Bones Omnibus (62 page)

“Wait a sec,” she balked. She moved over to Bones and unhooked the chain from around his neck so that he was completely unfettered. She then rubbed his snout.

“Take care of yourself,” she said to the shepherd. She then allowed herself to be harnessed and zip-lined across the street. Paul, the last one in the room, glanced back at Bones, who was now sniffing around the bloody hole in the floor.

“Don’t make me regret not shooting you,” Paul said, though Bones didn’t seem to notice.

With that, Paul exited across the zip-line, and seconds later the rope was cut as Bones watched. As if on cue, the door to the room was kicked open by four of the Mayer men.

“Where the hell’d they go?” barked Gerson, the leader of the group.

Bones galloped over to the window and began barking up a storm. Gerson and his men raced over and immediately saw the group of Israeli commandos retreating through the broken building across the way.

“Fuck!” shouted Gerson, who instinctively pointed his AR-15 tactical carbine out the window and began spraying the hotel with 5.56 NATO rounds.

Almost immediately, one of the Israeli commandos took a million-to-one shot to the neck, spun around, and fell four stories down to the street, where he landed with a dull thud, not unlike the hawk before him. The rest of the commandos immediately formed up and fired back, but with much heavier fire power.

High-powered rounds arrowed through the walls, easily tunneling through the midsections of Gerson and the other Mayer shooters despite their heavy plate body armor. It took a fusillade of less than a dozen bullets to silence the four men.

Having been just below the head- and chest-level shots taken by the commandos, Bones avoided getting shot, only to then have to dodge a falling mercenary who had taken three rounds to the stomach and was staggering backwards towards the hole in the floor. Bones ducked out of the way and let the man fall (directly onto Gary as it turned out, who seemed to groan upon the merc’s impact), but then skittered out the door.

Instead of going downstairs, Bones followed the scent of Chris up to his squat on the fourth floor. He discovered both Chris and Barbara absent their clothes on Chris’s cot but also absent most of their skin, having had it chewed away by the rats. Still clinging to one another, it seemed as if they’d been taken completely by surprise when the rodents swept in and, rather than fight, had allowed themselves to be devoured in coitus.

Bones sniffed around for a moment but then descended downstairs. When he reached the lobby, he saw that there were only a handful of the Mayer men left, and they were all too preoccupied with trying to get back in contact with the outside world to notice a lone dog.

“We’ve got a real emergency here!” shouted one of the men. “We need an extract!”

“How many of the clients have been affected?” came a voice on the other end.

“We don’t know. Too difficult to assess. You have to understand the gravity of the situation here on the ground! We have been breached, and we’re at almost 100-percent casualties!”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, but then a weary voice came back. “I’m afraid any attempt at extraction could be compromised by the current instability of the city. You’re advised to sit tight or attempt your own extraction via a southeastern, overland route…”

The man smashed the radio receiver at this point and shook his head. “Those fuckers! When I get back there, I’m going bring their goddamn company down to its knees. They won’t even know what hit them. Pricks.”

This man’s name was Richard Uhlmann, and he would unwittingly destroy mankind two hundred and forty-two days from this proclamation.

Bones padded out of the Deco Building and found Hollywood completely dark now that the generator-fueled lights set up by the mercs had been mostly extinguished. On the street and sidewalk directly in front of the structure were the corpses of thousands of dead rats shredded into mincemeat by the quick-thinking men in the Humvees, but also more than a few dead humans. Skipping through the carcasses, nose filling with the scent of the recently dead, Bones wandered north to Hollywood Boulevard, picked up a new scent, and began walking west.

The devastation along one of the most storied streets in the world was remarkable in its consistency. Very little was left standing, as the buildings had come down on both sides of the street, destroying the palm trees, signage, and even the “walk of fame,” granite stars placed in the sidewalk emblazoned with the names of media stars, many long dead before the quake, far more dead after the quake.

Bones kept moving, as he found himself hungry and had picked up the scent of food. He tracked this to a warm spot on the street five blocks down from Vine where he detected the smell of gasoline and cordite, the place where the Israeli commandos had parked their vehicles before beginning their operation. Bones sniffed around this for a moment but then kept moving.

A few more blocks, and Bones found a hot dog stand storefront that had been demolished by the quake but seemed to have proved impenetrable to looters, though it was obvious some had tried to get in but hadn’t managed to. Bones, however, was a very determined animal, and got down on his stomach, scratched his way forward, stretched out his spine, and finally edged his way into what had been the kitchen of the hot dog stand, now little more than a crawlspace filled with rotting meat. Bones immediately began feasting on the leftovers, scarfing down hot dog after hot dog until he couldn’t eat another bite. He almost fell asleep right there, but started to feel queasy and struggled back out onto the sidewalk.

Once he was out, he staggered forward, threw up, and then shit all over the sidewalk. It was a disgusting evacuation to be sure, but Bones immediately felt a little better. At the very least, he wasn’t hungry anymore.

As he walked, Bones looked up to the grassy hills above Hollywood most recently ablaze due to broken gas lines, but now only smoldering. He could see a couple of spots of orange that indicated fires that could have either been survivors or still burning homes. It was impossible to say.

His nose started picking up something else at this point, neither smoke nor rats nor gasoline nor people. It was a threat, and he scanned the darkness for its source, though this time the odor was coming off another canine.

Yipe…yipe…yipe…

The chilling, high-pitched call of a coyote pierced through the otherwise silent night, and Bones spotted his first would-be attacker: a skinny, gray-red coyote hurrying across the street towards him on spindly legs. No sooner had he see the first than he spotted two more on the way, called by their scout. They were skinny little animals with long, fox-like snouts, bushy tails, and incredibly sensitive ears that had been able to pick out Bones’s approach, even if his scent might have been obscured by every other smell in the air.

Unlike the timber wolves he’d encountered in Pennsylvania, this pack was desperate for fresh meat and could tell that Bones, still suffering from a myriad of injuries, wouldn’t be anywhere near 100 percent in a fight. Recognizing this himself, Bones began preemptively barking and barring his teeth, but this didn’t even slow the coyote’s pace. Though it seemed the pack hadn’t decided which of its number would lead the charge, they didn’t appear to be expecting much of a fight.

Bones backed up three steps, acting the wounded gazelle just enough to get one coyote out in front of the others. When it was far enough away from its pack, Bones launched forward. He caught the surprised animal off-guard and tore out its throat in one smooth motion. To drive his point home, the shepherd then lifted the fresh coyote carcass over his head, shook it around in his jaws a moment, but then let go. It flew a couple of feet before dropping lifeless onto the broken, rubble-strewn street.

But the coyotes were only momentarily put off by this display. They saw it for what it was: the one card Bones had to play. Now that it was on the table and the advantage had passed back to the pack, they quickly encircled the shepherd with their teeth bared.

Bones began barking, but the coyotes barked right back and snapped their saliva-dripping jaws. Bones stamped his feet a bit to show off his impressive claws, but the coyotes didn’t slow their advance. Not even when Bones dropped his shoulders and opened his mouth to allow the dead coyote’s blood to sluice through his bottom teeth onto the pavement did the coyotes seem to notice.

Realizing he wasn’t going to be able to bluff his way out of this one, Bones spread his front legs to give himself an open stance and waited to be attacked.

Suddenly, three shots rang out from above Bones’s position, fired straight into the air. The coyotes immediately sprinted away. Bones, a second later, did the same in the opposite direction. The shepherd only got a couple of yards before a man holding a rifle leaped down from the rubble of the building alongside the dog and blocked Bones’s way. Instinctively, Bones barred his teeth again and barked at the man.

But then another man jumped down behind Bones, slipped a choke chain around the shepherd’s neck, and pulled it tight.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” said the man standing in front of Bones. He stepped forward, revealing himself to be Paul, the Israeli commando team leader. “Sharon told us that you were some big fancy cadaver dog. Lucky for us, lucky for you.”

Bones continued growling as Paul walked up to him, extending a hand. But as Bones leaned forward for a sniff, Paul punched him in the snout. The shepherd reared back, snarling in anger.

“The man your friends killed back there? My wife’s youngest cousin. When we get done here, I’m going to eat your fucking heart, dog. But until then you’re on the team.”

Bones continued bucking at the choke chain, lunging forward and snapping at Paul, but the commando had already turned and walked away.

“S
o you do have a name.”

Sharon was walking over to sit next to Bones as the sun rose over the mountains way out past Pasadena and the Angeles National Forest. The Israeli team had pushed on through the night, creeping down what was left of Sunset Boulevard until they turned south on Doheny, went down a steep hill, and established a base camp at the intersection of Santa Monica and Doheny in a park opposite what had once been the Troubadour. Most of the buildings along Santa Monica had only been one or two stories high, so when they came down, there was so little rubble compared to everywhere else that it simply made the area appear as it did before the city was even established. The park had been chosen due to its location at a major intersection but also because it afforded clear lines of fire both up and down the hill, as well as the fact that because of the park’s fallen trees, it was easy to camouflage the two trucks the commandos had brought with them. It was also chosen due to its proximity to the next day’s target.

“Bones,” Sharon said, sitting next to the shepherd and handing him a piece of fruit.

Bones’s stomach was still torn up from eating the rotten hot dogs the night before, but he readily accepted the food, swallowed it whole, and then expectantly looked up at its provider for more.

“You saved us back there,” Sharon continued. “Paul claims his team had been waiting for the right moment and knew the rats were on their way, but I was there. We would have been toast if it wasn’t for you. Sounds like your military is still looking for you, as you’re presumed missing in action but not dead.”

Bones continued waiting for another apricot.

“I just wanted to say ‘thank you,’” Sharon said. “And I know what Paul said, but I won’t let him do anything to you. We do need your help, though.”

Bones nuzzled his snout into her hand, and she smiled. “I knew I could count on you.”

The shepherd pushed his nose through her hand to her pocket, discovered the three remaining apricots, and deftly removed them with his tongue, slurping them down as Sharon ran her fingers across the hair under his chin.

Sharon was a mid-level executive for the nonprofit wing of a massive foundation set up by a multi-billionaire, Ivan Stephane, whose money came from two sources: yogurt and privatizing the world’s sources of fresh water. Many felt he was one of the world’s most effective villains when it came to subjecting the poor to further hardships. A notorious example involved Chinese peasants who had been farming the same land for generations. They suddenly found themselves forced to pay for the water that irrigated their fields as the government had sold a controlling interest in the nearest river to the multi-billionaire’s corporation. In order to rehabilitate his public image, he had set up the Stephane Foundation with a substantial endowment to contribute millions to worthy causes around the world. Because of this, every negative article written would almost be forced to acknowledge the irony of his oppressive business practices due to his great (and tax write-off-able) philanthropy.

After each fiscal year, the culmination of the foundation’s annual charitable endeavors was an international conference held in Los Angeles to promote ethical and “green” business practices that gathered the controllers of almost 20 percent of the world’s GDP, or $10 trillion, in one place. This conference invited finance ministers from the world’s leading economies, governmental representatives from emerging nations, well-heeled captains of industry, and barons of the world markets in order that all could be brought together to discuss how they might work to better society and the human race.

Of course, what the gathering had become known for were the endless negotiations between those with the money and those with the natural resources, leading to deals in which public and private money from wealthy nations was passed along to their less fortunate neighbors, but in a way where said money could only really be spent on that which would directly benefit the donor nation in the first place. Money for roads was donating, but the roads would run between a foreign oil company’s refineries and bases of operation. Hospitals would be invested in, but only if long-term contracts were negotiated with western corporations that would supply the hospital with everything from surgical masks to Q-tips. Public utilities were constructed but were loans, not donations, and the terms of the deals made it so that the lucky country would be paying back those who built the dams, the power plants, and the electrical grids for decades to come.