The Alt Apocalypse: Books 1-3 Page 23

  His mind flashed to snapshots of Danny’s body, his wounds, and the distant, unfocused stare in his dead eyes. The grim thoughts were interrupted by a squeeze of his hand.

  “You okay?” asked Keri. “I mean, relatively speaking?”

  Dub forced a smile, though she couldn’t see it. “Yeah,” he said. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Life. What lies ahead.”

  “That’s an unanswerable question, isn’t it?”

  He locked eyes with her through his goggles and nodded. She was right. Keri was pretty much always right. He was the lucky one to have her in his life.

  She wasn’t the most demonstrative girlfriend he’d ever had. There was a reserve there, a barrier, he’d fought to crack. And he had. Somewhat. But now they had eternity, or at least the rest of their lives, to finish the job.

  She was his best friend. He could tell her anything without judgment. Almost anything. She hadn’t been thrilled when he’d suggested they were morally bankrupt for stealing radios. But he understood it; she’d thought he was judging her.

  That seemed like forever ago, another lifetime even. So much had happened since those bombs dropped. So much had changed. Yet at the center of it all, he still had her. She had him. Together they had Barker and Michael.

  Somehow, they’d all survived the initial blast, the fallout, the attacks on their home, and they’d found their way to a new beginning. An oasis.

  There was a commotion at the front of the group, a louder conversation that caught his attention. He and Keri simultaneously looked forward, and he followed Gilda’s outstretched arm to her fingertip. She was pointing ahead and up a large bluff on the side of the highway opposite the sloshing Pacific. Atop the bluff was a large majestic building he’d seen before, but to which he’d never given much thought.

  Gilda and the others stopped in the middle of the roadway, and the group gathered into an amorphous huddle. She was already explaining something when Dub was close enough to hear.

  “…to the entrance and then descend into the bunker complex,” she was saying. “It’s a steep climb if we go straight up. Or we can take the long way around and wind our way up the driveway. I’m good either way. Thoughts?”

  Nobody said anything, so Gilda made the decision to trek the bluff. It was a more direct route and would get them out of the elements faster.

  Dub was watching Gilda as she spoke. Her shoulders were back. One hand was on Maggie’s back, holding the dog close. She was a confident woman, a leader. He decided they were in good hands. They did have a future in this place.

  Victor keyed the radio and called to whomever was listening on the other end. He held the device close to his mask, his muffled voice still audible despite it and the swirling wind that swept across the highway from the ocean.

  “This is Victor calling K6VWV base,” he said. “We are on our way up. Count us seven. Over.”

  The radio beeped and crackled, and the response blared through the small speaker on the handheld transceiver’s face. Victor held it away from his face.

  “Copy that, Victor,” came the reply. “Seven on the way up. We’ll be waiting for you. Over.”

  Victor nodded at the group and then at Gilda. She pivoted and started an angled walk toward the bluff that held the mansion. She patted her thigh and Maggie gave chase. The others followed, and Dub glanced back up at the mansion on the bluff. He knew it as a museum, nothing more. He’d never visited, and he only knew what it housed because of the informational sign that directed traffic to it from the highway.

  He looked at the front of the pack, Gilda striding in the lead, Victor marching a step behind, and at Keri, who was next to him. He craned his neck up at the Getty Villa one more time, its architecture looming overhead against the gray, clouded sky. Disparate black and gray flakes landed on the goggles, clouding his view. But beneath his virtually intolerable but effective burlap mask, Dub smiled. He raised his hands, adjusted the mask on his face, and thumbed the lenses of his goggles clean, taking extra swipes to remove the remnant streaks of black. The goggles were fogged at the edges, but he could see more clearly without the flakes. The villa stood proudly above him. It beckoned.

  It looked like a good place to call home. As good as any, he decided. And if nothing else, it was a place to escape the ash.

  Turn the page to read

  LIT

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  Book 2

  Go back to Contents

  LIT

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  Book 2

  For Courtney, Sam, & Luke

  The torches who light my path

  “It is known that wildfires behave unpredictably—this is fundamental—but it is my experience that humans in the presence of wildfire are also likely to behave in aberrant and unpredictable ways.”

  —Michael Leunig

  CHAPTER 1

  Friday, October 17, 2025

  Angeles National Forest

  The first thing Sam McNeil sensed in the space between sleep and consciousness was the acrid odor of smoke. The second was an intense, radiant heat that gave him the sense he was cooking inside his eleven-hundred-dollar sleeping bag.

  What time was it?

  His eyes popped open; the sting of particulate forced them closed. Tears squeezed down his temples and he coughed.

  He blinked open his eyes again, fighting the instinct to shut them, and sat up on his elbows. Their tent was foggy with the smoke seeping in through the partially unzipped flap at the front of the space. Light fought through the opaque flood, giving the smudgy appearance of the sun stuck behind thick gray clouds.

  Then he heard it.

  The pop and sizzle of fire. It wasn’t the friendly, comforting, hearth-like crackle that beckoned the cold closer to the flames. It was angry. It was chaotic. It was wild.

  He coughed again and leaned onto one elbow, rolling onto his side. He placed his hand on his wife’s hip and gripped it.

  “Loretta,” he said, shaking her. “Get up.”

  She groaned something unintelligible and jerked away from him. Then she tugged on her own bag and pulled it up over her shoulder. Sam cursed her addiction to Ambien and tried again. This time he pulled himself from his bag, unzipping it without difficulty, and got onto his knees. He yanked her onto her back and shook her shoulders. His eyes were watering. The din of the fire was getting louder. The air was hotter, like the new dry sauna at Bay Club Santa Monica, where he and Loretta would work off their mojitos and vegan enchiladas.

  “Retta,” he said. “You have to get—”

  He coughed, and her eyes fluttered open. At first her face looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. Then she opened her eyes, sensing the urgency burned into Sam’s face, and her brow furrowed.

  “What’s happening?” she asked with the breathlessness that accompanies fatigue and disorientation. “What’s wrong?”

  Sam coughed. Before he could answer, her nose crinkled, and her eyes widened with recognition. She pulled away from him, sitting up on her elbows. “What’s that smell? Is there a fire?”

  Sam pulled the back of his hand to his face, attempting to cover his mouth and nose. He nodded emphatically. He could taste the smoke. He pulled his waffle long-sleeved T-shirt over his nose and mouth.

  Loretta scrambled from her bag. Her hands were trembling, her eyes glistening. Sam couldn’t tell if it was from the thickening haze inside the tent or if she was on the verge of crying. She coughed and planted herself on her stomach, staying low to the ground. She crawled closer to the flap at the front of the tent. She was wearing long johns that matched his. Her lavender thong peeked over the top of her waistband. Sam barely noticed. He was preoccupied with surviving.

  “It’s easier to breathe down here,” she said.

  Sam dropped onto the floor of the tent and elbowed his way the short distance to the flap, joining Loretta. She tucked her face under her armpit, trying to breathe clean
er air; her deep inhales indicated by the rise and fall of her back.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes and on his face. He blinked against the salty sting and reached up to peek through the opening in the flap. He pulled back on the nylon fabric, separating more of the zipper’s teeth, and peered outside.

  His jaw clenched. His stomach tightened and then lurched. Bile crept up his throat.

  The light he’d seen leaking through the gap wasn’t sunlight. It was fire. And it was everywhere. The sun hadn’t risen yet, not that he could tell. A wall of fire twenty feet high was all he could see. The heat was like an open oven, dry and oppressive.

  He lowered himself again, the afterimage of the inferno consuming his vision. It took him a couple of tries to swallow. A wave of nausea coursed through his body. His wife’s expectant, frightened eyes searched his for hope.

  Her recently trimmed bangs were matted against her forehead. Her face was soaked, and he couldn’t separate the sweat from the tears.

  He coughed again and lowered himself to the ground, inching as close to her as he could. He faced her and brushed her bangs from her face. Her skin was hot to the touch.

  “The fire is bad,” he said softly. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  She pulled his hand from her face and held it tightly with both of hers at her chest, rubbing his thumb with hers. “We can’t stay here,” she said, her chin trembling. “We have to get out somehow.”

  Sam was surprised by his wife’s relative calm. He’d expected her to panic. But he was the one suppressing that overwhelming urge to panic. Maybe it was the yoga. Maybe it was the Autumn Mist and Winter Jubilee candles she was always burning in their home. Maybe it was the juice detox.

  He should have tried the detox. He had no doubt. As he searched for an answer, a solution to this unsolvable danger, he was thinking about a juice detox and regretting his dismissal of it.

  “I need to go out there,” he told her. “I have to see if there’s a way out.

  She shook her head and squeezed his hand, her French manicure digging into his skin. “No, you can’t.”

  Sam coughed, the scratch of the smoke in his throat. “I’m just going to check. We can’t go out the front…”

  He tugged his hand from hers. Loretta reluctantly let go, her nails scratching his skin. She rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself into a low crouch on all fours.

  Sam leaned over and kissed her, feeling the heat from her skin. He tasted the salt and lingered for a moment before pulling away. “Don’t follow me outside yet. I’ll only be gone a couple of seconds.”

  Loretta nodded. A sheen of sweat coated her face and neck.

  Sam maneuvered into a squat and pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth again. He reached up and unzipped the flap, then crawled through the opening. A blast of heat immediately hit him. His ears and forehead were burning. His hands stung, and he tried pulling his sleeves over his fingers. He opened his eyes, barely able to focus against the waves of hot air that crashed over him the way an ocean might during high tide.

  The roar of the flames was almost deafening. It was definitely disorienting. Sam’s senses couldn’t process all of it at once; the sight, the sound, and the heat were too much. The moment he exited the tent, he reflexively retreated and backed into its fabric.

  He was low to the ground, on all fours. He scanned his surroundings, which he didn’t recognize. When they’d picked the spot the night before, it was a beautiful clearing just off the trail. There were the remnants of an old campfire they’d rebuilt to cook their dinner and a trio of wide stumps they’d used as seats and a table. He didn’t see any of it. The wall of flames was no farther than forty feet from the tent.

  Sam hugged the edge of the tent and, with his eyes closed, used the feel of the fabric to work his way around to the back side of the tent, opposite the entry flap. Once he’d reached what he believed was the back corner of the tent, his hand brushing against a metal tent stake, he opened his eyes again. He saw hope.

  There was a clear path, at least it appeared that way, leading away from the tent and the small clearing. Beyond a cluster of trees, there was what might be the trail.

  Reinvigorated by the possibility of escape, Sam scurried back to the flap, tore it open, and stuck his head inside. Loretta was in the same spot, curled into the fetal position on her side.

  “Retta!” he called over the din of the fire. “I found a way out.”

  She didn’t react at first. He called her again, and her head jerked, as if freed from a trance. Her eyes were mostly covered by her soaked bangs.

  He stole a glance over his shoulder and reached his hand through the opening. He wagged his outstretched hand at her.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Loretta searched his eyes. She didn’t move.

  Sam reached farther into the tent and grabbed her arm forcefully. Her tricep tensed against the pressure. “Let’s go!” he yelled. “Now!”

  Still dazed, Loretta acquiesced and followed the pull of his hand. She crawled through the opening, and he positioned her in front of him along the side of the tent. The fire was closer now, perhaps no more than twenty feet.

  The soles of Sam’s feet were burning. They hurt as much as the thick pain that covered the back of his neck and the tops of his ears. He motioned toward the path he’d taken to the back of the tent and pushed his wife ahead of him.

  They crawled along the edge of the tent, wading through the smoke. From behind, waves of heat washed over them. Sam’s knee came down on a rock, the sharp edge of it protruding through the blanket of toasting leaves and digging into the soft spot underneath his kneecap.

  He grunted, his body tensing against the bolt of sharp pain that shot up his leg. He gingerly moved forward to join his wife at the back side of the tent. She was shuffling, her head low to the ground. She stopped ahead of him and coughed. The smoke was thicker on this side of the tent than it had been when he’d made his brief exploratory trip.

  The fire had advanced quickly and was only a couple of feet from the front of the tent. Sam pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed his wife under her arm, yanking her forward and up as if trying to launch her into the air, and tugged her with him as he ran now, as fast as he could away from the flames.

  They coughed and wheezed, leaving the clearing behind and weaving their way through the cluster of walnut trees toward the trail. The bright glow of the fire lit the trees and cast long shadows onto the trail.

  When they reached the trail, Loretta stumbled and fell forward, dragging Sam with her. They tumbled to the dirt and skidded to a stop. Without checking for injuries, Sam got back to his feet. He was facing the cluster of trees that edged the clearing.

  There was no longer a clearing.

  It was engulfed and indistinguishable from the big cone Douglas fir and Coulter pines it had already devoured. It was moving faster, and if Sam didn’t know better, he’d have thought the fire was chasing them.

  The sweat that coated his neck stung his burned skin. The backs of his hands were red, which he noticed when he reached down to help his wife to her feet. The soles of his feet were raw. He yelled over the roar of the approaching flames, despite Loretta being only inches from him, urging her to run.

  They did, along a path that didn’t lead them away from danger, as they’d hoped. They couldn’t see where they were going. The farther they ran from the fire that consumed their campsite, the closer they came to another. They had no way of knowing as they ran, stumbled, and coughed their way through the forest, that seemingly all southern California was on fire.

  CHAPTER 2

  Friday, October 17, 2025

  Brentwood, California

  “What do you mean you’re not coming home?” Ellen Chang looked at the speaker in the roof above the dash and narrowed her eyes.

  Although she couldn’t see her son on the other end of the line, looking at the speaker gave her a misguided sense of control in the conversation.

&nbs
p; “I’m staying here for Christmas,” he said, his voice devoid of bass.

  She was late to a nail appointment after having a long lunch at the Getty. The buzz from the second glass of Canella Prosecco hadn’t worn off.

  “It’s her, isn’t it, Bobby?” she sneered and pressed the accelerator. “She’s making you stay.”

  He hesitated then cleared his throat. That was her son’s tell. When she hit the target, he equivocated by clearing his throat. She tapped the brake. Traffic was horrible. She glanced at the clock on the display. She was late. It would cost her a larger tip than usual. Much larger.

  “No, Mom,” he finally said. “I’m staying here because I want to stay. I like it here. The food, the weather, the people.”

  Ellen laughed, the sarcasm dripping. “The weather?”

  She couldn’t imagine a place with better weather than southern California. It was what kept her from wanting to live in the Bay Area near her sister. Well, it was the weather and her husband’s job. That was what afforded the Friday manicures and the two drink lunches at galleries and museums, what paid for the late-model import with a speakerphone in the roof above the dash.

  “I’m not coming home until the end of spring term,” Bobby said as if it were fact. “That’s when my year is up.”

  Ellen pressed the accelerator, zipped through a yellow light, and the push of cool air from an air vent danced across her fingers. The sweet of the Prosecco had gone sour on her tongue. She ran her tongue along the roof of her mouth.

  “I love how you’re telling me how it’s going to be,” she said, changing lanes without using her signal. “I don’t remember you signing the checks for your education. Did you sign a check, Bobby?”

  “No.”

  She changed lanes again. This time she swerved to avoid a parallel-parked car with its door open. The clock told her the tip was getting bigger. She cursed under her breath.