Primal Shift: Volume 2 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Read online

  Larry looked up at him without feeling an ounce of shame. “Foraging teams have been sent out, looking for anything they can get their hands on.”

  “Yes, I’m very well aware of that,” Timothy replied. “But it isn’t canned goods they’re finding anymore. For some reason, those have been vanishing, which means either there’s another colony of survivors that’s sprung up close by who’re stealing what’s ours, or it’s the Wipers. Security isn’t only about high walls and big guns, let me remind you.”

  Larry was shuffling through the inventory lists when he stopped. “I don’t need you to remind me of anything. If it weren’t for my walls and guns, this place woulda been overrun long ago.”

  Timothy crossed his arms. “Peter’s own son, Simon, was part of the latest foraging group. Do you know what they came back with?”

  Larry waved a hand dismissively. It was beginning to feel like those final depressing days when Herbalife was collapsing in all around him.

  “Rats and dogs,” Timothy said. “Is that what we’ve been reduced to?”

  “It’s food, isn’t it? Now that the world is empty of people, those four-legged bastards are scampering all over the place. They’ve become a real danger, you know. Spreading disease, forming into packs just like those ... ”

  “Wipers,” Timothy finished. “Yes, I know. Just keep in mind, Brother Larry, I stepped aside so you could make things safe here. That was your mandate.”

  “One more thing I don’t need to be reminded of.” Above him, Larry could hear the groan of the windmill. The kind of project he’d been championing since that early conversation with Simon. Sure, it mighta been Dana who came up with the details, but it didn’t take a genius to realize they needed a way to pump water up from the river and power the compound. Assembling the battery bank they’d salvaged from the innumerable cars littering the roads was the easy part. The wiring wasn’t a big deal either. Was mostly a question of ripping what they needed from the homes nearby.

  Finding an inverter. That was the real bitch.

  They were also lucky to have two electricians. Well, one really. The other was mostly a jack-of-all-trades. Funny how in this new reality, all those fancy university degrees weren’t good for more than wiping your ass with. Soon, it would be the tradesmen who would rule the world.

  Timothy was still standing over him, like he was waiting for an answer. Didn’t seem to matter that he’d turned this struggling little backwater into probably the best functioning survivor’s colony in the whole country ... at least what was left of it.

  From his breast pocket, Timothy produced a piece of paper and laid it on the table in front of Larry.

  The page contained a list of vegetables. Cabbage, lettuce, beets, turnips ...

  “What’s this? Planning on hitting a grocery store?”

  “Very funny. No, it’s plans for a fall harvest. If we can find the seeds and get planting right away – ”

  “Plant them where? There isn’t enough room within the walls for that sorta thing, and don’t tell me we can plant outside the walls ‘cause all that’ll do is attract scavengers.”

  “We grow them inside the enclosure,” Timothy replied. “But it’ll mean tearing down some parts of the wall at the back and wrapping it around the field.”

  Larry stood up. “You’re shitting me!”

  “Do you have another solution? Because I’d love to hear it.”

  “We could take down those tents and start moving people into the gymnasium.”

  Timothy was shaking his head. “You put that many people in an enclosed space and you’re just begging for an epidemic. Each of those tents can be outfitted with wood burning stoves.”

  Tearing down part of the wall when they were so close to completing it was a disaster. Already, he’d commissioned all hands on deck and practically driven the colonists into the ground to get this far. But Larry was beginning to see he would be screwed either way. Maybe Timothy had a point, even if he hadn’t stated it in quite these terms. Even now, the world was always an empty belly away from revolution.

  “There’s one last thing I’d like to bring to your attention,” Timothy added. There was a smug look on Timothy’s face, one Larry didn’t like one bit.

  “With you there’s always one more thing. What is it?”

  “The oath you took when you first became leader.”

  Larry tried to play dumb. “Oath?”

  “To step down once the colony was safe. For the most part, you’ve done a great job, Brother Larry, as I knew you would, but I want you to know that that time is fast approaching.”

  Dana

  Lou poked his head into the trailer that was Dana’s new sheriff’s office.

  “We got ourselves another problem with you-know-who,” he said, sporting that characteristic Southern drawl that had won Dana over the first time they met. She brought the heavy tread of her boots off the desk, opened the drawer, and removed her SIG. She checked to see if the pistol was loaded and slid it into the holster that hugged her leg.

  In spite of Romeo’s impressive record on Call of Duty, to say his skills as a deputy were poor was a serious understatement. Wasn’t long before she approached the people she thought would be perfect for the job. She needed three men who were honest, loyal, and more important, people who knew their way around firearms – real firearms, not their electronic counterparts maneuvered with joysticks and buttons. Lou, his son Ethan, and the Wyoming farm boy, Tanner, had come to mind right away, and it hadn’t taken more than five seconds for each of them to say yes. Problem was Larry didn’t want her to get rid of Romeo. Said maybe the boy needed a little more time. Eventually, she settled on a workaround. Keep the kid on as a part-time deputy. That way, she wouldn’t be left completely high and dry if, God forbid, anything happened to Lou or the other two.

  ‘Course, the conversation with the kid hadn’t gone over particularly well. Mostly ‘cause being downgraded to part-time deputy meant he would now be on work detail, just like everyone else. Seemed like Romeo and hard work really didn’t get along. And that was at the heart of why Lou had come to fetch her. Chances were better than even that Romeo had been caught skipping work detail again. There was lots to build, and New Jamestown needed every able-bodied person they could find.

  The draconian punishments Larry had instituted for shirking work detail was the part of the job she’d really come to despise. A single strike resulted in the loss of daily rations. A second strike meant the perpetrator was handcuffed to the pole of shame with a sign reading: Slacker, strung around their neck. Romeo had already gone through both of those and was in the final stages of having his part-time deputy status removed completely. You couldn’t very well command respect from the community after you’ve ridden the pole of shame. But it was the punishment for committing a third strike which was, for many, the most frightening of all: banishment. With nothing more than a few stale biscuits, you were sent beyond the wall and toward certain death. The Wipers were out there, drawing closer and closer everyday. Nor were they the same mindless brutes who stormed in here with Jeffereys more than a month ago. Guards in the towers were usually the ones to spot them, spying on the compound from the tree line. Watching for now, but surely taking mental notes and reporting back. But it wasn’t just the spying that made it clear they were evolving. It was the way their comrades would retrieve the dead and wounded, sometimes under fire.

  The defenses Larry had championed were perhaps the only thing keeping them alive, no doubt about that. But being tasked with punishing those who didn’t work, some of them simply suffering from exhaustion, was just plain cruel. Wasn’t a week ago that a man with a broken arm named Alistair was found resting in his tent. Larry had personally asked Dana to issue a first strike.

  “But he’s got a broken arm,” She’d protested.

  “Yes,” Larry replied. “But the other one works just fine. Now strike him.”

  And she’d carried the weight of that one for the rest of the day. Now,
it was Romeo’s turn. Except he didn’t have the luxury of a broken arm. His vice was sheer laziness.

  As Dana arrived at the worksite along the rear of the compound, she found Lou there, hands on his hips. Facing him, Romeo stood, arms crossed over his chest defiantly, and Dana only caught the tail end of what the kid was saying, but it was enough to know he was lying. For Romeo, she’d come to understand, if his lips were moving, lies were coming out.

  “ ... been here the whole time, I swear,” Romeo pleaded.

  A cult member named Brother Tristan was shaking his head no. “He missed his entire morning shift, that’s all I know.”

  “That’s bullshit, I was here.”

  Dana could tell he was lying, the way she could tell Alvarez was lying when he swore up and down he hadn’t killed Keiths. But the rules had to be obeyed. An able-bodied mouth to feed that didn’t pull his own weight put everyone’s life at risk. The power of life or death was in Dana’s hands. In this case, it was Romeo’s life. The kid was annoying, sure, and a slacker, perhaps from a long line of slackers. In the Old World, maybe he could have sailed through life eating Cheezies and playing video games. But that world was gone, and so, too, was the luxury of riding off of society’s coattails.

  “Cuff him,” she told Lou.

  Tears started rolling down Romeo’s cheeks. “You’re banishing me? Lemme talk to Larry.”

  Lou was patting Romeo down, searching through his pockets, when he came out with two thin pieces of metal. He held them up for Dana to see.

  “What’re you doing with a lock pick Romeo?” she asked.

  “That’s not mine,” he tried to tell her.

  Lou handed them to Dana who examined them. “Take him to the trailer,” she told Lou, but as they headed out, it was clear Romeo wasn’t done.

  Romeo started to resist before Lou quickly overpowered him. “You tell Larry that if he doesn’t want his dirty laundry laid out for everyone to see,” Romeo shouted, “then he better do something about this.”

  A group of workers stripping the bark off a log had come to see what was causing the commotion.

  They could still hear him ranting and raving as Lou dragged him to the trailer. She would have to fill out a report and inform Larry that Romeo would soon be sent beyond the wall. That last thing Romeo kept shouting, about airing Larry’s dirty laundry. Dana couldn’t help wondering if those were simply the desperate pleas of a terrified kid. Or an indication that New Jamestown was already becoming corrupted.

  Finn

  Lou was hauling off a crazed teenage boy when Finn arrived. The kid was shouting for Larry, that he needed to talk to him, that Lou and Dana were trying to kill him.

  “What was all that about?” Finn asked.

  She was still staring at them as they shrank in the distance. “Oh, nothing, just someone skipping work detail.” Dana glanced over and did a double take. “You’re awake.”

  “Alive and well and mostly in one piece.” Finn glanced down at his crutches. “Legs are still a big stiff from lying down for so long, but I can already feel my strength returning.”

  “You look thin,” she said.

  “Yeah, so do you.” Finn’s eyes dropped to the gun on her hip. “A lot’s changed since I’ve been out.”

  The workers who had gathered were beginning to disperse, and Dana nodded to them as they left.

  “It has,” she said. “And much of it for the better.”

  “I never thought I’d see cult members carrying rifles, had to scratch my eyes when I saw that one.”

  She smiled, and deep lines formed at the sides of her mouth. The thought occurred to him then that there probably wasn’t much time for fun and games for Dana now that she’d become sheriff.

  “I guess that’s part of Larry’s magic. He’s a salesman born and bred.”

  There was something heavy on her mind, and Finn couldn’t tell what it was. “Listen, I wanna thank you for what you did.”

  For a moment, Dana almost looked embarrassed. “It was nothing ... ”

  “Don’t be modest, if it wasn’t for you I’d have been splattered against those facility walls.”

  Her thumbs dug into the loop of her belt. “What I meant was that it wasn’t something I’d planned. It just happened. I didn’t go there intending to be a hero; I went there to get Larry’s C4 back. Catching Bud in the middle of a double homicide was what you might call a combination of luck and ... ”

  “Combat experience. Nikki told me what happened, said the whole compound was talking about it for days.”

  “Basic training kicked in, I guess,” Dana said with a touch of self-deprecation, and Finn could tell she was trying hard to be modest.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Who, Bud?”

  Finn nodded.

  “Locked away, somewhere safe.”

  “Lemme guess,” Finn laughed. “He’s at an undisclosed location. Shouldn’t I get a chance to have a few words with him? After all, he did try and kill me.”

  She didn’t answer him right away. Not before he could ask a question he might already know the answer to. “I know Johnson’s dead.”

  Dana’s fists clenched her belt. “By the time I got to you ... there was nothing I could do. Looked like one of the bullets severed her spine. I think that even if she’d made it, rolling around in a wheelchair is no kind of life in a world like this.” Her hand came out from her belt just long enough to make a wide arc, and Finn wasn’t sure if she was referring to the world outside or the wall that hemmed them in.

  “So, what about that chat with Bud?”

  “I gotta run it by Larry first.”

  “Geez, he’s really got this place by the nuts.”

  Dana nodded, and the way her gaze suddenly shifted, Finn wasn’t sure if he’d said something wrong. Maybe speaking your mind was no longer allowed here in New Jamestown. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just that Larry’s done a lot for us.”

  “He has, no doubt about that. But it’s sorta like asking a fox to guard the hens, don’t you think? It’s great for the fox, but not so good for the hens.”

  A voice from behind: “What’s not so good for the hens?” Finn turned to find Timothy standing behind him, a beaming cult smile plastered on his face. Their strict adherence to nonviolence might have been thrown out the window, but it appeared at least some things hadn’t changed.

  Dana nodded and excused herself and Finn watched her leave, wondering about that burden he noticed weighing her down.

  Timothy’s hand was on Finn’s shoulder, and even the man’s fingers looked thinner. “I trust you’re feeling better.”

  “Nothing a monthlong coma can’t fix, right,” and the two men laughed, but even as they did, something about the tone of Timothy’s voice reminded him of a dream. The one he’d had as his body struggled to heal itself. An image that was now etched in stark detail. The head of Tevatron’s research wing, Thomson, not doing much to hide his certainty that Finn was a cold-blooded murderer.

  “Everything OK?” Timothy asked.

  Finn blinked hard. “I guess when you’re out that long, the mind can’t help dredging up the past.”

  “A memory?” Timothy asked. Someone must have told him that most of Finn’s past was a foggy wasteland.

  “Yes. Some new bits, but nothing Nikki hadn’t already mentioned.”

  Timothy furrowed his brow. Clearly, no one had filled him in on the girl’s abilities.

  “Nikki can see things,” Finn said.

  “Are you referring to psychic phenomena?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. She can’t see the future, only the past. But she isn’t plucking it out of midair like those psychic hotlines I saw billboards for in Vegas. She can see lost memories.”

  Timothy’s face was a mask of shock and surprise. But it looked like more than a touch of understandable skepticism. It looked like something he’d been waiting for.

  Alvarez

&nbs
p; Anita peered into the pit, the grin on her face so wide even Alvarez couldn’t help but smile. Down below, men, his men, were swinging large rock mallets to flatten the floor of what would soon become his new arena. A sizeable lawn next to the hotel parking lot proved the ideal site, and no sooner had the idea popped into his head than he had commissioned Jeffereys to find someone to lay the plans and begin construction. Protected by a fence so the combatants couldn’t suffer a change of heart and attempt to escape, the arena also featured tunnels on opposite ends from which the fighters would emerge, both leading to holding areas where they’d be prepped and outfitted. All of this was dug underground and supported from collapse by 6-inch support beams. Projects such as this were only one of many luxuries Jeffereys and his nose for finding survivors had allowed. This particular enabler was an engineer named John Snow. He and his family had been found hiding in the basement of his rather palatial home. A fortuitous swim in their indoor pool at the time of The Shift had shielded him and much of his family from the effects. The research Alvarez had done over at Tevatron, back when he went by the name of Thomson, had taught them that even a thin layer of liquid surrounding the skin was enough to shield against at least some of the magnetic forces. After their capture, convincing John to draw the plans for the arena hadn’t been harder than reminding him how much he loved his two lovely daughters and his sickly wife, suffering as she was from Type 2 diabetes. He wanted all of them kept safe and sound, didn’t he? ‘Course he did. And so John had done as he was told, and before long here they were, Anita glaring through the arena’s chain-link fence and down into the depths with pure delight. Now that he had his gladiator pit, all that was missing were the gladiators. Alvarez was still admiring Anita’s beauty when a thought popped in. This will sure beat the hell out of watching television.

  But John wouldn’t get all the credit. No, sir. None of this would have been possible if his brutes hadn’t been there to do the back-breaking work. Those drones were the real unsung heroes. Then there were the slaves Jeffereys had captured from Rainbowland. This last month, they’d been hard at work, helping his men relearn many of the basics they’d forgotten. First, language and sanitation. Then, weapons and driving. And the progress had been spectacular. Soon, he began sending them throughout the city to scavenge all the canned goods they could get their hands on.