Derek bit. “How did I misuse denouement?”
“Denouement is the ending of a story in which all of the loose ends are tied up neatly and completely. It is the culmination of the plot, the postscript to the climax. It is satisfying. Nothing about this is satisfying, nor have we finished our story. There are still elements and twists and action ahead.”
Derek opened his other eye, still keeping his chin up to avoid looking down, and returned his own knowing grin. He faced his friend and colleague and raised a finger. When he spoke, his tone was every bit as didactic and bordering on condescension as Chang’s. “Okay, I get that. But I would suggest that the denouement is frequently ambiguous and unsatisfying. Often, it leaves the audience wanting more. It leaves them on the verge of understanding what’s just happened but also keeps them at bay just enough to frustrate them.”
Chang’s smile lingered for a moment. His eyes searched Derek’s the way a doctor examines his patient. Then the smile flattened and he motioned toward the street below. “Look down and tell me if there’s any ambiguity.”
Derek’s smile vaporized. He tightened his jaw and turned back to the window. His warm breath bloomed on the chilly glass. He braced himself, the muscles in his neck and lower back tightening as he lowered his chin.
The condensation on the glass disappeared and he could see what he’d feared. It was every bit as bad as he’d imagined. There was no ambiguity. There were no loose strings to tie.
Where he had once seen people fighting for their lives, for their relative freedom, he now saw char. Where there had been authorities in yellow Tychem suits, he now saw tendrils of smoke and the flicker of smolder.
All along the streets, piled at intersections like natural dams, were mounds of black, sooty remains. From his elevation he couldn’t distinguish one body from the next, one man’s arm from a woman’s leg. It was all the same. It was the remnants of society corralled into a four-block radius. It was the end of the iteration.
He stood there silently for what might have been seconds or a half hour. When he inhaled, realizing he’d been holding his breath for some period of time, he glanced away. Through the glossy sheen that fogged his vision, he saw the tears on Chang’s cheeks. They matched his. He was relieved to know that Chang hadn’t lost his humanity either. He was coping. There was a difference.
Derek sidestepped to Chang and put his arm around the man’s shoulder. He squeezed his upper arm in consolation. “Should we move on? Head downstairs and try again?”
Chang nodded. Before he could respond, Albert Moss burst into the room.
“There’s a vaccine!” he said, bounding toward them. The energy in his voice belied his appearance.
He was nearly out of breath. His eyes were weary. He wore a wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants pulled up above his calves. His skin was pallid.
“We got it,” he said. “CDC synthesized a workable product. The pharmacology is good. We provided a lot of the base research, but they just got it. That’s the good news.”
Derek grimaced. “What’s the bad news?”
“Producing enough of it quickly enough to make an immediate difference,” he said, “and delivering it.”
“What does that mean?” asked Derek. “They have a fix but can’t use it?”
“Sort of,” Moss said. “It means there is a long-term solution. Eventually, TBE will go the way of smallpox, rinderpest, and poliomyelitis.”
“Eventually those all came back,” Chang pointed out.
“It took a while,” said Moss. “And when they did, they weren’t the threat they’d once been. This is good news.”
“Not for the people who have it or for those likely to contract it in the coming days and weeks,” said Chang. “It’s too little, too late for our purposes.”
Moss’s shoulders sank. His earnest expression faded and he looked at the floor. “It’s something,” he muttered. “After all of this death, it’s something. It means it’s not the end of the world.”
“Perhaps,” Chang conceded. He turned his attention back to Derek. “Does this change our next move?”
Derek glanced at Albert before answering Chang. “No. We need to head downstairs and begin the next iteration.”
“What does that mean?” asked Albert.
Derek gestured for him to follow. “Come with us and see for yourself.”
CHAPTER 17
DAY 41
Santa Monica, California
Danny rubbed Maggie’s head. She was asleep in the booth next to him. She’d eaten canned chili, which was bound to create gastric issues later, and was in dreamland, kicking her paws in imaginary play.
Across from them, sitting with his elbows on the table and his hands wrapped around a steaming porcelain mug filled with coffee, was Arthur the fry cook. He rubbed his thumbs up and down the mug.
“How long?” asked Arthur.
“How long what?” Danny ran his fingers along Maggie’s head, feeling the soft strands of fur drag against his fingertips. His stomach grumbled, but he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t been hungry in days and found himself only eating when Arthur cajoled him into it.
“How long do we stay here?” Arthur clarified. “It’s been a while now. I’ve been here longer than a month now. I’ve lost track of the days. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of food, lose power for good, or somebody figures out we’re here and breaks in.”
They’d been lucky. Nobody had bothered them. Even the military, which wasn’t making regular patrols anymore, hadn’t noticed them. The two of them and Maggie had lived in isolation since Danny’s arrival more than three weeks earlier. It was miraculous really.
Arthur had nearly shot him when he knocked at the door to the diner. Maggie’s bark had prevented a blast of the Mossberg twelve-gauge shotgun Arthur kept in the kitchen. Arthur had told Danny that more than once.
“We could go to my place,” Danny said. “According to the maps on the internet, it’s a clean zone now.”
“If we were going to go there,” countered Arthur, “we could as easily go to my place. It’s closer than yours.”
“You said your building doesn’t allow dogs,” said Danny. “Otherwise we’d have left the diner two weeks ago.”
Arthur frowned. He picked up the mug and drew it to his lips. He blew on the hot liquid and tested its temperature before blowing on it again and putting it back on the table. A dribble of it splashed over the rim and leaked onto his fingers. He winced and licked them clean.
“I don’t think that’s a real concern now,” he said, smacking his lips from the taste of the spilled coffee. “I mean, I wouldn’t think it would be. Who cares about a dog when half the city’s dead?”
“It’s more than half,” said Danny.
Arthur shrugged. “I know.”
The two sat in silence for another minute before Arthur tried his coffee again. He slurped a mouthful, swallowed, and gently lowered the mug to the table. His gaze grew distant. His mind was somewhere else. Danny knew where.
“They say the vaccine is working,” said Danny. “There’s always a chance.”
Arthur blinked and eyed Danny, back in the moment. He shook his head. “She’s dead. I’m sure of it. I’d have heard from her otherwise.”
“You don’t know that,” said Danny. He was trying to be nice.
Every day since he’d arrived, their conversation had inevitably turned to Claudia and her unexplained disappearance. They both believed she was dead. Danny played devil’s advocate, trying to keep Arthur’s spirit from turning dark.
“I know it,” he said. “She’d have come back if she were okay. We had a thing, you know. And you don’t just leave that unless you can’t come back.”
He didn’t need to tell Danny they had a thing. He’d reminded him of it, as if revealing a secret for the first time, too many times to count. Danny played along.
“She could be stuck somewhere,” he said. “You know, in a bunker somewhere, just waiting for the right time to c
ome up for air. With the vaccine—”
“She’s dead, Danny.” Arthur glowered at him. “I appreciate you pretending, though we both know she’s dead along with just about everybody else we know.”
An image of Danny’s ex flashed in his mind. Was she dead too? What about Derek, the tech gazillionaire?
Danny didn’t like either of them. Loathed them, really. He’d spent countless hours imagining horrible ways in which the two of them would die. But now that the possibility truly existed that they were dead, he didn’t like it. He didn’t wish death for them. Not really.
He’d seen too much to wish TBE on anyone. He’d somehow been immune. Not even the third or fourth generation of the disease had sickened him. Arthur had also been immune. He hadn’t suffered so much as a tickle in his throat.
It was coincidence, and maybe grand design, that the two of them were together now. Two men who knew each other, liked each other’s company, and had beaten the affliction were planning their next steps together.
“Do we go to your place, then?” asked Danny. He was trying to change the subject. He knew how long the conversations about Claudia could last if unchecked.
“Tomorrow,” said Arthur.
“Tomorrow,” said Danny. “Before the weather turns cold.”
“Cold for southern California,” Arthur corrected with a chuckle. “I mean, cold here is a summer heatwave in some places.”
“True,” Danny said.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said Arthur wistfully.
“What?”
“The weather.” Arthur was staring out the window now. “The sky, the clouds, even the ocean.”
“I don’t follow,” said Danny, searching for whatever it was that held Arthur’s attention beyond the glass.
He didn’t see any movement. No people. No animals. Even the high, puffy clouds that climbed like towers off the coast looked frozen in place. The palm trees were still, the fronds drooping. There was no wind.
Arthur sighed. “I guess I’m saying the world moves on without us.”
Danny locked eyes with the cook, whose gray hair had whitened. His skin was ashy except for the streaks down both sides of his face, where tears were leaving behind a wet reminder of their paths.
Arthur sniffed and wiped both sides of his face with the back of his hand. He laughed, clearing a bubble in his throat. His chin trembled. He clenched his jaw.
Danny considered reaching out, touching Arthur’s hand, offering some gesture of empathy. He’d felt the same way.
Before he could extend his arm, Arthur was staring out the window again. The moment had passed.
“Think about it,” said Arthur. “Think about what’s happened to us. Our civilization is hanging on by a thread. There’s chaos, there’s death, there’s violence. People are going crazy, right?”
Danny didn’t answer. He knew it was a rhetorical question.
Arthur wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. He rubbed his thumbs up and down the porcelain. Danny shifted in his seat. The vinyl squeaked.
“Yet,” Arthur went on, “when you look at nature, it’s as if nothing happened. It’s just another Tuesday.”
He waved his hand at the view beyond the glass. Danny followed the motion and saw a flock of birds low to the ground in a V formation. They flapped their wings and then simultaneously stopped, gliding on the air.
“It’s Thursday,” Danny said absently, his attention still on the birds.
Arthur shrugged. “That’s my point. The world moves on. Days pass, grass grows, the sun rises and falls, the moon goes through its phases. We’re a blip, Danny. We’re nothing in the scheme of things.”
He drew the coffee cup to his lips and tipped it back. He swallowed, gulping the rest of the coffee. He set the cup on the table with a rattle.
“What’s the point of it?” he asked. Another rhetorical question. Or not. He raised his eyebrows, seemingly wanting a response from Danny.
“The point of what? Existence? Our lives? Fighting to survive?”
Arthur’s eyes glistened, the tears forming again. He sniffed and licked his teeth. He shook his head with resignation and lowered his chin. “All of it. I know I’m getting all philosophical and whatnot, but really, what’s the point?”
He lifted his head again, blinking against the tears that were now following the well-worn paths down his cheeks. He didn’t bother wiping them.
“The point is,” said Danny, “we’re here on this Earth for a reason. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if I ever will, if we ever will. But, getting all philosophical, I gotta believe there’s a purpose to all of this. There is a point. And if we stick together, we’ll figure it out.”
Danny offered a smile, and this time he reached across the table without hesitation and put his hand atop Arthur’s. He squeezed.
“Don’t give up,” he said. “Don’t ever give up.”
***
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my team of incredible professionals who helped get this book into your hands. Felicia Sullivan, Pauline Nolet, Patricia Wilson, Hristo Kovatliev, and Stef McDaid are worth their weight in gold.
Thanks also to Steve Kremer, master of all things, for his keen eye and valuable insight, and to Albert Moss for his insights and suggestions.
Courtney, Sam, and Luke always support me and give me the strength to keep pecking away at the keys. I love you all.
To my parents, mother-in-law, and siblings, thanks to you for all of efforts to spread the word. I am grateful.
And thank you to everyone who’s supported The Alt Apocalypse. I’m humbled by how you’ve embraced such a unique concept in disaster fiction.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
Acknowledgements
The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction Page 26
