Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

“Blast shields,” he said. “You can hit those babies with an RPG and they won’t budge.”

It was a good speech. Still, half the crowd ran for their cars. Frank opened the gates at the end of the driveway just long enough for them to get through.

Then he locked us in.

Like a lot of heavy money types, the L.A. riots in ’92 put the fear of god into Frank. That’s when he started buying guns. But he turned his paranoia into art. Went full survivalist and with the kind of money he had, Frank made himself a bullet-proof Xanadu just thirty minutes from Hollywood. He had enough food, water, and medical gear to supply a small country. The mansion ran mostly on solar power, but he had a gas backup generator too. And because no one likes a boring siege, the mansion was stocked with movies and music, plus enough liquor and drugs to keep his guests high until the second coming.

After a couple of days, it was clear that whatever was happening wasn’t going to end anytime soon. By then, the sky over L.A. was full of Floaters—sort of enormous jellyfish that hovered like hot air balloons and snatched up people with their long, dangling tendrils. It happened so fast you usually didn’t see it, but you knew it was happening because Floaters bay like foghorns every time they snag a tasty morsel. The first Stingers had shown up in the city by then too, but we didn’t know enough about them to be properly scared yet. We were preoccupied with something worse: what the freaks even were .

The first images were so strange it took a while to understand them. A news crew was out getting B-roll of Floaters near the Hollywood sign. One of the cameramen went into convulsions and a couple of his friends rushed over to help him.

That’s when things stopped making sense.

The cameraman screamed as his chest and belly split open and what looked like tentacles coiled out. They latched onto his two friends as a translucent white something unfolded itself out of the guy’s body and dragged his friends into the air.

That’s when we knew we were fucked. The freaks weren’t invaders from another planet. They were us. Maybe that’s what McKee meant when he said his wife tried to eat him.

Anyway, that bit of good news was what probably inspired our first suicides: A record producer and his wife. Macy found them in one of the downstairs bathrooms, ODed on a bottle of Frank’s Oxycontin. I didn’t even know their names. I was just sorry Macy was the one to find them. She was hysterical when she came back upstairs and it took me a long time to calm her down. Frank opened the shields on the back doors long enough for the two of us to haul the couple outside and leave them by the pool.

That left ten people in the house. I knew Alex, Macy, Frank, and Geoff a little. They were my clients now. The rest, well, good luck.

When the world’s burning, you have to make choices.

Over the next three days, I spent as much time with Alex as I could without Macy getting suspicious. By the end of the third day a few of us decided to make a run for it in one of Frank’s armored limos. On TV, they were saying that the freaks were mainly over cities where the hunting was good. We wanted to see if there was a way out of L.A., maybe find somewhere with fewer freaks.

Besides, after a while, even a palace starts to feel like Alcatraz.

We left at high noon when we knew the Rollers would be asleep. That just left the Floaters to worry about, but if we kept moving we figured we could outrun them. In the limo was me, Frank, Mike (a reality TV director), and a kid who called himself Amped (one of the dead record producer’s proteges—a buff Burbank white boy hip-hop kid. Really annoying).

We knew the freeways were clogged with dead cars and the main roads were the Rollers’ and Floaters’ favorite places to hunt, so we stuck to back streets hoping we could weave our way around the danger and out of town.

I should never have let Frank drive.

He was so busy blasting down the empty streets, showing off his shiny armored toy, that he sideswiped a sleeping Roller. Lucky for us, it was big enough and we were small enough that it didn’t seem to notice the hit. But its spikes ripped a nice chunk off the limo’s side and shredded one of the rear tires.

After a short screaming meltdown, I got Frank to pull into an empty gas station and park in the garage.

“I’m so sorry, guys,” Frank said as we got out. “I fucked up.”

I said, “Forget it. Let’s change the tire and keep looking for a way out of town.”

The limo was so heavy that it needed a special jack to raise it high enough to get the tire off. We finally got it working and wrestled the bad tire off and got the new one on, but it took us half an hour. Amped sat his skinny ass on a tall tool chest and smoked a spliff the whole time. We’d just gotten the wheel on and the jack stowed when my throat went dry and I smelled chalk. That’s when Amped screamed and the rest of us got our first good look at a Stinger up close and personal.

The thing we didn’t know at the time was that Stingers were the most dangerous freaks.

Shapeshifters.

The tool chest had unfolded around Amped and dug its barbed tentacles deep into his body. Then it began absorbing him. His body went soft, like a deflating balloon as the Stinger liquified him and sucked him down.

Frank, Mike, and me scrambled back into the limo. I had to elbow Frank in the gut to keep him from getting in the driver’s seat, but he took it pretty well all things considered.

We needed to rethink the situation. I shot us out of the garage and back to Frank’s place fast. The folks who stayed behind opened the blast shields on the front door when we got back.

Macy was the first one outside, a fist over her mouth as she stared at the torn-up car. When she saw me, she ran over and cried as she hugged me tight. I’ll admit it: It was a tender moment, one of the nicest between us in a long time.

I let Frank explain what had happened to Amped. No one really knew the kid, so no one was too brokenhearted. They were a lot more interested in hearing about the Stinger.

It was another two hours before I could be alone with Alex. Once we found ourselves alone together, we crazy fucked in the room that had belonged to the ODed couple. They didn’t need it anymore, and god knows we did.

Afterwards, we lay in bed and she said, “I thought I’d lost you today.”

“No way, baby.”

“How’s Macy taking things?”

“She’s fine. Let’s not talk about her.”

Alex got up and started putting on her clothes. “It’s the end of the fucking world and we still have to sneak around.”

“Don’t talk like that. We’ll figure a way out of this. Just you and me.”

She didn’t look at me as she left, just mumbled, “Sure.”

Macy was at the bottom of the stairs when I came out of the room. She was looking the other way, so I don’t think she saw Alex leave but we were going to have to be more careful in the future.

Everyone’s phone was dropping calls so that night Frank got on a shortwave radio and started talking to people, trying to see if anyone knew a way out of town. I went into the kitchen for some food and when I got back, he’d drawn a route on a paper map from the limo’s glovebox. We decided to go out again the next day.

Two more people died that night. A nice couple. Liz and Cassandra. A murder-suicide with one of Frank’s guns. I checked the scene and didn’t let people into their room. There was nothing anyone could do and no one else needed to see the mess. But it was clear that we needed to get out of this fucking house before we all ended up the same way.

Frank tossed me the limo keys when we went out the next day. He knew I’d never let him drive again. Two other people came with us. A couple. I couldn’t remember their names and didn’t ask.