Stage 3 (Book 3): Bravo Page 5

  Fucking humans… Mason muttered inside his head.

  It was always the same. People rallied around marches for the climate and for equal rights and for gun control. They tweeted the shit out of government overreach and civil injustice and banning the ivory trade. Their Facebook pages were all about love and sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. But just beneath that carefully-crafted mask of civility, every human being on the planet was exactly the same. Shake their cozy little world, and out came the caveman.

  That nice guy next door has food, so take it! The couple you play canasta with every Saturday has a van full of fuel, so make it yours! The girl across the street who babysits your kid is home alone, so get over there while her parents are dying elsewhere and help yourself!

  Christ, it was always the same. Always. Mason generally regarded the human race as he would a swarm of flies buzzing high above the dinner table. They were annoying. But as long they kept their distance, he did his best to tolerate them. But the minute they drifted down and became anything more than annoying, he'd gladly swat the whole lot of them out of existence.

  And now, as he gazed out upon the crystal-clear evidence of mankind at its worst, he would have given anything for the mother of all fly swatters.

  Mackenzie was watching the carnage from Sarah's lap, and Sarah made no attempt whatsoever to shield the child's eyes from the horrors all around. As she'd expressed to Mason not twelve hours before, speaking in whispers as Mackenzie slept, this was her world now. Every bit as much as it was theirs, and perhaps even more so. With any luck, she would be living in this hellscape long after they were dead and buried, so she had to know it all. And indeed, this was her world now. This, right here.

  Certainly, the girl had seen death and destruction before, but this was something else. Most of this carnage had happened in the first days of the panic, long before anyone had heard of stage 2 or stage 3 or wilders or alphas. This was man's inhumanity to man at its most unambiguous, and the horrors mankind was able to mete out on its own far exceeded the savagery of any swarm.

  A man lay across the threshold of an open front door. The door was splintered on one side, undoubtedly kicked in with the same boot that'd then proceeded to stomp him to death. A dead woman and baby lay in a driveway in front of a vacant garage, the child in a broken little pile and the mother crushed by the wheels of her own car, stolen by another. A naked girl lay spread-eagle on an overgrown postage stamp of a lawn, her torn clothes scattered all around, save for the brassiere they'd used to strangle her life away, still coiled around her neck.

  The images went on and on, and aside from the occasional gasp from Inez or hushed curse from Christopher, they went on in silence. Mackenzie said not a word, nor did she betray any emotion whatsoever. She simply sat there in Sarah's lap, taking it all in.

  At one point, Mason shouldered a minivan aside, filled with rampaging shadows and tiny bloody hands clawing at the windows. Then, he drove up onto the sidewalk to avoid a cluster of miniature bodies in the middle of the road, all of them still in their Little League jerseys. When he bounced down on the other side, he crushed an old woman's body to pulp under his wheels. Then, two alphas appeared from a side street and he accelerated into them, flinging their broken bodies to either side with the cowcatcher. And through it all, Mackenzie didn't bat an eye.

  At last, he swung the truck around one last corner and slowed to a crawl. This was the street. Mason had only been here once, for an ill-conceived Thanksgiving dinner that had ended with him and Becks' father almost coming to blows. But that street and that house were forever etched in his mind.

  There it was. A simple little bungalow among a hundred clones. Mason pulled up in front of the house, keyed the truck off, and did the math.

  The front door was closed. Garage door, too. A double gouge had been torn in the postage stamp lawn. And most importantly, someone had scribbled a big X on the front door of the house with a black marking pen. In the top quadrant of the X were the numbers 7-6. In the right quadrant, an X with a square drawn around it. In the left, the abbreviation DS 5871. In the bottom quadrant was 3 - ?, and below that, an arrow pointing west and the word 'Skyline.' And so the story was told.

  “She's not here,” Mason said aloud.

  “What?” Inez howled from behind. “How can you possibly know that?”

  Mason took no offence at her tone, nor at Christopher squatting down between the seats and huffing, “What you got, Mace, X-ray eyes?” He simply laid out the information, point by point.

  “Becks' old man had a Camaro. She showed it to me once. '67. Lovingly restored. Great for cruising around town or tearing up the race track, but wholly impractical for escaping the city with a wife and daughter and a few cherished possessions.”

  “I've seen how men are with their toys, Mace.” Inez raised an eyebrow. “If you're talking about cherished possessions, seems to me that car would be number one.”

  “Not for a practical man like Becks' father. Too low, too loud, and too thirsty.”

  “The garage door,” Mackenzie said distractedly.

  “That's right, Mack, the garage door,” he told her, then he explained it to the others. “The man was a cop, so he would've kept doing his job right up to when things truly went to shit. By then, the power would've already been out, so even if he was stupid enough to try to flee the city in a fifty-year old muscle car, he wouldn't have been stupid enough to stop the car and risk life and limb just to close the garage door.”

  “And you figured that out too, Mackenzie?” Inez asked her, sweetly.

  “She's wise beyond her years,” Sarah answered, almost automatically.

  “As well,” Mason went on, “the man was meticulous. I mean, just look at this house! Not a blade of grass out of place. Not a single drop of oil in the driveway. Not a single leaf in the rain gutter. But there are gouges in the lawn right up to the front door that look suspiciously like tire tracks. Now, being a sergeant with the SBPD, he would've been assigned his own squad car. Those tire tracks were made when he came back for his family, too hurried and too scared to give a shit about his perfect little lawn.”

  “Okay, Sherlock,” Christopher nodded, “I'm with you so far. So what's with the graffiti on the front door? They don't look like dancing men to me.”

  Mason didn't get the reference, but he carried on, even as three alphas emerged from behind a house somewhere farther up the street and came howling down the middle of the road toward them.

  “That's a code FEMA uses when they've searched a building following a natural disaster. It's commonly referred to as an 'X-code.' The numbers on the top of the X are the date. July 6th. That's the day Mack and I found each other. The day Sarah's hospital was overrun...”

  “The day the world ended,” Inez grumbled.

  “The symbol on the right? That 'X' inside a box? That's FEMA code for 'do not enter.' The left side of the X is to identify the searcher. In this case, Detective Sergeant Gary Hansen wrote his own badge number. The bottom of the X is for how many living or dead were found in the structure. In this case, there were three survivors and a question mark for the dead.”

  “Three survivors!” Sarah hooted, “That means Becks was here! Oh, thank God!”

  “Don't go thanking him yet,” Mason said, not wanting to take hold of that double-edged sword quite so hard. “That third person could be anybody. Mother-in-law. Neighbor. Paperboy. Hell, it could have been anybody.”

  Sarah didn't push it. “Alright, Mace,” she said. “So, three survivors and a question mark for the dead. The only way a question mark makes sense is if the place was overrun, which also accounts for the 'do not enter.' But what's with the arrow, and what's 'Skyline'?”

  “Skyline College is a couple of miles away. Clearly, the man was familiar with FEMA protocol, and being a cop, he would have been well-acquainted with the community's disaster preparedness plan. I can only assume that Skyline College was designated as an emergency shelter, and the arrow is to tell anyone w
ho cared that that was where they were heading. The only question is whether or not they made it.”

  In fact, that wasn't the only question. Not by a long shot. But there was no point in bringing up the hundred or so others presently banging around inside his head. He shouted a few clipped words down to Addison and saw Alejandra's thumb stick high up over the roof to tell him she'd understood. Then, Beverly's face appeared at the side window, but only long enough to throw the empty scotch bottle in the general direction of the charging alphas. She sank back into the shadows, and Mason thought no more about it. But then, the muzzle of a shotgun snuck out through the open window behind Addison, and everyone was too slow to react.

  The first explosion caught them all by surprise and had them jumping in their seats and reaching for their own weapons. Poor Addison was the closest to the shot, so he suffered the most. He hit his head on the car's ceiling, then he instinctively ducked away from the window, nearly landing in Alejandra's lap.

  “Puta madre!” Alejandra howled, shoving him back.

  As far as Mason was concerned, few weapons were more awesome than a twelve-gauge shotgun. Every shell sent eight .33 calibre rounds downrange at nearly two thousand feet per second. Close up, they could cut a man to bits. At fifty yards, they could take down two men standing eight feet apart. For someone with indefinite aim or shaky hands or a snootful of scotch, they were most certainly the weapon of choice. A truly awesome weapon indeed.

  But Jesus Christ were they loud! If the .22 was a handclap and the Glock on his hip a cannon, that damn shotgun was a nuclear bomb! Yes, Beverly got lucky and took down one of the alphas with a single hit to the chest, but two more came chasing after the explosion from a side street, and then two more after that.

  Beverly pumped the shotgun, and before anyone could stop her, she fired again. A second alpha dropped to the ground twenty yards away, but it hadn't been a clean kill, so the thing took to crawling along on its elbows, squealing like a feral pig and dragging its shattered legs behind.

  Finally, Alejandra wrestled herself out from under Addison and reached over the seat, snatching the gun away from Beverly. The woman cursed a blue streak and tried to grab the gun back, but nobody won a tug-of-war against Alejandra. Mason couldn't hear every word of the ensuing shouting match, but at last, the shotgun was passed to Addison and he clutched it in his tight little hands, telling Beverly, “No, no, no... You can have your toy back when you learn how to play nice!”

  The drama was over, but it had come at a hefty price. The first wave of alphas crashed into the Mustang just as the windows were cranked shut, and more surrounded the Peterbilt like a pack of rabid wolves. Behind them, more were coming. And behind them, more still. And it wouldn't end there. Those nuclear blasts would bring every alpha from miles around.

  Mason turned a scowl toward Sarah, but she only shrugged.

  “She's scared,” she said, simply.

  “We're all scared,” Christopher reminded her.

  “It's what you do when you're scared that matters,” Inez chimed in.

  Mason said nothing, and keyed the truck back to life. There was a series of bumps and snaps and the barest skidding of tires as he rolled over the vanguard of the swarm, and there was one frightening moment when a creature bounced up onto the hood of the Mustang and began clawing away at the windshield. But eventually, the numbers started to thin out, and everything was silent inside the truck save for the occasional sound of an alpha coming apart on the cowcatcher.

  No one spoke for some time, until Mackenzie looked over from Sarah's lap and fixed Mason with her big green eyes.

  “Beverly was stupid, and stupid gets people killed,” she said, as coolly as if she were commenting on the weather. “We should leave her behind. Or maybe we should just shoot her.”

  CHAPTER VI

  The rest of the drive was made in total silence. No doubt, Christopher and his mother were wary of stepping into what was already a supremely awkward situation. So they sat there silently, hand in hand, and watching the world swirl by. As for Mason, there was certainly some of that as well. But the main reason he kept his mouth shut was because he had no idea how to respond.

  Mack had a cold, clear grasp of the world she'd inherited, and she wasn't wrong... entirely. Beverly had just done a very stupid thing that put them all in danger, and Mack was simply looking out for herself and for Sarah and for the others. Okay, fair enough. Good for her. But did one dumb move earn Beverly a bullet in the head? Was that the way this world worked now? Well, this was Mack's world, so maybe she knew better than any of them. Hell, maybe she should be in charge and he could just follow blindly along. Come to think of it, if she were in charge, they'd be skipping through strawberry fields in Pescadero at this very minute, instead of picking their way through suburban Hell, and that wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

  He cast a quick glance to Sarah, hoping she would say something to Mack so he could follow her lead. But she said nothing, and Mason couldn't blame her. After all, what was the right way to handle this? Tell her she's wrong? Tell her she's right? She was neither, and yet she was both. This world of hers was fucked up six ways to Sunday. Who knew what was right anymore?

  Hey, Sarah… he said inside his head. Don't kids just say the darnedest things?

  The drive should have taken minutes. Hop on the 280, across to the 380, jump off at the Golden Gate Cemetery, and a straight shot to Skyline Boulevard. But sticking to surface roads had them back-pedaling and circling around and cutting down back lanes so often, that Mason's internal guidance system was stretched to its limits. It took the better part of an hour just to reach a vast suburban maze that Mason knew would get them there, then another two hours to get through it. And of course the swarm came and the swarm raged and the swarm clawed at the truck and at the Mustang, and no matter how many fell beneath the wheels or were thrown to the ground like rag dolls, they just kept coming.

  At one point, Mason got so turned around in the maze that he had to drive onto and through an elementary school yard, dragging a twenty-foot section of chain link fence behind like the tail of a kite. Then, he had to hop a little berm and manoeuvre the big truck between two houses without an inch to spare. He and Sarah both reached out and folded the side mirrors in, but even so, Gloria had to peel entire sections of aluminum siding away and bulldoze a wooden fence into kindling before she was back on the road. And still, the creatures came.

  All along the way, Mason kept watch to make sure that the Mustang was keeping up. And every time he checked, he saw Beverly's shadowy head bobbing around in the back seat, and he wondered. Then, he'd toss a glance to the seat beside him and see that precious little girl curled up in Sarah's arms, and he'd wonder some more.

  But then he took one last bend in the road, and all of those thoughts vanished in an instant. They were out of suburban Hell, at last. A long, flat road running north to south stretched out across their path. This was Skyline Boulevard. Beyond it, he could just make out the top floors of several buildings at the end of a curved, double-lane road. Skyline College. They were there.

  Well, halle-fuckin'-lujah...

  There were muted cheers from Inez and Christopher, and a quick check of the mirror showed Addison pumping his fist excitedly. But a nagging unease stirred deep down inside Mason's belly as he crossed the road and started down the aptly named College Drive. He wasn't exactly sure what he'd expected to find here. As the college rose into view and he was afforded a better look at the buildings and the grounds, he realized that what he'd actually been expecting could be summed up in a single word.

  More.

  He'd expected more.

  Maybe not military helicopters and machine-gun nests and barricades, but he'd expected more.

  Simply that. More.

  He pushed a little Prius out of the way, then stopped the truck again to have a good, hard look at the place.

  A home field proudly proclaiming the name 'Trojans' was positioned at the front of the complex. Beyond
that, a couple of practice fields and a baseball diamond. And beyond that, the college itself. Nine or ten squat buildings clustered around a central concourse.

  Aside from that, nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

  No army. No marines. No ambulances. No emergency shelters.

  Not even a single tent where that elusive Red Cross nurse would greet him with a coffee and a donut.

  He scanned every inch of the place, and aside from the bodies and parts of bodies littering the fields and the baseball diamond and the concourse and the rest of the grounds, he doubted that there was a single bit of difference between what this place had been before and what it was now.

  “It happened too fast.” Sarah finally broke the awful silence. “Before they'd even decided it was an emergency, it was already too late.”

  “Too late,” Mackenzie echoed, barely above a whisper.

  Christopher came up between the seats to have a better look. “One day, it's a flu bug. The next, it's Armageddon.”

  “I didn't dare hope out loud,” Inez admitted, sullenly. “But deep down, I was still hoping.”

  “Too late,” Mason hushed.

  “So, what do we do now?” Christopher asked. Then, he laid a finger on the side of his head as if he'd just had a revelation. “Hey Mace, I happen to know about this little strawberry farm in Pescadero─”

  Sarah cut him off. “We still have to look,” she said, ending the debate before it could begin.

  Alphas were already tearing across the fields and down the road, and out from suburban Hell. Mason let them come as he sank deep in thought.

  The math was simple. If he had been in Becks' father's shoes in those first few days of bedlam, he would have taken one look at this place and given it a wide berth. Too many buildings. Too many people. Too few ways in and out. An emergency shelter after an earthquake, fine. But not now. No way. Not unless the army had already taken over the place with all their little tanks in a row. But, figuring out the kind of math that went on inside someone else's head wasn't always easy. So, he put himself to the task of answering a decidedly difficult question. Just what the hell would his ex-future-father-in-law have done?