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

  “I what?” Brooks’ words weren’t making any sense. “It was only the boy I ... ”

  Brooks was shaking his head.

  The cops were gonna throw the book at him. Thomson could see that clearly now, but somehow the thought of saving the human race from extermination was a price he’d been willing to pay.

  Beside Thomson’s bed was a hand mirror. He wanted to see the extent of the damage Mrs. Kesler had inflicted on him before he had ... before he had made her stop.

  Thomson reached for the mirror, felt the cuffs dig into his wrists. He used his fingers to inch the handle into his grasp. The bandages were the first things he saw, wrapped around the top of his head like a turban. Then the dried blood at the top of his skull, and he knew that was where his laptop must have cracked his head open. But the mark on his cheek was what caught his eye. A long patch of discolored skin, pink and smooth, it looked like a burn mark. The same one he had seen on Donald’s face. The room started to spin, and suddenly Thomson became aware of something dark writhing inside his guts. He wasn’t alone anymore.

  He had thought by strangling the boy that he could beat the Grim Reaper, but he had been wrong, terribly wrong. That thing had been right all along. There was no way to stop it, and now, when the world died, Thomson knew that he would be the one who pulled the trigger.

  PRIMAL SHIFT 1: Collapse

  Some Helpful Definitions

  Procedural memory:

  Remembering how to perform a learned skill (i.e.: riding a bike).

  Declarative memory:

  Recalling past experiences or information.

  Retrograde amnesia:

  The most common form of amnesia which involves the loss of declarative memories gained before an injury, trauma, or the onset of a disease. Therefore, learned skills are retained (i.e.: reading, driving, etc.), but the subject will not recall how those skills were acquired.

  Alzheimer’s disease:

  The slow erosion of both procedural and declarative memories.

  Subject: Unknown

  Date: Unknown

  Location: Unknown

  Inside the empty room, the capsule split open, releasing a torrent of pink liquid. With it came a man, his nearly naked body washing up against the wall. He rolled onto his stomach where he lay coughing and spluttering, trying to breathe. It sounded as if he were drowning. Already, the amniotic fluid that had rushed from the capsule was retreating toward the narrow space beneath the door. The man propped himself up on one elbow and vomited lungfuls of the same pink liquid, drawing in fresh oxygen to replace the fluid exiting his system. He wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and noticed the black tattoo. Eight numbers in a neat little row: 92574301.

  What those numbers might mean he didn't have a clue, nor could he recall what the hell he was doing there, lying on a cold, hard floor clad in a pair of soaking-wet underwear.

  A single memory dangled before him. An open field with tall grass, the height of a man's chest. The sun, bright and blinding, and it bathed him in warm, nurturing light. He felt a calming peace linger in his body as he cradled the memory, the same one he’d been dreaming about inside the capsule, before it tossed him out onto the cold, hard floor.

  He enjoyed a nice cold beer. He knew that much, but he couldn’t say what brand or whether he preferred it in a glass or in a bottle. It was only the sensory memory of the brew rolling over his tongue and down his throat that he could recall. What he also knew was that it tasted a hell of a lot better than the pink crap still floating around in his mouth. He spat, thinking about that cold beer, and that was when he realized how much of his past had simply vanished. His own name, for example. He couldn't remember what it was, although he knew he surely had one. It was the strangest feeling, as though someone had reached into his mind and stolen all of his memories, only to leave as residue the very imprint on his personality that those memories had created.

  Slowly, he rose on unsteady legs, struggling to make sense of this strange new environment. The concrete room around him was small and dimly lit by emergency lighting. The most prominent object in the room was the capsule: a smooth-edged coffin standing on end, with a mass of wires trailing up into the ceiling. A hatch at the bottom was open, and pooled around it was a puddle of that pink crap he’d barfed up a minute ago.

  The man scanned his fingers in the dim light. They looked pruned. How long had he been stuck in that black box, his lungs filled with disgusting goo?

  A thread of smoke tickled his nose.

  Something was burning.

  He glanced around and spotted a yawning crack in the wall. His eyes followed it all the way to the ceiling, and that's when he heard the faint sound of a siren.

  Where the hell am I?

  He scanned the tattoo and the rest of his body for clues, and he finally found one stitched into the band of his boxer briefs.

  FINN

  A name. His name? He wasn't sure, but it sure beat the crap out of the other one he'd found: Fruit of the Loom.

  Finn heard the sound of rumbling only a second before the room began to shake violently. His legs were too weak to keep him balanced, and he slammed up against the wall.

  Without warning, a giant slab fell from the ceiling, crushing the upright coffin he'd been trapped in not less than a minute before. Chunks of plastic sprayed him in the face as the concussion from the falling debris knocked him to the ground.

  He stood with some difficulty, his body white with the concrete dust that was swirling through the room, making it hard to breathe.

  Wherever the hell he was, he couldn't stay here. Not if he wanted to live.

  Another slab fell against the door, pinning it shut. There was some kind of earthquake or explosion, and if he didn’t get out now, this room would soon become his crypt.

  He peered up through the hole in the ceiling. Wisps of light filtered in from the opening. If he couldn’t go through the door, he’d go through the ceiling.

  Finn climbed onto one of the fallen concrete blocks, his legs still shaking, sharp bits of gravel and rock biting into his bare feet. He was higher now and could see a narrow shaft through the concrete and something on the other side. A room or part of a hallway.

  Grasping at the protruding edge, he pulled himself up and swung a leg over the lip. The muscles in his arms and abdomen quivered violently, begging him to stop. Clenching his teeth through the lactic acid burning in his muscles, Finn spotted a metal rod inside the hole. He grasped it and pulled himself up and into the narrow shaft. If another quake hit right now he’d probably be squished flatter than a crepe.

  The soft light ahead gave him hope, and Finn scrambled to pull himself forward.

  Soon, his fingers were curled around the outside rim. He was nearly there. Peering down, his mind registered that he was about to make an 8-foot drop, headfirst, with nothing but his hands to break his fall. But staying here or turning back wasn’t an option. Finn pushed himself out and tucked his head, rolling his body and landing in a crouched position.

  He stood and dusted himself off, surprised that he hadn’t broken his neck and positively shocked that he had managed to land on his feet.

  There you go, Finn, maybe you were in the circus.

  He doubted it very much, but the thought still managed to cause a smile to spread across his face.

  Looking about him, Finn saw that the hallway was beat to all hell. Pipes and wires hung from the soft paneled ceiling like black intestines. Shattered cinderblocks were scattered everywhere. A trail of smoke snaked out from a room in the distance.

  Thirty yards away, Finn spotted the body of a man, hunched forward as if in prayer. The man was wearing a lab coat covered in blood and grime. Finn drew closer, and as he did, he realized he was mistaken. The man in the dirty doctor's coat wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t praying. He was digging, tearing at the ground, his fingers covered in blood.

  Finn’s left hand had been waving, now it stopped and dropped to his side, unsure. “Buddy, you all
right?”

  The man suddenly turned, glaring at him. His eyes didn't look normal.

  He was licking the blood that dripped from his fingers, his eyes locked firmly on Finn. But something about his glare and the way the man was acting seemed a hell of a lot more feral to Finn than it did frightened. Sometimes people in shock did strange things, but this had to be one for the books. Without dropping his gaze for more than a second, Finn reached down and scooped up a piece of broken pipe that lay at his bare feet. The man grunted as he rose to his full height, the way gorillas sometimes do as a warning against threats. Something about the way this guy was standing, hunched forward, chest out, told Finn he was about to attack. Finn could feel his legs shaking under him, as much out of fear as out of weakness. His hair was still slick with that pink crap. Who knows how long he’d been soaking in that liquid coffin, pruning like a worm in a tequila bottle. And now here he was, about to be attacked by monkey boy. He took a step back. If he was right and the guy in the white lab coat was ready to start clawing at him with those mashed up fingers the way he’d been clawing at the floor, Finn hoped to high hell he had enough strength to defend himself.

  Dana Hatfield

  3:00 p.m. (PST), July 4th, 2017

  San Francisco Bay, CA

  The call about the floater had come in less than five minutes ago.

  Dana Hatfield held on to one of the side rails as the Coast Guard 47-MLB (Motor Life Boat) sped toward the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. High winds meant the Bay was particularly choppy that afternoon, and the craft bobbed and weaved as it cut its way through the waves. Dana glanced at the towering structure in the distance as they approached. It was one of the world’s longest suspension bridges, though few people knew that in 1937, 11 men had died building it. Ten of them at once, after a section of scaffolding gave way and sent them tumbling through the safety netting below. Hard to believe that since then, close to 2,000 people had voluntarily ended their lives by leaping over the edge.

  Dana took a deep breath, savoring the salty air and the strong wind buffeting her closely cropped dark hair.

  She hadn’t joined the Coast Guard with the intention of collecting dead bodies; suicide victims no less. Floaters was the rather ungracious name they were given. Not that she had much choice in the assignment. If every sailor got to choose their posting, dead bodies would be washing up on shore at least twice a week. It didn’t matter to her commanding officer that her own brother, Gregory Hatfield, had taken his life on this very spot less than five years earlier.

  “It might be therapeutic,” her CO had suggested in a hushed tone. Keiths was his name, and he was the kind of CO you wanted to please, because you hated the look of disappointment on his face when you let him down.

  But the truth was she was in the Coast Guard, not the Ice Capades, and she took that very seriously. Damn right she didn’t like the assignment, not one bit, but she did as she was told. Hell, there was a ton of stuff about life that she didn’t like. But obedience was all that separated an ordered world from chaos. Keiths had taught her that.

  Still, she always reserved a special place in her heart and mind for the memory of her brother and the close bond they had shared.

  Gregory had come back from a second Marine tour in Afghanistan. He’d seemed normal enough, if not a bit tired and withdrawn, but at the time, nobody knew that something deep inside of him had been broken.

  And that’s how they had found her Gregory. Floating in the Bay, his body shattered from the impact with the water.

  It was amazing how few people understood the grisly reality of suicide by bridge. The average Joe compared it to taking a jump off a really high diving board or flying with the angels, when in reality, it was like hitting a brick wall at 80 mph. When the body hit the water, inertia caused the organs to keep going, tearing them loose. Broken bones were common. Fractured skulls, sternums, pelvises. Ever since starting in retrieval less than a year ago, she’d already seen dozens of victims, and almost every one of them looked like their bodies had been broken on a medieval rack. The few lucky enough to survive the fall drowned in a matter of minutes, since their bodies were far too traumatized to be able to swim. Frothy mucus bubbles at the nose was usually a dead giveaway that a jumper had drowned.

  A shout rang out from Stratton, the coxswain. “Floater, dead ahead.”

  Stokes, the helmsman, set a course.

  An MLB had a crew of four, which meant that Dana did the retrieving, and Coons, standing next to her, acted as medic. Normally, after Dana did her job of snagging the body, Coons would help pull it on board and begin administering CPR. Coons’ one claim to fame was that he’d revived a kicker, although in all the time Dana had been on this assignment, the truth was they were a rarer sight than giant squid. Besides, Coons had a tendency to sling bullshit on a regular basis.

  As the boat slowed, Dana leaned over the side and peered ahead searching for the body.

  “See it,” she shouted. “Eleven o’clock. Come about.”

  She could already tell from the muscular build and the short bobbing hair that it was a man. They came alongside him, and Dana swung an arm down and grabbed a hold of the light jacket he was wearing. A second later Coons was by her side, pulling the man onboard by the arm. Dana turned to tell him to ease off, he was about to rip that arm right out of its socket; the words froze in her throat when she noticed the sky fill with the strangest lights she’d ever seen.

  Beside her, sea water shot out of the dead man’s mouth as he started coughing and shrieking. He was alive – a real-life kicker – but no sooner had the realization hit her than Dana heard the burst from high up in the atmosphere. The concussion struck her body a moment later, sending her tumbling headfirst into the water.

  She came up splashing. The Bay was cold even in summer. Her training had prepared her for an eventuality such as this, and she quickly grabbed hold of the guide rail at the back of the boat and fought her way out of the water. She was surprised that Coons hadn’t been right there to help pull her back on board. That was standard procedure, but what surprised her even more was the state of things on board the MLB when she finally got to her feet. The kicker lay flat on his stomach, screaming, and in a corner where they kept the spare life vests was Coons, his hands over his ears looking as if he suddenly didn’t have a clue where he was.

  Above, on the MLB’s open bridge, Stratton and Stokes were tearing at one other as though they had suddenly become mortal enemies.

  The dunk in the Bay hadn’t lasted longer than a few seconds but somehow, in that time, all hell had broken loose.

  “Coons,” she yelled. “What the hell is going on?”

  Coons looked up at her with a stupefied expression on his face.

  Dana went and shook him. “Coons!”

  No one was home.

  She climbed up onto the open bridge just as Stratton and Stokes, still locked in battle, went tumbling off the side. She rushed to the safety railing, but all she saw was a thin layer of foam.

  They’d sunk like a pair of stones. On the deck lay a pair of life vests, discarded or torn off during the struggle. She couldn’t tell which.

  Then came the rumbling sound. Low at first, but Dana recognized it instantly. The unmistakable sound of an earthquake.

  The Golden Gate began to moan and creak above them, under the violent onslaught of geologic forces. The water all around her quivered and frothed as unbelievable surges of energy were released from below.

  Barely a second later, the bodies began to fall. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Loud, piecing screams followed shortly after that by the slapping sound of flesh hitting water, kicking salty spray high into the air. She looked up. The Golden Gate outlined against a backdrop of what Dana could only describe as the northern lights.

  Weren’t those only visible at night and high up in the Arctic?

  Oh, but the bridge didn’t appear to be collapsing.

  With an ear-shattering boom, the body of woman with long blonde
hair crashed onto the ship’s foreword storage compartment; the impact made a sickening noise.

  Dana screamed and ran for the helm.

  She had to get the MLB out of here before they took another direct hit. She didn’t have the faintest idea if it were the earthquake or the weird lights in the sky, but somehow, everyone in San Francisco had suddenly gone insane.

  The Cartright family

  4:00 p.m. (MST), July 4th, 2017

  On board Flight 317, Salt Lake City International Airport, UT

  The plane was pulling back from the gate at the Salt Lake City International Airport, and Carole Cartright couldn’t shake the strange feeling that something wasn’t right. The feeling itself was odd, given that they were about to embark on a weeklong stay with relatives in Dallas. She’d taken an aisle seat, as she always did when they travelled. That way, if the kids needed something, she could get up without disturbing everyone around them. Fifteen-year-old Nikki and 13-year-old Aiden were peering out the plane window.

  Aiden turned to his mom, his thin fingers brushing through a set of bangs he thought made him look like Justin Bieber. “Hardly feels like we’re moving.”

  Carole forced a smile. “Just wait till we get rolling down the runway. You’ll feel it then.”

  Nikki rolled her eyes and turned on her iPod. Her little brother’s enthusiasm bored her, but lately it was as though life itself had lost its glimmer.

  A flight attendant checking seatbelts stopped when she saw Nikki using her iPod. She leaned over and touched the girl’s shoulder.

  “Can you please stow that away until after takeoff?” The request was followed by a polite if mechanical-looking smile.

  Nikki sighed and switched it off. The flight attendant continued on, and no sooner was her back turned, than the iPod reappeared.

  “She asked you to turn that off, Nikki,” Carole said. “It’s a safety precaution. Do you want to be responsible for crashing the plane on takeoff?”

  “Maybe.”