The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse

by Oday, William

  Now was as good a time as any to find out.

  He backed up from the wall and sliced the arc of the fatal funnel. Nothing. He sliced more of the arc. Still nothing.

  SHUCK SHUCK.

  The sawed-off barrel of a Remington 870 Tactical shotgun appeared from the yet hidden slice of the pie. “You picked a good day to die, you dumb son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A cold knot clenched in Mason’s stomach. He stared at the end of the barrel with the tunnel focus of a massive adrenaline dump. Through the crystal clear haze, he suddenly realized that he recognized the voice.

  “Juice, you left a few burrs on the muzzle. That’s a shit saw job.”

  Juice’s face appeared from around the corner and he broke into a wide grin. “Sarge, I almost blew your goddamn head off!”

  Mason swallowed hard and forced the feeling back into his legs. “Yeah, I’m really glad you didn’t, though.”

  Juice slapped him hard on the shoulder. “You look like shit, bro!”

  He was one to talk. The goatee he’d grown after returning to civilian life had once been a mere curiosity. Now it made him resemble a kung fu master without all the wrinkles.

  “Did you know you had a horse’s ass growing out of your chin?”

  He stroked it like it was a cat. “This? It’s my pride and joy. Helps me think.”

  "It's good to see you’re alive and well," Mason said. "How's Linda?"

  The light in Juice’s face sank beneath a cloud. “We're getting by. How is your family?"

  "Tough times with no end in sight, but we're together and alive. Considering the state of things, that’s something."

  "Right you are, Sarge. Listen, this isn’t the safest place to get caught up. Follow me."

  Juice spun on his heel and Mason followed. They walked into the guest bathroom at the end of the hall. Juice closed the door behind Mason and then stopped, waiting for something.

  "Why are we hanging out in the bathroom?" Mason asked.

  "Have you used this bathroom before?"

  "Yeah, I remember wandering back here for relief at that Christmas party two years ago."

  "And when you used the bathroom two years ago at the Christmas party, did you notice anything unusual about it?”

  “No.”

  “How about now?”

  Mason looked around. It was a fancy modern design. Flexible water tubes hung out of the wall where the sink had once been. It had been one of those faucets that spilled out like a waterfall into a clear glass sink. Apparently someone’s HGTV home needed it too. Large holes in the wall showed where they'd ripped the anchors out.

  "There's no place to wash your hands?"

  "Very funny," he said. "Anything else?"

  The toilet was still there. Apparently even a fancy crapper wasn't worth the average looter’s time. The shower stall to the left was one of those that had no door and a wall to keep the spray in.

  "I give up. Aside from it looking like it cost more than most kitchens, I don't see anything unusual."

  "Exactly." Juice turned and reached into the shower stall over to the recessed shelf in the tile wall. His fingers curled up into the overhang searching for something. Mason heard a click and a muffled whirring sound, like gears turning. Juice stepped back and looked at Mason with a broad grin. "Open sesame."

  With all that had happened, Mason didn’t think he’d ever be surprised again. He was.

  The tiled shower floor lifted. Sixty seconds later and the whole thing had rotated up revealing a set of stairs descending below.

  Juice smacked his shoulder. "Didn't expect that, did you?”

  "Can't say I did."

  "I knew the world would go to shit at some point. So I created this little emergency refuge for Linda and I. Follow me."

  “Where is she?”

  “Sleeping.”

  Mason followed him down the stairs making sure not to bump his head as he cleared the floor, now roof. They entered a large room with a couple of closed doors along the wall to the right. Juice tapped a button next to the stairs and the shower floor above slowly lowered into place. “Very secret agent. Very Juice Bond.”

  Juice laughed.

  Mason glanced around. Emergency bunker? This was a prepper’s palace. Six columns of heavy metal shelving units contained endless rows of supplies. Enough food, water, toilet paper, batteries, to last years. A long worktable covered with ordered piles of electrical equipment lined the left wall.

  At the far corner under the worktable sat a row of shiny silver appliances. Dishwasher, front loading washer and dryer. The missing refrigerator was squeezed between the far wall and the end of the work table. The lights on its front panel glowed blue.

  “Do those work?”

  “Wouldn’t be much of a refuge if they didn’t,” Juice replied.

  Mason shook his head. Amazing. Everyone forgot how utterly transformative automation was until it stopped working. Less than a week without power, and Beth was already getting cranky about laundry. He knew he’d be recruited to the task as soon as their bigger projects were finished.

  Juice walked over and picked up a crazy looking gizmo on the near end of the table. It had a spider web of wires looping in and out of circuit boards. A soldering gun sat next to it with the tip smoking.

  "Was just working on something when I heard you bumbling around upstairs."

  "I wasn't bumbling. I don't bumble."

  "You bumbled."

  Juice held up the device and Mason could tell he was about to launch into an extended explanation of whatever it was supposed to be. That would have to wait for another time.

  "Hey bro, sorry to show up without an invitation, but I need your help with something."

  Juice delicately set the device back on the worktable, obviously disappointed at not being able to dive into the details of his latest invention. "Anything, Sarge. You know that. I have what you call the life debt with you."

  Mason almost groaned. He'd heard Juice say that before. And even more painfully, he’d endured the explanation of the cinematic reference.

  "Don't go Star Wars on me now."

  "I still can't believe you’ve never seen A New Hope."

  "Was never my thing. And doesn't look like it’ll ever get a chance to be now."

  Juice’s face brightened. “Banish the thought! I’ve got it on my laptop. We can send it over to the flatscreen.” He pointed at an enormous TV on the wall. It was so big Mason hadn’t noticed it wasn’t the wall itself until now.

  "Another time."

  "Well, what can I do for you?"

  "I was hoping you could help me with a long-range communication system."

  "What do you need it for?"

  Mason related the highlights of Beth's plan and the necessity of it. It sounded no less insane coming out of his mouth then when he tentatively agreed to it after coming out of hers.

  "Sounds dangerous."

  Mason nodded. "Not many things aren't these days."

  "Well," Juice said. "The zoo is what, twenty miles as the crow flies?"

  "Near enough, yeah."

  Juice looked up at nothing in particular, murmuring to himself, tilting his head back and forth. Mason waited quietly. He'd seen Juice like this countless times back in the sandbox. Another minute or two of waiting and Juice snapped back to the present.

  "Yep, I think I can patch something together. I’m going to have to bounce it through a relay station here to pick up enough power, but it should work. It’ll take a half hour or so. Want a cold beer while you wait?"

  Cold.

  Beer.

  Mason wasn’t a beer in the morning kind of guy, but this might be the last cold one he ever had. It wasn’t even a choice, really.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mason glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past eight in the morning. Yep, a cold beer sounded like the closest thing to heaven that he was likely to find on earth. "Cold?"

  "Arctic."

>   "Yes," Mason said. "Like nothing else in the world."

  Juice chuckled and retrieved two beers from the futuristic refrigerator. “All of this is solar powered from panels I have up on the roof." He handed one to Mason.

  "Pliny the Elder?" Mason asked. "You're getting pretty cultured in your old age."

  "An ice cold Schlitz may have tasted like liquid caviar back in the sandbox. But here in civilization, it tastes like the watered-down piss that it is."

  "I'm not sure we qualify as civilization anymore."

  Juice tapped the neck of his bottle against Mason's. "All the more reason to enjoy a fine microbrew while we still can."

  Mason took a long, slow drink and enjoyed the bite of the hops as it slid over his tongue and down his throat. He finished the gulp and stared at the half-empty bottle. "Wow. As long as a man can drink a cold beer, there's still hope in the world."

  He looked over to see if Juice agreed but the eccentric tinkerer was already hard at work. The outside world had faded to black. Juice was like that. Artillery could be coming in danger close and Juice would only look up and swat it away like an annoying fly before returning to his work.

  Realizing he was no longer needed, Mason wandered the aisles of stocked shelves amazed at what his friend had squirreled away. Cases of wine stacked six high and three deep with probably ten bottles per case. Further down, a portion of one shelf held enough batteries to power a thousand Energizer bunnies for a thousand years.

  “Grab a bag and take whatever you want.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely, Linda and I won’t use all this stuff in a hundred years.”

  Mason spotted an ordered pile of brown paper bags. “Thanks. We can definitely use it.” He went about filling a number of bags, as much as he thought the cargo bike could hold in its saddle bags. As he shopped around, he noticed a surprising lack of drinking water. He looked through all six aisles and saw nothing more than a few cases of bottled water. There was no way that Juice had overlooked something so basic.

  "Mason, come hold this together for me." Juice handed him a collapsible antenna with exposed wires coming out the end. He held the exposed ends to the contact points on a radio. "Keep them right there."

  Mason took over while Juice retrieved a soldering gun and a roll of solder. "You could open up a Walmart with all the stuff you have in here."

  Juice shook his head as he started to melt the wires into place. “Don’t think so. I don’t sell at bargain-basement prices."

  White wisps of smoke curled up into the air as he worked.

  "One thing I don't see is enough water. Are you handling that?"

  Juice pulled off his safety goggles and grinned. "Astute observation. We have a 10,000 gallon water catchment system underneath the house. Even with the drought of the past several years, it's never gone below half full. It's sitting at around 7500 gallons right now. You'd be surprised how much 2000 square feet of roof surface can gather."

  "How much did that cost to install?"

  Juice winked. “Wasn't cheap. Hold still now while that cools."

  "Juice, tell me if I'm being nosy here, but… where’d you get the money for all this? I mean, I know you have a few patents. Is that what bought all this?"

  Juice’s eyes lit up."Yeah, for the most part. General Electric ended up licensing one of those patents for a manufacturing process. That paid millions."

  Mason shook his head. "Looks like I went into the wrong line of business."

  "Those patents are small potatoes compared to what I was working on before civilization decided to take a giant shit."

  Mason laughed. "Tell me you were working on a giant roll of toilet paper."

  "If only I'd had the foresight."

  "What was it then?"

  Juice rubbed his hands together. His eyes sparkled like a ten-year-old about to show off his favorite Christmas gift. "Personal aerial transport. PAT. It’s a she.”

  "You mean like a flying car or something?”

  “Not exactly. Smaller.”

  “A jet pack?”

  Juice pinched his brows together and grimaced. "Jet pack? What am I? An idiot?"

  "I think we both know that's not the case."

  "Exactly," he said as he checked the soldered connections. “That's gonna take another few minutes to set. Come take a look."

  They entered the second door on the right and entered a large room filled with a dizzying array of advanced electronic equipment. The stuff out on the workbench looked like Legos in comparison. If someone had told Mason a nuclear bomb was under construction, he wouldn't have ruled it out. In the center of the room, a large tan tarp covered what was presumably not a jet pack.

  "Prepare to witness the future," Juice said as he grabbed a handful of the cloth. “Or what would’ve been the future." He tugged the tarp off. It tumbled to the floor revealing a steel-framed half-cage that hugged the form of the intended occupant, much like the bottom half of an Egyptian coffin. Behind that were two large turbines about three feet across each. Shiny black housings encircled each propeller. It sat on skids like a helicopter. Two metal arms extended out and ended in joysticks. The left one had a small digital screen at the end.

  Juice stroked the smooth surface like it was his firstborn which, considering he didn’t have kids, maybe it was. "This baby was gonna change the world.” He looked down at the concrete floor and shook his head sadly. "And now it'll never see the light of day."

  "Looks a lot heavier than a jet pack," Mason said.

  “It is. But it’s infinitely more reliable and has ten times the range, too. The latest state-of-the-art fly by wire controls. Self stabilizing gyroscopic attitude mechanism.”

  “What does that mean in English?"

  "It means even an idiot like you could fly it without killing himself."

  "How did you plan on getting it out of here? I know it’s not making it through that doorway."

  Juice held up a finger without saying a word.

  "You're going to blow a hole in the ceiling?"

  "No need. See those controls on the wall over there?"

  Mason nodded.

  Juice then pointed to a fine line along the ceiling. "That seam is the edge of two panels that split apart and fully retract. That nearly featureless front yard you may have disparaged on the way in is for more than satisfying my distaste for lawn work.”

  "Makes for a nice skylight."

  "Perhaps it’s a little ahead of its time, but I had this bay built in anticipation of the technology making it mainstream. I bet every house would’ve had one of these within the next ten years."

  Mason didn't reply. He didn't think there was a chance in hell that would've been true. He'd heard the promise of flying cars from the age of four. And it was always just a few years away. But he didn’t see a point in raining on his nonexistent parade. “I’m sure it would've changed the world.”

  A scream echoed in from another room.

  Mason dropped his hand to his holster.

  Juice bolted for the door. "Linda! It's okay. I'm coming!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mason hustled after him expecting trouble. He followed him back into the main room and then to the closed door to their left. Juice threw it open and hurried inside. The trouble that Mason found was not what he expected.

  Linda cowered in a corner with her arms wrapped around her naked body. A bed sheet lay crumpled on the floor at her feet. She wept uncontrollably with a hand covering her face.

  Juice knelt beside her, and she jumped at his touch. "It's okay, baby. I’m here. It's okay."

  Mason's heart ached. He waited while Juice tried to calm and reassure her.

  The room was a complete mess. A total juxtaposition to the extreme order of the rest of the bunker. He remembered that Juice sometimes complained about Linda's natural state of messiness, but this was a whole other thing.

  A bed in the corner had sheets pulled off and piled on the floor. An open closet had a ra
ck full of empty hangers and a pile of clothes underneath. A plastic cup lay next to a puddle of what looked like spilled milk on the floor.

  Linda finally calmed down.

  "She okay?" Mason asked.

  His question drew her attention. She screamed and broke away from Juice and bounded into the closet on all fours. She cowered in a dark corner watching Mason with wide, unfamiliar eyes.

  He’d seen eyes like those before. The last time he’d seen them, they were trying to kill him.

  “Mason, get out!” Juice said. “Get out and shut the door!”

  “Sorry,” Mason replied as he hurried out. He waited by the workbench trying to think about anything other than what he knew to be true. After several minutes of failing effort, Juice emerged and closed the door behind him.

  All the happiness had drained from his face. His skin was waxy and hollowed out. He stumbled to a chair and collapsed. “It’s getting to the point where I’m not sure she recognizes me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, brother.”

  Juice looked up, his words coming out in a stuttering rhythm. “Why her? She was the most generous soul I’d ever met. She was everything. And now she’s turned into that.” Tears welled in his eyes and he curled forward as his body convulsed.

  Mason laid a hand on his back. “I’m so sorry.”

  Juice sniffed and wiped his eyes. He made an effort to straighten up and get his breathing under control. He plucked a tissue from a box on the table and blew his nose.

  Mason waited for him to compose himself. Besides, he didn’t know what else to say.

  Juice cleared his throat a few times and then chugged the nearly full bottle of beer he’d left on the table.

  “What happened?” Mason asked.

  Juice shook his head. “She got infected and turned into a delta.”

  “A delta?”