The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse (16 page)

He broke into tears as the shame and disgust washed over him. Noor was right. As much as this man deserved to die, they needed his help even more.

For now.

They would not need him forever. And the closer Ahmed got to the unsuspecting villain, the easier it would be to eventually exact vengeance upon him.

"I'm sorry," Ahmed said. "I feared for my daughter’s safety."

“Totally understandable. I have a daughter of my own. But if it's all the same to you, let's make sure you keep that Beretta pointed in a safe direction from now on, okay?"

"Yes, I understand."

Mason extended a hand in greeting. "I know you guys have been here for a few months but we've never actually had the opportunity for introductions. My name is Mason West. I'm your neighbor."

Ahmed shook his hand while trying to hide his disgust. "It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Ahmed Hassad and this is my daughter, Noor.”

"It's great to meet both of you. I meant what I said. We have loads of supplies next door and would be happy to share them."

Ahmed smiled and it wasn't completely forced. Knowing his daughter would have access to continued sustenance filled his heart with joy. "We very much appreciate that."

"I'm happy we can help. What we don't have next door is a defensible position."

"What?"

"What I mean to say is that I think we should combine forces and we’ll both be stronger for it."

Ahmed didn't quite understand what the man was getting at. "What do you mean?"

"Your house has many defensive advantages that mine does not. I propose we move everyone in my house along with all our supplies into your house."

Ahmed's jaw dropped. He certainly hadn't been expecting the intruder to invite himself to stay.

"I know it sounds a little weird, but the times we’re living in are weirder yet. If we band together, our families have a better chance at surviving."

Ahmed looked at Noor, at the pleading look on her face, and could find no counterargument of equal weighting. He nodded. "Yes, you are correct. How should we proceed?"

Mason slapped him on the shoulder like they were old friends. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. "Fantastic. I'll go tell everyone next door. After introductions all around, you and I can set to fortifying this structure while everyone else brings our supplies over."

Ahmed nodded. He would cooperate for now. For as long as the safety of his daughter required it.

But not forever.

BETH
blew through dead stoplights heading east on Exposition Blvd. She’d splashed through a few unavoidable puddles making her way through Ballona Creek. Her soaked right sock leached the heat out of her foot, leaving it tingling toward numb. She considered stripping the sock off so her foot could dry, but she didn’t relish the idea of bare skin getting hit by gravel or other road debris.
 

And there was a lot of debris.

Passage through Ballona Creek had been uneventful otherwise. She’d ridden it to the end and then made it a couple of miles on surface streets with no major problems. Assuming her frozen foot didn’t turn into a major problem.

Exposition Park was a few blocks ahead on the right. She used to take Theresa to the Natural History Museum there when she was younger. Much younger. Back when petting a Desert Tortoise would be the unchallenged highlight of her daughter’s day. She’d grown up so fast.
 

Too fast.

And now she would grow older in a world made almost unrecognizable. One that no longer had the reassuring comforts and security that most people assumed was a God-given right. They weren’t.

Society and all of its comfortable illusions were now swept away.

Theresa would be forced to survive in a way that mankind hadn’t endured for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. The descent hadn’t been easy already and there was no reason to expect it would get any better. And so it was up to Beth and Mason to protect her and do everything possible to give her a fighting chance.

Beth would die, if necessary, to ensure she had the best chance possible. Retrieving antibiotics was one such necessary task.

If she did survive this task, she knew others just like it would arise in the future. Each and every one as essential, and potentially deadly, to their survival as the last. That was the cruel irony of the survival situation. The tasks were like tests and mother nature didn’t grade on a curve. She gave only two grades: passing and failing. And it didn’t matter how many times you passed, a single failing grade meant death.

Her own death didn’t bother her overly much. But Mason losing his wife and, worse, Theresa losing her mother… she couldn’t bear the thought of their suffering.

No.

She’d make it back. This time and the next. She’d survive anything and everything thrown at her so that her family would remain whole.

Would remain unbroken.

She approached another intersection with traffic lights just as dark and unnecessary as all the others. Here in the city, the rumble of Spock’s engine bounced off houses and storefronts and generally made her anxious to get back down into the LA River where the sound could bounce harmlessly around with no one to hear it.

Not that she’d seen a single living human being, of whatever kind, yet. Aside from that pack of dogs, she’d run into no other threats. Hopefully, her luck would hold all the way to the zoo.

Out of habit, she glanced left and right as she approached the intersection. To the left, nothing unusual. Someday that phrase would make sense again. To the right, nothing—

A bright red Hummer H3 shot into the intersection to block her path.

She swerved to the left and managed to zip around it and keep going.

A loudspeaker squawked. “Hold up, honey! We want to help you! Slow down now!”

The hummer’s engine roared and tires squealed as it raced to catch up.

Good luck with that.

A metal fence ran along the left side of the road separating it from commuter train tracks. A fence on the other side secured an enormous parking lot. She was boxed in but fine because the Hummer was never going to catch up. She whizzed through another intersection and a part of her brain registered the dark metal statues on the corner of the Tyrannosaurus attacking the Triceratops, a fleshed out version of the larger skeleton one that occupied the main hall inside the museum.

A big black Jeep appeared in the intersection a hundred feet ahead. With fences on both sides and the Hummer behind, there was no obvious escape.

She slammed on the brakes and squealed to a stop, barely managing to keep her bike upright. She glanced back and saw the Hummer closing in fast.

The passenger door of the Jeep opened and a man stepped out carrying some kind of scoped rifle. He didn't point it at her, but he held it in both hands at the ready. "Hey darlin', shut your bike off and let's chat for a minute. Heck, it's a pleasure just getting to speak to a member of the fairer sex."

The loudspeaker boomed from behind her. "Baby, we just want to talk. It's dangerous out here and we want to make sure you're safe." The Hummer’s tires chirped as it skidded to a stop twenty feet behind her.

Beth considered drawing the Glock at her hip, but she wasn’t Mason and she had no doubt the man with the rifle would get the better of the exchange. So she kept her helmet down and scanned left and right looking for an escape path.
 

The man with the rifle raised it and aimed the long barrel at her. "Now don't go getting any crazy ideas. We don't want you to get hurt. Shut the bike off and step away from it. This is for your own safety. You have no idea how dangerous it is out here.”

She definitely had an idea of what was out there and as bad as it could be, it was no worse than the vibe she got from these creepy jerks. The fence line on the right opened for the entrance to the Natural History Museum. She didn't want to get trapped inside the fenced grounds but she didn't have a better choice. She had to go for it. The rifle guy would probably shoot her down but there were worse fates for a captured woman.

Beth cranked the throttle and Spock's front tire lifted as the torque jerked her body forward. She popped up the curb and entered the museum's grounds.

Doors slammed behind her. "Go! Go! Go! We’ve got her now!”

She raced through the entrance and scanned left and right. How was she going to lose them in the multilevel terraced grounds? Her bike would quickly get mired down in the mulch and bushes whereas both of their vehicles would tear right through it. She glanced at the giant glass cube that was the entrance to the building on the north side. Looters had clearly paid a visit. The glass doors were missing. The evidence of their existence lay in the scattered shards around the gaping entrance. Whole sheets of glass in the surrounding windows were busted out like someone went crazy with a bag of rocks, or maybe bullets.

Light spilled into the interior through the remaining glass, or lack thereof. The interior darkened further in. Their vehicles might make it through the entrance but they definitely wouldn't be as maneuverable inside as her bike was. She gunned it, heading straight for the gaping hole that no longer required a member’s sticker on your shirt to get in.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Rifle shots from behind shattered a sheet of glass above the entrance. Jagged shards rained down and bounced off her helmet as she flew through the entrance. She rode through the gift shop, narrowly avoiding overturned displays and cheap plastic dinosaurs that apparently even looters didn't consider worth stealing. She slowed down and wound her way through the tighter aisles and made it out into the exhibit hall.

She killed the headlight and popped her visor up to better see in the failing light.

Okay. Now what?

Had she escaped one trap only to flee into another?

CRACK.

A chunk of marble in the column two feet to her left exploded, showering her with fragments. She jerked right and almost dumped the bike as a result. She managed to hang on and rode through a large archway into the main hall.
 

In the near darkness, she saw even darker shapes hanging in the air ahead. She realized what they were and skidded to a stop before plowing straight into the gigantic skeletons of the Tyrannosaurus Rex battling it out with the Triceratops. They towered some thirty feet into the air. She’d nearly taken out the leg of the Tyrannosaurus. Take that out and the whole thing would've come down on her head.

"Straight ahead! She’s in there!"

Beth looked back and saw three flashlights attached to rifles sweeping back and forth. All headed in her direction.

She had an idea. A way to turn this trap back on her pursuers. She shut her bike down and guided it behind a marble pillar in the far corner of the main hall.

The men appeared in the large room with their beams of light slicing this way and that.

"I know she came this way."

"Little lady? Come out, come out, wherever you are."

"Kenny, shut your mouth. You sound like a dumbass."

Their flashlights landed on the skeleton dinosaurs. All three focused on the colossal display.

"Damn. Will you look at that?"

"Big fuckers, weren't they?"

"Yeah, but they all died off. You know why?"

"Well, I read that a big asteroid hit sending up a huge pile of dust that covered the—"

“Kenny, shut your mouth with that science crap! They died because they weren't holding the guns like we are."

The men walked up to the exhibit stepping into the space between the ancient, motionless adversaries. They stared up at the towering carnivore. One pointed his rifle at its head.
 

“I’d shoot it dead if it was alive.”

“Damn, there’d be a lot of meat on a beast that big. What do you figure it’d taste like?”

“I don’t know. Chicken, probably.”

“I read that chickens are actually descended from dinosaurs. Can you imagine?”

“Kenny, I’ll shoot you if say another word.”

"Be fun as hell to hunt one of these, huh?"

“Be more fun to catch the prey we're after."

All the men laughed gruffly. Sickeningly.

"It's my turn to go first this time."

“The hell it is. The last one didn't count. She was big as a cow. I did you both a favor going first.”

"Shut up, the both of you! There will be plenty of time for each of us to get a turn. As many turns as we want.”

"Now you're talking."

The hairs on the back of Beth's neck stood on end. Her belly squirmed with equal parts disgust and terror. How could they be so cavalier? As if raping her were no different than who got to pick what to watch next on TV.

What had mankind come to?

With the men still looking up at the skeleton beast above them, Beth lined up her bike like an arrow. She squeezed the brake and then fired it up. The headlight blinked on blinding the men as they turned in surprise. She cranked the throttle and then released the brake. The bike shot forward and tipped over as it reached them. It skidded across the marble floor and bulldozed through both ancient beasts.

The bones crashed down smashing the men below. They screamed and then went silent as they were either knocked unconscious or killed.

Beth drew the Glock and waited behind the column to see if anyone would crawl out of the jumbled pile of flesh and bones. They’d get a bullet if they did.

No one did.

She tiptoed out of cover and found Spock near the edge of the pile. It lay on its side pinned down by a number of large bones. She set the pistol on the floor and began clearing away the bones.
 

From somewhere inside the mess, one of the men groaned.

She grabbed the gun and waited, but no threat appeared. After waiting another minute, she returned to the task of digging the bike out. The bones were heavy, but much lighter than expected. It dawned on her that of course they weren’t real bones. They were casts of the found specimens. Real bones weighed too much to use in a full body exhibit.