Date: 2018-05-10 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post Apocalyptic; Dystopia; Science Fiction; Apocalyptic; Fiction; Horror; Adventure; Survival
Description: A nuclear attack. A collapsing society. A world covered in ash. The Alt Apocalypse explores survival under the most extreme circumstances, but with a twist (and no cliff-hangers). This series, which can be read in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse; a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies. Different heroes will emerge in each novel. Different characters will survive and perish. Your favorite character dies in one book? He or she will be back in t
Publisher: Piton Press LLC

ASH

The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

Tom Abrahams

A PITON PRESS BOOK

ASH

The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

© Tom Abrahams 2018. All Rights Reserved

Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

Proofread by Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson

Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

THE ALT APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SERIES

ASH

LIT (SUMMER 2018)

TORRENT (WINTER 2018)

THE TRAVELER POST APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

HOME

CANYON

WALL

RISING

BATTLE

LEGACY

THE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLERS

SPACEMAN

DESCENT

RETROGRADE

PERSEID COLLAPSE: PILGRIMAGE SERIES NOVELLAS

CROSSING

REFUGE

ADVENT

RED LINE: AN EXTINCTION CYCLE NOVEL

MATTI HARROLD POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

SEDITION

INTENTION

JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

ALLEGIANCE

ALLEGIANCE BURNED

HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

Contents

Author’s Note

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

Acknowledgments

For Courtney, Sam, & Luke

My Alpha and Omega

“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.”

—Winston Churchill

Author’s Note

I once told my editor, “People love reading about the apocalypse.”

She corrected me, as all good editors do. “People love reading about surviving the apocalypse,” she said.

She was right.

This series of books, THE ALT APOCALYPSE, is about that premise. It explores survival under the most extreme circumstances. It is, however, a new twist on the post-apocalyptic/dystopian/survival genres.

This series, which can be read in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse: a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies. Different heroes will emerge in each novel. Different characters will survive and perish. Your favorite character dies in one book? He or she will be back in the next.

The idea is to explore how people with different skills survive, or not, in alternate disasters. I hope you enjoy the fiction that treads close to reality (except the zombies) and choose to ride shotgun with me for what promises to be an exceptional set of adventures.

CHAPTER 1

Saturday, August 9, 2025

ATTACK +49 DAYS

Westwood, California

This is how I die?

Dub Hampton’s short life raced through his mind.

Good days. Bad days. Victories. Defeats. First kisses. Final goodbyes. All of it, flashing as it did, was clouded by an overwhelming thought of death as the beast of a man smothering him pressed heavier with his full weight.

The man was straddling him, trying to gain leverage enough to choke him. The struggle was real.

As he fought from beneath the attacker’s heft, Dub could taste the ash in his mouth. It was dry and reminded him of shellfish or the odor that clung to the fish-market docks along Long Beach and the Los Angeles River.

The ash was everywhere. It was layers thick on the ground. It coated buildings, dusted door handles. It clouded the sky. The ash, which seemed to drift and hover as much as it fell, offered an opaquely gray view of the world. No blue in the sky, no purple sunrises over the San Gabriel Mountains, no orange- and red-hued sunsets on the Pacific horizon. Just gray.

The ash ushered a permanent chill that clung to its dancing flakes and brought with it a never-ending supply of angst and terror.

The man grunted, his eyes wide with effort, as he worked with his meaty, sweaty palms to push Dub’s face to the side and into the thick layer of ash on the ground. The man, whose head was shaved and freckled with scabs, didn’t speak. But he drooled and snorted. He smelled like a combination of chicken soup and a long-neglected gas station washroom.

Dub struggled to breathe. His chest burned.

This can’t be how I die.

In the distance, the thin pops of rifle shots rang out in the thick, chilled air. They echoed from the hill behind him, rippling like crackles of thunder. His hearing became more acute as his vision blurred.

He hoped his friends were holding their own, that they were protecting what was theirs, that they could fend off the marauders who’d come to steal what little they had left. He prayed they could keep the attackers at bay long enough for the cavalry to arrive and take them to the Oasis, a place that promised to provide refuge after the day their world exploded in flashes of light and the rains of ash that came afterward.

Dub managed to free a hand from under his body, and he blindly scrabbled at the attacker’s face. He jabbed his thumb and then clawed, raking his fingers across the behemoth’s fleshy cheeks.

The man cried out in pain and, for an instant, the pressure lessened. It gave Dub the chance to suck in another ash-laden breath and free his other hand. He coughed but swallowed the flakes and balled his fist. He swung in a wide arc and connected with the man’s side, eliciting a gasp.

The momentary reprieve only proved to enrage the giant, who gathered his wits and bore down on Dub, straddling him now and squeezing his ample thighs like a vise. Dub felt a pop and a sharp pain that radiated like an electric shock when he tried to inhale.

With renewed vigor, the attacker overpowered Dub. He managed to wrap his hands around Dub’s neck. His fingers squeezed. The world darkened.

CHAPTER 2

Saturday, June 21, 2025

DAY ZERO

Los Angeles, California

Ellen Chang’s final moments alive were unremarkable. They were twisted with the banality of a doctor’s wife bored with her solitude, the desire to achieve a late day buzz, and the swelling discontent with the longer than usual wait at a popular downtown Los Angeles eatery.

She’d spent much of the day at The Broad, lazily deconstructing the collection of Basquiat artwork covering the walls of a gallery.

Sitting at her favorite table near the picture windows facing South Grand Avenue, Ellen sipped a Gambino Prosecco. She thumbed her plum lipstick from the rim of the flute and tapped her iPhone. She opened her favorite social media app and double tapped photographs that caught her eye. Her son had posted a new collection of snaps from the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, where he was studying for the summer. His wide smile seemed to stretch across the narrow, cobbled streets. A girl of whom she didn’t approve had her arms wrapped around his waist. She was nuzzling her son’s neck. On second thought…Ellen tapped the photo again, removing her public approval. She grumbled something from between her clenched teeth and raised the glass to take another, healthier swig.

She pushed the power button on the side of the device, turning the screen black, and placed it facedown on the glass table. The waiter appeared and replaced the healthy sip of he’d drained from her glass.

“Are you ready to order?” he asked. “Or would you like me to come back?”

Ellen lowered her reading glasses on the tip of her tiny, broad nose, and grazed the menu again. She tapped her salad selection.

“The organiz tomato with fior di latte mozzarella?” the waiter confirmed. “A wonderful choice.”

“EVOO on the side, please,” she said. “I’ll send it back if it’s not on the side.”

“Of course. And for the main course?”

Ellen eyed the waiter over the top of her glasses. “That is my main course. But I’ll have another glass of the Prosecco.”

The waiter slid the menu from the table and tucked it under his arm. “Right away,” he said and whisked toward the kitchen.

She scanned the restaurant. It was half-filled with museumgoers, tourists, and ladies and men of leisure, all of them preoccupied with their devices rather than one another.

Out the window, the traffic was stalled. A Tesla quietly pushed past a Range Rover and stopped at a pedestrian crossing.

The dial on her watch told her that it was too late to call her son. He’d be at dinner eating tapas or canoodling with the pretty Iberian witch who’d somehow used black magic to steal his affection using a foreign tongue and beguiling flirtation.

Her husband, she assumed, was still in surgery. He’d told her before he left it was a complicated procedure and he anticipated being in the OR for several hours, and that was if everything went as planned. Nothing ever went as planned. She eyed a woman walking past on the wide sidewalk beyond the concrete planters that protected the building’s façade from errant traffic, tracing her from last season’s Jimmy Choos to the ill-fitting romper that accentuated the wrong attributes. Ellen pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

She tipped the flute back and swallowed the last of the Prosecco, the tiny bubbles popping in her mouth. She swallowed and planted her hands on the table, exhaling loudly. Ellen tilted her head from side to side, stretching the tension from her neck. She’d need to reschedule her massage appointment at the Hotel Bel-Air.

She stared at her phone for a moment, then picked it up, turned it on, and returned to the app featuring her son’s photograph. Her finger hovered over the square image. She focused on her son’s smile. He was happy. That was something, she supposed.

As she lowered her finger to tap the photo again, reapplying her approval, a blinding light enshrouded everything around her. Instantaneously, there was a flash of searing heat, and before Ellen Chang could recognize she was being cooked alive and vaporized, she was ash.

The chef hadn’t yet plated her mozzarella.

CHAPTER 3

Saturday, June 21, 2025

DAY ZERO

Westwood, California

Dub thought it was his dunk that rocked the world. He’d caught the ball and bounded toward the goal. There was nobody between him and the rim. Three dribbles in his right hand, a crossover to his left, and he’d elevated. He exploded toward the basket and, with both hands grabbing onto the rim, slammed the ball downward.

He gripped the flexible orange rim and hung there for a moment, relishing the rumble that rippled through his body. But when he landed on the gym floor, it too was rumbling. The others on the court appeared off balance, their faces bearing the wide-eyed fear of uncertainty and confusion.

“Earthquake!” said Michael Turner, the out-of-shape, redheaded sophomore who’d passed the ball to Dub. “Big one.”

“I don’t think so,” said Barker Mayfield, a chemistry major with a severe Diddy Riese addiction. “This feels different. It’s like a vibration.”

The lights in the gym flickered and popped before going out. Dub stood frozen in place for a moment, listening to the squeak of high-dollar basketball shoes moving blindly across the court.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he found his way to his lanyard and phone, which he’d tossed under the backboard before the weekly pickup game. He slid his finger across the screen and it illuminated. He tapped it and triggered a flashlight on the back side of the device, shining it onto the court. “Whatever it was,” he said, “it stopped.”

“Yeah,” said Barker, following the arc of light from Dub’s phone toward the sideline and his own belongings. “I definitely think this was different.”

Dub draped his lanyard around his neck and started across the court when a second rumble nearly knocked him from his feet. He squatted and balanced himself with his fingers on the floor. The flashlight turned off.

“That was an explosion,” Dub said. “Something blew up.”

He pressed the screen on his phone. It didn’t respond. He swiped. He tapped. Nothing happened.

“Hey,” asked Michael, “anyone else’s phone dead?”

“Yeah,” said Barker. “Just quit working.”

None of them could get their phones to work.

Dub pushed himself back to his feet and, from memory, found his way to the edge of the court and the nearby exit. His friends were behind him, still fiddling with their smartphones.

“C’mon,” he called to them as he backed open the heavy metal door that led to the concourse outside the gym. “We need to see what’s going on.”

Dub led his friends along the windowless, darkened concourse, hugging the walls, until they found the main lobby. When he opened the door, an unearthly red light cascaded into the concourse through the large windows that framed the front of the building.

The six friends stumbled to the windows, all of them transfixed by the glow outside. Like moths to a flame, they were drawn to it. It was impossible for Dub to turn away from it.

“What is that?” asked Michael. “It looks like—”

“Hell,” said Barker. “It looks like Hell.”

The sky pulsed with color, and in the distance, a large plume of smoke mushroomed toward the sky. Beyond the plume, another wide bloom of smoke reached upward. The late afternoon sun was mostly obscured by the smoke.

On the ground, there was surprisingly little panic. While some students ran aimlessly across the grass, ignoring the concrete and brick paths that crisscrossed the four-hundred-acre campus, others stood motionless, staring at the sky.

Barker recognized a quartet of coeds racing past them in the direction of their sorority house. One of the women wore denim overall shorts and a white tank-top. Barker thought her name was Gemma. He’d met her at a party and vaguely remembered her blowing him off. She appeared to be leading the others, a trio of blondes. All of them wore frightened expressions on their faces. They kept moving and disappeared from view, merging into the other groupings of hurried students.

“Do we go outside?” asked Michael.

“I’m not staying in here,” said Barker, and pushed open the door. A rush of warm, dry air greeted the men as they stepped from the gym.

“I think it’s a nuclear bomb,” said Dub. “Somebody just dropped a bomb on us.”

As they moved away from the building, the wailing chorus of emergency sirens echoed in the distance. Countless pillars of dark smoke rose in thin columns everywhere Dub looked.

“We need to get back to our dorms,” he said. “We shouldn’t be out here.”

Moving as a pack, the six of them worked their way back up the hill toward their dorm. Clusters of backpack-clad students hustled past them, moved around them, climbed ahead of them.

They’d reached the first landing of a long bank of steps leading up the hill when the sky flashed white. Dub looked over his shoulder toward a downtown Los Angeles skyline he couldn’t see from Westwood as the third rumble blasted across the sky. This wasn’t a bomb though. It looked like a transformer explosion. Fires dotted the landscape, flames licking at the nasty sky.

No doubt. They were under attack.

What he couldn’t know was that Los Angeles was only one of the targets. There were simultaneous bombings in New York, Houston, Chicago, Miami, Washington, and Los Angeles.

He’d never learn that in the moments before the attacks, hackers had infiltrated the military systems that both warned and protected the United States from pending attacks. With those systems relaying false information, the gates were open. The castle was laid bare.

He didn’t know the twin ten-kiloton North Korean-sent explosives had instantly killed seventy thousand people in the half-mile-wide fireballs that consumed glass, steel, flesh, and bone. He was unaware that twice that number of people were injured and that some suffered third-degree burns close to five miles from ground zero. Nor could he have the knowledge that the attacks were coordinated amongst Russian, Iranian, and Chinese interests.

All he knew, as he resumed his climb toward his dorm, was that life had changed. The world in which he studied, partied, played basketball, and hung out with his girlfriend didn’t exist anymore.

He checked his phone. It was useless. When he reached the top of the steps, he faced east toward the smoke. It was coating the sky now, expanding upward and outward. The red hue was gone. Everything was turning gray.

He swung open the door to his building, sidestepped a pair of coeds walking outside with their fingers pointed toward the sky, and found the elevators. He repeatedly thumped the call button as if he were playing a video game and stuffed his phone into his deep pockets.

Michael and Barker were with him. The others had gone to their dorm across the plaza. Their faces had questions. Their minds were whirling like his. But none of them spoke. He punched the elevator call button again.

“I don’t think it’s working,” said Barker. “We’d better take the stairs.”

They huffed their way up five flights of stairs, their heavy steps echoing against the concrete and metal of the stairwell. When they reached their floor, a tall, slender brunette was waiting for them in the hall.

Keri Monk, whose every move usually carried with it a fluid Zen-like quality, raced toward them and threw her arms around Dub. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving. She held him as if she couldn’t get close enough.

“It’s okay,” Dub said, his large hand gently cradling the back of her head. “It’s okay.”

Keri buried her head in his chest. “No, it’s not,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s not okay. Did you see the explosions?”

Dub gripped Keri’s shoulders and pulled her back. Her eyes glistened with the welling tears pooling at the bottom of them while they searched his for some sense of comfort.

Dub swallowed hard. Usually it was Keri who calmed him. She was the yoga-loving boxer, a study in beautiful contradictions who never sweated the small stuff. But he was the psychology major, so he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“I saw them,” he said. “And I saw the fires. No doubt we’re under attack.”

She stepped back and addressed all three of the roommates. “Who?” she asked. “Who attacked us?”

Michael shrugged. “Someone who hates us? The North Koreans. The Russians. The Iranians. The French.”

Barker slapped Michael on his chest with the back of his hand. “The French?” He shook his head. “You’re not funny, dude.”

Michael pouted and ran his hand through his thinning hair. He tugged on his shirt, stretching it across his ample gut. “I’m just saying we have no idea. That’s all.”

Dub unlocked the room and shouldered open the door. “Let’s figure this out,” he said and ushered in his friends.

It was summer and most of the dormitory was empty. The Hill was a shadow of what it was during the three other quarters of the year. And while the roommates likely could have had doubles, they couldn’t leave an odd man out, so they stuck with their cramped triple packed with three beds, desks, wardrobes, and dressers.

Dub had the lofted bunk with a desk and short wardrobe underneath it. He pulled out the chair and offered it to Keri.

Michael opened their waist-high refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water, uncapped it, and took a swig.

Barker dropped onto his lower bunk, the bed opposite Dub’s and under Michael’s, shaking his head. He pointed at the sweating bottle in Michael’s hand. “You might want to save that,” he said. “We’re going to need to ration that stuff out if this is the real deal.”

“This is the real deal,” said Keri. “This is seriously the real deal.”

Dub looked out the window. He pressed his face to the glass and looked across the hill toward south campus. The sky wasn’t deep red anymore. It looked more like a sunset on Mars. There were hints of red mixed with the orange glow of the fires radiating off the low-hanging clouds of smoke.

“It’s hot in here,” said Barker. “I don’t think the AC is working.”

Michael took a couple of steps toward the thermostat. “No, it’s off. No power. It’s better if it’s off anyhow. We wouldn’t want the system circulating whatever is out there and pulling it in here.”

“What about the computers?” asked Barker.

Keri reached across the desk and tapped the space bar on Dub’s laptop. “Nothing,” she said.

“It’s an EMP,” said Barker.

Michael put his bottled water back in the refrigerator. “An EMP?”

“Electromagnetic pulse,” said Barker. “If it was a nuclear bomb, it could knock out the power and kill electronics with a huge blast of electromagnetic energy.”

Dub was transfixed by the genesis of the apocalypse unfolding beyond the glass. The smoke was thickening, the sky was darkening, the sun virtually blanketed by the burning debris in the air.

“It’s nuclear,” he said, his back to his friends. “We all know that. We all saw the mushroom cloud.”

“So what do we do?” asked Keri. “All of us are out of state. It’s not like we can go home.”

“What about Chang?” asked Michael. “He lives in Brentwood. Like five minutes from here.”

“Bobby Chang?” asked Barker. “I don’t think he’s here. He’s in Spain for the summer.”

“Yeah,” said Michael, rubbing his forehead, “but we’ve all been to his house. His parents know us.”

Dub looked over his shoulder and then faced his friends. “I don’t think we should go anywhere. We’re seconds into this. We need to stay here. Hunker down. See how things unfold.”

“Why?” asked Keri.

Dub squatted on his heels and took Keri’s hands. He pressed his lips together, considering his response before he answered. “All right, all of you are going to laugh at me, but—”

“You’re not about to spout psychobabble, are you?” asked Michael. “I know you’re some genius psychology student, but seriously, dude?”

“Dude,” said Dub, “this isn’t psychobabble, whatever that is. This is real stuff. Check your pulse. Check your breathing. Both are elevated, right?”

His friends held their fingers to their necks, measuring their heart rates. One at a time they nodded.

“And your appetite?” Dub asked. “Barker, you said you were starving before we went to the gym. Mike, you’re always hungry.”

Michael self-consciously touched his gut. Barker’s brow furrowed.

“You’re not hungry now, right?” asked Dub. “No appetite?”

Both shook their heads. Keri shrugged.

“That’s because your sympathomedullary pathway is regulating your stress,” said Dub. “Fight or flight. Now’s not a good time to make a decision. Your bodies are figuring out how to survive. Your minds aren’t clear.”

Dub rubbed his thumbs along the backs of Keri’s hands and laced his fingers with hers. He held her gaze as he talked.

“We’re safe here, as far as we know,” he explained. “We’re certainly safer here than we would be wandering out into whatever is going on beyond the campus.”

“What do we do, then?” asked Michael.

“We take stock,” said Dub. “We go room to room looking for other students. We figure out who’s here and who’s not. Then we formulate a plan. We could be here a while. We need a plan.”

“Okay,” said Michael. “I’m good with that if everybody else is.”

Barker agreed. Keri squeezed Dub’s hands and nodded.

“Then we stay here,” said Dub.

CHAPTER 4

Saturday, June 21, 2025

DAY ZERO

Santa Monica, California

Danny Correa banged on the door. Nobody answered. He waited a beat and tried the knob. He looked over his shoulder at the approaching menace and banged again.

No response.

“Is anyone there?” he said with urgency.

He cupped his hands to the glass sidelights next to the door and peered into the house. There was a small foyer in the hallway that led straight back to the rear of the home. There was an overstuffed sofa covered with chambray and a large leather easy chair with worn, wide arms.

Light filtered into the otherwise dim room through a pair of glass French doors at the rear of the home. Maybe they were unlocked.

Danny bit his lower lip and looked down at his dog, Maggie. He was losing time. He couldn’t risk being outside any longer. He’d wasted enough valuable hours caught in a day full of shock and disbelief.

He ran around the side of the house, Maggie in tow, and the two of them passed through an open gate into the small sandy backyard. Danny bolted for the door at the rear of the house, trying not to pay attention to the approaching toxic threat. He reached out to the handle, hesitated, then cranked it to one side. The door creaked and swung inward. Danny let Maggie into the single-story bungalow and called out, “Is anyone here?”

He was half hoping someone would answer and half hoping he was alone as he stepped over the threshold and into the house. It smelled like lemons. He shut the door and called again.

“Hello?” he called. “Is anyone here?”

Again, there was no answer. The darkened sky outside was casting thin shadows that were falling across the furniture inside the house.

Danny didn’t like the idea of breaking into a home. He had enough problems swirling around his sour existence that he didn’t need trespassing among them. But here he was, hiding in a stranger’s house, trying to save himself from something from which he knew there was no ultimate escape.

The world as he knew it had already ended once. A second apocalypse, this one affecting everyone, shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to a man whose outlook was at best negatively realistic.

But it was a surprise, and he had reacted in a way most might. Instead of running when he’d seen the billows of smoke engulfing the Southern California sky, he’d stood still for more than a minute. More than two. More than five.

When the bomb exploded, he’d stood on the beach, unable to move. He’d wanted to run. He’d wanted to scream. The surf had washed his feet deeper into the sand as he’d looked east. Maggie had pawed impatiently at his leg, whimpering for the gnawed, orange plastic Frisbee he held at his side.

He’d been unaware of the people around him, their collective day on the shore interrupted by the thickening smoke that poured skyward. They’d talked and cried, pointed, and huddled. Most of them, though, had been as frozen as Danny, unable to move or react to something from which every one of them should have known to run.

An older man standing only a few feet away had motioned with his chin toward the blossoming blackness over downtown Los Angeles. “That’s nuclear, isn’t it?” he’d asked Danny. “Looks nuclear.”

Danny had nodded blankly, another wash of the Pacific rolling over his ankles. The tide had been rising. He hadn’t really processed what the man had said. He’d heard him, but he wasn’t listening. The nod was rote.

“I didn’t see the bombs drop,” the man had said. “Didn’t hear ’em either. Just felt the blast and saw the smoke and the flames.”

Then Danny had faced the man, whose bronzed face was mapped with the wrinkles of someone who’d spent a lot of days on the beach. His eyebrows were bleached whiter than the wet, shaggy hair on his head, such that they were nearly translucent. A thin gold chain hung around his neck. He’d been shirtless and wearing board shorts, his hands planted on his narrow hips. An appendectomy scar stretched across the right side of his abdomen.

The man had glanced at the retriever mix. “Nice dog,” he’d said, nodded, and walked off toward the fallout. He’d rubbed the back of his leathered neck as he strode along the beach, his balance compromised by the shifting sand.

Danny had awoken from his trance, the shock of what was unfolding around him, and shook the Frisbee. He’d teased Maggie, coaxing her to follow him. “Let’s go,” he’d said. “We need to get back.”

The dog had nipped at the plastic disc, pimpled with divots from her bite marks, as Danny led her up the shore toward their old Volkswagen GTI. The amber glow of raging fires and the thickening layers of smoke had repeatedly drawn his attention as he marched away from the water. Maggie’s tongue had wagged.

The world had been spinning in slow motion when he’d reached his VW. The first hints of burning debris had stung his nostrils, and he’d looked overhead to the wisps of gray filtering across the sky.

He’d known he should run. His mind had told him he was in danger. Everyone was in danger. However, instead of panicking, he’d slid into the driver’s seat as if going out for a six-pack before the store closed. Maggie had hopped over him into the passenger’s seat to sit down and stuck her head out the open window to sniff the air. Danny had fished the key from his pocket, dropped it into the center console, and pushed the ignition button next to the steering column.

Nothing had happened. He’d pushed it again. Again, nothing.

He’d felt his pulse accelerating, his breathing becoming shallow and faster as he noticed the beachgoers starting to run. It was as if they’d flipped switches at the same time and simultaneously realized the gravity of what was happening.

Danny hadn’t found the switch yet, let alone flipped it. But he was groping for it. He’d sensed that as cool rivulets of sweat formed at his temples and on the back of his neck. He’d worked so hard for so long to retreat from the world, to find a hole and bury himself in it.

He’d pushed the button again. The car was dead.

Danny’s home was toward the chaos. His apartment was likely one of those burning. He could go there, toward the fallout and the radiation. Or he could move away from it and to the restaurant where he was a short-order cook. He and Maggie could probably stay there. Chances were there wouldn’t be a lot of customers, if any. He imagined Arthur, another cook, or the resident know-it-all waitress, Claudia, had hunkered down in the kitchen. The two of them were always at the diner. They were fixtures every bit as much as the vinyl booths or laminate-topped lunch counter. They were as popular as the burgers and the pancakes. Okay, maybe they weren’t as popular as the pancakes, but they were good people. Still, he wasn’t sure going to the diner was the best bet. He’d opened the door and pulled a large camping backpack from his trunk, grabbed an insulated tumbler, and slung the bag over one shoulder.

“C’mon,” he’d said to Maggie. The dog hopped from the VW, and Danny had led her to the water fountains at the concrete-block bathrooms fifty yards from his car.

He’d filled the tumbler with water and stuffed it into his pack before sliding the straps onto both shoulders and marching across the Pacific Coast Highway and Ocean Avenue onto Wilshire.

He stole a glance at a billboard he’d seen a thousand times, but never given much thought. Lane Turner, the newsman on his favorite channel, smiled down at him. The man’s arms were folded across his chest and his impossibly white teeth sparkled almost as much as his eyes. Danny wondered, for a split second, what had happened to Lane Turner. Was he still broadcasting to an audience of none? Did his studio burn up in the attacks?

Truth be told, he hadn’t seen Lane on television in a while. He’d not watched the news. Everything was too depressing. He chuckled to himself at that thought now. He gave Turner’s towering image a final look and pushed ahead.

The street had been a parking lot. Stalled cars and bewildered drivers had littered the lanes in both directions and spilled onto the sidewalks. It had been impossible to distinguish the lines of cars normally parked along the curb from those powerless to move.

Maggie had stayed close to Danny’s side as he’d picked his way past a man cursing at a dead cell phone, holding it up to the sky as if that would make a difference.

Danny didn’t have a phone. Couldn’t much afford one anymore. He missed it, having been a regular consumer of news through apps and mobile websites. But rent killed every bit of his fifteen dollars an hour. Thankfully the restaurant gave him two meals a day. Extra jobs as a dog walker and occasional handyman paid for the lights, the water, and diesel in the VW.

He’d trudged northeast until he reached the tennis courts at a local park, turned northwest up Seventh Street, and kept his head down. The acrid odor in the air was growing stronger. He’d slid his T-shirt up over his nose and mouth, replacing the burn with the sour odor of his sweat.

Men and women had coughed as he’d weaved past them. He’d moved faster, the sense of urgency finally translating from his brain to his feet. Maggie had trotted alongside dutifully. She was a good dog.

They’d traveled another five blocks. Danny had checked over his shoulder and looked above. The dark clouds were moving toward him, giving chase. Beyond the advancing layer of smoke, there was what looked like a curtain of rain. But it wasn’t rain. It was gray, almost black in color, and cascaded like snowflakes.

It was the radioactive fallout. The ash. It was coming for him, and he needed to move as if his life depended on it. So he’d found the house. Someone else’s house.

Now he stood in front of the chambray sofa and shrugged the pack from his shoulders. It dropped onto the cushions and toppled onto one side.

Danny moved toward a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that ran along one side of the living room in which he stood. Along with vegan cookbooks and coffee-table photography tomes that featured far-flung places with snowcapped mountains or desert valleys, he saw the photographs of the young couple who he assumed called the bungalow their home. They wore expensive-looking clothes, reflective sunglasses, and had impossibly white teeth.

He wondered where they were. Were they on the beach, staring helplessly at the smoke and flames, as he had done? Were they swallowed by the inferno and radioactive fallout? Maybe they were fortunate enough to be on an adventure. Maybe they were vacationing at one of the spots in their picture books. It was summer, after all.

Wherever they were, he knew he couldn’t stay in their home long. Maggie sat at his side. She was panting and shifting her weight from one paw to the other.

Danny walked back to the sofa, reached into his backpack, and withdrew the tumbler of water. Before he opened it, he had a second thought.

He worked his way through the furniture, much as he had done amongst the stalled traffic on the streets, and found the kitchen. He opened the cabinet next to the sink and found a large bowl. He put the bowl in the stainless, double-sided sink and pushed up on the faucet handle. The stream of water poured into the bowl. Danny ran his finger through it. It was room temperature. He filled the bowl and set it on the floor for Maggie.

She wagged her tail and dipped her muzzle into the water, lapping at it greedily with her long tongue. Danny turned back to the sink and inserted a stopper into the drain. He turned on the water, let it run until the sink was full, then worked his way to the home’s lone bathroom.

He filled the sink there, as well as the cast-iron claw-foot tub perched on the slate flooring. He knew water would become scarce, as valuable as gold, in the coming days and weeks. The more water he could save for himself, or the couple should they come home, the better.

When he went back into the living room, he could hear the splash and slap of Maggie’s thirst. She was still drinking from the bowl. He leaned against the fluted column that separated the kitchen from the living room and looked out the window. The ash was falling now.

For some time, Danny had kept himself isolated from the world. That isolation, for the most part, was intentional and figurative. This was involuntary and literal.

CHAPTER 5

Saturday, June 21, 2025

DAY ZERO

Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California

Clint Anthony could barely breathe. His lungs burned; his muscles weakened. He stumbled and caught himself before he fell. He was running as fast as he could, but he could not outrun the debris, the fallout, the heat.

The outer fringes of the blast wave caught him as it dissipated. It was enough to give him first-degree burns on his neck, the backs of his legs, and his hand. It was enough to bump him to the asphalt, where he hit his head and, for a brief moment, lost consciousness.

When he awoke moments later, he was certain he had died and gone to Hell. Behind him, stretching for miles, were the remains of buildings, cars, and people.

Screams and groans, flames and smoke, they all melted into a single visceral cacophony of pain.

Clint pressed his fists against the hot asphalt and pushed himself to his feet. He stood upright and then bent over at his waist to vomit. He was dizzy, and his vision blurred, yet despite the confusion swirling around his head, he knew what had happened. His home was under attack. His city was toast.

He raised one hand to his cheek and wiped away what he thought was sweat. When he pulled his fingers away, they were bloodied. His neck stung, as did his leg. It felt as if his cotton shirt was stuck to his back. His socks, which covered his ankles to the bottoms of his calves, felt as if they were part of his skin.

It was difficult to distinguish one searing pain from the other, but he did his best to ignore them and looked back at the black swell that spread outward like a canopy from a single thick column of smoke.

Debris rained from the sky. Bits of singed paper floated, parachuting to the ground. Soot poured from the sky in a constant blizzard of swirling ash. It was like he was caught in the middle of a nuclear snow globe and someone was shaking it violently.

Clint wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sucked in a choking breath of spoiled air. He coughed and then spat the phlegm onto the thickening layer of ash on the ground.

A gargling groan behind him caught his attention and he turned to face it. The noise leaked from a newly one-armed man sitting cross-legged at the curb. Blood leaked from his nose, his clothes were torn, a large gash cut across his bald head, and his eyes were fixed to his missing arm. He was mumbling about his arm.

“I need to find my arm,” he repeated again and again.

He had to find his arm.

Not far from the amputee was a pair of bodies. They were burned such that Clint couldn’t tell if they were men or women or one of each. He thought one of them might be alive. Outstretched fingers, dripping a gray liquid, twitched as if playing an invisible piano.

Beyond the bodies were the walking wounded. One was virtually indistinguishable from the next, all of them charred Angelenos stunned, irradiated, and struggling to survive.

Clint stumbled forward and caught his stride. He walked away from the carnage, the ash falling on him. His eyes scanned from one side of the street to the other as he walked, and he was struck by the relative silence.

There were no emergency sirens, no whirring helicopters overhead. All the cars, in fact, were stopped. They were stalled in the street. Some of them had collided. Some of them blocked his path, and he had to pick his way through the snarl on his way to nowhere.

Clint tried clearing his throbbing head to formulate a plan, but all he could think about was how clouded his mind was. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, trying to clear away the ash. As soon as he cleared it, more ash replaced it.

A young woman, her face streaked with mascara and her white, formfitting dress stained with filth, stood on a curb to Clint’s left. She held a broken, red-soled heel in one hand and her phone in the other. She was preoccupied with the phone. Her face was crinkled with frustration as she tapped at it and held it skyward.

She looked like Southern California. She was blonde, her skin sun kissed. The bag on her arm was saddle-colored calfskin. It probably cost more than six months of his rent. He was sure she was part of the SoCal elite that was all about money, status, and appearance. She likely spent her days in Brentwood or Beverly Hills and partied at One Oak and took free drinks for granted.

A familiar gut-grinding ache coursed through his body and he clenched his fists. It took every bit of restraint to ignore her and keep moving. He’d known women like her. He’d gone to jail over women like her.

He walked another half block and stopped, looking over his shoulder at the woman. She was still there.

Clint eyed the large bag, its sloppy handle draped across the crook of her elbow. He bit his lower lip and inhaled a sting of air through his nostrils, exhaled, and scanned his surroundings, his eyes searching for the nonexistent police. For a moment, he contemplated taking that bag, grabbing whatever was in it and leaving the woman empty-handed. He could get away with it. He’d gotten away with it before. He’d also been caught before.

But this was chaos. People were consumed with their own survival, and nobody would be able to distinguish her screams for help from those of the dying or badly injured. Clint took another breath and coughed it out.

Now wasn’t the time. There would be plenty of opportunity in this unsurvivable apocalypse to prey on those too weak to stop him.

The woman glanced his way and he averted his eyes. He lowered his head and forced his body to walk more quickly toward wherever it was he was going.

He wandered the streets, taking measure of the fear on people’s faces. They weren’t prepared to live in a world like the one he imagined was evolving before them. It was evident in their sallow skin, the gape of their mouths, the wide black pupils that occupied their eyes.

Clint had seen that look before. He’d seen it on the grim, frightened faces of new inmates, of the young men with freshly shorn heads and V-neck smocks too big for their spindly frames. They were the ones who wouldn’t last long. They were the ones who would ball up in the fetal position on the shower floor or the corner of the yard.

This new world, only minutes old and still ripe with the smell of burning flesh and hair, was far more familiar to someone like Clint than the one that preceded it; the one with rules, where birthright and privilege took precedence over those who started the game with nothing in their pockets and no one to show them how it was played. This newly chaotic world was, like prison, Darwinian in its purest form. It was primal and raw.

He glanced up at a singed billboard pronouncing the Southland’s number one news anchor was some glue-haired Barbizon model named Lane Turner. The man’s arms were folded across his chest in a “trust me, I’m smart” kind of way. His cheeky smile stretched across his tanned face. But in the center of billboard, right between his twinkling eyes was a gaping hole, its edges black and smoking. Something had shot through it, ruining Lane Turner and the ad which hoped to attract Angelinos to his nightly news program.

Though wounded and woozy, thinking about the coming possibilities, Clint began to stride through the crowded streets with confidence. He pulled his shoulders back and raised his chin. The end was a new beginning for him. He held the cards because the rules no longer applied.

A smile crept across his face, and when a tendril of blood from his forehead reached his lips, he licked it into his mouth. This was a good day. All he needed now were people who could help him make it better.

CHAPTER 6

Saturday, July 5, 2025

DAY FOURTEEN

Westwood, California

Dub bit into the last of the chicken nuggets. He’d overcooked it and it was rubbery. If he dropped it on the floor, it might have bounced back up into his hand. He didn’t say anything to his friends, hoping they wouldn’t notice. It didn’t matter.

“I can’t believe the last chicken nugget I’m ever going to eat tastes like complete and total crap,” said Barker. He was chewing wildly with his mouth open. “I didn’t know you could screw up chicken nuggets. That’s like making a bad pizza. It’s virtually impossible.”

“Yeah,” said Michael Turner. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Dub, you managed to ruin chicken nuggets. I mean, that’s pretty impressive.”

“These aren’t nearly as bad as the pot stickers though,” said Barker. “Those might have glued my jaw shut if I’d let them set up in my mouth.”

Everyone at the table but Dub laughed. Keri nudged him with her shoulder, and a smile leaked onto his face. They had not left the dorm much in the previous two weeks. They’d spent most of it hoarding what supplies they could and securing them in places they thought might be safe from intruders.

There were forty people living in their building. They figured there were no more than a couple of hundred on campus. In addition to its being summer when the bombs dropped, it was a weekend, and a lot of kids had gone home. That left the out-of-state kids and a few employees who, for some reason, had nowhere else to go and felt obligated to stay.

They had raided several of the dining halls nearest their dorm building. In the first couple of days, they managed to eat the vast majority of the fresh fruits and vegetables on hand, then started eating the frozen protein. There was fish, chicken breasts, short ribs, hamburgers and hot dogs, and the chicken nuggets.

While the ovens and refrigerators no longer worked, the walk-in freezers managed to keep much of the food cold for ten days. The gas cooktops in the dining hall kitchens still worked with the help of a lighter or match, and there were enough jugs of cooking oil and distilled water to last six months at least.

They were careful with the water, reusing it for several meals. It made the pasta taste like the pot stickers and the pot stickers taste like boiled hot dogs. The oil they drained and recycled, pouring it back into a single jug.

Food consumed much of their daily lives. When they weren’t sleeping, playing cards, or debating the merits of staying versus leaving, they were either thinking about eating, talking about it, or doing it.

They took turns cooking and cleaning. Nobody complained about the work. Sleep, however, was different.

Sleeping wasn’t as easy. Despite a scheduled rotation to ensure someone was always watching the first-floor entrance to the dorm, nobody ever got more than a couple of hours at a time.

Dub and Keri shared his bunk. She didn’t want to be alone in her single, and he was happy to have her with him. Both, however, complained of the other’s restlessness. Dub shuddered and sweated in his sleep. Keri mumbled and spoke gibberish.

Barker complained jokingly about his cell phone’s inability to record them both and post it on the internet. Dub took the joke as a passive-aggressive complaint about Barker’s own inability to sleep because of the noise he and Keri made.

“Stop whining,” Dub had told him. “You’re not paying a dime for tuition right now, and your room and board is free. It’s like you’re on a full scholarship.”

Barker hadn’t laughed. “Prison gives you a free cot and three hots a day too.”

Nobody but Barker had found that funny. Dub already felt like they were incarcerated. For the most part, their movements had been restricted to moving between their high-rise and the dining hall. That, in and of itself, was adventure enough.

The ash, still falling from the darkened sky and accumulating across the entirety of the four-hundred-acre campus, was toxic. They all knew it. Each time they moved from one building to the next, they did what little they could to keep from breathing it, from allowing it into their eyes and nostrils and mouths.

Dub wore a pair of ski goggles he’d brought with him to school. He’d expected weekly trips to Mountain High or Big Bear, but like so many of his initial college plans, those trips never materialized. He’d gone once as a freshman.

He also bundled up with a hoodie and a barn jacket, drawing the hood tight over his head and cinching the drawstrings as far as they would go.

If the wind were particularly strong, as it was frequently now, he’d wear a mask over his face fashioned from strips of burlap he’d found in the room of an art major who’d left before the attack and hadn’t returned.

The goggles were on his head, the burlap pulled low around his neck as he chewed on the final chicken nugget. It was his fourth. It was more than enough.

“So, Chef William,” said Barker, “how are we doing with supplies? Still a lot of food back there?”

Dub frowned. “Don’t call me William. Only my mom calls me that.”

“Sorry,” Barker said. “I was just kidding.”

Keri adjusted a large scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. “We have plenty,” she said. “Several weeks, I bet. If we ration a little more judiciously, we could stretch it even more.”

Michael wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “It’s not enough. No matter how much we have, it’s not enough. Eventually we’ll run out.”

“What do you suppose we do then?” asked Dub. “We can’t leave. We have nowhere to go. And we have no idea what it’s like out there.”

“I heard there’s a gang of cannibals,” said Barker. “They’re going house to house looking for people to eat.”

Keri rolled her eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

Barker shrugged. “A guy on the third floor.”

“Who?” Keri pressed, her brow furrowed.

Barker leaned back in his seat and shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s just what I heard. I heard the whole city is gone. Other cities too.”

“Those are rumors,” said Dub. “There’s no way anybody could know what’s going on. We have no way to communicate.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” said Michael.

“What do you mean?” asked Keri.

“In Boelter Hall there are a bunch of radios,” said Michael. “There’s a ham radio club. They meet there. Met there. I bet there are radios there. I bet if we—”

“How do you know this?” Keri cut in.

“I’m a mechanical engineering major,” he said. “I know a lot of things.”

Keri lowered her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?”

Michael ran his hands through his thinning, curly red hair. “I’ve got friends in electrical engineering who are in the club. I took Calc 32B with them. I’ve heard them talk about it.”

“You’re suggesting we go find one of these radios?”

Michael shrugged. “I’m just saying we can’t stay here forever. A month. A couple of months. Even six. But beyond that we’ve got to have a plan. We need to know what’s out there, right?”

“They could be fried,” said Barker. “The EMP. What if they don’t work?”

“It’s worth a shot,” said Michael. “We’ve spent two weeks doing nothing but subsisting. We need more than that. What about our families?”

“What about them?” asked Barker.

Michael shook his head. He spoke louder, more forcefully, with a hint of exasperation. “We have no idea if they’re alive or dead. We don’t know if they’re trying to come get us or not. Don’t you want to know that?”

Barker frowned. “Getting on a radio doesn’t mean we find anyone, let alone our parents. My family’s in DC. Yours is in North Carolina. That’s like a needle in a haystack.”

“You can’t find the needle if you don’t look,” said Michael. “And we can’t do nothing just because we might fail at something.”

“You sound like a philosophy major instead of an engineer,” quipped Barker.

Dub agreed. “He’s right. We’re good for now, but now isn’t forever. Eventually we’ll need to leave. We can’t do that without knowing what’s out there. And we won’t find out anything about our families without trying.”

“Where’s Boelter Hall?” asked Barker.

Kerri looked at him askance. “How can you not know that?”

Barker shrugged. “I’m undeclared. All of my classes are on north campus.”

“Ten-minute walk,” said Michael. “South of Ackerman.”

“Easy enough,” said Dub. “Let’s do it.”

***

A rap at his door caught his attention. “Dub,” said Keri, “you ready?”

Dub glanced over his shoulder at Keri, admiring her slender, sporty physique. “As ready as I’m gonna be,” he said.

Keri moved into the room and glided between the bunks to the window next to Dub. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. “We don’t have to go,” she said, her New Orleans drawl pinging the words. “We could stay here.”

Dub nodded at the window. “Until what? The ash is gone, or the radiation has subsided? That’ll take forever. Now’s as good a time as any.”

She smiled and brushed her black hair from her eyes, her large brown eyes still somehow bright. “I agree with you, but I’ll do whatever you think is best. I’m with you, Dub.”

Dub turned from the window and opened his arms. Keri slid comfortably between them and the two embraced. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her familiar sweet scent.

She pulled away first and ran her thumbs along the inside of her pack straps. “It’s hard to hug you with our packs on.”

Dub touched her face and kissed her forehead. “You managed it when we were hiking Santa Anita Canyon.”

Keri blushed, her eyes finding the floor, and she slapped his chest with her open hand. “Hush,” she said. “Now is not the time for that.”

Dub winked. “Let’s do this, then,” he said. “Have you seen Michael?”

Keri nodded. “I think he’s downstairs with Barker. They were getting suited up. They’re waiting for us.”

Dub snatched his mask and goggles from his desk and led Keri to the door. The two left the room and weaved their way through the eighth-floor hall in Rieber Vista, one of the Plaza dorm buildings on campus. The dim passageway was littered with microwave pizza boxes, ramen cups, full trash bags, empty soda cans and bottles. Keri folded her arm across her face to cover her nose. Dub held his breath and took Keri’s free hand to lead her to the stairwell, where they bounded down into the darkness, their loud footsteps echoing against the metal and concrete well. Dub was sweating by the time they reached the first floor. He hadn’t had much exercise in the days since the attack.

He pushed through the first-floor doorway and out into the open, sucking in a deep breath of air. Keri kept pace with him, her long legs striding side by side. Ahead of them, near the front entrance to the tower, their friends were already gathered. They were loaded for bear and apparently anxious to move.

“It’s about time,” said Barker as they approached. “We’re not going to have much daylight, and the less moving we do in the dark, the better.”

Michael pulled two mini LED flashlights from his jacket pocket and handed one to Dub. “I kept these in my lockbox, with my credit cards and cash. They still work.” He flicked the ice blue light on and off.

“Thanks.” Dub lowered his goggles onto his eyes, cinched the hoodie, and drew the burlap mask over his mouth and nose.

Michael pushed open the door and led them out into the ash. Dub held the door for Keri, as he was the last to step outside. The cold wind blasted against him as the door slapped shut behind him. It seeped under the edges of the cinched hoodie, chilling his exposed skin.

The lack of sunlight had dropped the Southern California temperatures a good twenty-five degrees. Add the wind to the cooler air and it was cold. The ash might have been mistaken for snow had it not been for its gray, sooty color.

Even though they’d been out in it, moving between the dorm and the dining hall, this felt different. They were trekking more than a mile, and the terrain wasn’t easy. It was a steep descent down the hill and then a climb up the steps on the south side of campus.

Dub’s feet trudged through the ash, following closely the tracks of footprints worn into the ash along the length of the plaza outside their dorm. Once they’d passed the dining hall, they started making their way down the long flight of steps.

There were no footprints here. If anyone had traversed the steps before them, the evidence was covered by the new-fallen ash.

Despite his protective mask, the overwhelming smell of char and death seeped into Dub’s nose. It was a sickening odor that clung to everything, everywhere. Gone were the pleasant notes of the jacaranda trees and rose gardens that dotted the campus, and the smell of freshly cut grass and hints of citrus that had welcomed him to the campus on his first visit there as a prospective student two years earlier. These were distant memories now. They’d never return, he imagined, as he stepped carefully through the slippery drifts of ash at the bottom of the first set of steps. He shrugged his pack up on his back and followed closely behind his trio of friends. Michael marched confidently, purposefully in the front, leading the silent procession.

Dub wiped flecks of ash from his goggles and listened to the sound of his breath as he walked. Keri moved a step ahead of him. She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up with her gloved hand.

When they reached the bottom of the second set of steps, Dub exhaled, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t want to inhale too deeply, but his quickened pulse was thumping against the burlap at his neck. He pulled up his mask, adjusting it over his nose.

A gust of wind blew the ash sideways against them. Drifts of it shifted on the wide path ahead of them that ran alongside Pauley Pavilion. Two of the glass entrance doors were shattered, thin spills of ash crossing the threshold into the arena’s concourse.

Other than the damaged pavilion doors, there was no evidence of life anywhere. They were in a nuclear wasteland devoid of anything recognizable other than the structures cemented into the high desert soil of Southern California.

Dub raised his chin and looked skyward, despite nothing to see. From the ground upward, everything blended together into the gray of the ash. Shades of that gray, bordering on black in places, drifted like vapor clouds through the opaque curtain of debris. A shudder traveled along Dub’s spine, and the group approached the iconic bear statue outside the Ackerman Student Union. Its bronze was layered with silvery fallout. Dub noticed all three of his friends glanced at the bear as they passed it.

“Not far now,” said Michael. His voice was muffled by the thick yellow scarf he wore over his nose and mouth. Everything looked incandescent against the colorless surroundings. “We’re almost there.”

Dub kept walking, his thighs burning as he waded through a particularly deep ash drift. He imagined the radioactive dust filtering upward and into his nose, seeking out the cells in his lungs. He coughed reflexively and pushed past the drift.

Finally, after a normally ten-minute walk that took twenty, they were there. Michael pointed up to the building’s roof and a grouping of radio antennas perched at the edge. This was the place.

Boelter Hall was one of the buildings that made up the Court of Sciences on South Campus. It was eight stories with a basement and decorated in pale red brick. Its entrance was a set of ten wide steps that led from the court and into the building.

The hall was guarded by keycard access on weekends and after hours. A student or faculty member had to wave their Bruin Card across a panel at the door and the entrance unlocked automatically. That, however, was no good when the power was out.

Michael vigorously pulled on the handles for the twin glass doors. They wagged, but neither gave.

“We’re going to have to break in,” said Barker. “There’s no other way.”

“What about a utility access around back?” asked Keri. “Through the alley?”

“We could try it,” said Michael, “but if this is locked, so is that. All of these keycard doors are on the same system. I think Barker’s right.”

Dub walked down the steps to a landscaping square that surrounded the base of a large oleander. He picked up a couple of round river stones with his gloved hands and moved back to the base of the steps.

He waved his hands, motioning for his friends to move. “Back up. I don’t want you to get hit.”

He took the first rock and chucked it at the door. It hit dead center and splintered the glass, decorating it with a large spiderweb crack. He switched the remaining rock from his left hand to his right and tossed it at the crack. Bull’s-eye. The glass shattered, and large angular shards bounced from the landing down the steps.

“That’ll work,” said Barker, nodding with approval.

The foursome stepped carefully from the glass-laden doorway into the building. None of them had been there before.

“Which way?” asked Barker. “Up or down?”

“Let’s try the basement first,” said Michael. “We know the antennas are on the roof, but there’s a chance that any radios up there would be fried from the blast. Maybe they have some stuff in the basement.”

“It would save us from having to climb eight flights of stairs too,” said Barker. “I’m all for that.”

Keri pointed along a hallway. “The stairs are right here.” She led the group toward the stairwell. They hurriedly made their way to the basement level, the white arcs of LED lights flashing on the steps as they descended into the darkness. They walked the corridors, checking every room for anything that might resemble radio transceivers.

Then they came to 3420, a room outside of which a bronze plaque proclaimed the space as a historic site. Inside the room, in the far corner, was a tall, thin machine that looked like an air-conditioning furnace. Michael held his light on the wall.

Barker ran his fingers along the raised lettering on the plaque, reading it aloud. “At 10:30 p.m., 29 October 1969, the first ARPANET message was sent from this UCLA site to the Stanford Research Institute.”

“This is the place the internet was born,” said Michael. “Well, what became the internet?”

“I’ve been here two years and never knew this existed,” said Barker. “Crazy.”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “UCLA sent the message to Stanford, but Stanford couldn’t respond. The joke is that UCLA invented the internet and Stanford broke it.”

Everyone chuckled at the humor. Then Dub sighed.

“C’mon,” he said, pointing the flashlight onward. “We need to keep going. It’s going to be dark soon.”

Nights were no longer what they’d experienced the first two decades of their lives. Since the attacks and the subsequent sky-blanketing fallout, nightfall was earlier, and it was black. There were no stars, no moon, no ambient light from streetlamps or building windows. It was an unearthly experience to be outside once the opaque sunlight disappeared. And as far as they knew, it wasn’t safe.

Dub led the group from door to door. They found nothing until Keri turned the knob on an unlocked closet toward the end of a hallway. To one side of the door was a room label that read W6YRA SUPPLIES. She stepped inside, Dub guiding her way with his flashlight.

The closet was lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling metal shelves encased in mesh cages. They were effectively see-through lockers of various sizes.

Dub’s and Michael’s icy lights swept across the shelves, casting shadows on the contents. Keri pulled up on a latch at eye level and swung open the door. She reached inside and pulled out an oval-shaped handset.

“That looks like a CB microphone,” said Barker. “My dad was a long-haul trucker. He used to let me push the button and call out some of the lingo. My handle was Little Bark.”

“It’s a radio mic,” said Michael. “That’s a good start. But it’s no good without a radio.”

Keri shoved the handset back into the locker, shut the door, and opened the next one. Dub stepped behind her and shone his light into the space. There was a stack of rechargeable batteries inside.

Another locker held differing sizes and lengths of wiring. A fourth stored stacks of circuit boards. A fifth was empty.

“Hey,” said Michael, opening a locker on the back wall. “I think I found something.”

He opened the door and pulled out a squatty silver radio with a long black antenna. He handed it to Keri, reached back into the locker, and pulled out a second identical radio.

Michael held up the one in his hand. “These could work!” he said excitedly. “These are handheld ham radios, and they take AA batteries.”

He set his flashlight on the edge of the locker, aiming it at the radio in his hand. It was a Kenwood.

“Kenwood?” asked Barker. “Like the subwoofer in my brother’s Mustang. It’s in the trunk and—”

“Your brother has a Mustang?” Keri cut in.

“Yeah,” said Barker.

“Figures,” said Keri. “I always figured you for a Ford guy. I like Chevy.”

Barker smirked. “Figures.”

Michael picked up another radio, a Yaesu. He turned it over in his hands and used his index and middle finger to pop open the battery compartment that ran along the back of the device. It was empty. He snapped the cover back into place.

“We’ve got a couple of options,” said Michael.

“Maybe,” said Barker, “but, one, we don’t even know if they work. And two, where are we going to get batteries?”

“I’ve got some in my room,” said Keri. “I haven’t taken them out of the packaging yet.”

“I’ve got some too,” echoed Dub.

“And we could probably find a big supply of them in Ackerman,” said Michael.

Dub shone his light at Michael. “Ackerman?”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “Assuming it hasn’t been raided already, we could probably get what we need there. As a backup.”

Barker mumbled his dissatisfaction with having been wrong and opened another locker. He blindly fished around inside it and pulled out a larger set-top transceiver. It was a rectangular box with a DC cable attached to the back of it. “What about this?” he asked, holding it up for redemptive approval. “Is it useful?”

Michael aimed the arc of LED light at the box and shrugged. “Can’t hurt to take it. It’s not battery powered, which could make it tough. But sure, bring it.”

Barker tucked the box under his arm and shut the lockers. “We good, then? It’s got to be getting late, and if we’re stopping at Ackerman, we’d better head back outside.”

“Yeah,” said Michael, “I think we’re good.”

Dub waved his light toward the doorway and led his friends from the closet to the hallway and to the stairwell. They trudged up the steps and back to the ground level, winding their way back to the shattered doorway through which they had entered. It was nearly dark, and it was getting colder. The breeze that had chilled them as they walked from the Hill to the Court of Sciences was more of a biting wind now. It swirled through the plaster and rustled the remaining leaves on the dying trees that had once been a beautifully crafted canopy above the plaza that connected the collection of buildings dedicated to various scientific disciplines.

The foursome trekked back in silence toward the center of campus and the Ackerman student union. Dub held the burlap mask against his face with his free hand, trying to stop the whirl of briny ash from getting into his nose or mouth. Keri edged alongside him and put her gloved hand on the small of his back as they moved together.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice muffled through her scarf. “You’re unusually quiet. You’ve always been the strong, silent type, but other than directing us, you’ve hardly said two words since we left the dorms.”

Dub shrugged. “I’m okay. No better or worse than anyone else. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“What we’re becoming,” he said.

Keri stopped rubbing his back, quickened her pace, and stepped ahead of Dub. She craned her neck and glared at him. There was a sting in her voice he hadn’t heard before.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked pointedly.

Dub shook his head as if to nonchalantly downplay the hyperbole of his opinion. “I don’t know. We broke into Boelter Hall. We—”

“You broke into Boelter,” said Keri. “You threw the rocks, remember?”

“Okay,” Dub conceded. “That’s semantics, but fine. I broke into Boelter. Now we’re going to break into Ackerman.”

“We’re trying to survive,” said Keri. “We’re doing what anyone trying to survive would do.”

“That’s my point,” said Dub. “I’m not bothered by taking radios from Boelter or batteries from the union. It’s what I think is coming. Today it’s breaking into buildings and stealing radios and batteries. What will we do next? What will we be able to justify with the reasoning that we’re trying to survive? It’s only been two weeks, Keri. Two weeks.”

Keri slowed and eased beside Dub. She didn’t correct him or tell him he was being overly dramatic. Dub instantly wished he hadn’t said anything. He wished he’d told her nothing was wrong and that he was quiet because he was tired. She’d have believed that, and it would have prevented the tension between them. Neither of them spoke another word until they’d reached the main entrance to Ackerman.

Barker tried the doors, the set-top radio still under one arm. They were locked. He faced his friends and nodded at Dub.

“You have any more rocks?” he asked. “Because we aren’t getting in otherwise.”

Michael stepped back from the doors and surveyed the area. He craned his neck from side to side and swept the bright flashlight beam across the front of the building. “I don’t think anyone else has been here,” he said. “That’s surprising. I would have figured someone would have beaten us here. We might have hit the jackpot.”

“Maybe I can score free textbooks for next semester,” Barker joked. “I’ll splurge and go with new ones. Nice clean pages without any scribbles or notes to confuse me.”

“Funny,” said Michael. He stepped forward and tried the doors. They were locked. He turned to Barker, his eyes on the handheld radio. “Since we don’t have any rocks…”

“You want me to throw the radio?” asked Barker.

“Or maybe that concrete planter,” Michael suggested. We could do it together.”

Barker adjusted his goggles and with Michael’s help, the two of them heaved it through the glass.

The door shattered, and the four stepped carefully into the union.

“How about you guys look for the batteries?” Dub suggested. “Keri and I will look for food.”

“Cool,” said Michael.

Dub used the flashlight to guide Keri past the computer and electronics store, such as it was, on the left. The two of them moved straight back toward what passed for a convenience store. Barker and Michael weaved past the racks of blue and yellow sweatshirts, hats, and T-shirts toward the batteries.

As Barker and Michael disappeared, Dub and Keri reached the mini grocery. He aimed the flashlight at the untouched bounty of food, drink, and toiletries.

“Gold mine,” Dub said under his breath. Keri was apparently close enough to hear him.

“So now you’re comfortable with what we’re becoming?” sniped Keri. “Food thieves?”

Dub exhaled and pulled the burlap below his mouth. The sour odor of rotting fruit permeated the still air of the first floor. He stopped at a bank of cash registers near the area of the floor that held racks of nonperishable foods and glass-front refrigerators stacked with bottled waters, sodas, and energy drinks.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Dub pulled a plastic shopping basket from a stack at the register counter. “You’re taking what I meant out of context.”

Keri got another basket. “Am I? You basically called us thugs back there, judging all of us for what we’re doing.”

Dub watched her walk past him and aimed his flashlight toward an aisle to help her see. She plucked granola bars and bags of nuts from the shelves, sliding them into her basket.

“I didn’t call us thugs,” he said, “and I’m not judging us for anything. I’m just thinking ahead. I’m worried about what will happen weeks or months from now.”

Keri glanced at him, squinting into the white beam of light, and tossed a can of Pringles into the basket. Dub tilted the light away from her eyes but kept it on what there was to select.

“Is that what you meant?” she asked in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe him.

He picked up his basket and walked toward her. He lowered his voice to avoid sounding defensive. “Of course it was, Keri. Think about it. Three weeks ago, we never would’ve thrown rocks into a building to steal school equipment. But today it’s okay. It’s acceptable. What will be acceptable, what will be okay a month from now? I bet there’s something you wouldn’t think of doing right now that in four or six weeks you rationalize as being necessary.”

Keri set the basket on the floor. She adjusted the scarf around her neck and moved toward Dub. She lowered her voice to prevent Michael and Barker from hearing her. “Do you understand how I take that?” she asked. “Like you think less of me. Like you think I’m a bad person.”

Dub didn’t understand. He wasn’t singling her out. It was a general observation and concern about what problems might lay ahead. He was the one who’d thrown the rocks to break into Boelter Hall. How could he be judging her or think less of her when he’d done as much or more than she had?

Dub searched her eyes for understanding, hoping he could find in her wide-eyed gaze that key to unlock her psyche. And then, as the faintest glint of a tear glistened in her eyes, he saw it. She wasn’t upset with him because he’d judged her. She was upset with him because he’d vocalized what her conscience had already told her was wrong.

He reached out to her, one hand holding the flashlight and the other holding his basket, and wrapped his arms around her. His hug loosened layers of ash from their shoulders and backs. Keri reciprocated the squeeze.

His cheek was pressed against her ear as he reassured her. “I’m worried about myself. I’m worried about the things I might do to keep myself alive, to keep you alive.”

“I know.” Keri sniffled. “Me too.”

Dub pulled back, the hint of a smile on his face. “You’re worried about what I’ll do?”

She slapped his chest and giggled faintly. “No,” she said. “You’re a moron, William Hampton.”

He laughed. It was the second time that day. A new post-apocalyptic record. Dub made a mental note of it as Barker interrupted their brief moment of levity.

“Are we intruding?” he chirped. “We can leave you alone if you want, but I’m not sure now is the time or place for—”

“You’re not intruding,” said Dub. “Did you find the batteries?”

“Plenty,” said Michael. “Double A, triple A, nine volts. Looks like you found more food.”

“We did,” said Dub. “And more importantly, water.” He faced the wall of glass-front refrigerators and shone the flashlight on rows of bottled water. Then he ran it along the bottom row, revealing cartons of milk and juice. “I’m guessing we’ll want to stay away from those. But we should take what we can and go. It’s got to be dark out now.”

“Agreed,” said Michael, and the four of them filled up two baskets apiece with as much as they could carry.

CHAPTER 7

Saturday, July 5, 2025

DAY FOURTEEN

Santa Monica, California

Danny Correa stood at the back door waiting for Maggie to do her business. His hands were tucked under his armpits to keep them warm. It was late in the day. He was sure he could see his breath as Maggie padded lightly across the ash like a show horse, searching for the perfect spot.

“Every single time?” he asked the dog. “Do you have to do this every time?”

The dog stopped her search and stared at Danny, taunting him. She tilted her head to one side and then resumed the sniffing and high-stepping.

For two weeks, he’d maintained a rigid schedule, positive that rules and order were the key to sanity; otherwise he’d lose track of time and eventually the will to live.

He’d awaken at the same time every morning, coaxed by Maggie’s need to go outside. He’d do fifty push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, and two hundred jumping jacks. Then he’d make himself and the dog a meager breakfast from whatever was left in the pantry. He’d brush his teeth, wash his face, and comb his hair.

He’d pull a book off the shelf and read one hundred pages while Maggie slept at his feet. It didn’t matter the book—romance, political, biographical, classic—all of it was fiction now. He’d stayed away from George Orwell and Aldous Huxley but figured he might eventually be left with only their works to read.

Then he’d let Maggie outside, take a nap, let her out again, eat dinner, do more push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks before checking the security of the doors and windows and going to sleep.

He’d guessed he was getting five or six hours a night, maybe more for the first ten days or so. It was hard to tell given the relative lack of sunlight, but he’d gotten up every morning feeling refreshed.

In the last couple of days, however, he had not been sleeping as much. Noises outside had awoken him, kept him on edge. They’d sounded like voices. He hadn’t been able to make out what they’d been saying or how close to the house they’d been.

Given that Danny hadn’t seen a living person since squatting in the house, he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining the voices. Still, he was anxious every time he opened the back door to let Maggie do her business.

“C’mon, girl,” he said impatiently. “Hurry it up.”

Maggie squatted, pranced around the yard for another minute, hunched her back, and did her business, then gleefully made her way back into the house.

“It’s about time,” said Danny. “You know the ash isn’t going anywhere, right? It’s going to be here for a while. We’re all going to have to deal with it.”

Danny bent over and cupped Maggie’s face in his hands. He rubbed the spot behind her ears and she closed her eyes. He scratched under her jaw and she tilted her head back. She licked him on the nose and then followed him into the kitchen. Danny opened one of the drawers and pulled out a large box of matches. He struck one of them on the side of the box and lit a series of thick scented candles he used to light the house at night. The wicks sizzled and reanimated, sending the overpowering scents of Autumn Mist and Winter Jubilee filtering through the home.

He crossed the kitchen to the pantry and pulled out a can of soup. Maggie followed him expectantly with her tail wagging. He looked at her and smiled as he drew back the pop top to open the can and poured half of it into a bowl. He was thankful to have the dog. She was a rescue nobody wanted and, according to the pound, had been left to die in a gutter.

Danny had paid twenty-five dollars for her. It was half of what he’d had in his bank account at the time, but she was worth a thousand times that to Danny, especially given their current predicament. He needed something to love and something that would love him back. Every time Maggie looked at him, Danny knew she was aware he’d saved her life. She probably didn’t know she’d saved his.

He put the bowl on the floor at his feet, and Maggie at once dove into the cold barley and potato soup. He drew the can to his lips and slurped his cold dinner. As he ate, chewing on the mushy potatoes and listening to Maggie’s collar clang against the bowl, he looked through the windows above the kitchen sink. It was now dark outside. Another day had evaporated, and he was still living in someone else’s house.

Danny called the couple who owned the home Ken and Barbie. To occupy his mind, he’d imagine their life together and wonder if it was as perfect as it seemed in the bookshelf pictures and in the meticulous decoration of their home. Or was it only perfect in the digital ones and zeroes of photographs? Underneath that shiny veneer, were there cracks that ran deep through the foundation of the relationship?

When his thoughts turned dark, the images of Ken and Barbie were replaced with the memories of his ex and their failed chance at happiness.

Well, his failed chance. The last he’d heard, she seemed blissful.

She was living somewhere up the coast near the bay, having fallen for some software designer, a Silicon Valley gazillionaire who had locked in to a deal with Google or Yahoo or Apple or Microsoft. Danny couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Whatever he was, he made her happier than she’d ever been with him.

She had stolen his trust, his dignity, the deed to their home, and half of everything else. There wasn’t much of everything else to begin with, so Danny effectively started over while she moved on and didn’t look back.

He tipped back the can and tapped the remaining clumps of barley into his mouth. Maggie was licking the dry bowl around the kitchen, sliding it with each lap of her tongue until she reached the corner of the lower cabinets.

Danny chuckled. “All right, I think you’re done.”

He reached down and snatched the bowl from Maggie, her eyes following his hands as he dropped the bowl onto the counter. He dipped a paper towel in the water-filled-sink and used it to wipe out the inside of the bowl. Then he opened a half-empty gallon of spring water, poured it into the bowl, and offered it to Maggie. He tossed the empty can into a trash-bag-lined can and stretched.

“Time for exercise and bed?” he asked her. She ignored him and drank from the bowl. Danny licked his dry lips as he thought about the water. He had six more plastic gallon jugs of drinking water. He went through one every three days, which was barely enough to keep the two of them hydrated. At that rate, he’d be out of clean drinking water in less than three weeks. He’d have to resort to the tub water, which he was using to occasionally flush the toilet.

He left the dog in the kitchen and moped toward the front door. He looked outside onto the street. In the dark, it almost looked beautiful, the banks of ash that rose and dipped along the streets and postage-stamp front yards. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flash of movement to the left of the house. Then another.

Danny touched the door handle and held it for a moment before unlocking the deadbolt and opening the door. A gust of ashy wind blew into his face, and he rubbed it from his eyes. He left the door cracked open and stepped from the threshold into the yard, his bare feet treading softly in the ash. It filtered between his toes like dry sand, and he stepped closer to the street. He squinted in the darkness, sweeping his eyes from one side to the other. He reached the curb and stood silently for a moment, listening to the gusts of wind and the distant crash of the surf on the beach a few blocks away.

Convinced he’d imagined whatever it was he thought he saw, he started walking back to the house. He tucked his hands into his pants pockets to shield them from the chill and tucked his chin against his chest to keep the swirling ash from his eyes.

He’d almost reached the stoop when, to his right, he saw evidence he hadn’t been imagining anything. There were two sets of faint footprints in the ash. They crossed the yard toward the side of the house and the gate to the back.

Danny froze. His muscles tensed, and his pulse quickened. He glanced at the cracked front door and then back to the footprints. He wiped a dusting of ash from his face and exhaled, moving cautiously toward the side of the house. His hands were out of his pockets and balled into fists. His thumbs were on the outside of his tightly clenched fingers, as his Shotokan karate instructor had taught him as a kid. He moved with one shoulder in front of the other, defensively ready to attack or defend, depending on what he found.

As he turned the corner, easing close enough to the gate to find it swung open, a thick punch to his lower back knocked him to the ground. The attacker was on top of him, shoving him into the dirt. Danny scrambled onto his back to see the man’s crazed eyes, the snarl on his face, and the blade in his hand. The rank odor of desperation filled Danny’s nostrils as he fought against the wiry, unkempt man.

The attacker growled and drove the blade toward Danny with a quick jab. Danny deflected it, and the blade sliced across the fabric of his hoodie. He felt a sharp burning cut as the knife grazed his arm. Still, he managed to grab the man’s forearm and hold the weapon at bay as he fought for leverage.

The man rolled away from Danny, taking the knife with him, and then lunged again. Danny pulled his knees to his chest and thrust them outward in a mule kick. One of his feet caught the attacker’s side, knocking him off balance.

The attacker growled again and scrambled to his feet. Danny was on his back, scooting backward in the ash, trying to gain enough separation from the man to push himself from the ground.

Danny coughed at the swirl of ash that coated his tongue and the inside of his nostrils. The attacker launched himself forward, swiping with the blade as he landed next to Danny. He missed when Danny rolled to one side and managed to push himself up. Danny stood near the gate now, his hands again balled into fists, his right leg behind his left. He spat dust from his mouth and waited for the circling attacker to make his next move.

Before the intruder could make his next move, a blur from the side slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. The man screamed and cried out in pain before the wails became gargles.

Danny took a step forward and saw Maggie on top of the man, her head shaking wildly as she tore into his neck and face. She was relentless, every bit as crazed as the man had been moments earlier.

“Maggie,” he said. “Maggie, it’s okay. It’s okay, girl.”

Cautiously, and still in a defensive position, he moved closer to his dog. Her snarl was unlike anything he’d heard from her before. It was vicious, both a warning and a declaration.

“Maggie!” he snapped.

She whipped her head toward him, her muzzle creased with anger and her teeth dipped in blood, then instantly relaxed. She wagged her tail and pawed toward him, her head low as if she’d pooped on the carpet.

Danny squatted onto his heels and took both sides of her head as she reached him. He held her at bay when she tried licking him. He could smell the man on her breath. He praised her and calmed her, assuring her he was okay.

She backed away and inched toward her kill. She sniffed at the man, whose fingers still twitched involuntarily.

Danny followed her and stood over the attacker. He appeared smaller now. And the blade next to him in the bloody ash wasn’t a blade, it was a long shard of glass.

The man’s body shuddered as he took his last gargling breath. His fingers stopped moving. His body sank into the ground and Danny exhaled.

He slinked backward and led Maggie to the house. He turned the knob and opened the door, stepped inside, shut the door again, and stopped cold.

Didn’t he leave the door open?

A chill ran along his spine and he stopped breathing. He motioned to Maggie for her to sit. She obeyed. Danny pressed his back to the door, listening for the owner of the second set of footprints he’d seen in the ash. He raised his hand to his face to wipe gray sweat from his brow and noticed his palm was covered in blood.

It was coming from his arm. He wiped the blood on his pants and tried not to focus on the stinging throb above his wrist.

Maggie shuffled her feet and whimpered. Her ears pricked, and she looked toward the hallway that led to the bedroom. Danny motioned for Maggie to follow him and stepped lightly toward the kitchen. He kept his focus on the dark hallway as he backed through the living room to the sink. He drew open a drawer and slid out a long carving knife.

Danny motioned with his head, tapped Maggie on her hind end, and she led him back to the living room and toward the hallway. When they reached the hallway entrance, Danny tapped Maggie again and they stopped. He listened and ran his thumb along the side of the knife’s ergonomic grip.

There was a noise coming from the second bedroom, the room that Danny had made his own. He took a measured step forward into the dark hall. Ahead and to the left, a dim light was flashing, strobing, from the bedroom.

Another step.

Maggie was at his side, herding him along, silently padding her way toward the bedroom.

Another step.

The man was grumbling and snorting as he tore through the room. Drawers opened and closed. His feet were heavy on the floors. The closet door slammed against its stopper and then banged shut.

Another step.

And then the man was in the hallway.

He didn’t see them. His back was turned as he moved from the second bedroom toward the master. He was larger than the dead man outside. Easily five or six inches taller than Danny, his shoulders were broad and rounded with muscle. His neck was thick.

He made a move toward the bedroom before pivoting quickly to face Danny. He jerked with the shock of surprise before lunging at Danny with his meat-hook hands.

Maggie leapt at the man as he exploded into Danny, tackling him against the wall, which gave way at Danny’s elbows and the back of his head. The man shoved his forearm against Danny’s chest, knocking the wind from him, and he dropped the knife to the floor.

Maggie snarled then yelped when the man kicked her in the side. His fist powered into Danny’s gut, doubling him over, and he drove his elbow into Danny’s back before Maggie bounded onto the man, her jaws clamping down on the back of his leg.

The man cried out in pain and shook her free, then bolted awkwardly from the hallway into the living room. Maggie gave chase while Danny collected himself. He groped for the knife and found it, then struggled from the hallway, using the walls for support while he regained his breath.

He followed the sound of the tussle between his dog and the intruder into the living room, where he found the furniture overturned and Maggie on top of the man near the kitchen. Danny moved across the chair and sofa to help Maggie as she snapped and snarled at the man underneath her. He was strong enough to keep her at bay, and he shoved her from on top of him and crawled to the kitchen. Danny reached the man as he pulled himself to his feet and found the bowl on top of the counter.

He swung wildly at Danny’s head and caught his ear with the side of the bowl, knocking Danny off balance as he swiped with the knife. The man grunted and cursed, but the victory was short-lived as the attacker wrestled the knife from him and spun Danny around, catching the small of his back on the counter. The knife clanged to the floor.

Now, in the candlelight, he could see the man’s face. It was ruddy and pockmarked. His scraggly, blotchy beard ran ragged across his sunken cheeks and chin. His eyes were infected with the same crazed glare as his dead partner.

He pressed his body into Danny’s and worked his hand around his throat. Danny grappled to regain any sort of leverage. He reached behind his head onto the counter, searching for any weapon, knocking over whatever was there but failing to grasp a tool that might help.

Maggie came to the rescue again, bounding onto the man and biting into him such that he let go of Danny and turned to find the dog. That gave Danny enough time to drop to the floor and find the knife, which he blindly drove upward toward the hulk looming over him. He jabbed it repeatedly into the same spot, the man screaming in pain with a cry that made Danny want to cover his ears, but he kept stabbing. Maggie kept chomping.

The man crashed to the floor, fighting for his life until Maggie found his neck. Danny collapsed to the floor, exhausted. His back, neck, arms, and head throbbed with pain. His chest ached; his throat burned.

He sat against the cabinets under the sink, blankly watching Maggie go full wolf on the man. The candlelight grew brighter and brighter until the flickering orange light was too bright for a pair of scented candles.

And the scent wasn’t pleasant anymore, it was smoky. Danny rolled away from the cabinet and pushed himself to his feet to find the curtains and cabinets on fire. Panicking, he cupped his hands into the sink and splashed water onto the thin sheers that framed the window and the edge of the pressboard cabinet uppers that hung on the wall.

It did nothing, and it was spreading quickly now. The crackle of the hungry flames grew louder, and the smoke grew thicker.

He was nearly out of water and the fire was out of control. Danny pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth and called to Maggie. She looked up at Danny, the light reflected in her eyes.

“Let’s go,” he said. He led her back to his bedroom, grabbed his backpack and a gallon of water he kept next to the bed, then hustled into the master bedroom.

He hadn’t spent much time in the room, preferring to keep it as Ken and Barbie had left it. It was enough that he’d lived in their home and eaten their food. He couldn’t bring himself to invade their sanctuary until now.

He blindly rifled through both bedside tables, hoping to find a weapon, a radio, or anything that could help him in the wild. There was nothing. He looked over his shoulder into the hallway. The smoke was thickening. He was running out of time.

Danny slid into the master closet and ran his hands along the top shelf above the clothing rods. His fingers moved along the stacks of folded clothes until they touched a metal box. He fought past the jabbing pain in his ribs, and Maggie tugging at his pants with her teeth, to reach up and pluck the box from the shelf.

He spun free of her jaws and assured her they were okay. It was as much for him as it was for her.

Shaking the box, he found there was heft to it. He hoped it might contain a gun and some ammunition. He wasn’t a marksman. He wasn’t much of a martial artist, having only finished his green belt, but could pull the trigger if he had to do it. After all, he’d just repeatedly stabbed a man to near death.

Danny blinked against the burn in his eyes. The smoke hung in the air, a barely visible dusty haze flowing into the master bedroom like a slow creek. Danny covered his mouth and nose again and, with the lock box under his arm, dropped to his knees to crawl from the bedroom. He’d have to push the gallon water jug with his free hand.

With the pack on his back, he groped his way halfway to the living room, planning a quick exit through the front door, when he realized it wasn’t happening.

Up ahead was the radiating orange and red of the flames. The smoke was too thick to see anything but those strobing flames. Their crackle was more of a roar the closer he got. The heat on his face was too much now. It reminded him of standing too close to a fire pit while roasting marshmallows. He inched backward on his hands and knees until he found the master bedroom, tugging the water jug along.

He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing tears down the sides of his face, and shut the master bedroom door. The smoke lessened, the roar of the flames dulled, and he felt for the large windows that faced the front of the house.

Once he found them, he flipped the locks to slide the windows open. The cold air seeped into the room and Danny breathed it in. He punched through the mesh screens separating him from the outside, then spread the hole wide enough to move past.

He pushed Maggie through the opening first, tossed out the lock box, the water jug, and the backpack, then crawled through. He rolled across the dead rosebushes that ran along the entirety of the front of the home. Thorns scratched his face and hands, and he fell awkwardly into the ash, sending a plume of it into the chilled air.

He lay there for a moment, his chest heaving up and down until he caught his breath. Maggie licked his face and whimpered, nudging him.

Danny looked over at the house, smoke pouring from under its eaves and mixing with the delicate haze of ash that clung to the air. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. Then he looked down at his feet and cursed himself. No shoes.

He glanced at the open window and, for a split second, considered crawling back into the house to get shoes. Any shoes. He thought better of it and reached down to grab his pack. He unzipped it, shoved his belongings down as far as they would go, and slipped the lock box into the remaining space. After struggling with the zipper, he finally closed it and slung it over his shoulders. He snapped the chest strap, grimacing and grunting at the pressure it applied to his aching ribs, and grabbed the gallon jug of water with one hand. He crossed the yard to the first of the dead intruders, crouched down, and yanked the shoe from the man’s right foot. He placed it next to his foot. It was easily two sizes too small. He tossed it across the yard, and it skidded across the layer of ash like a meteor leaving its mark on the Earth. He cursed the shoe, the intruders, the fire, and the nuclear holocaust. Then he cursed his ex-wife and her gazillionaire lover. He said some choice things about Google, Apple, and Amazon to cover his bases.

“All right,” he said to Maggie. “Let’s go find somewhere else to stay.”

The dog cocked her head to one side and then yawned again. Danny wiped his forehead and clicked his teeth. She followed him into the street and kept pace with him as he slogged his way from the house. The pop and crackle of the flames as they devoured his temporary refuge stuck in his ears. The farther he walked from the house, the heavier the cold sank into his body. It was in his fingers wrapped around the backpack shoulder straps, in his toes shoveling through the ash, on the back of his sweaty neck.

He tried to ignore it and the swelling aches that sparked across his body as the adrenaline from the twin fights and fire dissipated. He focused on his needs.

“Maggie, we need somewhere to sleep tonight. Somewhere with a roof and at least three walls. That’s job number one.”

The dog padded alongside Danny, her tongue hanging from the side of her mouth. She didn’t disagree with him.

“Then we need to go through the lockbox in my pack,” he said. “I’ll have to figure out how to open it, right? That’s job two.”

They walked another block, the wind swirling past them and sending a shudder through his body, amplifying his pain for an instant.

“Job three is keeping our heads on a swivel. If there are two guys out there breaking into homes, there are more. No doubt in my mind we haven’t seen the last desperate, awful-smelling survivors willing to kill us for a can of soup.”

A half hour later, after countless blocks and a handful of aimless turns, Danny stopped. He hadn’t thought about where he might be headed. He’d just left. Spinning around in the street, scanning the houses and buildings around him, he had virtually no idea where he was. None of it was familiar. Not with the ash. Not in the dark. Not with the pain that threatened to overpower his senses.

He cursed loudly. His words hung in the air, dulled by the ash. Everything was dulled by the ash.

He covered his nose and mouth with his shirt collar and sucked in a deep breath of frustration. It was like a sigh, but deeper. He pushed the air from his lungs forcefully, hoping to refocus his mind and gain a sense of his surroundings.

The ocean wasn’t too far away; he could hear it washing against the shore. At least he thought it was the ocean. It could be the wind, which was constant. It ebbed and flowed like a tide, but it was always there.

If it was the ocean, he could orient himself. Walk straight for it, move along the coast until he recognized a landmark, and he’d be good.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rhythm of the distant wash of water through the whoosh of air. It was there. It was the ocean.

Danny opened his eyes and lowered his shirt from his face. He motioned to Maggie, and the two of them headed toward the coastline. Aside from the wind and breaking waves, the only sounds were the slosh of water in the jug he carried, the shuffle of ash around his feet, and Maggie’s panting.

It was strangely quiet. Danny hadn’t spent much time outside at night since the attacks. Other than waiting impatiently at the back door for Maggie, he’d spent all his time in Ken and Barbie’s house.

The virtual silence reminded him of Christmas Eve in the Rockies. Snow crunching under his boots as he walked hand in hand with his ex along empty streets, people in their homes prepping for Christmas morning or had turned in early for a good night’s sleep.

Danny caught himself smiling, thinking about it. He quickly frowned, pursing his lips. This wasn’t Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve was full of hope and wonder and the promise of a wonderful day when the sun rose. It was about family and love and peace and joy. It was magical.

This wasn’t any of those things. This was despair and loss of hope. He had no family other than Maggie, and his was a life devoid of peace or joy. If there was any magic involved, it was black and sinister.

He’d walked a couple of blocks closer to the beach when he found a service station with a partially open garage bay door. It had a roof and three walls. Danny stood at the curb staring at the opening to the bay. He pivoted toward the sounds of the beach. They were louder now.

His mind told him he could make it to the sand and find a place to sleep. His body told him otherwise. He walked toward the service station and cautiously approached the open bay. Maggie was beside him as he inched to the edge of the garage.

He got down onto his knees, dipping his fingers into the ash, and called through the opening with a voice above a whisper, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

His voice echoed against the metal walls of the building. Silence followed it.

“All right,” he said to Maggie, “let’s give it a shot.”

He pulled up on the door, working hard to heave it upward. It rolled upward with some resistance until it caught a spring and finished the job itself.

Danny got to his feet. He tried peering into the space, but only darkness stared back.

He stepped into the garage and was immediately met with the steel bumper of an old sedan. A budding bruise throbbed in his thigh. He dropped the water jug and pressed his hands flat against the smooth body of the car.

Once he’d regained his breath, he found the jug, picked it up, and ran his free hand along the side of the car until he found the driver’s side door. Danny slid his fingers into the recess under the handle and yanked open the heavy door. A dim dome light illuminated the interior of a 1974 Chevy Impala.

Surprised by the light, Danny at once shut the door, bathing the garage in darkness again. He groped his way back to the garage bay door and found a looped chain to pull it shut.

He quickly felt his way back to the car and opened the door again. Danny patted the driver’s seat for Maggie. She jumped into the car and then hopped into the back. She circled around twice before curling into a ball on the wide bench seat.

The light, while dim, provided more than enough for Danny to see inside his backpack to remove the lockbox. He adjusted the rearview mirror toward Maggie’s reflection. She licked her bloodstained chops and nuzzled her head into her paws.

The box was lock and key. Thankfully it wasn’t biometric like most safes. It was old school. He turned the box over in his hands, testing the hinges and the locking mechanism. It wiggled but didn’t give way. For thirty minutes he fiddled with the box while Maggie snored. Finally, about to give up, he set it on his lap and rested his head on the back of the seat. Clipped to the sun visor was a faded photograph of a man and woman on the beach. Danny pulled it from the visor along with the clip.

He eyed the picture, running his thumb across the glossy paper. The sun was behind the couple, so the picture itself was dark, their faces obscured by shadow. But Danny wasn’t interested in the photograph. He was interested in the clip.

He tossed the picture onto the seat beside him and unfolded the steel wire clip, bending it until it snapped in half. He took one piece and bent its tip downward. Using both parts of the clip, he tried manipulating the simple key lock on the front of the box.

He wasn’t a locksmith, no more than he was Chuck Norris or MacGyver, but he’d seen enough YouTube videos on how to do a variety of seemingly useless things that he thought he could easily pick the lock.

It wasn’t easy, but he was right. He picked it and the box sprang open.

To Danny’s chagrin there wasn’t a weapon. No gun. No knife.

There wasn’t food or gold or anything of value. At least it didn’t appear that way.

Still, piece by piece, he worked his way through the box’s contents. There were birth certificates for Ken and Barbie, really Sean Andrew McNeil and Loretta Underwood King.

There were passports. They’d been to more than a dozen countries, including Russia and Estonia. There were yellow immunization cards neatly stuck inside the passports. They’d both had shots for yellow fever. If they were on vacation on the day of the attack, it appeared they hadn’t been out of the country.

Beneath the passports were sealed letter-sized envelopes, both labeled in neat, precise handwriting with the words LAST WILL & TESTAMENT/LIVING WILL. There was one for Sean and one for Loretta.

Danny ran his fingers across the envelopes, tracing the letters he imagined Sean wrote. The lettering looked masculine.

Danny never took the time to write out a will. He and his ex didn’t have much, other than the house. They’d been young enough they thought themselves invincible. He flipped one of them over and considered tearing it open, then thought better of it. They were likely gone. He’d violated enough of their privacy as it was. He tossed both envelopes aside.

There was a small booklet stapled at the spine. It was an insurance log, a list of valuable belongings. Danny flipped through it, scanning the extensive list of itemized furniture, china, jewelry, and artwork.

He’d seen the heavy acrylic work framed on their walls, abstract canvases by artists whose names Danny either didn’t know or couldn’t decipher. None of them were recognizable pieces, but according to the ledger, they weren’t cheap. They were ash now. Just like everything else in Southern California.

At the bottom of the box was a manila envelope. It was sealed with a brass brad that poked through the hole in the envelope’s flap. Danny squeezed the brad and slipped his fingers inside the envelope. He wiggled them around until he was able to snatch the contents and slide them out.

A rectangular piece of metal slid into his hand. It was gold plated and shaped like a hotel keycard. On one side it read, in engraved calligraphy,

The holder of this key is granted unlimited access.

Danny turned over the key in his hand. The other side was engraved with the same calligraphic font.

The Oasis

17985 PCH

Intrigued, Danny set the card on the dash and reached back into the envelope. He pulled out a thick piece of card stock. On the white stock, the size of a large smartphone, was stenciled what appeared to be an invitation.

The Oasis

Mr. & Mrs. Sean McNeil

Welcome To A Most Exclusive Retreat.

For entrance, please present the enclosed access key at the main entrance.

Our concierge will escort the bearer of this card to the Oasis.

We are available twenty-four hours a day.

No reservation required.

He laughed as he ran his thumb across the name at the top of the invitation. Ever since reading Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel Ready Player One years earlier, he’d come to think of the Oasis as a virtual reality simulation, an immersive video game in which players were identified by their digital avatars. It had long since lost its original meaning as either a mid-1990s English rock band or fertile spot within a desert where one could find water.

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 together 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.

He buttoned the coat, which he’d stolen from the same man who’d previously owned his tent, laced up his boots, and grabbed a forty-caliber HK pistol he’d looted from a pawnshop two days after the attack. While others were taking televisions they couldn’t use, jewelry that had virtually no value, and rifles they couldn’t easily conceal, he’d gone straight for the small weapons. He’d taken the HK, a couple of boxes of ammunition for its ten-round magazine, and a couple of folding knives that might come in handy. He’d tried to snag another handgun, but a much larger man had beaten him to it. Still, he was happy with his haul, and he’d left the pawnshop through the shattered plate-glass picture window unafraid of being stopped by police.

Law enforcement of any kind was essentially nonexistent. They probably knew better than to try to demand order in the chaos and anarchy of a post-nuclear Los Angeles.

Clint unzipped the tent again and climbed through the opening. He set his boots into the shifting, ashy sand that surrounded his homestead and closed the tent behind him. He blew ash from his nose and pulled the coat’s hood over his head.

He stuffed his hands into the coat pockets, keeping one hand on the HK’s molded grip and the other around a small brown bag he’d secured the day before, and trudged toward the boardwalk and its row of end-to-end businesses. When his boots hit the cement boardwalk, he pivoted his body back toward his tent. It was among a sea of them that stretched for what looked to Clint like a quarter mile. Some of the tents, like his, were enclosed nylon structures. Others were blue tarps pitched on scraps of wood or metal. Still, many were little more than duct-taped cardboard boxes fashioned into structures large enough to accommodate however many people called them home.

Clint didn’t worry about someone breaking into his tent or stealing it. It would be within sight the length of his short trip. He spun on his heel, twisting a pattern in the flaky accumulation on the cement, and ambled to the shop he’d visited every day since arriving at the beach.

None of the shops, such as they were, sold anything anymore. Money was useless. And most of the T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other touristy swag had been stolen within the first week. The pharmacies still operated, though their supplies of medicinal herb were dwindling.

Only the fortune-teller was still at work. She had hours-long lines of people who wanted her insight into what their lives held in the near and distant future. They paid her with whatever they could. The fortune-teller was well-fed and high most of the time. Clint walked right past her as he wove his way into an electronics stall absent electronics. In the back of the shop, which the owner now used as a one-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot home, was a man named Filter.

That wasn’t his real name. It was a prison moniker that stuck because he was one who always had the latest information from the outside world. Everything, from sports to news to whose appeals were getting denied, was filtered through him.

Clint liked Filter. The two of them became friends and had stayed in touch after getting out. When the attacks happened, the only place Clint thought to go was Filter’s shop in Venice.

He knocked on the thin door that separated the front of the shop from the back. From behind it he heard a grumble, a couple of deadbolts click and slide, and then Filter’s scraggly, ghostlike face appeared in the thin opening between the door and its frame. His voice sounded like he’d been gargling with fallout.

“What?” he asked. He was wearing a faded T-shirt that bore the words, “Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come”.

“You got it?” asked Clint. “It’s been three days.”

Filter cracked the door wide enough for Clint and his oversized coat to squeeze through. “What’s your hurry?” he asked and closed the door.

Clint stood inside the space, which was illuminated with organic beeswax candles that smelled like eucalyptus. He pulled one hand from his coat pocket and held out the small brown package.

Filter tugged on the bottom of the T-shirt, which covered the frayed waistband of drawstring sweatpants. He didn’t see the offering until he’d plopped back down into a weathered leather easy chair. He hung one of his legs over the side of it and crossed his hands at his chest. His eyes were cracked open only slightly more than the door had been when he’d first opened it.

“What’s that?” Filter asked.

“It’s what the doctor ordered,” said Clint, shoving the package toward his friend. “I managed to secure a little bit of it at a very reasonable price.”

Filter chuckled. “I bet you did.”

Clint held out the package, and Filter made a halfhearted effort to lean forward and take it from him. Clint cursed at him for his lack of effort and tossed the package onto his lap.

Filter caught the bag and held it at his chest. “I’m exhausted, man. I can’t get any sleep. People croaking and hollering all night. It’s worse than doing time at the Q.”

Clint leaned on the rickety card table across from the easy chair. “You think so? I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“That’s because you live in a tent on the beach,” said Filter. “I have an actual roof and walls. People are banging on my door all night looking for a place to crash. All night.”

“I’ll trade you,” said Clint. “You can have my tent. I’ll take this place.”

“I’m good, thanks. I can sleep during the day when people are out scavenging for food.”

He unwrapped the package, revealing a trio of neatly rolled joints. He pinched one of them between his fingers and drew it to his nose, running it along his upper lip like a fine Cohiba. “Nice,” he said through his raspy voice. “Thanks.”

“So?”

“Oh,” said Filter. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s over there on the counter next to the sink.”

Clint quickly crossed the room to the wall opposite the easy chair. There was a cabinet sink with a mirrored medicine cabinet above it. A long crack ran diagonally across the mirror’s face, and the magnet on the door was missing, so it hung open permanently.

Next to the sink was a rough-hewn cedar plank potting bench that Filter called the counter. Clint bellied up to it and picked up what he’d come for. He held it in his hand and turned it on. A faint hiss crackled through the speaker, and he held it up to his ear. He looked over at Filter, who had one of the blunts dangling from his lips.

“Does it work?” asked Clint with a suspicious tone. “You told me you could get it to work.”

Filter lit a match he’d seemingly produced from thin air and held it to the end of the joint. The paper glowed orange, and Filter sucked in a healthy toke, holding it in his lungs for a few seconds before exhaling. He sank more comfortably, if that was possible, into the chair.

Clint took a couple of steps toward Filter and the dissipating sweet smoke of the marijuana cigarette. He shook the blue handheld radio in his hand, repeating his question about its functionality. Filter held out the blunt, offering it to him.

“No, thanks,” said Clint. “The radio, though. It’s static.”

“You’ve got to tune it,” said Filter. “I fixed the antenna. That was the problem. There was a loose wire. It works.”

Clint turned the radio over, looking at the quartet of buttons on its face. Above the buttons was an LCD screen. On its right side were a couple of dials. Stretching from its top was a telescoping antenna.

Filter pointed the blunt at the radio. “It’s got FM, AM, and world band. You can listen to some cool dudes from all over the place. I heard some radio geeks talking about New York City. It’s toast. Brooklyn Bridge is gone. Statue of Liberty is gone.”

Clint changed the frequency to FM and scanned the dial. He got nothing but static.

Filter drew in another drag, holding it in his cheeks while Clint fumbled with the AM frequencies. He blew it out and coughed. “Whew,” he said. “That’s stronger than usual.”

Clint narrowed his eyes, frustrated with the lack of reception and his friend’s inability to postpone getting high until he’d left. He took another step closer and snatched the blunt from Filter’s hand and tossed the radio in his lap.

“It’s still not working.”

A Cheshire cat smile filled Filter’s otherwise revenant face, and he plucked the radio from his lap. He fiddled with it for a minute and then tossed it back to Clint, who caught it against his chest.

“AM and FM don’t work,” he said. “The frequencies work, but nobody’s broadcasting. All the stations are gone, man. You gotta use the world band. Shortwave. That’s the only way you’re going to hear something. And it’s only going to be if someone is on the air when you happen to be listening.”

Clint felt heat in his cheeks. “Oh,” he said. “Got it.”

“Now give me back my weed,” said Filter. “Gotta get the buzz going.”

Clint handed back the joint, thanked Filter, arranged to see him later, and showed himself out of the room. The cool air hit him again as he exited the shop and stepped onto the boardwalk. He looked in both directions, noting the crowds were building as the encampment came to life. People were getting up and moving about. He imagined most of them were on their daily hunting and gathering expeditions. Clint turned off the radio and slipped it into his pocket. He put the hood over his head and weaved his way back toward his tent. As he approached, he checked to make sure it was still zipped shut, which it was, and he kept walking.

He swallowed hard against the bitter, acidic taste of bile on his tongue. He’d found it harder to keep down what little food he’d had over the past few days. He shrugged it off as a bug, even though his intuitive gut told him it was something more.

He moved beyond the dozen rows of tents and their close facsimiles and stood at the edge of the tide. A line of ash, thicker than the rest of the accumulation covering the beach, looked like a wiggly line of wet lint that stretched endlessly up and down the beach. He turned to the right, toward Santa Monica, and beyond the gauzy haze of the ash stood the iconic Ferris wheel. It wasn’t moving, aside from its carriages swaying in the breeze. He couldn’t see the rising peaks of Topanga State Park or even the coast at Malibu. The gray that limited his sight was almost overwhelming. He looked left toward the long fishing pier that jutted out into the colorless Pacific. While there were a few people who’d cast their lines into the surf, there wasn’t much to catch, unless one wanted to pick up the dead ocean life that washed ashore with each high tide.

Clint wiped his eyelids clean of fresh ash and thought about the radio in his pocket. He’d traded valuable Kush, the stuff that came from overseas and wasn’t easy to procure, for a radio that had somehow survived the attack but might not be of any use. He let a wave of self-pity wash over him as the crash of the ocean lulled him into a self-reflective trance.

It had been more than a month since the attacks, since he’d barely escaped ground zero downtown, and none of his plans had materialized. He’d thought in those early hours, once he knew he wasn’t going to die immediately from radiation poisoning, that with his skill set and absent moral compass he’d be ruling the world by now.

He’d seen himself with ample food and water, squatting in some Hollywood hotshot’s Bel Air mansion, surrounded by men and women ready to do his bidding. Instead he was camping on a beach with countless other homeless transients, scrounging for morsels and droplets, lamenting his inability to conquer.

Clint was a natural leader. Despite a few disciplinary issues here and there, he’d been a good kid to a single mother, captain of his high school football team, senior class president, and had graduated with honors from Sacramento State with a degree in business administration.

There’d been a few run-ins with Sac State Police for minor altercations and drug possession, but with the help of a decent lawyer, they hadn’t derailed what was an otherwise successful college career. He’d focused on general management, and despite a tight job market, had been hired straight out of school by a large international energy management company in Fresno.

Shortly after he’d begun work, his mother died from a stroke and his girlfriend dumped him. Clint had taken it hard and began self-medicating to cope with the loss. Predisposed to addiction, as his absent father had died young from a heroin overdose, he quickly spiraled downward.

Within two years he was out of a job, living on the streets, and doing whatever he needed to do to score the next hit. Crime became a natural result of that need. He started by stealing from friends and pawning their belongings for what little cash they would provide. When he was out of friends, he turned to burglary.

He fell deeper into an inescapable hole. His addictions needed more and more to satisfy them. The way he chose to feed them became correspondingly violent.

He hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d come close. That had sent him to prison, where he spent the better part of a decade learning a new way of life. Adjusting to the outside, to the real world, had been close to impossible. Clint was lost.

He bounced from job to job, boardinghouse to boardinghouse, and never found his footing. His various business ventures never found footing. Now, close to forty years old, he was a cautionary tale of addiction and poor self-control.

There were plenty of addicts he’d known who had never intentionally harmed anyone or used their illness as an excuse for bad behavior. He’d met them. He’d stood before them, told them his name, and worked some of the twelve steps with them. Now he stood at the edge of the rolling gray tide awash with ash and barely resembling the Pacific he remembered as a child. He wondered what had become of those people; the ones who’d fought their battles and won, the ones who treasured their anniversary coins and their “One Day At A Time” medallions.

How were they coping with the apocalypse? Were they still clean? He ran his fingers along the molded pistol grip in his pocket and tried to remember names and faces. They didn’t come easily. Nothing did for Clint.

He turned his back on the ocean and surveilled the teeming masses. If he was going to fulfill his promise to himself and find that castle on a hill, he needed help. He needed others who would be willing to take advantage of the power vacuum that now existed.

Somewhere among the thousands of people who camped along the beach, he could find them. From his time in prison, he knew there was only one thing that could keep a man going when the future looked bleak. From behind those black bars and yellow-painted concrete walls of his cell, he’d learned a lot about the human condition.

A man didn’t need oxygen, food, or water to survive. He didn’t need a functioning brain or even a pulse. Sure, they all kept him living, but they didn’t help him survive. Surviving required an existential, elusive gift called hope. Hope was what sustained him during the dark nights and even darker days in that dank cell. Hope was what he clung to now, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of a stolen coat. If he could offer hope to some of the forgotten on the beach, he would earn their loyalty, and their muscle, and their faith.

***

Clint rubbed the space between his nose and his upper lip, trying to lessen the foul chicken-soup-like odor hanging in the air around the large man sitting in front of him. He tried not to be obvious about the nauseating smell, but it was getting more difficult the longer he sat with him in the collection of connected cardboard boxes the man had been using for shelter.

“What do I get out of it?” the man asked for the third time. He was sitting cross-legged in the largest of the boxes.

Clint sighed. He’d explained it already. If the man joined his new venture, he would get housing, food, women, and most importantly, hope. He wanted to tell the man to forget it. But he needed him.

The guy was huge, and he had a tattoo on his neck that told Clint he’d done time. It was an amateurish-looking “13” that was obviously done with a combination of black pen ink and shampoo or melted plastic. The number meant he was the member of a biker gang or one with roots in El Salvador. Clint couldn’t tell which from the man’s skin color. It didn’t matter to him. He repeated his pitch.

“You go with me,” he said, “and we do what needs to be done. There are plenty of big houses on the west side. There are people who have more than they need. We relieve them of it. We live like kings.”

The man tilted his bald head back and scratched his neck. Clint noticed the scabs dotting his scalp. They were in various states of healing, and some looked infected.

The man nodded. “I gotta do what you say? Are you my boss?”

Clint blinked his attention away from one festering scab and shook his head. “I’m not your boss, I’m your leader. I make decisions so you don’t have to do it. I pick the places, the people, the jobs. You help me out. Together we live better than we would on this beach.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Leader sounds like boss to me.”

“A boss can fire you,” said Clint. “I can’t fire you. I lead you as long as you want to be led. You decide you don’t like what I have to say? Leave. Go do your own thing. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The man scratched his neck again. “What did you say your name was?”

“Clint. What’s yours?”

“Jesse.”

“Where’d you do time?”

Jesse flinched at the question. He shifted his body away from Clint, which let loose a burst of body odor that made Clint want to retch.

“Why you ask that?” Jesse said in a suspicious tone. “You a cop?”

Clint laughed. “Do I look like a cop?” he asked rhetorically. “No. I asked because I did time at the Q. A good stretch.”

“For what?”

“Armed robbery. Aggravated assault. Attempted murder.”

Jesse’s eyes widened with surprise. “You?”

Clint nodded. “Got a monkey,” he said, referring to his addiction. “Had to feed it.”

A thin smile of recognition spread from one corner of Jesse’s mouth. “Lancaster.”

Lancaster was a state prison in Los Angeles County. It housed more than thirty-five hundred inmates, all men.

“You in?” Clint asked.

“I’m in,” said Jesse. “So long as you’re not my boss.”

Clint offered him a fist bump. Jesse reciprocated.

“Give me a few days,” said Clint. “I need to procure some more people like you. Then we gather up and head out.”

“I know some people,” said Jesse. “You want me to ask around?”

“Definitely,” said Clint. “You know the electronics shop over by the fortune-teller?”

“Yeah.”

“Meet me there at sundown. Bring your people. We’ll talk it out.”

Jesse nodded, picking at a scab behind his ear, above the top edge of a tattoo. Clint maneuvered his way out of the boxes and into the relatively more breathable ashy air of the outside.

He cupped one hand over his head like a visor and looked up, searching for the sun. He found the faintly bright smudge high above him. It was midday. There was still a lot of work to do. He made his way back to Filter, hoping his friend was lucid enough to communicate.

***

Clint waited for a wave of nausea to pass. Then he knocked on the door, assuming it was locked. He knocked again. When Filter didn’t answer, Clint tried the knob. It turned, and he gently pushed open the door. Its sand-ravaged hinges creaked and revealed Filter asleep, mouth agape, in the same position where Clint had left him a couple of hours earlier.

He shut the door behind him and scanned the room. The warm glow of candlelight still cast a luminous glow off the walls, giving the dank space a surprisingly cozy aura.

Clint chuckled to himself. All Filter needed was a cat and a cup of hot cocoa and Norman freaking Rockwell could have a field day in the place. He could call it Stoner in Closet. Or The Real American Dream.

He quietly stepped to Filter and peeled away the bag of joints. He fished around inside and found a fat one, pulled it out with one hand, and tossed the bag back onto Filter’s chest with the other. Then he crossed the space, grains of sand crunching under his boots, and he held the blunt to a candle. It sparked orange and he pulled it to his lips. He hesitated.

He hadn’t gotten high since the attack. And he’d managed, somehow, to stay clean for twenty-three days before that. He considered doing the math and totaling up his sobriety but thought better of it. The sweet smell of the rare Kush was intoxicating in both the figurative and literal sense. He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, as he’d done countless times in his life before heavier substances had consumed him, and sucked in a deep pull of the weed. He held it in his lungs, feeling the tingle in his extremities. A familiar rush of calm washed through his body, as if he could feel the sensation of the THC-laced smoke traveling through his blood vessels. He closed his eyes and slowly, reluctantly exhaled.

He stood there for several minutes, enjoying the treat and relishing the first anxiety-free moments he’d felt since running from the outer edges of ground zero.

That moment, the instant the first bomb exploded, was tattooed into his memory. It was vivid and disturbing. And as he replayed it in his mind, as he’d done a thousand times or more in the weeks since it had happened, it was as if he were there again—the bright, distant flash.

It was bright, like a bang of magnesium, and then he felt the heat as an invisible punch that knocked him onto the ground. When he awoke seconds or minutes later, the color of things was what struck him first. Everything around him was either red, black, or brown. There were bodies not far from him whose fingertips were on fire. Like wicks, the fingers helped feed the flames to the rest of their bodies and they burned whole. Gray liquid dripped from the hands, instantly deformed, and morphed into something grotesquely inhuman.

He didn’t know at the time that he too was burned. The skin on his palms was raw from having pressed them onto the searing asphalt when he pushed himself to his feet, but he didn’t know a whirlpool of fire from which he ran had roasted the back of his neck and arms. The backs of his ears were still tender now, more than a month later.

He remembered the woman on the cell phone and how he’d thought about robbing her, about taking whatever it was she had to help him survive. He’d since regretted moving past her without action, thinking wrongly he’d quickly rise to the top of the ashen heap.

Among all the horrific mind-staining images, and the piercing wails for help that still awoke him on nights when he could sleep, more than anything the smell of death was what stuck to him. Burning flesh and whatever else burned after the skin was gone was worse than the common death odor to which he’d long ago become accustomed. It was something altogether sinister, an odor not meant for Earth. It was a lingering scent that occasionally drifted past him with the ash fall and only reinforced his core belief that he, and everyone else, was living in Hell.

Even before the attacks, he’d convinced himself that he deserved torment after he met his maker. He was a vague believer in a higher power, something slightly more faithful than agnostic, and understood he’d have to pay for what he’d done. As such, he believed the toll paid and any further transgressions wouldn’t make his damnation any worse than it was already. That was why there were repeated moments when he thought maybe he’d died in the attack and that this was his eternity. He’d read Dante at Sac State. He recognized the seven levels when he smelled them, tasted them, felt their heat against his broiling skin.

This was a mental rabbit hole he kept traveling, and the pot only made the fall more acute. He’d have stayed there for hours if not for the irritated, raspy voice yanking him back to the surface.

He opened his eyes and saw Filter leaning on the edge of his easy chair, his bony elbows on his knobby knees. He was staring at the half-burned joint in Clint’s hand. He pointed at him with his finger.

“Dude,” he said, “you could have asked. That right there is uncool.”

“You offered,” said Clint.

Filter rolled his eyes and blinked in slow motion. He sat back in the chair and ran his palms along the wide chair arms. The bag of weed slid from his lap and into the crack between the cushion and side of the chair. He ignored it.

“You declined,” said Filter.

Clint held up the joint, toasting Filter mockingly, and took a long pull. He held it in his lungs for a long moment, then blew out the smoke in Filter’s general direction.

“I changed my mind,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Filter glanced at the door. “And you broke in too, eh?”

“You left it unlocked.”

“It’s still B and E,” said Filter. “You know that.”

“You pressing charges?”

Filter scratched his chin and then ran his fingernails along the uneven stubble that peppered his angular jaw. He raised his eyebrows, feigning consideration of Clint’s question, then yawned. Filter’s movements, or lack of them, and the lazy extension of his extremities reminded Clint of a cat. A hookah-smoking Cheshire cat.

“I’ve got a proposition,” said Clint.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an offer that—”

Filter waved his hands in front of his face. “Dude, I know what proposition means. I’m not a moron. I’m asking you what the proposition is. What is your offer?”

“I’ve invited some people over. They’ll be here in an hour. We’re getting out of here. We’re making a better life than what exists out on that beach. I want you to come with us, be part of the group.”

Filter’s nostrils flared, and he inhaled a deep breath. He sat there for what felt like a long time to Clint, clicking the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Finally, he narrowed his eyes and spoke. “Why would I leave here? I’m not out on the beach. I’ve got four walls and a roof.”

Clint stepped forward. His face lit up like a salesman on a home-shopping television channel. Even his voice affected a different, silkier tone. He gesticulated with big sweeping motions as he made his pitch. “Wouldn’t you like more than four walls and a roof? Wouldn’t you like to have a real bedroom? Maybe a kitchen with a gas burner that works? Women?”

Filter chuckled. “You know I got no use for women. And you really think anybody’s got a gas burner that still works? No chance.”

Clint ignored his negativity. “Huge pantries full of food,” he said, subtly licking his lips. “Clean sheets. Blankets. Swimming pools full of water.”

“Radioactive water full of ash,” countered Filter.

“It’s water we can use to flush toilets,” said Clint. “Real toilets. With real toilet paper. The soft quilted kind.”

“You are high,” said Filter. “The only place you’re going to find that stuff, if you find it at all, is the west side. Brentwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills. Those places are gated. They have security.”

Clint furrowed his brow. “You’re thinking like someone who isn’t living in the apocalypse. We are in some next-level shit here.”

Filter shook his head in disagreement. It was a derisive shake, scolding Clint for naiveté. “Beverly Hills is Beverly Hills. I’m not buying it. You’d need a small army. And those people have money to keep security, Clint. You know this.”

Clint pulled back his shoulders, bristling at Filter’s surprisingly condescending tone. He flicked the blunt at him. “Money doesn’t mean anything anymore. That’s why I paid you with this. And that’s why I paid the hookup with double A batteries, and the dude who gave me the batteries got a bag of dried milk.”

Filter, unfazed by the blunt hitting him in the cheek, picked it up from his lap, dusted away the ash, and held it between his fingers. The tension on his face relaxed, and the deep furrows in his forehead gave way, symmetrically disappearing as if someone had taken a rubber eraser to them.

“We’re in a barter economy now,” Clint pressed, “and the only thing separating the rich from the poor is a safe space and access to food, water, and toilets. If we have ten guys, we can flip the script. We can be living in one of those big houses with however much food they’ve got left.”

Filter pulled one leg up over the chair’s arm and draped it across, letting his heel tap against the fabric stretched across its side. He pinched out the joint and dropped it into the bag next to his lap. “All right. You get an army. I’m in.”

CHAPTER 9

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

DAY FORTY-FIVE

Westwood, California

Dub had his trembling hands raised above his head in surrender. His goggles were fogged, but his eyes were on the barrel of the gun pointed at his face. Despite the icy wind that somehow cut through the burlap on his face, sweat bloomed on his forehead and at his neck. His breath was suddenly hard to find. He was screwed.

“I don’t have anything,” he said from beneath the burlap. “I can’t give you anything.”

It was the fourth time, they were aware of, in the last week a gang of desperate people had used violence, or the threat of it, to rob somebody on campus. There were rumors that a couple of missing students from Oregon, presumed to have left on their own, might have been mugged, killed, and their bodies dragged away.

Dub was alone at the base of the hill, returning from a trash run. It was his turn to remove the waste his group had accumulated over the past three days. It was in a pair of trash bags he’d already deposited in a large dumpster near an abandoned construction site near Ackerman. UCLA, as the students had long joked, was an acronym for Under Construction Like Always. What had been a constant source of irritation and detours before the attacks had been a boon of both construction supplies and places to dump waste.

He’d gone alone, against Keri’s wishes and his own common sense, because it was a particularly cold day. The ash fall was heavier than it had been in more than a week. He didn’t want her exposed. He’d promised to be right back and joked that if he wasn’t, to send the cavalry.

He didn’t hear any bugles or see any horses. He was alone. He cursed himself for having disobeyed one of his own basic rules, which was to always travel in groups. The six people stopping him near Pauley Pavilion had apparently employed that strategy.

The person holding the weapon, who looked like a man but could have been a large woman, rattled the weapon at Dub. When the thug spoke, Dub concluded he was a man.

His voice, muffled by the heavy scarf that covered his mouth and most of his face, was a baritone but scratchy. Most people who’d spent any length of time outdoors exposed to the fallout had developed a painful-sounding rasp to their voice. It was as if they both needed water and to clear their throats from excess phlegm. A thin wisp of breath puffed from beneath his scarf and disappeared.

“We know you got food,” he said. “Take us to the food.”

The other five people closed around the armed thug, ready to advance or pounce on Dub. Even though their faces were mostly covered, their eyes were wild. Feral. They were more than desperate. They were dying. They knew it. Their basest instincts had overridden whatever decency they might have held days or weeks earlier. Now they were standing between Dub and the stairs that would lead him back to relative safety.

Dub’s arms already felt heavy. He shook his head. “I don’t have any food.”

“We know there’s food,” said a woman standing to the gunman’s left. “We’ve seen it.”

Dub studied the body language between the gunman and the woman who spoke. She hung off his shoulder. Then he noticed that, of the other four people, only one of them was as tall as the gunman or the woman. The other three were much shorter.

“Are you a family?” asked Dub without thinking about it.

The gunman took a step forward, kicking up a cloud of gray ash. He spread his stance, protecting his brood, and jabbed the gun in Dub’s direction. “Tell me where the food is,” he said again, “or I pull the trigger.”

“You’re not going to shoot me in front of your children,” said Dub. “You don’t want them seeing—”

The shot cracked, echoing through the air until the wind squelched it. Dub instinctively ducked and turned his body away from the gun. He waited an instant, thinking he was shot. Then he wondered if the man had missed. He peeked back over his shoulder to see the gun raised into the air, the last tendrils of smoke drifting with the wind.

“That was a warning,” said the man. “I won’t give you another one.”

Dub’s pulse thumped in his temples and against his chest. His mouth was dry, his palms sweaty. He stood up straight, a little wobbly, and nodded. “Okay,” he said reluctantly through short gasps for air. “I’ll show you where we keep some of the food. Follow me.”

Dub started toward the stairs, but the man again aimed the gun at him, so he stopped. He pointed beyond the man and his family. “I need to go that way.”

The man and the woman ushered the others to one side, keeping enough distance, Dub assumed, so that he couldn’t try to wrestle the gun away or use a child as a bargaining chip. He moved past them and trailed a gloved hand along the metal railing that ran up the length of the steep concrete steps.

His legs tingled as he drew himself up one step at a time. Behind him, he sensed the huddle of followers sticking closely to him. He half expected the man to put the barrel into the small of his back and whisper something trite about making a funny move.

They moved in relative silence. The collective shuffle of their feet up the steps was the only sound other than the gusts of wind that whistled through the empty, dead branches of the once-flourishing trees that decorated the walk up to the hill.

One of the desperates sneezed. It sounded like a bird chirping, and Dub assumed, without turning back to confirm it, it had been the smallest of the group. It was followed by another two identical, muted chirps.

“Bless you,” said Dub. It was more out of habit than consideration or an attempt to curry favor with those who sought to steal from him, or hurt him, or worse. Dub didn’t even realize he’d said it until the soft, raspy voice of a little girl said, “Thank you.”

Dub’s hand dragged along the elevating railing, displacing a new healthy layer of ash. The color was a different shade of gray. It wasn’t as dark as the earlier layers of ash had been. He wondered absently what that meant as he climbed higher, taking the steps deliberately.

Not only was he concerned about slipping on the ash, as he’d seen several others do on their treks up and down the hill, but he was struggling to catch his breath. He couldn’t get his heart rate under control, and the thick burlap that covered his nose and mouth didn’t help. He pulled himself upward, halfway to the top of the first flight of steps.

“When is the last time you ate?” he asked. “And what did you eat?”

One of the children started to answer, but the father interrupted. His voice sounded like a seal barking. “Don’t talk,” he snapped. “Walk. Take us to the food.”

“You’re not going to kill him,” the woman whispered through the rasp. “What are we going to do if he refuses to take us? What if he stops?”

“Shhh,” the man responded brusquely. “If he stops, I will kill him.”

“I don’t want the kids seeing that,” she said loudly enough that Dub could hear her. “That would be traumatizing.”

“As would watching all of us starve to death,” the man said through his teeth. “You want that? I’m going to do what I have to do.”

Dub wondered if the couple was speaking for his benefit. They had to know he could hear them. They were only a few feet behind him. Maybe they were trying to scare him. It had worked. He was frightened. Desperation and fear, hunger and exhaustion made people do things they otherwise might not have been capable of. Mix them together and reason evaporated. He wondered if once he showed them where the food was, they might kill him anyway. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Nothing was. He tried clearing his mind of it but couldn’t. He thought of ways to escape, none of which ended without a bullet in the back.

He tried sucking in a deep breath through the burlap, which was beginning to scratch against his nose and upper lip, irritating them. He exhaled loudly and reached the top step. He glanced ahead. Up the hill and to the right, he caught a flash of movement.

He wasn’t sure he’d actually seen anything, but he held his gaze there while trying not to give anything away. There it was again. Somebody was there. Two people. Three. All of them crossing a walkway that led past the second set of narrow steps to a sidewalk that ran along the edge of the hill. There was a road there that led around the hill to the back side of Rieber Plaza, where ride-sharing companies would park and wait for their fares. In the same instant his hopes for help were buoyed, they were dashed. Whoever it was wasn’t heading toward him. They were moving away.

“What are you waiting for?” harped the gunman. “We’re hungry.”

Dub faced the man then scanned the rest of his dinner party. They still wore pained expressions, their eyes wide with something worse than desperation. He ignored the question and moved forward, toward the second set of steps.

By the time he’d reached the third step and the family was behind him on the wide walkway separating the two long stairways, he heard a muffled cry and the sickening thud of something hard hitting the ground. He spun around to the sound of an unintelligible scream to see Barker and Michael on top of the gunman. The gun had skittered away from him.

The woman was screaming, beating on Barker’s back to free her husband. The children, even the tallest among them, were frozen in place. Fear had replaced the desperation.

Dub let go of the handrail, took a giant step downward, and slipped on the ash, tumbling onto his friends, who now had the man under control. He struggled to push himself free of the pile, and as he did, something hard caught him in the chest, propelling him backward onto the concrete. He caught himself but landed awkwardly on his wrist. A sharp pain exploded outward toward his fingertips and his elbow.

The woman was still screaming when Dub managed, one handed, to get to his feet and corral her away from his friends. She struggled against him, trying to free herself from his grasp. Despite his injured wrist, Dub was able to hold her long enough for Barker to grab the gun and level it at her.

“Stop,” he said.

The woman stopped.

Barker wore an expression devoid of the eyebrow-raised sarcasm that usually traveled with him in every circumstance. He was serious. He was angry. He backed away from the group and stepped up onto the first step. He swept his aim across them, his hands steady.

Michael was still on the ground with the man, who was apparently unconscious. The thud Dub had heard was his head slapping against the concrete when Barker and Michael had bum-rushed him and tackled him before he’d been able to react.

The children were whimpering, their bodies shuddering under their layers of tattered garments. The smallest plopped to the ground in tears and called for her mother.

The woman implored Barker with her eyes. She pulled her scarf down and asked if she could go to her child. Barker nodded and waved the gun in the child’s direction.

Dub let go of her and turned his attention to the man on the ground. He was groaning but wasn’t moving. Michael had removed the heavy scarf and his jacket hood, which revealed the man’s thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and a ruddy complexion.

“Is he okay?” Dub asked.

Michael nodded. “I think so. He’s got a big knot on the back of his head. But he’s breathing and making those noises. Maybe he has a concussion. But the swelling is a good sign.”

The mother was crouched beside the youngest child now. She had her arms around her. The three other children gathered around her. None of them moved toward their father.

The tallest of the children pointed at his dad. His voice was higher pitched than his father’s but carried the same awful, grating rasp. “My dad’s a good guy. He didn’t mean it.”

Barker huffed. “Yeah, he did.”

“C’mon, Barker,” said Dub. “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair,” said Barker, “is pointing a gun at your face and demanding food.”

Dub, for some reason he couldn’t understand, was more upset with Barker and his lack of empathy than he was with the pistol-packing desperates who’d threatened him and held him at gunpoint.

“We should give them some food,” said a familiar voice standing twenty yards above them on the steps.

Everyone but the semiconscious man on the ground turned to see Keri standing with her hands in her coat pockets. Her face and head were covered with protective gear.

“What?” asked Barker. “Why?”

Michael piped up before Keri could answer. “You’re the one who heard the gunshot and sent us to help Dub. Now you want to help them?”

“They’re people, like us,” said Keri. “It’s not their fault they don’t have food. It’s not like they’re a gang of—”

“They held your boyfriend at gunpoint,” said Barker. “If we feed them now, they’ll come back for more. Maybe they’ll bring more people. It’ll get worse. It’s like when they tell you not to feed wild animals at national parks. It makes the problem worse, not better.”

“We’re not wild animals,” growled the mother, a sharpness in her raspy voice.

Barker had the pistol leveled at the woman and he approached her. She stood and backed up a couple of nervous steps, as did her children. The tallest of them moved in front of her, apparently willing to take a bullet for his mother.

“You may not be wild animals,” said Barker, “but you’ll behave like them if we give you food. You’re telling me you won’t come back the next time you’re starving? You won’t go back to the place where the nice college kids helped you out and kept you alive?”

Dub’s flash of discontentment with Barker faded. He understood his friend’s point. As callous as it sounded, he was correct in that basic human conditioning would provoke their return. It was Skinner’s box.

He’d learned about it during his first semester. It was a groundbreaking psychological experiment conducted by behaviorist B. F. Skinner in the 1930s. Skinner’s box, as it became known, was technically called an operant conditioning chamber, and its use ultimately expanded well beyond the science of psychology.

In it, Skinner used positive and negative reinforcements to condition an animal’s response inside an electrified wire cage. In its simplest form, a light or noise would prompt the animal to push response levers. If the animal pushed the correct lever, it got food or water. If it pushed the wrong one, the cage would supply a shock.

Give these people food, and they’ll come back for more. Deny them, and they’ll go away. The psychologist in Dub knew it was as simple as that. But nothing in the real world was ever as clear-cut as a controlled scientific experiment conducted in a lab. What he’d mistaken for something feral and wild in their eyes was maybe hunger and fear after all.

Keri descended the steps until she’d reached everyone else. The wind intensified, and she pulled her scarf up higher on her face, pinching it at her nose under the bridge of her goggles. She stood as tall as the eldest child, her athletic build thinner than before the attack but hardly skinny. The wind blew toward her, pressing her coat against her body. Ash flew directly at her and she wiped her goggles clean with her thumb. She angled herself away from the wind as she approached Barker and shielded one side of her face with a gloved hand. She spoke slowly and in a way that neither suggested she was at odds with him nor that she agreed with his position.

“Look,” she said, “I don’t disagree with you. If we turn them away, they probably won’t come back. Or they might. We don’t know. I bet if you asked them right now, they don’t know.”

Dub moved closer to Keri, quietly siding with her without saying anything. His attention shifted between her and the gunman struggling to regain consciousness. He was moving now, albeit slowly.

“We can’t make our decisions based on what they may or may not do in the future,” Keri said. “We need to make our decisions based on right now. And right now, this family is hungry.”

The man on the ground groaned more loudly. He rolled onto his side and reached for the back of his head. He winced. A thin trail of drool on his chin trapped flakes of ash.

“I say we feed them,” said Keri. “Give them a little extra to take with them and send them on their way. It’s the right thing to do.”

She looked over at Dub through her goggles and held his gaze. She was telling him she remembered the conversation they’d had in Ackerman a month earlier. Regardless of how smart an idea it might be to send the family away hungry, she was holding on to that bit of humanity Dub was afraid they were all losing.

“I’m with Keri,” said Dub. “I say we feed them.”

“Of course you do,” said Barker. “You’d give them the keys to our room if she told you to.”

Dub clenched his jaw. His fingers balled into fists. His body tensed, and his heart rate, which had slowed considerably, accelerated. Keri touched his arm, suggesting he let it go.

“C’mon, Barker,” said Michael. He was still crouched next to the father. “That’s not fair.”

Still holding the weapon at the mother and her children, Barker stole a glance at Michael. His scarf had slipped beneath his chin. “You’re with them too? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not the jerk here. I’m not heartless. But I’m clearly the only one using my head. We’re only inviting more trouble by giving these people what they want. It’s like negotiating with terrorists or paying off a blackmailer. Do it once and more come knocking.”

“So now we’re blackmailers and terrorists?” asked the mother.

Barker held up the gun and waved it at her. “This is your gun, isn’t it?”

“Let’s compromise,” said Dub. “We give them something to take with them but make it clear if we see them again, it doesn’t end well. The well is dry after this. It’s a onetime deal.”

“I’m okay with that,” said Keri.

“That’s a good idea,” said Michael.

“It’s not a good idea,” Barker huffed. “But I’m outvoted here.”

He turned away from the mother, lowered the gun, and handed it to Dub. He pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and marched up the steps back to the hill. Dub watched him until he’d finished his ascent and turned the corner toward their dorm.

“I’ll go and get something for each of them,” said Keri. She turned to the mother. “Then you’re gone. Understood? And there’s no more where it came from.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We are—”

“Save it,” said Keri. “You’ve done and said enough. This is for your kids. Not you.”

Keri spun on her heel and followed the same path Barker had taken. Ten minutes later she was back with a box of crackers and a third of a block of cheddar cheese. She handed them over to the eldest child and produced three bottles of water.

By then, the father was sitting on a step. He was woozy but conscious and could stand without help.

“We’re keeping the gun,” said Keri, shooing the family down the steps. They quietly shuffled away, the wife helping her husband navigate their exit.

Once they were gone, she faced Dub and Michael. She wiped the ash from her goggles. “We need to have a meeting.”

“Agreed,” said Dub. He started following her back up the steps when he stopped her. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said. “But you should thank Michael and Barker. They’re the ones who actually saved you.”

***

Barker sat on his bunk, his back against the wall and a pillow in his lap. He wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a disgusted look on his face. Despite the chill outside, it was warm in their room on the fifth floor. The air was thick and stale. The lack of air-conditioning was noticeable, as was the tension among the four friends.

Michael was next to Barker, sitting on the edge of the bunk with his feet on the floor. Keri was in Dub’s desk chair, rubbing her temples. Dub was above her on his lofted bunk.

They’d been there for half an hour more or less, and nobody had said much of anything. Dub had thanked Barker and Michael for coming to his aid. Barker had begrudgingly accepted it.

Finally, Keri broke the silence. “I want to give away the key to the room,” she announced.

“Too soon,” said Michael, though his smirk told Dub he found the attempt at humor moderately funny.

It didn’t make Barker laugh either, but it did get him talking. He leaned forward, peeking his head out from the shadow of the bunk above him. “Giving those people food was stupid, Keri,” he said. “I know you’re trying to lighten the mood or whatever, but it was stupid. And we’re going to pay for it. I’m telling you. They will be back.”

“Don’t call her stupid,” said Dub. “Not cool.”

“I didn’t call her stupid,” sneered Barker. “I called the decision stupid, which it was. Deep down, Dub, you know it.”

Dub pushed himself from his bunk to the floor and landed on his feet. He took a step toward Barker and pointed at him. He spoke through a clenched jaw, doing everything he could to mitigate the frustration boiling inside him. “No, Barker, I don’t know that. We were in a no-win situation. We send them away with nothing? That doesn’t guarantee they don’t come back. And the next time, when they’re that much closer to death, they don’t hesitate to use violence. So what if they’re a family? Ultimately, they’ll do whatever they have to do to survive.”

Barker stood, his face inches from Dub. His muscles tensed. “Which is why giving them food was bad. Now they’ll bring their friends. Whoever they meet. They’ll tell everyone they got food from us. I already made this point. It’s not worth discussing again. What’s done is done.”

“It is worth discussing,” said Keri, wincing, “because it’s going to happen again. These weren’t the first people to come around looking for help.”

“You okay?” asked Dub, noticing her run her fingers along her forehead.

“I have a migraine,” she said. “It’s not bad yet. I’ll be fine.”

Dub reached over to his desk, picked up a thermos of water, and handed it to her. “You need to drink. You’re probably dehydrated.”

She took the water and opened its nipple with her teeth. She squeezed the sides and sucked down a swig. She waved at the others to keep talking.

“Keri’s right,” said Michael. “You guys heard about that missing couple, the rumors about them getting robbed and killed for their coats and boots, right?”

“Yeah,” said Barker. “And the kids who got the crap beat out of them for their shoes. It’s getting worse. Which is my point.”

“I think you’re also making Keri’s point,” said Dub. “It’s going to get worse regardless. Giving those people food wasn’t going to change that.”

Barker rolled his eyes. “We give up, then? We acquiesce to the pitiful demands of every desperate that shows up?”

“I’m not saying that,” said Dub.

“You’re not?” asked Keri.

“Yeah,” added Michael. “If you’re not saying we help whoever shows up, what are you saying?”

Dub put up his hands defensively and backed away from the group. He shook his head, sucked in a deep breath of the room’s increasingly fetid air, and exhaled loudly. It was stronger than a sigh, more forceful. His eyes danced amongst his friends. All of them glared back with varying degrees of confusion and accusation.

“Okay,” he started, gathering himself. “I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t have hard and fast rules about who we help and who we don’t. But we have to be prepared for those who will come here looking for more than a meal.”

“Elaborate,” said Barker.

“Psychologically,” said Dub, “people are going to start breaking. The human mind can only handle so much pain, so much…”

He was searching for the right word. The more he tried to find it, the more evasive it became. He snapped his fingers.

“Headache,” offered Keri. “I mean, heartache?”

“Death?” Michael suggested.

Barker offered a litany of four-letter words that probably came closest to Dub’s intent. Dub pointed at them one by one. He nodded.

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said. “All of those. As that happens, as they deteriorate, they’ll either dive into some alternate fantasy land of denial, or they’ll get inhumanely violent, or a combination of the two. Their minds will find a way to cope.”

“What do we do?” asked Keri. “How do we prepare?”

“Well, that’s the first thing, right?” Dub said rhetorically. “We need to prepare. We’ve been subsisting and living as though there is some nebulous future in which our lives change, like the semester will end and we’ll go home, get jobs or internships, the whole drill.”

Michael ran his hand through his hair, rubbing it along the thinning crown. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks for attention. “I think we know that’s not happening. We don’t have a future. Not like what we used to think of as a future. This is our future. Here.”

His eyes danced from one person to the next. They settled on Dub. “You’re right. We need a plan. We need to defend ourselves in the short term and figure out an escape in the long term.”

“An escape?” asked Barker. “To where?”

Michael shrugged and plucked at his T-shirt to pull it away from his shrinking gut. He pushed himself from the bed and stood with Barker and Dub. “I don’t know, but we’ll find it. Eventually, we’ll figure out the right place to go. We need to be ready for that too.”

Barker hummed a tune. It was the Clash. “Should we stay, or should we go?” he asked, approximating their lyrics.

“If we stay, there will be trouble,” said Keri. “If we go…”

The tension in the room eased. The three roommates backed away from one another. Michael sat back on his bunk.

“We need a plan for both,” said Michael. “And we need it yesterday.”

“How’s the radio working?” asked Dub. “Any luck?”

“No,” said Michael. “There’s traffic out there, but I haven’t been able to connect cleanly with it. I’m not an expert.”

“Still, I think that’s our escape plan,” said Dub. “You keep trying the radio every chance you get. Search every frequency you’ve tried, then the ones you haven’t. We need to find safe places out there.”

“Safe places?” asked Keri.

“Yes,” said Dub. “There have to be preppers out there who have bunkers or stockpiles or whatever. I’ve read about them. They took the end of the world seriously. They’re bound to be out there.”

“This is Southern California,” said Barker. “Nobody takes anything seriously.”

Keri climbed up onto Dub’s bed and lay down. She stared at the ceiling for a moment and closed her eyes. “Dub’s got a point,” she said. “We might never go home again. But if we work at it, we’re smart enough to make a new home.”

“Why can’t that home be here?” asked Barker. “Why can’t we load up and defend ourselves, likes soldiers holding a line? We’re on a hill. We have a tactical advantage.”

“Not without weapons,” Keri said.

“That’s our other plan,” said Dub. “We need to find weapons. The most obvious place?”

“USC,” said Barker.

Keri groaned. “Be serious.”

Barker smirked. “I was.”

Dub shook his head. “UCLA Police. They’re right here on campus.”

“Don’t you think they’d have taken everything?” asked Michael.

“There’s no way to know unless we look,” said Dub. “Barker, you’re coming with me. We’re going to the police station.”

“And me?” asked Michael.

“Keep working the radio,” said Dub.

Keri opened her eyes and turned toward Dub. “What about me?”

“You’ve got a migraine,” he said. “Keep Michael company.”

She didn’t argue with him, which told Dub how intense her headache must be. Typically, if he tried to sideline her in any way, which was rare, she protested. This time she nodded and looked back to the ceiling.

“Then it’s settled,” said Dub. “By tonight we’ll have a better handle on our future.”

***

The campus police department was a red brick building with long slat windows that jutted out from its main façade. It was on a corner near the school’s main entrance on Westwood Plaza. The building, which neither Dub nor Barker had visited before, looked as abandoned as the rest of the campus below the hill. As he walked by a black and white squad car parallel parked at the curb in front of the building, it struck Dub that so many people, including first responders, had vanished in the hours after the attack. Where had they gone?

He imagined in some cases they’d rushed toward the danger. Others had likely cut and run. They’d left to be with their families or escape Southern California altogether.

They reached the front entrance, both of them checking over their shoulders for onlookers or threats. Both carried empty school backpacks on their shoulders. They’d decided, as a group, to leave them empty to fill them with as much as they could carry from the police station.

“Have you seen any cops since the attacks?” Dub asked. He was checking the front doors, which were bolted shut with chains and a combination lock. He spun the dial and then dropped it. The lock clanged against the aluminum frame.

Barker turned and eyed the squad car. “What do you mean? Like working?”

“Yeah,” said Dub. “I haven’t seen a single one. I guess in those first few minutes, when we were leaving the gym, there were some helping direct people to safety. But other than that, nothing. Nobody’s come by the Hill. Nobody’s checked on us or offered protection of any kind.”

Barker twisted his mouth to one side and squeezed his eyebrows in thought. Then he pivoted and moved past Dub to the intersection with Charles E. Young Drive. “I guess not,” he said. “I remember a few of them helping out that first day, but not since we holed up in Rieber Vista.”

“I can’t blame them,” said Dub. “If I had somewhere to go or someone to go to, I’d have left. Maybe that makes me a coward or something.”

Barker checked a window for access but apparently found none. He chuckled and shook his head at his friend. “You’re a naïve moron,” he said with a broad grin. “And you worry too much about what other people think of you. But you’re not a coward. Far from it.”

Dub smirked. “Is that a compliment?”

“It’s the truth. You’re not a coward. You are a naïve moron.”

They walked along the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder through the drifts of ash that had built up along the spots where the walk met the side of the building. They slalomed around a series of low brick columns that had served as protective barricades to prevent vehicles from ramming the building. When they came to a side entrance, they stopped.

“I’m a naïve moron because I agreed with Keri?” asked Dub. “Because I wanted to give those people food?”

Barker bent at his waist and ran his finger along the edge of the door near the handle. He tried the handle, which didn’t budge. He shook it. It rattled but didn’t open. The door and the windows above it and to both sides were frosted green. There was an electronic card scanner next to the handle. Off to the side was a waist-high red metal placard affixed to the wall.

Building #061

Police Station 601

Westwood Plaza

Automatic Fire Sprinkler Fire Department Connection 1

45 PSI Working Pressure

“You’re a moron because you took out the trash by yourself,” he said. “It was your rule that everybody travels in pairs. You didn’t do that, and it put all of us at risk.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Barker ran his hand across a three-foot-high clump of pipes and valves. Together they looked like the distant cousin of a fire hydrant or a residential outdoor backflow valve. He dusted it off with his glove and then made a halfhearted attempt at turning the valve on the top, then seemingly thought better of it. He looked up at Dub. “I know. I get it. I’m over it.”

“Naïve though?”

“Because you fed those people,” said Barker. “At some point you have to stop thinking the best of people. You’ve got to be more cynical. Being nice all of the time is going to get you killed.”

“So be more of an ass?” asked Dub. “Like you?”

“Exactly,” said Barker without hesitation or the slightest hint of his trademark sarcasm. “Without question.”

The two fist-bumped each other with their gloved hands, offered a mutual one-armed hug, and slapped the ash on each other’s backs. They’d made up. All was good, at least as far as their friendship was concerned. Getting into the police station, however, was another matter.

Beyond the glass door, at the part of the building where it merged into Mattel Children’s Hospital, there was what was best described as a sally port. It was a two-story-high mesh gate that controlled access for emergency vehicles. To one side was a black and white UPD squad car parked flush against the police building. To the other was a row of parking spaces. They were empty except for a salting of ash and a single white and blue ambulance.

To the gate’s right was a mesh metal door made of the same heavy gray material. It was also armed with an electronic lock and a crank handle that turned but didn’t open. Barker stood with his gloved hands on his hips, surveying the gate for any opportunities.

“I bet that ambulance has first aid supplies,” said Dub. “And that cop car might have some usable stuff in the trunk.”

Barker motioned toward the frosted door to the right. “Maybe we should break the glass. That might be the easiest move.”

Dub shook his head. “I bet they’ve got shatterproof or ballistic glass,” he said, stepping close enough to the gate to slip his fingers through the narrow horizontal gaps in the gate. “But I bet the hospital doesn’t,” he added.

“I’m not interested in the hospital. We need weapons. We need things to protect ourselves. Bedpans and scalpels aren’t going to help a whole lot.”

Dub checked his footing and hoisted himself up onto the fence. He climbed a couple of rungs and pressed the left side of his face against the cold metal. Then he hopped down onto the sidewalk. A plume of ash billowed like a cloud of chalk then settled.

“Maybe I’m naïve or a moron, but I disagree,” said Dub. “Bedpans and scalpels could make good weapons in the right hands. But I’m not talking about taking anything from the hospital necessarily. Well, we could, but that’s not my point.”

Barker narrowed his eyes and moved up to the gate. He craned his neck, looking in the same general direction as Dub. Then he backed away and shook his head. “What am I missing?”

Dub pointed toward a set of wide, aluminum-framed glass doors beyond the ambulance. It appeared as though they led directly into the hospital. They were cracked open. He then watched Barker as his eyes widened with recognition.

“If we find a way into the hospital,” said Barker, “we can get into that sally port. That gets us a step closer to getting into the police station.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Dub, “and I’m pretty sure that’s our way into the hospital. Plus, look up there.”

Above the open doors, leading from the hospital’s second floor to that of the police station, was an enclosed walkway. That was an option too.

“Either way,” said Dub, “I think we can get there.”

He motioned to their left. Between the building and the sidewalk, there was a sign directing them to the emergency room entrance to the hospital. They followed the arrow and quickly found themselves at the wide, covered entrance. Like the double doors in the sally port, those leading into the emergency room wing were cracked open.

Neither Dub nor Barker could widen the gap between the frozen doors, but both were thin and agile enough to squeeze through the existing opening and into the dark space of the hospital.

Other than the darkness, the first thing that struck Dub about the space was its odor. Even through his scarf, he smelled the rot. Evidently Barker smelled it too.

“I hope that’s cafeteria food.” Barker grimaced, sliding his glasses up above his eyes and resting them on the heavy ridge of his brow.

Dub swallowed hard, his mouth and throat suddenly dry. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the LED flashlight he’d been keeping for weeks. Incredibly, it still worked without having had to change the batteries yet. He flicked on the bluish white light, and it illuminated a wide cone, which Dub swept across what was clearly the waiting and reception area of the hospital’s emergency wing.

There was a dusting of ash across the floor that lessened the farther into the building they walked. To the right, the waiting room sat with its chairs tossed onto their sides. Some of them were broken into pieces. A table was missing one of its legs, and the floor was covered with the pages of old magazines Dub assumed had once served to occupy the loved ones of emergency patients.

In the corner of the waiting room was a colorful rug decorated with a road for toy cars on one side and a collection of hashtags on which children could play tic-tac-toe. There was a television mounted on the wall. It was unplugged, and the cord dangled from beneath the lower bevel of the screen.

Keeping his hands gloved and the burlap scarf up over his nose and mouth, Dub used his free hand to slide his goggles above his eyes and onto his forehead. He flipped the hood of his jacket hood back. As much as it itched, which it did after he began sweating, the annoyance was better than the alternative of smelling whatever foul stink was permeating the air like an overspray of cheap perfume.

“Shine the light over here,” Barker said. He was standing by the reception area. “I think I found what’s causing the smell.”

Dub shone the light on Barker and then to either side of him. He was against a chest-high counter that housed a pair of computer monitors, one of which was facedown, and was the barrier between the reception area and the workstation for nurses and administrators responsible for maintaining order in the lobby area. He panned the light slowly, checking the space in front of him. His boots crunched on the tile floor, the ash and debris flattening underneath his steps.

He reached the counter and leaned over it. The odor, overpowering him, forced his gag reflex and he almost puked. But he held it together and looked at the culprit. On the desk behind the counter was an open pizza box. In the box was the remains of a half-eaten pizza. As Dub shone the light on it, countless cockroaches scattered. Some of them skittered under the spoiled foot-long sub sandwich on a piece of wax paper next to the pizza box.

“I’d always heard roaches would survive a nuclear bomb,” said Barker. “Now we know it’s true.”

Dub pinched the burlap against his nostrils and tried breathing through his mouth. Then he lifted the beam of light from the molded carcasses of what had been a last supper to what he now knew was the real source of the stench.

On the floor a few feet from the desk, sticking out from behind the corner of a wall, was a pair of white-stocking-clad legs. The feet were shoeless and turned at odd angles. Dub swallowed again and held the light in its position while he directed Barker’s attention to it.

“I don’t think it’s just the food,” he said. “Look.”

Barker followed the light and his crinkled, sour expression relaxed. His eyes filled with horror, and he pulled his gloved hands up to his mouth, covering the blue paper surgical mask he favored over scarves. He stepped behind Dub, slipped into the gray darkness beside the reception counter, and then reemerged into the icy light near the body. He looked back at Dub and squinted into the light. It made his skin appear translucent, and he shuffled the final few steps to the wall, stopping short at the stocking-clad feet.

He crouched down, leaning one hand on the wall. Dub did his best to aim the light where Barker could see.

“Can you bring the light around?” Barker asked. “I think it’s a nurse.”

Dub followed Barker’s path around the side of the high counter. He slid behind the counter and the attached lower desk to stand directly behind his friend. Shakily, he lifted the beam until it shone on the ghastly form of the dead body.

Dub tasted the bile in the back of his throat. His stomach lurched. But he held himself together and put both hands on the small flashlight, trying to steady it. “Is that a woman?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure,” said Barker. “She has fingernail polish.”

The woman’s body, assuming she was a woman, looked as if it had popped. There were too many different colors of dried fluid to know what was what. But it was clear to Dub there was vomit, a lot of it, dried near her mouth and under her head. Her tongue hung from her lips. There were roaches crawling in and out of her mouth. There were maggots everywhere. She was, in short, something out of a horror movie. It was so grotesque it looked fake, like the work of a special effects artist in Century City who’d gone overboard.

Barker pivoted on his toes, holding onto the wall and turning away from the body. “What do you think happened?”

“Radiation sickness?” said Dub. “There’s a lot of…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to explain what he saw.

But he did know the basics about the effects of intense radiation exposure. His mother was a breast cancer survivor. Well, she had been. He didn’t know if she was alive now. Before the attack, she’d lived seven years since remission. She was technically cured.

While she’d fought the disease with chemotherapy and radiation, Dub had spent countless hours researching the effects of the treatment and how they were, in some cases, worse than the illness itself. He was thirteen and a voracious consumer of all things YouTube and Wikipedia. He’d retreated into the glow of his laptop during his mother’s long fight. His father wasn’t around much, spending a lot of time at work when he wasn’t tending to his wife. That gave young Dub unfettered access to the internet without any guidance.

Once, when rechecking radiotherapy’s side effects during week five of a seven-week course, he’d stumbled upon a video that detailed the four stages of acute radiation syndrome. The first stage, the prodromal stage, included nausea, vomiting, and likely diarrhea. They could start manifesting within minutes of exposure or take days. The latent stage was a respite. The exposed might look, and even feel, healthy. That too might last for hours or weeks. The manifest illness stage varied. Its symptoms depended on the type of syndrome, the affected bone marrow, the gastrointestinal tract, or the cardiovascular and central nervous system. The final stage had two options: recovery or death.

Given the state of her body, there was no way to know for sure, but the amount of bodily fluids from all parts of her body made Dub think she’d been exposed on the day of the attack.

“You might be right about the radiation,” said Barker. “Look over there.”

Dub followed Barker’s direction and aimed the light at a metal rolling cart. It was the kind used to move around meals or surgical tools. On it were several open boxes labeled DOSIMETRY BADGES. There were shredded packages left on the top of the cart.

“They were checking for exposure,” said Dub. “But the attacks were miles from here. We’re nowhere near the blast zone. Why would they be exposed?”

Barker used the wall to help him to his feet. He leaned on it for support and adjusted the mask on his face. He exhaled loudly, pushing the air from his lungs. He shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know where she was when the attack happened. She might have been in the middle of everything. Or maybe she got exposed to something here.”

“Should we even be here, then?” asked Dub. “Is it too big a risk?”

Barker stood up straight and lowered his shades to shield his eyes from the flashlight beam Dub had pointed toward him. He adjusted his mask again, pinching the metal clip at the bridge of his nose. “Dude, we’ve already been exposed. The ash all around us is radioactive. It gets in our hair, in our eyes, into our mouths. Seriously, we’re already exposed.”

Dub felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders tense. “I haven’t gotten sick,” he countered. “Nothing. No nausea, except for when I see a dead body like that. You?”

Barker shook his head. “No. Not yet. But it could take longer for us. We were pretty far away from the blasts, however many of them there were.”

“I guess,” said Dub. Barker’s argument wasn’t comforting. He was right. They’d all been exposed. It was impossible to avoid no matter what measures they’d taken to mitigate it.

There was fallout everywhere. Even when they stayed inside with the air-conditioning off, they were breathing ambient air that had circulated into the building from the outside. And on windy days, of which there were many, the fallout was as thick as fog.

Thinking about it made Dub’s throat seize, and he unconsciously held his breath as he considered how many times he’d inhaled irradiated particles capable of killing him. He tried to shake his mind free of the thought.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s keep going and try to find our way back to the sally port.”

“Without running into any more dead bodies,” said Barker.

Dub flashed the cone of light over the body one more time and then passed it across the unfinished food. The whole scene didn’t sit right with him. Regardless of how the woman had died, she couldn’t have been alone. She wouldn’t have ordered an entire pizza and a sub sandwich for herself, would she?

And that was assuming she’d ordered the food. It was more likely the meal was meant for others who’d had to abandon it when the attacks happened. This was a hospital. There was a good chance they’d had to triage people injured in the attack. Even if it was a children’s hospital, in a mass casualty emergency they’d have likely been called upon to help the wider medical center.

As much as Dub tried to imagine what had happened that led to the macabre scene in front of him, he was unable to picture it. He closed his eyes for a moment, moved the beam to the side, and followed Barker back toward the dim gray light seeping into the space from the emergency room doors.

The two moved cautiously, Dub sensing Barker’s trepidation as they walked away from the natural light and relied exclusively on the thin white beam from the LED flashlight.

The odor faded along with the light, and they pushed their way through one set of double doors after another. Dub had a vague sense of where they needed to be to find the entry to the sally port, but they had not seen any signs directing them there.

He aimed the light at one wall, searching for clues, swept the beam in front of them along the industrial tile floor, and aimed it at the other. There was no indication they were heading in the right direction. And then they hit a dead end.

A pair of doors, apparently locked electronically, were closed. It cut them off from what appeared to be a surgical area. They rattled the doors, tried prying them apart, and finally gave up.

Dub swung the light around, searching for some alternative when he spotted it. A sign on the wall behind them pointed to the elevators and a stairwell.

“Stairs,” said Barker. “More stairs. Everywhere we go, we have to climb stairs.”

“It’s good exercise,” said Dub, leading them in the direction of their path to the second floor.

“Yeah. But typically, I like to alternate leg day with back and shoulders.”

“Funny,” said Dub. “I didn’t know you worked out.”

“Not funny,” said Barker, despite a chuckle. The momentary levity, as brief as it was, eased the tension Dub felt building throughout his body and in the air around them.

They wound their way through the maze of hallways leading to the second floor, checking as they went for an alternative path to the ground level of the sally port, avoiding sections that contained banks of hospital rooms. Neither wanted to see another dead body if they could help it.

That desire almost stopped them from ascending the stairs once they’d reached the well. They were at the turn between the two flights of steps, their hands guiding them along the round metal railings, when Dub stopped cold in front of Barker.

“Do you hear that?” he whispered, his voice bouncing off the walls of the well. Dub’s pulse thumped in his neck. His hands were sweating inside his gloves.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Dub whispered, more softly than he had before.

“Should we turn around? Forget this mission? I mean, we can survive without weapons, right?”

Dub flicked off the light. He twisted his body and stepped down to even himself with Barker. He could hear his friend’s accelerated, heavy breathing. Barker was as scared as he was.

“Maybe,” said Dub, “but you agreed it’s going to get worse. We need to protect ourselves until we figure out a way off campus. It’s just that—”

The noise froze both of them in place. It was louder. It was closer. It was coming from the second floor only yards from them. Dub stared up at the spot where he’d last seen the door above them. He couldn’t place it, as disturbing as it was.

It sounded like a wounded animal; part moan, part screeching cry, and all agony. It certainly didn’t sound human.

Barker took a step back, descending a stair and putting Dub between himself and the door. Dub tightened his grip on the bannister and tugged himself another two steps higher. He felt Barker tug on the back of his jacket, but he ignored it and took another step as the wail grew louder and echoed in the space beyond the door.

Dub had his free hand wrapped around the flashlight. He considered turning it on but didn’t. A flash of light that snuck from underneath the stairwell door might alert whatever it was on the other side.

His chest was heaving as he struggled to control his breathing. It was the second time that day fear-fueled adrenaline had coursed through his body. Rather than search the darkness with his eyes, he closed them and focused on the sounds.

The wail, which induced goose bumps across his neck and arms, was as loud as it had been. It was laced with a scratchy, harsh undertone, like the crack and pop of an old vinyl record. Dub suddenly realized his body was trembling, but he took another step upward, blindly closing in on the door. Another wail, this one warning with phlegm, stopped him again. Barker slid up behind him.

“I don’t think we should go up there,” he whispered. “Could be an injured animal. Something with rabies or just wounded and angry.”

“How would an animal get up there?” asked Dub.

“I don’t know,” said Barker, his words barbed with exasperation.

Dub inhaled, his pulse still thumping in his chest. “We need to get to that police station.”

“Wait until whatever is making the noise gets farther away,” Barker whispered back.

Dub agreed and the two of them sat on the stairs. For the next hour, the noise was too close. Then it moved away, each successive wail somewhat more distant than the last.

When a good ten minutes had passed without the noise, Dub turned on the flashlight and led Barker through the heavy door and into a dark hallway. The air was thick with a variety of nauseating odors.

Barker gagged. “This is worse than downstairs,” he said. “I think we should—”

“Let’s go,” said Dub. “Hold your nose and let’s hurry.”

Dub, his eyes watering, searched the beige-colored walls for any signage that might lead them to the bridge. He started to the right and stopped about halfway along the hall. He turned back to Barker and aimed the flashlight past his shoulder. There was a thin dark line that ran along the center of the tile floor.

“It’s that way,” he said. “There’s an arrow pointing toward the bridge.”

Before Barker could answer, the wail echoed through the hall, bouncing off the walls and filling the space with an echoing cry that crescendoed before the warble and crack of it dissipated. Barker nervously adjusted the empty pack on his back.

An involuntary shudder rippled through Dub’s body, and he aimed the light farther along the hall and past Barker, who hadn’t moved. He appeared cemented in place.

Dub quickly moved to Barker and stopped beside him. Barker was trembling with fear. It was much warmer on the second floor than it had been on the ground level.

“It’s coming from that direction, isn’t it?” asked Dub, already knowing the answer.

Barker exhaled, his breath ragged. “Yeah.”

Dub craned his neck from one side to the other, releasing some of the tension with a crack. He put his hand on Barker’s shoulder and squeezed. “Let’s go.”

Dub slid the beam of light from one side of the hallway to the other and from in front of their feet to the end of the light’s reach. They were nearly at the end of the hall, at a T intersection, when Barker stopped again. He pointed at the floor, at the thin line that ran along its center. Dub aimed the beam at it and noticed it was wider than it had been and wasn’t as rod straight as it had appeared farther back along the hall.

Barker crouched onto his heels and, with the help of the light, dragged a finger across the line. It smeared, leaving a brighter red stain on the light tile. Barker, realizing what he’d touched, tried to wipe it off and lost his balance. He tumbled onto his back, his breathing labored. He scrambled onto his feet.

“That’s blood, dude,” he said. “It’s blood.”

Dub shone the light on the wall at the end of the T intersection directly in front of them and saw the bridge was to the left. He lowered the beam to the trail of what they now knew was blood. It went left.

Barker shook his head. “Mother—”

“We’ll be fine,” said Dub and turned left, keeping the beam ahead of them. They couldn’t have much farther to go.

The two stepped deliberately, though not confidently, forward. In the back of his mind, Dub knew this was stupid. There was no reason to risk their safety for the hope of finding anything worthy in an abandoned police station. But he was prone to acting without thinking. Barker, who he was surprised was still behind him, had been nice enough to point it out less than two hours earlier.

As scared as he was about what might be lurking between them and the bridge, he believed it couldn’t be something dangerous. More than evil, it sounded as if it were in agony.

That assumption proved right when the beam found the source of the wail. The moment the light struck its face, the piercing cry it emitted made Dub want to run in the opposite direction. But he didn’t. He stood there, the jittery beam fixed on the poor creature curled into a fetal ball at the point where the hall led to the bridge.

“What the…?” muttered Barker. “Is that…?”

“I think so,” said Dub. As much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. He was transfixed, trying to comprehend exactly what it was on the floor in front of them.

He took another step forward, and the creature, instead of recoiling, reached outward toward him with something akin to a claw. Dub tried to swallow. His throat was dry, and it took a couple of tries.

“What do we do?” asked Barker, sounding genuinely concerned. The fear in his voice was gone, but he didn’t yet sound himself.

“I don’t know,” said Dub. He ran his thumb along the inside of the strap of the empty pack on his back.

The creature wailed again, the phlegm crackling as the shriek exploded past them. It was remarkable that a person so badly damaged by radiation they were unrecognizable could emit a sound of such strength.

It was impossible to know if the person was a man or a woman. What little hair was left on its head was matted in clumps, like patches of weeds growing from sand. Its extremities were shriveled into weak appendages that curved from what Dub imagined were cramped muscles.

Its tongue lolled from an orifice that had to have been its mouth. Its eyes were swollen into two peepholes. It was emaciated, but even that word didn’t do justice to how bone thin it was.

Dub couldn’t tell from where the blood was coming, nor could he fully grasp how much of what he saw was from malnourishment, a pre-existing condition of some kind, or the attack itself. It almost looked like something from another dimension, something that had succumbed to the rigors of space and time. What he did know, however, was that this person didn’t have long to live and was spending what little time it had left aimlessly roaming the corridor on the second floor of a children’s hospital.

“Should we kill it?” asked Barker. “You know, like a mercy thing?”

Dub didn’t answer Barker. Not because he didn’t hear the question, but because he didn’t have an answer. The right thing to do would have been to end the poor thing’s life, to put it out of its misery. But they didn’t have the tool for that. Not yet.

“Dub,” said Barker, “what should we do?”

Dub sighed and looked over at his friend. “I think we go do what we came here to do.”

Barker glanced at the creature and then back at Dub. He swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes ebbed with tears. He clung to the wall and stepped ahead of Dub, carefully but quickly slipping past the dying remains of the person and onto the bridge. He kept moving past the beam of the light Dub still held out in front of them.

Dub followed and squeezed his eyes shut as he too passed the creature. It wailed at him, forcing another shiver along Dub’s spine. Without turning around, he crossed the bridge and guided Barker to its opposite end with the light.

Incredibly, the closed door at the opposite end of the walkway was unlocked. It led into the second floor of the police station. A level replete with cubicles, it looked like any other office building with a communal workspace.

The two of them searched desks and closets for anything resembling a weapon. They found nothing. They wound their way downstairs, through another stairwell, and found themselves outside an evidence room on the first floor.

Neither of them had said much since their encounter with the living corpse. For his part, Dub didn’t know what to say. There weren’t words. But as they worked to find a way into the evidence locker, Barker broke the relative silence.

“We can’t leave it up there,” he said. “It’s not right.”

Dub nodded. “I agree, but we need to finish here first. Then we can talk about it.”

Barker pointed toward the drop ceiling above them. Dub aimed the light overhead. “We could climb through the ceiling,” he said. “I bet there’s access that way. Up right here and then down in there.”

“How would you get back out?” Dub asked.

Barker shrugged. “I don’t know. Same way, I guess?”

“Worth a try.”

They found a chair behind the receptionist’s desk and rolled it over to the space outside the door to the evidence room. Dub flipped it over and pulled the wheels from the legs. Then he set it upright and helped Barker climb up to the ceiling. He pushed through a tile and reached down to take the flashlight from Dub.

“There’s a wide support beam,” he called down. “I can shimmy along that until I cross into the other room. Then I’ll punch through and hop down.”

“Okay,” said Dub. “Go for it.”

He steadied the chair and let Barker use his shoulders for a boost. The pressure released, and Dub looked up into the black open square directly above him. Barker was struggling along the beam, followed by a couple of strained grunts, and then came a crash.

Dub hopped off the chair and moved to the evidence room door. He pressed his hands and burlap-covered cheek against its cold metal.

“You okay?” he called.

“Yeah,” said Barker. “Wasn’t exactly how I planned it, but I’m okay.”

His voice got louder as he spoke. Dub backed away from the door. The handle turned; then it swung open, Barker leaning into the open doorway with his shoulder. He had the flashlight in one hand and a cut above his right eye.

“You’re bleeding,” said Dub.

Barker reached up and then rubbed the blood between his thumb and fingers. Then he wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m fine. C’mon in. Let’s check this out.”

The room was smaller than Dub had imagined. It was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves, the kind Dub had put together from a kit he’d bought at a home improvement store. It reminded him a little bit of the radio room in Boelter Hall, though instead of spare electronic parts and tech equipment, the shelves held various sized plastic bags or worn cardboard boxes. There were manila envelopes and overstuffed file folders held together with overstretched rubber bands.

Barker aimed the light at the shelves at eye level. He moved the light from one side of the room to the other, casting the beam on the various containers. There didn’t appear to be an obvious catalog method.

“I say we start ripping into stuff,” said Barker. “Anything looks like it might be good, we take it. Cool?”

Dub agreed. He’d reconciled some of his issues with pre-attack morality versus what was acceptable afterward.

Barker rested the flashlight on a chest-high shelf closest to the door. It gave them some, if not great, visibility on the other shelves across from it.

Over the next thirty minutes, they rifled through every bag, box, and envelope they could open. They stuffed their findings into their packs until they couldn’t hold any more: two handguns, a box of 9mm ammunition, a .22 rifle, a full magazine of .22LR ammunition, a dozen knives of varying shapes and sizes, a flare gun with a half-dozen flares, lengths of bungee cord, a socket wrench set, three screwdrivers, and a full bottle of Southern Comfort.

They cracked open the whiskey and took healthy swigs from it before capping it and hauling their heavy packs out of the evidence room. They trudged back up the stairs.

“You ever wonder why somebody would have flares on campus?” asked Barker. “And why would they be evidence in a crime?”

“Or a socket wrench,” countered Dub. “People are crazy.”

“I’m glad they’re crazy, or we wouldn’t have the flares and the wrenches.”

“Agreed.” Dub was carrying the rifle in his hands, carefully ascending in the dark behind Barker, who’d kept the flashlight.

They reached the top of the stairwell and stopped. Barker had one hand on the door handle and the other aiming the light at Dub’s chest. He squinted, sucked in a breath through his mask, and sighed.

“What do we do about the…?”

He didn’t have to finish the thought for Dub to know what he meant. They hadn’t fully discussed their plan for euthanasia; they just understood one of them would have to do it. It wasn’t right to let that poor living corpse wander the halls like a spirit searching for its soul.

“I got it,” said Dub.

Barker didn’t protest and swung open the door. He led Dub back onto the second level, and the two of them marched closer to the bridge. Dub could still taste the hint of fruit and spices unique to Southern Comfort. He wished he’d drank more than a couple of healthy pulls. It would make the coming task easier. Not easy, but easier.

Dub shrugged his pack on his back and tried to prepare himself for what he was about to do. On the same day he’d seen his first dead body, he was about to create another. He was going to kill a man. Or a woman. Or a child. Even if it was the right thing to do, it was taking someone’s life. The grease of sweat loosened his grip on the rifle, and he tightened his fingers around the stock and barrel.

He’d already attached the magazine but thought that using one of the handguns might be better for the task at hand. A knife was too personal, too bloody.

He’d resolved to use one of the handguns, despite Barker’s suggestion they needed every bullet they could keep, and was ready when they crossed the bridge. As he got closer, he could see the mess of a human on the floor hadn’t moved since they’d left it there.

As they approached, Dub expected it would lift what was left of its head and wail as it had before. It didn’t. In fact, it wasn’t doing anything.

Dub squatted at its side, not yet having taken the pistol from his pack, and eyed its body for any sign of movement. There was none. It wasn’t breathing. Its swollen eyes were rolled back. The thick saliva that had oozed from its agape mouth was stagnant.

“I think it’s dead,” said Dub.

Barker sighed. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah,” said Dub. “Me too.”

They stayed there for a moment, Dub having gotten back onto his feet, and stood in silent vigil. He wondered if this awful death, in some way, awaited all of them. Maybe not with the burns or the disfigurement, but with the undeniable agony. He thought of the ash.

“We should find the pharmacy,” said Dub. “Grab whatever we can.”

“I think some dudes on the Hill already took stuff from Ashe,” said Barker, referring to the Arthur Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center on campus, “but it can’t hurt to have more.”

Dub stepped around the heap and followed Barker’s flashlight beam to the T-intersection, where they turned right and followed the thin blood trail back to the stairwell. Along the way, they found directional signs leading them to the pharmacy, which they found in a corner on the first floor.

They had to use a fire extinguisher to break the glass and enter what amounted to a stockroom of a variety of drugs. Dub’s pack was full. There was some space in Barker’s pack, so Dub walked behind him and stuffed whatever would fit into the remaining gaps in the pack’s main compartment. He wasn’t even paying attention to what drugs he was sliding from the counters and into their possession. It didn’t matter. Whatever they were grabbing would help in some way. Even if it only later served as something with which to barter, it would be useful.

Once finished in the pharmacy, they worked their way back to the emergency area through which they’d first entered. Both prepared themselves for the odor and did their best to hold their breath until they’d squeezed outside into the chill.

The ash was falling again, heavier than when they’d entered. Dub slid his goggles down, pulling at the elastic strap. He spat into each lens, coated the inside of each with the saliva, then drew the goggles over his eyes.

“That’ll keep them from fogging,” he said to Barker, who was looking at him askance.

“That’s gross,” said Barker.

Dub chuckled, thinking about what they’d seen inside the hospital: the dead bodies they saw and the ones they could smell, the bloodcurdling wail of a dying, irradiated shell of a human, and even the maggot-infested food left uneaten on the counter. All those things and he thought Dub spitting into his goggles was gross.

“Whatever,” said Dub with a smirk. “Let’s go see what luck they’ve had with the radio. It’s getting dark.”

***

Michael keyed the radio, as he’d done countless times before. He held it up to his mouth and sighed, sure this effort wouldn’t produce anything more than static.

“Hello,” he said, not familiar with ham radio parlance or procedure. “Is anyone on this frequency? Is anyone listening? This is Michael. I’m in Westwood.”

Though he was a novice at amateur radio, he did understand frequency transmission enough to understand that, without a repeater system, his message wouldn’t travel far. He also knew the atmospheric conditions weren’t favorable. They wouldn’t be for months, potentially longer. But he had to keep trying. That was his end of the deal. If they were going to leave their home on the Hill, they needed somewhere solid to go. They’d agreed that wandering around aimlessly was as pointless as it was suicidal.

He counted to ten and repeated his transmission.

“Hello. Is anyone on this frequency? Is anyone listening? This is Michael. I’m in Westwood.” His voice was monotone, devoid of any enthusiasm for the task.

He let go of the key.

Keri was lying in Dub’s bed. Michael was at his desk on the opposite side of the room. He glanced at her over his shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked. “I’m sure I can find some Tylenol or Advil.”

“I took some,” she mumbled. “Thanks though.”

“How often do you get the headaches? I think I’ve only seen you get one a couple of times.”

“It varies,” she said. “They come in clusters.”

Michael shifted his body in the chair to settle in for a conversation. “My cousin used to get them. He would see spots and puke.”

Keri was pinching the bridge of her nose. “I don’t see spots,” she said. “I get nauseated and have pretty severe light and noise sensitivity.”

Michael took the hint and lowered his voice. “Sorry. I’ll stop asking questions.”

Kerry gave him a thumbs-up. He sheepishly pivoted back to his desk and the radio that emitted nothing but static. He adjusted the frequency.

Michael was never great with social cues. He tried. He’d gotten better at it. Dub and Barker had both helped him assimilate into the social ocean of college, which hadn’t been easy. His social ineptitude, of which he was acutely aware, manifested itself with fiery outbursts. They were childlike and happened at the worst possible times, when he was around strangers. He’d learned to control it with his roommates’ guidance. Dub, the psychology major, was especially good at getting ahead of a potential meltdown.

Michael was always a good student. He loved math and science. Writing wasn’t his strength, but he was proficient enough, and sometimes putting words to paper was the easiest way for him to express himself. He wasn’t on the spectrum, as some might have thought. He was an only child, raised in suburban DC to parents who were both self-involved enough not to notice his tics or, if they had, didn’t care enough to do anything about them.

It wasn’t that they didn’t love him. They did. He knew they did. But they both worked in demanding careers that had them leaving early and coming home late. Coping with a spirited child like Michael on top of that was too exhausting. A nanny had been the only one to put boundaries on Michael and to demand he bend to the world, not the other way around.

Because of his nanny, Michael was bilingual. He spoke fluent conversational Spanish. It frequently surprised people when the redheaded nerd offered a flawless accent and keen understanding of what Spanish speakers around him were saying. He’d caught people talking about him, not realizing he understood everything they were saying with perfect clarity.

Michael wasn’t much of an athlete. He loved basketball and always played with the roommates when they hit the gym. They didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t jump as high or run as fast. And when he had an open shot, they always encouraged him to take it.

In a lot of ways, he idolized his roommates. Dub was an all-around good guy who thought of others. Barker, despite his relentless sarcasm, was fiercely loyal as a friend. The three of them, as odd a trio as they might appear, had been the perfect complement to each other. Michael’s anxiety about living with strangers had dissolved immediately once the others had put him at ease and made him understand they were on his side.

Michael hadn’t gone home to the East Coast since he’d first arrived at UCLA. His parents had visited him during the short Thanksgiving breaks and he’d vacationed with them in the Canadian Rockies during Christmases. He’d stayed at school both summers, trying to take some of his more writing-intensive general education classes at a time when he needn’t worry about complicated math and science classes.

He ran his hand along the top of his head, lightly brushing his fingertips along the thinning patch of hair at the crown. He wondered, as he often did, if losing his hair was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Could it be that the more he thought about it, the more he worried, the more likely it was he’d go bald?

Those thoughts were less frequent now. Losing his hair had become so trivial in the wake of the attacks that he felt stupid even thinking about it and would internally chastise himself.

He pulled his hand away from his head and balled his fingers into a fist. Then he picked up the radio and tuned it to a new frequency, one he hadn’t tried before.

The radio was an exercise in patience and, to this point, futility. As he sat there keying the mic and repeating his mantra, Michael regretted suggesting the radios as an option. It got the others’ hopes up.

They’d gone through batteries quickly. They’d been using them in a detachable battery pack that connected to the handheld radios. Thankfully, the ones they’d taken from Ackerman were plentiful enough to sustain them. Still, it wasn’t endless supply, and eventually they’d have to figure out an alternative source of power or go find more batteries to feed into the radios.

In the weeks since they’d taken them from Boelter Hall, Michael had learned how to use the Yaesu more efficiently than the Kenwood, and he tended to use it more often. He’d never managed any sort of connection with the Kenwood. With the Yaesu, he’d heard other transmissions twice. The first of them was on the first day he started listening.

He’d turned on the Yaesu, and the radio had beeped, and the LCD screen displayed information about the frequency, the last to which the UCLA club had it tuned.

147.36 DARN Mt. Disappointment

Barker had been over his shoulder. “Is that a joke?” he asked. “DARN Disappointment?”

Michael had clenched his jaw. He’d already been stressed about properly working the radio. Having his smart-ass friend offering an unneeded commentary didn’t help.

“It’s not a joke,” he’d said. He’d figured that the radio worked much like the walkie-talkies he’d used as a kid, so he’d held the push-to-transmit button on the side. A red light had illuminated on the top of the radio.

He’d pulled the radio toward his mouth. “Hello? This is Michael Turner. I’m…we’re in Westwood. We’re survivors. Is anyone out there?”

He’d let go of the button and waited, receiving no response.

After trying it a few more times, and ignoring Barker’s suggestions, he’d rotated the channel button on the top of the radio and the display changed to a new frequency.

146.52 Natl Simplex Call Frequency

Like the previous channel, Michael had no clue as to what the designations meant. He assumed, though, that the first frequencies to pop up were probably the ones that the club had used most often. That meant, in a best-case scenario, they’d be the channels on which he’d be most likely to connect with someone.

What he hadn’t known was the 146.52 was a common emergency frequency. It was one astronauts aboard the International Space Station might use to communicate with Earth.

“Hello,” he’d said, pushing the PTT again. “My name is Michael Turner. I’m in Westwood. Is anybody out there?”

He’d waited a moment, and then the red light on the top of the radio turned green. The hiss and crackle had given way to a voice.

“Station calling, please repeat. Please repeat,” came the call of an older-sounding woman. “Your signal is very weak. Please up your power. Repeat your call sign and message. This is K6XMA. Over.”

The green light flipped red. Michael and Barker had exchanged wide-eyed glances of excitement.

“What do we do?” Barker had asked. “Can you power up?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know how. Hang on.”

He’d pressed the PTT button on the side of the Yaesu. “Hello. Who are you? Where are you? I’m not a ham. I’m not sure how to power up. Repeat, I am not a ham.”

The red light had turned green again.

“Okay,” the woman had said. “I copy that. You are not a ham. That’s okay. Your signal is weak though. I’m having trouble understanding everything you’re saying. Turn up your power. If you can’t do that, then you have to move to higher ground. A roof. A hillside. The higher the better. Over.”

Michael had immediately responded. “What if I lose you?” he’d said. Then he’d added, “Over.”

“I will stay on this frequency until you move,” she’d said. “Don’t worry. My name is Nancy. I’m K6XMA. Over.”

“Okay,” Michael had responded. “Please don’t go away. We’ll move.”

Michael and Barker had climbed the stairs to the top of the dorm. They’d pressed themselves against the glass in a common room overlooking the area plaza and tried again but had not been able to reconnect with Nancy. For more than an hour they’d tried without success.

The second communication had come a week later. They’d reconnected with Nancy, and for whatever reason, she’d heard them more clearly from their room.

“You’re a five and nine,” she’d told them. “It’s ham lingo for me reading you loud and clear.”

They’d learned during their short conversation that she was part of a group called ARES, Amateur Radio Emergency Services. What few of them had survived were taking shifts scanning the airwaves for others. Nancy had told them that in the time she’d been searching, she’d only connected with three others, and one of them had piqued her interest. She’d told him they were looking for survivors to join them.

“Join them?” Michael had asked.

“Yeah,” Nancy had said, chuckling. “They kept going on about knowing the end was coming. They’d been preparing for it. They have a bunker, supplies, and it sounded to me like they’re inviting anyone who wants to join them.”

“Are you?” Michael had asked, hoping for more specifics.

“Am I what?” Nancy had asked.

“Joining them.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Nancy had answered. “I’m self-sufficient, and I don’t think I could travel the distance. They were near the coast, if I remember. Plus, I’m not going around advertising it and looking for strangers to join me. I want to help people. But that’s a little much. There’s benevolence and there’s crazy.”

Barker had thumped Michael on the arm. “That sounds like heaven,” he’d said. “Ask her more about it. Where are they? Who are they?”

Michael had tried, but the signal had given out. Since then, there had been no reconnecting with Nancy or anyone else.

He kept trying though. He sat at his desk awaiting something, anything, from the nebulous outside. His eyes on the red light, he listened for any response. And then, as if magically answering his prayer, the light on the top of the radio turned green.

“Hello.” It was a man. The signal was clear. “This is K6VWV. Do you copy, Michael? Over.”

Michael rubbed his eyes and stared at the light as it turned from green to red. He looked over his shoulder at Keri, seeking confirmation his ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him. She was buried in blankets, wrapped like a mummy, snoring lightly. He grimaced and turned back to the radio.

He picked it up and pressed the PTT. “Hello, K6VWV, can you hear me clearly? Where are you? Over.”

“I can hear you, Michael,” said the voice. “My name is Victor. I am in SoCal like you. Do you have a call sign? Over.”

That wasn’t helpful. Of course Victor was in SoCal. Michael knew enough to understand that his radio was line of sight. The curve of the Earth and the atmospheric conditions, plus the relative low power of his handheld Yaesu running on triple A batteries didn’t lend to long-distance transmission or reception. Still, connecting with anyone was progress. He pressed the PTT.

“I don’t have a call sign,” he said. “The radio belongs to W6YRA. I’m borrowing it. Where in SoCal are you? I’m in Westwood. Over.”

Michael leaned forward on the desk. The light changed back to green. It was like waiting for the phone to ring. He hadn’t heard a phone ring since the attack.

“You’re at UCLA,” said Victor. “That’s not too far from my location. Are you a student? Are you alone? Over.”

The signal was crystal clear. Unlike the connections he’d made with Nancy, there was very little static when the green light was on and Victor was transmitting. He was either much closer than he was letting on, which might account for his being coy, or he had a high-powered radio and functioning antenna.

Michael pressed the PTT and then released it. He ran his fingers along the crown of his head and thought about how best to respond. He eyed the radio as if Victor were looking back at him.

“I’m not alone,” he said. “What about you? Over.”

The response was immediate. “Not alone. How’s your health, Michael? Over.”

Michael stared at the radio, his brow furrowed. “That’s weird,” he said to himself. “Victor, you’re a little weird.”

He glanced at the door over his left shoulder. He wished Dub were here. He’d know how to respond. He’d also know how to get Victor to answer questions. Dub had a way about him. That was what would make him a brilliant psychologist. Well, it was what would have made him one had the world not blown up. He had an incredible skill in which he would ask a litany of questions, poking and prodding for information, all the while making it seem effortless. Dub wasn’t here though. Neither was Barker. Barker was blunt. If he had a question, he asked it. If he had an opinion, he offered it. It was what made him endearing and frustrating at the same time. Either of them would be better at talking to Victor than him.

Even Keri might have done a more effective job. She was pretty forthright and didn’t take a lot of crap from people. Michael rubbed the top of his head with his palm. He sighed. The light turned green.

“Are you there, Michael?” asked Victor. “Do you copy? I asked if you are healthy. My friends and I down here are doing well. I hope you are too. Over.”

Michael cocked his head to one side like a curious dog. Down here? He pressed the PTT and brought the radio to his mouth. “I copied it, Victor. Good to hear you are healthy. We are too. Trying to avoid fallout as much as possible. Over.”

He hadn’t asked a question that time. Intentionally. He wanted to hear where Victor would take the conversation, as he clearly had some agenda in mind, asking about numbers, location, and health. The light turned green.

“That’s good to hear, Michael. The fallout makes it dangerous out there. Down here, we stay out of it as much as we can. Thankfully we’re pretty well stocked. What about you? Over.”

Michael thought about his previous interactions with Nancy. He wondered if this was the same group that had talked with her, the cult. An involuntary shudder passed through his body. He swallowed hard and then pressed the PTT on the side of the radio.

“Do you know K6XMA?” he asked. “A woman named Nancy? Over.”

A full minute passed before Victor responded. When he did, the transmission was short. “Yes. Over.”

Michael puffed his cheeks and exhaled. He felt like he was playing chess with an expert or poker with a blind man. There was no way to tell, no hint of what Victor wanted from the conversation. Before he could respond, the light switched from red to green.

“We’ve spoken with Nancy several times,” said Victor, “but she wasn’t interested in our offer.”

This was the cult. These were the strangers who, in every way, sounded odd. They clearly had a bunker; they had rations. They had a group of people who had not only survived the attack but were healthy. They’d planned for a doomsday scenario. A cult. A freaking cult. Of all the people out there who might have heard Michael’s transmission, it had to be a cult.

A rush of nervous adrenaline coursed through his body and, without thinking about the consequences, he turned off the radio.

CHAPTER 10

Friday, August 8, 2025

DAY FORTY-EIGHT

Pacific Palisades, California

Danny Correa stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the collection of art along the plastered walls of the Oasis. He’d walked past it countless times in the month he’d spent here, buried under the Pacific-facing bluff that held the Getty Villa. Until now, he’d never paid attention to their significance.

The collection was three similarly sized photographic prints. They were matted in white and framed in black. They hung on the wall, equally spaced, under protective non-reflective glass.

The first featured a collection of rocks and boulders that bled into a vast mountainous desert. In the center of the frame was a pair of trees and a thin trail of meandering water. It was labeled with a placard beneath the frame.

OASIS IN THE DESERT

FRANCIS FRITH

HAND-COLORED ALBUMEN SILVER PRINT

1856–7

The next print, the one in the middle, was dominated by a cloudscape across the top. In the center, framed by a thicket of trees and bushes, was a fabric tent pitched in the dirt. In front of the tent were camels and a man dressed in traditional Middle Eastern garb. He was a nomad, perhaps, who was looking into the camera without expression. He was crouched by one of the camels. It too had an identifying placard beneath the frame.

FAIYUM OASIS

UNKNOWN

TINTED ALBUMEN SILVER PRINT

1860–1880

The last of the three prints was more modern art than photograph. It depicted a white, four-legged table in the middle of a desert. Atop the table was a grouping of three trees growing upward. At first blush, it didn’t fit with the other two pieces. Then Danny read the placard.

L’OASIS

RENÉ MAGRITTE

GELATIN SILVER PRINT

1925

“Pretty cool, right?” said Ritz. He’d snuck up behind Danny. “All three of them were in the Getty Museum until this place was built. Then they were moved.”

“All of them have oasis in the title,” said Danny, stating the obvious.

“Yep,” said Ritz. “There are other pieces here too. All of them are a variation on the same theme. The designers thought art was an essential part of humanity. That’s why they included them here. It wasn’t just about subsistence, you know?”

Danny liked Ritz. He was an affable guy who always had a smile on his face. Despite the circumstances, he was remarkably optimistic. Danny found that all the people in the Oasis were optimistic. Ritz was on another level though.

Ritz motioned with his head and led Danny along the corridor. It was early in the morning according to the clocks inside the Oasis, and it was time to eat breakfast.

“You haven’t eaten yet, right?” asked Ritz, moving effortlessly along the hallway.

Danny shook his head. “No. I was headed to the kitchen but got sidetracked by the art.”

“Where’s Maggie?”

“She’s sleeping,” said Danny. “She had a restless night.”

Ritz frowned. “Sorry to hear that.”

Maggie hadn’t adjusted as well as Danny. There wasn’t a lot of room to run and jump. Not for a dog. There was a gym for human use. Danny had tried walking her on the side-by-side manually powered treadmills. It hadn’t gone well.

“I think she’s depressed,” Danny said.

“Sorry to hear that,” said Ritz. “We’ll have to figure something out. I’m sure she misses the outdoors, like all of us.”

Danny followed Ritz into the kitchen. There were two others already there. They were eating flatbread with jam and drinking black coffee.

One was a woman named Barbie. She was blowing on the coffee, which she’d brewed in a French press. Next to her was her husband, Hal, who was spreading preserves on his bread. Both smiled at Danny and Ritz and greeted them warmly. Danny repeatedly reminded himself not to refer to Hal as Ken, given his nickname for the people whose home he’d used as a refuge before coming here.

“This batch of raspberry isn’t as good as the last one,” Barbie lamented. “I tried, but this one isn’t as sweet. And it’s too chunky. At least it’s edible.”

Barbie had been a caterer in her pre-attack life. She’d jarred the vast supply of preserves on hand and had also canned vegetables and waxed large wheels of cheese. She was her own worst critic and never had a positive thing to say about her own cooking. Hal was her biggest fan.

“I think it’s delicious,” he said with his mouth full. Crumbs from the bread sprinkled his salt-and-pepper beard. “No complaints from me.”

Barbie lovingly rolled her eyes at her husband and took a tentative sip of her coffee. She held the mug with both hands like a child sipping milk from a cup. Hal watched her adoringly.

As Danny had come to learn during his time in the Oasis, the vast underground complex was the brainchild of a Getty. A distant cousin whose ties to the family were tenuous, he’d ascribed to the belief that the end of the world wasn’t a question of if but rather a matter of when.

As such, he’d gone about forming a secret society of friends and acquaintances who’d called themselves the Order of Apocalyptic Survivors In Sync: OASIS. The group spent decades financing the construction of the complex and recruiting new members.

The original OASIS members, all of whom had long since died, had passed along their beliefs and detailed preparations. While secretive, they weren’t exclusive. Often, the group would scour social media sites for like-minded people in Southern California and invite them to join their collective.

Of the fifteen people living in the OASIS, only Barbie, Hal, and five others were members before the attack. One of those was the concierge. Another was a doctor. A third was the technical expert. There was a sociologist. And there was a botanist. They’d happened to be the experts in their fields on their monthly rotation when the attacks occurred. Had it been a few weeks earlier or later, a different physician, techie, and scientist would have been on hand. It was the luck of the draw, so to speak. The others in the OASIS had been last minute invites or, as in Danny’s case, found an invitation that led them to the site. Ritz was one of the last minute invites. He’d lived next door to Barbie and Hal in Brentwood.

The bunker had a capacity for more than fifty people and had the ability to sustain them for twenty years. In truth, it was possible that with fewer people, they could stay inside the bluff longer. But the idea of the OASIS was mankind’s survival. For it to thrive, the members believed they should open the doors to anyone willing to contribute.

Of course, they didn’t want violent or mentally ill people inside the complex. When Danny had arrived, the first thing he’d done was undergo a battery of tests with the doctor and the sociologist. Despite being told he suffered from low self-esteem and was malnourished, he’d passed the entrance exam and been allowed to join the others.

Initially, Danny was wary of the others. It wasn’t the entrance exam that kept him distant. He was, in a strange way, comforted by it. Those in the OASIS were nice enough, but they were too nice. On top of that, he questioned the sanity of anyone who had spent the better part of the last century building an underground ark beneath an oceanside hilltop under the premise the world was going to hell.

If they’d truly wanted to include outsiders in their grand humanity-propagating scheme, why had they built the complex in secret? Why not let the world know about it?

The whole place was a contradiction: buried and hidden but open to anyone, designed by preparedness devotees but populated with people who were unprepared and desperate, inviting yet somehow cold.

He pushed these things, constantly swirling around in his head, to the back of his thoughts as he took a piece of naan bread from the counter and ripped it in half. He rolled up one half and popped it into his mouth.

“You’re funny,” said Barbie, peeking at Danny from above the top of her mug. She was still holding it with both hands.

Hal’s eyes danced brightly between his wife and Danny.

Danny crinkled his nose, drew his eyebrows together in a sharp V, and shrugged. He was chewing the dry bread and didn’t want to talk with his mouth full.

“You eat like a child,” she said and used her hands to mimic what he’d done to the thin, round piece of bread. “Tearing off little pieces to eat and stuffing it in your mouth like a chipmunk.”

She’d said it sweetly enough, but Danny flushed nonetheless. He swallowed what was in his mouth but held the other piece in his hand.

“Is he a child or chipmunk?” asked Hal. He chuckled and winked at Danny.

“He’s cute, whatever he is,” said Barbie, affecting a maternal tone. “There’s a sadness in you though, Danny.”

“There’s a sadness in all of us,” Ritz piped up. He had a glass of watered-down orange juice. All the juices had been mixed fifty-fifty with water. “Think about it. We’ve all lost loved ones and friends. Millions of people are dead.”

It surprised Danny to hear Ritz admit to being sad. He was the happiest person he knew. He was always smiling and always positive, annoyingly so.

“We don’t know it’s millions,” said Hal. “Thousands, sure. Tens of thousands, likely. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. But millions?”

Hal took a bite of his naan. A bit of the preserves clung to the corner of his mouth. Barbie took a hand from her mug and gestured to him. He wiped it clean with a napkin.

“It’s millions,” said Ritz. “I’ve heard the chatter. It’s not just LA that got hit. It’s—”

“We know this,” said Hal. “New York, Miami, Houston, and Washington.”

“And Chicago,” added Barbie. “Can’t forget Chicago.”

“It’s other places too,” said Ritz. “It was at hundreds of thousands from the initial attacks. The fallout only adds to the numbers.”

“We still don’t know who did it, do we?” asked Danny. He still had half of the naan in his hand, though he rolled it up.

“Nobody has said for sure,” said Ritz.

“It was the Russians,” Hal stated.

“Maybe,” said Ritz. “Maybe not. We don’t know. Somebody probably knows. But we don’t.”

Danny got the sense this was an oft-repeated conversation and that Ritz and Hal didn’t see eye to eye. They both made sense to him.

Barbie sighed and blew on her coffee. “It’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter who did it. It was done. It doesn’t matter how many died. They are dead. We are here. We are safe. And we have coffee.”

She took another sip and smiled at Danny. He liked her. She was maternal and sensible. He liked Hal too. Even if Hal and Ritz didn’t agree on the particulars of the attack and its aftermath, both men seemed good-hearted.

“Who did you lose?” asked Barbie as Danny popped the rolled bread into his mouth. She noticed this and apologized. “You’re next, then. Ritz, who did you lose that makes you sad? I don’t think we’ve discussed it.”

Ritz finished his allotment of watery juice and grabbed an apple slice from a cutting board on the counter. He eyed Barbie warily and then apparently decided she was being sincere.

“Everyone,” he said and popped the apple slice into his mouth. “My parents, my girlfriend, my pets. I don’t know where any of them are.”

Danny watched Ritz as he spoke. His shoulders, usually pulled back and confident, curled inward. He slouched. His chin trembled. His eyes glistened.

Ritz sighed. “It would be easier to tell you who I didn’t lose.”

Danny sensed Ritz had said as much as he wanted to say. He swallowed his bread and rejoined the conversation.

“Same here,” said Danny. “Except for Maggie. Funny thing is, I lost everyone before the attack. When it happened, I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything. I still don’t. Not really. Maybe that’s why I’m sad. I have nobody to miss.”

A silence draped the room. Nobody was chewing or sipping. Everyone was still.

Barbie lowered her coffee mug and set it on the table in front of her. Using Hal’s shoulder, she pushed herself to her feet. Her chair scraped against the stone floor, and she eased her way across the space to Danny. She put her warm hands on his shoulders and rubbed them and then slid them up to his face, cradling it as a mother would a child.

Danny noticed a tear had streaked the faint layer of powdered makeup on her cheek. She ran her thumbs along his cheekbones and held his gaze with her dewy eyes.

“That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. She glanced over at Ritz and smiled weakly. “No offense to you, honey, but all of us lost people in the attack. It’s sad. But nothing approaches a man having nothing to lose because he’s already lost it.”

She closed her eyes and drew herself into Danny’s body, wrapping her arms around him. He smelled the coffee on her breath. She held him, and he, not sure what else to do, hugged her in return.

He closed his eyes to avoid the stares of Ritz and Hal. He felt them watching him, pitying him in a way his wife had done the last time they’d seen one another. His throat tightened, and he fought the swelling urge to cry.

“You have us now,” Barbie said sweetly as she pulled away, dragging her hands along his back, “and we have you.”

Danny opened his eyes and cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

He glanced at Hal and then over at Ritz. Surprisingly the look in their eyes didn’t resemble pity. It was something more akin to empathy, as if in some way they understood how he felt or, more accurately, how he didn’t feel.

Danny drew in a deep breath and exhaled. He chuckled. “That was a bit heavier than naan bread and coffee. I think I’m full.”

The others laughed. Barbie wiped her eyes with the tips of her fingers, and Hal helped her back into her seat. Danny took another piece of bread from the counter. I’m going to feed Maggie,” he said. “I bet she’s hungry.”

He said goodbye to the group and wound his way back through the hall, retracing his steps. The stone floors were uneven. They tended to slope from the entry toward the back, or bottom, of the compound. It felt like one level but was in reality many. There was a slight curve to the hallways. If seen from above, Danny imagined a corkscrew of passages with rooms jutting off here and there.

It got colder the closer he got to his room, which was about halfway between the kitchen and the end of the corkscrew. Most of the living quarters were deeper in the mountain. Danny guessed this was because it was easier to store all the heavy goods toward the front/top of the compound.

Danny reached his room and turned the knob. He opened it to a shooting sound as the warmer air in his room met the cooler air in the hallway. The compound had power through a hydroelectric generator that pulled water from the Pacific. That same generator also worked as a desalinator that provided potable fresh water. It supplied the toilets and showers, but Ritz had advised Danny not to drink it. They had no way of knowing how much sulphur had leached into the water from the flotsam of ash that coated the water.

As soon as he stepped into the room, Maggie bounded from the bed and jumped to greet him. She planted her paws on his hips and licked at the air. Her tail wagged. When she saw the bread in Danny’s hand, she whimpered.

He greeted her and kissed the top of her head. Then he held up the bread and she dropped to the floor on her hind legs. She sat stoically, patiently, her dark eyes fixed on the bread like heat-seeking missiles.

“You’re a good girl,” he said, and she shifted her weight anxiously from one front paw to the other. “Here you go.”

He handed her the bread and she chomped at it, grabbing it whole with her teeth. She took it over to a round rug at the center of the room and lay down to take her time with the bread.

“I think I’d rather be with you than people,” said Danny. He took two steps over to the bed and plopped down onto the thin mattress. “I kinda feel like we should be out there. Not in here.”

Maggie ignored him as she slopped her way through the bread. He was glad to see her eating. It was hit and miss. Some days she was voracious. Others she was listless and disinterested. She finished the bread and started licking the crumbs from the rug.

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “The people here are nice enough and all, but I don’t feel like we really belong. Besides, there was something adventurous about being outside on the surface.”

Danny knew it was crazy talk. The surface was contaminated with toxins. The degree varied by the proximity to the blasts, but it was all crap. Nothing was really safe, not in the pre-attack sense of the word. Being underground was far preferable for those who wanted to survive.

That was wherein Danny’s dilemma took hold. Did he want to survive? Did he want to spend the rest of his life underground? Ritz had been happy to see him because the group, as it had been, was already growing tired of itself. They wanted someone new to liven up the party.

How would it be in six months or a year? Ritz and Hal, two nice guys, already had tension brewing between them. What would happen when less amenable OASIS dwellers got sick of one another? It was a different but altogether equally lethal type of toxicity. People weren’t meant to live cooped up underground any more than they were supposed to breathe radioactive particles into their lungs.

Danny patted the bed and Maggie sprang from the floor. She hopped onto the mattress, chased her tail for a couple of revolutions, and curled into a ball next to him, resting her head on his thigh.

He stroked her head. She closed her eyes.

“I don’t think I can stay cooped up in here for eternity,” he said to her. “I don’t think you can either. If there’s a chance to get outside, I think we need to take it at some point.”

The walls of his room were a mixture of stone and plaster. They were relatively straight but not exactly plumb. His walls were bare. He hadn’t taken the time to hang anything on them, mostly because he didn’t have anything to hang. Despite his ability to come and go from the room as he pleased, it felt to him like a cell might feel to a prisoner.

The bed was a thin twin mattress atop a piece of plywood cut to fit atop an array of cinderblocks. It was pressed against the corner opposite the door. It also served as a lounger, or daybed, and was the most comfortable piece of furniture in the room. He had a foam pillow, sheets, and a wool-blend blanket.

Next to the bed, on what amounted to be the back wall of the room, was a simple desk with drawers and cabinets. The chair was foldable plastic.

There was an open wardrobe with shelves on the wall to the right of the entry. It had a bar with a few wire hangers atop the shelves. Danny kept his things, what few he had, in the wardrobe.

There was a circular rug on the center of the floor. It was more of a bathmat than a rug and had rubber webbing on the bottom to keep it from sliding out of place. That was it. That was Danny’s home. The toilets, sinks, and showers were in a shared bathroom at the bottom of the corkscrew. Gravity helped with the water pressure, but it was still weak by pre-attack standards. Danny and the others were asked to keep shower length to less than three minutes. They didn’t flush unless there was more than urine in the toilets.

Danny didn’t ask where the waste went. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Trash, which consisted mostly of food waste, was either composted and used in the gardening room or it was incinerated. From what Ritz had told him, he knew the power generator was under the bottom of the corkscrew, as was the water filtration.

The deeper one traveled into the complex, the more evident the generator’s gentle vibration became. There was a constant ambient hum that permeated the entire complex. Danny had noticed it his first day in the OASIS. After that, it became white noise and he couldn’t hear it.

Despite the simplicity of his own quarters, the compound was impressively advanced. The architects had an answer for everything but boredom and claustrophobia.

Danny spent the next hour sitting on the bed, staring at the empty walls and petting his dog, his mind drifting in and out of coherent thought. He was almost asleep when a knock at his door startled him and made Maggie jump from the bed. She loped to the door and started sniffing at the gap at the floor.

“Who is it?” Danny asked, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

“It’s Ritz.”

“C’mon in.”

The door opened and Ritz, smiling as usual, slid inside. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it.

He ran his hand along the short trim of his hair and then scratched the top of his head. Maggie was at his side, sniffing and assessing.

“Hey,” said Ritz, “I’m sorry about earlier. That breakfast got awkward really fast.”

“It’s fine,” said Danny. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“I didn’t realize you’d been alone,” said Ritz. “I imagine that’s—”

Danny waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. It’s in the past. I’m here now. The newest and last member of the OASIS clan.”

Ritz chuckled. “That might not be the case. That’s why I’m here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Danny, his interest piqued.

“There might be more coming.”

“Who?”

“Well,” said Ritz, “I say they’re coming, but it’s more like we might need to go get them.”

Danny stood from the bed and stepped toward Ritz. “Go outside?”

Ritz looked at the floor and nodded. “I know it’s not ideal, but since you’re the newest—”

“It’s fine,” said Danny. “I’m fine with it. When do I leave? Where do I go?”

Ritz blinked and tilted his head to one side. “That’s not the reaction I was expecting.”

Danny swallowed and searched for a response other than I need to get out of here. He shrugged. “Everyone should have the chance to stay here as long as we have room for them. If I can help bring others to the sanctuary of the OASIS, I’m happy to do it. It’s the least I can do.”

Ritz stared at Danny for a moment, measuring the response. Then he nodded and smiled.

“Makes sense,” he said. “C’mon, follow me.”

Danny followed Ritz into the hallway, trailed by Maggie, who kept pace at Danny’s side. They wound their way back up the corkscrew toward the kitchen and the rooms at the top of the compound.

They made their way back to the main entrance. It was a sleek, modern space that was different than the rest of the OASIS. To their side was the concierge sitting at her glass and chrome desk. Danny had learned her name was Betty. She wore the same bright smile, thin yellow sweater, and dark blue pencil skirt she’d worn the first day he’d seen her more than a month earlier.

Ritz stopped at her desk and greeted her. He said something that Danny couldn’t hear. Betty nodded and handed him a key.

Danny looked at the key in Ritz’s hand as his friend walked toward him. It was unusual, not because it was an old-fashioned skeleton key, but because none of the other rooms in the OASIS had locks. There was a general understanding that if a door was open, anyone could enter. If it was closed, one had to knock and ask for permission.

Since nobody had anything of real value and everyone knew each other, there was no concern about theft or assault. Danny thought it naive and a bizarrely utopian way of thinking, but he played along.

Ritz walked past Danny to a door opposite Betty’s desk. Danny glanced at her, she smiled at him cheerfully, and he followed Ritz to the door. He’d never noticed it before, even though he’d been to the main entry a handful of times since his arrival.

In a fluid set of moves, Ritz slid the key into the lock, turned it, swung open the door, and removed the key. He walked it back to Betty, handed it to her, and then waved Danny through the door.

Once Danny and Maggie had cleared the threshold, Ritz closed the door behind them. Like the rest of the OASIS, it was lit by sconces evenly spaced along the walls. They walked for a short distance along what Danny could sense was a shallow rise in their elevation. In the distance, he heard the murmur and faint echo of a conversation. He couldn’t make out the words or determine who was talking until they’d reached the end of the rise and entered a room that widened into a rectangular space.

The room looked like a command center. There were tables strewn with maps and diagrams, electronic consoles connected to wires, which ran along the walls and ceiling in a web Danny couldn’t make sense of. And there was the distinct odor of hot coffee.

Sitting around the desks and at the consoles were three people Danny recognized but hadn’t spent much time getting to know. All of them turned when Danny entered the room. Their eyes drifted to Maggie. None of them looked thrilled to see the dog.

One was the doctor who’d examined him when he’d first arrived. Everyone called him Doc. He was a middle-aged man with a full head of hair that always looked as if it hadn’t been brushed. His thick black-rimmed glasses sat low on his nose.

He was taller than Danny, maybe six feet two or three. He carried a heavy gut despite appearing thin from behind. His face was permanently concerned. A quartet of lines, like waves drawn on paper, decorated his brow. He frowned even when he wasn’t frowning. He spoke deliberately, apparently measuring every word he uttered.

Another was a woman named Gilda. Danny had met her in passing in the hydroponic greenhouse, where they grew algae and potatoes. She had a green thumb. She was average height but muscular, her white-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun atop her head, which accentuated the strength of her neck and shoulders.

The third was the man at the controls of a radio. He had over-the-ear headphones wrapped around his neck and wore a Los Angeles Dodgers sweatshirt. His brown skin, smooth and even, belied his age. The white hair that wrapped his temples and framed his bald head gave it away. He was probably in his late forties, but if he shaved the gray and went bald, Danny figured he might pass for late twenties.

His name was Victor. He had been an electrical engineer before the attacks, and he’d wired the room with communications equipment. He was the first of the three to speak.

“Welcome to the hub,” he said. “It’s good to have you here.”

“Welcome,” echoed the others.

Maggie sat at Danny’s side. She was panting. The room was warmer than the rest of the compound given the heavy dose of electronics humming and whirring on its tables.

“Thanks,” said Danny. “Good to be here.”

Ritz opened his mouth to speak when one of the radios interrupted him. A voice, buried in static but audible, squawked through a tabletop speaker in front of Victor.

“Hello, K6VWV, are you still there? This is Michael. We’re considering your offer. Over.”

Victor raised a finger with a sly smile and slid the headphones over his ears. He raised the attached mic to his mouth and keyed a button on a keyboard in front of him.

“Hi, Michael. This is K6VWV. I’m here. We’re here. Take your time. There’s no rush, but we are getting together a team to come get you. Over.”

Danny watched the room. Everybody’s eyes were on the speaker atop the desk. They were waiting for a response.

Gilda folded her arms across her chest. Her neck flexed. Her bun was unmoved. Danny thought he’d caught her stealing a glance at him, but he wasn’t sure.

Doc tugged on his pants, pulling them up across his belly, and worked to tuck in his shirt. And then the response came. It sounded as if the sender were on another planet or transmitting through a tin can on the end of a string.

“This is Michael,” the voice said through the static. “Can you accommodate four of us? Over.”

Victor pressed the key and pinched the mic’s windscreen between his fingers. “Yes. As we discussed previously, we can accommodate you. We have plenty of room for—” He kept the mic keyed but paused to look down at a pad of paper on the table in front of him. He squinted and read from the notes. “—you, William, Keri, and Barker. It’s not a problem. Over.”

“We’ll get back to you soon,” said Michael. “Thank you. Over.”

“We’ll be listening,” said Victor. “Over.”

Victor pulled the headphones from his ears, draping them again around his neck. He leaned back in his chair and motioned toward the others in the room. He introduced them and explained why they’d called Danny into the hub.

“You’re the most recent of us to be outside,” he said. “That is, you were the last one here.”

“I’m the first to go?” asked Danny. He knew it sounded defensive, even though he hadn’t intended it. He was okay with leaving the confines of the underground corkscrew. “Ritz told me you wanted me to go on an expedition.”

“Not exactly,” said Victor. He unplugged the headphones from the radio and stood from his seat. He walked over to the others and joined them, like a troika conferring before a military action.

“Gilda,” he said, “would you like to explain?”

Gilda nodded. Her voice was softer, more feminine than Danny had expected. “We believe you have a better understanding of the conditions we’ll face. We need that insight.”

“And…we…like that you have a dog,” said Doc, pausing before critical words he wanted to emphasize. “Your dog could…come in handy. We know she was helpful to you in…extreme…circumstances.”

“I’ll be leading the expedition,” said Gilda. “Victor and Ritz will come along. Victor is our radioman. Ritz is a paramedic. You and Maggie are…”

Danny raised an eyebrow. Maggie’s ears pricked. “Just me and Maggie,” he said.

Gilda eyed him up and down, as if taking stock of his plusses and minuses. She furrowed her brow, pulling her bun forward on the top of her head. “I don’t follow.”

Danny shrugged. “I don’t have any particular skills. I’m just the dude with a dog.”

Victor smiled broadly. “No, that’s not it. As we said, you’ve been out there more recently. Having the dog helps.”

“It doesn’t matter what the reason is,” Danny said. “You don’t have to sell me. I’m in. If we need to go get people, I’m good with it.”

“Good,” said Victor. “That’s good.”

“Is this the first rescue mission?” Danny asked. “Have you done this sort of thing before? I know most of us aren’t original OASIS.”

Gilda shook her head. “No.”

“Not even for your family members or friends?” Danny pressed. The morning’s breakfast conversation had him thinking about what the other survivors had lost. Was he the only one who had nothing to lose?

Gilda tensed and narrowed her eyes. But she didn’t answer. She let Doc handle it.

“We’ve been…selective,” he began. “We need people of…certain types, who bring…assets to our small…community.”

“Assets?”

“People need to pull their weight,” said Gilda, “or bring something unique. None of us had family that survived the attack. A couple of the others you referred to as not being original OASIS were friends of ours. They made their way here on their own.”

Danny nodded toward the radio. “What do these people offer? Michael and the others?”

The troika exchanged knowing glances. They all knew the answer but, from Danny’s perspective, couldn’t decide whether or not to share it. Doc nodded at the other two and sighed before offering the explanation.

“They’re young,” said Doc. “They’re smart. That’s…important. We know they have different areas of study, which could be…beneficial. Intellectual diversity is a key component of any…burgeoning…micro-society.”

“And two of them are a couple,” interjected Gilda, her ice blue gaze lingering on Danny in a way that sent a bolt of electricity through his chest. “We need babies. Long term. Down the road. We need people who can procreate. Because when we get old, we’ll need younger people to take care of us.”

Danny blurted out a chuckle. Then he caught himself and pressed his lips together in silence.

“What’s funny?” asked Gilda, frowning as if he’d hurt her feelings. There was a chink in the armor.

“Nothing,” said Danny.

“Danny?” asked Victor in a way that prompted a response.

Danny sighed. “It’s just that I don’t think any of us are going to live that long. We’ve all been exposed to the radiation. I’ve rolled around in the ash, breathed it in, wiped it off my face. Long-term survival is a pipe dream.”

Doc’s perpetual frown deepened. “Then…why…are you here?”

Four sets of eyes settled on him. Danny flushed with embarrassment. He shouldn’t have chuckled. He shouldn’t have spoken up.

They were right to ask. Why was he here? Why had he fought to find a place to stay, to defend himself against the intruders at Ken and Barbie’s house? That, he assumed, was instinct.

“The short term,” he answered.

Doc’s stoic face twitched. Gilda smirked. Victor smiled.

“Short term it is,” said Victor. “I think—”

The radio behind him chirped, and a burst of static gave way to Michael offering his group’s decision. Victor slid back to his chair and plugged in his headset.

“This is Michael. Are you listening, K6VWV? Over.”

Victor adjusted the mic at his face and shifted his weight in his chair. He pressed the key and spoke calmly in a voice slightly dissimilar from his normal conversational tone.

“Hello, Michael. This is K6VWV. We copy you loud and clear. Your signal is good. Do you copy? Over.”

“I copy, Victor,” said Michael. “We’ve decided to take you up on your offer. We’ll come to your place. Over.”

Victor checked with the others over his shoulder, who nodded their approval. He turned back to the radio and pressed the transmission key. “Excellent. We copy that. Give us a day to organize and we’ll be on our way. Bring what you can carry on your back. Keep this channel open in case we need to touch base. Over.”

“Copy that. Over.”

“We will let you know when we are on our way,” said Victor. “Until then. Over.” He pushed back from the radio and clapped his hands together. “This is good. Now we need to finish formulating the route, pack our provisions, and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”

“How far are we going?” asked Danny. Maggie was at his side but was lying down, her head resting on her paws.

“Ten to twelve miles,” said Gilda. “It depends on the route.”

“Where are we going?”

“Westwood,” said Gilda.

“UCLA?”

“Yes.” Gilda waved him to the table with the maps. There were chairs for all of them, and they sat together discussing their options.

Their initial journey would invariably take them southeast along the Pacific Coast Highway. Danny would be retracing the route he’d taken to get to the villa. He told them he hadn’t encountered any obstacles or dangers on the PCH. Of course, it had been a month since he’d made the journey, he reminded them.

From PCH there were several options they could employ to head north and east toward Westwood. Sunset Boulevard was a straight shot aside from a hairpin S curve that had them backtracking a bit near Rustic Creek. At the same spot they’d leave PCH and take Sunset, they had the option of shifting south and making a couple of turns to walk San Vicente Boulevard all the way to the Veterans Hospital west of the 405. From there they could take Wilshire onto campus. It was the shortest route at under ten miles.

The longest option was to take PCH all the way to Santa Monica. At the pier, they could catch I-10 and take it to the 405 heading north until it hit Wilshire.

The debate centered on whether surface streets or highways were the better option. There was likely less human traffic on the highways, but there was more exposure to the elements and potential threats.

“I think we’re better off taking the shorter route,” said Victor. “It’s more of a straight line and helps us keep radio contact. Drifting farther south creates some problems, especially if we move south of the Wilshire corridor with all of its tall buildings.”

Gilda listened intently, nodding as Victor made his point. Then she ran her fingers along the map in front of her, smoothing its creases, and sighed.

“Okay,” she said. “That makes sense. I’m concerned about our exposure here, at the creek. Because we make this horseshoe turn, we give spotters, up on the ridge at its center, the chance to rat us out. It makes ambushing us a lot easier.”

Ritz spoke for the first time since they’d sat around the table. He’d been leaning on it with his elbows but sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you talking about when you say spotters and ambushes?” he asked. “That’s the first I’ve heard of any of it. I thought I was going in case somebody got injured from a fall or something like that. I didn’t think I was going to be a field medic.”

Gilda shot Victor a glance and offered a barely perceptible nod.

“We’ve been hearing chatter on the radio,” Victor said. “Nothing big, nothing concrete. But enough that it worries us. There might be small gangs of thieves, marauders maybe, who are jacking unsuspecting travelers.”

Ritz’s eyes widened. He waved his hands in front of his face. “Whoa, that’s news. First that there are any people traveling in this at all, and second that there are organized gangs attacking them.”

“Like I said,” offered Victor, “it’s chatter.”

Ritz’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to Gilda. “Why are we going, then? Why do we need to get these kids if those risks exist? We’re fine with the people we have. We can make a go of it. Besides, Danny is not wrong when he says planning for the long term is ambitious at best.”

Doc leaned in from his seat. He wasn’t going on the trip. They couldn’t risk losing their only physician if things went south. But he was integral to the planning of the excursion. “These…youngsters…need help. They are clearly…resilient…in that we’ve learned over the course of our…dialogue…they have established their own community on the Hill. They’ve pieced together their defenses, managed to feed and house themselves effectively, and create a sense of…social order. They each know their roles.”

Gilda raised her hand to stop Doc’s dissertation. “We need smart people,” she said. “We need young people. And they need us. They’ll die up there if they stay exposed. You’re right, they may already be dying. So are we. Everybody is. That doesn’t mean we give up.”

“We’ve been scanning the airwaves since the attack,” Victor said. “We’ve sought survivors who could clearly communicate with us. That meant they were close enough we could reach them with the antenna we raised post-attack.”

“Post-attack?” asked Danny.

“We had it ready to go,” Victor said. “But it was hidden beneath the rock. Part of the plan for this place, which truly began as the museum was being built in the 1950s, was protection from nuclear war. That was a big thing back then. An exposed antenna would have fried in the attack’s electromagnetic pulse. We kept it encased in the hillside. When we activated, we raised it.”

“Good plan,” said Danny.

“That said,” Victor continued, “we’ve known from day one we’d need more people. It’s why we let Ritz come. It’s why you’re here, Danny. You didn’t know it, but we’ve turned others away. Either they didn’t come in, or we examined them and released them back into the wild.”

“This isn’t some spur-of-the-moment decision,” said Gilda. “It’s always been part of the plan. These kids are the best chance we have at getting the kind of people we want while providing us a relatively short trip to get them.”

“Why not let them come on their own?” Ritz questioned. “That would eliminate our risk.”

“We don’t want them picking up…stragglers…on the way,” said Doc. “Our screening of these students was…methodical. Victor asked and answered questions with my guidance and that of our sociologist. It was…carefully crafted.”

“We also don’t want to give out our address,” said Gilda. “If they know it and something bad happens to them, the wrong people might show up at our door, and that creates a whole new set of problems.”

“You want everyone to come,” said Danny. “But you don’t want just anyone to come.”

Gilda pointed a trigger finger at Danny. “Exactly.”

Danny understood that there was nothing sinister or conspiratorial about these people. They were smart. They were a little odd, yes, but they knew what they were doing, at least as far as what they wanted to carry out. They wanted to live with people who would help them survive as long as possible in an environment not conducive to survival. The risk to them was worth the potential gain.

Gilda surveyed the group at the table. “Okay. Can we settle on a route?”

The others nodded their agreement, and she traced her finger along the map, running it down PCH and then up San Vicente. It was the compromise that gave them better radio access without the danger of the switchback S curve on Sunset.

“Now that we’ve gotten that settled, I’ve got a list of things we need to pack. I’ll split it up amongst you. Once you’ve got it, bring it back here. Betty will let you in the hub. We’ll depart first thing tomorrow.”

She handed out hand-scribbled supply lists to Victor and Ritz. Victor was responsible for the electronics. Ritz was in charge of obtaining medical supplies.

Danny held out his hand. “Do I get a list?”

“You get me,” said Gilda, a glint in her eye. “We’re going to get the food.”

***

The greenhouse rooms were remarkable. Danny hadn’t seen them before, aside from standing at the door of the outermost room where he’d first met Gilda. She had been tending to algae and he’d stopped to introduce himself. She hadn’t made the effort to stop her work, so he’d waved and went on his way.

Now he was with her, aiding in the effort to take with them what they’d need on what Gilda thought might be as long as a four-day journey. They could make the ten miles in a day. Or it could be two. It depended on the ash fall and the wind.

The room was carved from rock like the rest of the bunker complex, but unlike the soft sconce lighting in the rest of the OASIS, this one was bathed in bright sunlight-imitating grow lights. It was warmer and more humid in the space. Long, waist-high tables ran the length of the room and parallel to one another. Gilda stood between two of these long tables, examining fresh sprouts.

“It’s an incredible thing, isn’t it?” she asked, her hands gloved in latex and flitting over a plot of greens. “This place?”

Without lifting her head, she looked across the table at Danny, her eyes angled up at him. One eyebrow was raised.

He nodded. “Yes,” he said, breathing the warm damp air. “It’s even more amazing they built this place without anyone knowing about it.”

A smile crept across Gilda’s face as she gently tamped the soil around one of the delicate plants. It told Danny he didn’t know the half of it.

“Oh,” she said, “people knew. The various Getty interests paid a lot of people of lot of money to construct this marvel. No doubt. From the government pencil pushers who had to sign off on plans to the architects and engineers, there’s no telling how many people knew about this place and what it was intended to do. Drawing water from the ocean and funneling it under the PCH to the complex for power and consumption was incredibly controversial at the time.”

“It would be now too, wouldn’t it?”

Gilda looked past Danny, considering his point, and nodded.

“And nobody said anything?”

She slinked along the table and moved toward its end, which held a series of large aquariums filled with green-colored water. Above the tanks and angled off to their sides were orange lights. Gilda held her hand under one of the lights.

“Of course they said something,” she said incredulously. “But this was during the Cold War, when everyone was building bunkers. Everybody was worried about nuclear war.”

“But it’s a secret.”

She shrugged. “All of those people are dead now, so they’re not talking. After a generation the idea of a bunker complex beneath the museum became urban legend, and then people forgot.”

Danny walked along his aisle to stand across from Gilda. The green tanks were between them. “Algae?” he asked.

Yes,” she said like a teacher acknowledging a correct answer. “Spirulina, more specifically. Great nutrients. Easy to grow, though we do have to use a different, warmer grow light on the tanks.”

Gilda motioned to the orange light and then pointed vaguely to the cooler-colored overhead grow lights in the rest of the room. She picked up a plastic bottle, uncapped it, and shook a thin strip of paper into her hand. She recapped the bottle and dipped the strip into one of the tanks. “Testing the alkalinity,” she said. “Spirulina is pretty hardy. It can handle high alkaline content. But we like to know what we’ve got. We do use charcoal filters for the water we cycle through the tanks.”

“It tastes okay,” Danny said. “I’ve had it with a few meals.”

“It’s good to balance out the diet,” she said. “Takes the edge off the sugars we put in our body.”

“It’s like a sludge,” he said.

She chuckled. “Yeah, though its chemical structure is like a corkscrew. Similar to the design of the OASIS.”

Danny noticed she was almost pretty when she laughed. The hard edge of her muscles relaxed and made her seem vulnerable.

He ignored the speck of attraction and furrowed his brow. “Was that on purpose?”

“No. Coincidence. Or divine. Take your pick.” She checked the strip against a chart on the side of the bottle. “All good,” she said and motioned for Danny to follow her through a doorway and into the next room.

The setup was resemblant of the antechamber, absent the algae tanks. Sitting on the tables were large trays mounted on top of water tanks. Black plastic irrigation tubing ran from the tanks and into the trays. The chug and gurgle of air pumps resonated through the space.

“We don’t have a lot of soil,” she said, referencing the table in front of her. “Whatever we can grow hydroponically, that’s what we do. Potatoes are perfect for this. I’m assuming you’ve eaten our potatoes.”

“At every dinner,” said Danny. “And most lunches. When I have lunch.”

“We like them because they provide fiber, potassium, protein, iron, and most importantly vitamin C. Come on this side. These trays should be ready for harvest. We’ll take what we can get and carry them with us on the trip.”

Danny moved around the end of the table to join Gilda. She pulled up the side of the tray, revealing a bounty of palm-sized brown potatoes. She handed him a pair of scissors she’d been carrying, which Danny used to start cutting at the veiny tangle of roots. Her gloved hand touched his and lingered there for a moment.

“Won’t this be heavy to carry?” he asked.

Gilda held out a bag for him to drop in the potatoes and offered a smile. “We have some MREs. We’ll take those too. But having a few potatoes apiece is never a bad thing. It’s good for bartering too, if we get in trouble. You know the old saying?”

Danny dropped a pair of spuds in the bag. “What’s that?”

“Give a man a French fry and you feed him for a day,” she said, peeling back the other corner of the tray. “Give him a potato and feed him for a lifetime.”

Danny smirked and cut. “I don’t think that’s the saying.”

“It’s a joke,” Gilda said dryly. “I do have a sense of humor.”

Danny plucked another potato and dropped it into the bag. He raised his eyebrows in doubt and smirked again.

“This is gonna be a fun little quest, isn’t it?” she said.

Danny sighed, realizing he was the one without the sense of humor. He knew that among all the infinite words Gilda could use to describe their rescue mission, of all the descriptive adjectives she could likely conjure, fun was the least accurate.

“I don’t know about fun,” he said.

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I know,” he said, cutting another potato from its lifeline.

Gilda sighed. “What’s with you, Danny Correa? What’s your story? Why so serious?”

Now that was funny, and Danny laughed. “That story is way too long to tell you.”

“We’ve got eternity.”

Danny looked up from the underside of the tray and noticed Gilda’s sharp features had softened. Instead of the tight expression she’d worn since he’d seen her in the hub, there was a hint of sympathy. Her eyes were narrow with concern, searching his. Instead of her mouth being pressed into a tight, flat line, her teeth pressed against her lower lip expectantly.

He stared at her for a beat past comfortable, and a wave of warbling heat coursed through his body. She blinked her ice blue eyes, glanced at the bag, and swallowed. Maybe she’d felt it too. She used one hand to check the bun at the apex of her head. Then clearing her throat, she shook the bag open again. The potatoes thumped together in the bottom.

“Maybe later,” Danny said.

“I didn’t take you for the strong, silent type,” she said, looking at the bag in her hands.

Danny laughed again. “I’m not strong. And I’m not used to talking to anyone but Maggie.”

Gilda lifted her head, a mischievous smile revealing her bright white teeth. “You ask a lot of questions though.”

He twisted the last of the potatoes free of its home then tossed it into the bag. His hand accidentally grazed hers, and they looked at each other. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched a woman, even accidentally.

That wasn’t true. He remembered the last time he’d touched his ex. He’d replayed it in his mind over and again. He’d paused it, rewound it, tried to find clues. He never could. There were none. Not until she’d announced she was gone and there was another man, stronger, more articulate, richer, better than him.

“I have a lot of questions,” he said. “I just don’t have any answers.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Maybe you’ll get used to talking to me. I wouldn’t mind.”

Danny took a step back. “Maybe. I wouldn’t mind that either.”

Gilda cleared her throat again and blinked herself from what Danny wondered might be a trance. She looped the top of the bag into a knot and traded it for the scissors. “We should get going. We’ve got to hit the dry pantry and pack our bags. We have a lot to do before tomorrow.”

Danny slung the bag over his shoulder and followed her back into the relative chill of the stone corkscrew. He watched her hips swing as she walked and traced the curve of her hips into the narrow of her waist. His heart fluttered.

“Are you watching me walk?” Gilda asked without turning around. “I can feel it.”

Danny spluttered, unable to say anything intelligible. He switched the bag from one shoulder to the other and cast his eyes at the floor ahead of his feet. His face and neck suddenly felt hot.

She glanced over her shoulder, smiling. Danny looked up and noticed a dimple in her cheek he hadn’t seen before.

“It’s okay,” she said. “But I get to walk behind you at some point. Fair is fair.”

CHAPTER 11

Saturday, August 9, 2025

DAY FORTY-NINE

Bel Air, Los Angeles, California

Clint was having trouble catching his breath. His throat ached, and his heart pounded against his chest. He pulled the bottom of his shirt up to his face and wiped his mouth, lingering at the corners. He exhaled, trying to slow his pulse from his most recent coughing fit, and stared at the thin smear of red on the shirt. He ran his tongue across the roof of his mouth and over his teeth, tasting the now familiar coppery residue of blood.

He was sitting on a curb in a service alley behind a house large enough to house a third of the people on the beach he’d left behind ten days earlier. He blinked his vision back into focus and relished in the swirl of a refreshing, if not toxic, breeze tunneling through the alley.

Before the fit, he’d thrown up into one of the half-dozen trash cans next to him. Some of them, most of them actually, were recycling bins. But they were teeming with trash. And rats.

He’d eaten one of them the night before, having charred it over a small fire Filter had managed to construct with trash and a lighter. He couldn’t be sure if the vomiting was from the rat or the radioactive poison slowly killing him.

He’d seen more and more dead bodies littering the roads and gutters as the days had passed. He wondered about the conditions on the beach. How much had they worsened since they’d left? How many of the tents and boxes housed people as sick as him, or worse? As much as he regretted having left the beach, and its access to the easy trade of goods, it was much more desirable not to be in a place where morning brought it closer to a sand-packed graveyard replete with makeshift mausoleums.

His heart rate having slowed and the pain in his chest subsided, Clint pushed himself from the curb and trudged through the newly accumulated mounds of ash toward the street. He emerged from the alley as he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

Awaiting him was what was left of his army. What had been forty was down to ten. And that ten was threatening to shrink to five or three or one.

None of what he had promised had come to pass. The march here had been harder than he’d expected. Gusts of ash and coldness had made it challenging at best and demoralizing at worst.

And the estates on the city’s west side were more secure than they had imagined. Fences, gates, security systems, dogs, and armed homeowners had left them empty-handed for the most part.

Sure, they’d managed some food, clothing, and some other supplies through the occasional mugging, but it wasn’t much. They’d even killed one man when ripping his pack from him. While Jesse distracted the man, begging for help for nonexistent children, one of the other men had snuck up behind the unsuspecting loner and yanked his pack from behind.

The man had fallen back and hit the back of his head on the asphalt. He was dead within minutes. They’d taken the pack, his clothing, and left his body in the street, nude and bloodied.

The one house they’d managed to penetrate was devoid of food and heat. The owners, or some previous squatter, had even taken the sheets off the beds. While it served as a base of operations and a place to stay out of the ash at night, it wasn’t much more than a fancy tent. The toilets didn’t flush, the water in the sinks and tubs was sporadic, the water in the pool out back was ash-laden and worthless. The liquor cabinet was empty aside from Cointreau. The men had finished it the first night.

Filter had been particularly nasty about it. Despite having stuck around, he repeatedly reminded Clint of what he’d left behind. He’d had four solid walls and a roof. He’d had privacy and security. He’d given it up for a far less valuable prize behind door number three.

Clint had shot back that the choice had been Filter’s. Nobody had forced him to make the choice to search for something better. No one had put a gun to his head.

Filter didn’t want to hear it. He blamed Clint. Their relationship was strained, and many of the remaining men were looking to the perpetually stoned Filter rather than Clint for guidance and leadership.

Instead of Washington crossing the Delaware, Clint had found himself more akin to Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty. He was getting sicker by the day and wondered if maybe his men might kill him before the radiation did but had stopped believing in miracles long ago. His strength, his resolve, and his ability to shoot down rebels was diminishing by the day. He was approaching what was left of his ineffective army, ready to tell them to give up on him, when the radio on his hip squawked.

He didn’t even realize he’d turned it on, so the squelch of noise startled him. He froze in the street a few yards from his men and unclipped the radio from his belt.

Jesse and Filter drifted from the group toward Clint. Filter glanced at the radio in Clint’s hand and pointed at it with the blunt he had between his thumb and index finger.

“That thing getting a signal?” he asked. “Somebody talking?”

Clint shrugged.

“You look like a dead man,” said Jesse. He pulled his shirt over his girth, but it wasn’t big enough to cover it much below his navel. “Seriously, bro, you look like you died. Like a zombie. You know, one of those—”

Clint wasn’t interested in hearing the opinion of a man whose head looked like a scab receptacle. “I get it, Jesse. I feel worse than I look.”

Jesse and Filter exchanged glances. The radio crackled again.

“…copy you. This is Michael,” said the voice over the speaker. It was relatively clear. “Can you hear me, K6VWV? Over.”

“You gonna answer that?” Filter asked and took a drag, holding it in his lungs.

Clint shook his head. “No, I’m just going to listen. I wanna see who K6VWV is. Let’s see if they—”

“We copy you,” came a second voice. This one sounded older than the first. It was calmer too. But the transmission carried with it more static, indicating they were farther away.

“Glad you hear us too,” said the second voice. “We’re on our way. All is good and on schedule so far. Be packed and ready to go as discussed. Over.”

Clint turned up the volume on the radio. Others from the group wandered over to join him, Jesse, and Filter.

One of them asked, “What are you doing?”

Clint held a finger and pressed it to his lips. He looked at the frequency on the radio’s LCD display: 146.52. He pointed to it and showed it to Jesse. “Remember this number,” he whispered as it crackled to life again.

“How much of our food do you want us to pack?” asked Michael. “We have plenty. Over.”

Clint’s pulse quickened again as he listened. The others drew closer, all of them transfixed by the possibilities. Sensing their interest and trying to soften their palpable resentment, Clint turned up the volume and held out the radio so all of them could hear more easily. He offered a weak smile, which none of them returned.

“Pack whatever you can carry,” came the reply. “You’ll need it for the trip back. Over.”

Jesse tugged on his shirt again and whispered, “Where are these people?”

Others shushed him, and Clint shrugged. He held up the radio, aiming its antenna skyward.

“Copy that,” said Michael. “Again, it’s four of us. We’ll be ready and waiting on the Hill. Let us know when you’re close. Over.”

The response was immediate. “It could be midday tomorrow,” said K6VWV. “The ash is bad out here. The wind has picked up again. It’s slow going. Over.”

“Copy that,” said Michael. “I’ll keep the channel open. Over.”

Clint waited for a response from K6VWV. There wasn’t one. After a minute, he turned off the radio and clipped it to his waistband. The others looked at him expectantly, as if the brief transmission between two strangers had magically restored his sway.

He put his hands on his hips. “All right, this is good. We’ve got a lead on some food, and we know where it is. It’s close too.”

“We do?” asked Filter, the blunt sticking to his lower lip, hanging there.

“The Hill,” said Clint.

“Dude,” said Filter, “this is LA. There are as many hills as there are douchebags.”

“Probably more hills,” added Jesse. “A lot of those douchebags are dead.”

“Good point,” said Filter. He chuckled, leading the rest of the group to laugh.

Clint clenched his jaw and exhaled slowly. He didn’t want to lose his cool. He couldn’t afford to spend the energy on frustration.

“It’s the Hill,” he said. “At UCLA.”

“What’s that?” asked Jesse.

“It’s where the students live,” said Clint. “All of the dorms are there. It’s on the other side of Sunset, a few miles from here. That one voice on the radio, Michael, is a student. No doubt. Easy pickings.”

“How are we going to find them when we get there?” asked Filter. “There’s more than one dorm, right?”

Clint unclipped the radio and waggled it in front of the others. “We’re closer than the people coming for them,” he said. “We get there; we turn this on; we pretend we’re K6VWV. They come out to us. We do what we do.”

“College kids,” said Jesse.

“College kids,” said Clint. He surveyed the others. They shrugged or nodded their agreement. They were in.

“Let’s get our stuff from the house and head out,” said Clint. “We could be there in a couple of hours.”

Filter took a final toke and flicked the stub of his blunt onto the street. He exhaled slowly; a warm cloud of smoke billowed from his nose and mouth before evaporating into the ash.

It wasn’t windy in Bel Air. The occasional breeze blew through the dense but thinning canopy of brown oaks and sycamores. The brittle branches rustled and creaked. The ash was thinner in the air at the moment, a fine dust like that which was once visible in fans of sunlight slicing through the rooms of an unkempt house.

Clint watched the others disband and trudge up an incline toward their gated base of operations. It was a five-minute walk from where they’d heard about their possible salvation on the radio that was now affixed to Clint’s hip.

He dragged behind them, taking his time to consider what was next. His arms swung at his sides, propelling him up the slope. He ran his tongue along his teeth. He could taste the blood from the back of his throat.

He listened to the clop of the boots and shoes of the men ahead of him, measuring the random rhythm of the rise and fall of their soles on the ash-coated street. Small clouds of the particulate hung at their ankles as they moved forward.

Clint knew he didn’t have long. That much was evident in his inability to hold down food, the blood in what little stool he produced, and his unshakable malaise. A couple of the other men were sick too. None of them had very long. There was too much fallout.

They’d all been too close to the attack, whether it was on the fringes of ground zero as he’d been, or on the edge of the city, where the ash relentlessly fell. It invaded everything. It was like sand in a desert, seeking and finding secret places to hide. It had found its way into his lungs, or stomach, or both. He crept slowly up the rise, thinking about what that meant.

If he was honest with himself, it meant that whatever he did in the next few days was pointless. However much food he stole, however many college kids he robbed of their homes or lives, he would still end up dead, his emaciated corpse in a pool of his own blood. There was no doubt about that.

But Clint was never a man who was honest with himself. He lied to himself, justifying his foul actions one way or another. It was how a man like him could sleep at night after doing the things that he’d done. He was a victim. His cards were low numbers and unmatched suits. Everything he did was justified, no matter what it did to others.

With that in mind, what this meant to Clint was that the trip to the Hill and potential bounty that awaited him there was one last adventure. It was one final opportunity to exact on the world the kind of pain and misfortune the world had pressed upon him. It was a chance to show the wavering band of men trudging in the ash up ahead of him that he’d been right all along. There was a pot of gold at the end of their rainbow, and he would lead them to it.

Clint smiled to himself. This was what he needed. One. Last. Hurrah.

Yes!

A renewed sense of purpose swelled in his chest, and he picked up his pace. He swallowed the blood collecting beneath his tongue and took a long drag of the ashy air, filling his wounded lungs with energy and suppressing a phlegmy cough.

He flexed his fingers as he swung his arms at his sides faster and with more vigor. He balled those fingers into fists and pushed them through the air, working to catch his men so he could lead them.

CHAPTER 12

Saturday, August 9, 2025

DAY FORTY-NINE

Westwood, California

“You don’t think this is overkill?” asked Keri. “They said they had food.”

“I think we should take what we can carry,” said Michael. “That’s what they said.”

They were standing inside the walk-in cooler that was barely lower than the ambient temperature of the dry storage surrounding them. None of the food in the cooler was cold, and they’d long ago consumed the majority of the food that needed refrigeration.

They’d been using the cooler to store as much of their food as they could fit inside it. The cooler, unlike the dry storage, had a thick metal door with a lock on it.

After the incident with the gun-toting family, they’d decided a secure location was far better than one without any deterrent. Now all four of them stood inside picking through what they thought were the best options for travel. It was getting late in the day. They’d spent much of it packing their clothes and emergency supplies, which were in bags in their room. Packing the food was their last task before getting to bed early. There were only a few hours of daylight left.

“How much water you think we should take?” asked Dub. He was standing in front of a pallet with their last five cases of bottled water. “My thoughts are all of it.”

Barker was stuffing sleeves of wheat crackers into a drawstring bag. It was the kind of cheap swag given away at extracurricular fairs. He gave Dub a sideways glance. “We can’t carry all of it. Way too heavy and way too far to go. It’s what, like ten or twelve miles?”

Michael nodded. “That’s what they said.”

“Where exactly is it again?” asked Barker.

“They didn’t say,” said Michael. “On the coast. That’s all I know.”

Barker pulled the stuffed nylon bag closed and slipped it onto his back. “And who are they again?”

Michael rubbed the top of his head with both hands. “I told you this already, Barker. We’ve discussed it. We don’t know exactly who they are. They have an underground bunker, running water and power, and sustainable food.”

“I’m still iffy on this,” said Barker, adjusting the drawstrings on his shoulder. “How do we know they’re not cannibals or something?”

“Cannibals?” asked Keri. “Seriously?”

Barker shrugged. “Just saying.”

“Back to the water,” said Dub. “We don’t have to carry all of it. We can have our tour guides take some too. They’ll have packs, I’d guess. How many of them are there?”

“Four,” said Michael. “I think.”

“Four cannibals,” said Barker.

Keri rolled her eyes. “That’s not helping.”

“I’m just glad Michael’s chunkier than I am,” he said. “They’ll eat him first.”

Michael’s face reddened. He touched his gut, which was flatter than the day before.

Keri smiled at Michael. “I don’t know about that, Barker. He’s been looking good. Plus, I think cannibals would eat the most muscular dude first.”

Barker frowned. “Whatever,” he mumbled. “I’m going to grab a case of water and head back to the dorm.”

“You’re not going to wait for us?” asked Dub.

Barker shook his head. “I’ll be back to get another one. If we’re taking all of that water, better to carry it up to the dorm and divvy it out. Whatever we don’t take, we leave behind up there.”

Dub shrugged. “Okay. Grab the one on top. I’ll fill up my pack and be right behind you.”

Barker retrieved the rifle, which he’d leaned up against the cooler’s insulated wall, and slung it over one shoulder. Then he grabbed a case of water, his fingers digging under the thick plastic shrink-wrap so he could carry it in front of him. He shuffled out of the cooler, whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as he disappeared from sight.

“That dude kills me,” said Keri. She was stuffing pull-top cans of tuna into her drawstring bag. “I mean he’s a total pain, but he’s funny.”

Michael looked at her flatly. “Yeah. Funny.”

“He doesn’t mean anything,” she said, touching his shoulder. “Don’t worry about him.”

Michael was about to respond when his radio squawked. It was perched at eye level on a box of vinegar bottles, leaning against the wall. The red light turned green.

“This is K6VWV,” came the call. “Calling Michael. Over.”

The voice sounded different from Michael’s recollection, but there was less static. The signal was clear. They were close. But he wasn’t expecting them before the next twelve hours.

Michael shot Keri a glance with a furrowed brow and reached for the radio. He pressed the PTT.

“This is Michael. I copy you. Where are you? Over.”

The red light turned green. “We’ve made great time,” said the voice on the other end. “We’re here.”

Michael held the radio in his hand, staring at the display. With his free hand he scratched the crown of his head, his fingers rubbing his expanding bald spot. He again eyed Keri. Her face wore an identical look of concern. Dub stepped closer to them, his hands on his hips.

“How should I respond?” Michael asked nobody in particular. “This isn’t Victor.”

“Are you sure?” asked Dub.

Michael nodded. “The transmission is clearer, so I guess that could account for some of the tonal difference. I don’t know though. This voice is rougher, not as soothing.”

Dub ran his hands through his hair and squeezed it at the back. He puffed his cheeks and sighed. “This is the same frequency?”

Michael looked at the display to confirm and nodded.

“How would they know your name?” asked Dub. “How would they know the other call sign?”

“They could have been eavesdropping,” said Keri. “It’s an open channel, right?”

“It’s a common channel,” Michael said. “It’s not secure.”

“Play along,” suggested Dub. “Find out more.”

Michael checked with Keri, and she nodded her agreement. He swallowed and raised the radio to speak. He hesitated. The light turned green again.

“This is K6VWV,” said the gravelly voice. “We’re here on campus. Do you copy, Michael? We are here and ready to meet. Over.”

Michael didn’t hesitate this time. When the light flipped red, he pressed the PTT.

“That’s great,” he said, trying to hide the concern in his voice. “Where exactly are you? Over.”

“On the Hill,” said the caller. “We’re awaiting better directions. Tell us where you are and we’ll come meet you. Over.”

“I don’t know about this,” said Michael. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“I’m going out there,” said Dub.

Keri arched her back and folded her arms across her chest. “No, you’re not,” she said emphatically.

“Why not?” asked Dub. “We need to find out who these people are. They could screw up everything.”

“And they could hurt you,” said Keri. “Haven’t you learned anything from that family that attacked you? You can’t be out there by yourself.”

Dub shook his head. He stepped to Keri and put his hands on her shoulders. She flinched. The expression on her face hardened.

“I’m not by myself,” he said. “Barker’s out there and he’s on his way back. Plus, these people don’t know what I look like. They won’t know who I am even if I’m standing next to them.”

“How will you spot them?” asked Keri.

“They have a radio,” Dub said. “I’ll see the radio.”

Keri’s tension eased, but the frown was plastered on her face. She shook her head. “I don’t like it. You should wait for Barker to get back.”

“Then Barker’s out there by himself,” Dub reasoned. “You two stay here. Stay on the radio. Keep them talking.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Michael. “He can keep a distance but find out what they’re doing. He can listen to what they’re saying that they’re not broadcasting.”

Dub widened his eyes and smiled for Keri’s approval.

She sighed with exasperation and threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said. “But don’t approach them, please.”

“Scout’s honor,” said Dub.

Keri smirked. “You’re not a Boy Scout.”

“I’ll keep my distance,” promised Dub. He put both hands on her face and pulled her in for a short kiss. She closed her eyes and kissed him back.

Dub hugged her and then turned on his heels. He jogged from the cooler and slipped around the corner. Keri and Michael stood there quietly for a moment, neither of them moving or speaking. Michael held the radio at his side, his fingers wrapped tightly around its molded plastic case.

“What do you think?” she asked Michael. “Was that a good idea?”

Before he could answer, the radio’s light turned green again. Static crackled and the raspy voice returned.

“Michael,” the transmission began, “K6VWV here. Awaiting location instructions. Do you copy? Over.”

Michael lifted the radio and responded, “We’re gathering up our belongings. We weren’t expecting you yet, so we’re behind. Give us a few minutes and we’ll be down. Then we’ll figure out where to meet. Over.”

Michael let go of the PTT and awaited an immediate response. He got one. But it wasn’t from the voice with whom he’d been communicating. It was Victor. His voice was muffled, but it was definitely him. He confirmed their suspicions.

“Michael,” he said, “this is K6VWV. We are not on campus. Repeat. We are not on campus. Over.”

***

“How far are we from the Hill?” asked Ritz, his voice muffled by the filtered gas mask he wore on his face. “Can we speed up?”

Gilda squatted in the middle of the street and unfolded a laminated street map of west Los Angeles. She ran her finger along the plastic until she stopped and tapped a spot. Ritz squatted beside her.

“We’re here,” she said through her mask. “We’re making good time, but we’re easily three hours away. Maybe four. It depends on what kind of debris we have to avoid or pick our way through. It could be five hours.”

It was true, they were making much better time than they’d thought they could, three times faster than the worst estimates. But if there were imposters on campus already, the threat was immediate, and they couldn’t help.

“I could run,” offered Danny. He wasn’t wearing a mask. “Maggie could go with me. We could help them.”

Gilda looked up at him. “That’s sweet, but even running isn’t going to get you there for another couple of hours, and you’ll be useless when you get there.”

“What do we do?” asked Ritz. “They’re helpless.”

Gilda folded up the map and stuck it in her breast pocket. She adjusted the mask strap at the side of her head. Danny stepped to her and helped her untwist the strap.

“We don’t know that,” she said as Danny worked on her mask. “They might be armed. They might be able to hide.”

Victor joined the three of them, holding the radio in his hand. His eyes bugged from behind the clear goggles of his mask. “They’re in trouble,” he said. “Whoever these people are, whatever their end game, they’ve been ghosting our transmissions.”

“Ghosting?” Ritz echoed.

“Listening without transmitting,” said Victor. “Now they’re pretending to be us, and there’s nothing good about it.”

“They probably heard the conversations about food and supplies,” said Gilda.

Victor nodded. “Probably. And now they know we know.”

Gilda slid her thumbs inside her pack straps and tugged the bag higher on her broad shoulders. “We’d better get going. We’re not doing them any good by standing here talking about it.”

She started marching again, moving northeast past the tangle of abandoned ash-covered cars and trucks that littered San Vicente Boulevard. The others followed in a single-file line, weaving their way around and between the obstacles. None of them said anything for a mile or more. Then Ritz eased up beside Victor.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have told them those imposters weren’t us,” he said. “You think we created a bigger problem by telling them?”

Victor turned his head to glance at Ritz. After a moment of consideration, he answered, “It’s a catch twenty-two. Either way, they’re in trouble. Is it better they don’t see it coming? I don’t know.”

“Do you think we should keep going?” asked Ritz. “By the time we get there, they—”

“Yes,” Victor said firmly. “We keep going. The radio’s been silent since my last transmission. We have no way of knowing what’s happening. For all we know the kids are hiding somewhere. They said they were inside getting ready.”

Ritz frowned. “I didn’t mean to sound…”

“Sound what?” prompted Gilda. She’d slowed and, while the men were engaged in conversation, moved next to them without them having noticed.

Danny was still up ahead with Maggie at his side. She had her nose to the ground, sweeping it back and forth, relishing the variety of scents and odors.

“Unkind,” said Ritz. “Insensitive.”

Gilda was looking at Ritz through her mask. Unlike Victor, whose goggles were clear, hers were tinted with a reflective film. It was impossible to see her expression.

“It’s fine,” she said after a few seconds. “And it’s a fair question. But we have to keep going. We’re already on our way. Turning back now would be a waste of time, energy, and resources.”

Ritz nodded through his mask and pressed forward. Gilda quickened her pace to join Danny at the point. He was talking to Maggie when she sidled up next to him, her shoulder brushing against his.

“You talking to your dog?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s happier than she’s been in weeks.”

“She looks happy,” said Gilda. “But all of that ash she’s sniffing isn’t good for her. Just like it isn’t good you’re not using a mask. You’re breathing in all of the fallout. It’s not good.”

Danny watched Maggie for another moment, kicked at the ash ahead of his feet, and wiped the film from under his nose. He shrugged the pack on his back and adjusted his grip on the rifle he was carrying. All of them were armed.

“You’re ignoring me,” said Gilda.

“I’m not ignoring you,” Danny said, shaking his head. “But I’ve been breathing this stuff on and off since the attack. I rolled around in it. I got it in my mouth. What’s done is done.”

“That’s fatalistic,” she said.

“It’s the truth. I was exposed.”

“Why make it worse?”

He shrugged. “Am I making it worse? I don’t know. I think I’m already starting to get sick. My appetite isn’t great; my chest is tight. I find myself clearing my throat a lot, which doesn’t feel great.”

“Don’t say that,” she said.

“Sorry. I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Have you talked to Doc about it?” Gilda asked.

Danny shook his head. He blinked, his lashes flicking away particulate.

“You should,” she said. “You may not have radiation sickness. It could be a cold. You know, the fallout can lower your immunity. You could live twenty years.”

Danny turned his head and looked at a warped image of himself in her goggles. He raised his eyebrows in a disbelieving arch.

Gilda turned awkwardly and looked over her shoulder. Then she faced Danny as she kept walking. “Look,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I like you. I’m attracted to you.”

Danny’s heart accelerated, and he suddenly felt short of breath. He hadn’t heard those words in…forever.

“But,” she said.

There had to be a “but.” Danny turned his body sideways to ease between two pickup trucks, ducking between their side-view mirrors.

“You’re starting to piss me off.”

Danny chuckled nervously. Gilda wasn’t laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she said.

“That I’m pissing you off.”

“It’s not funny,” she said, pushing her way past an open car door and slamming it shut. “I’m opening up to you and you’re laughing.”

“I just—”

“You’re pissing me off,” she said, “because I can’t invest in a guy who’s bent on dying and sees no value in trying to live.”

“I never said that.”

“Yeah, you did,” she said, working to suppress her volume. “You’ve talked repeatedly about there not being a future. It was sort of endearing at first. Now it’s irritating.”

“Endearing?”

“Yes,” she said. She was walking farther away from him now. “Like a wounded puppy. But you’ve gone from wounded puppy to old dog on the porch waiting to die.”

“Wow,” said Danny. “This is a lot to digest. I mean, I went from cool to douche in, like, a day. And I had no idea.”

“Never mind.”

“No,” Danny said. “You started this. I took you for intense and no-nonsense. I didn’t take you for sensitive.”

Gilda stopped in her tracks. Danny didn’t need to see the expression behind her mask to recognize it. She stared at him for a moment and, without saying anything, she shook her head and started marching again. Her pace quickened, and Danny had to rush to catch up with her.

He reached out for her shoulder. She shrugged him off.

“Hang on, Gilda. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Being sensitive is a good thing.”

She slowed a step.

“I’m not sure right now is the best timing for this conversation,” he said. “With everything going on, you know.”

She sped up.

“Okay.” He shook his head at his own stupidity. “I’m not good at this.”

“Clearly,” she said.

“I like you too.”

She slowed.

“You’ve got to understand.” Danny sighed. “I’ve spent a long time not having anything to live for, okay? When a nuclear bomb drops in my hometown and obliterates everything, that’s not necessarily a cause to celebrate life, okay?”

Gilda kept walking. She kept her gaze ahead.

“But if you’re saying you like me,” he continued, “that for some crazy reason you’re attracted to me, then that gives me a reason to live.”

She stopped again and pivoted toward him.

He waved his hands in front of his face. “Wait, that sounded creepy. See, I’m horrible at this. And—”

“Just shut up,” she said. “You’re right. This is bad timing. It’s like in horror movies, with the psycho killer on the loose, two teenagers end up doing it. Or when two people are on the run in an action movie, they still find time to fall into the sack. I get it. We can talk about it later.”

Danny handed her his rifle and held up a finger. Then, in the middle of the road, he shrugged off his pack, unzipped it, and fished out his gas mask. He slid it onto his head and stared at Gilda for a moment. He smiled.

“What?” she said.

He slugged his pack on to his shoulders. “You said sack—” he chuckled “—like some old lady.”

She shoved the rifle at him. “Irritating.”

Victor and Ritz caught up with them, and Victor’s eyes danced between Danny and Gilda from behind his mask.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked. “It feels like I’m interrupting something.”

Gilda shook her head. “Not really.”

“Good,” said Victor, “because the imposters are transmitting again.”

***

“I think that’s one of them,” said Clint. He, Jesse, and Filter were pressed against the side of a building at the edge of a plaza.

They were watching a tall blond move cautiously across the plaza. His masked face swirled back and forth, as if he were searching for something. And he was armed with a handgun.

“You think he’s looking for us?” asked Jesse.

“Could be,” said Clint. He held up the radio. “They know we’re not K6VWV.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Filter. “Follow him?”

Clint suppressed a cough and slid back behind the corner of the building. He closed his eyes and swallowed against the sensation of razors in his throat.

“You okay?” asked Jesse.

Clint opened his eyes and blinked past the blur until he pulled focus. He swallowed the thick mix of phlegm and blood that pooled against his cheeks and under his tongue.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice somehow raspier than before. “I’m fine.”

“So?” asked Filter. “Plan?”

Clint glanced over Filter’s shoulder. A hundred yards downhill, the remainder of his men sat on a bench. They were waiting for a signal. Tactically, having them sit out in the open wasn’t the best idea given that they’d been made as imposters. But Clint wasn’t a tactician, he was a convict. He liked to project force even when it was counterproductive.

He touched the radio at his hip, making sure it was still there, and scratched his neck. It itched constantly now. “Jesse,” he said, “you go around the back side. Follow that kid. Surprise him from behind.”

Jesse tugged on his shirt, trying to pull it over the hang of his gut. “Got it.” He offered Clint a weak salute and headed toward the path the tall blond kid had taken.

“And me?” asked Filter.

“You and me,” said Clint, “we’re going to join the others down there and try to draw the rest of them out.”

“The rest of them?”

“The other three,” said Clint. “There’s four of them, right? One of them is out there in the plaza. Jesse’s got him. That leaves the rest of them for us.”

“We don’t know where they are,” said Filter.

Clint held up his index finger and waggled it in a circle. “They’re in these buildings,” he said. “It can’t be that hard to find them. We search the buildings.”

Filter looked around at the high-rise complex of dormitories and sighed. “Okay. That’s a lot of work.”

“Hang on,” said Clint. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth onto his chin. He licked it clean and pulled the radio from his hip. He keyed the PTT button on its side and held it up close to his mouth.

“We’re coming for you,” he said, drawing out the words. “We know you got food. We know you got supplies. We know you got soft pillows and pretty girls. Ready or not, here we come.”

Filter squeezed his brow with confusion. “Pretty girls?”

Clint shrugged. “It sounded good.”

“What was the point?”

“They’re going to panic now,” said Clint. “They don’t have the luxury of taking their time to figure out how to avoid us. Their little hearts are pounding now.”

“How does that help us?” asked Filter.

“Panicky people make mistakes. They’ll give away their position. Just keep your eyes on those windows.”

Clint pointed skyward toward the banks of windows that lined the floors of the dormitories. Some of them had curtains drawn; some didn’t. His eyes scanned from floor to floor across one building, then another.

“I don’t see anything,” said Filter.

“Keep looking,” said Clint. “I’m going to get the others. I’ll bring them back here and we’ll start searching. We’ll find them. No doubt.”

***

Jesse saw the student from behind. The tall, athletic man was wearing goggles and a mask made of some rough fabric. Jesse couldn’t see his face. He had no concept of how old the target was other than a guess that he was in his late teens or early twenties.

The man was armed with a handgun, but he wasn’t handling it the way a skilled shooter carried a weapon. Jesse had seen plenty of those people in his days. They held guns like they were bodily extensions, indistinguishable from the carrier’s hand.

This man, whoever he was, kept readjusting his grip. He was consciously aiming the weapon away from himself and toward the ground. His finger danced in and out of the trigger guard. Nobody who knew anything about guns would carry the semiautomatic the way this guy did.

Jesse chuckled under his breath. He’d disarm the punk first, then take him down and out. If the guy didn’t put up a fight, Jesse decided he’d let him live and use him to find the others. If the guy resisted, it was over for the dude. No doubt. Jesse didn’t play.

He checked over one shoulder and then the other before advancing quickly on the man. His girth rubbed against his belt and one thigh against the other. Sweat lubricated the raw, thinly calloused skin as he moved.

Despite his size, he was light on his feet. In a matter of seconds, he’d closed the distance between his observation post and the man, whose attention was elsewhere. By the time the man turned, Jesse had barreled into him like he was hitting a tackling dummy.

He heard the rush of air from the man’s lungs as he hit him, driving him toward the ground. They collapsed together in a heap, and Jesse blindly reached for the gun hand. It was empty.

Jesse pushed down on the man, unable to see him clearly because of the ash cloud that had bloomed around them and was again settling onto the ground. The man was as strong as he’d expected. He could feel the muscles straining against him, the kicking and thrashing of his legs.

Grunting and working harder than he would have liked, Jesse sank onto the man, trying to force the last of the air from his lungs. Then he quickly pushed onto him, raising his torso and spreading his legs. He was straddling him now, working to gain better leverage.

The man’s goggles were cockeyed on his face, and the fabric mask, which felt like burlap against the back of Jesse’s hand, had come free. There was ash everywhere, as if they were bathing in it. Jesse could feel it being sucked into his nostrils as he breathed. He tasted it on his teeth and the inside of his thick lips. It was foul and salty.

Jesse grunted and squeezed his legs. He fought off the man’s struggle and pushed his face to the side, smothering half of it in the disturbed layer of ash on the ground. The ash gathered in the corners of his mouth and made him drool. He felt the leakage on his chin and the underside of his jaw. He snorted, trying to clear his throat, and he found his grip, wrapping his thick, pasty hands around the man’s neck. He squeezed. The man’s fight was weakening, the tension in his straining muscles beginning to soften.

Then in the distance he heard gunshots. In the confusion of the moment, he thought somehow the handgun he’d knocked loose was in someone else’s hand. But as his hearing focused, he realized the percussion was distant and echoed like rifle shots.

Jesse snapped his head around while maintaining his grip. He didn’t see anyone close to him. Another shot cracked and rippled through the speckled air. A deeper sound, a heavier caliber, snapped back with a volley of shots. They were farther away, from where he’d left his gang perhaps.

He swung back around and tightened his grip, grunting one final push to put away his opponent, when he felt a thick smack on the side of his head.

Dazed, his vision instantly blurred, Jesse released his grip and swayed. He blinked his eyes, trying to focus, and reached for his head. Warm blood oozed from the wound, already sticky with ash flakes. Still stunned and unable to comprehend what had struck him or how, he dopily pivoted his weight toward the direction of the strike. He was met by the fuzzy image of a woman and a deafening explosion of sound before the world went black and silent.

***

Keri stood with the handgun leveled at the same spot where she’d aimed a second earlier. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the end of its barrel, mixing with the ash and evaporating into the gray that surrounded her. It was the gun she’d insisted on taking from the family that had attacked Dub. She’d kept it in her waistband whenever she traveled outside since that day.

The fat beast of a man wobbled for a moment, his eyes fixed with confusion before his gigantic frame slumped and fell to one side. His legs were still draped awkwardly across Dub’s torso.

As Keri stood there in her goggles, the cold composite grip of the gun squeezed in her hands she was frozen in place. Simultaneously in disbelief that she had killed a man with a shot into the center of his forehead, she was thankful to have saved her boyfriend’s life.

Michael, who’d run up behind her as she pulled the trigger, had slid onto his knees and was at Dub’s head. Keri was only vaguely aware of this as she dispassionately lowered the weapon and stared at the dead man’s eyes.

Are those scabs on his head?

A shudder rippled through Keri’s body before Michael caught her attention and brought her back to the moment. She turned toward his voice and found his eyes targeting hers.

“…breathing,” he said. “He’s alive. You saved him.”

It took a moment for the words to register. When they did, her eyes glazed with tears that pooled in her goggles. She crouched beside Michael, put the gun on the ground beside her, and used all of her strength to heave the dead man’s legs from Dub. She grunted and angrily shoved them free. They flopped onto the ground with a thud and a spray of ash bloomed above his body.

Dub’s still body twitched, and he coughed. He sucked in a deep breath of noxious air and coughed again, gagging. Keri helped Michael move Dub onto his side as he retched. His body convulsed several times before he started breathing normally. He rolled onto his back and wiped his face with his arm.

“Thank you,” he rasped. “Thank you.”

Keri put her hands on his chest, sliding them up toward the sides of his face, and she laid her body on his. He gently pushed her away.

“Hang on,” he said. “Too much.”

She apologized through her tears and running nose and reached for one of his hands with both of hers and squeezed. He squeezed back, his fingertips wrapping around the outside of her hand.

Their moment was interrupted by the crack of rifle blasts farther up the hill. Michael and Keri turned their attention toward the sound. Dub propped himself on his elbows before trying to stand.

“I think that’s Barker,” said Keri. “He’s alone.”

“Let’s go,” Dub said through the scratch in his voice. “He needs us.”

Dub scooted up and Michael helped him to his feet. Keri picked up the handgun and handed it to him. Her eyes flashed to the dead heap at her feet.

“I don’t want this,” she said. “You take it.”

Dub took the gun, brushed the ash from his clothes, and adjusted his goggles on his face. Keri reached over and pulled the burlap mask over his nose. She rubbed the coarse fabric between her fingers next to his nose.

“Burlap was a bad choice,” she said.

“Not like I had a lot of choices,” he said, his voice still mostly husky.

She patted his chest, and the three of them marched up the hill toward the sound of gunfire.

***

Barker brushed the glass from his arm and pulled the rifle tighter to his bruised shoulder. The butt kept slamming against his sore arm. He wasn’t skilled at handling the weapon and certainly wasn’t a marksman. He knew this. His hope was that, by opening fire, he’d draw attention away from his friends lower on the hill.

He’d first noticed the odd pack of men when he’d peeked through his dorm window. He’d delivered the goods and set them on the low chest of drawers beneath the window between his bunk and Dub’s lofted bed. He’d glanced out toward the plaza and seen them. One of them had a radio. He’d thought that maybe they were the rescue team, the people from the Oasis. He’d slid open the window sideways for the first time since the attacks, working hard to crack the stubborn railings on the top and bottom of the sliding mechanism. It had scratched open and he’d started to speak, to call to the men, but stopped himself and instinctively crouched low. His pulse had quickened as he hid, counting in his mind the number of people five stories below.

First, there were more than four people. The rescuers had told them they’d have four people and a dog. He’d counted more than four. He wasn’t sure how many, but it was twice as many. And there was no dog.

Then he’d remembered there was supposed to be a woman too, although he couldn’t remember her name. But she wasn’t there.

Even if he could rationalize the absence of the dog or the woman, there were too many people gathered around the one with the radio. And they didn’t look like healthy, well-supplied trekkers who’d made their way from the coast, either. They looked sick, especially the one with the radio. He was thin and hunched over at his shoulders. His complexion, even from fifty feet above, was as gray as the sky and ground around him.

Barker had sat with his back pressed uncomfortably against the wood chest, his butt on his heels. He’d smelled the pungent odor of his own sweat and felt the thump of his heart against his chest.

He’d reached across his body and picked up the rifle, which he’d laid on his bunk, and gripped it by the forestock. He’d swung it around, and with an empowering exhalation of air from his lungs, he’d thrown himself onto the dresser and aimed down toward the men.

He’d fired a couple of warning shots, hoping they might scatter. But they hadn’t. They’d found cover. Apparently, they’d steeled their resolve and stayed on this part of the hill. The one with the radio hadn’t moved at all.

The radio man had produced his own weapon, a large black pistol that looked like the kind of gun a police officer might use. He’d quickly clipped the radio to his belt and wrapped both hands around the pistol, unleashing a volley of shots aimed at Barker. Those shots had shattered the window glass next to him. There had to be more than one gun. There were too many shots at once. He hadn’t seen the others clearly enough to know, but his ears told him more than Radio Man were armed.

Now Barker needed to take better aim. No impotent warning shots this time. He slid his finger inside the guard and leveled his aim down at Radio Man. He applied pressure to the trigger as another round of percussive shots zinged past his head.

The rifle kicked again, but this time it was tight enough to his shoulder that the recoil didn’t disturb his aim. The .22-caliber round punched through the air straight at the target. And missed. Barker thought the man smiled, his lips stretching wide across his gaunt face.

The man reset his posture and fired again, unleashing a torrent of shots that sent Barker rolling off the chest, crunching shards of glass beneath him and crashing to the floor between the chest and his bed. He lost his grip on the rifle and it fell to the floor, but not before the barrel cracked him in the center of his forehead.

Barker was on the floor, dizzied, and thought he’d been shot. He quickly realized that if he’d taken a bullet to the center of his head, he’d be dead.

He rubbed the sore spot on his brow and scrambled back onto the edge of the bed, picking up the rifle. He scooted back, away from the window, his body trembling in response to the surge of adrenaline that made his senses hyperaware. He smelled the ash as flakes of it drifted in through the window and settled on the shards of glass lying on the chest of drawers.

The men were talking down below. One of the voices carried more than the others in the chilled air, his words clear and understood.

They thought he was dead, that the last barrage of semiautomatic pistol fire had somehow hit him five stories up.

Barker gathered his nerves, now thinking they wouldn’t be looking for him to pop up as a gallery target might in an arcade. They wouldn’t expect it at all.

In one smooth series of actions, he properly gripped the rifle, raised himself onto the glass-covered chest of drawers, and slid forward to aim the barrel down toward the last time he’d seen the men while easing his finger onto the trigger. He quickly drew the butt to his body and pulled.

The rifle recoiled, and its familiar blast exploded from the barrel. He pulled again, aiming in the same direction, and the rifle slammed back against him. A third shot zipped from the .22 long gun before Barker peered through the trail of smoke drifting from the end of the barrel to see what damage he’d done.

No sooner had he caught sight of two men on the ground when a peppering of shots snapped back in his direction. It sounded like firecrackers, but he caught the muzzle flashes in his peripheral vision and rolled over to one side. The shots tore through the air next to him and bored into the ceiling, showering the room in the mineral fiber of the suspended tiles.

The men below were shouting, bellowing in pain. He knew he’d hit at least two of them with his three shots. Neither had been the radio man, apparently.

Barker expected one of two things to happen as he squatted on the floor with his back to the dresser: Radio Man would reload and open fire again, or the other surviving men would figure out where in the building he was holed up and they’d come for him.

His eyes found the door and he scrambled to his feet. He stayed low, crouch running as he bungled his way into the door with his shoulder. He reached up, his hands trembling, and fumbled with the deadbolt until he was certain he’d locked it correctly.

Barker exhaled. His pulse was thumping in his ears. His chest was heavy. He pushed himself from the door and lurched toward the chest of drawers. His ears pricked, listening for the sound of return fire or the pounding of boots in the hallway outside his room.

Neither came. Not yet.

***

Clint held Filter at his side and dispatched his remaining men toward the building in front of them. That meant five were headed to find the lone sniper in the tower.

“Just you and me?” asked Filter, his voice as relaxed and indifferent as ever.

Clint surveyed the dying men at their feet. One of them was clutching his gut. A dark stain stretched from his midsection to his groin. His legs were splayed on the ground, a sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He was barely conscious, mumbling incoherently as the color drained from his face and the life from his body. A semiautomatic pistol was on the ground inches from his hand.

The other was unconscious already with a shot to his upper chest. He was breathing, as far as Clint could tell, but not for long. He was on his side, and the rise and fall of his ribs was less and less visible with each successive breath.

He shrugged. “Yeah.” He reloaded the HK with a full magazine, palming it into the bottom of the semiautomatic’s grip. “Just you and me.”

Clint chambered a round. Filter folded his arms across his chest. The men stood there silently, watching the quintet lumber into the high-rise dormitory. Two of them were armed. Clint motioned toward the gun on the ground and raised an eyebrow. “You gonna grab that?” he asked Filter. “It might be good if I weren’t the only one with a weapon.”

Filter moved to the gun. He squatted and picked it up, holding it away from his body. He rose to his feet and looked down the hill toward the next plaza. Buildings and tangles of dead or dying tree branches blocked his view. He glanced over his shoulder at Clint.

“What do you think happened with Jesse?” he asked, walking back to Clint’s side. “I heard a shot.”

Clint looked past Filter, toward the mangle of trees. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

No sooner had they begun their march toward the cluster of trees, beyond which they’d be able to see what had happened to Jesse, or what damage he’d inflicted, than Clint heard the pop of handgun fire from the side. Filter grunted and stumbled backward into him, knocking him to the ground.

“I’m hit, dude!” he cried out in a voice that more resembled a squeaky preteen than a grown man. He whimpered. He was wandering aimlessly, his feet tripping over each other, grabbing a limply dangling arm. His gun was on the ground. So was Clint’s, and he didn’t know where it was.

Clint tried scrambling to his feet but dropped to the ground as a pair of loud pops sent slugs into Filter’s body. He danced like a marionette for a moment, spinning to face Clint with wide, frightened eyes, before they rolled back in his head and he dropped to the ground. The side of his skull cracked sickeningly when it smacked against the unforgiving concrete. Blood was everywhere, and for the first time since the bombs dropped and the fire raged, Clint was afraid of dying.

The anxiety welled in him as he tried to scramble to his feet. It was as if he were in a dream, and no matter how fast he tried to move, his body responded in slow motion. By the time he’d gathered himself and found the black composite HK dusted in ash, three people stood above him. Two of them had weapons leveled at his head.

The woman crouched beside him and pressed her weapon to his temple. He relaxed and tried spreading his fingers wide, having given up on trying to grab his gun.

She glared at him through goggles, the armed man standing above him. He too wore goggles, but the mask that covered his face was made of some odd material. It was stitched together with wide thread. Was it…burlap?

The third of the group kicked away the HK and then reached onto Clint’s hip and plucked the radio from his side. He shook it in his hand and backed away slowly, his feet dragging across the newly fallen ash.

The woman said something, but Clint didn’t hear it. He was transfixed by the ash. There was always more ash. He felt the press of the handgun’s muzzle against his head.

“I asked you a question,” she said. “Who are you?”

Clint exhaled and leaned on one elbow. He closed his eyes, imagining his mother’s face. He couldn’t truly remember it. Not entirely. Bits and pieces. Her eyes. Her toothy grin. The dimple on one cheek. Or was it two dimples? He couldn’t be sure.

“What are you doing here?” asked the man with the burlap mask.

Clint opened his eyes and looked at him. He was the one Jesse had gone after. Clint chuckled, thinking about how he got his answer about Jesse without having to see for himself.

“I’m a survivor,” he said with as much defiance as he could muster, “no different from you.”

He was right. He’d survived, as they had. In that, they were the same. But they would live longer now. Soon he’d be a casualty of the attacks, of his own hubris, of karma.

He took a ragged breath and coughed. The blood pooled in his mouth, and he spat it at the woman’s feet.

“Are you it?” she asked.

His brow furrowed. He coughed again, unsure of what she meant.

“Is there anyone else?” she asked. “Or are you it?”

He shook his head but must have stolen a glance at the building where his men had gone. Because the one now holding his radio spoke up and pointed to the ground leading into the dorm.

“There are footprints,” he said. “A lot of them. There are more people. Not just him.”

The woman jabbed the barrel into the side of his head again. “How many?”

Like he was going to tell her. Like he was a snitch, a rat. No way. He’d done his time in a cell and his time in a tent on the beach. He would die with his lips sealed.

And then he did. A bright flash and a deafening bang were the last things Clint heard. His world went from ubiquitous gray to all-consuming black and he was free.

***

Dub was on Michael’s heels as they bounded up the first flight of stairs. Keri was a few steps behind, using the rail to propel her upward. The sounds of their heavy breathing and footfalls on the concrete echoed through the stairwell.

Dub pulled his mask from his face. It gathered at his neck, scratching against his sweaty scruff. He broke the hushed cadence of their silent climb. “When this is over,” he said between breaths, “I need to know why you killed that guy.”

Michael stole a glance back at Dub as he rounded the corner from one flight to the next, his palm spinning on the rounded steel finial. He nodded and kept huffing upward, the strain on his face evident as he tried to take two steps at a time.

Dub kept pace and checked on Keri as he rounded the same flight. She’d slid her goggles onto her forehead. Her mask was around her neck. Her face was flushed, rosy at her cheeks, but she wasn’t as winded as Michael looked or Dub felt.

She’d been better about keeping some sort of athletic regime since the attacks. Dub reminded himself he needed to do a better job of that. When this was over, after he’d figured out why Michael had fired two shots into the unarmed man who was clearly dying of radiation poisoning, he’d talk to Keri about staying fit. Or getting fit. He strode up the next flight of stairs, two steps at a time, acutely aware he was trying to distract himself from the task at hand.

Up ahead, on the fifth floor and likely attacking their room, were five marauders bent on taking from them what was rightfully theirs. As they neared the floor, all of them swallowing and panting to control their breathing, they slowed.

They stepped more lightly on the treads and held their ground at the stairwell’s exit into the hallway onto the fifth floor. Dub’s mind flashed to the hospital and the sad, sick remnant of a human being who’d crawled and wailed along the ward’s corridor. It echoed in his mind as if it were there. Keri nudged him, bringing him back to the moment.

“You hear that?” she asked.

Dub refocused and heard a rhythmic pounding. It was fists on doors. And then a gunshot. It was muted but recognizable. One of the men was armed and had unloaded a shot. Another shot blasted through the noise of the pounding.

Michael reached for the handle and turned it. “We gotta go,” he said, and swung open the heavy door. As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he lifted the handgun, leveled it with two hands, and fired. The weapon popped two, three, four times, and hot casings clinked into the air. One of them caught Dub on his neck as he slid into the hallway.

He ignored it and focused on the three men visible in front of him and only feet away, backlit by the daylight seeping through the window at the end of the hall. One of them was slumped against a wall. A second had his hands in the air, his eyes wide with fear and resignation. Another was stumbling forward, trying to lift his weapon and take aim.

Michael took a fifth shot. It missed the target, which was ambling awkwardly forward. A sixth shot hit the man’s shoulder, but he kept coming. Michael tried another shot, but the weapon didn’t fire.

Without thinking, Dub, still armed, dove forward and aimed for the man’s gun. He caught him on the side and tackled him to the ground, wrestling the weapon free and tossing it blindly back toward Michael before pinning the target. The moment he had control of him, he felt a heavy hit on the back of his head. His vision blurred as a second punch stung the side of his head.

Dazed, and his ears ringing, he collapsed on top of the man he’d pinned, vaguely aware that man was now dead.

Beneath the ringing and the throbbing pulse at his temples, he felt pressure on his back, heard a pair of muted pops, and the pressure was gone.

Farther down the hall, there was shouting and more muted pops of gunfire. He closed his eyes, understanding at some level how stupid he’d been not to simply put a bullet in the stumbling gunman as he lost consciousness.

***

“You’re a freaking moron,” Keri muttered under her breath, rolling Dub onto his back. He was out cold. “Gallant. And moronic.”

She stayed low, using the pile of three marauder bodies to provide cover as she tried to take aim at the pair of men at the opposite end of the hall. The body closest to her was the one she’d killed, the man feigning surrender who’d attacked Dub with a flurry of punches to his head. She’d shot him twice.

Michael was crouched next to her, with Dub’s limp body flat on the carpet between them. One of the men outside their door at the end of the hall was firing shots at them.

“How many rounds could he have?” she asked Michael.

He was pressed to the floor, waiting for the end of the volley to return fire. He shook his head as if to tell her he didn’t have any clue.

Both were armed and somewhat protected by the trio of bodies that jerked when freshly fired rounds slugged into them.

“I’m not cut out for this,” Keri said, her voice cracking. Her throat tightened. Her eyes glazed with tears she couldn’t stop from welling.

Michael reached out with one hand and gripped her arm. He squeezed it and nodded again at her. This nod told her she would be okay. He would help her.

Dub groaned, and his body twitched. Keri leaned to his ear and whispered to him through her tears.

“Shhh,” she said as the gunfire stopped. Her ears were ringing, but the barrage had stopped.

She lifted her head just enough to see the gunman running toward them from the dark. His hands were empty, balled into fists. His eyes were wild, his teeth clenched. The man was only ten feet from them. Then five.

Keri rolled onto her side, her right arm semi-trapped under the weight of her own body, and raised the handgun. Her finger found the trigger and she pulled. She pulled again. And again. Her aim was off. She knew none of her shots had hit him. They’d zipped wide.

Somehow, the man’s expression froze for a moment as his body torqued to one side and bounced into the wall from more shots than she’d fired. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw slackened. He grabbed for his chest and dropped to one knee, his momentum carrying him forward, and smacked his chin on the floor.

Keri turned to see Michael’s handgun smoking. She looked back down the hall. The walls and ceiling were peppered with bullet holes. He’d managed to hit the target, where she’d missed. Her hands were trembling now. A sharp, rippling chill preceded a wave of nausea coursing through her body.

Now there was only one man left. He too was armed, Keri now saw. He was also trapped, pinned between the end of the hallway and Keri and Michael.

Dub groaned again, calling Keri’s name.

***

Barker wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his arm while keeping his grip on the rifle. Outside his door, the pounding had stopped. The pair of bullet holes above the locking mechanism were ineffective in their efforts to ply open the only thing standing between him and however many men were coming for him.

He inched toward the door, lowering the front end of the rifle waist high. The wafting scent of the outdoors caught his nose when he inhaled. He glanced behind him and saw the thin layer of ash coating everything close to the shattered window and suddenly noticed how much colder it was in his room than it had been minutes earlier. He wiped a fresh sheen of perspiration from his forehead and shuddered.

Barker reached for the doorknob at the same moment it rattled from the heavy fist of someone on the other side. He jerked back and raised the rifle, drawing it tight to his shoulder and off his cheek.

“Barker?” the voice on the other side called. “Barker, it’s me, Michael. Open up.”

Confusion swelled in his cluttered mind. He held his finger on the outside of the trigger guard but took a step back. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye.

“Michael?”

“I’ve got Keri and Dub. Let us in.”

Barker hesitated. “Michael?” he said again.

“Yes,” Michael said. “Open up, dude.”

Barker stood motionless for a moment, too afraid to move. Then he realized he was holding his breath and exhaled. The tension in his neck and shoulders relaxed. He lowered the rifle and took two large steps forward and cranked open the handle, simultaneously unlocking the door.

Michael was standing there, the side of his face glowing from the opaque white light from the window to his left. His clothes were stained with dark red and ringed with sweat, his eyes wide with fright. He was rubbing the top of his head with one hand, the other was at his side, holding a pistol he tapped against his leg.

“Where are Keri and Dub?” asked Barker.

Michael stepped inside, sliding past Barker and moving to the window. He placed the gun on the chest of drawers and collapsed onto the bottom bunk.

Barker spun back to the door and took a tentative step into the hallway. He had trouble making sense of what he saw. It was a macabre scene cast in the grays of ambient window light. There were bodies on the floor. There was blood. His chest tightened as his vision swept across the carnage.

He took a step and then another, staggering along the corridor. He extended his arm and steadied himself against the wall to his left. A slideshow of horrors clicked through his mind. He’d killed people. He’d actually taken men’s lives. Shot them with a rifle and stolen what time they had left. His friends had clearly done the same.

They were teenagers only two years removed from high school. They weren’t equipped for this. Nobody was, really, but especially young adults with no military history or backgrounds dipped in violence.

None of them had come from the mean streets. None of them, as far as Barker knew, had lived in abusive homes. They’d led privileged, if not historically typical, lives.

Now there were bullet holes in the walls and ceilings of their dormitory. There was blood on the floor. There were dead men piled on top of one another like some sick photograph he’d seen in mid-twentieth-century history books. His eyes found a wide smear of dark red on the floor in front of him, and his mind snapped to the hospital and the living corpse he and Dub had seen.

He wanted to puke.

“Barker?” came a soft voice from the pile of dead bodies.

His eyes snapped to the pile. His pulse quickened. He thought he was hearing things, that ghosts were calling to him. He spread his fingers on the wall, searching for something to hold.

“Barker? Are you okay?”

Then he saw her through the gray. It was Keri. She was on the floor beyond the bodies, sitting on her heels. She was holding something in her lap. Her goggles were on her forehead above her eyes.

Barker dragged his fingertips across the uneven texture of the wall and tentatively walked toward her. His body blocked the light pouring in from behind him, casting a shadow that made it more difficult to see where he was stepping. He stopped short of the pile. How many bodies were there? Three? The tangle of arms and legs made it hard for him to count, to distinguish one body from the next. His eyes drifted from the tangle to Keri’s lap. He was now close enough to see what she held in her lap. Dub. She was stroking the hair from his face, absently running her fingers through it over and over again. The top half of his body was propped onto her legs. Barker couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

“Is he…?” Barker swallowed the end of the sentence, worrying that if he said it aloud, it would make the words true.

She blinked and looked down at her boyfriend. She stopped stroking his head and placed a hand on his cheek. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “He’s alive. He’s hurt, but he’s okay, I think.”

Barker waved his hands across the hall, jabbing his hands at the bodies strewn haphazardly from one end of it to the other. He struggled to find the words and shook his head, blurting out the only thing he could think to say.

“What happened?” he asked, not recognizing his own voice.

Keri’s chin trembled. She was rocking now. She shook her head, her glistening eyes searching as much for the answer to the question as they were surveying the hall.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was so fast. So loud. I…I think I killed more people.”

Barker leaned into his hand on the wall, letting the pressure support his weight. He exhaled loudly, sighing such that his whole body sagged.

It was one thing to shoot people from a distance, as he’d done from his room. It was like a video game. The results were absent sensation or emotion. There wasn’t the sound of the bullets piercing their flesh, the thud and crack of their bodies collapsing to the floor. There wasn’t the smell of their body reacting to the pain, the fear they were taking their final breaths.

Here, though, it was inescapable. It was close. It was intimate.

“More people?” he asked.

She tilted her head and nodded toward the outside. Her body was still rocking back and forth.

“I…I killed a man who was trying to kill Dub,” she said. “Shot him. Right there.”

A wave of exhaustion washed over Barker. He knew it was the adrenaline leaving his body, bringing him back down. He pressed his shoulder into the wall and slid down to the floor.

They sat there in silence for what felt like an hour but might have only been minutes. Barker didn’t know what to say. For the first time in a long while, he couldn’t think of anything worth verbalizing. He’d always had something to say, something snarky or approaching humorous. He’d never been at a loss for words. He opened his mouth a couple of times but couldn’t speak.

He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to dream. He wanted to escape the waking nightmare he and his friends were living and that had likely killed their families. Even if those family members were alive, they’d never see them again. They were too far away. Thousands of miles and, in his case, an entire continent separated them. He closed his eyes and thought about Wilmington. He imagined the cool breeze riding the surf onto the soft, wet sand of Topsail Beach. He envisioned riding shotgun in a convertible across the bridge to Figure Eight Island. He pictured the spray of salt water hitting his chest and face as he rode a board behind a Boston Whaler, bouncing on the wake as he crossed from one side of the wash to the other. He recalled the warmth of the sun on his shoulders during the day and the sensation of a sunburn stinging against the stiff sheets in his bed at night.

He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs, the foul stench of the hallway filling his nostrils and bringing him back to the present. He opened his eyes and focused on a bullet hole in the wall directly across from him. At the same moment Michael appeared from their dorm room.

Barker watched his friend march toward him with purpose. He held a radio in his hand.

“I got a hold of them,” Michael said, stopping a foot from Barker’s boots. “They’re getting close.”

“Who?” asked Barker.

Michael’s face crinkled with confusion. His eyebrows drew together above his narrowed eyes. “The rescuers. I talked to Victor. They’ll be here in a few hours.”

“What do we do then?” asked Barker, still in a fog.

“We get our crap together,” said Michael. His voice was mechanical, like he was detached from everything that had happened. “We make sure we’re ready to go when the time comes.”

Keri shook free of whatever trance had held her silent. “What about the others?”

Michael shrugged. “What others?”

“The other kids on campus,” she said. “There are a few others on campus, right? Are we leaving them here?”

“There’s nobody,” said Michael. “Everybody’s gone. Maybe there are some kids over in Sproul. And I saw a few last week in Hedrick. But that’s it.”

“What about them?” she asked. “Do they come with us?”

Michael took another step forward. His knuckles were white from the tightness of the grip with which he held the radio. He held it out and wiggled it. “They didn’t invite anyone else,” he said. “They invited us. We found the radio. We talked with them. They’re coming for us. They’re not coming for anyone else.”

Michael pulled back his shoulders and lifted his chin. He motioned toward the space beyond the hallway, waving his arm toward the plaza outside. “Everybody else is on their own. We’re all on our own. This world isn’t getting better. It is what it is. Those students out there aren’t our responsibility. We aren’t theirs either.”

Barker thought about what his friend was saying. It was harsh. It was cold. And it was true. There was no magically happy Hollywood ending. Hollywood didn’t exist anymore as far as he knew.

CHAPTER 13

Sunday, August 10, 2025

DAY FIFTY

Westwood, California

Dub shrugged the pack onto his shoulders and winced. His head still ached, though it was better than it had been the day before. He looked up toward the sky, thankful for once the sun was a muted smudge hiding behind the omnipresent cauldron of swirling clouds.

“Are you okay?” asked Victor, the soft-spoken but confident man with whom they’d been communicating on the radio. He’d gone from one person to another, checking their gear and their state of mind. Dub was last.

“I’m fine,” said Dub, offering a weak smile. “Thanks.”

Victor put a hand on his shoulder and locked eyes with Dub. “Your girlfriend…Keri, is it?”

Dub nodded and glanced at Keri. She was talking to the leader of the group, an athletic woman called Gilda.

“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 the 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.

She threw off her mask and slid onto her knees, nudging Maggie aside. She yanked off Danny’s mask and cradled his face with her trembling hands.

Dub took a step back as Ritz rushed past him carrying a first aid kit. It was then Dub noticed the blood leaking from everywhere, spreading outward from beneath Danny’s body.

Gilda was speaking to Danny, trying to hold his attention. His eyes were unfocused, trying to hold Gilda’s intense gaze but unable to.

Tears streaked down her face. Her tight bun had come undone when she’d ripped off her mask. Her long white-blond hair draped across her shoulders and in a thin veil across her face. She brushed it away aggressively with her fingers, leaving a powder of ash on her cheeks and brow.

Ritz ripped open Danny’s torn jacket and shirt. He uncapped a bottle of water he’d pulled from his pack and squeezed it over the wounds. Then he took another bottle and did the same along the side of Danny’s neck where Dub now saw a wide gash that ran from behind his ear to his collarbone.

After irrigating the wounds, Ritz slammed a needle into Danny’s thigh and pushed the plunger with his thumb. He yanked out the needle, tossing it behind him to the ground.

“I can’t do anything else for the punctures,” Ritz said hurriedly to nobody in particular. “But these tears, these, uh, gashes, I’ve got to get them closed. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

“What can I do?” asked Dub.

“There’s a staple gun in there,” Ritz said, pouring more water on the wound at Danny’s neck. “It’s white.”

Dub reached into the pack to fish for a white stapler. He found it, shiny plastic with a flat nose and a wide pull trigger along its base. He handed it to Ritz and slid back on the ground.

“While I work on this one,” he said to Dub, “apply pressure to that one.”

He pointed to some parallel gashes on Danny’s side near his navel. They weren’t long, but they looked deep. To Dub they resembled fish gills.

Dub swallowed hard, his throat dry, blinking away the sweat that was dripping into his eyes, and trying to focus through the haze of fog developing at the edges of his goggles’ lenses. He took part of Danny’s torn shirt and pressed it against the wound.

Ritz pinched the folds of skin together at Danny’s neck and pressed the stapler’s nose perpendicular to the wound. Then he pulled the trigger and a staple thumped into his neck.

Danny winced, his eyes wildly searching the space above him. The faintest groan oozed from his mouth.

Gilda was talking to him as the next staple snapped into his neck. She was speaking softly, repositioning herself to maintain eye contact. Snot dripped from her ash-caked face. Tears streaked clean lines along her face.

Maggie walked around in circles at Danny’s head. She was whimpering and restless, as if the commotion had called her attention to the gravity of her master’s health. She tried nuzzling toward him, sniffing at his head. But each thump of the stapler caused her to jump back and tuck her tail.

“Look at me,” Gilda implored. “Stay with me.”

Dub could see on Gilda’s face, in her crinkled, trembling chin, what all of them knew. Danny was dying. The wounds from the cat or his own dog were too much. He didn’t have enough blood.

He held the pressure at the wound in Danny’s side, his own emotions welling inside his chest despite having known the man for less than a day. Ritz told him to move so that he could close the wounds. Ritz pulled back the shred of shirt. More blood, as if held at bay by a dam, leaked from the gashes and leached together to form a single pool of seeping blood.

Ritz pressed the stapler against the top of two of the tears and squeezed. The thwack of the device drove a sterile piece of steel into his skin at two points, joining the torn pieces of flesh.

But as he set to apply a second staple, Danny’s body shuddered. His legs shook. His arms flapped to the ground. His lower back arched, and his chest rattled.

Gilda let go of his head and hovered over him. Her eyes jittered.

“What’s happening?” she cried.

“He’s seizing,” Ritz snapped.

By the time he’d finished answering, the seizure was over. Danny exhaled one final time, his chest and abdomen collapsing like a balloon losing air.

Gilda grabbed for his slack-jawed face. Her long strands of hair draped across him as she lowered herself to him and sobbed. His eyes stared back at her, vacant and distant.

Maggie vacillated between standing and sitting. She whimpered. She licked her bloody chops. She began pacing in a narrow path behind her owner. Then she hesitantly approached and sniffed him. She nudged the back of his head with her nose and licked it. She moved closer and licked his eyes and his nose.

Gilda lifted her head and reached for the dog. She gently put her hand on the animal’s head and rubbed with the grain of its fur. Maggie stopped licking Danny’s face and raised her head. She stared at Gilda for a moment, sniffed the air, and then lay down next to Danny’s body, resting her head against his. A whimper came with every soft exhale. It was the only sound in the suddenly suffocating air.

Ritz watched the dog mourning, its sudden realization that her companion wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. Gilda sat on her heels, her hands drawn to her face and covering it like the mask she’d tossed to the ground.

Ritz had one hand on Danny’s still chest. His other gripped the stapler, its white plastic now smudged and smeared with streaks of blood. He was muttering something quietly to himself. Dub imagined it was a prayer.

Behind him, Dub felt the presence of his friends and Victor before he felt a familiar touch on his shoulder. Still, he flinched when Keri gently slid her fingers across his jacket and squeezed.

Gilda broke the silence. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “This isn’t real.”

It was getting colder now, and her breath puffed with each word she muttered. She shook her head, her eyebrows knitted in disbelief. “I did this,” she said. “I killed him.”

“You didn’t kill him,” said Ritz. “This was an accident.”

She shook her head and pressed her hands flat against her thighs. She was squeezing her own legs, digging her fingers into the fabric of her pants. “I chose the route,” she said, her words running together as she staved off what sounded like hyperventilation. “I should have known better. We should have taken San Vicente.”

“You couldn’t have known,” said Ritz.

“I told him to shoot,” she said. “I told him to fire the warning shot. That’s what did it.”

Victor stepped to Gilda and crouched beside her. He placed an arm around her back and pulled her off balance and into his body. She leaned into him.

“You didn’t make him run to the animals,” he said. “He did that.”

Dub pushed himself to his feet and draped one arm over Keri’s shoulders. The mountain lion lay beyond Victor and Gilda, its tongue hanging from its mouth. Its eyes were open. It looked oddly as if it were licking the ash from the road.

Its coat was dingy, and the outline of its ribs rippled across its side. Its big paws were twisted awkwardly.

The scene was surreal. Despite all that Dub had witnessed since the attacks, no matter how close he’d been to death, what lay before him on Sunset and Bundy was a memory he knew he’d never shake. It was a collection of images that seemed disconnected yet told a story already emblazoned in his mind: a large cat, dead because of its confusion and desire to protect its food, a whimpering dog, bleeding but unaffected by its injuries while it nuzzled its owner and best friend, that friend, dead like the cat, a mix of blood and bones on the street, and grief. Immeasurable grief.

It was one thing, Dub considered there in that moment, to imagine tens or hundreds of thousands of people being dead, vaporized, burned, murdered. That was vague enough, in numbers too large to really comprehend on a rational level, that he could talk about it without it wrenching at his gut.

But standing in the street with a single man dead in front of him and the cause of it laid out like a crime scene, it was easily recognizable for what it was. Dub leaned his head against Keri’s, and he was suddenly aware of her shuddering body. She was crying.

“I’m the one who didn’t want the mountain lion dead,” she whispered through her mask. The words were nearly inaudible, but Dub understood them. “He’s dead because of me.”

They looked at each other through their goggles, and he lowered his itchy burlap mask below his chin. He blew ash away from his lips and shook his head.

“Not your fault,” he said, holding her foggy gaze. “You didn’t do this either. Nobody did this. Not even Danny. This is just what the world is about now. It’s about surviving or not. That’s all.”

Victor, who must have overheard him, eyed Dub from over his shoulder. He patted Gilda’s back and stood, backing away from the bloody scene. “All right,” he said loudly through the rubber covering his face. His chest swelled with a deep breath of filtered air. “This is bad. We’ve lost a friend. There’s no sugarcoating it. But there’s also no need for blame. It is what it is. We will mourn him. We will remember him. And we will move on.”

Gilda sobbed. She covered her face with her ash-covered hands. Dub wondered if she was trying to inhale it in some tragic act of Shakespearian guilt.

Victor was unmoved. “We have a long way to go,” he said. “There is nothing we can do for Danny. We need to bury him and move on.”

“How do we do that?” asked Barker. “Where do we do that?”

“He’s gonna be difficult to carry,” said Ritz. “And we don’t have a lot of time until its dark. It’ll take two people to—”

“Stop,” Gilda interrupted.

As the others watched silently, reverently, she wiped her face with the backs of her hands. She rose to one knee and then stood up, wavering for a moment before catching her balance.

“We can’t,” Gilda said. “We have to leave him here.”

Victor stepped toward her but kept a comfortable distance. “We can bury him, Gilda. It’s inhumane to leave him here with a deer carcass and a dead mountain lion.”

“It’s his body,” said Gilda. “It’s not him. Ritz is right, it’s a fool’s errand. Nobody would want to see him buried properly and given some sort of eulogy more than me, but it’s stupid. We need to go.”

Nobody argued. Truth was, as Dub figured it, nobody wanted to bury him. It was hard enough watching him die. They packed up their things, replaced their masks or goggles, and prepared to leave. Gilda took the rifle and shouldered the extra gear. Victor protested, but she insisted. Dub imagined she viewed it as some sort of penance on the march back to wherever it was along the shoreline they were headed. All he knew was that they had miles to go and the plan was to keep marching through the night.

As they readied themselves to leave, Gilda turned back toward Danny’s body. She stood there, taking one last look at the man with whom she’d thought she might have a future, whatever that word meant now. Then she whistled.

Maggie picked up her head. Her ears pricked. She blinked but kept her stare fixed to Gilda.

“C’mon, girl,” Gilda said through her mask. She patted her leg with a free hand. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Maggie pushed herself up and sat obediently by Danny’s body. She yawned but stayed. Gilda called her again, lifting the mask from her mouth so her voice rang more clearly through the air. Maggie’s eyes darted between her master and Gilda, but she wouldn’t move. She refused to leave Danny’s side no matter how many different ways Gilda tried to coax her.

“We need to go,” said Victor. “I’m sorry, but we do.”

Gilda nodded from behind her mask and spun on her heels toward the coast. She shrugged her pack on her back and gripped the rifle with both hands. She motioned west on Sunset, and the others followed her.

They’d gone fifty yards when the slap and patter of paws against the ashen asphalt caught up with them. Maggie’s tongue was wagging as she slowed next to Gilda. She inched next to her and rubbed her side on Gilda’s leg.

“Good girl,” said Gilda. “You’re a good girl.”

CHAPTER 15

Monday, August 11, 2025

DAY FIFTY-ONE

Pacific Palisades, California

The ocean looked black, like a boiling cauldron whose unseen ingredients were cooking beneath the bubbling surface. Even as the sun peeked high above the sheer faces of rock and dirt to their right, its opaque yellow smudge casting enough light on the water to make it visible beyond the gray shoreline, the Pacific was warning people to stay away. Its water was as uninviting as anything he’d ever seen.

Dub pulled down his burlap wrap only long enough to steal a quick pull of water before sliding the patchwork protection back up over his nose. He offered the rest of the bottle to Keri, but she declined. She’d already had most of his allotment.

“You okay?” he asked, taking long strides to stretch his sore thighs and calves. They hadn’t stopped since Danny’s death except to urinate and dig cans of tuna from their packs.

He could taste his breath under the fabric. It made him gag.

“I’m fine,” Keri said. “Tired, but fine.”

Dub and Keri were in the back of the group. Gilda, who seemed indefatigable, led them. She marched with the same pace and intensity as she had the moment they’d left Danny behind. Maggie was either at her side or at her heels, bouncing with a consistent rhythm and occasionally sweeping the ground or the air with her nose.

Gilda was a strong woman, Dub thought. Then mentally corrected himself. She was just plain strong, no gender qualifier needed. She’d seen Danny die and, aside from allowing herself a few minutes to grieve, stayed the course. He didn’t know their relationship status—married, dating, cousins, friends. But he knew she cared about him. And she was badass enough to compartmentalize her own emotions to get everyone else home safely.

Behind her was Victor. He’d key the radio every couple of hours and update whoever it was on the other end of the line at the bunker complex. Dub got the sense he was a good man who spoke only when he had something important to say. That made him perfect for his role. He was the kind of person Dub could see himself befriending. There was a kindness to his face, a sympathetic curiosity in his eyes, that put others at ease.

Ritz was a wild card. He was clearly someone with medical expertise. That meant he was smart and worked well under intense pressure. He was affable enough, from what Dub had seen of him. But given that he hadn’t seen his face, he couldn’t read him. Unlike Victor, whose eyes were visible beneath the mask, Ritz wore one with dark-tinted goggles. Other than his close-cropped hair, deep tan, and a tattoo that crept out from under his shirtsleeve, Dub couldn’t get a handle on him. Ritz and Victor would occasionally march next to one another and talk. They were too far ahead for Dub to hear what they were saying, but their body language told him the two appeared to get along, and given Dub’s assessment of Victor, that did bode well for Ritz.

The constant slosh and break of waves crashing ashore was still somehow mesmerizing as his mind washed in an out of daydreams about who his new friends were or might have been. His eyes drifted from those ahead of him silently marching along the center line of the PCH to the backlit bluffs. The sunrise was muted but recognizable. The thin haze of yellowish light ebbed like a slow tide above the jagged black outlines of the bluffs.

He tried to remember what the morning used to look like, when a distinct fiery ball confidently stretched on its broad shoulders higher and higher into a clear blue sky. The images, the memories of vivid colors, were fading already. They’d been replaced with the grays and brown hues that dominated his world now.

Even the brightly dyed T-shirts or sweats he had in his limited wardrobe appeared duller. Everything was duller now. Bleak was a good word.

Yet in the distance somewhere close there was hope. The promise of a place where he and the others could live out whatever remaining time they had in relative peace.

As much as bleak was an operative word, so was relative. There was pre-attack and post-attack. Anything measured post-attack was relative. It couldn’t objectively compare to pre-attack conditions, when the colors were as bright and as warm as the sun.

There was a soft breeze that blew from the ocean. It was cool but not cold, though it sent an occasional shudder through Dub’s body as it travelled past him and up the bluffs.

He took note of the houses on either side of him in their various states of disrepair. The salt air had long made maintenance a chore for beachfront homes. The ash, wind, and weeks of neglect had exacerbated the decay. Maybe it was the gray that made the press of homes between the road and the sand appear ghostly. Dub couldn’t be sure. But he didn’t see any people. There wasn’t the faint filter and strobe of candlelight or the sweep of flashlights passing across the windows or glass doors. They were dark, as were the homes and businesses on the eastern side of the highway. They appeared battered, haunted. It was now that he understood the difference between a house and a home. None of these houses, no matter how many millions they were worth before the attack, were homes anymore. They were shells. He considered, as Keri reached for his hand and he lowered his to lace his fingers into hers, whether people were shells now too.

How much of who they’d been, who they might have become, was vaporized in the attacks? Sure, they’d survived. They’d managed to eat three meals a day and sleep in beds with sheets. That was more than so many others.

But they’d never see their families again, he was certain. They’d never take another class or flip the tap on a keg and pour sour, cheap beer into a Solo cup. They’d been to their last football game cheering on the Bruins at the Rose Bowl. And he’d likely dunked a basketball for the final time.

He wondered about Danny. Who was he? How had he ended up in the OASIS? Why did he leave it to come rescue them? What was it about him that had affected Gilda so deeply?

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.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE ALT APOCALYPSE: LIT

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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 of his eleven hundred dollar sleeping bag.

What time was it? It felt like the middle of the night.

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.

It was the pop and sizzle of fire. But 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. It felt 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 as if she’s sucked on a lemon. Then she opened her eyes, seemed to sense 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. And before he could answer, her nose crinkled. Her eyes widened with recognition. She pulled away from him, sitting up on her elbows.

“What’s that smell?” She asked. “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 glistened. Sam couldn’t tell if it was from the thickening haze inside the tent or if she on the verge of crying. She coughed and then planted herself on her stomach, staying low to the ground.

She crawled closer to the flap at the front of the tent. She wore long johns that matched his. Her lavender thong peeked over the top of her waistband. Sam didn’t notice. 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 cleaner air. Sam could see her inhaling deeply by the rise and fall of her back.

Sweat dripped into his eyes and his face felt as if he’d been out in the sun too long. 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. At least 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. He tried to swallow but it took him a couple of tries to make it happen. A wave of nausea coursed through his body. He turned to see his wife’s expectant, frightened eyes searching his for hope.

Her bangs, recently trimmed, 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 turned onto his side to face 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. She was rubbing his thumb with hers. Her chin trembled.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “We have to get out somehow.”

Sam nodded. He was surprised by his wife’s relative calm. He’d expected her to panic. But he was the one suppressing that overwhelming urge. 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 dug into his skin. “No,” she said. “You can’t.”

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

He tugged his hand from hers. She reluctantly let go, her nails scratching his skin as he did. 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 as he pressed his lips onto hers. He tasted the salt and lingered for a moment before pulling away.

“Don’t follow me outside yet,” he said. “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 and 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. Then he opened his eyes, barely able to focus against the waves of hot air that seemed to crash over him that way an ocean might during high tide.

The roar of the flames was almost deafening. It was definitively disorienting. Sam’s senses couldn’t process all of it at once; the sight, the sound, and the heat were too much. No sooner he’d 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 metal tent stake, he opened his eyes again. He saw hope.

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

Reinvigorated by the possibility of escape, Sam turned himself around and scurried back to the flap. He tore it open and stuck his head inside. Loretta was in the same spot, but 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 back, as if freed from a trance. She looked back at her husband, her eyes 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 as if she didn’t understand him. She didn’t move.

Sam reached farther into the tent and grabbed her arm forcefully. Her triceps tensed against the pressure.

“Let’s go,” he said, almost screaming the command. “Now.”

Loretta, still dazed, 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.

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

Both of them 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 protruded through the blanket of toasting leaves and dug into the soft spot underneath his kneecap.

He grunted, his body tensing against the bolt of sharp pain that shot up his leg. He exhaled and gingerly moved forward to join his wife at the backside of the tent. She was shuffling. Her head was 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.

Sam looked over his shoulder. The fire had advanced quickly and was only a couple of feet from the front of the tent. Sam turned away from the flames and 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.

Both of them 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, spotted in darkness, 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. But there was no 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 against his burned skin. The backs of his hands, which he noticed as he reached down to help his wife to her feet, were red. 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. And the farther they ran from the fire that consumed their campsite they closer they came to another. They had no way of knowing as they ran, and stumbled, and coughed their way through the forest, that seemingly all of southern California was on fire.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the team of professionals who help me put my work out into the world. Editor Felicia Sullivan, proofreaders Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson, formatter Stef McDaid, and of course the cover artist extraordinaire, Hristo Kovatliev – all do incredible work.

Thanks to my fellow authors who are collaborative and helpful. We do a lot to lift each other up, and I’m grateful for that.

Steve Kremer is a master of everything. His intellect is invaluable in telling these stories accurately.

And to my family, words can’t convey my love and appreciation for all you do. I know. I’m a writer. I should be able to come up with the words.

And to you, the readers…please know without you these books don’t have a home. Thank you for your undying support.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

Acknowledgments