AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

  The room was empty.

  They took a minute to be sure, sweeping flashlights beneath pews and banging in adjoining doors—bathrooms, a small classroom, an office, storage. The team was good, kept their movements coordinated, called out as they cleared rooms.

  Two pews had been pushed face-to-face into a makeshift bed. The reek coming off the blankets was pure homeless.

  Well, shit. Brody holstered his weapon. “Ops, there’s no one here. Looks like somebody was crashing, but I doubt it was our target.”

  “Understood,” Claire said. “One of the calls mentioned a weapon. See if you can find it.”

  “Roger.”

  The tacticals drifted back in teams of two. They’d come in hard and professional, but now relaxed. One of them pulled a pack of cigarettes, lit up. “You mind? Always wanted to smoke in church.”

  Brody shrugged. As his eyes adjusted, the shaft of sunlight cast plenty of illumination. There was trash everywhere, old newspapers and Popeyes bags. Someone had bothered to heap up a pile of glass three feet high, multicolored shards that must have been stained glass. Sergeant Morgan stepped on an empty Pabst, crushing the beer can flat. “What do you want to do?”

  “Someone sliced the chain. Let’s do a search. If we find something, groovy; if not, I’ll buy lunch.”

  “Hey,” said the cop with the cigarette. “I’ve got something.” He clicked his flashlight on a pew; in the center of the beam a used condom lay like a beached jellyfish. “Want to collect DNA?”

  In spite of himself, Brody snorted a laugh.

  “Kurtz, you asshole,” Morgan said. “Alright, you all heard the man. Get to work. Grid search, outward from center.”

  The team split up. Brody left them to it, wandered over to the beam of sunlight, his eyes cataloging the junk on the floor. Somebody could shoot an art exhibit on the depth and variety of detritus in abandoned squats. There were always broken bottles and broken needles, but he’d seen doll’s heads, chess pieces, snow globes, stethoscopes, paperweights, bicycle tires, underwear. His foot nudged a coverless paperback, water-fat and faded. He picked it up, read the first line—The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed—smiled, tossed the book back in the corner.

  Out the busted plywood the sky was pale blue. The smoker on the fire escape was still there. Thinning hair and sloped shoulders, a melting-wax sort of face, his cell phone out to take a picture. People and their conflict videos.

  A ring sounded behind him. Brody turned, annoyed. Tactical units should know better. The sound was coming from Kurtz, the comedian with the cigarette. Brody was about to tear him a new one when he registered the cop’s expression. It wasn’t oops, I forgot to turn off my phone; it was what the hell is that?

  Which made sense, because the ring was coming from the pile of broken glass.

  Oh. Oh no.

  “Down, down!” Brody charged, slamming into Kurtz and sending him sprawling as the phone rang a second time.

  The church filled with parti-colored light, like a rainbow sun had been born in the center. For a fraction of a second Brody was staring into it, a blast of furious illumination blooming beneath the stained glass, and then the shattered pieces leapt up from the ground and the shock wave hit and everything went loose, he was flying, swept up in a blast of heat and a hundred shimmering razors and if he hadn’t been in the midst it might have been beautiful and then—

  EIGHT

  Patterns of swirling dust. Skirling dust, twirling rust.

  Skirling was a funny word.

  Something wrong.

  Wrong, gong, bong song, swirling song . . .

  Was it a word? Skirling? Couldn’t remember.

  He blinked, coughed. Where . . .

  Brody sat up, and in the process realized he’d been lying down.

  His chest felt heavy, and he fumbled at the straps of the ballistic vest, releasing the Velcro with a rip. He sloughed it off and lurched up. Wobbly. The world was sparkling dust, and standing made it worse, cut his sight to inches. He took a breath. It felt like inhaling needles.

  Claustrophobia struck, animal panic. Lips tight, Brody dropped low and launched into a frantic crawl. The floor was covered in rainbows. His leg hit something, inertia driving it forward.

  His knee exploded in brilliant blinding agony.

  A dagger of glass stuck out of his leg. It was a vicious inch wide and jammed deep. Blood bubbled up around it, staining his pants.

  The pain was revelatory. It cut the fog, and he realized that the rainbows on the ground were pieces of stained glass. The ones heaped up to cover the bomb. The dust sparkled because it was powdered glass. Which explained why it hurt to breathe.

  Panic beckoned, but he forced it down. If he lost control he might pass out. Still holding his breath, he took the glass between thumb and forefinger and pulled. Inch after sickening inch slid out. The edge was jagged and slick with blood. He tossed it aside. It shattered on the floor.

  Locking his leg straight, Brody rose, took the edge of a pew in one hand, then hopped to the next.

  His lungs were burning by the time he shouldered out of the ruined church and collapsed amidst the weeds growing through cracked concrete. His first desperate breath set fire to a hundred tiny cuts in his mouth and throat. The knee throbbed, and his pant leg was soaked with hot blood.

  Gritting his teeth, he forced his leg to bend. It did. The glass knife hadn’t cut whatever tendon ran there.

  He patted for his other injuries, found none. Incredible luck; he’d been next to the bomb when it blew. But then, he’d been low, tackling the cop, so maybe the shards had passed above—

  Where were the others?

  Brody looked around, saw his car parked where he’d left it. No sign of the tactical team, though. He remembered the earpiece, said, “Ops?” He toggled the power button. “Claire?”

  Not even static. The explosion must have damaged it. And his phone, when he pulled it from his pocket, was blank, the screen cracked.

  Brody looked around. A meh block in a crap neighborhood, frame houses sagging under the weight of grey skies. Leafless trees, faded fire hydrants. There were people in the street. Three, running this way. They must have heard the explosion.

  The sniper is nearby.

  Adrenaline slammed through him, muting the pain in his knee, making the pulse pound in his forehead. He forced himself to his feet. “Get down!”

  The Good Samaritans kept coming, moving at a sprint. Brody waved his arms above his head. “Stop! Stop, the . . .”

  There was something odd about them.

  When disaster struck, some people cowered, while others hurried to help. But even the helpful ones did it cautiously. Eyes darting. These three weren’t even looking around. They were just racing at him.

  My god they’re fast. How are they . . .

  The woman wore jeans and a sweatshirt, turquoise running shoes, and a Bowie knife. As she drifted to a stop, she drew the blade, ten inches of sharpened steel with sawback serrations down the spine. The men were armed too; the big guy in the expensive leather jacket carried an aluminum baseball bat, and the pale scarecrow slashed the air with a machete.

  Samaritans they were not.

  Brody drew the Glock, aimed with both hands. “FBI. Drop the weapons.”

  The woman stalked forward. She was maybe twenty. There was something feral to her expression, a wild grin on a dirty face.

  The psych profiles are wrong. There wasn’t a single sniper operating alone. It was a team, some sort of cult, and these three were members. “Down. Do it now!”

  They kept moving.

  Fine. Brody aimed at the girl’s thigh, squeezed the trigger.

  The pin clicked. Misfire. Almost unheard of with a Glock. He racked the weapon to clear it, aimed and squeezed again.

  Another click.

  The gun wasn’t working. It was three on one, and the sniper was out there somewhere, maybe sighting in on him now.

  Brody turned to run.


  First step, he knew he was in trouble. The moment he put pressure on the knee it nearly buckled. Standing, he could lean on the other. But there was no way to run with one leg.

  No way to fight either. Suck it up, Marine. He staggered forward, clenching his fists. Adrenaline pushed the pain far enough that he could keep hobbling along. Not very fast, and not for long. But he didn’t need long. Backup was on the way.

  The tactical team must have been wounded in the explosion, but he’d had an open line to the FBI operations center. They’d been watching the raid on surveillance cameras. The strong arm of the law was racing here now. Squad cars, helicopters, SWAT team. All he had to do was survive until they arrived.

  The street was empty, no traffic in either direction. Brody cut across a parked Jeep. Pounded the pavement. Every footfall an explosion. There must still be some glass inside the knee socket. Jesus that was an awful image.

  A glance over his shoulder showed the three giving chase, their faces twisted into snarls. They weren’t more than thirty feet behind him. He could hear their footfalls, thought he could smell them, a whiff of sweaty body odor. Every time his right foot hit the pain wiped away the world. If the glass worked deeper, his knee would crumple. He’d go down and never get up again.

  There was a liquor store on the corner, the sign burned out, security screens over every window. He angled for it, pushing through each starburst of agony. Behind him, the woman wolf-howled and the others laughed and Brody remembered their speed. They could run him down in a heartbeat.

  They were playing with him. They were dogs and he was the chew toy.

  The thought infuriated and terrified in equal measures.

  He stumbled to the store and yanked the metal door of the security cage. An open padlock dangled from the loops, and he snatched it, slammed the gate shut with a clang, then fumbled with the lock. His hands were slippery and the holes were rusty and the shackle caught on the edge, they were closing, the baseball player winding up, and then the padlock slid home and snapped shut. Brody leapt backward as the aluminum bat slammed into the thick metal bars with a sound like a car crash. He’d made it.

  The other two joined the baseball player, the three staring through the thick metal bars. The scarecrow with the machete smiled, revealing a horror show of tweaker’s dentition. There was something about them, some side effect of fear hormones or trick of the light that made them seem hyper-real, as if they were in sharper focus than the rest of the world. He could smell the sweet foulness of their breath, though Brody noticed that where he was panting and soaked in pain-sweat, they weren’t even winded.

  “Feeling safe?” The baseball player rested his hands on the bars, gave them a test rattle.

  “About a thousand cops are on their way,” Brody said.

  “That right?” The scarecrow’s laugh was high-pitched and manic. He slapped the baseball player on the back. “You hear that?”

  “Very frightening.” The men exchanged looks, then set their weapons on the concrete. They moved languidly, like they had all the time in the world, as they took hold of neighboring bars and began to pull.

  Brody almost laughed. This was a lousy neighborhood, and one thing shop owners invested in was security. The bars were an inch thick. It’d take a tow truck’s winch to make them wobble.

  The veins stood out on the men’s arms. Their teeth grit tight. Feet braced against the cage for leverage.

  With a slow scream, the bars began to bend.

  The panic that drenched Brody then was unlike anything he’d known. There had been moments in his life when death seemed imminent, and every single one of them had shaken him to the core. But this.

  “See, little bunny?” The girl smiled. “No one can save you.”

  He turned, banged through the door into the shop. There were no customers, and the fluorescents were out, leaving the air soupy with screened daylight. He limped to the counter, encased in inch-thick Plexi. No one behind it. The door to the office was locked. Over the shriek of yielding metal he heard the woman’s crystalline laugh.

  A weapon. He needed a weapon.

  The Glock could probably be fixed, but not in time. He had his cuffs, but no pepper spray or backup gun, extra weight eschewed by most agents.

  The liquor bottles were all behind the Plexi. There was a rack of candy bars, another of chips.

  “A little more. Just a little more!”

  Neon signs hanging in the window. A display of magazines.

  The girl pushed her head through the hole in the bars, wriggled her hips, and slid inside.

  A fire extinguisher on the wall.

  Brody yanked it free. It weighed about fifteen pounds, and he held it with two hands, one top and one bottom. The woman slowed when she saw it, a flicker of amusement crossing her face. Her eyes darted to his wounded knee, the pant leg sodden with blood. “Oh, sweetie.”

  When she lunged, it was just a blur of motion. Like a train speeding past. He barely got the canister up in time. The steel took the blow with a bong. The impact rang up his arms and numbed his fingers and nearly tore the extinguisher from his hands. Somehow this slender girl could hit like George Foreman. Brody reeled back wrong footed, and a blast of pain from his knee almost dropped him. The girl rebounded and lunged again, too fast to see. He didn’t even try to block. Just threw himself backward like reverse diving into a swimming pool.

  Midair the edge of her knife parted his shirt and cut a line of fire across his belly, and then he crashed into the rack behind him, the gaudy colors of candy wrappers flying in all directions as he tried and failed to break his fall. His back hit the floor square and the breath blew out of him and he lost his grip on the canister. The world wobbled in and out of focus.

  Brody told himself to move. To get up. All he could manage was rolling to his side and sucking desperately for air. Everything hurt. Spots danced in his vision.

  A pair of turquoise running shoes stepped in front of his face.

  Move. Move or you’re going to die right here, on the floor of this liquor store. Gutted by a sorority girl with a Bowie knife.

  “Don’t worry, bunny.” Her voice drifted down. “I’ll make it quick.”

  Air, he needed air, his lungs wouldn’t accept it and his belly burned every time he tried and something had gone very wrong with his knee.

  “Finish him, Raquel.” A man’s voice growled from far away. “Take him.”

  Brody stared at her shoes, and at the ankles that protruded from them, the calves. He saw the ripple of muscle in them as her weight shifted. She would be stooping down with her knife, the edge already slick with blood, but he just stared at her shoes.

  When the heel rocked off the floor he grabbed the trigger of the fire extinguisher with one hand and the nozzle with the other and pointed it up and fired a blast of pressurized potassium bicarbonate where he imagined her face to be.

  The girl shrieked and toppled back on her butt. Her legs splayed out and flailed, the rubber squeaking on the linoleum floor. She dropped the knife and clawed at her eyes, her face frosted with powder. Brody forced himself to sit. He gripped the base of the canister in both hands and tightened his core, ignoring the agony from the slash in his stomach as he unwound a full-strength backhand swing to the side of her head.

  He felt her skull crack. Her hands dropped from her face. Her eyes went glassy.

  And Brody found himself outdoors.

  NINE

  He was in a suburban backyard. Though he’d never seen it before he knew that it was his. The air was thick with the smell of lilacs. Daddy had his arm around Mom. On the wrought iron table there was a cake with HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY Raquel!!! in pink icing. Beside it was a wrapped present, big enough that it might contain an American Girl—

  Before he touched the box, he was in Kara’s house. They’d been inseparable in sixth grade, BFFs, and Kara’s room, with its slanted ceiling covered in pictures of Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and shirtless David Beckham, had been home
-away-from since Dad bailed. They’d already played at makeovers and now were watching a video of a stoned cat and laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, like, literally, it was hurting—

  The world was chlorine smell and the roar of the crowd. Arms spinning in a butterfly stroke, the water turned to foam by the force of the motion. Neck and neck with that Lahser High bitch, the stuck-up chick who always won. Blasting through the pool, goggles too tight, hair tugged back in the swim cap, dragging himself through the water, two of them almost in sync, the end of the lane in sight, both of them pushing, reaching for the wall, and he got there first, he knew he had, but the judge called it for the other girl, took away the victory that belonged to—

  The dorm ceiling was only three feet above the upper bunk, and between the ceiling and his body was Aaron Rutgers, he of the bangs and the dimples. Aaron’s hands were on Brody’s breasts and he was fumbling around down there, trying to get it in, and then he sort of lunged and something tore in Brody’s vagina, it hurt, a lot, actually, but way behind the pain there was something else, something almost nice—

  Sunset over the quad, the sky glowing gold, the trees bursting with buds. Walking across campus and already beginning to disconnect from this place. The whole world out there; the chance to build a career, get married, have beautiful children. Or be repeatedly fired, date a string of losers, have abortions. Either way, life was about to—

  Smeary and loose, muscles not right. Throbbing that was too big for his head to hold. Face on dirty concrete, and blood starting to pool, his blood. Above, voices. Someone said, shit, why’d you hit her so hard? and another replied, get her purse, come on. The strap snapped as someone yanked at it. Footsteps running away. Black spots growing. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair, he’d been waiting so long to begin and everything had been taken over thirteen bucks and a cell phone—