One of the rear doors to the SUV opened and I saw Heather head out. I heard Lori rummaging around back there. I was at the front of the vehicle, near Tracy, trying to help. Emily"s screams were ear piercing. "She"s gonna attract more," I said.
"I know that!" Tracy shot back at me. "I"m trying to calm her down, dammit!"
"Let me gooooo!" Emily screamed.
Lori rushed back with the Valium. "Here." She pa.s.sed it to Tracy. I grabbed hold of Emily and helped hold her down while Tracy forced the pill into her mouth and made her swallow it. For a brief few minutes I was in a panic as Emily gasped for air. She gagged. I was hoping that was only half a dose or less and not a full one.
"She"s choking!" I panicked.
Tracy brought a bottle of Evian water to her mouth and forced it down. "Calm down baby, it"s okay. Drink this."
Emily got some of the water down and let out a breath. She was breathing heavily, sweat running down her face, and then she started crying. Tracy must have noticed the worry in my face. She looked at me and said, "It was just a quarter dose, like last night."
I nodded, relieved as Emily cried.
Tracy held her close, rocking her. "It"s okay honey. It"s okay. Shhh."
Despite seeing that Emily was going to be okay, that she"d soon be asleep when the Valium took effect, I was still deeply troubled by what had happened.
I grabbed extra magazines for the Kimber and handed them to Lori. "Don"t let that .45 out of your sight," I said. She nodded and I turned back to Tracy. "I"m gonna close the door so she can calm down."
Tracy nodded and I closed the pa.s.senger side door of the SUV and headed back to the driver"s side to take stock. I was running low on ammo. I headed to the back of the SUV where Martin was already reloading magazines for the Ruger. James Goodman and Heather were standing awkwardly at the side of the road, looking uncomfortable and nervous. "How long do you think it"ll take before we see more?" I asked.
"Don"t know," Martin said. "Wish we had more weapons, though."
"Hopefully Wesley will come back with more."
"I"m wondering if it"s still a good idea to wait for him," Martin said. He"d already filled up three magazines and was starting on a fourth.
"Why?"
Martin paused. Sweat dotted his face. He looked toward the east where dead primitives lay. "No telling how far sound travels now that everything"s changed. More could be heading this way and I don"t like the way this attack was carried out. They planned this, David."
"No s.h.i.t they planned it," Lori said. She was standing to my left. She was filling magazines for the Kimber. "Who"s to say they won"t learn to use guns eventually?"
I wanted to tell them that the primitives weren"t that smart. Surely they saw the news coverage yesterday, of the live feeds showing policemen suddenly dropping their weapons uselessly on the ground as they turned primitive. Their behavior today was far from stealthy, especially when it came to the attacks on my house last night.
But I knew they were right.
"Let"s wait it out," I said. "We"ll keep watch, first sign of anything in the distance we get in the car and go. We can always come back later for Wesley."
Lori was finished loading the magazines for the .45. She looked at her watch. "It"s just after three-fifteen. He"s not here by five on the dot, we"re out of here."
"Agreed." We can leave a note pinned to a rock or something for him if need be.
When all the weapons were reloaded I stuck about half a dozen magazines in various pockets, as did Lori and Martin. James and Heather were standing about five feet apart from each other, James pacing the front of the SUV, Heather kicking pebbles on the ground, looking restless. "You want to watch the north?" I called to her.
She looked at me. "Do I get a gun?"
"Sorry. We don"t have enough."
Something crossed her features briefly and then she relented. "Okay." She headed to the front of the jeep to stand watch.
Martin, Lori and I split up to the east, south and west respectively. I opened the driver"s side door of the SUV to check on Emily. Tracy was cradling her in her arms. Emily was already fast asleep, her mouth hanging open. Tracy looked exhausted. "I don"t know how much more of this I can take," she said. She looked ready to crack emotionally. And with the trauma of losing Eric, I"m surprised she was able to hold herself together this long.
"We"re gonna wait for Wesley and if he isn"t back by five, we"re out of here," I told her.
"We should leave now!"
"Honey, we need a guy like him!"
"No we don"t! What if more of those things come?"
I told her we were all watching out for them and at the first sign of any primitives, we were getting in the vehicle and leaving. She seemed to accept that. "We have three quarters of a tank of gas," she said. "That should be enough to get us out of here, at least to the foothills of the Sierras."
"And we can siphon more if need be," I said.
"This last attack," Tracy began. "They were throwing rocks at us, weren"t they?"
I couldn"t lie about that. "Yeah."
She looked worried.
"We"ve got it covered," I said again. When she didn"t say anything else I closed the door and looked west. Aside from dead primitives lying in the fields, I saw nothing but shrubbery and barren fields in either direction.
Martin was right, though. Sound traveled very well in the high desert. Especially after normal civilization had ceased.
The first signs of more trouble came about an hour later.
Seven.
The heat was unbearable. It beat down on us like a sticky thing, relentless and stifling. As the sun began its descent in the west, I felt its full effect. At one point, Tracy rolled down all the windows of the SUV and even started the engine for a while to get the AC going. Emily was fast asleep in the front seat and we left her there, slumped across it with the doors and windows open for cross ventilation. Tracy joined me on the west side and eventually we all grouped together again. Only Heather remained near the front of the SUV, occasionally heading to the rear of the vehicle for a snack. For the most part, we all made a trip or two for snacks and water. The guys were able to relieve themselves in the field while the girls had to go behind the SUV for privacy.
The time pa.s.sed slowly. While we were definitely more alert and aware of our surroundings now, we started talking again. James sat on the ground against the rear of the SUV. He"d taken his shirt off, as did Martin. Both men"s physiques were complete opposites: James the pudgy middle-aged professor, Martin"s was rock solid, muscular.
Heather noticed the second wave first. "I see more!" She said, rushing to where we were all huddled.
We scrambled to our feet, weapons in hand. Sure enough, I saw about half a dozen trotting down the road toward us.
"Nothing coming at us from the west or the east," Martin said behind me.
"Nothing from the south, either," Lori said.
I took a look at the road ahead of us. I tried to make out if there were others behind these half dozen, if perhaps more of them were sneaking up behind them. Martin and Lori were on my wavelength. "I don"t see any sneaking up from any other direction," Lori said.
When I was sure we would only deal with these six, I pulled my Sig. "We can deal with them."
When the primitives saw that we"d noticed them, they stopped. I could hear them grunting, gesturing to one another. Were they communicating?
"How far away are they?" Martin asked.
"One hundred yards, maybe," I said. No problem. I raised my Sig, placed one in my sights and pulled the trigger.
One primitive dropped. The others scattered. I calmly took down two more while Martin got two. One got away.
"f.u.c.k," I said. We watched the lone survivor grow smaller as he or she scurried out of range.
"Those things were communicating!" Lori exclaimed. She looked surprised and shocked. "Did you see that s.h.i.t?"
"I saw it," I said.
Tracy, James and Heather had watched us take down the five primitives and now they joined us. "Are you sure they were communicating?" James asked.
I described the gesturing they made to each other when they saw us. James looked grim. "It"s almost as if...whatever it is that causes people to revert to this stage...it"s almost as if those affected are operating on a level not seen since the Neanderthal."
"What do you mean?" Heather asked.
"There was a report released a few months ago," James said, looking out across the horizon. "Scientists were able to trace the DNA strand of Neanderthals and they found out that humans share a good percent of that DNA structure. It suggests that at one point h.o.m.o sapiens and Neanderthals crossbred."
"I could"ve told you that," Tracy snorted. "I read Clan of the Cave Bear, too!"
James grinned. "Neanderthals and h.o.m.o sapiens co-existed for thousands of years until Neanderthals eventually died off about twenty-five thousand years ago. It"s almost like what we"re seeing is a total reversion of not only our physiological selves but our sociological as well. It"s like a giant reset b.u.t.ton has been pressed, reverting us back to our most primitive state."
"That"s why I"ve been calling them primitives," I said.
"I noticed that awhile back," James said. "Very apt." What I was seeing from James Goodman was the History Professor, the man who until a few days ago challenged young minds in college cla.s.srooms. "It fits, too. I mean, some of the news footage I saw showed cops dropping their weapons when they turned. It was like they"d lost their knowledge of the weapon"s use."
"Why were they attacking everybody then?" Heather asked. For the first time, she looked curious.
"Out of fear. Territory. Food."
I flashed on the scene of a primitive huddled over a dead man, tearing into the flesh of his arm, and grimaced.
"You two were in the street when this happened, right?" James asked Lori and Heather.
"I was at home," Heather said.
"Yeah, I was trying to get to work," Lori answered.
"And you said you saw them running in the street...like there was ma.s.s hysteria?"
"Well, yeah..." Lori"s forehead creased with thought. "Now that you mention it, I didn"t see a whole lot of attacks. Just...they were all running and howling...making those weird a.s.s noises."
"Like monkeys being riled up in the monkey cage at the zoo," James said. "That"s what we experienced yesterday. And those who didn"t turn and were caught up in it were attacked because they were in the way. Rile up monkeys at the zoo, get them scared and be in the middle of it, you"d be attacked just like yesterday."
"So what we"re seeing now is their natural behavior?" This came from me.
"That"s what it seems," James replied. He motioned to the fields along both sections of the road. "Primitive man was very smart. Very cunning. He communicated with members of his own tribe and they were smart enough to hunt in packs and do a lot of things in their own little communities. Modern apes like chimps and baboons, even gorillas, share this trait. Now that they"ve calmed down after the sudden transition of their change or whatever it was that caused this, they"re behaving normally." He regarded us with a frown. "And we"re a threat."
n.o.body asked how we could be a threat to them. We all knew this was the case. We regarded the primitives as enemies and would kill any we came across.
And somehow they knew this.
"Different ape species regard one another as their natural enemies as do other animal species," James continued. "It"s instinctual. What we"re seeing now is no different. They see us as the enemy and they"ll kill us if they can."
"So you think that"s why they snuck up on us today?" Tracy asked. "They saw us and just...coordinated this attack?"
"Absolutely. We have to a.s.sume that packs or tribes have already been formed. The ones that attacked us? We were probably in their territory."
"And those?" Tracy indicated the ones down the road we"d just killed.
"They heard the gunfire and commotion from who knows where and were attracted to it."
"I would think that a sound like gunfire would scare them," I mused. "Why would it attract them?"
Silence for a moment. When James answered, his voice was grave. "The primitives we saw today were bearing weapons. Maybe they...recognized the gunfire for what it was."
"What"s that?" Lori asked.
"A call to battle."
Twenty minutes later there was another skirmish.
Tracy had retreated to the SUV to tend to Emily when I noticed it. "Something"s happening," I motioned to Martin. We were standing near the rear of the SUV and I nodded toward the east field where a plume of dust was rising.
Martin squinted into the distance. "Looks like a vehicle."
"Is that Wesley coming back?" Lori heard us and came back from the west side where she"d been keeping watch. James and Heather joined us.
"I don"t know," I said.
There was movement in the field, way off in the distance. For the first time I wished we had a pair of binoculars.
The vehicle was drawing closer. Suddenly it seemed to stop.
The sounds that came back to us were very clear and unmistakable.
Gunshots.
"That"s got to be him," I said. I drew my Sig.