After The Apocalypse

by Roseman, Josh

  No triangle of light. No peace. Just pins and needles from my hips down, and Buffy pressing her head against my fingers.

  I sigh. “Fine. You guys come first. Again.” I run my hand around her ears, neck, and jaw, and she scent-marks my fingers, her teeth hard where they scrape my skin. “Good kitty.” I always feel foolish saying that, but Buffy is being more loving than usual, and I need the love. I pick her up and hold her against my chest; her purr is soft, not rumbly at all, but then, it never has been. I snuggle her fur against my neck and cheek, her nose cold near my ear, and then gently set her down. “Sorry, but when I try to get up, I’ll probably drop you. I can’t feel my legs.”

  My eyes have adjusted to what little light is coming in through the window, and I see Buffy jump up onto the coffee table to watch me stand up.

  Which sucks. Because I know -- just know -- that Buffy is laughing at me.

  I make it to the bedroom and fall onto the bed before the numbness turns to fire blasting its way up my legs. Each time I even think about moving my toes, to see if they’ll obey my orders, another wave crashes across me. I hate when this happens, but at least I know it’ll be over in a couple of minutes.

  Soon enough I’m in the shower, water as hot as it’ll go. The pain in my legs is gone, but I’ve replaced it with scalding water beating down on my shoulders and the back of my neck. It’s hotter, more unpleasant than the Device when the Professor uses it--

  Wait.

  Wait just a damn minute.

  My hand comes up to touch the mark on the back of my neck.

  The mark the Professor didn’t touch with the Device.

  I wonder...

  I turn off the water and step out of the shower. The mirror is completely steamed up -- how long was I in there? -- so I wrap a towel around myself and go out into the bedroom. Only my bedside lamp is on, and it’s too dim to use for this, so I flip on the overhead light attached to my fan and blink for a couple of seconds.

  Then I go to my dresser and, for the first time since this morning, look -- really look -- at my reflection.

  Specifically, my eyes.

  They’re still brown. Mostly.

  But there’s a tiny bit of blue -- just a touch of glow -- that, no matter how many times I try to wipe it away or blink past it, just refuses to disappear.

  My reflection smiles at me, but the smile is fleeting. The last time I saw blue in my eyes, I overreacted; I tried to exercise like a madwoman, I cut my arm, I even jumped up and down a couple of times to see if I could fly.

  Not this time. This time, I won’t be fooled.

  I go back into the bathroom to finish drying off, taking the time to blow-dry my hair and put moisturizers on my skin. It’s nearly impossible to avoid seeing the blue glow in my eyes, but I manage it.

  Finally finished, wrapped in my bathrobe, I sit on the edge of my bed and stare across the room at my reflection. “All right,” I say. “Now... Now I’m ready.”

  I wish I could say something happened, but it didn’t. I waited, and I tried not to hope too hard, but after ten minutes I feel exactly the same.

  “Screw it.”

  I go into the kitchen and pour a small glass of milk, drinking it standing at the sink. I run a little water in the glass, check the cats’ bowls, and glance at the front door to make sure it’s locked.

  When I get back to my room, Willow is in her usual spot, curled up on the pillow. I trade my bathrobe for a t-shirt and flannel shorts, and when I get into bed the sheets and blanket cool where I touch them. I take my Kindle off the nightstand and turn onto my right side, reaching for Willow. My hand smooths over her soft fur, and she lifts her head. Her yellow-green eyes are mostly closed, but she still bumps her jaw against my fingers and tells me she’s tired.

  “So am I, little girl.” I stroke behind her ears, then down her spine, and she settles in place.

  “Love you,” she meows.

  “Love you too, Willow.”

  She’s right. I’m too tired to read anyway. I put the Kindle down and click off the light, pulling the blankets around me as I get comfortable. Things will be better in the morning.

  Wait.

  Wait just a damn minute.

  Wait just a damn minute!

  I turn over in bed to face Willow. “Hey,” I say, poking her hindquarters with two fingers. “Wake up!”

  In the darkness, I see her eyes open, large and pale in her patchwork face.

  “What? Sleepy!”

  “Did you just...” I swallow hard. My heart is pounding. “Did you just... talk?”

  Willow sighs, lowers her head to her paws, and is asleep a moment later.

  I want to get out of bed right now. I want to test my powers. I want to talk to Buffy, if she’s still awake.

  I want to see if I can fly!

  But...

  But I don’t. I’m not going to rush into it again. I’m going to go to sleep, and I’m going to deal with this in the morning.

  All of this.

  It takes a very, very long time to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NORMAL AGAIN

  +++++

  Buffy is standing on my chest again. I groan at her.

  “Wake up.”

  “Fuck you,” I grumble.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you too, bitch!”

  My eyes snap open. I reach over and turn on the light.

  I don’t know who said that -- it’s only me, Buffy, and Willow in here at... oh, crap, is it really only 4:30 in the morning? There’s no other woman in the room.

  Just Buffy staring at me with large green eyes.

  I keep my voice as level as possible. “Say that again.”

  “I said, ‘fuck you too, bitch.’”

  Buffy’s mouth hadn’t moved, but I’d heard her very clearly in my head.

  “Quit your damn smiling,” she snaps. “I’m hungry!”

  “Yeah?” I push her off my chest and sit up. “Well, you can just wait for a minute, because... because...”

  After a long pause, she gives me a long-suffering sigh. “Because what?”

  “Because I said so.” Then I run -- actually run, something I haven’t done since the last time I had powers (I have powers!) -- to the kitchen, refill the food dish, and am back in bed before Buffy has a chance to say anything else. “Now go. Eat.” I make shooing motions with my hands. “Go on. I’m tired.”

  “You don’t look tired.” She jumps off the bed and parades out of the room, tail raised high.

  Nothing grounds a person who just got superpowers so much as seeing her cat’s butt.

  But the grounding doesn’t last.

  I’d like to say the first thing I did was lift something heavy, but I really have to go to the bathroom. After that, I bend down, slide my hand under the foot of the bed, and raise it high enough that Willow cries out in surprise and bolts from the room.

  I test my strength on other heavy things in the apartment -- my dresser, the couch, the big desk in the spare room -- and I can pick them up easily. Each time I do, I feel a little jolt of power, an extra bit of confidence, and by the time I lift the refrigerator, I’m not even thinking about it anymore. I’m just doing it for the hell of it.

  “You’re an idiot,” Buffy says from where she’s perched on the couch.

  I smirk at her, then zip across the apartment to scoop her up and bury my face in her fur before she can even blink.

  “Hey! Quit doing that shit!”

  “Stop calling me names, then.” I put her down gently. “Y’know, for a cat, you have a really foul mouth. Do I curse that much?”

  “It’s just her.” Willow trots through the living room and plops down in front of the window. “Why can you understand us?”

  “Because I got my powers back.” I got my powers back!

  “Powers? What the hell are powers?”

  I sit down on the couch. Buffy makes her way to the far armrest -- as if that’ll save her if I want surprise snuggles again -- and stares a
t me until I speak. “Superpowers. Things that make me better than regular people.”

  Buffy blinks. “I haven’t seen you do anything that makes you better. So you can lift heavy things, and you can run fast. I run fast too.”

  “I can talk to you.”

  She appears to consider that. “Fine. You never did understand me before, I guess.”

  Willow leaps lightly onto the couch, then settles in my lap. I stroke her ears and she purrs. “Feels good,” she says. To Buffy, she adds, “you really need to get over yourself and get some of this.”

  Buffy jumps to the coffee table and picks her way until she’s sitting in front of me. “I don’t need to be petted.”

  “Suit yourself.” Willow rubs her face against my knuckles. “She always talked to us, you know. She just never understood us.”

  “So why now?”

  “I don’t care,” I say. That’s not the whole truth -- I do care, kind of, a little bit, but I have powers! I don’t care about the reason right now. I’ll care about it tomorrow. “I haven’t felt like this since I was eighteen. I’m going to enjoy it, if it’s all the same to you two.”

  “What else can you do, anyway?” Buffy asks.

  I tick off the powers on my fingers. “Strength and speed, which you saw. Understanding animals. I haven’t tried the others, but I should be able to heal from really bad injuries. And fly.”

  “Fly?” Willow looks up at me, actually startled. “What do you mean, ‘fly’?”

  I give her a little nudge on the hindquarters and she steps off my lap. Then I stand up. “I mean fly.”

  I leap into the air.

  And land less than a second later.

  Willow gives me a quizzical expression. “You meant to say jump, right?”

  “No.” I try another leap, but again go nowhere. “Damn it!”

  “You’re still an idiot.”

  I give Buffy a dirty look, then stalk off to the kitchen to make coffee. While it brews, I give a half-hearted effort to clean off my range top. Nothing short of an act of Congress will ever make it white again, but at least it doesn’t have to be covered in oil spots and specks of tomato sauce.

  My hand brushes over the spot between the burners where, under the metal surface, the pilot light does its thing. I wouldn’t have noticed, except that it’s a little warm.

  Hmm...

  Before I can think about what I’m doing, I turn the burner knob to high, start the flame, and screw it back down to 4.

  Then I press my hand to the fire.

  My scream sends the cats scampering.

  Coffee forgotten, I stand with my hand under the kitchen faucet, cool water streaming over my burned hand. I can never remember what I’m supposed to do with a burn, but the water feels good for now.

  “You’re an idiot,” Buffy says again, this time from right in front of me, on the kitchen island.

  “Shut up.” I sniff hard -- the pain is so awful that I’m just now recovering from the shock, and I’m still crying a little. “And get the hell off the counter!”

  “No, I mean, you’re an idiot.” Buffy turns and shows me her ass for a good five seconds. “Look at your hand.” She jumps down and saunters away.

  I turn off the water and inspect my palm. It’s still pink, but there’s no burn. I poke experimentally at my skin with one finger, and while it does sting a little, the pain isn’t that bad.

  “Hey, cat, can you tell time?”

  “Yeah,” Buffy says. “It’s about three minutes after you stuck your hand into an open flame.” Then she adds, quietly, “you idiot.”

  “I heard that!”

  “I don’t care!”

  I gently dry my hand on a dish towel, but I barely even notice any pain. I flex my fingers, but there’s no blisters or weird pulling in my skin.

  By the time I’ve put sugar and milk in my coffee, it’s like it never happened.

  Just to test myself, I put the same hand on the now-extinguished burner. It’s still hot, and I jerk away quickly, but the red mark fades almost instantly, and the pain along with it.

  “Cool.”

  I carry my coffee to my excuse for a dining room table -- mostly it’s just a place to throw the mail when I get home from work -- and sit down. Willow hops up onto the chair next to me. “Are you okay?”

  I reach over and scratch her behind one ear. She tries to rub her jaw on my finger, but I tease her, going for the other ear instead. “I’m fine.”

  “You screamed pretty loud.”

  “Yeah, because it hurt.”

  She gives me a quizzical look. “How does that work? Even I know touching hot things hurts for a long time.”

  “I still feel pain,” I tell her. “That’s nothing new. Even before--”

  “Before?”

  “The last time I had powers.” I sip the coffee. “I always felt it every time someone hit me, or zapped me with a spell, or threw me against a wall. But the way the Professor explained it--”

  “Who’s the Professor?”

  I poke her in the shoulder. “A.D.D. much, cat?”

  She makes a disgruntled noise and walks away.

  “Fine. Whatever.” I go back to my coffee. The Professor told me, when I was first learning what I was, that pain is a direct result of damage -- the more damaged a person gets, the more pain she feels. But my healing powers -- I take a moment to enjoy the fact that I have powers! -- fix me faster than normal humans. Once it's done, I don’t feel the pain anymore.

  I look at my hand again. Still completely healed.

  Awesome.

  After I finish the coffee, I go back to my bedroom and lie down, phone in hand. I send a quick text to Janice, asking if she and Carolyn want to get coffee this morning -- that I’m going to skip the gym -- and then check my other messages.

  There’s a voicemail from the Professor. I guess I didn’t hear the phone buzzing while I slept. I play it.

  “Hello, Andrea. I’m sorry we weren’t able to meet up last night. Something came up here at the college, but I handled it.” I’m guessing that means he 'got rid of' the guy I killed.

  Why don’t I feel sad about that? I should feel sad about it.

  “Why don’t we see each other today instead? Let me know if you’d like me to pick you up, or if you would rather meet me at my office.” He pauses, as if trying to figure out what else to say. “I hope to see you soon.”

  The message ends. I delete it.

  Yeah. Not going to even think about seeing the Professor today. I mean, why spoil what’s turning out to be an okay weekend? Why worry about that stuff when I have powers!

  I can’t stay in bed. I jump up and go into the bathroom, quickly brushing my teeth and tying my hair back. I change into a t-shirt and yoga pants, tuck my spare house key into my pocket, and head for the front door.

  Buffy comes out of the other bathroom and looks up at me with baleful eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I smile, savoring what I’m about to say.

  “I’m going for a run.”

  “Hey,” Janice says. “You look good.”

  I smile and set my coffee mug on the table, then sit down. “I feel good. And thank you. How was the gym?”

  “About the same as usual,” Carolyn says. She looks at me strangely. “Did you get new contacts?”

  “What?” I blink hard, concentrating. “My eyes are the same color they’ve always been.”

  Carolyn squints, then shakes her head. “I guess you’re right. Must have been a trick of the light.”

  “Must have.”

  Now Janice is peering at me. “I think you lost weight.”

  “Did I?” I check the waist of my pants with two fingers. It’s a little looser than the last time I wore these. “Maybe. I went to the gym again on Monday.”

  “Well, you’re lucky. I took my niece to one of those yogurt places on Thursday, and ate way too much.”

  “Hey, it happens.” I sip the coffee -- plain old coffee, as usual. The o
ther two have exciting concoctions that the internet tells me are full of sugar and fat and all manner of artificial ingredients. I think the fro-yo binge Janice had might actually have been healthier than what she’s drinking now. “Anything interesting happening with you?”

  I find myself tripping slightly over the word ‘interesting’; I meditated again this morning, trying to get past what I did last night. I’m still bothered by what I did to save that girl, but I have powers now -- I have powers! -- and I don’t even care that much about him anymore.

  That bothers me.

  A few minutes later, I get up to go to the restroom, and while I wash my hands I look at my face and neck in the mirror. I really do look a little thinner. I hadn’t expected the changes to come on this fast, but then, I didn’t eat much for dinner last night, and I had only a small breakfast this morning.

  Professor Wedlund’s lessons come back to me in a rush; after my first big fight, I learned not to ignore what he had to say. “The human body needs energy, needs to burn calories. As a person with heightened abilities,” and he always called it that -- ‘heightened abilities’, “you need more calories. That’s why you’re so tired and weak right now.” I remember he made me get on a scale, and I’d used so much of my body’s fat reserves that I’d dropped to 115 pounds. He made me eat regular meals, keep a food journal, and drink three energy shakes a day. If the powers are really back, I’m going to need to start doing that again.

  I just hope that, in the past eleven years, the companies that make those shakes have improved the taste somewhat. Even the chocolate ones were atrocious.

  I dry my hands off, adjust my clothes, and head back to the table. Janice, Carolyn, and I chat for a little while longer, and then Carolyn drives me home. She drops me off at the entrance to my apartment complex, which I’m glad for, because Professor Wedlund is standing at my door, waiting for me.

  I duck out of sight before he can see me. I know I should talk to him; I know I should tell him that I have the powers back. He made me promise to let him know if that happened, and anyway, he’s the person who taught me everything I needed to know to save the world. He’s important to the whole process, even though sometimes I just wish he’d go away.