Edge of Survival Box Set 1

by William Oday

  She raised her arm straight into the air. “I’m talking Man of Steel. Hours and hours of pleasure. A real human dildo.”

  Beth’s jaw dropped open.

  “Good to know,” Mason said. “Thanks for the personal history.”

  Iridia looked between him and Beth. She frowned. “Oh no! Are you two having a problem with Little Willy?”

  Mason nearly blushed. “His name is not Little Willy.”

  “Little Jimmy?”

  “He’s not little! Why Little? He’s not little.”

  “I saw you naked.”

  “What?” Beth said.

  “After finding the neighbors.” She trailed off and a distant look crept across her face.

  “Oh, right,” Beth said.

  “You can’t count that,” Mason said. “That water was freezing cold!”

  Iridia seemed to accept the excuse.

  Not that it was an excuse. It was a reason. A biologically proven one. Why did he have to explain it?

  “So what’s the problem down there?” Iridia asked.

  “There’s no problem down there!” Mason replied.

  “Oh, why are you taking Viagra then?”

  Mason flung the bottle to the kitchen counter like it was a venomous snake. “I’m not taking Viagra. And can we please stop talking—”

  “I’m not the one that brought it up,” Iridia said.

  Clyde broke into a desperate coughing spell and the topic thankfully died. Beth wiped the snot and saliva dripping from his nose and mouth. She turned back to Mason when the spell subsided. “We have to get antibiotics today. Today.”

  “I understand. But how? I don’t think we’re going to find a pharmacy that isn’t cleaned out.”

  A muscle in Beth’s jaw rippled. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

  22

  That wasn’t the most reassuring way to pitch an idea. Mason didn’t know whether to stop listening now or wait for her to actually say it and then stop listening.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The zoo,” Beth replied.

  “The Los Angeles Zoo?”

  “No, the San Diego Zoo. Of course, the Los Angeles Zoo.”

  Iridia poured herself a cup of coffee. “I love the San Diego Zoo. We did a shoot there once. Have you ever had a fourteen foot snake wrapped around your shoulders?”

  Mason and Beth ignored her hoping she might take the hint and enjoy her morning joe somewhere else.

  She wasn’t good with hints.

  “No? Well, it’s terrifying. My nipples were rock hard the entire time!” She took a sip of coffee and stared off into a past that only she cared anything about.

  “Why the zoo?” Mason asked.

  Iridia’s brows knotted together in confusion. “Well, where else are you going to find a gigantic snake?”

  Mason squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m talking to Beth.”

  “My lab,” Beth said. “The medical wing is behind locked metal doors that only a few people have the keys for. And the medicine itself is locked in a security cabinet that only I have the key for. It’s the one place that’s guaranteed to still be stocked.”

  From the sound of it, she was probably right. There probably were antibiotics right where she said they’d be.

  “Absolutely not,” Mason said.

  “Don’t ‘absolutely not’ me,” Beth said.

  “It’s too far. Too dangerous. No.”

  Beth raised an eyebrow at him. She wasn’t the type that surrendered a position by force. It just made her dig in harder, even if she wouldn’t have otherwise cared. He loved that about her, but it was also exasperating at times.

  Mason held up a hand for parley. “Look, think about what you’re saying. Theresa and I went less than two miles last night and ran into serious trouble. You’re talking going all the way over to the east side. That’s twenty miles!”

  “Twenty-five miles. I rode it every day, each way.”

  “That’s insane.”

  Iridia waved her hand in the air as she parted the space between them and headed for the dining room. “Your vibes are killing my morning cup. And it’s bad enough already.” She swept out of the room with vague annoyance, like royalty leaving behind squabbling commoners.

  “Listen to me, Mason.” Beth’s tone softened. “I know it’s dangerous. I know. But Clyde is going to die without antibiotics.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I can’t let that happen. I promised Jane I’d protect him. Keep him safe.”

  Mason didn’t want him to die either. And he knew how much Jane, Clyde’s mother, had meant to both Beth and Theresa. But knowing that didn’t equate to him agreeing with her ridiculous plan. Before he could reply, she continued.

  “And it’s not just about Clyde. It’s about our family too. All of us. Elio will take the last of his round today. That’s it. What happens the next time one of us gets an infected cut or scrape?”

  Mason didn’t know how to respond.

  “We’ve done our best, but general hygiene is slipping. And that’s saying nothing about the contaminants in the outside world. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, one of us is going to need them too.”

  Mason remembered the conditions he’d endured in Fallujah. Where the environment was so filled with poison that every single nick got infected in no time. The only reason any of them didn’t instantly succumb was because they each took a massive daily dose of antibiotics as a matter of course. Even with the chemical assistance, some sores took weeks to heal.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  “You can’t go,” she said. “I’m not being a martyr here. You’re beat up. You limped in here this morning.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Your calf is still healing. And after last night, you’ve got new bruises on top of old bruises.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that.

  “I can still do it,” he said.

  “I have no doubt you could, but you already have an urgent job to do.”

  He knew what she was going to say before the words came out.

  “Like you said, we can’t stay in this house. It’s only a matter of time before looters or whatever attacked you comes after us. Whether it’s next door or somewhere else, we need to make that move today.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that either.

  “I can’t lose you, Beth.”

  “You won’t.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “How did you know that you’d return to me after your deployment?”

  The truth was that he didn’t. He assured her, of course, that it was some unwritten guarantee. But he knew better.

  “I just knew that I’d do whatever it took to get back home to you and Theresa.”

  She nodded.

  Mason sat in the chair next to her. “If you’re going to do this, I need to have an open communication channel with you at all times.”

  “Mobile phones haven’t worked for days. Our walkie-talkies are lucky to work more than a mile in the city. I don’t know how we could do that.”

  A possibility flickered in Mason’s mind. An old jarhead buddy. He wasn’t a part of The Thundering Third, but Mason didn’t hold it against him. He hadn’t seen him in too long. Before the outbreak, life was too busy. After the outbreak, social calls weren’t high on anybody’s priorities.

  But if anyone could help, Corporal Francis Knipplemier could. Juice as he preferred to be called. As much fun as it was to yank his chain about his given name, every knuckle dragger Mason had ever met called him Juice because the guy could perform miracles with anything that had electricity coursing through its veins.

  Juice could figure it out. If he was still alive.

  23

  Mason pedaled the cargo bike south on Pacific Avenue letting the electric assist do most of the work. He’d opted for a slower, but near-silent mode of transportation. This wasn’t a supply run and the Bronco’s engine was like an air siren in the unsettling quiet that blanketed the new
world.

  It wasn’t that it was silent.

  Seagulls screeched and fought with the ravens perched atop bodies in the street picking at decomposing flesh. It struck him in an oddly removed way. The air stank of rotten meat, and then a fresh breeze would sweep through and all he’d smell was the briny scent of the ocean. And then the stink would settle back in and make him regret that last big breath.

  The onshore breeze rattled palm tree leaves high above. It caught bits of trash, cartwheeling them across the street to pile up against the curb on the leeward side.

  Despite the natural sounds, the sounds of city life were unsettlingly absent. The usual hum of cars driving, people talking, and music drifting from store fronts was missing. Few things felt lonelier than being all alone in the middle of the city.

  Juice lived over on the Venice Canals in one of the multimillion dollar homes that lined the waterways. He and Linda shared a sparkling modern construction that they designed themselves. Mason’s old 1960s Craftsmen cost half as much and was a quarter as cool. That was west side real estate, before the outbreak. You could spend a million and a half dollars and live in a shack within a mile of the ocean. Or you could spend twice that and end up with something ten times nicer.

  It seemed like a weird bifurcation of the market until you thought more about it. Your average, successful double-income Joe and Sally could pull a million dollar loan no problem in the sloshing easy money environment created by the Federal Reserve. That inflated the market and created an artificial floor above the million dollar mark. But Joe and Sally really stretched to make it happen. Whereas if you jumped up to two and a half to three million dollars, Joe and Sally were left behind by the truly wealthy.

  The people that didn’t need loans to purchase real estate. The competition at that level of the market was much, much lower. And therefore, those less contested square feet had to work much harder to earn a sale.

  It was nonsense propagated by an institution that had done as much to harm the economy as to help it.

  Maybe the outbreak did have an upside. Not since the days of Manifest Destiny had west side real estate been so cheap.

  Mason didn’t encounter any threats on the way over. The exertion of the trip loosened his muscles and took the edge off the innumerable pain signals coursing through his nervous system.

  He headed down a concrete ramp to the canal level below. A row of expensive houses occupied each side of the small canal. A wide sidewalk ran along each side. Small docks with canoes and paddle boats dotted the shore. Just over a week ago, this was one of the hottest neighborhoods on the west side. Now, it was a ghost town without all the tumbleweeds.

  Juice’s house was two down on the right. He turned off the electric assist and coasted to a stop in front. What used to be large glass windows were now gaping holes edged in razor shards. A blood red triangle was painted on the exterior wall next to the missing front door. The painted delta symbol reminded him of the story of how the Israelites had painted lamb’s blood above their doors so that death would pass them by.

  Obviously lamb’s blood and spray paint didn’t offer the same level of protection.

  Mason looked around. All of the surrounding houses were clearly looted. It made sense. When things fell apart, desperate people noticed those with the most. Juice was not the type to go quietly, but maybe the virus had already taken him by the time looters hit his house.

  Mason hid the bike behind tall bushes that also artfully hid a water meter. Was probably an HOA regulation in this neighborhood. He drew his pistol, inched the slide back to verify a round was chambered—it was—and kept it in the low ready position while listening for clues. The small front yard was covered in a thin layer of decomposed granite and dotted with a variety of drought tolerant plants. It was the kind of yard that people who didn’t like to think about yards had.

  A flight of ducks glided in from the east. They lined up to the canal and splashed up small wakes skidding to a stop on the surface. He considered taking a shot at one to add to their protein reserves but refrained, knowing the shot would sound like a cannon in the canyon formed by the houses that lined both sides.

  A careful step over the lip of a shattered window and he was inside. The place was gutted to the polished concrete floors. The open floor plan design made almost everything on the first floor visible. The expensive stainless steel kitchen appliances were gone.

  Really?

  Did someone think they needed a fancy dishwasher more than anything else while society fell apart around them?

  A large, conspicuous hole showed where the fridge used to be. Even the sinks had been ripped out. Was someone building an HGTV dream home with all their stolen plunder? With no power or water service, those anachronisms of modern convenience were nothing more than shiny doorstops.

  An elegant span of clear acrylic stairs led up to the bedrooms on the second floor. Mason went upstairs and cleared them one by one. Thankfully, he didn’t find the bodies of Juice and Linda.

  CLANG.

  Someone grunted.

  The hushed voice came from downstairs. Mason crept downstairs looking down through the steps as he went. The faint sound of an intentionally placed footfall to his left made him pause at the bottom of the stairs. He circled around the steel bannister and saw nothing in the living room, foyer, or kitchen. He hugged the wall on his left side with the Glock up and ready for action. With all of his senses switched on, he inched toward the back of the house. The wall ended and he paused at the corner.

  What was around the corner? He remembered a dinner party he’d attended over a year ago. He’d gone looking for Beth when the conversation lulled. She’d been in a bathroom at the end of the hall. There were two more doors along the hall. The one on the right led to the garage. The one on the left had been closed and he didn’t recall ever knowing what was behind it.

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

  He backed up from the wall and pivoted around the corner, slicing 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.”

  24

  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 an amateur night saw job.”

  Juice’s face appeared from around the corner and he broke into a wide grin. “Sarge, I almost blew your 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 terrible, 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 tail 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 catch 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 re
lief 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 one 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 crack at some point. So I created this little emergency refuge for Linda and me. Watch your head.”

  “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.”