by Nick Cole
Around and above them, the air grew thick and quiet as the fog started to roll in from down along the coast.
“That’s weird,” said Frank.
“What?” asked Ash.
“This fog usually shows up around May and June. We call it the June Gloom. This is the time of year where we’re almost into the Santa Anas. Then the weather’s too dry for fog.
“It feels good on the skin after a hard day of unrolling all that fencing,” whispered Ash.
“And digging holes,” mumbled Holiday.
No one said anything after that as the fog seemed to rise, becoming thicker, enveloping them. Soon, swirling arms of mist were creeping along the street.
“It kinda feels warm,” said Ash.
And that’s when they heard it. One distant Thuuump. As if some gigantic weight had suddenly fallen to the earth on some distant place.
There was a moment in which each of them looked at the other, checking to make sure the other had heard the same Thuuump they’d heard. Holiday watched the wine in his glass. It had moved. Now it was still.
Thuuump.
The wine in Holiday’s glass, in all of their glasses, concussed outward, creating small, brief concentric shockwaves of cabernet within the stemware.
“What…”
Thuuump.
The sound was closer now. With the next Thuuump it was clear that whatever it was, whatever was making the sound, it was coming closer.
“Cover the barbecue,” said Holiday, downing his wine.
They got up, carrying what they could. Frank slammed the lid down on the Weber grill and they retreated inside the garage. Frank pushed the button to lower the garage door as another Thuuump made everything in the garage begin to rattle. The Thuuumps were growing louder and the interval between them, though far apart, was decreasing.
“I’ll kill the lights,” said Frank, and no one disagreed.
Inside Frank’s house Ash sat down on the couch, hovering over her knees. She poured a glass of wine quickly and drank.
“What could… what is it?” whispered Frank, going from window to window, craning his head upwards to see something.
The next Thuuump was so loud the house shook.
Holiday put one finger to his lips, his eyes watching the ceiling.
The Thuuump that followed sounded as far away as the Walmart, but the next one that followed quickly on the heels of the last one, sounded too near, too close. Within, or near the neighborhood. Frank’s framed watercolor fell off the wall, glasses within some of the cupboards rattled. The walls of the house reverberated from the last strike.
And before the next one, each of them was absolutely convinced, whatever it was that made the gigantic Thuuumps, would land on them… was that right?… Something was making the sound? Whatever it was, it would land right on top of them with the next strike. Even though it was dark inside the house and the fog swirled close to the windows, turned orange by the streetlights outside, the shadow of some immense thing seemed to pass above them. Seemed to hover over them from some great height. They felt the weight of the shadow as if it fell over everything, even their hammering hearts.
The shadow of some giant thing was walking out there in the fog and the dark. Some huge alien thing that walked and had come with the fog. Some monster not of this world.
The next Thuuump went off like a bomb had landed out in the orchard that backed up to Frank’s townhome. The windows rattled in their casings. Ash shrieked and then held her breath. Frank and Holiday moved to the venetian blinds and peered through them. They could see nothing but the thick, swirling fog.
And now the Thuuumps, though massive, though tremendous, though slow and ponderous, faded. Receded into the north, heading out into the Cleveland National Forest. Heading out into nothing.
In time they were gone.
By then, each of them was sitting on Frank’s L-shaped leather couch. It smelled of smoky cigars, leather and allspice.
“I don’t think our fence is gonna keep whatever that thing is, out,” said Holiday, breaking the silence. In the dark, they heard him pick up the wine bottle and pour.
“What in the world could it have been?” asked Frank. No one answered.
“Whatever it was,” said Holiday after a moment. “It’s gone now.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” whispered Ash.
Holiday said nothing.
For a long time they sat in the dark, each of them trying to wrap their heads around what had just happened. Eventually Holiday stood up and stretched.
“Well, I guess I’d better head back to my place.”
The fog swirled and clutched at the windows.
Frank stood, moved to a window, watched for a moment, then said, “Buddy, I’d feel better if you just stayed here tonight.”
“It’s only down the block, Frank,” sighed Holiday. “I’ll be okay.”
“If it’s all the same, buddy, just stay here tonight. I’ll get you some blankets and a pillow for the couch.”
Holiday considered it for a moment. He’d been planning to have a few more drinks and maybe watch a movie when he got home. But, there was something about the fog. Watching it, one felt two things. One, that it wasn’t totally fog, not like normal fog. And two, that it wanted in. It wanted into the house where you were.
Holiday flopped down. “Well, if you insist.”
Frank got some blankets and laid them out for Holiday. Ash remained on the couch.
“Maybe it’ll be a little tough for all of us to get some sleep tonight. But I think I’ve got something to take the edge off.” Frank disappeared into the kitchen and they heard glasses being gathered and a bottle being uncorked, the delicate sound of liquid softly burbling.
He came back with a bamboo serving tray and three snifters filled with a dark amber liquid.
“This is a nice port I get sometimes. I serve it in the snifters because I like to smell it. Smells better in the snifter.” Each of them took a glass.
Frank set his down next to his overstuffed cigar chair and turned to the stereo. In the dark, they heard the distinct click of an opened CD jewel case and the sound a loading tray makes when it opens and then closes a moment later. Then the dull hum of an active high quality sound system just moments before the music starts. The blue light from the stereo display felt soft and somehow soothing.
“How about a little Sinatra while we enjoy our nightcap?”
They could hear Frank easing back into his leather cigar chair by the sound good leather makes when it’s being comfortably settled into. Then Sinatra quietly sang Fly me to the Moon and there was something about Frank Sinatra’s carefree singing that made them forget the night and the fog and the giant thing that moved through the outer dark.
They listened to the whole Reprise album with Frank inserting bits of trivia that he knew about Sinatra here and there, and when it was time to go to bed, Ash and Frank went upstairs to their rooms and Holiday settled into the thick, comfortable scents of the couch in the dark and slept.
Upstairs, she could hear Frank rattling around in his room for a while. She knew he’d never open her door but she waited anyways. She was dressed for bed. Some pajamas she’d borrowed from the clothing in the drawers. Her face washed and scrubbed. She waited. She heard Frank’s light go out. She heard the house settle and minutes later, she heard him snoring softly.
She got up, moving lightly. She moved to her green canvas bag and slowly unzipped it. Once it was open, she shoved the other things that were in there aside and found the gun wrapped in a heavy, winter-issue, camouflage patterned jacket. It was an AK-74U. She knew the clip in it was full. She felt the oil on the gun. She ejected the clip and blew on the top bullet, something she was used to with an M-16, but which wasn’t needed for the AK’s. They were much more dependable. She seated the clip into the bottom of the
small Russian Spetznaz commando assault rifle. She checked the other two clips that were in the pockets of the heavy jacket. Each felt full. They’d been full when she’d checked them last. They still felt full. They’re full, she told herself again.
She put everything back in her bag, slowly re-zipped it and then slipped back into bed.
She could hear Frank snoring.
She wondered if Holiday was asleep.
She watched the orange-colored fog swirl thickly beyond the blinds of the room’s only window.
Chapter Fourteen
The day civilization ended in Downtown LA, things were going from bad to worse for everyone. Even Jackson Braddock, who everyone used to just call “Jack”, was this close to being sucked down the global whirlpool of crazy to the power of ten.
Twelve months ago he’d been a special operator in Afghanistan, again. Now, he was a special operator running through the streets of downtown, working for a private contractor, chasing a high value target. Weapons were live and the situation was on fire as the FEMA barriers began to collapse from skid row and along the 101 as the uncountable dead swarmed into the sweltering streets of Downtown LA.
Jack Braddock pounded down Grand, passing the burnt-out wreckage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, engaging infected tangos on the fly with his silenced MP5 as they came, moaning and bloody, for him. His ruck was overloaded with spare ammo and three breach charges. His smart glasses were identifying Infected, based on a new software install they’d just received that graded and categorized target body heat. “Less civilian casualties that way,” Snowe the CO and contractor for Wyvern Security Forces International had told them that morning.
“Does it matter now?” Braddock had whispered in the stillness of oh-dark-thirty, as a sleeping world began its last day. “Does it really matter now? Everyone’s a casualty.”
Snowe just glared at him and the rest of the operators sitting underneath the hot white fluorescent hangar lights back within LAX Safe Zone. “Just do your job ‘till the checks stop cashing.”
They were all wearing the new washed-out gray digital camo fatigues that somehow messed with the Infected’s ability to track live targets. Or, at least that’s what they’d been told. Over each shoulder a subdued U.S. Flag had been added. So the government was writing the checks for this one, thought Braddock and probably a few of the others as they slipped into their new gear. Most didn’t care one way or the other who paid for the work as long as someone did.
Back on Grand, three Infected stood around a bus stop bench, ravaging a still-twitching body. One of them looked up from the feast and growled as Braddock approached. Ten minutes ago he’d been part of a six man team. Now he was alone and surrounded.
“Alpha Six this is Doghouse, Target acquired,” said a net operator for Downtown LA Tactical Command. “3rd Street and moving north toward the tower. Be advised, Target has switched to a black Escalade. Intercept and terminate still in effect.”
The Infected who’d noticed him first alerted his two friends. Monsters who’d been people just hours ago, thought Braddock and then pushed that somewhere else because that line of thinking wasn’t needed anymore. The other five who’d been Alpha Team, they were monsters now, too.
“Everyone’s a casualty,” he’d told Snowe back in the hangar. He pushed on and remembered something someone had once said to him long ago.
“You’ll just go all the way to the end of the world, Jack, won’tcha? ‘Cause you’re too stupid to quit.”
Puff, Puff and Puff whispered from the long-barreled silencer at the front of the MP5 on that hot, cacophonic street as people screamed and raced to get clear of the downtown collapse. A safe area that was no longer safe. A confined defensible position, just like the LAX Safe Zone, that had been holding out for the past week as what had first been reported as mere riots turned into something much, much worse. Now the barriers surrounding downtown, surrounding the hilltop, were breached, and Infected were inside the perimeter. Puff, Puff and Puff. Head shots all around. Tangos down.
They’d stopped calling out “tango down” days ago. The sheer number of times it would have been used would have taken up the net for minutes at a time.
The failed rescue of the Vice President in Beverly Hills. The rescue of the CDC analysis team at the Galleria Primary Infection Hot Zone site. The nuke convoy pinned down on the 405 at Hawthorne.
All of those had been heavy weapons in use and no silencers. Braddock had melted down the Sixty he’d used for the Nuke Convoy op. So many tangos, Infected, monsters who were once people, had come at them in endless waves that the barrel on his M-60 had melted and then warped, becoming unusable. He’d picked up a dead operator’s weapon and gone back to work as another wave came at them and a nearby team leader finished his airstrike request with a “Danger Close”.
Shoulda used a 249, he thought now as he checked the street known as Grand back in Downtown LA. There were less Infected here at the top of the hill, but in some way, they were still everywhere. Coming out of gaping dark doors, crawling from the smashed windows of cars, stumbling up the hot street in the blaze of noon, all of them blood-crusted and wounded in some way.
“On the move and heading down Grand to intercept,” replied Braddock over the net.
After a moment the net operator came back. “Be advised Six, you’re in this one alone.”
Braddock didn’t alter his pace a second. The three other teams of six operators were down. This morning there had been fifty operators in that hangar back at the LAX Safe Zone. Seals, Delta, Rangers, mostly. Guys with real world time. They’d been promised a long day with ops falling on the heels of ops. He wondered now, just after noon, how many of them were still active six hours later.
Two Blackhawks had dropped twenty four off on the roof of Parker Center at the bottom of Downtown LA. Inside, LA County Sheriff’s deputies were firing out slotted windows, point blank, into the mob at the collapsing CDC barriers on the street below. A few deputies had killed themselves already. Braddock had watched as one guy stepped away from the window, put his service revolver to his head, and blew his brains out in a quick spray all across the institutional white walls. The operators, led by a Sheriff’s Department Deputy Sergeant made their way down to the sub-basement and then took the tunnel exit to get out onto the streets.
“You sure you wanna go out there, boys?” she’d said. A bloodied L.A. Sheriff’s Department Sergeant. A blonde with a pony tail. Pregnant. “Have to, Ma’am,” said one of the others. Alpha Three. The senior man in their squad. He’d been with Wyvern before everybody. Maybe a year at the most.
They’d gone out into the hot hell that was Downtown LA by eight that summer morning, looking for the HVT. High Value Target. They’d spread out, each team on an east-west running street, clearing small observation posts with silencers. Braddock’s team had taken a cramped apartment over a liquor store at the edge of Japan Town. They’d had drone coverage. All they’d needed next were eyes-on-target and they’d already been OK’d from U.S. CENTCOM for a kill shot.
Back on Grand now and racing toward 3rd, Braddock felt his smartphone vibrate in his chest pocket. Incoming message. He tagged an Infected who’d cross his path in ten seconds. The thing was aiming for a woman and two little girls who’d just run out of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Behind them lumbered a man with a bloody mouth and bloody hands. One of the little girls was screaming, “Daddy!” The thing Braddock had dropped twirled away against an abandoned cab where the once-cabby now-monster clawed at blood-smeared windows from the inside. The woman and girls ran on and the monster man chased them. Braddock tapped his earpiece and switched channels.
“Go,” he grunted, and continued at a trot toward 3rd Street.
“Mr. Braddock, this is Mr. Steele.” The voice was flat. A monotone that didn’t waver in greeting with surprise or apology like most people did when they started phone calls. There was only informat
ion and nothing more in the voice. Maybe, command. “We have you as in position to accomplish a task of importance for us. If you’re still interested in work with our firm, then we’d like to make you an offer of employment right now.”
Braddock ducked into a large spreading stairway that dropped below street level. Farther up the street, a large mob surged around the bottom of an apartment tower. He leaned against the red brick of the wall along the stairwell and slapped in a fresh magazine.
“All ears, Mr. Steele.”
An Infected lurched out from behind a corner farther down the stairs and Braddock drew his 9mm and put one bullet right in the thing’s head. It tumbled back down the stairs into the darkness.
“I need you to take possession of the suitcase the target you are currently pursuing has possession of,” announced Mr. Steele in Braddock’s ear. “Once you have the suitcase in possession and you’ve taken it to the US Bank building that is currently in use by the government as the West Coast Emergency Management Headquarters, I’ll have further instructions for you.”
Braddock could hear himself breathing sharp and short over the connection. Gasping at the hot and heavy air. Things were getting real. More real than they’d ever been. He just hadn’t thought it would go down now, in the middle of everything going bad. The thing he and every other operator working for the CIA’s most off the grid office had been waiting for had finally happened, at the worst possible moment.
He thumbed the laser sight on the MP5 and followed it down the stairs into the subterranean walkway that ran alongside Grand.
“Do this Mr. Braddock, and you’re in.”
The call ended.
Down below street level, a lone Infected careened in and out of a darkened arcade of shopfronts along the tunneled walkway. Shattered glass and the remains of bodies were everywhere.
Halfway down the tunnel, Braddock saw some remains that looked promising inside the blood-smeared glass of the Omni Hotel’s second story entrance. He stopped, watching his surroundings, waiting for Infected to come from wherever they were hiding. Hunched shadows leaned over other remains farther down the concourse, oblivious to Braddock’s observation. He checked the corners, the dark places, and everything he could. His breathing was still quick and sharp and he didn’t care. He needed to be wired, fully oxygenated. Not fatigued like seven straight days of operations and endless killing might do to anyone. He was thirsty, but there was no time and no safe place to take a drink. His fatigues were soaked with sweat.
