The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse (3 page)

A couple of those years had torn them apart and pushed them away to opposite cliffs separated by a bottomless abyss.

But they hadn’t surrendered. They hadn’t given up on each other, on their shared life together. To be fair, it was Beth’s bottomless well of compassion that pulled them through. But they did it.

They survived.

Together.

As warm and welcoming as Beth’s hug was, it was also a reminder of a question he’d been asking himself more and more.
 

Could they survive in the world they now faced?

Not for a day or two. Not for a month or two. Not for a year or two. But for a lifetime?

And even if they could, what kind of life would it be?

“Have you seen Mr. Piddles?” Beth said.

The cat they’d been forced to inherit after their neighbors passed away from the outbreak. He was named Mr. Piddles for a reason. Mason had no use for a cat in the first place, much less one that squirted its nasty urine indoors.

Not in a cat box indoors.

“No, but my pillow reeks. I’m pretty sure it pissed on it. Can we get rid of it?”

“The pillow? Sure.”

“I’m talking about the cat, although the pillow might have to go too.”

“Mr. Piddles is a
he
. And no, we’re not getting rid of him. He’s just expressing his sadness. Can you imagine how upset he must be?”

“I try not to. But he’d better not express on my pillow again.”

“Anything yet?” Beth asked, wisely deciding to change the subject.

“Nope, should be any second now.”

“Do you think anything will be different? Any updates?”

“It’s been the same for seven days now,” Mason replied. “I don’t know.”

The message always played three times in a row starting exactly at noon. It had done that for the last seven days. Mason didn’t want to think about what the static, daily repetition might mean. No possibility that came to mind was a good one.

“We’ll find out soon,” Beth said as she rested her cheek against his back. “How’s the calculating going?”

Mason surveyed the long gray granite countertop. Every bit of food in the house lay stacked and sorted on it. Cans of beans, vegetables, and fruit stood four high. A large block of boxes contained an assortment of pasta shapes and sizes. An unopened bag of dog food for their recently deceased Bullmastiff, Max, was at the end.
 

He hoped it wouldn’t come to dog chow.

At least it was organic.

“I still have to count—“

The tiny speaker in the emergency radio chirped to life as an unwavering tone indicated the transmission had begun.

This is a message from the Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test. Repeat. This is not a test.

For the protection and safekeeping of all citizens, the President of the United States has declared martial law. Anyone not engaged in official business of the state is required to stay indoors at all times. Anyone violating this restriction is knowingly placing him or herself in extreme danger and will be dealt with accordingly.
 

The President, along with the surviving legislative branch, is taking all prudent action to resolve the crisis as soon as possible.

The best course of action for the citizen is to stay indoors, keep you and your family safe, and wait for further instructions. Tune in at noon tomorrow for the latest news on the state of the emergency.
 

This concludes the message from the Emergency Broadcast System.

The radio was silent for ten seconds, and then the tone and message repeated. The cycle began again, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary (if that could mean anything anymore), until the transmission cut out early.

…The best course of action for the citizen is to…

And the radio went silent.

It wasn’t supposed to go silent. It was supposed to finish the message.
 

Mason checked the volume knob. He cranked it all the way over and the static grew louder. He checked the red dial on the frequency band to see if it had somehow slipped away from the correct frequency.

Nope. Right on the nose.

Beth came around to his side. “Why did it stop?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he met her warm amber eyes. “But I think their guidance is no longer the best approach, if it ever was. We need to get out and assess the situation for ourselves. We’ve been dug in like gophers for the last week. All of the regular media channels blinked out days ago. We need intel.”

“Slow down, Sergeant Mason. How are you feeling?” Mason stretched the tender muscles in his left calf and flexed the muscles in his back. The wounds he’d acquired in rescuing his daughter and Elio from that crazed gang were healing well.
 

“Sore, but good, Dr. West,” he said as he winked at her.
 

“Why are you winking? I
am
a doctor. A veterinary doctor, I’ll give you that. But I’m your best shot right now.”

Mason grinned and kissed her lips and then her forehead. “It’s your bedside manner that keeps me coming back.”

Another voice intruded on their private moment.

“Ewww, gross. Aren’t things bad enough already without you two going max PDA in my face all the time?”

The other most important person in Mason’s life, his daughter Theresa. Maybe
the
most important. He and Beth had had conversations over the years about the hierarchy of deepest love and, by mutual and inoffensive consent, they agreed Theresa came first. That was just what being a parent meant.

She was a carbon copy of his wife in so many ways. Long, wavy black hair framing amber eyes. An easy smile both coming and going. A sharp tongue when the situation suited her. A tenderness forever hidden beneath.

His heart ached for the world she’d inherited.

She deserved better.
 

Beth pushed up on her tippy toes while pulling Mason’s head down to hers. She slipped her tongue between his lips and flicked at his teeth until they gave way.

“NO! NO!” Theresa yelled. “I’m scarred for life. That unholy image is burned into my retinas!” She held her arms out and cast her eyes around the room like a cat following a laser light. “It’s everywhere! Everywhere!”

Elio Lopez flew into the kitchen and jolted to a stop behind Theresa. He held her shoulders. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” His eyes darted back and forth from person to person. He narrowed them. “Wait. Am I missing something here?”

Theresa giggled. “No, nothing you should be subjected to seeing. I just walked in on these two making the kitchen into a love shack. And the kitchen is
not
where it’s at.”

Elio scrunched his brows together in confusion.

Theresa turned to him, “That gives me an idea.” She leaned in to Elio, their lips drawing ever closer.

Mason’s heart leapt into his throat. He jumped over and lowered a hand between their faces. He eyeballed Elio. “Back up, hero. I’d hate for you to get injured right when you’re getting better.”

Theresa tried to slap his arm away, but it held firm. “Dad, we weren’t going to actually kiss!”

Elio’s eyebrows jumped and he stumbled back. “Uhh, no. No, sir. I mean—“

“Yeah,” Mason said, “I was seventeen once. I know what you mean.”

Elio shook his head. “It’s not like that, sir. It’s not—“

Theresa whirled on him, her hands anchored to her hips and a dangerous glint in her eye. “It’s not like
that
? So, we’re not like
that
, huh?”

She had her mother’s fire. The same ability to flit from humor to anger and back again in heartbeats. It occasionally terrified Mason, but it always captivated him.

“No, it’s not like that. I mean, yes! Yes, it is with us!”

Mason’s mood darkened. “So it is?”

Elio looked between Mason and Theresa, caught in a trap from which he couldn’t escape.

Beth cut smoothly between the opposing forces and swept her arm around Elio and led him away. “Come help set the table while her father adjusts to his daughter’s growing independence.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with clear relief in his voice as they disappeared into the dining room.

“Dad,” Theresa said, “don’t scare him.”

Mason shrugged. “Isn’t that my job?”

Theresa arched a brow at him. “I thought you were a bodyguard.”

“I am.”

The sizes of the portions on each plate were exacting and unavoidably meager. Mason ensured that each plate got a cup of Cajun rice and beans, a slice of bread, and a slice of apple. His mouth watered tasting the spicy scent in the air. His belly grumbled. It would get one of the plates even though three or four were needed. He surveyed each one and shook his head. This was going to be considered feast before too long.

Theresa had left to go check on her blossoming love interest. His mind almost gagged on the words. She was fifteen. That was too young. Back when she was five, fifteen had seemed like a reasonable age to start this kind of thing. But now?

No. Too soon. Way too soon.

Maybe the lack of calories would suppress their teenage hormones. Maybe that was the one up side. Rationing was a clear necessity. But that wouldn’t make things last forever. Which brought up the question of what to do next.
 

There was no way to know without more intel first. It was just that he wasn’t looking forward to confirming what he already knew in his gut.

Things were fucked.
 

It wasn’t the inconvenience of rolling blackouts in the middle of the day that had become common in recent summers.

It wasn’t the widespread power outage that took down most of the Northeast for a week in August of 2003.

It wasn’t even the abject failure of local, state, and federal government in the response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
 

Those were problems.
 

They had solutions, even if the powers that be were slow to implement them.

This was a predicament.

There were no solutions, per se. Only adjustments. Only hard choices that burned in the kiln of an unforgiving new world. And every choice was another round in the fire.

Another chance to crack apart and fall to ruin.

The apple slices came up a plate short. He’d go without. In another time and country, he’d lived on far worse and far less.

Iridia Reshenko sidled up next to him. She eyed a plate and Mason gritted his teeth, willing himself to be calm while she registered her complaint.

“I can’t eat that many carbs!” she said.

That wasn’t the complaint he expected.

Though he should have. A Ukrainian supermodel that had appeared multiple times in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue (if he could believe Miro, at least) had somehow ended up in his care, in his house, in his space.

She was the job that never ended. The one that wouldn’t die. And it was his job to keep her that way. But, it had gone way beyond a job. Over the last week, she had done her best (which was generally terrible) to integrate into the West household.

Mason appreciated that she tried to be helpful, which for a supermodel accustomed to the world waiting on her every whim, meant she tried not to whine and complain every time Beth asked her to do something around the house.

This new reality wasn’t easy for any of them. But it was probably the hardest for Iridia. She’d had the furthest to fall.

Still, Mason wished she’d fallen onto that plane that would’ve taken her out of his life. But, it wasn’t meant to be.

He’d done his best to do the job as directed. But factors beyond his control ended up making that impossible. The federal government closing down the airspace above Los Angeles was one thing. His daughter’s life in danger yet another.

It should’ve been simple. Get her on a plane back to her father, some genius scientist. It was the first job he’d ever not completed. The first in almost a decade as a close protection officer.

He didn’t like it.

But the world didn’t turn according to his preferences.

He scraped away half a cup of rice and beans and put the recovered half back into the lidded glass bowl.

Iridia picked up the slice of bread from her plate and peered at it. “Is this gluten-free bread?”

Mason rolled his eyes. “It’s packed with glutens. I specifically picked up the one with extra-gluten.”

She tilted her head away like the inert slice of baked flour might bite her.

“Eat it,” Mason said. “You’re too skinny.”

Iridia lifted the long, loose-fitting shirt that she’d borrowed from Beth, exposing her waist and lack of clothing to cover her minimally functional underwear. She twisted around and her sandy blonde hair trailed across her shoulder. She patted and squeezed an exposed buttcheek.

“
This
is a disaster,” she said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Mason replied as he stared off into the backyard thinking of what might be beyond.

She turned back to Mason as if stricken. Her crystal green eyes wide and worried. “You see it, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Just say it. It’s there.”

“What are you talking about?”

Iridia squeezed the buttcheek again and a sob welled up in her chest. “I have butt fat.”

Mason pinched his eyes shut and shook his head. He forcibly returned his attention to something less infuriating, like the fact that he was providing his family fewer calories than their bodies required, and yet, here was this person complaining about the tone of her buttcheeks.

“Hello,” Beth’s voice said from the doorway to the dining room. “Iridia, you were supposed to be getting lunch for everyone, not showing your half-naked body to my husband.”

Iridia whimpered and dropped the shirt which still ended mid-thigh. “This is terrible. The worst.”

“What is—“

“Don’t ask,” Mason said hoping to save her the grief.

“What is terrible?” Beth asked anyway.

“I should’ve expected it. I mean, I’ve missed my daily workout with Esteban for over a week. And I eat any old garbage you put in front of me…”

She said a few other things but Mason’s brain had stopped listening. She was complaining about eating into his family’s dwindling resources? How could she be so clueless?