The Change 2: New York

by Guy Adams

  Published 2017 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-095-7

  Copyright © 2017 Guy Adams

  Cover art by Pye Parr

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  OUTSIDE THE CABIN, she heard her uncle screaming and wondered if today was to be the day she would die.

  Chapter One

  Eight Months Later

  ‘THE QUEEN WILL fix it,’ the old man said. ‘Ain’t nothing on the river she don’t handle.’

  He poked at the contorted body of the stray cat he was roasting on his campfire, spat into the flames laced with burning plastic and singed fur, and offered a smile that proved his dinner was going to be hard to chew.

  ‘The alternative is to go it without permission,’ he continued, ‘but I don’t recommend it. Last I heard, The Fishermen were eating anyone who floated past without the Queen’s say so.’ He smiled again. ‘And don’t think they don’t have a taste for dark meat, they’ll put anything in their cooking pots.’

  Grace squirmed, as much at the reference to her ethnicity as the thought of feeding cannibals. The world had ended and here was someone who thought it important to point out she was African American.

  ‘Talking of food,’ said the old man, lifting the hissing carcass from the fire, ‘I don’t mind sharing if you don’t mind keeping me company.’ That smile again. all purple gums and breath that made your eyes water. ‘I don’t mind a little dark meat either.’

  Racist and willing to sleep with kids. What a great city this was.

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ she said.

  He shrugged as if the information was meaningless to him. No doubt it was.

  ‘World’s moved on,’ he said, ‘nothing matters anymore.’

  She left him to his meal, thankful that he was too weak to stop her.

  Chapter Two

  THAT NIGHT SHE slept on the back seat of a car beneath Shore Parkway. Most people avoided the cars because of the dead bodies they often contained but Grace didn’t like to sleep in the open. If she found an empty backseat she’d take it, turning her back on any dry remains left upfront. What was one more dead body in a world filled with them? The dead could only hurt those that had loved them, to anyone else they were street furniture.

  As she was dropping off she heard the sound of gunshots coming from Coney Island Hospital. She pulled her coat over her so that anyone looking through the dirty window would see nothing but a lifeless bundle on the backseat. The hospitals and medical centres had become dangerous places, a target for those looking for drugs or weapons. A way to kill yourself or someone else. Let them get on with their business.

  In sleep she returned to the cabin. The darkness that had seemed oppressive for the first couple of weeks then a security blanket as the world outside became a place to hide from. She remembered the smell, the splinters beneath her fingernails, the stomach cramps of hunger. She remembered the way the moonlight would catch on the metal bars, little pieces of freedom to remind her of what she’d lost. She remembered Uncle Ray, his dead body bloating and then thinning out once more. A flux of flesh followed by grinning bone.

  A couple of hours later she was woken by screaming in the road behind her. She was tempted to stay wrapped up and hidden but curiosity got the better of her. She peered through the back window to see a woman being chased by a man in a white lab coat. The woman was unsteady, trailing plastic tubing and plastic sacks from cannulas in her hands. The man was whooping with excitement, in no hurry to catch her as she weaved between the cars. The woman stumbled and fell to the road. The man opened his lab coat to reveal stained underwear and a selection of instruments taped onto his body. Metal glinted in the moonlight. Grace wrapped herself up and tried to go back to sleep; the things she saw there weren’t much better but at least they were familiar. Despite the screaming, she eventually managed.

  Chapter Three

  MORNING POURED ITSELF over the freeway and Grace woke to stiff bones.

  She glanced around to make sure the coast was clear then climbed out, stretched and wondered about breakfast. She ate a vacuum-packed pastry, washing it down with bottled water and continued the final stretch towards the coast.

  She didn’t look up at the intersection, the bodies hanging from the lights were just like all the rest. They creaked on their ropes, the gentle breeze swinging them to and fro. A sign painted on the road told her SO ALL SINERS MUST PAY.

  To her left stood a tenement block with a crenellated roof. Flags flew from its summit, bright colours whipping against a murky sky.

  ‘What ho, girl,’ called a voice in a thick Bronx accent, ‘how goes the day?’

  She looked for the speaker, finding him stood to the side of one of the flags. An elderly man wearing an improvised suit of metal oven trays and a motorbike helmet with the visor removed.

  ‘OK,’ she replied, ‘you?’

  He shrugged with a clatter. ‘Nobody’s tried to kill us yet.’

  ‘Then it’s a good day.’ She made to carry on.

  ‘Mind yourself on the corner of Ocean View,’ the voice called after her, ‘God’s been in a lousy mood all week.’

  It had been longer than that in Grace’s opinion but she waved her thanks and continued on her way. A few seconds later she heard the flat blast of a trumpet as the old man greeted the rest of the street in his own, crazy manner.

  She rummaged in her backpack for something else to eat, pulling out a bruised apple. Carefully eating around the brown flesh, she drew closer to the intersection with Ocean View Avenue.

  Just ahead, there came the sound of breaking glass. She moved to the other side of the street, wanting to give herself room to run should she need it. The glass was followed by the sound of pounding metal. As she came opposite the Guardian Angel church she spotted a man with long, white hair and beard stood on top of a parked car, pounding it with a sledgehammer. He was wearing colourful priest’s robes, shining purple and black silk.

  ‘Damn you!’ he roared as he took another swing at the car, ‘and coming from me you know that means something!’

  This, Grace presumed, was God. As he spun around on the car roof, the beard, false now she saw it from the front, slipped slightly and he breathed a mouthful of it in, choking. Panicking, he lost his balance and fell off the roof, the sledgehammer toppling from his hands. The air filled with the sort of cursing deities were generally thought to frown upon.

  Grace circled around, not wanting to be seen. She was out of luck.

  ‘Hey kid!’

  She stopped moving, looking over to where God had fallen, his robes hiked up to reveal spotted boxer shorts and socks pulled up by suspenders.

  ‘Give an old deity a hand, for Christ’s sake!’ he shouted.

  She considered running; it obviously showed.

  ‘Come on!’ he pleaded, ‘I’m God! If I wanted to hurt you I could smite you from here. I’m a beneficent deity, one whose robes are caught in the door of this damned Nissan.’

  ‘Then magic them unstuck,’ she suggested.

  ‘And cheat you of the chanc
e to help the Lord? What sort of miserable God would do a thing like that? Please kid, the blood’s rushing to my head here, things are looking even weirder than normal.’

  She thought about it for a moment and then moved over to help him.

  ‘Bless you,’ he said as she tugged at his snagged robes, ‘there’ll be a bounty for you in Heaven. Coffee in the vestry too if you want.’

  Grace decided she did. God didn’t seem interested in harming her and she wouldn’t mind asking him what he knew about the Queen. The more she knew what to expect, the better.

  ‘Why were you smashing the car?’ she asked him as they entered the church.

  ‘Keeps me fit,’ he replied.

  The vestry was a clutter of books, unwashed plates and crates of food. She looked through his supplies. God had a sweet tooth it seemed: bars of chocolate and bags of candy. At the centre was a table and chairs, buried under spilling piles of newspapers.

  ‘If you’re hungry,’ said God, ‘help yourself.’

  He stared at her in a manner that he no doubt thought of as intimidating. With the beard, the effect was compromised. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice you were eating an apple earlier. Apples are bad for you.’

  ‘I’m fine thank you,’ she told him, ‘but the coffee would be great.’

  He shrugged and began to hunt for a clean cup.

  ‘So where are you headed?’ he asked her, rinsing a cup and drying it with his beard.

  ‘I want to see the Queen,’ she told him, doing her best not to think about the state of the cup her coffee was being poured into. ‘I need to get to Rikers Island.’

  ‘I knew that of course,’ he said, though the look of shock on his face proved his omnipotence false. ‘And I also know why you’d want to do such a stupid thing. Still, it would be good for you to get it off your chest so let’s just pretend I don’t and you tell me anyway.’

  ‘I’m trying to find my brother,’ she told him. ‘He was there before... before everything happened.’

  He nodded. ‘The Change,’ he said, ‘that’s what they call it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He handed her the coffee and poured one for himself. He sipped at it for a moment, adding to the dark stains in the hair around his mouth.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said, ‘what makes you think he’s still there?’

  ‘I don’t know where else to look.’

  ‘Where were you when it happened?’ he asked.

  ‘My Uncle Ray’s.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anything?’

  ‘I was ill. Measles. Couldn’t open my eyes. Light burned.’ Which was an out and out lie, albeit one based on a truthful memory. She’d had measles a few years before and remembered the blinding pain at its height.

  ‘A miracle,’ he said, bowing his head slightly as if expecting thanks. ‘And after. On the news or the Internet?’

  She shook her head. ‘The power was out.’

  ‘Because you know that some videos of it leaked. They’re dangerous. Looking at it second-hand wouldn’t kill you, not like it did for those that were there, but it has... power.’

  She knew this of course. Hadn’t she seen its effect on her Uncle Ray? She had no intention of discussing it, though, no more than she planned on telling him where she’d really been when The Change had hit.

  ‘I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘because some people that saw it...’ his face took on a dreamy quality, ‘they were affected quite badly. Not me of course, I could handle it, being God and everything, but some people... they went completely nuts.’

  ‘What was it like?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, I’ve heard stories. The things in the sky. The shadows...’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s best not to talk about them. They’re ungodly. They came and broke my world. People pray, they ask me why I... why I would... But it wasn’t me. This was nothing to do with me.’

  He was getting agitated and Grace was concerned he might turn nasty.

  ‘I know,’ she said, touching his arm, ‘you’d never have done something like that.’

  He nodded, his coffee spilling slightly. ‘I mean, they talk about the flood but that was different. I had to do that, things had gotten… complicated, but this? No. Not me.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she repeated, ‘let’s sit down for a bit. You can tell me about the Queen.’

  The change of subject seemed to help. ‘The Queen?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, what should I be careful of?’

  He laughed and, just like that, his mood changed. ‘Just about everything! I mean, seriously, that woman’s mad!’

  He sat at the table, shunting a stack of the New York Times out of the way so he could put his coffee down.

  ‘She’s running most of Coney Island,’ he said, ‘and as far as I’m concerned she’s welcome to it. You’ve seen what’s happened to some places? The way they’ve been changed?’

  ‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘I stayed where I was for a few months.’ She pictured the cabin. The slow scraping at the floor to get free. ‘I’ve heard from other people on the road though,’ she said, ‘it’s not just the people who died or went mad.’

  ‘It’s the city itself. All cities probably. Everywhere. The very earth has changed. People used to say that ghosts were just symptoms of history and emotion getting soaked up into the bricks and mortar of the real world. As if the world could become infected by what happened on it. It was true. So many places are now... I don’t know, they’ve become as screwed up as everything else.’

  ‘And Coney Island is like that?’

  ‘It always was a place of dreams. I’ve not been there, not because I’m scared of course, I’m God, what could harm me?’

  A battered Nissan car, thought Grace.

  ‘Still,’ he continued, ‘I’ve heard enough about the place from people who have. I really don’t think you should go.’

  ‘If I want to get to Rikers, the river is the only way, you can’t get through Queens anymore. I tried. But if I don’t get permission...’ She let the thought hang there.

  He nodded. ‘You do what you have to do,’ he said. ‘That’s always been God’s way; I don’t like to interfere. Bear in mind though that means I can’t intercede on your behalf. Not even if things get really screwy.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’s nothing personal, just the rules you know? I’ll walk some of the way down with you though, even God sometimes needs to stretch his legs.’

  Chapter Four

  GOD PUT ON a pair of lopsided Ray-Bans and headed onto Ocean Parkway with Grace. Resting on one shoulder was his sledgehammer in case ‘I need to do any smiting on the way.’

  Coney Island was a short walk through Brighton Beach and Grace partly wished God had let her carry on alone. She would have moved quicker and been less obvious. Still, in a world where any kind of charitable thought was rare, she shouldn’t complain when someone tried to be nice.

  ‘How come you lived with your uncle?’ he asked her as they made their stately way through Brighton Beach.

  ‘My parents died when I was a baby. 9/11. My brother and I were shuffled around the family until they could find somewhere we could stick. Brett’s ten years older than me. It hit him harder. He knew them, I never did. He went his own way.’

  ‘And ended up in prison.’ He didn’t make it sound judgemental but Grace was always defensive on the subject.

  ‘He couldn’t help it.’ She didn’t really believe this more than anyone else but couldn’t help but defend him. ‘He made bad choices.’

  ‘We all do sometimes.’

  She waited for him to ask what crime Brett had committed, people usually did, but he stayed silent, just shifted his sledgehammer from one shoulder to the other.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ she said, ‘with all this. Who cares? I need to find out if he’s ok. He’s probably the only family I have now.’

  ‘He was in a better place than
most when it comes to surviving,’ he said. ‘He probably didn’t see Them. I hope you find him.’ He seemed to remember who he was supposed to be. ‘Of course, I know he’s alive really. I’m God. I know everything. So have hope, all will be well. Probably. Bearing in mind any accidents caused from your having free will and everything.’

  It was nonsense but he meant well.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, her attention drawn by a group across the road. They were gathering around a three-level, red brick building, chanting and waving a selection of weapons in the air. Baseball bats, chains, someone fired a handgun.

  ‘I don’t like the look of that,’ God admitted, ‘some sort of mob. Yes, definitely a mob. Probably the Russian mob in fact, you know what Brighton Beach is like.’

  They kept to the other side of Ocean Parkway, using the cars for cover.

  ‘I wish I could just wipe them from existence,’ God said, ‘but I can’t abuse my powers, that wouldn’t be right.’

  Now they were directly across from the crowd, they could hear what they were chanting.

  ‘Baba Yaga?’ Grace repeated, ‘what’s that mean?’

  ‘Russian for I’m going to hit you with my baseball bat,’ said God with misplaced confidence. ‘No doubt someone inside the building has got on their wrong side, let’s just get out of here shall we?’

  Grace had no problem with that but, as they continued to move between the cars, the air was filled with the sound of crumbling masonry and the building the Russians had been gathered around rose slowly into the air.

  ‘That’s just not right,’ said God, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘How’s it doing that?’ Grace wondered, trying to see through the trees and the crowd to get a clearer view of the building.