The Alt Apocalypse: Books 1-3 Read online

  Now, apparently, it was the name of some exclusive club on the PCH. He found himself absently humming the tune to “Champagne Supernova” as he checked the back of the card. It was blank. He tucked the card back into the envelope and added the golden key.

  Pacific Coast Highway? 17985? That wasn’t too far. No more than five or six miles. He could make that in a half day easy. It was a destination at least, somewhere to head. Maybe he’d find other people there. Maybe there was food. If nothing else, it was bound to be a nice place to stay, and he already had a key.

  Danny reached over and pulled the driver’s side door shut to extinguish the interior light. He slid his backpack toward the passenger’s side of the bench seat and laid his head on it. He shifted his weight, adjusted his neck, pulled his knees toward his chest, and extended his legs as far as he could. He rolled onto his back and then onto his side. His toes were cold. His body ached.

  Maggie was already snoring, her paws racing against the back of the front seat as she dreamt. Danny closed his eyes and inched his feet into the crack between the seat back and the bench. Within minutes, he drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

  ***

  Danny stood on the highway, looking up at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway. It had taken him five hours to find it, and he still wasn’t sure he had the right place.

  He blinked away the ash and looked skyward, up a bluff overlooking the gray, sloshy ocean, and soaked in the Romanesque grandeur of the address. Even with the ash covering its terra-cotta tile roof and the colorless sky behind it, the estate was breathtaking. It towered at the edge of the bluff like a proud watchman with his chest puffed and shoulders back.

  It wasn’t the enormity of the place that had Danny questioning the address, it was the familiarity of it that forced doubt into his mind. He recognized it. He’d driven by it countless times, craning his neck close to his windshield as he passed it in his Volkswagen.

  17985 PCH wasn’t random. It was the Getty Villa, a landmark tourist attraction built in the 1970s by oilman J. Paul Getty. It was a recreation of a first-century Roman country house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy.

  Though he’d never visited, Danny had read about it. He remembered it specifically because the original house after which Getty had modeled the estate was still partially buried in the ash from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius two thousand years earlier.

  Danny chuckled at the coincidence, wiped ash from his face, and started climbing the slippery embankment toward the house. Maggie followed at his heels, navigating the slippery climb.

  There were roads that lead to the Getty Villa, but Danny didn’t have the inclination to take the long route. He’d just as soon make a straight line for it.

  The soles of his feet stung with blisters as he stepped carefully but confidently up the steep hill. Occasionally, he’d grab the branch of a shrub or thin trunk of a dying tree for stability if his heavy pack swung one way or the other. He’d tied the half-empty jug of water to the pack, which made it difficult to navigate a sudden, wide step one way or the other. Twice, he had to coax Maggie upward, but she obeyed and made the trek without much trouble.

  They reached the top of the bluff, both panting, as Danny turned his back to the villa to gaze out at the ocean. It looked foreign to him, the surface of another planet awash with gas and particulate matter. The sun was a vague smudge of light that hung above the milky shallows of the shore. The waves crashed into the sand, but one was hardly distinguishable from the other. Everything was gray. On the beach, beyond the wet tideline, he made out an even path of ash that piled thicker than that around it. The ocean was washing it ashore and depositing it with each push and pull of the tide. Danny followed the line for as far as he could see, longingly pining for the green and brown color of the wrack that no longer dotted the shore. Until now, he’d never missed giant kelp.

  It was windier atop the bluff, somehow colder than it was down below. Danny curled his toes under his blistered feet as he stood there. It didn’t help. He exhaled loudly and walked toward the building, searching for an entrance. Maggie pranced, her nose flaring as she sniffed the new surroundings. The tip of it was white with ash, like she’d just devoured a powdered sugar donut.

  Danny worked his way around the wide property until he found himself at the public entrance, which was beyond a large parking structure to his left. He walked through the entry pavilion and along a wide path framed by steeply cut rock on one side and dying vegetation on the other. The path wound along the hillside until it ended at the edge of an amphitheater. The amphitheater sank into the hillside and led to a colonnade on the western side of the villa. Maggie bounced ahead of Danny and leapt down the wide stone steps that ran in a terraced semicircle to a stage at the bottom. She reached the stage and stopped to scratch behind her ear. Her collar clanged as she worked the itch. Danny moved deliberately down each step, scanning the ashy topcoat for footprints or other signs of life.

  There were none.

  He tapped his thigh and Maggie followed him along the colonnade and into the museum. He walked through the entry foyer, which spread out on either side into art galleries. As he moved past the galleries and toward the square courtyard, called the inner peristyle, he searched for any doorways that might appear as though they could be the right entrance to the Oasis.

  Danny was certain the private club was hidden with the museum. It had to be. Not seeing an entrance, obvious or otherwise, he stepped outside into the peristyle. Maggie’s nose was to the ground, her muzzle sweeping the ground as she explored the abandoned space.

  To the right was a sign that marked stairs, bathrooms, and an elevator. They pointed to a section of the villa labeled CCXIII. Danny momentarily forgot about his search for the entrance to the hidden Oasis. He focused on finding the restrooms, which he did. He pushed his way into the men’s room, Maggie following, and felt his way through the dark until he found the sinks along one side of the lavatory.

  He waved his hands under the sinks, not considering the loss of power. He wanted to wash his feet and clean the filth from the stinging wounds on his arches and heels in the worst way.

  Nothing sprang forth from the faucets. He cursed his luck and retraced his steps back into the light. He stood at the stairwell, considering whether or not he should climb up to the second floor.

  “What do you think?” he asked Maggie.

  She cocked her head to one side and sat. She pawed at him. He crouched down onto the balls of his feet and took her head in his hands. He pulled the side of her head to his and rubbed behind her ears. She tried licking his face from the corner of her mouth. Danny pulled back, still holding the sides of her head, and touched his nose to hers, unconcerned about the ash.

  “You’re a good girl,” he said. “You’ve saved my life more than once. I’m leaving this decision up to you. Do we take the stairs?”

  Maggie’s tongue wagged and made a big swipe across the front of her muzzle. She pawed at him again. He had no idea what she wanted, but he pretended the swipe was agreement they should try the stairs in search of a secret entrance that might or might not exist.

  For all he knew, the Oasis was a metaphor for something, or a club long since abandoned. He sighed and pushed himself to his feet, the heavy pack making the move harder than it needed to be.

  “Let’s do it,” he said, adjusting the pack to regain his balance.

  He pushed open the door and revealed a dark stairwell. It was polished white, which reflected the ambient daylight as long as the door was ajar. Once he closed it, the well would go dark.

  He held it open with his foot while he assessed the space. The stairs led up to a second floor. That level was home to the upper peristyle and assorted collections of Roman antiquities.

  “Here it is,” he said to the dog. “More climbing.”

  He craned his neck to see up the well. It didn’t offer much. The first flight was straight ahead. Then it turned one hundred and eighty degrees to rise another flight
to the second floor.

  Maggie brushed past him into the small dark space. Instead of walking up the steps as Danny suspected she would, she moved past them to a wall that ran under the second flight. She stood at the wall, beside the first-floor steps, and whimpered.

  Danny snapped his fingers and pointed at the steps. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re going up.”

  Maggie licked her chops and ignored him. She was staring at the wall. Danny tried again to get her to move, but she wouldn’t. Finally, he let go of his foothold and walked next to her. The door shut and the well went dark. It was then Danny saw what had his dog’s attention.

  In the darkness, the faintest outline of dim light leaked through the gap between a door and its frame. He let go of Maggie’s collar and stepped to the wall, running his fingers along the thin vertical line that ran a length of three feet above his head. He followed it straight down to the floor. It was a doorway. No doubt. But there wasn’t a handle or an obvious way inside.

  He pressed his ear to the wall. There was no sound coming from beyond what he knew must be some sort of hidden space.

  He pressed on it at the spot where a handle or knob ought to have been. There was no give. He tried various spots inside the rectangular frame of dim light but got nowhere.

  Out of frustration he banged on it with the side of his fist. Maggie barked. The shrill sound of it bounced off the concrete stairwell and echoed up to the second floor.

  Danny groped around in the dark until he found the top of her head and he rubbed it, trying to comfort her. She whined.

  Then Danny heard a noise from the other side of the wall. He pressed his palms and ear to the cold concrete and listened. Footsteps. They were getting louder, closer.

  He backed away from the wall, anticipating a door swinging open. That didn’t happen. He heard a man’s voice from behind the wall. It was muffled, but he heard the question well enough to understand it.

  “What is it you are seeking?”

  Danny swallowed hard. Was it a trick question? Was there some secret code?

  The man asked again, “What is it you are seeking?”

  Danny shrugged in the dark. He pressed his hands to the wall and spoke into it as if he were close to a microphone. “The Oasis.”

  He was sure he’d blown it. The man didn’t respond. He didn’t ask another question. Then, from the other side of the door, he heard what sounded like metal grinding on metal, and the thin strands of dull light grew wider and brighter.

  The door was opening inward. It was slow, as if being hand-cranked. And it was loud. The grind was amplified in the small conductive space. Danny covered his ears until it stopped.

  When it did, an unremarkable man in a T-shirt and basketball shorts stood there with his hands on his hips. Danny guessed the man, who was less imposing than his voice, was in his late twenties. He had a close-cropped head of hair, tanned skin, and muscles that visibly flexed when he moved to shake Danny’s hand. He smiled, revealing bright white teeth.

  “Hi,” he said, with his hand extended. “I’m Ritz. Welcome to the Oasis.”

  Danny hesitated but shook his hand. “I’m Danny,” he said. “This is Maggie.”

  Ritz eyed Danny and then crouched to greet the dog. She moved in, sniffing him, and tried to lick his face. Ritz stood up, backed away, and laughed.

  “Sweet dog,” he said. “Follow me.”

  Danny stepped through the opening. Once inside, Ritz leaned into the door and heaved it closed. Then he spun a wheel similar to one Danny had seen on large bank safes in the movies; then Ritz motioned him to follow.

  The walls in this secret area were like those outside it. They were painted concrete or plaster of some kind. Every few feet about six feet from the floor, and not far from the nine-foot ceiling, were flickering LED lights made to resemble candles.

  Danny took a half-dozen steps before he was descending a steep set of stairs that appeared to go two or three levels below the first floor of the museum. He grabbed a lacquered oak handrail befit with chrome brackets drilled into the wall and took the steps one at a time, hesitating as his sore feet touched each cool surface.

  “First time here?” asked Ritz over his shoulder. “That look on your face tells me you’re a newbie.”

  Danny wasn’t sure how to answer, so he chose honesty. “Yes. First time.”

  “The others will be glad to see you,” said Ritz, his resonant voice bouncing off the walls. “We figured we weren’t getting any new arrivals. It’s been, what? Two weeks now since the attacks?”

  “Others?” Danny asked. Maggie was descending the steps next to him, keeping his pace. She’d occasionally look over at him as she pawed her way lower into the hidden stairwell.

  “There are fifteen of us,” Ritz said. “The last of us got here more than a week ago. Then nothing. We all cheered when we heard you bang on the door. Then we saw you and the dog on the infrared camera in the stairwell, and I volunteered to come get you. Like I said, we’re excited to have a new face.”

  They reached the bottom of the stairwell, and Danny looked over his shoulder at the long flight of steps they’d walked. They had to have descended thirty feet or more. He guessed, at this point, they were inside the bluff, in some carved-out bunker within the hillside.

  He turned back and eyed the hallway in front of them. The corridor ended at a pair of large ornately carved oak doors with handles that matched the bracketing hardware on the stairs.

  Finally, he settled his gaze on Ritz. He noticed the bottom part of a colorful tattoo sticking out from underneath Ritz’s shirt sleeve. A heavy, expensive-looking watch wrapped around his wrist.

  “Look,” Danny said nervously, “I’m not sure I should be here.”

  Ritz’s brow furrowed with confusion. “Why not?”

  Danny considered whether he should say anything about how he’d come to knock on the door. Clearly these people had money. They didn’t necessarily have J. Paul Getty money, but wealth nonetheless. And he doubted any of them had come by their access through a happenstance of events which found them jimmying open a lockbox in the front seat of a dead car inside an abandoned garage.

  It was better to tell them now than having to do it later after he’d settled into the place. Whatever the place was.

  “I found the invitation,” he said. “It’s not mine. It doesn’t have my name on it. I don’t even know what the Oasis is exactly.”

  A broad grin spread across Ritz’s face. He scratched the side of his head, the LED wall lamps glinting off the watch face, and took a step closer to Danny. “Do you have the invitation?”

  “Yes,” said Danny. “It’s in my pack.”

  “That’s all you need,” said Ritz. “That card entitles whoever possesses it to enter the club. You possess it. You can enter.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Danny. “It’s a private club.”

  “It’s not private,” said Ritz. “It’s secret. There’s a difference. You’ll see. Of the ten of us, only two have our names on the invitations.”

  Danny followed Ritz to the double doors. Ritz knocked. The doors buzzed. He opened one of them and held it. Danny walked into the gleaming, sleek space. To his right was a young woman sitting behind a glass and chrome desk. She wore a bright smile and a thin yellow sweater with a dark blue pencil skirt.

  “Hello,” she said. “Welcome to the Oasis.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Sunday, July 27, 2025

  DAY THIRTY-SIX

  Venice, California

  Clint Anthony buttoned his pants and cinched his frayed belt another notch tighter. He hadn’t eaten anything in a couple of days, and his stomach was growling. He’d gotten used to the sensation of hunger. It was never gone. He’d merely gotten accustomed to its degrees.

  He was living in a tent he’d pitched on the boardwalk at Venice Beach. There was a virtual city there now of people who had nowhere else to go. They’d survived the attack five weeks earlier and somehow managed to cobble t
ogether a slim existence in a spot long tolerant, even embracing, of vagrants, drug-addled wanderers, and creatives who were attracted to counterculture.

  The hundreds who’d gathered along the wide strips of concrete or on the ash-covered powdery sand itself apparently didn’t care about their exposure to the radioactive elements surrounding them. There wasn’t anything they could do about it. And if they were anything like Clint, there was no long-term anything anymore. They lived, and died, one day at a time.

  Clint unzipped the entrance flap and peeked his head from his two-person tent. The ash was intermittent now. For the past couple of days, it had come in sheets, its approach visible from a distance as wind carried the fallout across the mountains and valleys that defined the Southern California coast. It also brought with it the odor of death, something with which Clint had become familiar with while in prison. It was the kind of stink that, once you inhaled it, you never forgot it. It was at once sweet and sour, intoxicating and nauseating.

  Scanning his immediate surroundings, blinking away the sprinkle of gray ash that swirled around his head and landed on his face, he didn’t see much that had changed from the night before. It was a refugee camp, more or less, from which there was no place to go.

  He ducked back into his tent, zipped it up, and finished getting dressed. He pulled on a black quilted thigh-length coat he used as a blanket at night. It was easily twenty degrees colder than it had been before the attack, and while it wasn’t downright cold, it certainly wasn’t warm anymore. Clint didn’t know much about nuclear explosions or the so-called nuclear winters that could result from multiple simultaneous detonations across a wide area, but he was smart enough to understand there wouldn’t be much sunbathing on Venice Beach for the foreseeable future.