Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Read online

  Head-banger swung the shotgun around and opened fire, knocking the first man to the ground. This was a golden opportunity, and Dana wasn’t going to let it slip through her fingers. Jamming the car into drive, she punched the gas, and the Nissan let out a squeal as she peeled away.

  Another shot rang, this one shattering her rear window and spraying the inside of the car with glass and buckshot. She heard a handful of pellets strike the rear of her seat, and the Nissan fishtailed and nearly went skidding into a parked car that appeared suddenly out of the gloom. Dana jerked the wheel left and then sharply right before regaining control. A quick glance in the rear view mirror showed Head-banger being engulfed in a swarm of bodies. Then came the sound of tires screeching and a puff of white smoke, as Goatee spun the Chevy around and took off in the other direction, leaving his friend behind.

  Dana maneuvered past an intersection with a three-car pileup and headed back toward the MLB, docked at Pier 42. It hadn’t taken long for San Francisco to be carved up by armed factions, intent on controlling as many neighborhoods as they could. Driving through the darkened avenues, she became distinctly aware that the city had become a war zone. Gangs wielding weapons pulled from the debris of fallen buildings ruled the streets. Except this new world wasn’t anything like Afghanistan or Vietnam. No, this was Mogadishu.

  An hour later, Dana pulled the MLB up to the dock at Fort Baker. The trip back had largely been uneventful, apart from the hundreds of dead bodies she’d seen floating in the Bay. She’d even seen some by Pier 42, making it clear enough that once everyone had gone batshit crazy, many of them had simply stepped into the water, the way Coons and the others had done back at the base. The way her father had. Were they suicidal, or did they simply not know any better? Judging by the way Hodge had behaved like a cornered rat when she first arrived back from patrol, she was beginning to suspect the latter.

  Fort Baker was bathed in eerie shadow as she approached, and the sight made her more than a little uneasy. More likely than not, Alvarez hadn’t eaten much since she had left to find her father.

  And you did find him, didn’t you? Drowned in the fish pond, out back. Was that worth finding out?

  “Yes,” she said quietly. The truth was hard, but not nearly as horrible as what the mind can manufacture in the absence of the facts.

  She snatched a flashlight from the boat and made her way to the mess hall to fetch Alvarez some food. He was going to bitch and moan that she’d hardly left him enough food for the entire day, but he was luckier than he knew. She’d almost didn’t make it back. Luckily, the fridges still had some chill to them. She sliced off a thick piece of ham and tore off a hunk of bread. The fort was deathly quiet, and Dana’s footsteps creaked along the floor as she approached the brig. It was right off the radio room, and even now she could hear the faint sound of static. The batteries weren’t dead yet. That first realization gave her a glimmer of hope. The second made her heart, along with the food she was carrying, nearly go tumbling to the floor.

  Alvarez was gone. His cell door was sitting wide open. Dangling from the lock was the key ring. Either somebody had happened along and decided to free him, or somehow, he’d found a way to escape. She’d laid the keys on a desk with a note to whoever found him, in the event that she didn’t return. The note, along with a clipboard and some pencils, lay scattered on the floor in front of the cell. Her gaze swung between the cell door and the desk. Back and forth. Back and forth, until it finally clicked. He must have swung something through the bars and onto the desk.

  But what? His clothes?

  Must have dragged the keys and everything else onto the floor and toward him.

  The radio was still buzzing away behind her, and the longer she stayed in the room, the more that static began to take on the distinct sound of a human voice. She turned it up and tried to sharpen the signal.

  “Forty-one degrees, 14 minutes, 42 seconds north, 111 degrees 93 minutes, 0 seconds west ... ”

  The same mysterious signal Keiths had found playing when he’d been killed, presumably by Nash, although Dana was growing more and more certain that Alvarez had committed the heinous act himself. He was terrified at the thought of doing prison time, of losing his rank and his job with the Coast Guard.

  A pad of paper sat on the desk beside the radio. The top sheet had been ripped off, but when she aimed the beam from the flashlight at an oblique angle, Dana could see a string of letters and numbers. Grabbing a pencil, she shaded lightly back and forth until words began to appear.

  He’d written down the coordinates.

  And below that a name.

  Uintah.

  Carole Cartright

  Salt Lake City suburbs, UT

  The children in the gymnasium and the cafeteria to her left continued to chant gibberish, and the sound sent chills spiraling through every nerve ending in Carole’s body. In a matter of seconds they would come at her and Nikki, all of them, swinging hockey sticks and any other weapon they could get their tiny hands on. If they’d managed to string up Principal Hen, there was no telling what they were capable of.

  Carole glanced behind her and felt a sudden swell of hope. A narrow stairway led up to the second floor. Already, the kids in the cafeteria were moving forward, taunting them, trying to make them run.

  This is a game for them.

  The epiphany was so disturbing that it made her mouth dry. This was like Lord of the Flies on crack.

  Nikki stood, rigid as a board, her eyes bugged out in disbelief. Carole grabbed her daughter and pulled her toward the stairs. Up they ran, and it quickly became apparent that the leg Nikki had wounded in the plane crash was causing her problems. She could walk just fine, but the additional pressure of supporting her weight as she sprang from riser to riser was causing the muscles to bunch up. She shouted in pain, and in response, the chants from downstairs grew louder, more vicious.

  The stairs were split level, and they were starting up the second part when they heard the kids break into a charge. Carole’s heart was hammering in her chest as she listened to their tiny feet clamoring after them. Her terror was far greater than anything she had experienced at the airport, and she could only assume it had something to do with the primal fear of being hunted that all humans carry with them.

  After reaching the top riser, they found themselves at the end of a long corridor, a series of doors on either side. Running was the only option available at the moment, and that’s exactly what they did. Put as much distance between themselves and the horde of tiny killers bearing down on them. That was what Carole was aiming to do, and perhaps with any luck, the staircase at the end of the hall might lead back to the front door. Her memories of the school were fuzzy, however, and with the power long gone, every shadowy corner hid the promise of danger.

  She and Nikki were nearly halfway there, the children already on the second floor and starting to close the distance, when she glanced into an open classroom to make sure no little brats were waiting to ambush them. But inside wasn’t any brat. It was filled with the corpses of adults – parents, administrators – and all of them were lined up like salmon at a fisherman’s wharf.

  The stench drifting out at them nearly made her wretch.

  Scrambling to the end of the hall, they rounded the corner, ready to hop down the stairs two or three at a time if necessary.

  But instead, Carole stopped so abruptly that she slid on the slick floor and landed on her rear end with a thud. Another group of feral children had swung around to cut them off.

  Nikki cupped her mother under her armpits to help her stand. They were trapped, and soon they, too, would be just another pair of dead bodies stacked in that chamber of horrors.

  “Mom, hurry,” Nikki called out.

  Mom?

  Carole turned and saw Nikki duck into one of the classrooms. The children streaming down the hallway after them were so close she could see the whites of their bared teeth. She threw one foot in front of another and followed her daughter, sl
amming the classroom door behind them.

  As quickly as they could, Carole and Nikki jammed the teacher’s desk up against the door. A rectangular wire mesh window looked out onto the mass of children assembled outside, giving the almost surreal impression that they were waiting to be let into class for the lesson to begin, only the lesson they had in mind involved death and dismemberment.

  Soon, everything they could lay their hands on was piled up to prevent those little monsters from getting in.

  Carole grabbed Nikki and held her close.

  “I’m sorry, baby. This is all my fault. I’m so very sorry.”

  Nikki shook, her face buried in her mother’s chest.

  They were kicking at the door and with every echoing boom, Nikki’s body gave a noticeable jolt. Carole held her tighter, wondering what in God’s name they were going to do. Those dead bodies piled in the other room. What had been the point of that? To keep their rotting corpses out of the way? Or were they using it as some sort of twisted grocery store? The thought was too sick to even contemplate. There wasn’t an ounce of civility left in them.

  A tiny light flickered in the recesses of Carole’s mind.

  She’d been wrong. It wasn’t that everyone who’d been affected by the event had suddenly turned into monsters. No, there was a far more Earthbound explanation for the ferocity she and Nikki had witnessed recently.

  The lights in the sky hadn’t simply erased everyone’s ability to perform simple tasks, it had wiped out a sense of right and wrong nurtured by parents and society as a whole. Was it any surprise then that the weak and the few unwilling to kill were the first to go? In this new world, it wasn’t the fittest or the most adaptable who survived. It was those willing to commit any act of savagery. Kill or be killed.

  And how many were you forced to kill at the airport?

  The children outside were still bashing at the door.

  Carole’s mind was racing with options when she noticed the poster on the wall at the back of the classroom. A picture of the northern lights and below it a caption:

  The Earth’s Magnetic Field is our Friend.

  She ran to the window. Outside, the clouds had begun to clear, and those twinkling blues and pinks were back, weaving to and fro like waves lapping against the shore. The connection was so obvious she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of it before. Whatever had cleared everyone’s brains had something to do with the magnetic field.

  A solar flare?

  No, those had happened in the past without such dramatic results.

  The door was beginning to move. They’d already figured out how to turn the handle, and now all they had to do was push hard enough against that desk and all the chairs Carole and Nikki had piled up, and they’d be in.

  Carole spotted a thick black drainpipe right outside the window than ran down from the roof. If there was enough time, maybe they could slide down.

  “Give me a hand,” she called out to Nikki.

  The two of them tried opening the window, but it wouldn’t budge. They’d probably been sealed shut to prevent kids from doing something dumb. Yes, how ironic since they were about to burst in here and do something even more stupid.

  Carole grabbed a chair and threw it against the glass. It bounced off, but not without causing the glass to spider web. Nikki was next, and now the edge of the web ran from edge to edge. Carole grabbed a boxy old-fashioned computer monitor that had fallen to the floor and paused.

  “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she told Nikki and heaved it. The sound of breaking glass was loud and for a moment all noise outside ceased. But only for a minute, then it was back, with a note of renewed desperation.

  The little bastards are worried lunch is about to get away.

  She and Nikki knocked out the largest pieces of glass and crawled out onto the ledge, and a frightening thought occurred to her.

  The shattering glass confused them, that’s why they stopped; they think and learn and are slowly becoming more efficient hunters.

  Carole wasn’t sure if Nikki would be able to do it, but her daughter held the pipe, cupped her feet around the edges and shimmied down.

  That’a girl!

  Carole was right behind her when she heard the kids charging in. Their angry faces appeared at the window, and a few of the hockey sticks flew past her as she landed on the soft grass below. Nikki was already half way to the SUV in the middle of the street.

  Carole got in, started the car, and glanced up toward the second-story classroom she and Nikki had only narrowly escaped from. But the blood streaked faces were now gone. Sprucewood Elementary was serene once again.

  “Look,” Nikki called out, pointing.

  Framed in the front entrance window was a child’s sweet face. The same one Carole had seen when they first pulled to a stop, still wearing what she thought was a July 4th T-shirt. Then she noticed something that hadn’t clicked before. The handful of cars stopped on the street directly in front of the school. She hadn’t paid attention to them before, but they had suddenly taken on an eerie new significance. Other survivors had stopped, just as she had, intent on saving the child. But the kid with the sad face was nothing more than bait, a lure to draw unsuspecting survivors into the school. The thought made chills race up Carole’s spine, and as she drove away, she couldn’t help but wonder how many others would enter Sprucewood to rescue that adorable child only never to be heard from again.

  Larry Nowak

  Salt Lake City, UT

  It took Larry another full day of driving and three refueling stops before he crossed into Utah. The wind had started picking up when he was around 50 miles from the border and only grew stronger as he drew closer to Salt Lake City and what he hoped would be a safe haven, surrounded by a very high wall. If it were a FEMA camp, that wall might be a fence topped with barbwire and watch towers at every corner.

  When he finally reached the city, Larry found a quiet, almost deserted landscape. Some streets proved impassable from fallen trees or power lines, damaged during the quake. No doubt the high winds rocking the Escalade back and forth had also done their part in making Larry’s life difficult.

  Protruding from the landscape like a glittering palace was the Grand America Hotel. A few of the top windows appeared to have shattered, but overall it seemed to be in excellent condition. A veritable fortress looming over the city.

  It was only as he’d turned right onto Main Street that Larry noticed the car’s compass was behaving strangely. By all accounts he should be heading North, toward the X on Bud’s map. The only survivor collection point he’d heard of to date. Surely as time went on, there would be more, but how long could one expect to sit around and wait for people to organize themselves and get the word out? Of course, it did seem rather soon after such a devastating worldwide catastrophe to be broadcasting the location of a safe haven. That thought had gnawed at him on occasion during this last part of the drive, where he’d been alone with the constant IV drip of doubt clouding what he knew was currently his only option. At least the one that made the most sense. Over the last few days he’d seen the kinds of barbarity the remnants of the U.S. population were capable of. Any notion of law and order had vanished almost at once, forcing Larry to call upon that part of himself he kept tucked away, just far enough out of reach to keep hidden, but never too far to call upon.

  Larry was on a country road now, and gravel crunched under the Escalade’s wheels, the leaves on the trees whipping back and forth violently. He glanced down at his map then back to the road. Ahead was a small, two-lane bridge that spanned the Green River and just beyond that, his destination.

  Larry rolled across the bridge slowly.

  His first impression was surprise.

  Just after the bridge he came to a multicolored sign that spanned the width of the gravel road, fastened to two metal poles. He read the three words on the sign several times, not entirely sure what they meant, or what sort of place he had come to.

  Welcome to Rainbowla
nd

  The letters were arched to resemble the curve of a rainbow.

  Larry’s confusion and disorientation was still strong when the third impression began to settle into his awareness.

  There weren’t any walls or fences topped with barbed wire as he’d hoped. He slowed the car to a crawl, studying the trailer homes lined up end to end on either side of the dirt road. Beyond that, nestled on the left, was a large, three-story, rectangular building. He had watched on the news back in 1993 as the ATF had invaded the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, killing dozens of religious nut jobs in the process. The building he was seeing in the distance looked a lot like that. Beige aluminum siding, white roof, tiny windows. Everything was very neat and angular. Was like someone had arrived with a ruler and laid out the plans using only rectangles. The Rainbowland sign he’d seen on his way in was the only thing that wasn’t a straight line.

  Larry stopped the car, but didn’t get out. In the distance, where the gravel road became a field of yellow grass, a tall, thin man appeared, wearing a flowing white gown. Behind him was a group of men, women, and children dressed in simple, earth-toned clothing. The males had brown shirts buttoned to the neck and blue cotton pants. The females were in similar colors, but instead of pants they wore blue or brown dresses that brushed the ground.

  You’ve got to be shitting me.

  The word “cult” kept flashing across Larry’s mind, over and over, before the truth of it sank in.

  Soon, the group of people arrived and stood before Larry’s truck. They were all smiling, and there was something so warm about the kindness on their faces. An almost naïve, childlike quality. Now Larry could see that the men all had beards and long hair, tied back into pony tails. The women, too, had long hair, and it whipped around in the wind.

  “Well, are you going to come say hello?” the man in the white robe said, and the others giggled and laughed, and Larry suddenly felt like he was some socially awkward teenage boy who hadn’t a clue how to behave around others. He opened the door slowly and stepped out of the car. The pain from the fullness of his bladder seemed rather dull right about now.