Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga (29 page)

Sebastian’s steady stride came to an end as he tried to swat the rats away, resembling a man beset by bees. “Christ, he’s on my ear!” Sebastian grunted, a rodent turning an attached ear lobe into a detached one.

“Hang on,” Greta said as she reached over to bat it away. Unfortunately, the rat simply grabbed her hand in mid-flight, bit into it, then ran up her arm directly to her face where it bit her nose.

“
Aaaah!
” she screamed, trying to get it off.

Members of the Malaysian news team and a couple of the hotel workers slowed down to help the pair, but this was a grave, albeit all-too-human mistake as the rats simply swarmed them as well. A rat bit into Sebastian’s carotid artery, and he bled out within seconds. The moment a second rat bit into her, Greta gave up and slid to the ground as well, resigned to her death, which the rats happily obliged. Two of the hotel workers were next, the rats moving up their bodies like cartoon army ants, and then one of Lisa’s colleagues at the Asian medical consortium who, mistakenly, thought Sebastian could still be saved.

Though he hadn’t made the mistake of slowing down to aid his fellow man, Trenchard, the Australian finance minister, was next as years of living high on the hog caught up to him as thirty rats leaped onto him.

“Kathy!” he cried, reaching out to his mistress.

She looked back at him, shot him a sort of conflicted look but then kept running without a word.

Sally and Shahin were way out in the lead, but even they seemed to know that the end was nearing. They looked back at the rats and then each other.

“I’m pretty sure I love you,” Shahin cried.

“Yeah, me, too,” Sally replied. “I never would have made it this far without you.”

Shahin smiled and kept running. “Race you to the beach.”

“Last one in is a rotten egg.”

They kept going, but Sally could feel the burning sensation in her legs and side and knew that she wouldn’t be able to complete the race.

Sharon looked over at Lisa and saw that the rats were now running alongside them, swirling around like dirty water. She was barely able to watch where she was running, the constant fear of twisting her ankle and going down, smashing her face on the concrete, going through her head.

“This is it,” she said to Lisa for no reason in particular. Lisa nodded back just in time to see another of their number fly backwards, multiple rats on their back, and sprawl into the piranha-like miasma where they were quickly torn to pieces.

Of the runners, Bones was faring the best. Rather than simply trying to bat the rats away, every time one landed on him, he made sure to kill it and toss the corpse aside. Seeing this happen, a number of the rats seemed to stick with bringing down the humans first, which suggested that if the shepherd had so desired, he could have used this opportunity to flee. Perhaps he could have more of a fighting chance away from the group, as the rats didn’t look too ready to divide their number. But Bones was too loyal, simple, and endlessly rat-hungry to consider making a simple turn up a side street and disappear from view. Instead, almost blissfully unaware that each moment could be his last, he continued casting his lot in with the humans.

A new sound suddenly cut through the night. It took the survivors a moment to realize it was coming from above them. Sharon was the first to look up as lights pierced through the night sky and rapidly approached their position.

“What is it, sergeant?” Paul asked. “Choppers?”

Zamarin looked up into the dark but couldn’t believe his eyes. “Looks like, sir. The cavalry has arrived.”

Two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters with U.S. Navy sigils lowered themselves over Santa Monica Boulevard, hovering as if seeking out a flat enough surface to land on, but then deciding to take action from the air as they realized how dire the situation on the ground was. They lowered themselves to about thirty feet off the ground, the wash from the rotors so tremendous that it knocked a few of the survivors off their feet though it had the same effect on the rats.

The side doors of both choppers slid open. A pair of National Guardsmen began firing at the rats with heavy door-mounted machine guns as the helicopters came around and began blasting at the same with nose-mounted Vulcan cannons.

The muzzle flash illuminated the street as if it was the middle of the day, but the sound was more deafening than the sonic disruptor the commandos had used. Sharon clapped her hands over her ears but kept running, slightly hunched over, as she stepped into the pool of white light created by the helicopter’s high beams.

The helicopters continued blasting away at the rats, the white hot bullets racing over the humans’ heads as they ran, chopping the rats to millions of little pieces. The rats continued to surge forward regardless, but the door and nose gunners had more than enough ammunition to answer them.

It took a steady stream of fire that didn’t cease for well over a minute to finally turn the tide. But not until more than a quarter-million rats had been torn to pieces.

As the helicopters landed, several guardsmen hurried off the helicopters to the survivors as Sergeant Zamarin pulled Paul to his feet. Bones seemed to have lost a step or two to the rats but was recovering. Sharon, her clothes torn and her body bleeding from two dozen cuts, got to her feet in a state of disbelief.

But then she looked down and saw that the rats had chewed through Lisa’s stomach and had dragged out her entrails as they fled. Sharon bent down and could tell from the blank-eyed look on her friend’s face that, perhaps thankfully, Lisa was already dead.

Along with Lisa, Sebastian, Greta, and the Australian finance minister, the two other members of Lisa’s medical consortium, Gregoire, three of the hotel workers, and Shahin were all dead. Sally had actually survived, but had her hands chewed down to the bone. Shahin had been the one to fall behind first and she had been trying to save his life when the helicopters arrived. This left a dozen survivors, albeit severely traumatized ones.

The guardsmen approached Paul and Zamarin, looking over their weapons.

“Where did you get those?” a captain asked, “Feliz” on his uniform’s name stripe.

“Found them,” Zamarin replied without blinking.

“Where?” the captain continued, sounding as if he didn’t believe Zamarin.

“Back of a truck. Same place as we found these clothes. Looked like the owners had been killed by the birds. Mercenaries, I think. Mayer, maybe?”

The captain looked from Zamarin to the others in the group, waiting to have the man contradicted, but when no one did, he sighed.

“Well, this was just meant to be a flyover, not a rescue,” the captain said. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have room for all of you.”

“That’s a shame,” Paul said, piping up. “My friend and I will be the last ones on. If there’s no space for us, we’ll do what we can.”

Captain Feliz wasn’t expecting this response, but then nodded. “We can see about sending back a relief helicopter, but we were under strict orders not to land or engage anyone on the ground.”

“We’re glad you countermanded that order, captain,” Paul replied. “But even if you did come back, we’re not really planning on staying in the same place.”

“I understand,” Feliz said. “Good luck to you all the same.”

•  •  •

One by one, the survivors divided themselves amongst the helicopters and climbed on board. Once they were on board, one of the guardsmen looked expectantly at Sharon, but she shook her head.

“You won’t considering taking the dog, will you?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“Are you serious?” the guardsman asked.

“The number of times he’s saved my life, I can’t just leave him behind,” Sharon explained. “Thank you, though.”

Paul turned to Sharon like she was crazy. “You need to get on that helicopter.”

“I cast my lot with you guys. You’ve gotten me this far.”

“Yes, but that’s mainly because we know who your father and grandfather is and was.”

Sharon grinned and nodded, moving away from the helicopter.

“Lieutenant?” Captain Feliz said. “Relieve them of their weapons.”

The sergeant stepped forward, but then Sharon stood in the way. “You can’t leave us defenseless!”

“I absolutely cannot allow weapons like that to remain here in such a hostile environment,” Captain Feliz said. “If they should fall into the wrong hands, terrorists domestic or foreign, I would be in dereliction of my duty.”

No one missed the implication of Captain Feliz’s emphasis on the word “foreign” as he made it clear that he knew neither Paul nor Zamarin were locals. The lieutenant indicated for the pair to hand over their weapons, so they did so. The guns were then loaded onto the helicopters with the others.

As the choppers began prepping to take off, Captain Feliz eyed Sharon.

“You’re staying behind? Despite the dangers?”

“Absolutely.”

Captain Feliz turned to Paul and Zamarin. “I don’t know who you people are, but I have a good idea. Something tells me that I don’t want to know more. I don’t wish you ill, but I will be reporting your descriptions in my report and will recommend the new military authority locate you and possibly take you into custody. If your business here is concluded, I’d suggest you bug out at your earliest convenience.”

“Understood,” Paul replied.

The captain nodded and headed back onto one of the Seahawks. A few moments later and the helicopters were aloft, sending a storm of concrete dust all down the street. But Paul, Zamarin, Sharon, and Bones were already gone, taking the captain’s advice and hastily beating a path to the ocean.

•  •  •

Though they had one eye over their shoulder the entire time, the rats never returned. The night passed swiftly, but now that it was only the three humans and one dog, they made excellent time. The streets were even relatively clear of debris. That is, until the last blocks before the ocean as the buildings got higher and the familiar sight of massive chunks of broken concrete sprawled across their paths returned. It was when they reached 16th Street, though, that the impassibility became laughable. The road was completely blocked by a tall hospital structure that had collapsed across Santa Monica Boulevard for several blocks.

“What now?” Sharon asked the sergeant.

“It’s too dark to pick through, so we’ll have to go around,” Zamarin said.

“The side streets are a mess, too.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Zamarin replied, shrugging his shoulders. “We either backtrack or pick our way down. Simple as that. Paul?”

“I don’t want to sound too confident, but I think the rats have found something better to do,” Paul suggested. “I think we can afford a detour if that means saving time in the long run.”

Sharon nodded and Zamarin turned Bones’s leash, aiming his nose south. “What’s your nose telling you, boy?”

Bones sniffed the air a little, didn’t seem to be picking anything up and Zamarin nodded. “Let’s go.”

Though the side streets were littered with broken buildings and cars, Sharon’s belief that they would be just as impenetrable as Santa Monica proved untrue. Soon they had found a much more passable route.

“Guess a stopped clock really is right twice a day,” Sharon said. Zamarin scoffed and kept going.

A few blocks later, Sharon saw something rising on the horizon. She didn’t think it was any kind of structure, but whatever it was hadn’t fallen in either quake.

“What is that?” she asked.

Zamarin peered ahead and grunted. “Looks like trees. A park. Some kind of oasis in the desert.”

“Intact?” asked Paul.

“Yeah, appears to be. Quake brought down every goddamn tree from here to Christendom, but decided to leave this little group alone.”

The survivors moved ahead. As they neared the park they saw how right Zamarin had been. There were a couple of tennis courts and a children’s soccer field, but then there were rows and rows of live oak trees left to grow wild in and around a winding walking path. All in all, the park covered at least three acres of land that appeared, at least cloaked in darkness, to have avoided the brunt of the quake.

They moved ahead and stepped into the park. The feeling of grass and soil beneath her feet was surprising to Sharon. It really was like discovering some Garden of Eden that had already grown up amidst the ruins, a more believable scenario than to think somehow the quakes that had devastated the city simply weren’t felt in this one perhaps acre-sized patch of trees.

“You’d think this would be the one place any other survivors would come to camp out,” Sharon suggested.

They’d seen the evidence of other survivors in Santa Monica as they walked or, more accurately, smelled it. Cooking fires were distinguishable from accidental ones mostly by the rich scent of the food being prepared over them. Though they didn’t see anyone, there was a part of Sharon that was allowing her brain to imagine that Emily was among these people, having somehow, miraculously, survived the initial collapse and found herself separated from Sharon. She knew this was unlikely, but it made her happy.

“Seems like someone has,” Zamarin said, nodding at a pile of belongings leaned up against one of the trees that included a pile of empty food wrappers.

Bones moved over to the wrappers and began nosing around in them. He found two miniature donuts and immediately scarfed them up.

But then, Paul stopped and raised a hand.

“What is it?” Zamarin asked.

“You don’t smell that?”

“I don’t smell anything,” Zamarin replied cheekily, but then saw Paul was deadly serious.

That’s when Sharon smelled it, too, something she hadn’t smelled since the hotel, the same acrid phosphorus and nitrogen of the eighth floor. She tried to look around in the darkness but knew what she’d find.

Guano.

“Oh, God,” Sharon said under her breath. “The birds.”

Sharon looked up into the trees above and watched as a bird shifted its wings a little as it rested on a branch. Even in the dim light of early morning, she could see that there were literally dozens of birds just above her. This led her to believe there were hundreds, maybe thousands throughout the trees in the park.