After the Dark

by Max Allan Collins

“. . . Bullshit?”

  “No . . . sophistry.” Her mentor Moody had taught her that.

  “Sof' his'try, hard his'try . . . it should be history, you dig?”

  “Some things can't be forgiven.”

  Original Cindy backed away and lifted her head and gazed down at Max, as if she were trying to see her better. “You look like Max and you sound like Max . . . but you can't be Max.”

  Not at all in the mood for being kidded, Max turned away from her friend.

  “'Cause if you was the real Max? You wouldn't be such a damn fool.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “How long you known Logan?”

  “. . . Goin' on two years.”

  “And how much you been through together?”

  “. . . A lot.”

  “And who was always there for you no matter how bad things got?”

  “You.”

  O.C. grinned. “Goes without sayin', but who else?”

  “Joshua.”

  Original Cindy punched her lightly in the shoulder. “Thank you for makin' my point about you bein' a damn fool.”

  Max managed a tiny grin. “Logan has always been there. For me.”

  “Yeah. And that's somethin', ain't it, in this post-Pulse piece-of-shit world? . . . Who I got?”

  “Well—you got me.”

  “Yeah, and hey, Boo, thass a lot, don't get me wrong, but that ain't everything, you dig? Friendship is cool, way cool—but we got needs, you and me, that you and me don't do for each other.”

  Chuckling, Max admitted, “Yeah, I suppose.”

  Original Cindy was not chuckling. “Me, I had Diamond . . . only, she's gone.”

  Diamond Latrell had been Original Cindy's one true love, or so it seemed to Max; Latrell had been injected with a biotech experiment while in prison. Max helped Logan bring down Synthedyne, the corporation responsible for the experiments, and Diamond managed to pass the bioagent on to Synthedyne's CEO Sidney Croal before she, too, died.

  “I know, Cin,” Max said. “I'm so sorry. . . .”

  “True love's a bitch, ain't it? To try an' find in this world, I mean . . . and you done found it, Boo. And 'cause your lover boy held back somethin', 'cause he was afraid it would hurt you and he didn't want to risk losin' you . . . 'cause he ain't perfect, you're ready to crumple that up and toss it away like a damn candy wrapper?”

  “Cin . . . I can't trust him.”

  “Well, of course you can't,” O.C. said, rolling her eyes. “He's a man, ain't he?”

  “He's a man.”

  “Then sayin' you can't trust him is like sayin' water's wet. That's why the divorce rate is sixty-forty against, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “But you can trust him for some things.”

  “Such as?”

  Original Cindy took one of Max's hands in both of hers. “Trust that he's gonna love you till he dies.”

  “. . . You think?”

  She nodded. “Trust he's always got your back and ain't never gonna let nothin' bad happen to you, not if he can help it.”

  “Then why did he not tell me about Seth for all that time, only to spring it on me now?”

  “You rather he never tell ya?”

  “. . . In a way.”

  “So it's okay for you to lie to yourself; it's just other people who can't lie to you. Boo, the man's tryin' to be honest. He knows he screwed up, and he was tryin' to fix it . . . not make it worse.”

  “But he did.”

  “Girl! You wanna pout till doomsday? Or you want a man in your life that couldn't take your fine ass to bed till he owned up with you 'bout something that was burnin' a hole in him? Boy's got a damn conscience, and you kicked him outta your life not for bein' dishonest . . . but for bein' honest!”

  Stunned by Cindy's take on the situation, Max sat and quietly considered her friend's words.

  Finally, she was starting to see this from outside herself. It would have been easy for Logan to keep up the lie—all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. She never would have found out about Seth if he hadn't told her . . .

  “Don't you ever get tired of it?” Max asked Original Cindy.

  “Tired of what?”

  “Being right.”

  O.C. grinned and took a long drink from her coffee. “Oh, it's a burden, baby . . . Now, then—what you gonna do about this shit?”

  That question was hard to answer.

  Making a face, Original Cindy said, “That coffee's cold. Let's go get some fresh, and talk this sucker out.”

  Max shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I really think I've heard everything you have to say on this subject.”

  Worried, Original Cindy said, “That won't stop Original Cindy from houndin' you. You best give in.”

  “Know what? Think I ‘best' go talk to Logan.”

  Original Cindy's face lit up. “Now you're talkin', Boo.”

  “I suppose I owe it to him to at least . . . try to straighten things out.”

  “See, girl? You ain't terminally infected with the bitch bug, after all! Maybe ol' Kelpy took that one on, too.”

  Max yelped a laugh and gently slugged her friend's arm.

  O.C.'s smile melted into a frown.

  “Oh,” Max said. “Didn't mean to hit you hard or anything . . .”

  “Ain't that, Boo. It's just . . . if you're finally goin' to see Logan, and we're not goin' out after fresh coffee . . . thass tragic in its own self.”

  “How so?”

  “It means . . . Original Cindy's got to go to work.”

  They both laughed, and then they hugged.

  Max felt a tear working its way down her cheek. As they broke, she hastily wiped it away.

  But Cindy had caught the action, and said with the surprising gentleness this tough woman carried, “Don't worry, Boo. It's gonna work out. You two both too pretty to be unhappy.”

  “Oh, you,” Max said, nodding and trying to smile, wanting to share her friend's confidence; but truth was, she held little hope.

  There was that damned word again: hope.

  And maybe this apprehension was why—on her way to see Logan—she stopped first at the control center in Terminal City. She told herself she was doing this out of a sense of responsibility, but she knew nonetheless that she might just be stalling.

  Still, she hadn't spent this long a time out of touch with the others since the beginning of the siege. She was their leader, and it bothered her that she'd given so little thought to her responsibilities, that she had gone off by herself without consideration for her friends, who—like Original Cindy—had probably been worried about her.

  The strange thing about last night was, she had enjoyed the time to herself, the solitude, even if she had been basking in something approaching self-pity. Within her the call of the maverick was struggling to be heard. She wondered if her life would always contain these contradictory urges, reflecting the periods when she'd been a part of a group . . . as at Manticore, or with the L.A. street gang, the Brood . . . and those other times when she'd been very much on her own, scratching for survival, based upon her own skills and wits.

  Seattle had begun as a quest for anonymity—once Seth was lost to her, Max only wanted to blend in with the crowd, a loner on the watch for her Manticore pursuers. But over the course of two years, another family had gathered itself around her: Cindy and Joshua and Sketchy and Alec and the other transgenics, and even Normal, and, yes, most of all Logan.

  Was the presence of this family a comforting one in her life, or merely smothering?

  She passed through those tall forbidding gates, made the walk to the heavy steel door that led into the control center, the weight of that door seeming to transfer to her as she swung it open.

  Made up of two distinct sections, upper and lower, the control center resembled electronics stores Max had seen in pre-Pulse vids and movies. The back section of the lower half was given over to a large layout table where th
e group held council sessions; right now it was largely covered by a map of Terminal City and the surrounding neighborhoods. The front section was a pyramid of video monitors, a dozen screens where four transgenics kept an eye on the local media and what the world out there was up to. Four stairs led to a raised level, where another thirteen monitors were pyramided, showing the Terminal City security system, both interior and the perimeter. From a command chair up there, Dix supervised the entire operation.

  Down below, huddled over the map, Mole, Alec, and Joshua were in the midst of a powwow.

  Mole was first to notice her return. “Hey, boss lady—where the hell you been?”

  She tossed him a sarcastic smile. “Mr. Warmth—sweet to see you, too.”

  “Hey,” Mole said, grinning, considering the appellation. “I think I like that—Mr. Warmth.”

  Max cheerfully flipped him off and asked, “Status?”

  “Nice and quiet,” he said. “Somehow we survived a night without you.”

  Joshua—just your average dog man in an army field jacket, T-shirt, and jeans—lumbered around the table and enveloped her in a bear hug. “Little Fella!”

  His silly yet somehow endearing nickname for her gave Max a sudden rush of warmth.

  Also, she was struggling to keep breathing—the transgenic's fondness for her was exceeded only by his grasp.

  Squeezing out words like the last smidgens from a toothpaste tube, Max managed, “Heeey . . . Big Fella. What's shaking?”

  Joshua released her from his crushing embrace, and the noble, shaggy face studied her. “Joshua was shaking, till now. Now that I see Max is all right.”

  “Sorry to worry you,” she said, meaning it. “I had to think about some stuff.”

  Suddenly Alec was at her side. As usual, the X5's attire seemed parked halfway between beach boy and biker, a gray leather jacket over a T-shirt and dark jeans. “Logan told us about Seth.”

  Max couldn't read the handsome face, and asked, “So how do you feel about it?”

  “Logan recruiting Seth?”

  “Logan recruiting Seth and getting him killed.”

  Alec half smirked. “Come on, Max—Seth musta got himself killed. He was one impulsive dude, right? Anyway, he was a big boy—he knew the game and he knew the stakes.”

  “What about Logan lying to us?”

  Alec grunted something that might have been a laugh. “Oh yeah, I'm pretty worked up about that. I mean, I never lied to anyone, my whole life, right? . . . And I'm sure you've been straight with Logan, hundred percent, since day one.”

  That made her flinch a little, but she managed to cover.

  Of course she'd lied to Logan—plenty of times, since they'd met; in the early days particularly, before trust had been built up. But this was different—this mattered; this had been about something important. Yet the sense that she was guilty of judging by a double standard burned in her stomach.

  Max said, “You guys seem to've got by fine without me last night.”

  “Well, you sent us on a merry chase,” Alec said. “But yeah—Terminal City stands in all its glory.”

  “Can you guys get by without me awhile longer?”

  Alec shrugged. “Girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.”

  From the sidelines, Mole pitched in: “We'll be fine, Max. Take some time. Chill.”

  Alec's smirk widened. “Like you're capable of chilling.”

  She ignored that.

  “Okay then,” she said to the group. “I'll be at Logan's for a while, you need me.”

  Joshua said, “Logan is a good man, Max. Don't be mad at him.”

  “Or at least be fair and make sure he's wearin' that exoskeleton thingie,” Alec said. “You know . . . 'fore you kick his ass?”

  She shook her head, but couldn't hold back the smile. “You're bad, Alec. Truly bad.”

  “That's the rumor,” he said.

  Almost at a run, she took the tunnel between the two former Medtronics buildings, the one inside the Terminal City fencing and the one on the other side. Logan owned both buildings in the name of a fictional company, Sowley Opticals. Even though the siege was over and she could use the streets, the private passage of the tunnel felt more comfortable.

  The tunnel had concrete walls and ceiling, and a tile floor, all a dull hospital green; fluorescent lights hung every thirty feet or so. Her boots were almost silent on the floor and Max stayed quiet, keeping her breathing shallow as she strolled toward the far end. She liked the silence down here—sometimes so still, she could hear her own blood coursing through her veins.

  Going up the stairs at the far end, she could see a slice of light from Logan's apartment around the door, which was partially open—usually, it would be closed and locked, and she wondered if Logan had company.

  That would be perfect: here she was ready to try to forgive him, and on the other side of that door, he's crying on some other girl's shoulder—Asha, maybe . . .

  As she reached for the knob, shaking off her lover's paranoia, she could detect voices in there; but this wasn't Logan's voice, nor Asha's for that matter—these voices spoke something that wasn't even English . . .

  Not convinced anything was wrong—but hardly ready to cheerfully call out, “Anybody home?”—she stepped quickly, quietly inside . . .

  . . . and saw a man with a gun.

  A squat Latino with a buzz cut and a dour, puffy face, Logan's “guest” wore jeans and a black T-shirt and no coat, despite the bitter cold outside; an F was tattooed on the man's right forearm, the branches of the letter formed from forearms and clenched fists. He held an Uzi loosely in both hands.

  The tattoo marked the visitor as a member of the Furies, a gang from Sector Eight—a guest who would hardly be stopping by Logan's to sing Christmas carols. The Furies considered themselves the badasses to end all badasses, but in Max's opinion these Latinos ruled Sector Eight by sheer strength of numbers.

  With over a hundred soldiers in their ranks, the Furies were broken up into units of ten—“packs,” which tended to include specialists in arson, theft, torture, sniping, and various other skills, making each little unit self-contained for assorted fun and games.

  If the asshole with the Uzi was here, she knew the rest of his pack wasn't far away. Logan not in sight, she stood alone, here—which made the likely odds at least ten to one. She considered going back for Joshua and the others, and she could have outrun these clowns and ducked their bullets, or maybe she could just slip back out and use her cell to bring the gang running, yeah, that would be the smart move . . .

  . . . only the guy heard or sensed her now, and his flat-featured face lifted to scowl at her.

  He grunted, and it might have turned into a word, but that was all the sound he got out before Max took two swift steps and leapt as he brought up the gun, way too late. Her foot connected with his throat and he toppled over, crashing to the floor, the Uzi bouncing away—fortunately not firing, though making enough of a clatter to attract Logan's other “guests” . . .

  Furies appeared from everywhere—they'd spread out through the apartment—and she took a tally, even as she started dispatching the gang members.

  Soon she realized that two full packs filled Logan's digs! Twenty-to-one odds were a hell of a handful for even someone as skilled as Max . . .

  She was a dervish, though, kicking this one, sweeping the feet out from that one, punching a third to the floor. The odds didn't matter—fighting through these invaders and locating Logan were her only goals now. It didn't matter that he'd lied about Seth, or that they'd had a spat, nothing mattered but getting to him . . . and his being alive.

  She kicked one Fury in the groin, and he went down howling as two more converged on her, from behind; she leaned back, grabbed each of them by the back of the skull and slammed them together face first. They dropped in a bloody, silent heap, their faces smears of red that seemed if anything an improvement.

  That was when she saw Logan, five Furies on him like army ants,
dragging him from the bedroom toward the front door.

  What the hell?

  What did a street gang have to gain by kidnapping Logan?

  She jumped, kicking to either side, each foot connecting with the head of a Fury, sending both bangers to a dark place. As they fell, she landed nimbly, then turned toward the five Furies who had hauled the struggling Logan to the door.

  Logan spotted her and yelled her name—and in the sound of his voice there were myriad emotions, from fear to regret, and love was in there, too.

  But she could do nothing—there were too many of the bastards—and that she was still kicking ass when the five dragged Logan out into the bright sunshine of the frigid morning provided no damn solace at all.

  Time was key—seconds could mean life or death. She punched the nearest one and wrenched the weapon from his hands, a small submachine gun. She hated guns and had vowed years ago that she would never use one, but she needed to save Logan and—filled with revulsion as she was—this seemed the only way to even the odds.

  She jerked back the bolt on the weapon, but before she could fire, a Buddha bunch of arms closed over and around her and she found herself wrestling with half a dozen Furies for control of the weapon. They weren't stronger than her, not hardly; but there were just so goddamn many of them!

  Finally, she released the Uzi and returned to the hand-to-hand combat at which she excelled. Besides, the Furies were loyal, a family however dysfunctional, and if she stayed in close, they wouldn't dare fire automatic weapons into a crowd of their cronies.

  She hadn't, however, seen the Tazer.

  The two prongs dug into her back, and she knew instantly what had happened, even before the violent shaking started and the thought of reaching Logan was driven from her mind by the searing pain that consumed every cell of her being as she did a macabre marionette's dance at the end of the two wires feeding voltage into her back.

  She tried to fall but couldn't, the electricity holding her up until all the Furies had exited the building, the one controlling the Tazer leaving last. She vibrated for a second more, then dropped over, unconscious.

  Max awoke with a violent start, the smell of ammonia filling her nostrils. “Wha . . . what . . . Logan! They got Logan!”