Primal Shift: Episode 2 (6 page)

And before all that, Finn would need to head to the grocery store.
Please let the shelves have food on them.
And then he’d need to lug it back on the bike to the Land Rover that he’d left by the side of the highway. 

Tucking the pipe into the pocket of his coverall, Finn turned the key and then thumbed the ignition switch. The Ninja came to life at once, settling into a low growl.

Less than a minute later, he was rolling up to the Buy Low’s front entrance. The sight was an ominous one. The sliding glass doors that opened into the store had already been pried apart, although no one seemed to be around at the moment. He killed the engine, removed the lead pipe and walked inside.

The rank scent of rotting food struck him like a fist to the gut. The heat outside was nothing compared to how sweltering it was in here. And every corner was filled with deep pockets of shadow. Several long aisles receded into darkness, swallowing every ounce of available light. Above them, a handful of banners hung from a high ceiling advising him to always buy low.

Cute.

 The plan was to make this a quick in and out. Grab whatever he could carry and high tail it out before anyone else decided to show up.

Aisle one: Organic.

Yuck.

Finn kept going.

Aisle two: Condiments.

Nope.

Aisle three: Canned goods.

There we go. About as good a place to start as any.

No sooner had he turned the corner than the toe of his boot connected with a miniature version of Chef Boyardee’s head. The can of mush floating in fake sauce skittered across the floor.

That was when that surprised look settled onto Finn’s face. Unlike the other aisles, the cans in two had barely been touched. Then another interesting thing. About a half dozen of those cans lay dented and deformed at his feet. One even showed a set of teeth marks.

The revelation came swiftly and was one more indication of what had become of nearly seven billion human minds. They’d forgotten how to use a can opener. Whatever had scorched the sky with those wacky colors which hovered in the air like something out of Woodstock, had spread farther than even Finn was ready to admit.

Finn reached down, snatched a can of beans off the floor and dropped it into a plastic bag he pulled from the pocket of his coverall.

He hadn’t come through things unscathed, that was for sure, but he still knew enough to unzip his fly before taking a leak. Jackson had also been spared, but why?

Does a virus kill every host? Maybe not, but the smell in here was about to
.

Finn tossed in a few more cans, stepping over a box of fusilli pasta that had been torn open and spilled all over.

The noise behind froze his arm as it reached out for another can.

He checked behind him.

A slight figure stood at the end of the aisle. Was too hard to make out any features, but he was male with a head full of messy hair, that much was clear.

They stared at one another for almost ten full seconds before the sound of shuffling feet came from the other direction. Three more shapes appeared and now it was looking like they meant to box him in. Three more joined the first guy and now the game became as clear as day. Whoever they were, they meant to take his possessions or to take his life and Finn wasn’t ready to give up either one, not just yet.

They were approaching now, slowly, cautiously, the way lions ease up on their prey and suddenly Finn saw what he was up against. A black guy with a yellow shirt which read

‘Shit Happens’ was gripping what looked like a box cutter. Both of his hands were crudely bandaged and it was clear that there had been an element of trial and error to his discovery that the box cutter could slice through flesh with ease. Others carried broom handles and for a second they almost looked like a group of angry villagers, which meant that he was their Frankenstein.  

But those guys didn’t frighten Finn nearly as much as the one decked out in chain mail gloves and a leather butcher’s apron, wielding a long pointed blade.

The little prick Finn had seen first let out a high pitched scream as he came at him.

The plastic bag in Finn’s hand didn’t hold more than four or five cans, but the extra weight was more than enough. Finn had just enough time to swing the bag one full rotation before bringing it down on top of the skinny man’s head. The sound of his skull breaking apart was all the man probably heard before his legs stopped working and his limp body went careening into the hard metal shelf.

Part of Finn’s plan called for a ruthless demonstration of force he hoped might scatter these yahoos, and make them think twice about messing with him.

But much to Finn’s disappointment, that wasn’t exactly how things were working out.  

A savage cry erupted from the one wearing the butcher’s gear and soon, all of them were rushing in at him from both sides.

Finn tossed his bag of cans ahead of him and ran at the shelf that divided aisle one and two. His arms and legs scrambled to make it to the top before the men with the knives had a chance to start hacking away.

He wasn’t even at the top when he heard the soles of their shoes running back the other way. They were trying to race around and cut him off.

Finn staggered across the top of the grocery store shelf and jumped down. His chest was tight with fear, cutting off the oxygen trying to get to his muscles.

The Buy Low was their turf and Finn was little more than a trespasser who needed to be taught a lesson, or worse.

The last shelf before the fruit section was before him and he didn’t waste any time climbing that one as well. Two of them began climbing up after him, but that wasn’t the part that worried Finn the most. It was the three men with homemade weapons now blocking the front entrance, effectively trapping him like a rat in a maze.

Dana Hatfield

San Francisco

Dana was heading up Cortland Avenue in the beat up Nissan Cube when she came to the roadblock. Two men with AK-47s sat in the back of a pickup truck on folding chairs. They stood as her car approached and raised their rifles.

She stopped and got out of the car with her hands in the air and that was when she saw one of them was a teenage boy, floating in a heavy metal t-shirt three sizes too big for him. Next to the headbanger was a slightly older guy, well-built and somewhere in his mid twenties, handsome features, goatee, bright blue eyes. Clearly whatever it was that had transformed people into babbling idiots or savage animals had skipped them, just as it had skipped her.

Goatee lowered his weapon a touch when he saw she was a woman. “What’s your name?”

“S’cuse me?” Dana replied.

“Your name, what is it?”

“Dana.” She didn’t understand why on earth they’d need her name.

The kid leaned over and spoke to Goatee. “She’s clean.”

Goatee nodded and turned back to Dana. “Ma’am, this area’s been cordoned off.” The tremble in his voice was obvious and the last thing anyone wanted was to face off against a nervous man with a twitchy trigger finger.

Dana let her hands fall to her sides. “Cordoned off? By whom?”

“That’d be Mr. Jeffereys, ma’am. Traffic attendant who lives in the neighborhood.”

“Oh great, now meter maids are calling the shots.”

Headbanger snickered and Goatee elbowed him quiet. “Don’t let Mr. Jeffereys hear you say that.”

The blood was still smeared along the side of her Nissan from when she’d run over the guy with the pole and the contrast it struck with the car’s white paint job was hard to miss. All three of them seemed to be studying it at the same time.

“I need to get my father and after that I’ll get out of your hair.”

“What’s his name?” Goatee asked.

“Hatfield, Richard. Early sixties. Listen, I’ve come half way across the city just to get him, you have no idea what I’ve been through.”

A knot formed in her belly when she remembered the woman trapped in her car, how she’d had to leave her behind. Tears were welling up again and she choked them back.

“More than likely he’s probably dead already.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“We’ve been fending off looters since yesterday. Today they started hitting us in groups. They’re getting more organized, so we’ve started blocking the roads in here. Anyone who seems out of it or don’t know their name, we waste ‘em. Jeffereys is going house to house as we speak, rounding up anyone with shit for brains and if they show violence in any way, he puts ‘em down.”

Goatee’s words struck Dana like a closed fist. The urgency of reaching her father and bringing him to safety was now greater than ever.

The kid with the banger t-shirt next to Goatee spoke up for the first time. “You’re Coast Guard, aren’t you?”

Dana nodded, wondering if that might win her wiggle room.

“Then maybe since you’re part of the government you can tell us what the hell’s going on here.” He jabbed a skinny finger into the air. “Ozone layer’s trippin’ out with shiny lights, an earthquake trashes the city and now everyone’s gone frikin caveman on us. Government’s behind it, that much I know. Video on You Tube says how they’ve got bases deep in the earth, running all kinds of whacked out experiments. Mind control, weather manipulation.”

Dana couldn’t help sighing as she listened to the kid’s paranoid ranting. “Listen kid, I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. Frankly, the two of you are starting to sound like a couple of nuts.”

The kid nudged Goatee. “Hear that? We sound like nuts. Of course you don’t know a thing. And I suppose next you’ll tell us that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job.”

Gritting her teeth, Dana couldn’t take it anymore: “You wanna know what’s really going on you little shit? The goddamn world is ending. So go spread that on your cornflakes.” And with that she got back into the Nissan, slammed the door behind her and put the car in reverse. She would need to find another other way to reach her father. And God help Jeffereys if he’d hurt a single hair on her father’s balding head.

Larry Nowak

Jersey City

The Holland Tunnel now behind him, Larry was pedalling along the Lincoln Highway, waiting for a clearing where the cars weren’t as gridlocked so he could grab one for himself. At one point, he passed a young black woman in her car, pounding against the windows with bloody fists. Wasn’t a chance he was going to risk stopping for anyone. It was impossible to tell who was out of it and harmless and who was out of it and eager to murder you. A city of desperate people on the best of days had now become a city of desperate, hungry people who didn’t care how they got their next meal. That thin, imaginary line between civilization and chaos had blurred so badly that Larry wasn’t sure any of them would ever find it again.  

Sections of the highway had cracked open in yawning mouths during the earthquake, forcing Larry to climb over cars that spanned the gap, making him certain more than once that he and the bike he carried would go tumbling from the off ramp to their death.

Thick black smoke rose from half a dozen of the residential buildings just off the highway. Larry stopped his bike long enough to fish a bottle of water from the bag tied to the rack. He’d been forced to toss the loaf of bread, water had made it inedible when the bike had fallen over in the Holland Tunnel.

And here was another problem he hadn’t counted on. Several of the cars had been left idling since the disaster yesterday evening, as their owners had either fled or been trapped inside. It wasn’t more difficult than unlocking the door and pulling a handle – hell, more often than not the keys were still in the ignition – but it seemed like now most of the cars were either out of gas or running dangerously low. He’d need to get lucky if he was going to make it to Kenny’s lake house in Bethlehem.

Larry exited onto Hoboken Avenue, thinking about his investment portfolio and how most of his net worth was tied up in shares of Nutrilife and the other diversified stock investments he’d made. He wasn’t a property man. He was a gambler and Wall Street was as close to a casino as he’d come since swearing off dice. But none of that mattered much, since it was looking more and more as though his new net worth amounted to the clothes on his back and the dented bike beneath him.

He reached Palisade Avenue and squeezed both brakes only seconds before the Escalade roared by.

“Watch where you’re going, asshole!” he shouted in true New York style.

The SUV squealed to a halt, trailing long black lines through the intersection.

He didn’t have a gun. That was the first thought that fired through Larry’s head. He didn’t have a gun and now some gangbanger with sore feelings was about to waste him. He turned his bike around to flee.

“Hey!” the voice called out.

Larry was standing up on the pedals now, trying to build speed.

“Stop, I’m not gonna hurt you!”

He glanced back as he slowed to a stop, blinking twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. A man in a white lab coat was waving at him.

If this guy was packing heat and had any intention of killing Larry, then chances were good he would already be dead. Larry turned and pedaled back.

Under the lab coat, the man wore a dress shirt and pants that sagged, accentuating the impression of a young boy who’d raided his father’s closet; it didn’t take Larry long to realize the clothes he was wearing were from a man much larger than him. Larry approached and saw that the man’s skin was smooth and white, the pasty pallor accentuated by hair so blonde it was nearly white. A few stray hairs on his cheeks and chin passed for a sad looking five o’clock shadow.

He also smelled as if he hadn’t showered in a week. The wrinkle in Larry’s nose must have been obvious.

“You don’t smell so hot yourself, mister.” The stranger said, offering his hand. His fingernails hadn’t been cut in a few weeks. Larry took it after a brief hesitation.

“Larry Nowak.”

The man’s eyes fell to a mark on the asphalt where city workers had marked out sewer tunnels beneath the road.