfully he grew out of it, but here’s the point: Being civil to one another is a lesson children learn only after they cause enough pain. Kids can be lovely and sweet, but they can also be incredibly cruel. It looks like what happened yesterday just undid all of that.”

  Carole looked over at Aiden, who was standing in the doorway, the tail end of a smile disappearing from his face. Alice was behind him. “Coast is clear, for now.”

  With some effort, Carole brought herself to her feet. The muscles in her neck were bunched together like taught springs, and the resulting headache that had begun as a low throb last night had worked itself into a real thumper. They were becoming dehydrated. She’d read somewhere that the body can last weeks without food, but only days without water. The taps were still working, in spite of the power outage, but it was the safety of the water Carole was worried about. Without purification, tap water might contain dangerous bacteria. Maybe even bits of fecal matter that the purification plants were no longer able to filter out. The growing danger made getting out of here all the more imperative.

  “If we all work together,” Carole suggested, helping Nikki off the floor, “we might be able to pry this cabinet open.”

  “You think there are machine guns inside?” Aiden asked. His eyes were practically glowing with excitement.

  “If there’s anything of the kind, you certainly won’t be the one using them.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s bullshit.”

  Carole gave him ‘the look’: a glassy death stare, which usually put Aiden in his place.

  His fingers fiddled nervously. “Sorry, Mom, it’s just that with everything going on outside we need some serious firepower.”

  “No, we don’t,” she refuted. “Don’t forget those are people out there, Aiden, and most of them aren’t trying to kill anyone, they’re frightened and want nothing more than to get away. Only, they don’t know how to get there. Now come over here and give your mother a hand.”

  They slid the metal chair leg between the cabinet and the thin metal chain and collectively pushed down. Nikki was straining so hard her bottom teeth were showing and Aiden’s features bunched up as though a massive weight had just been plopped onto his shoulders. The sound of the chain snapping made them erupt into cheers.

  They swung open the doors, Nikki flicking the light around.

  “Aww, man,” Aiden said, distraught at the lack of heavy weaponry, “that was a real waste of time.”

  Alice came in between them all. Her rosy cheeks glowing, even in the low light of the room. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  As far as Carole was concerned, Aiden was right. All she saw was what looked like a cable TV box with a bunch of wires sticking out. “Does it play tapes or 8-tracks? I can’t tell.” she asked.

  Alice laughed. “Neither. It’s a ham radio. My husband, Sal, owned one for years. Tried desperately to get me involved, but you know, I couldn’t fake any interest in it.”

  “Bet you wish you could take that back,” Nikki said.

  Nodding, Alice said: “There are a lot of things I wish I could take back.”

  “I’m sure he’s at home, worried to death over you.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Sal left me last year.”

  “Alice, I’m so sorry,” Carole said. “I didn’t know.”

  “How could you? No, it was my fault. I suppose fidelity was never my strong suit.” She laughed sardonically. “He was one of those preppers. Gearing up for apocalypse. Maybe if he’d spent more time with me rather than stocking our garage with gas masks and water filtration systems, things might have been different.”

  Carole laid a land on her shoulder. “All the prepping in the world wouldn’t mean a thing if suddenly everything you knew was wiped clean away.”

  There was a layer of dust on the ham radio, and Alice brushed it clean with a kind of reverence, and it made Carole wonder if it had something to do with the machine’s connection to Sal. “It’s just too bad the power’s out,” Alice said, “‘cause this little baby might have come in handy.”

  A red button on the top left read Power, and Aiden reached over and pushed it.

  Carole tried to swat his hand away, but was too late. She had a rule about grasping hands. No doubt about it, if there was a button, Aiden had to push it. He’d been that way his whole life.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, the orange-colored LCD screen came to life, displaying a bunch of numbers and letter that looked to Carole like nothing more than a bunch of gobbledygook.

  “Must be solar-powered,” Alice said, astounded. “Can’t believe I didn’t notice it before. See that 12-volt car battery on the bottom shelf and those wires going up through the ceiling? They must have a solar panel on the roof.”

  “Great, so can we call the police or the Army or something?” Nikki asked.

  Alice suddenly didn’t look so sure. “I think so. The real question is, will anyone answer?”

  She moved the tuning knob to the right. “First thing I’m gonna do is roll through the frequencies and see if I can pick anything up.”

  After over 30 minutes of static, the receiver began picking up a faint signal.

  “ ... 111 ... 93 minutes, 0 seconds ... ”

  Aiden lifted his head from Carole’s shoulder, suddenly alert.

  Beside them, Nikki opened her eyes and stared intently. “What is it?” she asked.

  Alice played with the knob, trying to home in on the signal. “I’m not sure.”

  Larry Nowak

  Manhattan, N.Y.

  Going back to his swanky apartment in uptown Manhattan wasn’t an option for Larry Nowak. The streets were clogged with abandoned cars and chunks of rubble. A number of fires had broken out during the earthquake, and with no firefighters to battle the blazes, thick columns of smoke now chocked the horizon. Even the twinkling pastel lights in the sky, which couldn’t possibly be a sign of anything good, were temporarily lost in the haze. Last night he had found a BMW X5 sitting under the lip of a high-rise apartment complex on Pine Street, inviting him in with an open driver-side door, and he decided it would make as good and safe a bed as any.

  But sleep hadn’t come easily for Larry. Gunshots and screams had played out through most of the night. If there had been any vestige of order yesterday, it soon disappeared when the sun went down. The survivors were growing hungry, and yet with restaurants and variety stores on every corner, Larry continued to witness events that surprised and disgusted even him. A man in an adjacent alley feasting on what looked like a poodle. At one point, a man and a woman staggered along the street. A slab of concrete fell from above, crushing the man into the pavement. The woman, stumbled back a few feet, looking indifferent as she continued walking. The sight reminded Larry of the one story Larry’s father liked to tell about his “good-for-nothing” son. Apparently, at the age of 3, Larry had wiggled from his father’s grasp aft
er a trip to the barber and had run right off the sidewalk, into traffic.

  “Little Larry’s got a death wish, I shit you not.”

  The room would erupt into gales of laughter, and even young Larry would put on a sly little smile. He would never give the old man the pleasure of knowing the story pissed him off. And it proved to be an important lesson for Larry. No matter what the bastards say, make sure you’re always smiling.

  Looking at it last night, however, that memory of his father sipping warm beer from a can, surrounded by fat relatives squeezed into cheap plastic folding chairs on the back lawn, had started to take on a different light. In a way, the image of that woman who’d stared indifferently at the crushed body of the man who’d been walking next to her a second before kinda reminded Larry of that story his son of a bitch of a father loved to tell all the time. Kids are oblivious to death. They only know pleasure and pain in the simplest forms. But empathy, feeling the pain of others, is a learned behavior. The epiphany was an important one and something Larry would tuck away, perhaps for later use. Maybe these folks running around like idiots weren’t cavemen as much as they were children. Slates wiped clean in a single cataclysmic event. But why not him? Why had he, of all people, been spared?

  Morning arrived, and the streets appeared to be largely empty, except for a lone figure or two in the distance, wandering around aimlessly.

  Larry left the X5. His suit was torn in three places and caked with concrete dust from when the cop had tried to make him his bitch. The bruises on his outer thigh and back where the cop’s baton had connected were still smarting, but if those were the worst of his injuries, then he considered himself a lucky man indeed. With both the Glock and the .38 in the front pockets of his suit, he wouldn’t quite feel at the mercy of the next New York City psycho who tried to mess with him.

  Larry staggered on stiff legs toward the corner of Pine and Broadway. Cabs, SUVs, compacts. Most of them were open, and many of the engines were still running with the driver’s door open, as though he’d summoned a valet to pull the car around. He had his veritable pick of the litter, true, but none of them would do. To make it through the clogged streets and off the island, he’d need a frickin’ tank. One of the few friends Larry had, a man by the name of Kenny Eton, lived beside a lake just south of Bethlehem, N.Y. No more than an hour’s drive east and definitely not a bad place to ride out the storm. Besides, if Kenny had lost his marbles, then at least Larry could put him out of his misery and not let the place go to waste.