Cascade Prequel: Encounter
Chapter 7
The glow of a laptop screen lit the anxious face of a man.
“First phase… growth… metabolic roles, DNA replication…” he said under his breath.
His speech, one that he was going to give tomorrow before his first class at Stanford slipped from his mouth to his mind as he went through the various stages of the cell cycle. It was basic stuff for even a high school student, but he had to start somewhere before getting into the more meaty subjects.
His eyes began to blur. He sat back and rubbed his eyes.
Need a break.
He had been locked in his small, one-bedroom apartment, one of many in his block on the Stanford complex for over a day, spending his time getting his first lecture perfect. He was still not a fully qualified professor, but one of those who was, liked his work and asked him to present a class to his students. Dr. Raj Joshi was happy to oblige.
He stood, stretched, then walked to his small kitchen, pulling the fridge door open. Inside wasn’t much to eat or drink, but what there was, was all he required. He pulled out an unopened bottle of water, twisted the top and took a few sips. His mind immediately jumped back to his work.
A knock came at his apartment door. It partially made him jump and he swallowed a bit too much of the water and coughed. He was confused who would want to talk to him at 8:30 p.m.
Putting the bottle down, he walked quietly to the door. As he was halfway to it, a knock came from the door once again, this time louder.
“Dr. Joshi?” said a male voice. “We would like to talk to you.”
Now he was getting concerned. That voice sounded authoritative, serious. He quickly scanned through his recent social media entries in his mind, trying to remember if he could have said anything which might anger the wrong people.
He unlocked the door and pulled it open. Two men stood facing him, one older than the other.
The older flashed a shiny badge at him, mentioning something about homeland security.
“What… do you want with me?” Being an invited guest in the country, a chill ran through him.
Are they kicking me out?
“Can we come in?”
“Umm… sure.”
Raj stepped backwards, giving the men enough room to walk inside, but he felt uneasy about letting them all the way in.
The taller man looked at the clothes, books, and general chaos which abound inside the small apartment.
Raj smiled. “I’ve been busy studying for a lecture I’m going to give tomorrow. What can I do for you?”
“My name is Glen Cornell; my partner here is Mr. Drake. We have been following your work.”
“Why would homeland security be following my work?”
Even more insidious thoughts flowed through Raj’s mind.
They think I’m a terrorist!
The idea of them thinking that was completely insane to him, but he thought it nonetheless.
Cornell smiled as if he could read Raj’s mind.
“Have you seen what’s been happening in LA?”
The question caught him off-guard, but he was pleased it wasn’t aimed at himself. “No…”
Cornell walked to Raj’s laptop. “Do you mind if I open your browser?”
“No…” Raj’s mouth was dry, he needed that bottle of water more than before.
Within a few clicks, the scene of devastation at LAX was playing on recordings from earlier in the day, and the headlines scrolling across the screen talked of a city under lockdown.
Raj leaned in closer to the screen. “That’s terrible… a freak weather event?”
Cornell stood upright. “That is what the public are being told, correct…”
Raj looked between both men. “I don’t understand?”
Cornell sighed. “There are events taking place across the globe, that those with a higher security clearance than I feel you would be helpful to understand. I’m afraid you won’t be giving that speech tomorrow, doctor…”
The further east Grant, Luciana, and Ben rode the prettier the houses and landscape became. They had been peddling and freewheeling when the road dipped for over an hour. No conversation passed between any of them after the incident on the bridge for each wanted to be as far away from it as possible. There was no time for talking, only for pushing further towards the hills and a way out of the madness.
The more countrified the surroundings became the larger the homes were, and more deserted the spaces in-between. Even during his time on the job, Grant hardly came out to this part of LA.
He had navigated them well so far, but he hadn’t bargained for the inclines that kept becoming more frequent and prolonged the closer they got to their destination.
Onwards he pushed because stopping would mean his mind would slip back to the cop’s expression when the thing had him. Monsters are not real. They can’t be.
But whatever had happened it did serve to confirm to Grant that leaving the city, even on antiquated bikes, was the right thing to do.
Finally, though, the burning in his legs and chest became more than he could handle and he pulled up where a group of trees provided cover from a nearby street light. Ben and Luciana stopped behind him.
He reached down and grabbed the bottle of water that was clipped to his bike. He was drenched in sweat, and all of his limbs ached in places he couldn’t reach.
After taking what he needed he passed the bottle to Ben, and then Luciana. Both looked less tired than he felt.
“You gonna make it there?” said Luciana.
He hoped she was joking. On realizing she wasn’t, he frowned, taking the bottle back from her. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine!” the words came out stranger than she wanted, and she looked guiltily at Ben, and then away from both of them.
“How much further? I’m kinda tired,” said Ben. He rubbed his elbow.
“Maybe another twenty minutes, then we’ll be at the trail into the hills. We’ll go into them a mile or two, then rest for a bit, okay?”
Ben sighed but nodded.
“Hey, you are being really brave,” said Grant.
“I know…” Ben pushed off again, as did Grant and Luciana.
Sidewalks melted away, so there was only road, which wound left and right, dipping and climbing. The final part of the journey was the hardest. Finally, they made it to a point where the tarmac ended.
Out of breath, they looked into only darkness.
“You want us to go in there?” said Luciana.
Grant reached across and held Ben’s shoulder. The fear was obvious on his son’s face.
Grant nodded, looking at her. “If we want to leave LA, that’s where we need to go.”
A noise came from a nearby house.
“We can’t stay here we have to go!” said Grant. “Just follow me.”
He jumped off his bike, lifted it up the curb and onto the path which flowed through a gap in a small wooden fence.
Voices came from some gardens behind a wall.
Ben scrambled his bike forward, following his father. Luciana shook her head and walked her bike onto the path, and then jumped on and started peddling.
Grant’s bike lamp provided scant light to allow him to see where to go, and he eventually gave up and climbed off. He looked back to the others. “We’ll just push the bikes.”
“I’m tired,” said Ben.
“That makes two of us,” said Luciana.
“I know it’s hard, but we’re still in LA. We shouldn’t have to go that much further, across these hills then we can rest. At least we can talk freely now. There’s no one out here.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” said Luciana, looking into the absolute darkness around them.
Grant looked up at the stars. His mind flashed back to when he was a child and his father would take him into the mountains, and he would look up and see a similar matinee of light.
Something rustled in the bushes out in the void.
“What was that?” said Luciana.
“Could be any number of things. Probably a rat. Nothing to worry about. Just keep walking.” Grant’s mind was trying to hold rigidly to how things should be. The things at the airport, the one that bubbled up from the waters of the canal, the strange insect in the garden, they were aberrations. If it had been a biological attack, then they were a few of its results. Now they were moving away from the affected area, they would be fine.
Still, he found himself pulling his shotgun from his backpack once more and resting it on the bike.
Luciana walked with her bike at the rear and couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
Ben kept his eyes on his father. Everything else was too scary to think about. He wondered what his mother would think about them traipsing through the LA hills during the night.
Another sound echoed through the air. This time, Grant stopped and whipped the twin barrels around. Ben gripped his bike, shaking.
A branch snapped.
“You should know I got two barrels facing out in the dark. I got no idea—”
“Okay, okay, señor!” said a male voice. “Don’t shoot!”
“How many are you?”
“Just myself, my wife, and my daughter. Don’t shoot!”
Grant lowered the shotgun slightly.
“Come out into the light, so I can see all of you…”
Luciana asked in Spanish what they were doing there, to which the man replied they were trying to get out of the city.
“English,” said Grant.
“I just asked why they are out here. Seems they are doing what we are doing.”
A middle-aged man with a thick mustache, and a light brown leather jacket walked onto the path, with him were two women, one of similar age to him, the other much younger.
“All the roads are blocked. We thought we could get out through these hills,” said the man. “My name is Galo Cuesta, and this is my wife, Estella, and my daughter, Sofia.”
“Okay,” said Grant.
“We should take them with us,” said Luciana.
Grant looked back at her surprised. “This is not a wagon train. It’s hard enough just for us to get out.”
“We will not be of any trouble, and maybe we can help push your bikes?” said Galo.
Grant looked at Ben. His eyes looked heavy.
“Which way are you heading?” said Grant.
“Just south and east.”
“Okay.” Grant introduced himself and the others, and together they all continued along the sandy path.
“So, why not stay in your house? Why be out in the middle of nowhere with your family?” said Grant.
Galo looked hesitant to talk. “Because there are things… things that are not natural in this city. I have seen them with my own eyes. And I do not believe the TV people when they say what happened at LAX was a bad storm. Something is happening, and I do not want my family in the middle of it.” He looked at Grant. “What about you?”
“Same story.”
“You have seen these strange creatures?”
“Yeah.”
They both fell back into silence as they trekked forward. Soon they came to a grassy bank.
Grant went to pull out his map, but Galo held his hand up.
“No need to look at your map. I know this whole area. I have worked with construction crews on these freeways. We go up here and across the road, and then head back into the hills and go south. In about an hour we will come to a road which crosses the highway again.”
Grant looked back at Ben. His head was hanging low.
“Can you push my bike?” he said to Galo, who nodded he could.
Despite the fatigue in his legs and arms, Grant took Ben’s pack, throwing it onto his son’s bike, picked him up, and pulled his bike along.
They soon crossed the freeway and headed in the direction Galo indicated.