Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  "It was only the once," she muttered. "Only the one time without a condom..." This wasn't the time to think about it. She had months to make a decision on the baby, to keep or to kill; for now, it was best to keep it a secret. Right now, she just needed to get out of here.

  "Now would you like to call your parents? There're no charges being pressed. You were there, but we can't prove you did more than get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. Go home, get this whole situation taken care of. No lawyers needed."

  Amanda nodded, and the officer smiled. "I'll go get your cell phone."

  The officer left, returned, left again.

  Amanda sat alone and dialed her father's number. Twelve rings, no answer. She tried her mother, the same. One more time to dad's mobile and—

  "Jesus, Amanda, this had better be important! I've only got five minutes' break."

  "Hey, dad, I need you to come pick me up—"

  "What? Amanda, what the hell? If something's wrong take the train, no way in hell I'm driving up there."

  Amanda slowly closed her eyes. In all the excitement, she had forgotten about her weekend plans. "Dad, I'm not in New York..."

  "Then where are you?"

  Amanda quickly spun out the afternoon for her father, carefully editing the narrative to paint her as an innocent victim caught up in events beyond her control, rather than as an agent provocateur. "—so then they rounded up a bunch of us, kind of as hostages to get it to end. So I'm at the police station."

  "Jesus Christ, Amanda." He sounded exhausted. For just a moment, Amanda felt guilty for disappointing her father this badly. "I can't get off for five more hours."

  "But dad—"

  "No. I can't get off; we're swamped." A string of shouted instructions and a yell of pain underscored his words.

  "Dad..."

  His sigh distorted as it passed through the mobile. "Look, I'll call your uncle, okay? I'll see if maybe Jack can pick you up, maybe if you can stay with him tonight. We'll talk about this in the morning."

  Amanda wasn't sure if the police would release her to Jack, but it was worth a shot. "Yeah, fine."

  Her dad grunted once and cut the call.

  Amanda leaned back, placed her hands on her abdomen, and stared at the far wall. She was pregnant, and she didn't know what to do... She couldn't get involved in politics now, could she? Her rioting days were behind her, assuming she kept the kid. Either way, it was probably better to lay low for awhile.

  Even as she thought this, she rejected it. Edarus hadn't laid low. One day into office, and he had set the wheels turning on a solution to this whole mess. He was facing death and disgrace; how could she let anything—police, pregnancy—stop her? Today had been a small victory. Her next would be larger.

  As she waited for Jack and stroked her belly, she saw a future unfold before her... and it was glorious.

  5

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 14

  A tower of LEGO was rising in Jack's living room. Months ago, as his tower began to take shape in the Cohen & Associates computer, he had begun to use LEGO sets purchased at the mall to bring his tower into the real world. It may have cost him most of his pay thus far, but it had been well worth it.

  The tower, built not quite to scale, nearly reached the ceiling, and Jack had begun to add the smaller out-rigger towers the week before.

  He now took a step back from his creation, carefully avoiding the line of paper taped to the floor, labeled "Trench" in bright blue hi-lighter.

  "It's not going to work, Jack." Alice's voice boomed from the apartment's speaker system and echoed off of the central tower.

  Jack bent and rummaged through a bin of beige bricks; the one he needed had been there just a moment before.

  "Jack?"

  Jack stood and applied a brick to one of the looping buttresses that connected an outrigger to the main structure. "And I'm saying just do it."

  Alice sighed, the speakers reproducing it as a rush of static. "You're really not helping the situation, you know that? I've tried telling them that the balcony isn't feasible, but they won't listen. You just going along with it makes it harder."

  Another brick went onto the building. "I'm really not concerned with feasibility. It's what the client wants, so I'm giving it to them. The plans reflect what they've asked for."

  "It'll only take a day or two to make the changes, to get the balcony to work properly, and then I'll go over it with them, explaining why it won't work."

  "You're—you're not getting it." Jack bent under the buttress and clipped a brick to the bottom.

  "What am I not getting?"

  "What the client wants, the client gets. They want a building designed, they get it. Whether it works in the real world or not isn't our problem. Just give them their fantasy building."

  Alice didn't respond for several long moments. "You have to face reality, Jack. You can't just make up what you think is real and hope the rest of the world goes along with it."

  One of the buttresses was beginning to sag more than usual, so Jack gabbed it and squeezed the bricks closer together. "Fine, whatever. Change the balcony. I'm sure the client will love the project delay."

  "Screw it; I have more important things to do on a weekend then listen to you be an asshole." There were three rapid beeps, then the call disconnected.

  Jack bent down and rummaged for a brick.

  "What was that all about?"

  Bricks scattered as Jack started. He looked over his shoulder and saw Amanda, dressed in flannel pants and a tee-shirt, standing in the doorway to the living room.

  "Just some stuff at work. The client has a design in mind that isn't holding up to physics test, but refuses to budge on aesthetics. I'm saying leave it as-is and let the contractors get through to him.

  Amanda nodded and walked over the the sofa; she groaned as she sunk into it. "God, I love this couch."

  "Oh, hey, your dad called."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah." Jack reached down and began gathering the scattered LEGOs. "He got talked into doing another shift, so he won't be here for another couple hours."

  "What time is it now?"

  "About two-thirty."

  "Shit, I was out for a long time."

  Jack nodded, half distracted, as he noticed one of the outriggers bending oddly.

  When they had gotten home early that morning, Amanda had been strangely reserved, saying very little about the obviously exciting event that had landed her in police custody. As soon as they were in the apartment and Amanda was given a bed she was out, and had slept soundly until just a few minutes ago.

  "You hungry?"

  "I guess so..."

  A quick shake and an audible snap and the bent tower was stable again. "C'mon, into the kitchen. I've got cereal and frozen waffles."

  As Jack began gathering utensils and condiments, Amanda slipped into her guest-room and retrieved her mobile. She dumped it onto the table, then sat across from Jack and snagged a waffle.

  "So," Jack prompted as he poured milk into a bowl of puffed rice, "tell me about what went down last night. All your dad would say was there was a riot, and all you would say was that you got caught in it."

  Amanda took a bite of her waffle and began to scroll through her mobile's news feed. "Okay, so Tara and I were supposed to go to New York this weekend, right, to support the Latterndale plan at the U.N. Only the school wouldn't let us leave, so I decided to create a distraction and force our way out."

  "Thus the riot."

  She nodded. "Would've worked, too, but the precinct station was too close."

  Jon snorted. "Well, if your dad doesn't tell you, I'm proud of you for standing up like that, even if it was a stupid thing to do."

  "Thanks." She looked up and smiled, then returned to the news. "I know my mom will be happy; I just need to remember to call her before she sees it on the news."

  She bit off another chunk of waffle and continued scrolling.

  Jack looked do
wn at his cereal and felt some of his appetite drain away. Despite what he had told her, he wasn't really proud of Amanda. If anything, he resented her actions. All she was doing was shaking up his world a little more, cracking the load-bearing walls of his reality. He had come to terms with the coma, with the presumed death, and he was now slowly coming to terms with the blatantly supernatural Defenders. But with every stunt like this, every reactionary measure that resulted from their influence, they felt shockingly too real, too close for comfort. He needed more time to accept all the changes; he didn't need his niece bringing war to his own backyard over these things.

  "Oh, shit."

  The cereal jumped into sharp focus, and Jack looked up to see Amanda staring wide-eyed at her mobile.

  "Oh, shit, shit, shit, no... no, no, no, no, no..." Her voice grew more distorted with each repetition, and she was shaking her head with increasing force. "Oh, God, oh fuck, shit, no, no..."

  "What's wrong?"

  Amanda took a deep breath, tried to speak, shook her head again and slid the mobile across the table to Jack.

  There was a picture of a boy, late high-school aged, overweight, with some kind of vague facial hair under his lip. Over all was a headline: Philadelphia Youth Slain in School Riot.

  "Raife," Amanda whispered. "My friend, Raife..."

  He leaned back and nodded.

  Tears were welling now, and Amanda had found her voice. "I killed him, it's all my fault, I killed him, my fault..."

  Jack rounded the table and held Amanda, felt her rocking against his side, warm tears soaking into his collar. He looked across the room to his tower, rising majestically through to the ceiling, and for a moment saw his accomplishment as Amanda's, saw his pride and effort collapsing, killing. Imagining something he had created killing someone, realizing that Amanda's brave, stupid action had resulted in the death of one of her friends, was just too much for him. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to see his little niece as a killer, didn't want anything to change.

  So he held her, so she cried...

  They made their way into the mall, the gently curving opalescent canyons feeling disconcertingly alien, vaguely skeletal. As Jack imagined himself walking through the calcified heart of some colossal beast, he realized that the decay he sensed all around him wasn't a construct solely of his imagination. Changes had occurred in the last six months months; many of the boutiques—bath supply stores, toy stores, gift shops—had dried up. The hobby shops, the luxury goods, the gourmet vendors—gone. Even the stores that remained were different. What remained, shops of a more practical nature—clothes, groceries, basic electronics—were still doing business, but everything seemed to be on sale, priced to draw in the thinning crowd of customers. The sales were advertised, brightly and boldly, on signs that stood alone, bereft of the usual stack of goods that helped to anchor them in the public's mind. The whole mall was desperately begging for a last bit of attention before it collapsed into dust.

  Even the clientele had changed. No kids, no roving packs of teens. Every one here seemed to be middle aged and shopping with a purpose.

  Amanda, out to get a nice dress for dinner with her adult escort, was the youngest person there.

  They stopped in at a shop about halfway down the canyon wall, and Amanda went through the motions of picking a dress, trying it on, deciding it wasn't for her, and trying again.

  "You don't have to do this, you know..." she said on a trip back from the fitting room.

  "It's a nice restaurant; you need to look nice."

  "Can't we just do this at your place?" She picked up a knee-length black dress with short ruffled sleeves and held it up to the light.

  "You need something to take your mind off everything. Good food can do that."

  She lowered the dress and stared at Jack. "I wasn't sorry I did it, you know? Last night, after I got Tara arrested, I still thought I did the right thing. I was trying to change the world, I was doing something. Now it seems stupid."

  "You want the truth?"

  Amanda nodded.

  "It was stupid. I'm not saying kids like you can't change the world, but kids like you usually don't know when to pick your battles. Fight for what you believe in, but don't go rushing in head-on."

  "Edarus did."

  Jack clenched his teeth. No matter what was going on, the Defenders always seemed to make their presence felt in it. "Edarus didn't know what he was up against. I'm sure if he had, he would have made a different choice."

  "So what should I do now?"

  Jack looked into her eyes for several long moments, then down to the dress. "Get the dress; relax. Don't worry about changing the world for one night. Just live with it as is."

  On the last floor below the penthouse, the elevator doors opened up on a vast room that took up the entirety of the floor. Jack and Amanda stepped out of the elevator and took in a space that stretched away in tiered levels of burgundy carpet until it met the empty sky of the great windows encircling the tower. Here and there, stretching out in rays from the core of the tower, were rows of support columns, covered in red stained wood.

  A step away stood a small podium, serving to separate the elevator from the restaurant proper. Next to the podium stood Grant, looking tired and worn in a rumpled grey suit.

  "Hey, Jack..." He glanced briefly at Amanda. "I heard about your friend."

  Amanda nodded, and Jack stepped over to the hostess to check on their reservation. The three were led to a table by the enormous window, Jack seated across from Grant, Amanda between them, forced to gaze out over the city.

  "The longer I live here," Jack muttered once the hostess had left, "the stupider this building seems."

  "Thought you'd never come around to the rest of us," Grant answered.

  Jack grunted.

  They ordered, they waited. They tried to make small talk about Grant's day at the hospital, about Jack's work, about Amanda's school. For the first time in recent memory, there wan no mention made of politics.

  The drinks had just arrived when Amanda announced, "I want to go to LA."

  Grant raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me, what?"

  "I want to go live with mom till next school year."

  Grant sent an accusatory glare Jack's way, then focused back on his daughter. "Why?"

  Amanda swallowed. "It's my fault Raife is dead. I was the one who organized everyone, and who threw the snowball that got everything started. If it was not for my stupid, selfish action, Raife would still be with us today. Being here, in Philadelphia, were the E.H.U.D. riots began, is not a good place for me. It's too easy for me to get caught up into the passion of the moment, and to make decisions that seem right at the time, but which are not conducive to my future."

  "How long have you been working on that?"

  "I typed it up while I was trying on clothes."

  Grant nodded, then rested his chin on his fists. He glanced briefly at Jack who shrugged, as if saying 'I had nothing to do with this.'

  "I'm thinking..." Grant closed his eyes. "No."

  Amanda swallowed.

  "You've got a month and a half of school left. You leave now, you get knocked behind a whole semester, that's not conducive to your future."

  Amanda ground her teeth, and glared at her roll of silverware, summoning arguments that she was sure would win her father over.

  "I tell you what, though. You stick out the rest of this semester, I'll call your mom, and if she's okay with it, you can transfer out there for the spring. Deal?"

  Amanda's shoulders slumped, but she didn't nod. "Please?"

  "C'mon, what is this? Why are you so desperate to get away all of a sudden? Look, I know it's going to be hard facing everyone at school, but it's something you need to do."

  She chewed her lip, and looked to be on the verge of tears.

  "Is it me? Is it about last night? Look, I was angry, okay? I was in the middle of my shift, and you said you'd been arrested—"

  "She can stay with me."
>
  Grant and Amanda turned to look at Jack. "I know it doesn't help with school, but if she just wants to get away for awhile, change things up, she can stay with me until the end of the year."

  Amanda looked at Grant, her eyes pleading.

  "No."

  She blinked. "Flat no? No negotiation? I'll still be going to school—"

  "No." Grant lowered his hands to the table and stared at Jack. "I'm sorry I imposed on you last night, and thanks for picking her up, but to be completely honest, I don't trust you with the care and wellbeing of my daughter."