AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

  It wasn’t until he got back home and laid the rifle on the bed that Simon asked himself why he had bought it. Perhaps he could brace the stock against the floor, put the barrel in his mouth, then lean forward to press the trigger? He supposed that would work.

  But why the scope? A rifle and a scope were for hunting, and he didn’t hunt.

  It was then a voice had whispered to him. The voice was clear and firm and not his own. It spoke in his head, and it said just one word: yet.

  With that word, his birth began.

  He embraced it. Each day he heard the voice more often, and louder. Each day he spent longer as the man he wanted to be. The voice was remaking him into something new, something stronger and in control. The voice was his friend, his partner, his master. Like horse and jockey. The two existed together, depended on one another. Without the horse, the jockey could not ride; without the jockey, the horse would not race.

  And his True Self wanted to race.

  But the transformation wasn’t complete. There were moments when he was alone. Just the horse. Dark moments like this one, spent staring at the ceiling as the city slept around him. Moments when he pondered planting the rifle stock against the floor, and wondered whether he would hear the shot.

  How many of them had? Perhaps the woman today. He’d been in position for half an hour. Rifle braced on the edge of the dumpster, only an inch of the barrel protruding. The sweet smell of rot surrounding him. Horse and jockey together, unified. Calm and potent.

  Savoring.

  An elderly couple walked with the comfort of decades, her arm in his as they tried, comically, to hurry. He centered the crosshairs on her heart and imagined taking her from her husband. Leaving the old man to stare down at his life’s chest blown out.

  Moments later, he’d traced the skipping body of a little girl. She had a ponytail and a worn bunny clenched in one fist. Her mother was tugging her along, and the girl was trying to keep up. A squeeze of his finger, and the mother would be pulling meat. For the rest of her days, the woman would know that she had spent the last second of her child’s life frustrated and impatient.

  The feeling thrilled him. Filled him. Once, he’d overheard a man on the train talking about how after he had sex with some girl he felt like a god. It was like that, only better. When the jockey was in him, guiding his hands, steadying his aim, he didn’t just feel like a god—he was God. The fate of all those people in his hands. They even prayed to him. Their darting eyes, their quick steps, their nervous looks at the horizon, these were all rough dedications offered up to him. Entreaties to God: not now, not yet, not me.

  That’s what the woman today had been thinking. According to the news, her name was Emily Watkins, but when he’d looked at her through the glass of the scope he had seen only a supplicant, powerless and praying, and he had rejected her pleas and exercised his divine right with one squeeze of a finger.

  She’d wobbled when the bullet struck. Light had sparkled off her wedding ring. The bags had fallen from her shoulder, contents spilling out, ice cream tub breaking open on the concrete.

  The moment had given him a thrill electric as orgasm. He had lingered, watched the police arrive, the ambulance. He’d decided to try for a second sacrifice, and almost succeeded. If only that detective hadn’t thrown the EMT, he would have—

  What have you done?

  He wasn’t the jockey now. He was just his sad, pointless self, and the memory filled him with horror. As though it hadn’t been him that went to the dumpster, that set up the rifle, that stared down the scope—

  What are you doing?

  Simon lurched out of bed. His feet tangled in the covers, and he hit the ground hard. His palms burned and pain rang up his knees. He crawled frantically to the corner. In the darkness the rifle was insect-perfect. The barrel tasted of oil. Simon fumbled for the trigger.

  Do it, do it now, now while you see clearly, while the jockey isn’t looking, do it, do it, do it—

  Emily had fallen backward, crumpling to the ground. Through the scope he’d been able to look right up her dress. The toned thighs framing white cotton underwear. A little tuft of brown hair escaping one side.

  Thinking about it, he felt a tingle in his groin. And then came the jockey’s voice, and with it, calm, and certainty.

  Emily Watkins was just a sacrifice. He was a god.

  Simon took his mouth from the gun. Rose, carefully wiped the barrel, and leaned the rifle in the corner. The taste of metal lingered on his tongue, and he went to the bathroom, got his toothbrush from the medicine cabinet.

  When he closed it, he saw himself in the mirror. Not the old one, droopy and small. His True Self. The one from his dreams. The jockey that rode the horse.

  In the mirror he was himself, but taller, broader, stronger. His cheekbones were sharp diagonals. His eyes blazed.

  In the mirror, he wasn’t in a dingy bathroom. He was on a throne beside a massive pyre, the flames leaping twenty feet into the night sky. Flickering light painting his face in oranges and shadows. Around the fire men and women writhed, danced, groped. Sweating demons ecstatic in their debauched worship. Simon sat above them, expressionless and impassive as a woman serviced him with her mouth, her bare breasts glistening, his hand twisted in her hair to push her down farther, farther, to hold her there—

  He ran his fingers down his chest and took himself in hand.

  Just a moment of weakness. Resistance from the old self he was cutting away. How could he think of ending it?

  Tomorrow was going to be special.

  SIX

  Through the open window Claire could hear the mutter of traffic, the beep of a truck in reverse. She floated toward consciousness, wallowing in the warm bed and the languid glow of satisfaction. Even freshly shaven, Brody’s face had rubbed her chin and lips raw, and she was sore—the way they’d been going at it she’d have to be made of boot leather not to be—but the pain was sweet.

  When there was no pretending to be asleep any longer, she yawned and opened her eyes. The curtains fluttered in the October breeze, parting to splash sunlight on her still-bare walls. Need to do something about that someday.

  She’d moved from DC to Chicago in July, spent a weekend assembling furniture and buying towels, and then thrown herself into her new job. As a woman who had hurtled up the ranks of what remained a man’s organization, she’d found that efficiency, competence, and intelligence were only part of the equation. As important was flawless presentation. It wasn’t a matter of sexism, exactly. It was genetics. Below the surface, both genders were wired to expect strength from men and support from women. Which of course was nonsense, but arguing it didn’t help, and neither did overcompensating. An attitude considered tough in a man tended to get a woman written off as shrill.

  The best solution she’d found so far was simply to focus on the job and demand others do likewise. And the best way to express that was to embody it. Doubly true for a woman who had parachuted in to lead the office; though the org chart said she was number two, the Special Agent in Charge was months away from mandatory retirement. Whereas she was a rising star, one of the director’s anointed.

  All of which added up to her having to hustle her butt off. Fine. She’d never really learned to unplug anyway; Dad often teased that her tombstone would read WORKED HARD. July and August had been a blur. Then, just as she was starting to feel established, Brody had happened.

  God, that thing he’d said last night. Over the last weeks they had traded histories, not the way she was used to, where both people presented the version of themselves they wanted the other to believe, like a relationship CV. With Brody it had felt like exploring a marvelous new city, wandering the main thoroughfares and twisting back alleys with equal fervor, trying to capture it all. Lying in the dark, his voice soft and disembodied, he had painted pictures of a suburban childhood, sprinklers and summer shrieks, tree forts, a blue-and-silver BMX Mongoose. Of teenage alienation, train rides into the city to see bands she’d n
ever heard of. The crunch of autumn leaves as he strolled campus. Where he’d been on 9/11—a coffee shop, hungover—and his horror at the helplessness of the people trapped, and how that had driven him to enlist the next day.

  So Claire understood how genuine was his need to aid, to protect, to be the guy who did the thing. And of course she’d read his file, and knew that he was an exceptional agent. Not destined for upper echelon—his leap-then-look approach wouldn’t fit, and he couldn’t smile while chewing a shit sandwich—but his FBI career would last as long as he wanted.

  So for him to say that if need be, he would put it aside . . . well. There had been plenty of guys in her life, but mostly they had felt like boys. Even the ones in thousand-dollar suits. It took a man to say the things Brody had. To put his partner’s ambition before his own.

  No, that wasn’t it—to make her his ambition. Thinking of it made her stomach float and her chest fluttery. She’d never been a princess, never fantasized about her wedding, but here she was, mooning like a schoolgirl. And more than that, not caring.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  She turned, saw him staring, his head on the pillow just inches away. Habit tempted her to say something flip. Instead she rolled on her side to face him. “Us.”

  “Us, huh?” He smiled, and again she felt a stab of familiarity that outstripped their time together. Like they’d been trading secret smiles for decades instead of a couple of weeks.

  “Us,” she repeated, staring into his eyes and thinking that people spent most of the time not quite looking at each other. That even when two individuals managed to lock eyes, one or both of them were thinking about that fact, concentrating on not looking away.

  Not here. Not now.

  Her phone rang.

  Claire groaned.

  Brody snorted a laugh. “Tough to be king.”

  She rolled away, sat up. Took the phone off the charger, registered the number, the Chicago office switchboard. A new victim? She cleared her throat and put on her professional voice. “Claire McCoy.”

  “Good morning, ma’am. I hope it’s not too early—”

  “Of course not. What is it?”

  “Yellow flags.”

  As soon as it became clear that the killings weren’t an isolated incident, Claire had implemented a tip line. The phone number was in constant rotation on the media, and the number of calls grew daily, with more than eight thousand in the last twenty-four hours, according to the agent.

  That was the thing about terror: it made rational people act irrationally. From a certain perspective, the fear was more destructive than the actual killing. Fear had brought the city to a standstill. Fear had closed schools and flatlined the economy. And fear made normal people pick up the phone to accuse cranky neighbors and creepy brothers-in-law, recount odd behavior and partially overheard conversations. Every call was logged, recorded, cross-referenced, and prioritized. Red flags were followed immediately, but they were rare. Analysts generated a daily list of yellow flags, leads worth pursuing but not considered hot.

  Eight thousand calls. It was at once an exercise in frustration and an important tool.

  She said, “Go ahead.”

  Brody rolled out of bed, cracked his neck, then padded away naked, scratching his belly.

  By the time she hung up, he was out of the shower, toweling his hair like it had done him wrong. Billows of steam filled the bathroom. Claire brushed her teeth, then climbed in the shower, turning it from the flesh-melting temperature he preferred to merely scalding. She sighed as the water ran down her back.

  “Yellow flags?” Through the steamed glass door, Brody was a ghostly shape, his edges amorphous.

  “Yeah. You know we got eight thousand calls yesterday?”

  He whistled. “Any worth anything?”

  “An Iraq veteran gone off radar. Caller was his sister, claimed he wasn’t returning her texts. His VA therapist confirms he’s missed his last three sessions.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No.” Given the skill involved in the killings, the leading psych profile suggested the sniper was ex-military. They’d been reviewing lists of discharged soldiers for weeks. “Guy was a helicopter mechanic, though, not exactly special forces.”

  “Army teaches mechanics to shoot too.”

  “What else. Two reports of neighbors that own assault rifles. Some calls about a storefront religious group named the Sword of God preaching violence to hasten the Second Coming. A couple of overheard conversations, people admiring the sniper.”

  Brody groaned.

  “I know.” Her shampoo filled the shower with the scent of mint tea. “An abandoned church on the West Side, three calls about someone coming and going, one of which said they saw a gun. And two claims of responsibility, both unlikely.”

  “Those flags are a very pale yellow. Practically beige.”

  “Yeah.” Claire tipped her head, let the water sluice down her hair and back. They had a morning status meeting in an hour, and she was already working a grid, mentally divvying up assignments. Then a call to the director, check in with CPD, do pregame for today’s press conference. God, she was tired. “You worked the West Side, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Brody said. “The cartels use West Side gangs to distribute. Want me to take the church?”

  “Would you? Have CPD back you up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Hold on.” She slid the door open. “Come here.”

  The kiss started sweet but got hot almost immediately, her hands around his neck, her body leaning into his. He pulled away, said, “Hey, you’re getting me wet.”

  “You’ll dry.”

  “Lady, if it were up to me, I’d climb in there with you. But my boss is a hard-ass.”

  She laughed. “Fine. Good luck catching bad guys.”

  SEVEN

  Someone’s going to die today.

  The mantra was a slap of cold water. It had become a ritual of Brody’s, a way to remind himself that his life spanned two worlds.

  One was Claire’s place, the universe pulled shut behind them. Going at each other until they were raw, and then spending half the night talking. Waking up to stare into each other’s eyes with childish wonder.

  The other world was this one. Where someone was going to die. Today. Unless he could stop it.

  Chicago’s West Side was row on row of sagging bungalows and gang-tagged apartment buildings. The church fit right in; the doors were secured with thick chain, weeds stood three feet high, and at some point a fire had shattered the windows and blackened the stonework. The plywood covering the holes seemed to be holding the building together. A group of teenaged boys in puffy coats eyed them from the stoop of a house.

  “That place?” Sergeant Morgan shook his head. “I hope not. It’d lower my already poor opinion of the sniper.” Morgan was weightlifter-big and as comfortable in his ballistic vest as a golfer in a polo shirt. Brody liked tactical cops; they tended to combine proficient ass kicking with amiable cheerfulness.

  “Probably nothing.” Brody took his own vest from the backseat, began strapping it on. “Your guys ready?”

  Morgan nodded, spoke into his radio, issuing orders to the rest of the team, five tacticals jammed in an SUV a block north. Brody tucked in an earpiece. “Ops, gear check.”

  “Confirmed, Agent Brody,” said a man’s voice. “Signal is strong, and we’re watching via surveillance cam.”

  “We?”

  “ASAC McCoy has joined me.”

  Brody failed to keep the smile off his face. “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Agent Brody,” came Claire’s voice, cool and professional. “What’s the situation?”

  “The church looks abandoned. I’m supported by CPD Sergeant Ryan Morgan and his merry band of door kickers. We’re ready to roll.”

  “Understood. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” Brody shook out his hands. Took a deep inhale through his nose, blew it out th
rough his mouth. Then put the car in drive and hit the accelerator. Morgan called go on his radio.

  They arrived in a squeal of brakes and were out the door in an instant, weapons low. It felt good to be in motion. Training took over, and Brody stepped swiftly and carefully, eyes swiveling everywhere. The young drug dealers scattered like seagulls. On a balcony fifty yards away, a man smoked and watched the show. No sign of motion from the church itself.

  The front doors were tall and heavy, a chain threaded between the handles. Brody took up position on one side. Morgan had the bolt cutters out, but when he closed the jaw on a link, the chain came free of its own accord.

  Softly, Brody said, “Ops, the chain on the front door was previously cut.”

  “Roger. Do you want backup?”

  “Negative. Probably just squatters.”

  Even so, he felt his hopes rise. He allowed himself to imagine catching the sniper inside, the man asleep on a cot, a .223 rifle on the floor beside him. Maybe no one needed to die today after all.

  The iron handle of the door was cold. Brody yanked it open and spun to one side, weapon up and pointing.

  The foyer—the entrance to a church is called a narthex, his brain informed him, a stupid pet trick it enjoyed in moments of tension—was strewn with trash. Brody moved quickly, and Morgan followed, spiking the door open for light. Graffiti had been Sharpied on the walls, gang tags and genitalia. The doors leading to the nave had been torn off their hinges, but the interior was dim. Brody clicked on his flashlight, holding it with his left hand and bracing the Glock above. Morgan did the same, their beams sweeping back and forth. They went in together, splitting to opposite sides to check corners. The resonant hammer-bang of a ram taking down a door echoed, the rest of the team piling in the back.

  The chapel reeked of ash and ammonia. Shards of broken glass sparkled amidst rags and faded newspapers and broken hypodermics. White streaks of bird droppings slathered everything. The plywood covering one of the windows had fallen, and a parallelogram of dusty sunlight stabbed through it. A smoke-stained Jesus stared down with a long-suffering expression, half his torso burned away.