Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 19

  Holding his hand to the window, Larry could feel, much to his surprise, that the temperature outside was at least 50 degrees warmer. They were driving back into a weather system that was starting to look like summer again.

  Hands glued to the wheel, Bud looked distracted. As a self-described misanthrope, Larry was comfortable in the knowledge that he hated most everyone he met. The world was populated by thieves and idiots, so when he hadn’t hated Bud from the get go, alarm bells had started going off right away. The loathing would come, he told himself; it always did. The two men had driven together already for nearly two days, had slept in car seats separated by only a few feet from one another, a thing Larry would have found unconscionable. But it wasn’t just the lack of hatred for Bud that Larry found so disturbing. It was his growing fondness of the young man. Easy to talk to, no bullshit, and since Larry had asked him about Brookhaven and Bud had clammed right up, well, a certain amount of intrigue had also been added to the list.

  It isn’t survival of the nicest, you asshole, it’s survival of the fittest, and right now you’re way behind the goddammned curve.

  The voice admonishing him always seemed to take on the grating tone of his father, echoing whenever the old man would stagger home from a night touring the local bars. The old bastard had been more concerned with making sure Larry was tough enough to make it in a world filled with pricks than he was with spending time on simple things like playing catch or having a meaningful conversation.

  I’m gonna toughen your pansy ass up, Larry Eugene Nowak, if it’s the last fucking thing I do.

  Larry shook away the memory and noticed a piece of folded paper sticking out of the compartment below the digital clock. He fished it out and unfolded it, recognizing what he was seeing immediately as a map of the U.S. with an X just north of Salt Lake City. This was where they were headed; the shelter. Bud had called it. Coordinates he’d received from short wave radio. And why trek out all the way to Timbukfuckingtu? Simple, Bud had said. There was nowhere else to go. And maybe the kid had a point. This FEMA camp, or whatever the hell it was, may very well be the last vestiges of the country they’d loved dearly, one they couldn’t imagine rotting away like an old bloated corpse. The route looked straightforward. Straight along Interstate 80 all the way. Certainly easy enough for Larry to go on his own if, God forbid, anything ever happened to Bud.

  When Bud’s voice cut through the silence, it startled Larry. The sun was already starting to come up, filling in the soft and already familiar lines in the kid’s face.

  “You asked me about Brookhaven last night, and I ducked the question. I wanted to say sorry for that. Some things happened there I wasn’t ready to talk about.”

  Larry fiddled with the paper before putting it back. “Bud, it’s your business. I was just making conversation, for Christ’s sake.” That sharp edge was clawing back into Larry’s demeanor, and Bud’s body language seemed to take note of the change.

  “No, it was rude. We still have another stretch along I-80 before we get to Utah, so I ought to get it out before I wake up screaming and scare the living crap outta you.”

  “Can’t possibly be louder than your snoring, I think I’m immune.” A smile edged back onto Larry’s face, although little about it felt or looked all that genuine. He had been annoyed with Bud last night, and perhaps that was why the dark thoughts had started inching their way back in.

  “I woke up in a lab, mostly naked, lying in a pool of what looked like amniotic fluid.”

  Larry’s eyebrows perked up. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

  “No, you don’t. I was in some sort of pod at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island.” Bud folded over the part of the lab coat he was wearing. Three bold letters were stitched onto the breast pocket. BNL. Brookhaven National Laboratory. When I came to, the man who originally owned this coat was beating down on my head with his fists. The guy meant to kill me. Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I’m lying there in a pair of tighty-whities, freezing my ass off and getting my head bashed in.”

  Larry’s eyes shifted to a spot above Bud’s right ear, where he noticed bits of dried blood.

  “Only realized after that he was one of them. Didn’t know it at the time, but he was making all kinds of weird sounds like a really pissed-off ape. He’d gone apeshit, I guess you could rightly say; who knows? Everything was dark, and the whole place was upside down, on account of the earthquake that leveled the building, which probably explains why I was lying on the floor in the first place. So the next thing I know the guy’s trying to tear my underwear off, and he’s got a bulge in his pants like he means business. I’m disoriented and confused and in pain, but I still knew if I didn’t get the sick bastard off of me it wasn’t going to end well. A table that had been knocked over in the quake had spread stacks of medical forms and manila envelopes all over the ground, and that was when I saw it. A letter opener; at the time, it looked like a gift from God himself. By now the guy’s got my undershorts in his hands and I’m naked, and he’s snorting like he’s gonna rape and kill me. I finally grab hold of the letter opener, just as he drops down on top of me, and I buried the thing right into the top of his head.”

  Larry was leaning against the passenger window, his right hand up over his eyes like a visor from the sun, disbelief tattooed all over his face.

  “So you killed the S.O.B.?”

  Bud’s chin drooped. “Yes, and I’m not proud of it ... ”

  “Hell, you should be. Kill or be killed, Bud, don’t you ever forget that. Hey, what happened to our country, to the world, is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Oh, the Black Plague in the Middle Ages? Fuck the Black Plague. Killed 30 million people. Thirty percent of Europe. Boo hoo hoo, I’m crying my frickin eyes out. What’s 99.9 percent of 7 billion, Bud? You figure it out and get back to me ‘cause that’s what we’re looking at. The last time the planet faced an extinction-level event on this scale was with the dino-fucking-saurs, millions of years ago. That prick was gonna rape your ass, Bud, sorry to be crude about such a delicate matter, ‘cause I fucking hate to curse. You know me that much, by now. But he was gonna stick it to ya, and you did the only damned thing you could to take him out before he could do the same to you.”

  Larry took a breath and felt his father’s spirit slapping him on the shoulder.

  It isn’t survival of the nicest, you overly sensitive asshole, Larry nearly blurted the words out and then stopped himself. It’s survival of the fittest. I’m gonna toughen you up, Bud, if it’s the last thing I do.

  Bud didn’t say anything. He looked stunned, and Larry was sure the kid was digesting the pearls of wisdom he’d tossed over free of charge. Bud’s expression intensified, and Larry realized that hadn’t been it at all. Out ahead of them on I-80, near the big green sign that told drivers they were approaching East Moline, Illinois, was a group of men with an assortment of crude weapons, and they were bashing a red sedan to pieces.

  Bud eased onto the brake. “There are people in there.”

  Leaning forward Larry could see he was right. “Yeah, well, this isn’t our fight, Bud.”

  The look on Bud’s face when he turned to Larry was as close to disgust as he’d seen in a long time. “Are you asking me to just drive past this?”

  “No, I’m not asking you to drive past it, I’m telling you to. Did you not hear a word I just said? Survival of the fittest, Bud, every man for himself. I didn’t make up the rules. You get out of the car, and they’ll kill both of us.”

  “No, they won’t.” Bud reached into the back and unzipped a duffle bag lying on the seat. Larry jerked away when he saw what was coming out. Bud had a shotgun in one hand and a big box of shells in the other.

  “Oh, you’re shitting me,” Larry said. “And what’re you gonna do after you save these people, Superman? Why not give them the rest of our food while you’re at it?”

  “Maybe I will,” Bud said, as he got out of the car. “You just stay i
nside the car and lock the doors.” The group of men smashing the car to bits weren’t more than 50 yards away. Soon, Bud was jogging forward, shotgun dug into the crook of his shoulder, shouting at the men to stop what they were doing.

  The epiphany that struck Larry just then was so powerful and complete, it was as though God himself had stepped down from the heavens and whispered into his ear.

  Guys like Bud weren’t cut out for a world like this. They were built to help little old ladies across the street and rescue kittens out of trees. Larry thought that Bud had understood everything he’d said about looking after number one. If he was too stupid to preserve his own life, then Larry didn’t have an ounce of respect left for the guy. Worse than that, Larry no longer had any use for Bud, period.

  A loud boom rang out, and the men attacking the car scattered. One of them lay sprawled on the asphalt, unmoving. Bud was still walking forward. He turned briefly to wave the car forward, signaling for Larry to close the distance between them. What Bud didn’t see was the handful of men ducked down beside a nearby wreck.

  Gotta warn Bud.

  Larry laid his hand on the horn and was about to press it and then stopped. Bud had broken the cardinal rule of survival, and now he would sleep in the bed he’d so carelessly made.

  The men behind the car charged out quickly, swinging sticks and bats, and Bud barely had time to swing around and greet them. A blast from his shotgun threw the first man back against the hood of the red sedan. Bud racked another shell into the chamber with expert speed and fired into the oncoming men, dropping two of them at once. The spray of blood was visible even from where Larry was sitting. The shot had gone through the first man’s chest and right into the second. Larry was no firearms expert, but he knew enough to recognize Bud had loaded the boomstick with heavy slugs.

  The men dropped their weapons and ran for good after that. Bud waved Larry forward again, moving his hand rapidly as if to say, ‘Hey, didn’t you hear me the first time?’

  Oh, I heard you, Bud. Loud and clear.

  Larry kicked over into the driver’s seat. The gas gauge was just about empty, but the yellow light hadn’t come on yet. He’d need to stop to refuel along the road somewhere soon, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Shifting into drive, Larry punched the accelerator. The engine roared, pushing Larry back in his seat as the speedometer climbed up to 40. The look on Bud’s face was pure confusion. No doubt he was wondering why the hell Larry was going so goddamned fast.

  Priceless.

  Bud rolled out of the way at the last minute, so, too, did the people he had saved in the car. The driver’s door had just started to open when a face looked back and slammed it shut. Too bad, ‘cause the dark part of Larry wanted to flatten that guy in order to drive the lesson home. Saving people who can’t hack it on their own is only delaying the inevitable.

  Larry drove on, watching Bud shrink away into an amorphous dot in his rear view mirror.

  Finn

  Interstate 15, NV

  At the first sight of the car headlights creeping up behind him, Finn sat up so fast his spine made a cracking sound. The windows were fogged over. All he could see was the diffused yellow glow from a pair of high beams.

  When the approaching car slowed down and pulled alongside him, his already racing heart really started to gallop. The vehicle was unlike any he’d seen before; a black minivan with tinted windows and encased in a protective metal cage. Whoever this was, they came prepared and sure as hell meant business. The metal pipe was resting on the passenger seat next to him. He grabbed it and opened the door, a sheet of rain water rolling off the roof and onto his left shoulder as he did so. A man with a prominent belly that bounced up and down as he ran came toward him, and it was only as the guy emerged from the rain that Finn relaxed his grip on the pipe.

  “I didn't expect to see you here, Lou.”

  Lou was holding the brim of his baseball cap as though that would block any of the fat drops exploding like tiny water balloons.

  “I ain't never seen anything like it,” he said glancing up briefly, his almost feminine eyelashes dancing as he blinked away the watery assault. “You mind if I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure thing. Mi Casa, Su Casa, Lou,” Finn said, waving him in.

  Lou got in the passenger side, pulled the door shut, and ran a hand over his face. “We weren't sure we’d find you at all. Just saw a speck of red in the distance before your tail lights went off. Visibility was so poor I didn’t want to risk rear ending some piece of crap Buick left in the middle of the road.”

  “I take it Ethan’s in the car with you?”

  Lou nodded.

  “Sounded like you were dead set against the idea of coming to Salt Lake City. Why the change of heart?”

  His eyes fell to his lap. Beads of rain water dripped from his brow, and Finn wondered if it might be sweat.

  “My brother-in-law, Philip, didn’t make it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, really I am.”

  “After what happened at the grocery store, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. Staying in Vegas didn’t make a lick of sense no more. We left the others. Said they were ready to defend their property from looters and groups of those ... savages, but none of them have a kid to look after.”

  “And your wife?”

  Lou snapped the dripping baseball cap off his head and rung it out at his feet. “She didn’t make it.”

  “I’m afraid the world doesn’t go easy on someone ‘cause they’re having a bad day,” Finn said, feeling like Lou was trying to build up the courage to say something. “Trying to find some kind of meaning in all of this is liable to drive a man insane.”

  That seemed to stir something deep inside Lou. “We were in the backyard, drinking beers and playing volleyball in the pool, when it happened. Me, Ethan, and the others you saw at the Buy Low. I didn’t even notice the sky go funny till my wife ... well, I thought she was playing a joke ‘cause she rose straight up outta her chair and walked into the pool. And that surprised look on her face when she suddenly went under ... I’ll never forget it. Sank straight to the bottom, too, no different than if I’d thrown in a 3-month-old baby.”

  Finn nodded. “Was that how she died?”

  “No, we fished her out and rounded up the others. See, like I said, at first we thought they was playing a practical joke. Then we were sure some wire had pried loose in their heads. But it couldn’t be all of them, not at once.” Lou flipped the cap back on his head and straightened it. “Maybe I shoulda let her drown in that pool. Woulda been the humane thing to do.”

  Both men were quiet for a moment, listening to the rain drumming against the car.

  “Should prolly get back to Ethan.” Lou said, opening the door before he stopped and turned. “Doesn’t look like she’s gonna let up anytime soon, does she?” He was talking about the rain again. “I’ve lived here nearly 30 years, and I can’t ever remember it being this bad before. Rain like this in the desert. People behaving like animals. It’s like the whole world’s been gutted.”

  An image of a compass needle reading the opposite of what it should flashed before Finn’s eyes. “You might be more right than you know.”

  They decided to give it another hour or so to wait out the worst of the rain and if it didn’t let up, they’d set out at first light. Lou cut a quick path through the rain and back to his steel-reinforced monster. A moment later, he pulled in front of Finn and cut the engine.

  Wasn’t long after that Finn’s stomach started grumbling. He reached into a bag on the back seat and fished out a can of tuna. He would have given anything for a couple of slices of bread and a touch of mayo, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Shopping for groceries now wasn’t like before, where you went to the right aisle and tossed it into your basket. Now you didn’t use a cart with a squeaky wheel, you used a gun or, in Finn’s case, a lead pipe. And if the grocery store was empty, then you were shit outta luck ‘cause the delivery
truck wouldn’t be making another run.

  Reaching back, Finn grabbed two more cans and ran through the rain toward Lou’s monster. He stopped by the driver’s window and tapped the can against the metal grate. Lou opened up.

  “Thought you two might like some dinner, on me.”

  “Sure thing,” Lou said, but something about the way he was acting seemed off.

  Why do I feel like I’m imposing?

  Finn got in the back. Ethan was next to his father in the front. After handing each of them a can he asked: “One of you has an opener, right?” The question wasn’t more than halfway past his lips when he heard the sound of breathing behind him.

  He turned around and there, writhing behind him, was a woman, mouth gagged, squirming in an attempt to free herself from what looked like a homemade straightjacket. Fear oozed from every pore of her body and suddenly, Finn knew that he’d made a terrible mistake.

  Dana Hatfield

  Bernal Heights, CA

  The darkened streets of San Francisco were cut by two pairs of headlights; her own and those of the Chevy beside her. Head-banger was clutching her arm with one hand, pointing a shotgun right in her face with the other. From the Chevy, Goatee was shouting for Head-banger to move his ass.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” He turned to Dana. “Now open this door before I ... ” Something from out of the darkness caught Head-banger’s attention, and he let her go at once. Dana turned just in time to see five men, two of them in torn business suits, bearing down on Head-banger with sticks and metal poles. Only a few days ago, they’d have been indistinguishable from hobos; faces smeared with dirt, wrapped in an assortment of pillaged and mismatched clothing. But the single theme common to all of them was a look of anger and determination, the same expression that was visible on any homeowner facing down trespassers.