“That's better.”
Max took a step forward. “Don't hit her.”
Jack slapped Max even harder, the pain shooting through her jaw, her teeth, through every fiber of her being. She resisted the urge to strike back; maybe this was how families behaved. She could always kill him later.
“You want to stay here,” Jack yelled, “you want three squares and a bed? You keep your fucking mouth shut unless you're told to speak.”
Her cheek still throbbing, Max stood there silently, glaring at Jack Barrett.
He slapped her again. “Don't stare at me, and when I tell you something, you show me the proper goddamn respect. Stick with that ‘Yes, sir' shit, and we'll get along just fine.”
Pain shot through her body again and this time a tear welled in her eye, but Max willed it not to fall. “Yes, sir.”
“Then she can stay, Jack?” Mrs. Barrett said.
“Kid can stay. For now.”
“Oh Jack, thank you.” And she kissed her husband on the cheek, and he brushed her away.
Mom (as Max had now begun to call her, and think of her) escorted Max to the bedroom she was sharing with Lucy.
“Stay on Jack's good side,” Mom advised, “and don't talk back when he's… in a bad mood.”
Later Lucy said, “I hope… I hope you don't think this is worse than where you escaped from.”
In her own warm bed, Max was weighing that. Getting slapped was better than getting shot.
“It's fine,” Max said.
That had been February. There were more slaps and even some outright beatings in March, April, and May. Sometimes Mr. Barrett would enter the room in the middle of the night and take Lucy away with him; the girl would look scared, but when she returned, she'd say at least her dad hadn't hit her.
Max had been too sexually naive at the time to really understand what was happening; but she knew it was something bad. As for the beatings, they were commonplace around the Barrett house; and Max, in an effort to fit in, had only fought back one time.
That had been in early March. Jack (as Max now thought of him, never coming to think of him as, much less call him, Dad) had waxed her pretty good, and when Max had gotten to her feet and he reached out to slap her again, she'd sidestepped the blow, caught his hand in hers, and broken two fingers before he'd wrenched it back.
But hurting Jack had been a mistake.
Max was forced to go without food for a week, which only bothered her a little— she'd had deprivation training, after all— but when he'd come home from the emergency room, he'd beaten Lucy so badly the girl couldn't walk for two days.
“If you ever,
ever
raise a hand to me again,” Jack told Max, “your sister pays.”
From then on, Max had done as she was told; and Jack had been smart enough not to lay his hands on his new “daughter.” At least until that day in June, when the whole world changed forever…
June 8, 2009, had seemed like any other day— school had gotten out the week before, and Max and Lucy were settling in for a summer of no schoolwork. Max had fit in surprisingly well at school, mostly keeping to herself, though the seizures that were a side effect of her genetic breeding caused a share of embarrassment, until the school nurse finally provided an unlikely nonprescription medication— tryptophan— that would curtail and control them.
Jack kept them busy enough around the house, and of late he'd been even angrier than usual. The Dodgers— the only thing he truly loved in this life— had been losing, and the skid had only served to give him more reason to beat on Lucy and Mom.
On this June evening, the sisters were steering him a wide path. He was parked in his recliner guzzling beers and chain-smoking, as he watched the Dodgers fall behind early, 3–0. Mrs. Barrett had taken refuge in the bedroom, leaving Max and Lucy to fulfill Jack's needs and receive the brunt of his rage. Jack had already raised his hand to Lucy once tonight, and the girls hovered in the background, being careful to not rile him again.
Finally things started to look up a little: the Dodgers had men on second and third and only one out. Max had learned some baseball from being forced to watch the games while she waited on Jack, and she recognized the beginnings of a rally when she saw one. For their own safety, the girls had become Dodgers fans, too. If the team did well, Jack was less apt to slap them around.
When the electricity went out, just after nine, Max grabbed Lucy's hand and led her to the basement where the two girls hid under the stairs while Jack went berserk. As they huddled there— tears running down Lucy's cheeks, and Jack tearing the house apart looking for them so he could “beat their asses”— Max made a decision.
Once these people had all gone to sleep for the night, she was out of here. As things turned out, no one went to sleep that night, but they still managed to miss the beating…
Tired of searching for them, his anger subsiding as he remembered the impending Dodgers' rally, Jack Barrett staggered back upstairs and turned on a portable radio, which relied on batteries. Jack was pissed when he couldn't find the game on the dial, but when his alcohol fog cleared some, his anger disappeared and he called Mrs. Barrett and the girls to his side.
“Something terrible's happened,” he said, his voice suddenly sober, and not at all hateful.
In fact, he sounded frightened, like a scared kid.
Soon they had all gathered around the radio to listen.
“This is the Emergency Broadcast System,” a voice said. “At twelve-oh-five A.M., eastern time, terrorists detonated a nuclear instrument over the Atlantic Ocean. This has triggered an electromagnetic pulse that has destroyed virtually every electronic device on the eastern seaboard.”
Mrs. Barrett hugged Jack and gathered the girls to her, as well.
“All communications are down east of the Mississippi River, and there is currently no timetable for the reestablishment of contact with those areas. The threat of another terrorist attack in the western half of the country is still a possibility, and all citizens are asked to remain in their homes until further notice.”
The little family huddled together like that for the next two and a half hours. The EBS continued to broadcast the same message over and over, with no new information. Finally, Jack grew bored and restless. He pulled Lucy away from her mother.
“Get me a beer,” he growled.
Lucy went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh beer, popping the top for him; but the can slipped out of her hand as she tried to give it to him, and landed upside down in Jack's lap, soaking his crotch.
He jumped up and stood before them, his face reddening in anger, the can bouncing across the room, his pants looking as though he'd just wet them.
Max laughed.
The livid Jack took a step toward her, his hand shooting out; but Max had already decided to leave, so there was no reason to endure the abuse anymore. As the dad reached for her, she ducked, kicked out, and swept his feet from under him, dropping him to the floor in a heap.
He howled in rage and, as he tried to get up, she delivered an elbow that broke his nose and knocked him flat again.
Jack shrieked in pain.
Finding the sound strangely satisfying, Max backed off then, moved toward the door; but the fight wasn't out of Jack yet and he crawled after her. Spinning, she delivered a kick to the side of his head that dropped him one last time and left him lying on the floor unconscious.
With one last look back at an astonished Lucy and Mrs. Barrett— her sister and Mom didn't seem to know whether to be upset or elated— Max whispered, “Thank you.”
And she walked out of the shabby little house for the last time. She didn't know where she was going, but she did know she wasn't coming back here— ever.
In the days to come, Max— like everyone— learned from the remnants of the media what had occurred.
The Pulse had screwed up everything but good. Every electronic and motorized device from New York to Des Moines bought the farm when that thing
detonated. Within seconds, power grids, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, banking systems, medical services, and emergency systems had become museum relics.
One minute, the United States of America was a superpower where everybody had jobs, money, food, all their needs met. The next, the American tapestry unraveled and left the country reeling… No jobs, no money, no food, people forced to start fending for themselves.
No more drive-up, no more New York Stock Exchange, no more school… the entire eastern half of the country came to a grinding, screeching halt. Everything people were sure of yesterday was in doubt today, and there was no telling how long… or even
if
… the country could recover from such a catastrophe.
Even though, on the night Max left the Barrett home, the effects of the Pulse hadn't yet reached California, the X5-unit found herself in the same leaky boat as everybody else. Genetically enhanced or not, a nine-year-old could do only so many things in an upside-down world; so Max quickly turned to petty theft. She did fine for a while on her own, stealing enough to eat, sleeping wherever she could find a place.
Though the East's destruction had been nearly instantaneous, the West took longer to feel the effects; but as the West Coast economic depression caught up with the upheaval in the East, the pickings for foragers like Max became more and more sparse.
Still, Max had managed to build a loner's life for herself there in Los Angeles. As the people around her broke up into smaller groups in order to protect themselves, she continued to live the outlaw life, finding herself a remote spot within the confines of Griffith Park, from which she ventured only when she needed supplies. To Max, the three years she lived in the park were like an extended Manticore field exercise.
With one important difference— she was free.
Whenever she started to get down about the state of her life, that one thought could bring her back up. But she wondered if the others— if there were any still outside the wire— missed her as much as she missed them…
… defiant Eva, shot by Lydecker, the catalyst for their escape, dead for sure; Brin, the acrobatic one; Zack, their leader and her older brother; Seth, the boy who'd been caught that night and dragged back by the guards; and her best friend and sister Jondy…
These and other sibs seemed to constantly occupy her thoughts; yet she kept going. Getting bigger, stronger, smarter, Max knew these things would help her to find her sibs in this postapocalyptic America, no matter where they were.
Those were the goals that needed to be met, not spending her time worrying about what
might
be. If she could make herself good enough, finding the sibs would take care of itself.
They weren't the only ones she missed, though. Lucy, and the situation Max had left her in, still bothered Max— her other sister, back in Jack Barrett's house, his world. Then, in the spring of her twelfth year, when she finally returned to the Barrett home to rescue Lucy, she found the house abandoned.
All the way back to her home in the park, tears streamed down her cheeks, as she realized that Lucy was probably out of her life forever. Finding her siblings would be difficult enough— locating a normal child like Lucy? Next to impossible.
Three weeks later, early May, the Big Quake hit.
Measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale, the quake struck in the middle of the night, killing thousands in their beds, taking far many more lives in California than the Pulse had. Fires raged for weeks, buildings collapsed, houses slid down the sides of mountains, overpasses fell, crushing late-night drivers.
Max's small sanctuary in the park survived, but with literally millions homeless now, the job of protecting her niche, and still trying to forage enough for her own survival, was becoming hopeless. She lasted a year that way, but with supplies getting harder and harder to find, she was forced to scavenge farther and farther from home.
And like so many young girls had in that time just before hers, Max made her way to Hollywood, although in her case it wasn't to star in the movies: her journey ended up being more of a simple migratory path…
… a path that led her straight to Moody and the Chinese Clan.
Chapter Four
BLAST FROM THE PAST
THE CHINESE THEATRE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, 2019
When Max strode across the cracked cement patio and into the former Mann's Chinese Theatre, a pacing Moody was waiting for her just inside the doors. She would have liked to think his anxiety was for her, but knew better: the Heart of the Ocean was the root of his worry.
The lobby still possessed the glass concession counters from the old days, but now, instead of food, they served up sleeping quarters for some of the younger kids. The carpeting had at one time been red but now was worn to a threadbare pink. Severely cracked by the Quake, the high ceiling had held for seven years now, and no reason to think it wouldn't last seven more, anyway. The walls were decorated not with posters but graffiti, some— like old cave drawings— representing Clan history, others just obscene.
“Are you all right, child?” Moody asked, his voice soft and smooth, but with a tinge of excitement in it.
His long silver hair was tied back in its customary ponytail and he wore a black sweatshirt, black slacks, black socks, and running shoes.
“You mean, did I get you your bauble?”
“Do you think so poorly of me, child?… Well—
did
you?”
“That's why you sent me, isn't it?”
A wide wolfish smile opened his face to reveal large white teeth (his grooming, by post-Pulse standards, was remarkable).
Before the conversation could progress, Fresca popped through the double doors that led to the old theater's main auditorium.
Thirteen or so, Fresca was tall and skinny for his age, with long, straight red hair and pale flesh swarming with freckles. He bounced over to them in his ancient WEEZER T-shirt (no kid in the Clan had any idea what the word represented, but it amused Fresca), and tattered jeans that were more white than blue.
“Whassup, Max?” Fresca asked, ever chipper.
The boy had enough energy zapping around in that gangly body to light a small city. Stillness took him only when he slept, and only then because he had the upper bunk, the top of the concession stand, a precarious perch: if he moved at all in his slumber, he'd end up on the floor.
“Gotta check in with the Moodman here,” she said easily, “then I'm gonna chill, Fresca— maybe get something to eat.”
“Great! Can I come? Can I?”
The kid wasn't even on drugs.
“Who said I was going anywhere?” Max said, trying not to smile, and failing.
Fresca grinned in response, and dug the toe of his tattered sneaker into the carpeting. She was well aware he was in love with her, and probably had been the moment he met her, when he joined the Clan a year ago.
Having been with Moody for most of the last six years, Max was an old-timer, the Moodman's chief lieutenant and the best thief in the Clan (“A master of the forgotten art of cat burglary,” Moody would say), which was no small feat, considering all twenty-eight members were street-savvy thieves themselves.
“Why, Fres,” Max asked, “you wanna go out?”
Fresca lighted up a ciggie and started to jitter. “Max, that would be great… that would be perfect. Been up all night waitin' for you to get back!”
She nodded. “Moody and me, we gotta go take care of a couple of things… Then we can blaze, okay?”
“I'll wait right here,” the redhead promised.
Moody— standing patiently through all of this (Fresca was one of his favorites, too)— led the way. Just before he got to the double entryway of the auditorium, he opened a side door at left and ducked up the stairs, obviously heading to Max's crib, in what had once been the grand old theater's projection booth.
Max wondered why they were going there. Moody usually conducted business in his own quarters, the
former manager's office; not that he hadn't dropped by Max's crib before… but this just seemed unusual.
Then again, the Heart of the Ocean was an unusual prize.
The tall man in black turned the knob and entered as if this were his room, not hers. Max's door was always unlocked— living with a building full of thieves made locks unnecessary if not outright absurd— and, anyway, Max knew of no one who might enter that she couldn't handle.
The young woman followed her mentor into the modest chamber and he closed the door behind them. Other than Moody's office/living quarters, this cracked-plaster-walled room was the biggest private room in the place. The dead projector had been shoved into a corner, a decaying museum piece unworthy of the institution Max had just looted. This provided Max a window into the auditorium where most of the Chinese Clan slept.
Down there, the rows of seats— except for the first half a dozen rows— had long since been removed and replaced with items better suited to the needs of the Clan: cots, jury-rigged walls, small camp cookstoves, and other paraphernalia, scattered around the huge room in little living-quarter pockets. The movie screen— with CHINESE CLAN! emblazoned in huge orange spray-paint graffiti— still dominated the wall behind the stage, and Moody used this platform when he addressed his shabby but proficient troops.
The projection booth itself was the biggest room Max had had to herself in her entire life. Her earliest memories were of the Manticore barracks; then she'd shared a room with Lucy, after which she lived in a hole in the ground barely big enough for one, back in Griffith Park.
Ten by sixteen, with its own bathroom, the booth seemed huge to Max, a suite all to herself. Of course, the bathroom would have been a greater luxury if the plumbing worked on a more regular basis. The theater had been abandoned because of the quake cracks in the ceiling, and had even been scheduled for demolition by the city, except someone had stolen the work order and— with all the other troubles in the city— Mann's seemed to have been lost in the shuffle.
The plumbing, which only worked some of the time in Hollywood anyway, worked even more infrequently within the theater— usually only after Moody had laid some green on local power and water reps.
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