Five Suns Saga I

by Jim Heskett

  Quentin gritted his teeth as a gust of icy wind swept along the wall. “We don’t have a choice. You hang, I cover, and we move on past this perch. It’s the only way it’s going to work.”

  She grunted as she slipped over the barrier. “Please hurry. I can’t hold this for long.”

  “Quiet.”

  With his eyes on the shadowy figure at the next perch, Quentin clunked along the grate, listening for any hint of sound from the Northie.

  Within fifty yards of the perch, the man stationed there stood up and pointed his rifle at Quentin. The man wore a full beard, mostly black, but dusted with gray around the middle.

  “Stop right there,” the man said. “Who are you?”

  “Quentin McCormick. Station 11.”

  “Why are you away from your post, McCormick?”

  The bearded man didn’t seem like an ordinary Percher. Quentin couldn’t make out the insignia on his shoulder, but it was something high-ranking.

  “Radio’s busted, sir. I’m going to the tower to have it checked out.

  The man did not lower the rifle. Quentin wanted to raise his own, but he wouldn’t be able to do so in time. He’d be cut to pieces and die right here, on a metal grate above the Chicago dividing line.

  “Who gave you permission to leave your post?”

  Quentin’s mind raced. But before he had a chance to respond, a grunt came from over the wall.

  The bearded man jumped, then pointed his rifle at the source of the sound. “What the hell was that?”

  Quentin froze. The plan was falling to pieces right before his eyes.

  The man rushed the barrier and pointed his rifle over the edge. “Look what we got here,” he said. He snatched her hand and yanked her up.

  She moaned and fell to her knees, then rubbed her hands together.

  “Explain yourself,” the bearded man said. “What are you doing trying to climb up the South side of the wall?”

  She struggled to catch her breath. “It’s my little brother. He got bit by some kind of spider and he’s really sick. If I don’t get to a real drug store and get him some medicine, he’s going to die. Please, you have to let me pass.”

  Spider bite?

  “You’re a Northie, then?” said the man. “Well, well, well. Sick brother or not, you are trespassing on the sovereign city of South Chicago, the punishment for which is death. Stand and receive your judgment.”

  Panting, she tried to raise up but only fell back on her butt.

  The bearded man leaned a little closer. “Wait a second. Where did you get those gloves?”

  Oh, shit. She was still wearing Quentin’s traction gloves.

  The man raised his rifle at Quentin. “Aiding and abetting a trespasser is a crime punishable by death. What do you have to say for yourself, McCormick?”

  The spotlight swept through. A burst of light drenched the three of them. A flash of movement, and Quentin watched as the girl thrust her little pocket knife into the bearded man’s side.

  He yelped as she twisted the knife, then he fell with a clang onto the barrier. She withdrew it and stabbed him in the neck. A wave of blood spurted into the air, arched, then fell onto the grating.

  “Help me,” she called to Quentin.

  But Quentin couldn’t move. He watched helplessly while she drove the knife into the bearded man’s throat and he gurgled and spasmed. Images of stabbing his own hunting knife into traitorous Barry’s back in the grocery store flashed in front of his eyes.

  Eventually, she stopped thrusting once he had quieted and gone limp.

  She stood up, holding the knife, chest heaving. Her clothes were soaked with blood.

  “Spider bite?” Quentin said.

  “I thought of a few of them while I was climbing. Just in case.”

  He raised his rifle and pointed it at her. “You’re not pregnant.”

  “Please don’t be angry with me. I have to get to the South side, and I have to do it tonight. Does it matter why?”

  Anger flared up and down Quentin’s veins. “It matters to me.”

  He pulled the trigger. Her chest exploded in a spray of red and her body flew backward, smacked against the barrier, then toppled over into the south side of Chicago.

  Quentin dropped the rifle and stepped over the body of the bearded man. As he walked, he looked down at his clothes. A little bit of blood had streaked the collar of his jacket, but that was all. He wiped it off with the inside of his shirt.

  He thought only of getting to the tower, going home, and waking Farrah. Whatever happened after that, he couldn’t know yet.

  Suit, Dress, Duster

  (DURING THE FALL)

  Julian opened the door and stepped out onto the rooftop. Gravel crunched under his feet as he crossed the short distance between the door and the ledge. To his left, a set of air conditioners whirred and clunked, and to his right, the hazy skyline of New York taunted him.

  He was supposed to make his future here, inside the auspicious walls of the building beneath his feet. Live the American dream like Jordan fucking Belfort, except for the arrest and fall-from-grace part.

  Julian grasped the three-foot concrete wall that separated the roof from the rest of New York. How far down did eighty floors equal? He didn’t know, but it should be enough.

  Enough to erase the failure he’d become. Eradicate the predictable descent into nothingness.

  On the ground level, life carried out its machinations. It persisted as normal as it could be since the meteor hoax, the bombings, and the president’s assassination. Most of those people down there didn’t yet know what had happened to the markets and the banks this morning. They had no idea they were about to be reduced to a net worth of zero.

  He tested the ledge by sticking a foot on top, then leaning forward so his head jutted over the edge. Julian’s tie fluttered in the wind, tapping against the side of his face. His breath came in snatches. Below, yellow taxis and pedestrians crawled the street like ants on a track.

  He yanked his head back, seizing gulps of air. He hadn’t thought it would be so difficult.

  “What a cliché. Stock broker jumping to his death,” said a soft voice behind him.

  Julian peered around to find Cassie, an analyst from the forty-third floor he’d dated a few months back. She was always changing the color of her toenails. The sex had been mediocre, but she was fun to talk to, at least.

  He faced the ledge. “This isn’t a good time.”

  “If you were thinking you were the first, you’re not. Some guy at Lehman jumped about thirty minutes ago. Twitter’s been all lit up about the crash for the last hour.”

  Julian watched a street-level flag protruding from the side of the building ripple in the wind. “I’m going to lose everything.”

  Cassie stood next to him and pushed her black glasses up her nose. “So is everyone else.”

  He turned and sat in the gravel with his back against the ledge. Cassie was wearing a form-fitting dress that pressed against her in all the right places. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I can’t get a cell signal in the building. I need to call my parents in Atlanta and let them know I’m okay. Everyone is going to start looting again, you know. All that shit we thought was done, I’ll bet you it all starts up again.”

  Julian took a pack of cigarettes and lit one, then twisted the pack in his hand. Smokes had already doubled in price over the last year, what would they cost if the economy crumbled? Would he have to trade a cow for a pouch of tobacco to get his nicotine fix?

  “If you need to call your parents so bad, what are you waiting for?”

  She scowled at him and took the lit cigarette from his mouth. “Because I wasn’t expecting to find you up here on the roof, about to splat yourself on Broad Street.”

  “Your bedside manner is awful.”

  “You listen to me, Julian: I’ve had enough of your bullshit. We’re all in this same mess together now. The vice president is in some kind of bunker in God-
knows-where, popping up on TV to tell us all that even though the president isn’t even buried yet, it’s all under control. Half the internet says the V.P is dead too, and that it’s computer-generated.”

  “I already know all that. What’s your point?”

  Cassie took a long pull from the cigarette, then snuffed it into the gravel. “Nobody has any idea what the hell is going on anymore, and you’re worried about your bank account?”

  “I don’t have anything else.”

  “Don’t you have a family?”

  Julian picked at the crumpled cigarette butt, pushing it along the chalky ground. “My mom… she was caught in the middle of the riot in Queens last month.”

  She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Jules. I’m so sorry.”

  “My little brother, too, but in Albany. Federal building, two weeks ago. He was just an intern, for Christ-sakes. A little errand-runner, but those terrorists blew him up all the same.”

  Cassie rubbed his shoulder, and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him with real empathy. Months, maybe.

  She managed a smile. “Look, I need to text my dad real quick, and then I’m going to walk you back inside.”

  Julian didn’t say anything, but he decided he would let her do it. He didn’t have the guts to kill himself. At least not today.

  She held her phone at arm’s length. “That’s weird. I can’t get a signal out here.”

  He took out his phone and checked it. No cell service and no internet, either.

  The rooftop door opened, and from the shadows emerged a man with a gun.

  ***

  The man in the rooftop doorway stood at least 6’4”, with long black hair, pale skin, and dark eyes. He was wearing a stetson hat and a long leather duster jacket, like a mix between a heavy metal singer and a vampire hunter.

  He pointed the gun at Julian and Cassie. “Look at this, I didn’t expect to find anyone up here. Couple love birds trying to bump uglies one last time before the world falls apart?”

  Julian got to his feet, then moved in front of Cassie. She gripped his arm.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Julian said.

  The man popped the clip out of his gun and eyed it, then slammed it back in. “Good thing there’s only two of you, because I only got three bullets left. When I started, I was worried I wouldn’t have one to bring me home. Looks like the Infinity is going to take care of me, after all.”

  Cassie started fiddling with something in her purse, and Julian watched her pull out a can of pepper spray. “Put that away,” he whispered. “He’s got a gun, Cassie. Your spray isn’t going to do shit against that.”

  “What’s going on there, miss?” the man said.

  “She’s not doing anything, so don’t worry about her. What did you mean when you were talking about ‘bullets left’? What did you do?”

  The man tapped the nose of the pistol on his chin and cast a long look at the cloudy sky above. “Something I should have done a long time ago. I’ve always hated the city, to be honest. If it weren’t for my ex-wife, I never woulda come out here in the first place.”

  The man sauntered away from them to the adjoining ledge, dragging his boots along the gravel. As soon as his back was to them, Cassie tried to move, but Julian held her in place. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said in a hushed tone. “What are you going to do, rush him? He’s got a damn gun.”

  “We can’t stand here and do nothing. He’s going to shoot us if we don’t do something.”

  The bottom of the man’s duster fluttered in the wind as he looked out over the city. “Did you know Congress passed a law this year crippling the FDIC, and now most deposits are no longer federally insured? You probably didn’t know that. It hardly made the news when it happened. Why do you think it didn’t make the news?”

  “I don’t know, but that can’t be true. We would have heard about it,” Cassie said.

  “Oh no, it’s definitely true. That’s why when I checked my bank account balance this morning and saw it was as empty as an old well, I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”

  Julian knew the man was right. Whoever was doing this, and however it had happened, the world was about to descend into chaos.

  “So what?” Julian said.

  The man spun around, an incredulous look on his face. “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, someone just blitzed the banks. How is shooting a bunch of people going to get your money back?”

  The man walked across the rooftop, each step crunching powdery bits under his boots. He stood within a few feet of Julian. “No, son, it’s not going to make my money come back. But it will make me feel a little better about killing some of you jackals while I still can.”

  Cassie let go of Julian’s arm.

  “We had nothing to do with this. Be reasonable,” Julian said.

  “I’ve been reasonable for far too long.”

  Behind Julian, Cassie dropped to a crouch. She emerged around his side, pressing against his hip for leverage. Julian barely had time to register what was happening before she was in the air and pouncing on the man. The force of her body took him to the ground, and then she pressed her hands against his arms, trying to pin him.

  “Help me,” she shrieked.

  The man got a hand free and smacked her across the face. As Julian leaped into action, a stream of blood sailed through the air from her mouth.

  Julian dove toward the man as he placed Cassie in a headlock. Managed to collide with the two of them, then roll off. Lying on the ground, the man made Cassie into a human shield, and he was trying to put the gun to her head, but she was squirming too much for him to make the connection between the gun and her temple.

  Julian got to his knees and threw a punch. He felt his knuckles crunch against skull, so he threw another blow with his other hand. The man’s forehead split open and blood ran down his face.

  The gun went off. Cassie screamed.

  Julian stopped punching the man to focus his eyes. Cassie was still moving. The attacker had fired his gun in the air, and she seemed unhurt.

  She threw an elbow into his ribs, and he lurched forward. Dropped the weapon. She wriggled out of his grasp as the gun skidded two feet to his left.

  All three of them lunged at the gun at once. Cassie got there first, tumbling over it and somersaulting with the weapon in her hand. She stood up, holding the pistol out in front of her. She was shaking so much Julian could hear it rattling.

  “Julian, get behind me.”

  He stood and walked to her, held out his hand to take the gun. Realized that his knuckles were throbbing and pulsing like loudspeakers.

  She shrugged him off. “No. Get behind me.”

  The man in the duster slowly put a hand on the ground to steady himself, then started to rise to his feet. His face was a wash of blood and long messy hair.

  “You stay on the god damn ground,” Cassie said.

  Julian held out his hands. “What are you doing?”

  “This piece of shit was going to kill us, Jules. He was going to shoot us, so I’m going to shoot him instead.”

  The man, chest heaving, waved a hand toward himself. “Alright then, let’s save the long speeches. I knew it was going to end this way anyway. Let’s go ahead and get it over with.”

  “What did you do in the building?” Julian said.

  “I already told you that.”

  Julian stammered, trying to form the right words. “How many people did you kill?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. I can only tell you how many clips I started out with. I already told you I had three bullets left. Now two, I suppose.”

  Julian reached out to touch Cassie on the shoulder, but she recoiled from him.

  “Don’t do this, Cassie.”

  The man ran a hand through his hair to pull it away from his face. “You only got two, so make ‘em count. One in the head, one in the chest, please.” He pointed to make sure she understood.

  “Fuck
you,” she said, and squeezed the trigger twice. Both shots hit the man in the stomach, and he twisted along the gravel. A whiff of white dust billowed around his body. His hands wriggled around his stomach as blood poured from his sides.

  He growled, moaned, kicked his legs. “Oh, you bitch,” he said, rasping.

  Julian watched a trickle of blood dot on Cassie’s lip. Her face twisted, and she started crying.

  He took the gun, which she gave up willingly this time. His arms gripped her. “It’s okay,” he said as she cried against his shoulder.

  “What are we going to do?” she said.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll be okay,” he said, but he didn’t believe it. Jordan Belfort had lost everything and come back from it, once. Maybe their lives could become like that, but the world had lost all its predictability. The future had no more strings to follow.

  He opened his mouth to say more, but an explosion at the building across the street knocked them both to the ground. Julian placed his hands over Cassie’s ears as a dozen more explosions ricocheted up and down Wall street.

  Stem of the Rose

  (AFTER THE FALL)

  Isabelle Salamon watched her boyfriend Dave hang his hand out the window of the eighteen-wheeler, a signal they needed to pull over. The CB unit installed on her dash crackled.

  She pressed the button on the side of the radio handset. “What’s up?”

  “Something’s not right with the brakes, so I’m thinking maybe we should check it out. There’s a gas station up ahead, going to pull over up there.”

  “Our schedule’s pretty tight, babe.”

  “I know,” he said. “We’re already a little over, but I think we can still make it to Chicago by Thursday. Provided we move ass and this turns out to be nothing.”

  “If it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Maybe I should scout around a bit first.”

  They were in the middle of the Nevada desert, not too far from Las Vegas and bracketed by a smattering of red rock mountains thrusting up from the earth. Between them and the mountains, nothing but open space filled the view.

  “If you want to scout, go ahead, but I think we’re good. I can see twenty miles in every direction.”