Apocalypse (The Wasteland Chronicles, #1) (9 page)

I didn’t want to talk to her, and I wanted
her to stop talking to me. Yet she did have a point. I knew nothing
about surviving out here. Going with her would give me something to
do, even if I hated her guts. Hate was better than emptiness. It
would give me a reason to go on.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”

She nodded, and seemed a bit surprised at
that answer.

“I figured we might make for Oasis. It’s a
walled settlement, so if I can get you in there, you’d be safe.
It’s run by a man named Ohlan, who I’ve met. You might be able to
buy your citizenship there with your share of the batts.”

“Do we have enough food to make it?”

“Just what we have in the pack.” She hoisted
her own pack on her shoulders. “You have a name?”

If I was stuck with her for the next few
days, I supposed names might be useful.

“Alex Keener.”

“Makara Angel Neth.” She nodded toward the
mouth of the cave. “Come on. If we’re fast enough, there’s a place
I know where we can shelter before sundown. Keep an eye out. I
can’t look everywhere at once, and Raiders can be thick in this
area. It’s cold today, so most of the rats will be hiding in their
holes. That’s good for us. If we hurry, we might make Oasis
tomorrow.”

Makara headed for the mouth of the cave. I
followed her outside.

By the time we got going, I realized I was
hurting more than I’d thought. Everything ached, especially my
stomach, which hadn’t had food in a while. There was not much
water, either. Makara gave me some of her share. I accepted, even
if I didn’t want to. As we walked, I munched on some of my granola,
fighting back the urge to down all of it.

Makara was always busy scanning the horizon,
ducking at random moments. I had no idea what she was so afraid of.
We were clearly the only ones out here on this cold, dismal
day.

The clouds were spooky-looking – always the
color of blood, casting the whole bare earth in crimson light.

“What kind of name is Makara, anyway?” I
asked.

“It’s Khmer. It’s the first month of the
Cambodian year. I’d like to think it means a new beginning.”

Despite myself, I became interested. “Are you
Khmer?”

“On my father’s side, yes. My mother was
American, and so am I, for that matter.”

“How are you American? You’re a
Wastelander.”

“I was born here, kid. That makes me
American.”

We stopped around noon to eat. She handed me
some sort of sticky, bread-like substance wrapped in tin foil. It
wasn’t bad.

“What’s in this, anyway?” I asked.

“Rice, mostly.”

“It tastes good.”

Makara gave a sideways smile. “Hunger is the
best seasoning. I’d rather have a hearty stew on a day like
this.”

We were up again soon, and walking. We were
in the wilderness, nowhere near a city. Makara had taken us far
off-road, thinking that if we were being followed, it would be
harder for her former raiding group to track us. Flat plains spread
before us, containing nothing but rock and sand cast red by the
baleful sky. The bareness of the land had a nightmarish beauty to
it.

The dry cold seeped through clothes and skin,
penetrating bone. As I suppressed my shivers, Makara walked on with
gritted teeth, bare-armed, oblivious to the elements. She wore
desert camo pants and a plain black tee shirt. Her jacket was tied
around her waist.

“So are we anywhere close to L.A.?” I
asked.

“L.A. is about eighty miles west. Fights and
gang wars all the time. Not much can survive thirty years.
Eventually, L.A. will be completely dead too. Not like it was ten
years ago, when Raine was alive.”

“Who was Raine?”

She didn’t answer, but kept walking. I
shrugged, and didn’t ask again.

No more words were exchanged. I could tell
Makara wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Fine by me – so did
I.

We walked the rest of the day without
incident. When the red sky darkened, Makara led us into an old
house, decrepit and peeling. Other than that, it seemed it had
weathered the horrors of Ragnarok pretty well. Its structure was
intact, and it didn't look as if it would be collapsing anytime
soon.

We went inside. We ate the last of my granola
bars. Judging by the expression on Makara’s face, she disliked this
even more than the rice bread.

After eating, she got up.

“I need to check something out,” she said.
“Stay here.”

I shrugged, not planning on going anywhere
anyway. I got out my blanket and hunkered down in a corner. Two
weeks ago I had been in my warm bed full of hopes and dreams. All
of that was gone now.

The numbness just grew until I let go. I
tried to hold back tears, but they came out all the same. I kept
thinking of Khloe. When one has no hope, one can’t even cry. But
now, I guessed, I had hope.

Hope in what?

Makara came back in. I hastily dried my
tears.

“We're not being followed…at least from what
I can tell…” She stopped short. “What’s wrong?”

I didn't answer her. I couldn't find the
words.

“I know things are tough,” she said, in her
tough voice. “But you need to buck up.”

How she could even say that, I didn’t know.
She had no idea. No idea at all.

I turned toward her. Her silhouette filled
the doorway.

“You know,” Makara said, “you probably won’t
believe me, but we’re a lot alike. That’s part of the reason why I
wanted you to come with me. I don’t fit in with the Raider types
and I don’t fit in with the settler types. If I can get away from
the raiding life, I’m willing to risk it.”

“You’re alone, then.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No. But it makes me wonder what you see in
me.”

She came in and sat on the floor, her back
against the wall and took a drink of water from her canteen.

I was about to think she truly was crazy,
when she surprised me.

“Like you,” she said, “I was born in a
Bunker.”

I just stared at Makara. I didn’t know what
to say.

“Wait…really? Which one?”

“Mine was a bit different. I was in the main
government Bunker. The one with President Garland in it. Bunker
One.”

Nothing in her voice told me that she was
lying. There was nothing I could do to hide my shock.

“Wait…
the
Bunker One? The Bunker one
thousand miles away in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado? What happened
to it? How did you end up here?”

“That's a long story.”

“Well, we have time.”

“I suppose so,” Makara said, “though I don’t
really like to talk about it. Where I’m from, it’s much colder, and
darker. They call this sunny California for a reason, huh?”

“Doesn’t seem too sunny to me.”

Makara smiled. “You’re hard to please.”

“What happened to Bunker One? How did it
fall?”

“Bunker One was huge. It held ten thousand
people.”

“Ten
thousand
?
How did you feed
them all? Where did they all fit?”

“The Bunker came from the Cold War era.
During the Dark Decade, they expanded it. But none of that matters
now, because everyone who lived there is dead. Everyone except me,
as far as I know.”

There was nothing I could say to that.
Nothing at all, other than:

“That’s what happened to us. People started
getting sick, and dying and…turning on each other.”

Makara nodded. Clearly, none of this
surprised her.

“Did Bunker One fall in the same way?” I
asked.

“It fell in a similar way. It was an attack
of demons.”

“Demons?”

“They are what they sound like. They’re
monsters, from Ragnarok. They’re still very rare around here. You
can find them in areas called Blights. You'll know the Blights as
soon as you see them, because this weird, purple fungus grows thick
on the ground and stinks up the land. All the trees are coated with
pink slime. All animals avoid it – except the demon animals, and
you will know them because they stink like rotting corpses and have
white eyes.”

When she said “white eyes,” I couldn’t help
but think about Chan, and everyone the xenovirus infected in Bunker
108. It was an image I had been trying to push out of my mind all
week. But it sounded like it had happened at Bunker One, too. Only
– that would have been twelve years ago. If that was the case, then
the human strain of the xenovirus was much older than my father had
thought. But Makara had said it was just animals. Monsters.

Before I could ask, Makara continued.

“The monsters attack any living thing on
sight,” Makara said. “That’s how uninfected animals turn – they are
bitten and become part of the Blight.”

“So you’re telling me these monsters attacked
Bunker One?”

“Yes. They're a lot thicker in Colorado, I
guess because it's closer to Ragnarok Crater. But now, it’s
spreading, even as far as here. It’s starting to affect everything.
I saw my first Blight in this area about a year ago, farther north.
There’s more of them now. There have been mysterious deaths, even
by Wasteland standards.”

“It’s nothing demonic,” I said. “It’s the
xenovirus. I had no idea it was this dangerous. Not until last
week, anyway.”

“When you live underground, you’re blind to
what's going on upside. These Blights have been old news here for
at least a year.”

“What happens to the animals it affects?”

“They become stronger, faster, and deadlier.
A huge wave hit us that night. Where they all came from, I don’t
know. There were thousands. But they were animals of all kinds –
birds, wolves, even bears – all rotting and twisted, attacking as
if of one mind to destroy us. And there were some that have no
name, which look like nothing this world has ever seen.”

“Were there people turned into them,
too?”

“No. I have never seen people turn into these
monsters. Is that what happened at your Bunker?”

I nodded. “Yeah. There’s apparently a new
strain that targets humans, too.”

“Then this is only getting worse,” Makara
said.

“The bodies exploded, sending purple slime
everywhere,” I said. “That seems to be how it spreads.” I thought
of Khloe, with a shudder. “Bites also seem to do it.”

“Anything that’s infected gives off the
slime. It can be pink, or purple. Pink for plants, and purple for
animals. The explosions, though…I’d never heard of that until now.
That’s very disturbing.”

“How did you escape your Bunker?” I
asked.

“When the last helicopter took off, I wasn’t
even supposed to be on it. My father ran with me in his arms across
the helipad while the monsters behind us gave chase. He threw me
into the helicopter just as it was lifting up. Someone on board
grabbed me. I still remember my father’s face as he fell away, as
more of those things overwhelmed the tarmac. He was buried in a
wave of them, his arms outstretched, screaming my name. I cried and
cried, but we were already flying away.

“The journey to California was incredibly
cold. We were supposed to join Bunker 114, but they didn’t have
room for us. So we were to touch down in L.A. The plan was for the
Bunker survivors to find some uninhabited corner of the city and
start fresh. But as we got closer, the helicopter blades
just…slowed down. I don’t know if we ran out of fuel or something
else, but the next moment, we were spiraling toward the ground.

“We crashed. By some miracle, I survived. I
was thrown out of the helicopter and landed in some grass nearby. I
was knocked out, and woke the next day to find the helicopter
turned on its side like some dead thing. Everyone else had died in
the crash – all except me.”

“Lucky.”

“I know. I don’t know
how
I survived
that, but I did. My luck didn’t end there, though. My older brother
had escaped in an earlier helicopter that had flown to L.A. as
well. I thought he had died.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. But it doesn’t matter now, because he
actually
is
dead now.” She gave a long sigh. “That’s another
story.”

“So, what happened after the crash?”

“I escaped, with nothing more than a broken
collarbone and a few bruises. I ended up staying at the crash site
for a day before heading into the ruins of the city. On my way
there, a patrol found me, but not from another Bunker like I
thought at first. It was the Lost Angels.”

“Lost Angels?”

“A gang. A man named Raine was their leader.
He took me under his wing, and in time I forgot about my past.
Soon, I was reunited with my brother, Samuel. He left the community
the Bunker One survivors founded and came to join us. A good thing
he did, too. The Bunker survivors were taken and enslaved by the
Black Reapers, a rival L.A. gang.” Makara sighed. “That was twelve
years ago. Another life.”

“God…you must have been, what, seven or
eight?”

“Seven. That’s as much as I remember, anyway.
I guess I was tough, even back then.”

“Which makes you nineteen now?”

Makara nodded. “Nineteen. Nearly twenty. The
point of the story is…yeah, you will cry sometimes. Life sucks,
there’s no way around that. But you never know when the good might
come. Maybe it won't, but you shouldn’t count it out. And besides,
that’s what makes us human, right? Even if it seems impossible,
even when there is no point, we fight to the death with smiles on
our faces.”

I was quiet for a while. Hearing her story
made me feel better, crazily enough – something I would have
thought impossible just minutes ago.

“Thanks, Makara. Believe it or not, this
actually helps.”

“Get to bed, kid. Story time’s over.”

She lay down and wrapped herself up. I heard
her snoring almost instantly.