“My head hurts,” added Barker, “and that ringing in my ears is still there. I’ll be fine though. I’ve got a knot on the back of my head and on my forehead. I heard swelling is a good thing.”
Dub replayed the bear encounter in his head. He hadn’t seen much of anything, having been knocked out of the fight instantly. There were screams and shouts, none of which he remembered clearly understanding. There was the roar and grunt of the bear, the squeals.
Squeals?
“Were there two bears?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Gem. “I only saw the one.”
“I wonder if there was a baby bear too,” he said.
Gem shrugged. She was good at that. “Could be. I didn’t see it though.”
“What are bears doing here anyhow?” Dub asked. “I didn’t think there were any south of the highway. I mean, I remember reading there were black bears north of here.”
“Sometimes they’ll wander over,” she said. “I’ve never seen one. My mom did once. It was at the Westgate Shopping Center in the parking lot. Freaked. Her. Out.”
They shuffled silently for another ten minutes, working their way slowly north. Dub finally worked up the nerve to say what he’d failed to mention in the minutes after the attack.
“Hey,” he said, swallowing hard, “I’m really sorry.”
Barker looked confused. “For what?”
“Snapping at the two of you back there. Before the bear thing. I—”
“Don’t apologize,” said Gem. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I mean, I can. This whole thing, this TBE, is numbing. It doesn’t seem real, right? I’m not processing all of it, I don’t think. But seriously, I haven’t lost anyone I love. So…”
Gem surprised Dub. Maybe he’d misjudged her. He’d treated her poorly from the moment she’d entered their dorm room, but here she was after fending off a bear and who knows what else she’d had to endure in the past three weeks, and she was forgiving him.
Based on what she’d told him and the psychology classes he’d been taking, he guessed she was in denial. The scope of the plague hadn’t hit her. How could it? She was still in the midst of it. Someday, and probably soon, it would crash down on top of her and she’d feel the weight of everything she’d experienced.
Right now, as they crossed the barren high desert of the southern California hills, she was coping. She was surviving. That meant she couldn’t wallow, she couldn’t be afraid, she couldn’t blame. She had to press forward, find solutions, and overcome obstacles.
“Thank you,” Dub said. “I’m glad you’re with us.”
She rolled her eyes with a crooked smile on her face. Dub could see it in the moonlight, which now cast a grayish hue across everything.
“Don’t stop being a jerk on my account,” she said with a soft chuckle.
“Don’t worry,” Barker said. “He won’t.”
“That’s the concussion talking, isn’t it?” Dub asked.
The three of them laughed together, and then Dub’s eye caught the checkpoint up ahead. With the moonlight, his flashlight, and the distraction of their conversation, he’d seen but not processed how close they were getting to it. They were no more than five hundred feet from it.
Dub stopped walking and turned off the flashlight. He held out his arm to stop the others. They stopped, looking over at him with furrowed brows. Barker wavered but stood straight with Gem’s help.
It was too late. They’d been spotted. Either the echo of their conversation or the illumination from the flashlight had given them away. The guards were scrambling now. They were pointing. There was the distant echo of radio chatter.
Dub cursed as the trio stood there, virtually frozen in place as they watched two Tyvek-suited guards climb into a Humvee. They were armed with rifles.
The open-top vehicle peeled out, dust blooming behind it, and then the driver spun the wheel so that the bright circular lamps shone directly at them. They couldn’t see the Humvee anymore, but the smell of diesel filtered through the air. Its engine revved as the truck shifted from first through third gears. It was moving fast and closing the short distance between them.
They were literally caught in the headlights.
“What do we do?” asked Barker.
“Run,” said Dub.
They did.
Dub led them north and east. They were running diagonally toward a neighborhood that dipped from Agoura Road south into the hills, the dim yellow glow of the streetlights their guide.
The moonlight was enough that Dub could see the backs of the southernmost houses. Their tiled roofs reflected the moonlight. He pumped his arms to propel his aching body forward. His limp all but disappeared from the adrenaline coursing through his body. The ache in his hip vanished. The bouncing pack, whose straps rubbed against his raw shoulders, swung back and forth with his momentum.
They were getting closer, maybe only fifty yards to go. The Humvee was gaining, the whine of its engine louder. There was someone yelling something over a loudspeaker. Dub kept moving.
He stole a glance to his right and saw the Humvee’s lights. From his peripheral vision, he could see Gem and Barker only a few feet behind him. He had no idea how his concussed friend was moving as fast as he was, but he didn’t have time to ask him about it. He pushed the thought from his head and looked straight ahead.
He climbed a final rise, his legs thick with acid and his arms pumping up and down, then skidded down the beginning of a downward slope.
Headlights bounced to his right. The loudspeaker squelched.
“Stop!” called out a man’s voice. It was muffled but clear enough, close enough, for Dub to understand the commands he would not obey. “Stop now or we will open fire!”
For a split second, Dub considered stopping. He thought about raising his hands and giving himself over to the military, or the police, or whoever it was ordering him to comply.
Maybe they would take them to where they wanted to go. They would see they were healthy, save the bumps and bruises, and would have no cause for quarantining them. They could drive them to Gem’s house and let them be. Surrendering could be a good thing. It could be the right thing. It definitely was the legal thing. All of these thoughts raced through his mind simultaneously. As muddied as his mind had been since falling ill days ago, it was crystal clear in this moment. It was firing on all cylinders. It told him he was an idiot for considering surrender. No good could come from being in the authorities’ hands. He’d seen too much of the encampments on the news to know they’d never let them go. They’d hold them and then ship them off to either a secure facility, as they were being called, or to one of the stadiums where they were letting people die. He’d even seen there were outdoor holding cells built with chain-link at major LA intersections where infected zones were separated from clean zones.
It was better to run. No doubt. So he ignored the thoughts and focused again on the task of staying free.
He found himself at the back of the neighborhood behind a pair of large houses that would have fit in perfectly next to the McMansions in his Houston neighborhood.
The ten-foot-high fences that separated them from the wilderness prevented him from slipping into the relative protection of their properties. He turned ninety degrees to the left, away from the approaching Humvee, and followed the fence line.
He checked over his shoulder and saw his friends were on his heels. The Humvee wasn’t far behind, the headlights bouncing up and down. He squinted into them, turned forward, and ran on. His chest was burning now, and a stitch in his side threatened to double him over. He didn’t stop.
“Stop!” came another call, louder and overmodulated. “This is your final warning. We will open fire.”
Dub had no reason to doubt the veracity of the threat, yet he disobeyed and darted to the left, the pack tugging opposite his momentum, and zagged right. “Keep moving!” he shouted breathlessly over his shoulder. “Don’t stop. This fence has got to end so
mewhere.”
Ahead of him, no more than twenty feet, the fence stopped its westward expansion and turned north toward the highway. Dub followed it and quickly found himself on asphalt bathed in yellow-orange light. He was running in the neighborhood now, along a north-south street that ran up the center of the development.
Dirt shifted loudly under the Humvee’s oversized tires, and a spray of rocks spattered across the dry land at the edge of the street. Then he heard a series of pops. They were like distant firecrackers or those little twisted pieces of paper with gunpowder wrapped inside. He’d thrown them onto the ground as a kid, relishing the exploding sounds of the popping caps.
These weren’t harmless pops though. They weren’t fun or the result of brilliant, celebratory sky decorations. They were gunfire.
More pops, and this time zips of air rushed past his head. He ducked instinctively, and at an intersection ahead and to the right, he cut across the front yard of a McMansion, bounding onto the curb and across the xeriscaped front yard. His shoes crunched against the pebbled granite lining beds of cacti and oleander. He pushed a hanging limb from his path and skipped past a modernist sculpture, hopped from the curb, and ran back onto the street.
He was running east now. There were footsteps behind him. They sounded like two pairs, accompanied by grunting and labored breathing. Both Gem and Barker were there. They were hustling to keep up, but they were there.
The Humvee’s engine accelerated and the gears shifted again, the tires screaming against the asphalt. It missed the turn and was doubling back. That gave the trio some space and, more importantly, time.
They needed somewhere to hide. They couldn’t outrun the Humvee for much longer. It was miraculous they’d made it this far. Another round of pops and zips and Dub zigged. He crossed the street, calling for his friends to keep up and follow.
After the dark having been a disadvantage when the bear attacked, the light from the overhead lamps was a problem. The amber glow gave those in the Humvee an unfair advantage. It was like they were graced with tactical eyewear.
Dub remembered from a physics class that blue light, with its shorter wavelength, scattered more easily than other colors and made focusing on objects difficult. Absence of blue light, as in filtering the light through red, orange, yellow, or a combination of the colors, improved sharpness and depth perception.
He cursed himself for not having stayed hidden in the high-desert, moonlit wilderness. This was a mistake.
He jumped a curb on the north side of the street and darted through the narrow but deep front yard of a white stucco Spanish-style house. He dashed between the house and its detached four-car garage, finding himself again in the dark. Behind him, Barker grunted and Gem huffed. None of them spoke. They kept moving.
Beyond the narrow covered passageway that connected the two buildings was a waist-high wrought-iron gate. Dub ran into it, not having seen it, adjusted himself, and climbed over it one leg at a time.
Once over the fence and in the ink-black backyard, he spun around and helped his friends. Gem was wheezing now. Her skin was clammy with sweat and her shirt was drenched.
Barker had trouble negotiating the fence. His balance was wonky and he seemed out of it as Dub supported his weight and helped him over the fence. Each breath was labored. He too was drenched.
Dub took his pack from him and told Gem to lead him into the darkness. Barker couldn’t keep going. It was too much to ask of him.
“Find a hiding place,” he said. “Stay there until it’s clear.”
Gem nodded without question. Dub waved them away from the oncoming Humvee. Wait.
Where was the Humvee?
He’d lost track of it as he’d helped his friends. Dub stepped backward, away from the gate, working unsuccessfully to control his own breathing. His chest was heaving and the cramp in his side was thickening. He put his hands on his hips and listened.
It was silent. Even the sound of the Humvee’s engine had disappeared. Had they lost them?
And then, from nowhere, bright round lights snapped on and blinded him. The Humvee was parked at the edge of the driveway where it met the street. It was facing him. Dub raised his arms to block the light. He was caught. His mind swirled with choices, with moves and countermoves. He was never good at chess. That was Michael’s game. Seeing ahead, anticipating the variables was never his strength. He missed Michael.
“Stop!” came the call from the bullhorn. “We’ve fired warning shots until now. The next shot will not be a warning.”
Warning shots? They’d warned him they would shoot him when they were chasing him. The consequence of not following the order was getting shot. That was the warning. They hadn’t warned him they would warn him. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He had them.
They didn’t want to shoot him. They were hesitant. That gave him an advantage he hadn’t seen seconds earlier. He dropped Barker’s pack onto the ground.
“Stay where you are,” said the voice. “I’ve got two officers who will—”
In a fluid series of moves, Dub lowered his hand, pivoted to one side, and dropped his torso toward the ground. He squatted for an instant and then, crouching, sprinted as fast as he could to the back of the house. He was up against the stucco, the outside of the house, the roughly applied exterior brushing against his shoulder as he moved away from the pursuers.
They called after him again. Not far behind him was the heavy sound of boots pounding into the backyard. Dub ran to the opposite end of the house.
Men shouted after him, but they couldn’t navigate the relative darkness as swiftly as he could. They were awkward in their Tychem suits. He could sense it from the heavy, irregular movements. They carried LEDs of some kind, in their hands or attached to the sides of their weapons. The beams danced around him, behind him. The ambient light chased his heels, but it didn’t catch him. He was quick enough.
At the edge of the house he cut back to the right and darted deeper into the backyard. His feet were on stone now, a decking of some kind that differed from the material at the edge of the house. He dashed behind a large tree, pausing at the exact moment interior lights flipped on, glowing through the windows and illuminating a large covered porch that stretched half the distance of the home’s rear. Dub hadn’t noticed it as he’d passed it, having been too focused on the proximity of the pursuers.
Dub was out of sight, but he could clearly see the two yellow suits now. The men stood at the edge of the flagstone porch, their faces hidden by hooded reflective shields, their hands gripping rifles. They were scanning the darkness for Dub and his friends.
“Hey,” said the bleary-eyed, unshaven homeowner. “This is a clean zone. Why are you here? What are you doing in my backyard?”
He was in his mid-forties or early fifties. He was in a Berkeley T-shirt and baggy sweatpants. His full head of salt-and-pepper hair was wet and brushed back from his narrow forehead.
The twin suits said something in response. Dub caught the muffled vibrations of whatever explanation they offered, but he couldn’t decipher the words.
“I don’t want you on my property,” the man said with an angry energy that surprised Dub. It appeared to surprise the sentries too. One of them actually jumped. The other took a step back from the porch. Dub glanced behind him, into the darkness, and backed slowly away from the tree.
“Martial law or not, you need to leave,” said the man. “I don’t care who you’re looking for. You’ll scare my children, my wife. Please. Go.”
A squeaky child’s voice pierced the air, carried on the slight but now constant breeze. She was standing at her father’s side, nearly wrapped around his leg in the way that shy children do.
“Daddy,” she said, a question mark punctuating the end of the inquisitive, “what’s happening?”
The father draped his arm over the girl, wrapping it around her side and then resting his hand on top of the nest of curly dark hair atop her head. He said something to the suits. His
tone was sharper.
Dub didn’t need to listen to more of the conversation. He needed to employ it to his benefit, use the distraction to further separate himself from his would-be captors.
Through the thin canopy of foliage overhead, he saw the muted light of the moon hidden behind thin clouds. He exhaled, still trying to catch his breath, and spun to run more deeply into the yard.
He rolled his feet from heel to toe as he ran lightly, tiptoeing from the stone and onto what felt like mulch or tree bark. He was a good thirty yards from the porch when low shrubs brushed against his legs. Then he was at a fence. It was cedar and eight feet tall. Dub reached up and grabbed the capped top of the fence, gripping it with both hands. The pack was heavy on his shoulders.
He couldn’t make the leap with it on his back. He quickly released his hold, shrugged off the pack, pulled himself up onto the fence using the rough-hewn boards for a foothold, and heaved himself over it. He crashed on the other side onto hard, compacted dirt and grunted from the sudden connection with the ground.
He’d landed on his left side; a radiating bolt of pain electrified his hip. He bit into his lip, grimacing, to keep from crying out in agony.
Dub lay there for a good minute in silence. Tears pooled and spilled from his eyes. His nose filled with snot. A cool sheen of sweat coated his forehead and the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure he could walk now.
Despite the pain, he listened for the pursuers. Where were they? Had they given up? Had they listened to the owner and left the property? His answer came in the form of a conversation on the other side of the fence.
“I found his pack,” said one muffled, masculine voice. “It’s back here against the fence.”
“He must have climbed over,” said someone else. “I don’t think we can navigate the fence in these suits.”
“Tell Darsky we lost him,” said the first one. “He’ll have to notify the other nearby patrols to be on the lookout for him.”
“The other two also,” said the second voice. “They’re out there somewhere too. And you’re telling Darsky. Not me.”
A punch of nausea hit Dub’s gut and traveled up into his throat. He swallowed against it and the burn of stomach acid stung the roof of his mouth. He stayed quiet, breathing quickly through his nostrils, keeping his body as motionless as possible.
The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction Page 20
