Ran (Book 1): Apocalyptica

by Joshua Guess

  Apocalyptica

  Ran: Book One

  Joshua Guess

  ©2016 Joshua Guess

  All rights reserved

  An important note for the reader:

  This ebook originally appeared in serialized installments. This version is the complete novel, a collection of all four parts. While I certainly wouldn't mind you purchasing both the serialized parts and this collected version, you shouldn't feel obliged. This volume contains no new or different material from those original installments.

  This book is dedicated to

  Darryl Cook, editor and friend. Your support means more than you know.

  And

  To Sarah, long-time supporter and super fan. There's more of you in Ran than any other single person.

  1

  Fact: unlike with most people, breaking up with my boyfriend actually was the end of the world.

  Look, I know what you’re thinking. I’m being too dramatic; it wasn’t that bad. You’re wrong. I’m not saying it was hard on me—it wasn’t. Jeff had long outstayed his welcome—but rather that, in the mother of all coincidences, I kicked his ass to the curb on the day the world literally ended.

  Too much? Okay, we’ll back up.

  I woke up to sunlight streaming onto my face. That by itself was enough to annoy me, if not to be the last straw. My sleep schedule is erratic in every possible way, a result of both my work and a lifetime of coping with multiple forms of insomnia. My home is usually light-tight, with heavy black drapes over all the windows and pinned to the walls to keep it dark.

  So when I opened my eyes to see the drapes pulled open in the middle, the sound of Jeff humming to himself in the kitchen, I was already angry. The clock next to my bed told me it was too damn early. I had gone to sleep after a marathon session in my office on a project which paid double my usual rate for swift service. The client had a laundry list of requests and gave me three days to do it. I’d finished in twelve hours.

  This particular client had been known to give out bonuses for speedy deliveries, but the hope for something beyond a double payday wasn’t why I spent half a day obsessively working.

  Pay attention to that word, obsessively, and it will tell you all you need to know.

  I rose from my bed on less than three hours of sleep and tromped into the kitchen. Jeff was cooking breakfast, and to his credit the guy was doing it right. A pile of eggs and bacon sat on one side of the stove in warming pans, Jeff finishing up a stack of pancakes on the other side.

  He glanced at me as I walked in, his eyes barely pausing at my face before checking out the rest of me. I felt my face warm as I realized I hadn’t put on clothes. I was standing there, furious, in my boy shorts and camisole. Granted, they were Invader Zim underwear, but still. Not the best outfit for an argument, at least with Jeff.

  “Why did you open the drapes?” I asked, my voice even.

  “Because it’s morning,” Jeff replied, flipping a pancake and not looking at me. “That’s when people get up.”

  “No, that’s when some people get up,” I retorted, fuming. “We’ve been dating for a year, but you still don’t seem to grasp the concept that I don’t always work on the schedule you want me to.”

  Jeff looked at me, his big brown eyes perfectly set in their best apologetic position. His mouth twitched into a slight frown beneath his dark beard. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words sounding as utterly sincere as they always did. “I just thought I’d make you breakfast. I wasn’t sure when you went to sleep, so when I came over for our day together, I figured…”

  I sighed. This was how it always happened. I felt the anger drain out of me. This had gone on too long. It was time.

  “You just figured you’d open the curtains, again, despite my many explanations that I want to wake up when I wake up and go to sleep when I feel like it. You thought you’d do it anyway, and apologize like you always do, and that I’d get over it and sit down to eat the breakfast you made to bribe me with.”

  He flinched, looking injured. “Randie, come on—”

  “Don’t,” I spat. “Don’t you call me that.”

  He threw up his hands, still holding the spatula. “Okay, sorry,” he said. “But Ran, you know I’m just trying to help you get your life together. You can’t keep living like this.”

  The rage flared back to life. I felt my eye begin to twitch. “Okay, that’s it,” I said. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  Now Jeff began to look angry. “What? Ran, I live here, you can’t just kick me out.”

  “You don’t live here, Jeff,” I said. “You stay here. That’s not the same thing. This is my house. I bought it with my money, paid it off with my money, and it’s in my name. You have an apartment where your mail is delivered, where you stay on nights you have to work. You sleep here because I let you, and I’m officially revoking your fucking access. Now, leave.”

  Jeff’s hands lowered slowly. He tossed the spatula onto the counter, turned off the burners. I stepped aside as he barreled into the bedroom. All of his things were either in the drawer of my dresser set aside for him, on top of it, or in the bathroom attached to the bedroom. It amounted to a few outfits, some toiletries, and a picture of his family. Jeff carried all of them as he emerged a minute later.

  I was munching on a piece of bacon, standing by the front door. He glared at me as he stomped by, but said nothing as I opened the door to let him out.

  He stepped onto the front deck and dashed down to his car. As he shoved the armload of junk into the back seat, a skittering sound in the house was quickly followed by heavy thumps. Nikola, my Rottweiler, slipped by me and ran outside to do his morning business, his curving tail wagging with the force of a small typhoon.

  As Nikola pranced around the yard, looking for just the right spot, Jeff slammed shut the door of his car and hurried back to me. I knew him well enough to understand instinctively he wouldn’t just take me at my word. His stubbornness was incredible.

  “Ran, we can talk about this when you’re calm,” he said after stopping a few feet in front of me.

  “Oh, that’s not patronizing at all,” I said. “Your problem is that you never could deal with me being me. I was a project, something for you to fix.”

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  “No, you’re trying to nudge me into being something I’m not. I like my life, Jeff. I like who I am. I like working from home and making good money and eating pizza at eleven in the morning and never having to deal with a boss. I thought you liked me for who I am, but I was wrong. And I don’t want to become someone else to make you happy.”

  I popped the last bite of bacon into my mouth and crunched down on it. Maybe the gesture appeared casual, maybe it was my words, but for whatever reason, Jeff lost his temper. It was something I had never seen before.

  He moved forward with surprising speed, his hands clamping down on my arms. “You don’t even care, do you?” he snarled, his face scarlet. “You just stand there and throw me away and you couldn’t give less of a shit.”

  “Let go of me,” I said calmly.

  He paused, as if realizing what he was doing. He wasn’t actually hurting me, but the aggression was past the line. It was during that second or two of frozen realization that things took a turn.

  A deep, rumbling growl nearly rattled the deck. Jeff and I turned our heads at the same time to see Nikola standing at the base of the steps, head down and legs braced for a leap. My monster dog was the sweetest, nicest animal you could ask for. Little kids at the park had no fear of him, climbing on his back and yanking on his ears, which he took with quiet grace.

  But you just don’t fuck with mama.

&nb
sp; “Nik, down,” I said. Nikola relaxed slightly, the growl fading out. He stood in a pose of relaxed readiness, watching carefully.

  Jeff slowly peeled his hands away, then took a step back.

  “Here, Nik,” I said. He trotted up the steps, then rested back on his haunches next to me. I wrapped the fingers of my left hand around his collar.

  Jeff eyed me and the dog, and it was hard to tell which of us unnerved him more. He turned and walked down the steps. I thought it was over until, halfway between the deck and his car, he turned on his heel.

  What followed was a stream of the worst things anyone can say to a woman. They were meant to hurt me, to show how much he didn’t care, but they did neither. When Jeff finally stopped yelling, huffing to catch his breath, I felt another rumbling growl vibrate from Nikola through the hand holding him.

  “That would bother me,” I said, “if I hadn’t been thinking about doing this for a long time now. Until today, I thought you were a nice guy. Maybe a little pushy, but overall a good dude. Thanks for making it clear to me how wrong I was. I don’t have to feel even a little guilty.”

  Jeff cursed and began walking toward his car. “I’ve still got a key,” Jeff said, his voice dripping acid.

  My fingers tightened into fists, and Nik felt the tension. He leaped to his feet and bared his teeth.

  “Is that a threat?” I asked.

  Jeff smirked. “Just a statement. You might want to change your locks.”

  He was nearly at the driver’s side door, which was on the side of the car facing away from the deck. I was in full view when I let go of Nikola’s collar.

  The dog exploded from the porch, taking all the steps in a single leap. Momentum carried him forward quite a ways before he could turn and head toward Jeff, who was fumbling madly. Nikola was ten feet away when Jeff gave it up as a bad job and ran around the car. I watched, amused, as my dog chased him to the edge of the woods.

  Jeff made a wide arc, running back toward the car. He must have picked the right key, because he was moving with purpose. Nikola’s paws pounded at the grass, though I could tell he wasn’t really going to attack. Nik could run down just about anything on four legs. A person wasn’t much of a challenge.

  “Nik, heel,” I shouted. The dog slowed immediately and angled toward me. Jeff, however, seemed startled by my voice and tripped. At the speed he was going, it didn’t end well.

  His head clipped the bumper of his car as he fell. Jeff got back to his feet, hand clamped to one side of his face. He made no noise as he climbed into his car and sped away, tires throwing up dust as they spun. Nikola and I watched it vanish around the bend in the gravel road leading off my property, and it was over.

  Or so I thought until the cops showed up.

  The local PD and I never had much chance to interact. I was that weird hermit who lived in the expensive trailer just outside city limits, and not much more. I only left home once or twice a week, usually to see a movie with Jeff or do my grocery shopping. Even the latter was hit and miss since the local grocery store delivered for a modest fee, one I was happy to pay in order to avoid people.

  There was a short discussion at the door of my home, mostly informing me of the charges and my rights, followed by a merciful grant of a few minutes to feed my dog and put on some better clothes than the pajama bottoms I was wearing. I grabbed my phone and, while I was at it, the flash drive sticking out of the large server in my office.

  The officers themselves weren’t especially interested in hearing what I had to say, telling me we could sort everything out at the station. You might be asking yourself why I wouldn’t fight harder to explain that I hadn’t actually assaulted Jeff, and the answer may or may not make much sense.

  Social anxiety and a healthy fear of authority make for a cautious Ran. End of explanation.

  I thought the handcuffs were kind of unnecessary since I was coming along peacefully, but at least they let me keep my hands in the front.

  At the station I was booked, printed, photographed, all that jazz. I was led to an interview room where my handcuffs were, to my surprise, not removed. Instead they were locked to a ring set into the top of the table in front of me.

  It seemed a little Law & Order for such a minor charge, but again, I was too fucking scared to say anything. I waited for a few minutes, idly letting my brain wander as the boring white clock on the dull gray wall ticked away the seconds.

  Eventually the door opened, an officer in plain clothes stepping inside. He was fairly young, maybe in his early thirties, with dark auburn hair cropped close. Not a small fella, either. I tried not to be intimidated by him, though he was easily a foot taller than me and probably twice my weight.

  He sat at the table across from me, placing a few printouts in front of him.

  “Randie Lawson,” he said, looking at the top piece of paper.

  “Ran,” I said. “I really hate that name.”

  The officer’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “Ran, then. Says here you’re self-employed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you do, exactly?”

  I smiled a little myself. “There isn’t really a title for it. I like to think of myself as a research editor.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What does that entail?”

  “Well,” I said, letting myself fall into the tone of voice I used to sell my services to clients, “in basic terms, I do research for other people. Authors, mostly, both fiction and nonfiction. Sometimes I work for universities or scientists, all kinds of people.”

  “So you just…look stuff up?”

  “No,” I said. “Sometimes an author will come up with an idea too big to handle, so they hire me to research all the little stuff and put together a concise document explaining what they need to know. Once, a scientific expedition paid me to put together all the logistics for a four-month boat trip to the middle of the Pacific. More than one university used me as a consultant to reorganize the filing systems for their archives. I made good money on those jobs.”

  The officer put his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his fists. “What makes you so good at these things? I mean, why do you stand out from other people who could do it?”

  Something about his tone sent my brain into caution mode. Combined with the facts in front of me, it made me worry. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t get your name, officer.”

  “It’s detective, actually,” he said. “Detective Jeremy Kurtz. I don’t like my name, either. People call me Jem.”

  “Just like in To Kill a Mockingbird,” I said with a calmness that didn’t match the ball of liquid nitrogen in my belly. A detective. That couldn’t be good. “I can’t help but notice you’ve got my vitals right there in front of you,” I said, nodding to the page. “Copy of my license and all that. So I have to wonder why I, a woman of five feet, four inches and weighing a hundred and twenty-five pounds, need to be handcuffed to a table. Is this procedure for people brought in on minor assault charges?”

  The detective leaned back in his chair, fingers laced together and resting on his stomach. “Not at all, Ms. Lawson. But you see, while you were being brought in, Jeff Conway, the man who filed the charges against you, died.”

  2

  Laughter was not the best medicine in this case, but I did it anyway.

  Kurtz didn’t seem put off by this. Either the guy was uncommonly jaded for his age, or he had an incredible poker face. I thought the latter seemed more likely; a detective isn’t that far off from the kind of research I did every day. Observing my reaction was just another way to gather data.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, fighting back a chuckle. “I don’t know what kind of joke you’re playing, but no way is Jeff dead.”

  Detective Kurtz watched me with soft brown eyes for a few seconds. “I’m completely serious, Ms. Lawson. Your boyfriend collapsed just after signing his statement, and died before the ambulance could arrive. According to him, the two of you had an altercation earli
er today. He claimed you attacked him with a baseball bat, hitting him in the head.”

  My mouth dropped open and the entire world came unglued around me. I’m usually pretty goddamned hard to rattle, but I was hit by a trifecta. Not only was Jeff dead—a state of affairs I was having a tough time feeling bad about—but the asshole had lied through his teeth to the police as a means of petty revenge. The icing on this particular cake was that my now very ex-boyfriend had so little understanding of who I was that he had thought he could get away with it. More than the charges and Jeff’s death, that was what pulled the metaphorical rug out from under me.

  Look, the guy almost attacked me. If not for my dog, I think he would have. And I won’t ever repeat the vile shit he said to me. Maybe I’m a terrible person for not caring that he died, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to feel pity or regret over the loss of awful people. I was feeling a little angry and disappointed in myself for not seeing what Jeff was sooner, but no one is perfect. Judge me as you will.

  “Wow, what an asshole,” I said. “You know, I have ten thousand dollars’ worth of computer equipment in my house. I fucking love machines. Jeff knew that. He knew how obsessive I am about security, yet was so self-absorbed that he never noticed the cameras.”

  Kurtz perked up. “Cameras?”

  I nodded. “He came close to attacking me this morning. My dog scared him off. I have motion-sensitive security cameras on my house. If you look wherever they put my personal items when they booked me, you’ll find a USB drive with footage on it. That should clear this up.”

  The detective frowned thoughtfully. “How did Mr. Conway receive his head injury?”

  “He slipped while he was running back to his car and smacked his head on the bumper,” I answered.

  “I’m going to take a look,” Kurtz said, then leaned over the table. “You’re going to stay cuffed, but I won’t leave you stuck to the table. Feel free to stretch your legs while I’m gone.”