At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (8 page)

I came to as Félix poured water on me. It was
three times now that he had done that, three times in two days. I
choked in air, coughing and coughing. He handed me an inhaler. “I
shook it already.”

I put it to my lips. The mist flew down my
throat and expanded my lungs as I held for thirty seconds. I
clicked down the silver tube again. The life-saving spray shot down
in sweet relief. “Thanks,” I managed.

He nodded, wiping his spectacles. “Yeah,
bromigo. I’m going to check on Maggy.”

“Uhrm. Yeah, okay.”

He replaced his glasses and climbed over the
bus seats to the front where Maggy was strapped into the driver’s
seat. She looked unconscious. I could barely make out the chair in
front of me, everything was blurry, unfocused. I was so dizzy. So
damn dizzy. I put my hand to the floor and slid over some glass
that slit the outside of my palm. “AHH!”

“You all right?” Félix asked, looking at me
as he crouched next to Maggy.

“Cut my hand on some glass.”

“Sorry.” His gentle voice was full of
sympathy.

“How’s Maggy,” I asked. I pulled myself up
using the edge of the tilted seats.

“I’m okay, Jelly. Everything is just
spinning, that’s all,” Maggy said, her voice high and grating.
Félix gave her some water, then an inhaler.

“Yeah, same for me,” I said, rubbing my eyes
as I stood upright. My feet were planted where the window used to
be. I turned and searched for Jacob. He had been holding on to the
bar a few rows behind me, and I found him sprawled out on his back,
unmoving. He had dozens of scrapes, some bruises too. “Jacob is in
bad shape.” I reached down and checked his neck for a pulse. His
blood was still pumping. “He’s alive, though.”

Félix walked over to me, hunched over. “If
he makes it I think I’ll try to make him a medal for being so
resilient.”

I laughed. “I bet he makes it. I mean, he’s
trying to kill himself, but I’ll still bet that he survives longer
than all of us.”

Félix smiled. “Yeah.” He turned and unlocked
one of the ceiling hatches, kicked it out after a few hits, and
crawled through. “Come on.”

Maggy slowly made her way over and crawled
out. I followed after. We examined the wreckage. The bus had
crashed into softer soil, but it was bent and crumpled, really
scrunched together.

“How did we survive?” Maggy spoke softly.
“How?” She looked over at Félix.

He shrugged. “The wonders of neo-plastic.
People have survived way worse.”

“Have they? With I-5 a level above the
ground, we fell five levels.” She paused calculating. “That’s over
20 meters.”

It was hard to digest. I inspected the bus,
walking all the way around it. I shifted to peer up at the fourth
level of I-5. “I think we should be dead, too. It just looks
impossible.”

“Don’t you remember that plane crash a few
years ago? All twenty-odd people survived because of neo-plastic’s
resilience and the way it compresses. No one was even critically
injured. It’s the stuff of miracles . . .” Félix backed up from the
bus a couple of steps. “Where is the alion?”

“Huh?” Maggy asked.

“There was an alion running alongside us,
remember.”

We all backed up, slinked around to the
other side, and paused. “You see what I see?” I asked.

“Yep, bromigo.” Maggy crept closer to the
back wheel well. Two tawny paws stuck out, crippled, visibly
shattered. “The rest of the body must be under the bus.”

I edged up next to her. “How did I miss it?
I walked all the way around.” I was stunned, but relieved. No more
hunters, no more alions to worry about, or at least, one less. I
could barely take it. “I’m going to go check on Jacob.”

Félix nodded. “Good idea.”

I crawled through the hatch and checked
Jacob’s vitals again. I tossed some water on him, since it had
worked so well on me. It worked on him too, kind of; he was already
waking when the water hit his face.

“What’s going on?” Jacob squinted at me with
cloudy eyes.

“You’ll be all right. Just take it
easy.”

“Do you have any gin?”

I laughed. “No, dude. I don’t have any gin.
Do you want some water?”

“What’s water ever done for me? Do you have
any vodka?”

I shuffled through a bag that had spare
water bottles. “Yeah, I do.” I offered him the water.

He snatched it up and drank it. “Damn that’s
good . . . that’s good. Never had vodka taste so clean, so
smooth.”

“Well, make it last,” I told him. “Here take
this.” I handed him an inhaler. He took it. “I’ll be right back.
Just relax. I’ll be right back.” I straightened up as much as I
could, found the hatch, and crawled out. As cozy as it was in the
bus, it was nice to be out in the open, breathing the untainted
air. When I walked around the bus, I came upon something I didn’t
want to see, ever. Maggy had her arms around Félix, staring at him:
my best friend. She rose up on her toes and kissed him. I twirled
around as fast as my feet could handle and strode away.

“They were just friends yesterday . . . what
is this? They were just friends . . .” I stomped around in the
dirt. I had never really drank before, but I could go for some of
Jacob’s magical vodka, the real stuff. My world was spinning,
around and around. I puked my heart out a few meters from the
bus.

Félix and Maggy came running up. “You all
right?” Maggy asked.

“Oh, yeah, fine. I’m fine. Just a sour
stomach or something, probably just needs to come out.”

Félix grabbed a towel out of the bus and
handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said. He nodded. I found a water
bottle and sat down, slouched against the bus. “What a
nightmare.”

“A little worse than a nightmare, that’s
certain,” Félix said, his voice shaking. “We have some guns, some
food, some water . . . but how far can we make it? It’s a long road
south.”

I sucked down the water. “And we don’t know
anything about conservation. Every time I put a bottle to my lips,
I drink half the container.”

He smirked. “Yeah, me too, bromigo. Me
too.”

“But we have to try,” Maggy said, her tone
full of hope. “We all know it. Even that melted drunk knows that.
We’re stronger than you guys think. We’ll persevere. That’s what
it’s about, isn’t it? The perseverance of the human race, that’s
our quality. It will be the alions downfall.”

“We don’t know anything about the alions,” I
countered. “Except that they have spaceships, they’ve taken about
99% of the population, they’re smart, they’re fast, and they look
like lionesses. That’s all we know.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We know they bleed just
like us, red blood and all; we know they can die.”

“I—”

“No, we’re going south. Together. That
melted head, too. He’ll make it.”

I looked up at her. “He’s already awake.
He’s fine, or should be fine. He thinks his water is vodka.”

They both laughed.

“I bet he does,” she said, chortling. She
kneeled down beside me.

I eyed her. “You’ve got a plan.”

“I’ve got a plan,” she said. “Don’t worry;
I’ll get us to Pasadena. All of us.”

“I wish I had a head like you,” I
confessed.

She blushed. “The plan is to find the
nearest on-ramp, find an SUV on the second tier, and take that all
the way, under cover. The second level has always been the least
driven, so we won’t have to worry about so much traffic to bump out
of our way. We’ll be in Pasadena in a day or two if we drive
without stopping.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan, IQ.”

“Tortilla and I will gather everything up,
you rest there.”

“Nah, I’m all right.” I clambered to my feet
with the aid of the bus. I was still holding the towel with puke
chunks, so I tossed it towards the front of the bus, and we crawled
through the hatch in single file.

Félix helped Jacob up and out the bus. We
removed everything that was still intact and started to consolidate
our inventory. I looked over our supplies. “So we have water
bottles; some food; cooking equipment and utensils, including a
stove we found at the sporting goods store; medicines; a whole
backpack filled with aluminum foil; some towels, blankets, and
toilet paper; and a whole duffel with knives, guns, ammo, arrows,
and saws.”

Maggy leaned against the haft of her axe,
the head resting in the soil. “Too bad we left the other duffels;
we might need more pots than this.”

“If we do, we’ll find some more along the
way,” Félix said. “We’ll find what we need.” He took an ammo box
that read 9MM PARABELLUM on the lid and started to reload his gun
the way Jacob had showed him a few minutes before.

“And make sure the damn safety is on,” Jacob
told Félix. “You don’t want to shoot one of us. That goes for all
of you.” He shifted his narrow gaze on to us.

“So how is everyone feeling?” Maggy asked,
changing the subject. “I have some big ugly bruises on my waist,
shoulders, well everywhere.”

“The cut on my hand is all right since I put
bandages on it. Other than that, I have a few pretty bad bruises on
my shoulders, arms, back, butt, and legs, but I’ll survive,” I
reported.

“Pretty much the same for me,” Félix
said.

Jacob looked the worst out of the four of
us. He was completely scraped up, bandages all over him, thanks to
Maggy. “I’m not sure I can walk.” Jacob was sitting against the bus
and tried standing to his feet.

“If you can’t, we’ll support you,” Félix
told him.

“What about the weight from all the bags? We
can’t support him and carry all this stuff,” I said. “I’m not that
strong, and I’ll get too tired long before we find an on-ramp.”

Jacob took a step and collapsed. “Yeah, we
need a new plan.”

“Tortilla and I can go find a ride and drive
back here,” Maggy said. “Jelly, stay here and keep him safe.” She
pointed at Jacob.

I nodded. “That’s not safe or smart, but
neither is leaving this stuff behind.”

They left, taking only three guns and the
replica axe.

Jacob sat back down, bent over as he ate
some jerky. “Why do you let her call you that?”

“Call me what?”

“Jelly. Why do you let her call you
Jelly?”

I stared at him, my mind blank. “Don’t know
. . . it’s endearing.”

He laughed. “No, it’s not. She’s calling you
fat, bro. She’s not calling you the love of her life.”

“What do you know? It’s endearing, just
leave it at that.”

He didn’t say another word on the subject.
“You want me to show you how to load the shotgun?”

I was holding the weapon with both hands,
across my stomach. “Yeah, unless you want the gun.”

“No, I found these in the store.” From a bag
next to him, his own bag, he grabbed a pair of submachine guns. “I
found these OMP2s while you were getting the stove. Probably just a
couple of years old.”

My mouth gaped. “That’s the gun from Death
Squad.” I had never seen one in real life.

“The Optimum Machine Pistol model 2. These
will rip those aliens to shreds. They fire at 2700 rounds per
minute. Neo-plastic, you gotta love it.”

“Why did you hide them?”

“Not sure, wasn’t thinking all too straight.
You know, melted brain and all.” He smiled.

I smiled and handed him the shotgun. He let
me hold the OMP2. It was so light; it probably weighed as much as
one of my shoes. “Wow . . .” I whispered.

“Looks like you’ve used three of the twelve
cartridges. See the loading port?” He pointed to the bottom of the
gun in front of the trigger. “You press this button.” He pressed a
button on the right side of the loading port and a magazine
detached. “And you get your magazine. It’s an easy single column,
so just pop them in here, and pop the magazine back into the gun
and it will lock automatically. You can adjust the firing rate with
this knob.” He pointed to the left side of the loading port. “You
can switch between automatic loading and pump-action by pressing
this switch.” He flipped a switch near the foregrip. “Either one is
good, you might waste more cartridges with it on automatic, but
it’s nice not having to worry about loading when you’re scared
shitless, so it’s your choice.”

“I think I’ll leave it on automatic.” I
accepted the shotgun when he offered it back to me. “How do you
know so much about guns?”

“My mother was a cop in Seattle for a long
time, and then in Bellingham. As I grew older, she decided to teach
me, it was fun for her. She really liked taking me to the range.”
He stopped when he began to really reflect on his mother.

“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what to say
to him, I didn’t really know him at all.

“We’ve all lost, nothing to be sorry about.
Nothing you could do, right? Unless you brought them here, unless
you ordered them to take all those people and leave a handful . . .
unless that was you, I wouldn’t be sorry.”

I was going to reply, but then I saw a
police SUV speeding along the road about twenty meters to the west
of us, the road that led to the freeway. “Look!” I flung out my
hand and pointed.

“Other survivors?” Jacob asked.

It didn’t take long for the answer to his
question. Maggy skidded to a stop next to us with the window down,
smiling. “You bums need a lift?”

“Yeah, and a drink,” Jacob said.

“A lift is all I’ve got. Take it or leave
it.”

“I suppose I’ll take it.”

They jumped out and loaded up the car. I
helped Jacob to the opened hood where he disabled the fake engine
noise, then into the backseat on the passenger’s side. After he was
settled, I went around to the other side. “Nice ride.”

“Figured it would be best to bump cars out
of the way, you know, able to withstand it a few dozen times.”
Maggy pressed the GO pedal and we were off. “The batteries are at
72%, so we have a ways before we have to recharge, or find another
cruiser. I wish we had that rectenna on this bad boy.”