The Alt Apocalypse (Book 4): Affliction Read online

  Water Filter, Clint thought as he took Filter’s hand to pull himself up. Water filter. That was funny.

  Clint squeezed through the unzipped flap and stepped onto the hard dirt that served as his front porch. He rose from a crouch to his feet, squinting to adjust to the light, and turned to see the man who’d ingested the bad batch of gravel, crack, or whatever it was.

  He was convulsing on the ground not far from the row of portable sinks. As Clint approached, he could see the man’s limbs were stiff. His fingers were spread wide as if he were reaching for something. His eyes were rolled back into his head, and his mouth was bleeding. Clint recognized him as someone who’d been at the camp for a few weeks. He didn’t know his name or his situation.

  Nobody was helping the man. The dozen or so squatters there before Clint stood in a wide circle, apparently not interested in getting too close. Then the odor hit him. It was awful, something between the men’s bathroom at the shelter and the dumpster behind Ralph’s on Sepulveda.

  Filter cleared his throat, coughed, and nudged Clint with his shoulder. “I told you,” he said. “Worth it, right?”

  Clint watched the man twitch and writhe for another minute without saying anything. His headache was more pronounced from having left his tent. He tried taking a deep breath but couldn’t. A hitch in his lungs made him cough and wince. The man on the ground stopped convulsing. His body went limp. His jaw went slack, and blood oozed from his nose and mouth. It was a lot of blood.

  “You sure that’s a bad batch?” asked Clint. “That looks like something more than that.”

  “It’s gotta be, dude,” said Filter. “That’s why I stick to Kush. Nothing they can do to that.”

  Clint kept his eyes fixed on the man he was sure was dead. “You know that’s not true. They can lace weed with anything these days.”

  “I guess,” said Filter. He put his hand on his stomach. “I gotta use the men’s room before I head to work.”

  “Work?”

  “Cleaning windows,” he said. “I’ve still got my entrepreneurial spirit, dude.”

  Filter had owned an electronics shop on Venice Beach. He sold as much to the spendthrift tourists as he did to the clientele who knew to ask for off-the-book deals. The shop had served as both business and home for Filter. He’d lived in the back room where he’d fixed tossed phones, tablets, and laptops. Sometimes he’d repair radios or watches. He also knew how to hack devices people had “found” and reprogram them so they could be repurposed or sold for cash. He didn’t ask questions, which became a problem when he sold an iPhone and a pair of high-end headphones to an undercover cop.

  Filter had beaten the case, something about entrapment, but lost the shop and his home. He’d joined Clint in the suburbs, living in a tent, determined to fight his way back to something more respectable than homelessness. Clint often told Filter he was the most motivated stoner he’d ever met.

  “What’s your angle?” asked Clint.

  “No angle,” said Filter. “Just cleaning windows in Westwood.”

  “Westwood?”

  “Yep,” said Filter. He lifted a leg and released a gurgling sound from between his legs. “High dollar. And that sounded wet, didn’t it?”

  Clint’s face soured, but he didn’t comment. “Westwood is like an hour and a half from here.”

  “The money’s worth it,” said Filter. “People up there got nothing better to do than part with their casheesh.”

  Clint shrugged and motioned to the portable toilets. “Go part with whatever is bothering you first.”

  The two fist-bumped and Clint turned back toward his tent. He’d taken a half dozen difficult steps when he heard someone retching to his left. Colonel Mick was on his knees, trembling, a line of spittle trailing from his hanging lip to a puddle on the ground. Then he vomited again. Clint swore there was blood in it.

  Clint thought for a moment about helping old Mick, but he wasn’t much for helping others unless there was something in it for him. Even when there was, he wasn’t the sort of man who’d follow through by doing the right thing.

  Instead of helping Mick, Clint thought about what size boots the man wore. Were they the right size? They looked new. They looked comfortable.

  He glanced back at the dead man; he was barefoot. Clint scanned the row of tents to that side of the encampment. Which one had belonged to him? Did he own anything of value?

  Mick puked again and Clint walked back to his tent, slid inside the opening, and zipped it closed. He was winded. His headache was more violent, a rhythmic jabbing behind his eyes. His stomach was pinched with cramps. He forced a belch and tasted bile.

  Clint dropped to one knee and twisted onto his back. He lay down and closed his eyes, trying to focus on something other than his discomfort. It was virtually impossible.

  His breathing was ragged, his lower back ached, and he was bloated and nauseated. He leaned onto his side to cough, little more than a soft hack caught in his chest. He barked again and again. He tried sitting up. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t catch his breath. Cough. Cough. Cough. He tried sucking in air between the choppy hacks but could do little more than squeak a small amount of air into his ailing lungs.

  Clint’s eyes welled. He was drooling now. Warm saliva filled his mouth. Snot dripped from his nose. His throat tightened as he tried to gasp for air between ragged spasms from his chest.

  After what felt like an eternity, the fit ebbed. He wheezed, but he could breathe. Air flowed in through his congested nose and open mouth. He wiped his glassy eyes with his knuckles and cleared his throat again. He was leaning on one elbow, twisted onto his side. His heart pulsed in his chest, threatening to burst from it.

  Clint sighed, exhaling what little air he had sucked into his ailing lungs, and wiped the snot from under his nose and the drool from his sopping chin.

  He drew up his hand before wiping it on the thin pale blue blanket that served as a mattress on the tent floor, and noticed the dark stain on his fingers. It was bright red. He ran his thumb across his fingertips, smudging the blood. He glanced at the blanket. A red splatter decorated the cotton, mixing with the blue to give the spray a purplish hue.

  Clint swallowed hard. A knot tightened in his sore throat. His vision blurred from the new, emotion-fueled tears that flooded his eyes. Through the blur he looked at the zipped flap of his tent and the dead body that lay beyond it. The fresh corpse had been thrashing about on the ground like a struggling fish moments earlier. Now it was a pile of meat and bones.

  In his mind he could hear Mick retching beyond the taut orange fabric of his tent. He could smell the mix of regurgitated fluids pooling on the ground.

  This was his future. Whatever illness he’d caught, it would kill him.

  CHAPTER 3

  DAY 9

  Los Angeles, California

  Ellen Chang stared at the glowing red digits through bleary eyes. The clock glared back at her tauntingly. It was nine thirty. Nine thirty-one. Nine thirty-two. It was more than two hours later than she normally got up and moving. It was four hours since she’d awakened from an uncomfortable sleep. It wasn’t really sleep either. Not good sleep.

  She hadn’t felt like herself in three days. Not since her trip to the Hammer in Westwood. Not since a vagrant had tried cleaning her windshield at a stoplight. He’d approached the car aggressively with the handheld wiper in his hand and leaned over the hood, his ghostly figure against the side-view mirror. She’d noticed he was wearing a grungy T-shirt with a threadbare collar that had the words SORRY I’M LATE, I DIDN’T WANT TO COME printed across the front. She waved him off. He ignored her. She rolled down her window to the distinct and sweet odor of marijuana and told him to stop. He did. Then he hocked a loogie and spat on the driver’s side door as she took her foot off the brake to ease the car past him at the light.

  Some of the ambient spray hit her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, grunted angrily, and drove the toe of her Louboutin onto the brake, jerking the car to
a stop.

  Her name-calling and threats went unanswered by the man, who’d moved to the SUV behind her. He was talking to himself.

  With the light still red, she leaned across the front cabin and pulled a wet wipe from a package she kept in the glove box. She used it to cleanse her face, spending extra time at her nostrils and lips. The light flipped green.

  “I’m going to get sick,” she grumbled and slapped her foot down on the accelerator. The sedan’s tires screeched on the pavement and she powered away from the moment that would end her life.

  The tightness in her chest began that same night. She was in the sitting room off the master bedroom, holding a glass of chilled, but not cold, Prosecco in one hand and the latest Kindle in the other. She was reading a Peter Clines novel, which dealt with alternate universes and steampunk mechanics. It wasn’t her usual fare, but her son had recommended it, so she’d indulged him by swiping through the story. Now she was into it. It gave her as much enjoyment as the sweet wine.

  She cleared her throat, sensing the discomfort in her chest, and attributed it to the chilled drink. Sometimes if it was a touch too cold, it might induce a cough or two.

  An hour and forty swipes later, perspiration beaded on her forehead and she simultaneously felt clammy and flush. A chill ran along her spine. Again, she thought it could be the wine. She’d had three glasses.

  Then she coughed hard enough that she felt warm, thick phlegm coat her tongue and paste her lips. She used an index finger to wipe her mouth. It came away stained red. She stared at it in disbelief, her brow wrinkled with confusion, until she recognized the coppery taste of blood.

  Her pulse quickened and she put down the glass on the white marble pedestal next to the chair. Still holding the Kindle in one hand, she used the other to push herself to her feet. Her knees buckled. The room spun. She dropped the tablet onto the travertine floor, cracking its screen in the instant before she collapsed next to it, unconscious.

  Now, seventy-two hours later, she rolled onto her side and coughed again. She winced at the biting pain that shot through her body as she hacked. She shuddered and barked again. The sounds coming from her were so unfamiliar that, had she not known better, she’d have thought they were the ear-raking noises from someone else. She gagged and retched on the thick mixture of infection, phlegm, and blood that shot up from her lungs and into her mouth. She caught it in her cheeks for a moment, then the next racking cough forced it from her stores, and a rotten pink spray splatted across the white bed linens only partially covering the king-sized mattress.

  Ellen groaned and licked her lips, calling for her husband. “Bahhhhhb,” she croaked. Her voice sounded as if she’d run her vocal cords across a cheese grater.

  “I’m right here,” he said. “I’m next to you.”

  She hadn’t noticed him sitting at her bedside. He held a washcloth in one hand as if he were waiting to put it down. His voice was soft. There was pity in it. She recognized pity. She wanted to tell him not to pity her, but she didn’t have the energy. A wave of nausea rolled through her and she gagged again.

  “Baaaahb,” she said again, the sounds dragging across thick gravel to escape her cracked lips. “I cahhhhn’t dooooo thissss.”

  Bob was whimpering now. Wait. No. It wasn’t Bob. She was whimpering. She sounded like the bichon frise they’d had years ago, a yappy puppy in need of attention.

  She rolled onto her back, choked on the blood pooling in her mouth, and coughed again before turning to face Bob. Her vision was blurred and she couldn’t make out his features. She couldn’t see his kind, sad eyes, his broad nose, or the deep furrows that ran along the inside of his full cheeks.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a toddler. “You’ll get through this. I’ve had some colleagues over here. They’ve got you on the strongest meds for what’s indicated.”

  His voice was muffled.

  Why is it muffled?

  “I tried to get you into a hospital,” he said. “There are no beds. Not even for us.”

  Is he in surgical scrubs?

  “Reagan, Cedars, nobody is taking patients,” Bob said. “Everything is overflowing. Besides, even if I had gotten you in, you’re safer here.”

  Safer here? Safe from what?

  Ellen narrowed her eyes and tried to focus on her husband. She couldn’t. But there was something blue stretched across his face, and he wore gloves on his hands. It wasn’t a washcloth he held. It was a glove.

  “Whass wifff duh masss?” she mumbled, asking about the mask covering his face. “An duh glubs. Why glubs?”

  Bob Chang’s blurry physique shifted in his seat. The wing chair’s feet scraped against the travertine. Was it moving back? Farther away from the bed? Chang cleared his throat. There was virtually no phlegm.

  Above the fog of catastrophic illness, she would have recognized the clearing as a stall tactic. As it was, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t her who’d tried to pull up the fluid in her chest. A bead of sweat dripped into her eye. It stung and she contorted her face into a squeeze. Somehow, amidst the exhaustion and pain that pulsed across every inch of her failing body, the burn of sweat focused her attention.

  Bob was talking now, but she didn’t hear him. Actually she did hear him, but she didn’t process any of what he said. She listened to the sound of her heartbeat throbbing in her temples. With her eyes closed, she envisioned the blood pumping to and from her heart, to and from her brain, to and from her fingertips and her toes. Ellen could see her circulatory system fighting to work, to keep the oxygen moving through her muscles and organs.

  Her focus shifted again, above the drone of Bob’s voice, to her legs. They were warm and then cold. They were wet: her thighs, the sheet underneath her, her groin. The unmistakable odor of urine crept into her nose, and she forgot the sweat in her eyes and the blood in her vascular system. She’d wet the bed. Or was it more than that? Her stomach roiled. A foul stench made her stiffen. Ellen whimpered again and tried speaking.

  “Soooo sorrrryyy,” she mumbled. “Puhhhleease, Bahhhhb. Don’t beee mah-yud.”

  She couldn’t be sure if she’d actually said the words aloud or only spoke them in her mind. She couldn’t be sure of anything. Her mind drifted. What was left of Ellen’s consciousness wandered aimlessly. The questions pulsed one after the other.

  Where was she? Was she at home? Why was she at home? Why not a hospital? Was Bob trying to kill her? Did he do this? Where was their son, Bobby? Why wasn’t he here? Was he at the hospital, waiting for her? Why hadn’t she gotten her nails done? She couldn’t go to the hospital without shellac. Was she late for her appointment? When was her Organiz tomato with fior di latte mozzarella arriving? Hadn’t the waiter taken the order an hour ago? Why was she in an aisle seat? Didn’t Bob know to book her a window seat?

  There was the lick of flames in her ears. The wash of water. The percussion of explosions.

  She could taste the Prosecco on her tongue. It was drenched with the sour aftertaste of a drink long since swallowed.

  Images of Van Gogh’s Irises danced in front of her. There was the bright abstraction of Basquiat’s Untitled Skull. There were square social media photographs of her son, Bobby, playing volleyball on the beach in Barcelona and standing against the serrated mountains of Montserrat and its ancient monastery. He was smiling. He was happy. So happy. The briny scent of the Mediterranean air washed over her like a wave, crashing into her.

  And then, as suddenly as the smells, and sounds, and sights of her life materialized and enveloped her in a cocoon of sensations, they were gone. There was nothing in their place. Ellen Chang’s blood stopped pumping. She didn’t hear her husband’s muffled cry or his call for help. She didn’t see the sheet-entangled horror of what remained of her disease-riddled body.

  CHAPTER 4

  DAY 10

  Westwood, California

  Dub Hampton wavered outside the Ackerman Student Union in a line that stretched across the courtyard to
ward the infirmary. The sun was bright, blindingly so, and the sky that framed it was a cloudless deep blue. The air was dry and cool. A breeze drifted across his face, chilling the beading sweat at his temples.

  His legs tingled and his shoulders and neck ached. His stomach grumbled. His throat was sticky with phlegm. He swallowed and tried to loosen it.

  The coed in front of him glanced over her backpack-laden shoulder and scowled. “Could you not cough on me?” Her voice was sour. “I mean, seriously.”

  “I didn’t cough,” Dub said through the wet rasp in his voice. “I was clearing my—”

  “Whatever,” she interrupted and took a half step forward, farther away from him and closer to the student in front of her.

  Their line stretched across Bruin Plaza. A spot that normally saw hurried foot traffic and selfie-takers at the bronze Bruin Bear statue, was instead the queue ue for a visit with the overwhelmed medical staff inside the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center. The Ashe Center, known as the infirmary, was where most students dealt with the flu, birth control, or anxiety. Every student at the school was insured through the university or bought a supplemental plan that covered the basics at Ashe.

  Dub swiped the sweat from his forehead with his fingertips. It wasn’t hot outside, but it felt like it was. He had a fever. The burning sensation in his eyes, the warmth across his face and the back of his neck, and the general malaise that accompanied an infection were all there.

  He’d put off going to Ashe for two days now, and there weren’t any appointments available. Not for him or for anyone. There were so many sick students that the infirmary had become a walk-in clinic, not dissimilar from a public hospital’s emergency room. His body told him he was markedly worse than he’d been the day before. Despite the hassle and the wait, Dub’s girlfriend, Keri, had convinced him to trudge down the hill from his dorm and get a spot in line.