Even the nuclear war left him with more expectations for the future. There were major cities unaffected by the fallout and the ash. Populations relocated, began anew.
Fires and flooding were localized, even if some of the key players behind Interllayar’s work didn’t survive the madness of those events, whose rippling effects had spread outward like a pebble tossed into a pond. What were initially isolated catastrophes eventually led to subsequent, cascading apocalyptic scenarios.
The frozen Earth scenario was bleak, but hope burned eternal beneath the layers of ice and snow. It was the starkest of the iterations they’d seen to date, but it was survivable.
They’d overcome what amounted to a zombie apocalypse, maybe more successfully than anything else. And when the Ring of Fire had erupted into global chaos and the West Coast was ruptured beyond recognition, they’d survived.
Mankind recovered. People died, yes. Key people died. But humankind persisted. That didn’t seem to be what was happening here. Not in the so-called civilized world. Perhaps some far-flung and remote tribes of indigenous people in the Amazon, the Outback, Papua New Guinea, or Borneo might survive because of their isolation. The rest of the globe, however, the parts connected to the Internet and transportation, would cease to exist as population centers.
Derek rationalized that even if a reasonable percentage of people lived, were immune, or could be treated before the disease mutated again and killed them, those people wouldn’t be functioning in a society with which they were familiar.
Cities would be wastelands. Basic services like power and water would eventually stop. Food production would slow and cease. Survivors would panic. Anarchy would take root.
He thought about a series of books he once read about a post-apocalyptic wasteland, set in Texas after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world’s population. Texas was a lawless, bandit-run colony abandoned by the rest of the United States.
He’d thought at the time, having read it for fun, it was preposterous. It was pulp fiction.
Not anymore. He tried to think of the name of the main character. He tried to think of his sidekick, the precocious and sad little girl who threw knives.
It escaped him. No matter. He could see himself in that wasteland now. It wasn’t so far-fetched anymore. It loomed as his reality.
The only saving grace was the bunkers, the underground societies already taking shape. They would live. That would seed the next generation of people living in this iteration.
“What’s the purpose?” asked Moss, shaking Derek from his reverie.
Chang answered the question with his own. “Of what?”
“What you’re doing?” Moss clarified.
It was a good question and one to which Derek hadn’t given a remarkable amount of consideration. He was aware of the mission, which was clear from the moment Interllayar was funded. But was that the right answer?
Chang clearly thought it was. “We are looking for an iteration in which the world doesn’t collapse,” he explained, “or for the least objectionable…apocalypse. That’s our goal. We’ve not found either yet.”
Moss narrowed his gaze. He spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “For what purpose?” he asked. “For whose purpose?”
Chang flashed a smile at Derek. Derek rolled his eyes. Moss was brilliant. He was asking the right question.
“We have very powerful people who have significant interest in Interllayar and its success,” Chang went on. “They’re people who’d like to have options when the time comes.”
“Options?”
“They’d like not to be stuck in the worst-case scenario,” said Chang.
“Wait, what?” said Moss, waving his hands in front of his face. “What does that mean?”
Chang started to speak, but Derek raised his hand to silence him. Then he took a step toward Moss. Derek didn’t like the questions anymore. More than that, he didn’t want to justify himself or Interllayar’s true purpose to an epidemiologist. Yes, he was top notch. He was exactly as advertised. Little good it had done them. At least this time it hadn’t stopped what was obviously the inevitable. Maybe next time. Still, Moss hadn’t earned the right to question them in such a way that made Derek inwardly cringe at his own motivations.
He jabbed a finger at the scientist. “We’ve said enough. You have work to do. We have work to do.” Derek motioned to Chang and nodded at the door. “C’mon, we’ve said too much already.”
They said goodbye to Moss, reminding him about the necessity of his discretion and the consequences of violating their trust. They were at the threshold, Derek halfway in the hall, when Moss stopped them.
“Oh,” he said, “there is one other thing we’ve identified. I shared my findings with the CDC and the WHO.”
“What’s that?” asked Derek.
“The incubation period is longer than we thought.”
Chang stood up straight. “How much longer?”
“It’s sixteen days.”
“People could have been sick for two weeks,” said Derek, “showing no symptoms, and then just became sick now?”
“Yes.”
“What about the clean zones they talk about on the news?” asked Derek. “There are people in those zones thinking they’re healthy.”
“They’re probably not,” said Moss. “Nowhere is safe. Not now. You could be deep underground in a bunker and you wouldn’t be safe.”
CHAPTER 13
DAY 14
East of Agoura Hills, California
“What do we do?” asked Gem. “Do you think they see us?”
Dub wiped the sweat from his forehead. He shrugged the pack higher onto his back and adjusted his balance by pressing one hand against the rock in front of him. “They don’t see us,” he said quietly. “They’re focused on the neighborhoods and the highway beyond them.”
“I think the sun has our backs,” Barker pointed out. “They’d be staring right into it if they were even looking this way.”
The three of them were crouched behind an outcropping of boulders on the edge of an overlook. They were south of Ventura Freeway, which they could barely see, stopped between the wealthy enclaves of Calabasas and Agoura Hills.
There were clusters of neighborhoods on both sides of them and up ahead a shopping center and office park. There was open field, hilly and barren as it was, between them and the Community Center. They could barely make out the edges of the tennis courts.
The trio had taken much longer than anticipated to travel from Westwood toward Gem’s parents’ place in Thousand Oaks. There hadn’t been any scooters, as she had anticipated, so they’d traveled on foot the entirety of the thirty-five miles to that point. To slow them further, they hadn’t counted on roadblocks and restricted zones forcing them off easier routes and into the high desert hills that separated the beach from the inland territories. Even some of the trails they’d planned on using were blocked off.
They’d managed, so far, to avoid any direct confrontations with authorities. They’d seen police and military patrolling, and witnessed the detention of more than one person at the hands of people in large yellow hazmat suits. While Gem had served as a capable guide, even she wasn’t sure what to do now.
The sun was behind them. They were directly north of Malibu.
“It’s too far to go south and then cut west before heading up to Thousand Oaks,” said Dub. “And if we try to head straight west, we’re in no-man’s-land for a little while with no paths or streets. We’d have to skirt that neighborhood there, and it could be tough going.”
“What about going north?” Barker suggested. “You think we could reach the highway before they see us?”
Dub looked toward the highway. The road and its drought-ravaged surroundings were awash in orange sunset light. The glow of dusk reflected off the large windows of some of the homes and glinted against passing military trucks as the occasional convoy rolled silently in the far distance.
“Too risky,” he said
. “Those guards would see us. They’d be on us fast.”
“If south is too far,” said Gem, “and east and north get us caught…”
She let the answer hang in the air. Dub grabbed it.
He checked over his shoulder, shielding his squinted eyes with a salute at his brow. He scanned the horizon toward the Santa Monica Mountains, wondering what was happening across the rest of the Southland. They’d been without information for much of the last twenty-four hours. Their phones worked, but cell service was spotty at best. Video had no chance of loading. Although Dub had news alerts set on his device, even those wouldn’t fully populate on the screen. All he’d get was a vague headline that offered the latest depressing statistics.
TBE responsible for three thousand deaths, possibly more
CDC working on vaccine, still days/weeks away
WHO: 140 of world’s 195 countries have cases of TBE
Is it mutating? Latest on TBE research
“West it is,” he said. “Let’s give it another few minutes though. The sun is going to set. It’ll be easier for us to move in the dark.”
“Easier how?” asked Barker. He opened his pack and pulled out a flask of water. “We won’t be able to see.”
Gem coughed and apologized. “Flashlights. Like we used last night. We’ll be able to see well enough.”
“I don’t think we can use lights tonight,” Dub countered. “We probably were stupid to use them last night. We’re lucky we didn’t get caught.”
“I’ll repeat my question,” said Barker. He uncapped the flask and tipped it nearly upside down to draw the last few dribbles of water from it. “How will we see?”
“We’ll have the dark to camouflage us. I think we’ve got a full moon, or close to it,” said Dub. “The sky is clear. If we’re smart, we could navigate the last bit of this without too much trouble. I mean, aside from the terrain.”
“I’m out of water.” Barker shook the flask and then ran a hand through his hair. “You guys?”
“I filled up at that park water fountain,” said Gem. She sniffed and cleared her throat again.
“So did I,” said Barker.
“You’re a glutton,” said Gem. “I told you to pace yourself.”
“I tried. I think I’m getting dehydrated.”
“It’s pretty dry out here,” said Dub, running his hand across the dirt coating the boulder in front of him. “I’ve got some water left. I’ll share with you if you need it.”
Barker thanked him, capped his empty flask, and zipped up his pack. He looped his arm under one of the straps and slung the pack onto his back with a grunt.
“What?” asked Gem.
“I don’t know,” said Barker. “This whole thing. It’s a lot to take in, right? Our friends are dead, and we’re trying to avoid being picked up by the National Guard or cops. It just doesn’t seem real.”
Gem nudged Barker with her hip and put her arm around him. She whispered something into his ear that made him smile. He kissed her forehead.
Dub watched them. A knot thickened in his throat and his eyes stung with tears. He turned away from them, pretending to look toward the direction of their looming nighttime trek.
He was happy for them. They had each other. In a time like this, one that Dub agreed didn’t seem real, everybody should have someone. So he wasn’t envious or jealous. He didn’t begrudge his friend a companion.
His deep, crushing sadness came from knowing that he no longer had someone. He was alone. Yes, he was traveling with two other people. But he was, ostensibly, a third wheel.
His thoughts drifted to his first date with Keri. Dates weren’t much of a thing anymore. There were hookups, there was chatting online, but dates were rare. But Dub was old-fashioned, and he figured a woman like Keri wouldn’t give him the time of day unless her first impression of him was remarkable. So he had asked her out on a date, called it that, which had surprised her, she later admitted, and she’d agreed. Dub had told her to dress comfortably. He was going to surprise her.
He’d rented a car, instead of relying on Uber or Lyft, and drove her up the coast. They’d eaten an early dinner at Gladstone’s in Malibu and headed north along the Pacific Coast Highway. He’d pulled off the road at Point Mugu State Park and stopped at a small semicircle beach at the base of the Sycamore Canyon Trailhead. It faced southwest toward the ocean, surrounded by the Pacific on one side and the curving PCH on the other.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” Keri had asked when they’d stepped onto the sand.
Dub, a blanket and a box of vegan cupcakes under his arm, had blushed and stammered out a nonsensical answer.
She’d laughed and taken his hand. “I’m teasing you,” she’d said. “But I liked seeing you struggle.”
That set the tone for their relationship. She’d challenged him. She’d made him look at himself in a way nobody ever had. She’d been his greatest champion and biggest critic. She’d made him want to be a better person. All of that was gone.
Keri was dead. Michael too. They’d been alive and healthy a month earlier. They’d had dreams, aspirations, the kind of futures kids at elite schools tend to have. Now they were lying in beds with notes tagged to their corpses, dreamless and without futures.
Dub took a ragged breath. That sunset at the state park years earlier was so different from the one he was looking at now. He filled his lungs with air and held it in his cheeks before exhaling slowly. He kept his back to his friends and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist.
The sun was low now, slipping below the hills and casting long shadows. It wouldn’t be long until they’d be able to move.
He checked his phone. There were old texts from Keri’s father and from Michael’s mother. He’d stopped responding to them. The conversations were useless and only served to frustrate him. Neither could accept their child’s death, and the increasingly caustic tone of their messages, while understandable, was distracting now. He needed to focus on getting to a safe place.
There was also a message thread with his own mom. She and his dad were healthy. They’d stayed at home in Houston, virtual shut-ins since the outbreak. They’d watched the news with interest and concern, his mother told him. They loved him, they missed him, and they warned him to be safe and to take care of his still-fragile immune system.
She’d wanted to fly out and nurse him herself, but travel restrictions had prevented it. So they waited patiently, she’d messaged, for good news. Dub hadn’t told her about Keri or Michael. He didn’t want to burden her with it. Not yet.
He tapped the GPS application and it opened. Gem’s address was saved in the app. He told the device to find it from his current location. It started the process but stalled. He looked up overhead, as if that might provide an answer as to why he couldn’t get a signal, and then put the phone away. They’d be hiking blind, and not just because it would be dark.
Dub was having second thoughts about his plan. The hills, the rise and fall of them more evident from the shadows they now cast, wouldn’t be easy terrain to navigate in the daylight. They could be treacherous at night.
“Gem, can you get us to your house without using the highway as a marker?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I think so. As long as I know we’re headed toward town, I can get us there. I might make a couple of wrong turns, but yeah, we should be okay.”
“We’re going to head west, although I don’t think we can stay moving in that direction. The more I think about it, the more I think the hills and canyons are too much.”
“I don’t disagree,” said Gem, “but I didn’t have a better idea.”
Dub glanced at her. “You were going along with it despite your reservations?”
“Yeah.” Barker snickered. “That’s a first. You typically play devil’s advocate just to get a rise out of people.”
Gem rolled her eyes and mimicked him with a sour face. Then she punched his shoulder. He grabbed his arm, pretending it hurt.
“Lo
ok,” said Dub, “I don’t want acquiescence for the sake of it. This is your hood. I need your input. I was thinking staying completely off the road was the best idea. Now I’m not so sure.”
“What do we do?” asked Barker.
“If I’m right,” said Gem, “and I think I am, Agoura Road runs parallel to the highway. It’s south of it. I think it stays that way up to Westlake.”
“Westlake?” Dub said.
“A community this side of Thousand Oaks. There’s a golf course right off Ventura; then we’re maybe only a couple of miles from my house.”
Dub nodded. “Okay. So maybe we head west past the neighborhood closest to us; then we sneak north and hit Agoura Road.”
“What about the checkpoints and the patrols?” asked Barker. “I mean, that’s what we’ve been trying to avoid. If we go north, we’ll get caught. That’s what you were saying, like, ten minutes ago.”
“I changed my mind,” said Dub. “I’m still not thinking clearly. Not like I should.”
Though they weren’t one hundred percent healthy, all three of them were better than they’d been when they’d left campus. The fresh air had helped them regain some of their strength. The hiking and lack of water had sapped some of that renewed vigor. Dub was convinced the illness was manifesting itself differently in each of them.
Barker was dehydrated. Gem was subdued. She had her moments of snark, but the physical exertion it took to move up and down in elevation had taken its toll faster than it otherwise might have. Dub was mentally foggy, and he was grieving in a way the others weren’t.
“I know what would make me think clearly. Diddy Riese.” Barker patted his belly and twitched a smile. “A couple of cookies, a slab of ice cream.”
Gem grinned. “Chocolate macadamia nut and vanilla?”
Barker’s smile widened. “Yes. I can taste it.”
Dub killed the buzz. Fantasies were a waste of time at the moment. They were distracting and counterproductive. He needed all the focus he could muster.
“It’s dark enough,” he said, interrupting the ice cream dreams. “Let’s move. We can talk about the ice cream sandwiches we’ll never have again once we’re in the clear.”
The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction Page 18
