The Alt Apocalypse: Books 1-3 Page 21

  “Keri told me you took a pretty bad beating,” Victor said. “She said you were unconscious. I’m making sure you’re good to go.”

  “I’m okay,” Dub assured him.

  “You can talk to Ritz if you need anything,” Victor said. “He’s a paramedic. He’s got first aid with him. Medicine. Whatever you need, okay?”

  “Thank you. I’ll talk to him if I need something.”

  Victor patted his shoulder. “Good deal,” he said and walked away.

  Victor moved to a man named Danny and Danny’s dog. The dog was sitting obediently at Danny’s feet.

  Barker was adjusting his goggles and mask. Michael was doing the same. The two of them stood off to one side. Dub looked past them toward Rieber Vista. His eyes climbed the side of the building until he found the shattered window that marked his dorm.

  The space beyond the window had been their home. It had been their refuge in the hours, days, and weeks since the attacks turned their world upside down. He would miss it.

  The dog whimpered and drew his attention back to the group. The leader, Gilda, was crouched in front of the dog. She held its head in her hands, and it was licking her face on the outside of her mask. Dub smiled, watching the unexpected moment of joy.

  The group of four, plus the dog, had arrived early that morning. They’d apologized for not having been there sooner to help protect them from whoever the imposters were.

  He was so engrossed in it, he hadn’t noticed Danny sidle up beside him. The man’s voice startled him.

  “So,” said Danny, “you guys have been here since the bombs dropped?”

  Dub nodded and motioned toward the others. “You’ve been with them all along?”

  Danny shook his head. “No, a few weeks. I found them. Lucky, I guess.”

  “Where is it we’re going?” asked Dub. “What is the place? Is it what they say it is? Food, water, shelter?”

  Danny chuckled, his amusement muffled by his own mask. “It is. It’s got enough for all of us for a really long time. As long as we live, it’ll keep us alive.”

  Dub tilted his head to the side. “What?”

  Danny shrugged. “All of us are going to get sick eventually, right? Just the facts. Until then, the place we’re headed will keep us alive.”

  Dub understood the paradox. “The ash,” said Dub. “The fallout.”

  “That’s my thought,” Danny said. “But I should be more positive. I don’t mean to be a downer. To answer your question without the negativity, yes. It’s the perfect place to ride out the future.”

  It was Dub’s turn to chuckle. “Even your positive sounds negative.”

  “Nuclear war has that effect.”

  That was the first time Dub had heard that term. Nuclear war. He’d never thought of it that way before. Of course that was what it was. The attacks were the beginning of a war. Still, it was shocking to hear it aloud.

  Dub nodded toward Gilda and Victor. “Do they know who did it?”

  “Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans,” said Danny. “They heard it was all of them.”

  “Where are the soldiers?” asked Dub. “If they attacked us, why haven’t we seen their armies?”

  “Nobody is sure,” said Danny. “There are rumblings on the radio, but nothing is crystal clear. There’s too much misinformation.”

  “What are the rumblings?”

  Danny stepped closer to Dub and lowered his voice. “It wasn’t just LA. They hit other big cities all over the place. The country is a mess. They’re waiting for us to die off,” he said. “They think we’ll all kill each other. It makes their job easier if there are less of us to resist. Plus, who wants to drop troops into this? They have time on their side.”

  “All the better to get underground with you guys,” said Dub. “Before things get worse.”

  Danny slapped Dub on the shoulder. “Now you sound like me.”

  Gilda interrupted the conversation by telling the group it was time to go. They had a long hike ahead of them.

  “We’re taking Sunset,” she announced. “It’s a straight shot, and I didn’t like the look of things on San Vicente. Too many potential traps there.”

  Gilda spun on her boot heels and marched toward Sunset. The boulevard ran along the edge of the campus that separated it from Bel Air and led to the 405. They marched quietly, the sounds of their boots and the rustle of the canopy of branches hanging over their path the only soundtrack as they moved as one group.

  It was the first time Dub had left campus since the attacks, since the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, and the Chinese had bombed them. It was disorienting and virtually unrecognizable, like visiting a place in the dead of winter after having been there only in the summer.

  They wound their way up and down hills, following the curve of the roadway. They passed abandoned houses, navigating their way through abandoned cars and trucks. All of them bore the same expression of bewilderment, as if somehow the ashy wasteland was a surprise. It shouldn’t have been shocking to Dub and his friends, given what they’d experienced on campus. Yet it was. It was a confirmation that the world beyond UCLA, which they’d only envisioned in their minds, was as bad as they’d feared.

  Dub quickened his pace to match Keri’s. She’d been ahead of him since they’d started their march.

  “If I didn’t thank you already,” he said, “thank you.”

  She had both hands wrapped around the straps of her pack. It bounced gently on her back as she moved.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Saving my life,” Dub said.

  “I saved it twice,” Keri said. She was smiling behind the mask. Dub couldn’t see it, but he could hear it in her voice.

  “Thank you twice, then,” he said.

  “You already thanked me, Dub. Several times.”

  Much of the previous day was a blur, not unlike the sun that was at its apex in the murky sky. There was the fat man pressing on his chest, trying to choke him. He remembered that. And he vaguely recalled lunging at someone in the hall. That was it. If he tried too hard to press the memories into service, it only hurt his head, so he let it go, hoping that they might come back to him at some point. He also hoped that maybe they wouldn’t.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her. She’d been distant, preoccupied since they’d woken up before dawn.

  Keri looked at her feet as she marched. She didn’t speak for several yards. Then she raised her head and looked at Dub through her goggles. He couldn’t see her eyes. He wished he could. They would have told him more than whatever words she said.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I think. To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know how I am. Yesterday was…”

  He considered trying to finish her sentence for her but thought better of it. He couldn’t know the right word. Any number of them would fit what had happened. He didn’t remember the specifics, but he knew it was a day that would stain the rest of their days, however many of them there were.

  She reached out and took his hand. “Do you ever wonder what we’d be doing if the attacks hadn’t happened?” she asked without pausing for an answer. “You know, where would we be? Would we be in Powell studying? Would we be in the sculpture garden, leaning up against a tree, enjoying the weather? Would we be at B Plate, scarfing down whatever they had for lunch?”

  Dub knew that he’d very nearly died the day before. That couldn’t have been easy for her. There was residual grief clearly evident in her voice, in her tone, in the way she carried herself. She’d had to do things neither of them would ever want to do, then or ever again.

  He knew that the unspoken part of this conversation, the elephant, was the knowledge that their morality had shifted. They’d killed people. They’d abandoned them. They were focused on their own survival. How did that square with eternity? How was it okay?

  There were a million ways to rationalize it. Those were conversations for another day, a day when they were safely underground and out of the
ash.

  When Keri didn’t say anything, he squeezed her hand. “I do know if we were at B Plate, I’d have swiped you in. I was always giving you my extra swipes.”

  “I think you paid for my food more than I did,” she said.

  “Probably. We’re even. I paid for your food, you saved my life.”

  “Twice,” she said.

  “Twice.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I still can’t wrap my head around this. It’s like we’ve slipped into some other dimension and I’m living someone else’s life.”

  Dub understood and empathized. Every morning since the attacks, he’d felt the same exact way. He hadn’t been able to formulate the right way to express it, to understand the overwhelming idea that this world wasn’t real.

  But it was.

  He pulled her hand up to his burlap mask and kissed it through the rough fabric. It was his way of telling her he got her. She pulled her hand away, bringing his with it, and did the same. She drew his hand to her mask. He could feel the pucker of her lips and the heat of her breath through the cloth.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sunday, August 10, 2025

  DAY FIFTY

  Brentwood, California

  The ash was briny.

  Dub could taste it on his tongue, something that reminded him of old shrimp or sushi left in the sun. It was unmistakable, and he could smell the ocean as flakes dissolved on his tongue and against his cheeks. After weeks of seeing it fall, of feeling it on his eyelashes and cheeks, of shaking it from his coat and hair, he’d only considered its taste once before, and he’d forgotten about it until now. He’d been under attack, pressed beneath the weight of the fat man who’d nearly killed him, and he’d gotten some of it in his mouth. He remembered it, both the taste of the ash and the sensation of being crushed to death. Neither were good memories. Yet he’d triggered them, having licked his dry, cracked lips and inadvertently catching a mouthful of the black and gray fallout that covered everything.

  He was living in a fuzzy gray place, with vague outlines and virtually no shades or shadows. It was the new world beyond the Hill. Somehow, he’d imagined that maybe once they’d left campus and ventured beyond its figurative bubble, the world might seem brighter. But aside from the occasional distant orange throb of a still-burning fire in the distance, the world was gray and black and brown.

  Dub adjusted his reflective ski goggles and quietly pulled up the suffocating burlap-scrap mask he wore to keep himself from doing what he’d just done. The material scratched his scruff and irritated his jawline and cheeks. After tasting the ash, he thought it better to be irritated than irradiated.

  The straps from his loaded pack dug into his sore shoulders as he shifted his weight. He was crouched behind an electrical box at the corner of Sunset and Bundy. His heart was racing, and his eyes were wide with fear.

  The ash, the fishy taste, the radiation, and the bruising pain on his shoulder were inconsequential. Right now, his biggest concern was a cat.

  On the other side of the street, crouched, growling, and looking right at him was a large male California mountain lion. Between them was the half-eaten carcass of a deer.

  They’d been marching without concern along Sunset, winding their way to the 405 and then crossing it. They’d maneuvered around abandoned cars and trucks. They’d clung together in an amorphous blob of armed trekkers.

  Nobody was much for talking, for getting to know one another as they plodded south and west toward the bunker complex. Michael had asked a couple of questions about the sustainability of where they were headed, and Victor had assured him they’d have more than enough food, water, and protection.

  None of the rescue party had given much in the way of details about where they were headed except to clarify it was on the coast but not on the beach. Michael and the others had apparently taken Victor at his word and not pressed for more details. They’d find out soon enough. All of them had been in a sort of trance as they moved together. Dub had smelled the deer first. It wasn’t a fresh kill.

  Barker must have smelled it a moment later, blaming the odor on Michael, who’d protested and insisted it wasn’t him through blushed cheeks barely visible behind his scarf.

  Then they’d heard the growl of the cat, and they’d frozen. It had inched forward, eyeing them. When they stood motionless, it held its ground. When they moved, it advanced.

  They were stuck, trying to gauge the best way to avoid killing the cat with a gunshot that would alert other wanderers to their location.

  He and his friends were huddled together with the quartet from the OASIS. Maggie the dog glared at the cat. She snarled with her shoulders squared at Danny’s side.

  “You’re supposed to make yourself as big as possible,” whispered Keri. “Make a lot of noise and act like you’re the dangerous one.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. “Riiight,” he whispered. “Those rules don’t apply anymore.”

  “Of course they do,” she said. “It’s still a mountain lion.”

  Barker interjected. He was on one knee behind Keri. “It’s a mountain lion standing on Sunset in the middle of Brentwood,” he said. “They’re called mountain lions because they don’t hang out on Sunset in Brentwood. If that were the case, they’d be called Brentwood lions.”

  “What’s your point?” whispered Keri.

  Michael added his two cents. “His point is that nothing is what it used to be. Nothing. Not us, not Brentwood, not mountain lions. Typically, they wouldn’t be out until dusk. We’re not close to nightfall.”

  The lion crept forward and growled with the ferocity of an overgrown house cat. This was an animal for whom Dub was certain its bite was worse than its bark.

  “We should have gone back the way we came,” said Victor. “We’d have avoided this.”

  “Second-guessing doesn’t help us,” said Gilda. “We need to shoot it.”

  “Really?” asked Keri, her voice straining. “I’m sure he’s as afraid of us as we are of him. If we just keep moving, we’ll be fine.”

  Dub reached out and put his hand on Keri’s thigh. “We can’t take that risk. That animal is clearly out of its element. It’s unpredictable.”

  The animal’s ears were pinned back. Its lips were pulled back, revealing its large teeth. It looked scared. It also looked angry.

  “That doesn’t mean we have to kill it,” said Keri, “does it?”

  Dub deferred to the OASIS crew. They were the ones in charge.

  Gilda’s head shifted mechanically, as if her ice blue eyes were darting from one person to another. The warped reflections of the group danced across her goggles before she settled on Danny. She motioned toward the cat with her chin. It was the only part of her face that was exposed to the elements. “Fire a warning shot first,” she said. “Scare it. Maybe it’ll run.”

  Danny nodded, the straps on his mask flapping up and down, and he lowered himself into a prone position on the ground. He planted his elbows into anthills of ash and aimed the rifle toward the cat. Then he raised the barrel above the cat’s head and toward the sheer hillside on the opposite side of the road. He made sure the safety was off, exhaled, took aim, and fired a single shot.

  A single crack resonated through the air, rippling off the hillsides and settling in the cool, still air that hung low beneath the thick gray clouds, which dissolved into mist. The cat flinched at the percussion but didn’t run. It held its ground. Maggie, however, did not.

  The dog, who’d been obediently holding her position at Danny’s side, bolted from the group and sprinted across the wide street. She leapt past the deer carcass and at the cat.

  The mountain lion tried to avoid the dog but wasn’t quick enough. Perhaps it was as stunned into inaction as was Danny. By the time it began its retreat, Maggie was on it. The two animals tumbled into a heap, snarling.

  Danny yelled for his dog as Gilda and Keri gasped in unison. He lowered the rifle and tried to find an opening to hit th
e cat, but the tangled blur of the animals fighting one another prevented a clear shot.

  Danny dropped the gun and sprang to his feet like a sprinter from the blocks. With his pack bouncing on his back, he forged the same path as his dog had moments earlier. His adrenaline propelled him forward as he slid into the fighting animals, his hands reaching in to separate them.

  Dub followed. Without considering what he was doing, he acted on instinct and grabbed the rifle from the ground. He started across the street, slipping on the thin layer of ash as he tried to dart quickly around the deer’s carcass.

  He could hear someone calling Danny’s name from behind him. It was muffled, but the depth of fear curdled within the painful call was evident to Dub even as he focused on the fantastic scene in front of him. He pulled the rifle to his shoulder and tried to take aim.

  He couldn’t discern arm from hand from limb from paw. It was a mess, with blood spraying onto the gray ash. Finally, he saw a clear shot at the mountain lion’s hind end and he applied steady pressure to the trigger.

  A blast kicked the rifle into his shoulder and the barrel sprang upward, a thin trail of smoke spiraling upward, but the round found its target. It drilled into the cat and separated into shrapnel.

  The cat cried out in a sorry hiss. Its legs kicked for a moment, spasmed, and the animal lay still.

  Maggie was still tearing at it, growling and snarling. Her muzzle was gashed and bloody. She had a long trail of parallel claw marks along her side, but she’d gotten the better of the cat. Somehow, she’d maintained a position of power over the wild beast despite its feral advantage. After a moment, she turned from the cat toward her master. He was next to her on the ground. She shook her body, as she would when emerging from the surf. Dub could tell Maggie was relatively unscathed.

  Danny, however, wasn’t as lucky. He was flat on his back. His head was turned to one side, still covered by his mask. One knee was raised into the air, his foot flat on the ground. He had his hands on his heaving chest. His breathing was rapid, shallow, and ragged.

  Dub felt something heavy knock against his pack and left shoulder, pushing past him and nearly knocking him from his feet. He caught his balance and saw Gilda in the peripheral vision of his goggles.