Bones Omnibus (66 page)

“And the birds?” Paul asked.

“That’s new,” Lisa sighed. “We only started to see them a couple of days ago. Somebody came in here and told us that they’d seen large swarms of birds patrolling around downtown, including gulls feasting on corpses, but we didn’t believe them. There have been a lot of rumors. But then they attacked a supply party yesterday, and that’s when we stopped sending people out. That’s when we decided it was just no longer safe to leave this room. We’ve been here ever since, driving each other crazy.”

“Have you had any contact with the outside world?” Sharon asked.

“Couldn’t get a single phone to work,” Lisa said. “We saw all the military helicopters the first few days and figured they’d get to us eventually. But then the second quake came and the over-flights ended. Any idea when they’re starting up again?”

Paul shook his head. “What’s worse is that once they get wind of this rat and bird situation, that’s going to delay them even more. I don’t think they’ve ever had to deal with something like this.”

Bones was lying down nearby, his eyes following the conversation as Lisa spoke, turned to Sharon, and then turned back to Paul. He even noticed when Lisa casually rested her hand on Sharon’s leg when making a certain point and similarly noticed when Sharon didn’t push it away.

“So what’s the plan?” Lisa asked. “Are you planning to take us out? Or was your earlier sentiment the most accurate: Look for Israelis, realize not a one survived down here with us, and slip away in the middle of the night when we’re not looking?”

“Well, it’s a risk either way, and not just for us,” Paul stated. “As their food supplies begin to run out, the rats and the birds are going to get even more desperate, which means they’ll find a way in here, believe you me. But if you come with us overland, we’ll be attracting a lot of attention and the chances of being overrun are high. Either way, it’s not going to be a picnic.”

“So what do you suggest?” Lisa asked.

“I think that decision should be left up to you and your people,” Paul said. “You’ve been savvy enough to survive this long, so that’s a major indicator towards your instincts. Also, you’ve been negotiating this city post-quake longer than we have and have a greater sense of the risks.”

It didn’t take long for Lisa to explain the options to the others and even less for a vote to be decided on.

The group in the ballroom consisted of Lisa; Sebastian, who was an English real estate baron but who had inherited everything from his father; the woman who’d struck Bones, Greta, who was an Austrian finance minister; Shahin, the Lebanese man who turned out to be the vice president of one of the largest construction entities in the Middle East; and Sally, the catering waitress with the knives, who had originally come from Tennessee.

Additionally, there were two other members of Lisa’s medical consortium; a four-man Malaysian news team covering the conference who had been sharing a suite on the tenth floor and were, in fact, the level’s only survivors; an Australian finance minister named Garth Trenchard and a woman he referred to as his “secretary” named Kathryn, but who was obviously a highly-paid escort; a Hollywood agent named Jeremy who hadn’t been at the hotel at all but at an agency across the street when the quake hit;, eight Latino hotel workers - four women and four men - all employees of the hotel who had been working around the kitchen and sub-basement when the quake hit and had survived entirely unscathed (though they had originally been a much larger contingent, as a number of the hotel employees were the ones who had decided to “brave” the outside after the second quake); a lecturer on investment opportunities in heavy manufacturing of electronics in Taipei named Gregoire; and then there were two kids, an eleven year-old named Tony and his older sister, Heather, who was fifteen. They’d been staying on the sixth floor of the hotel, their mother having been an attaché to the finance minister of Ecuador and whose room had been crushed, leaving no question as to the fact that their mother was dead.

Tony hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived in the ballroom.

But now with this motley crew assembled, Lisa got them ready to vote.

“All in favor of holing up here for a little while longer until the military arrives?” she asked.

Trent raised his hand first, followed quickly by each member of the Malaysian news team. One of Lisa’s colleagues at the medical consortium raised her hand, but the other did not. Kathryn, the Australian escort, raised her hand but, upon receiving a dirty look from her lover, lowered it. Gregoire raised his hand tentatively for a moment, but after seeing how few others were of this mind, he lowered it.

“Okay, all in favor of making a run for the ocean?” Lisa asked.

Sebastian’s hand shot up, followed by Trenchard and Kathryn. Shahin’s hand raised next in unison with Sally’s and, from the grinning look they gave each other, it would be obvious to anyone paying attention that this pair had been getting it on, albeit discreetly, over the last couple of days.

The others in the room followed suit, including the hotel workers, who first conferred amongst themselves in Spanish before deciding on an option. The last to vote were Tony and Heather, and they seemed as swayed by a desire to vote with the majority as Gregoire.

After making sure it was a clean majority, Lisa surrendered the floor to Paul, whom Nashon had kept abreast of the raised hands.

“All right,” Paul began. “First of all, anyone who wishes to stay can still do so. We won’t make anyone leave. That said, I firmly believe there is strength in numbers and would strongly invite you to change your mind. Both the rats and the birds have proved willing to sacrifice large numbers when they attack, and they can move quickly, making them a foe you cannot fight, only elude. Whether we leave during the day or during the night, our scents will travel the second we leave here, and whichever predator is about will move on us and might spring unexpected. The
one
thing we have going for us is this dog, Bones. He’s an enforcement animal and could buy us a few minutes to get to cover, as he’ll pick up on any attack before we do.”

The ballroom survivors looked at Bones with new eyes, most having figured him for some kind of companion or mascot.

Potential savior? Not really.

Paul waited a moment, sensing the feeling of dread creeping over his audience, all wondering if they chose poorly when voting for the escape. But then he continued:

“Personally, I think we have a better shot against the rats. There are more of them, possibly millions, but we’ll be fighting on an X-Y axis. With the birds, it becomes X-Y-Z, as they’ll be above us, and that’s a hard variable to overcome. Also, there’s that slim chance that the rats will simply be too far away to get to us by the time they catch on, and we can outrun them to the beach. The birds, of course, can cover that same amount of ground in a tenth of the time.”

The feeling in the room was obviously going Paul’s way now, and Nashon whispered as such into Paul’s ear.

“All right,” Paul concluded. “If you’ve decided to come with us, we’ll leave at dusk. Be ready to go.”

Paul’s pronouncement had come around noon, so there was plenty of time to prepare. Weapons were fashioned from broken chairs and the sharper edges of kitchen implements, what little food was left was gathered, and a couple of items that perhaps no one had considered as being easy to weaponize had been acquisitioned by Nashon on Paul’s instructions. Almost more important than all of these things, routes were determined. Gregoire and Trent, despite both having initially voted against the excursion, were key to this last point, having been on several of the scouting excursions out into Beverly Hills and down to Century City.

“You have to understand how fucked up it gets the further west you go,” explained Trent, indicating along a map to Zamarin and Nashon as Paul listened. “There were fewer tall buildings to topple over and create obstacles, but it becomes about the road itself. Santa Monica Boulevard was under construction and got hit pretty hard. The road becomes almost impassable just beyond Century City. You won’t be able to drive vehicles.”

“Wasn’t planning on it anyway,” said Zamarin. “If anything’s going to invite the rats in an otherwise quiet empty city, it’d be the trucks. We’re on foot.”

“Good point,” agreed Trent. “But that still puts us on the ground for two or three hours at least. You’re going to have people climbing over broken concrete in the dark, and not everyone here exactly in the best shape.”

Trent nodded over his shoulder at Sebastian and Trenchard.

“Yeah, we’ll be shouldering them through, I’d imagine,” suggested Nashon. “It won’t be easy.”

“That’s where natural selection comes in,” said Zamarin. “Some will be fed to the enemy so the rest of the pack can survive. It’s like ballast for a balloon.”

“You can’t be serious,” exclaimed Gregoire.

Zamarin got right up in Gregoire’s face and sneered. “You want to hear me say that every last one of us is going to make it to the beach alive and well, and tomorrow we’ll be doing this big happy joint press conference in San Diego about our harrowing escape? I mean, I can tell you that, sure, if you need to hear the words. But I’d be full of shit.”

Gregoire thought about this but then shut up.

In the kitchen, Sharon and Lisa gathered food as Bones padded alongside. The shepherd occasionally got underfoot and poked his nose where it didn’t belong, but Sharon had realized that in this whole mess the only time she felt any sense of safety was when Bones was near.

“So you’re from here?” Lisa was asking. “Where were you when the quake hit?”

“At home,” Sharon said. “In bed. Not far from here, actually. Westwood.”

Sharon fell silent, and Lisa sensed that she didn’t want to talk about it. Instead of pressing the matter, Lisa moved on with the preparations, only to hear Sharon exhale.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Lisa said.

“It’s like a superstition,” Sharon said. “If I don’t say it aloud, it didn’t happen, you know? I lost my partner, my girlfriend, of four years in the quake. It could’ve been me that died, but I was just faster.”

Lisa nodded but then put her hand on Sharon’s shoulder as the younger woman stared glumly at the floor. It was such a depressing thought, life without Emily. She’d so successfully put it out of her mind, but here it all was.

“What was her name?” Lisa asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Emily,” Sharon replied, her voice cracking on the third syllable, making it almost sound like a question. “She was a student. We met when she was seventeen at a club, but I didn’t pursue anything for propriety’s sake until she was eighteen. I needn’t have worried, though, as she was far more mature and worldly than I ever was. I’d been married when we met, but my husband and I both knew something hadn’t been right for a while. So we finally packed it in, and after he moved out, he went back to Tel Aviv telling everyone I threw him out for cheating on me.”
Sharon chortled a little, shaking her head. “I’ve never understood how that was better than admitting the relationship didn’t work. Even worse, he made it sound as if the accusation had merit, which has always made me wonder if something had been going on and I just never noticed. Anyway, I had kept in contact with Emily and we went on a date. True to stereotype, she moved in
maybe
three weeks later. She was eleven years my junior, but we were absolutely in love.”

Sharon looked as if she might cry. Lisa put her arm around her shoulder, and Sharon continued, “The hardest part of this is, well, we were moving out. We’d bought a house out in Agoura Hills. But when the Stephane conference hits, it takes over my whole life for the months leading up. So Emily had been packing on weekends, the new house was being painted, and we were all set to move…”

Sharon hesitated, trying to remember the date. When she realized when it was to be, it gave her pause. Even Bones, who had sat down at her feet, looked up, sensing her distress.

“…tomorrow morning.”

Lisa hugged Sharon, drawing her close as Sharon began to cry, her body quaking a little with the tears.

“It’s okay,” Lisa said. “I know it’s hard, but we’ll be out of here soon enough, and you’ll be able to grieve for real.”

“I’m not worried about me,” Sharon said, shaking her head. “It’s just, how long is Emily’s body going to be in the rubble of our apartment? Weeks? Months? A couple of years? She’s not buried, and even though we’re not the most traditional of relationships, in my culture you’re supposed to bury someone within three days of the death. It bothers me a lot, like I failed her. It makes it hard for me to want to leave.”

“I can only imagine how you feel,” Lisa replied softly. “But if she loved you as much as you love her, you have to know that she would want you to survive and carry on. Hold that close.”

“I do, but it doesn’t make it any better.”

“All right,” Paul said, addressing the group at fifteen minutes until six, the agreed-upon departure time. “We’ll be going straight down Santa Monica Boulevard to the coastline, no stops. We’re going to be as quiet as possible, doing nothing to give away our position. If we encounter any enemy, we will only engage this as a last resort. We’re trying to escape, and we’re not prepared to fight. Understood?”

No one replied. Paul nodded to Zamarin, who raised the one-shot sonic disrupter.

“I don’t know how many of you are familiar with our crowd-control methods, but this is what’s known as an LRAD – long-range acoustical device - or just sonic disruptor, which admittedly sounds more sci-fi. It emits a piercing blast of intense acoustic energy that can momentarily stun anything with a sense of hearing. On the low end, it can burst a human’s eardrum if jacked all the way up. On the high end, it can do similarly to the rats. That said, it has a very limited range and, like a taser, has one shot in it before needing to be recharged. We only have one, but it just might buy us some time. You see the sergeant or Corporal Sahar raising it, you stop, cover your ears, and open your mouth. Got it?”

Incredulous as some of the people looked, they all nodded and agreed.