Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Chapter 15

  Brilliant Disguise

  A police patrol escort was parked outside our house for the next two nights, and the NSA put a tap on our phone. As a group, we’d gone to the safety deposit box, and found that it was all true. A slip of paper gave the address of a drug-turned-weapons smuggler in a small town in Georgia, part of the former USSR. The man had already been arrested, but the uranium was never delivered.

  Cole’s apartment, which my parents had been managing during my self-imposed exile, had been savaged. His furniture was slashed. His papers burned. Mirrors broken. His suit linings cut from their wool. We found the bank account through Swiss Federal records.

  It contained 600 million dollars. Natalie was dead. Jerry was dead. Cole was dead. I was the only one left.

  “Take the money,” I told the FBI, then NSA, and then the DOD. But they wanted me to keep it as bait. The used shyster would be back, they assured me, and his clothes, hair, and even his accent, were probably a disguise.

  Over the next two days, I worked on a new painting. Four shadowy figures rode atop their horses. The redhead in front was clearer now to me, so I drew her wide-set brown eyes and long, narrow nose. The next rider had become a little clearer, too. Her hair shone like the scales of a fish. The others were still dark. We trotted through a desert of concrete waves and human dreck.

  My skin itched. I scratched my face under the bandages, and was surprised that it seemed smooth. Rossoff reduced my Oxycontin, so I got a second doctor, doubled my scrip, and began snorting it. At night I didn’t sleep; instead I painted and sweated. The whole house was hot. It was late autumn with a broken furnace, but no one had bothered to call for repairs, because even with the windows open, the house was eighty degrees.

  My parents looked exhausted, and I wished just once that I’d surprised them, and done something kind. So I cooked dinner that night. Sautéed cod with lemon and parsley.

  The second night, I decided to surprise my father and wear the red veil he’d given me. Sitting at my vanity, I unwound the gauze around my face. Layer after layer.

  When I was done, I didn’t move, or even breathe, for a long time.

  I was healed. Lips re-grown. Hair short and curly - thick, red locks, where once, I’d been a dirty blonde. My face was smooth again, though leopard spotted like the rest of my skin. My eyes had grown wider, and my lips were narrowed in a way that suggested shrewdness. My nose was longer and slightly crooked but not unpleasant.

  “Who are you?” I asked the girl in the mirror. She gazed back at me, just as shocked.

  I didn’t show my parents that night - I was afraid they wouldn’t recognize me. So I stayed in my room, and got used to the new curves of my face.

  Chapter 16

  New, Dark Mask

  They must have used silencers, because they took me by surprise. My door swung open. The shyster and two slender, leathery men in equally cheap suits pointed their guns.

  He gestured with both barrels for me to get up. In silence, I followed them to my parents’ bedroom. It was small, just a queen-sized bed, sewing table, and double dresser. Their brown slippers lay on either side, pointing out.

  Shyster flicked the light.

  My father was the first to sit up, and charge. He got no warning. Only a perfectly aimed bullet to the center of his forehead. Then he slid along the headboard.

  “Dad!” I cried as his eyes twitched. He looked at me without recognition.

  My mother was up, too, but knew better now, than to move. She watched with opened eyes, and I admired her strength suddenly, that she could be so silent, as her husband of thirty-two years bled to death beside her. She blinked as the shyster shot her, too.

  “Mom!” I screamed, as she tried to stem the flow from her neck with her hands. She didn’t now know me, either. I remembered then, how much my face had changed.

  Now the gun was pointed at me. Maybe they found out I’d called the police. Maybe they’d gotten the uranium they’d wanted, and were cleaning up loose ends. I wasn’t frightened anymore. I’d lost everything, so what was the point?

  I looked at the shyster’s pointed chin, and imagined it melting. Imagined his blood, boiling, and cooking his skin from the inside out. I wanted it to happen slowly. I wanted him to hurt.

  A bead of sweat ran down the corner of his face. Flashing against the blood-spattered walls were red and blue police lights. They’d been doing that all night, and I realized their drivers had to be dead, too.

  “What a waste,” I said.

  He cocked the trigger. It was so hot in here now that my hair had risen in the static electricity, and the other men were panting.

  This time I didn’t hesitate, or worry, like in Tower Two, that I did not deserve to be saved. I cocked my knee back, and with all my strength, kicked him between the legs. The gun went off. I felt the bullet graze my shoulder before I heard the pop.

  My parents, on the bed, were still watching me, opened eyed, and I realized they were not yet dead.

  My rage was not a contained thing. I thought of those planes that I hated so much, that had turned everything to ashes, and of Cole, and myself, and his family, and now mine.

  The shyster’s suit ignited. The sound was like tearing wind. And then the others exploded into flames, too. The fire spread as they screamed and bubbled inside their skin. It lit up the blankets, the curtains, my parents’ bodies, and the hall. I pulled it back for a moment, just to make sure that I could. The pain entered me instead, and the shyster sighed, weeping his relief. Then I gave it back to him and he howled.

  I walked out the bedroom and down the hall. The fire followed me. I took my red scarf and wrapped it about my face. Then dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and pocketed my morphine and passport. The walls turned red, and my paintings melted. I walked out of the house. The smell was wood and chemical and flesh. So familiar. Like I’d lived it my whole life, had been destined to it. Would always live it, again and again.

  Parked out in front was the slaughter. Cops with slit throats littered the blazing lawn like fall leaves. A limousine with its windows down was parked in front of the house. Inside were the driver and three men in expensive blue suits. The one in the middle looked out at me.

  As it pulled away, we locked eyes. His face was different; darker now, and his head shaven clean. But I knew him. I’d know him anywhere. The man who’d given me the ring that was now buried beneath my skin. He ground his teeth, and for a lone, idiot second, I was grateful he’d survived.

  Then I understood. He’d sold me out.

  As the car pulled from the curb, I pulled off my scarf so he could see me, and know the face that would haunt his dreams. The face that would track him, no matter how far he ran. He mouthed something to me as the men on either side shoved him down into his seat, and the car revved down the tree-lined street: You.

  Behind me, the fire blew, and so did the house.

  Bare footed, I walked out into the road, and knew now, what I had become. The girl from my own dreams, out of the shadows. Unmasked. The red-headed rider of war. The first of four. My rage burned bright like it always had, like it always would.

  I flew to Switzerland that night, and claimed my bounty. And then I began my hunt. With the money I created a new identity:

  I would avenge my parents, and requite the man who’d betrayed me. I would destroy my enemies, and all those, friend or foe, who got in my way.

  RUSH

  SARAH PINBOROUGH

  Chapter 1

  ‘It was my fault. All of it.’

  Rain came down in sheets outside. Lucy wasn’t surprised. For a while she said nothing more, but stared. Heavy grey drops beat at the thick plate glass. They clung to the surface and slid helplessly downwards. She imagined them falling away and screaming silently before crashing into the street below.

  Tears dripped from her cheeks and chin; the water from within paralleling the water from without. The moisture was salty as she licked it from her lips. The ghost of th
e sea. The ghosts in the sea. She pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them. Her white hospital trousers smelt of starch. She’d grown to like it.

  ‘Survivors of terrible events usually feel some responsibility.’ Dr Marsh’s pen rested on paper on the other side of the desk. The doctor was, as usual, impeccably dressed. Her pantyhose whispered as she carefully re-crossed her legs. Lucy wondered if they were silk. Probably, she decided. The doctor’s voice was like that expensive underwear; soft and smooth and elusively cool.

  ‘You were simply lucky, Lucy. We’ve discussed this before.’ She paused. ‘You have to help me deconstruct this delusion of personal blame if I’m to help you recover. You have to try to move on.’ The pen tapped quietly on the notebook. ‘You don’t have to be the same as you were before. It’s natural to feel changed. Two hundred thousand people died and you didn't. It was a life-changing experience.’

  Lucky Lucy. She almost smiled. She felt sorry for Dr Marsh. They went round in circles every time. The room was huge; the carpet thick, red and lush. Downstairs, everything was white; her walls her sheets, her table. She liked coming up here just for the colours, if nothing else. She sighed and swallowed. Her saliva tasted muddy.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The changing started before we went. That’s why we went. Somewhere inside, I knew.”

  Chapter 2

  Lucy Miller stood staring at the sparkling lights in the window of Selfridges on the other side of the road. She didn’t realise that she’d stepped out into the traffic of Oxford Street until her reverie was broken by the squeal of brakes and blasting horns. The red double-decker glared at her and she stared back, dumb and inanimate.

  The driver leant out through the side window, his face an angry mass of wrinkles as he gestured with one arm.

  ‘Get out of the road, you stupid bitch!’ he growled.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she answered to the departing wave of traffic before stepping back onto the pavement. She needed a coffee. Something to shake her mind awake. She was drinking a lot of coffee these days.

  Starbucks was warm and her nose tingled from the late-November icy frost, the steam from her latte condensing on her burning cheeks. She swallowed the first mouthful without blowing on the surface and let the liquid scald her throat in an effort to wake her mind. Every day was a haze and she needed to break free of it. It had been that way since she turned twenty-five more than two months previously; the two and five getting larger in her mind with each day that passed. Quarter of a century. Four quarters make a whole. Four is the magic number. She ignored the thought. Like so many she was having these days it just didn't make any sense.

  She squeezed into a corner past a bundle of bags and coats and laughing groups of friends and took the last empty stool. Settled and invisible, she gazed out at the hustle and bustle on the street. Wrapped figures scurried along the busy pavements, heads down and buried in scarves against the chill, but most moving with a briskness that belied a growing excitement at the approaching festive season. Party season. The season of goodwill. Christmas. She searched inside for some small buzz, but there was nothing. She frowned.

  She should be happy. She was happy. Technically so, anyway. She just couldn’t find any evidence of the emotion in the whirrs and clicks of her body. She let the coffee cool before the next sip. A couple walking by laughed so loudly that she could hear it through the window and over the hubbub of the café. It was a sound that matched their body language. Their laughter was in a harmony of its own. As they clung to each other passers-by made space for them as if subconsciously aware that these two were lost in a bubble of togetherness that shouldn’t be broken.

  Watching them made her think of Michael, ten years older than her but still a boy. Could he still make her laugh like that? Or had their love moved on from that?

  She yawned fiercely and checked her watch. Nearly four p.m. It was no surprise the sky was so gloomy. When had she last left the office this early? She couldn't remember. Often she worked until seven or eight or even later if she was designing a new advertising campaign for a client and then she’d arrive home with a smile, a bottle of wine and a Chinese take-away, still flushed with the adrenaline of creating something exceptional. She was an award-winning success, she reminded herself, licking the foamy cream from the back of her spoon. Maybe that was it. She added another sugar and watched it dissolve on the surface like crumpling sand dunes. Executive burn-out. All done by twenty-five. There would be a few at the agency that would be happy enough about that. Still, that wasn’t going to stop her leaving early today and maybe even tomorrow. The strong coffee was waking her up a little but that was it. She was still thirsty.

  She tried not to think about the thirst. It made her tired mind uneasy.

  * * *

  She’d downed a two-litre bottle of still Evian from the fridge and re-filled it with tap water before Michael got home. She'd had all the tests and there was nothing wrong with her – no diabetes, no kidney problems – she was just endlessly thirsty. Still, sometimes she'd catch him watching her as she drained glass after glass. She didn't like the concern in his eyes. It somehow made her feel like a child.

  ‘Hey, baby.’ He leaned in to kiss her cheek and his familiar scent drifted up to her over the vegetables and chicken she stir-fried noisily. ‘You’re home early.’

  ‘All the Christmas campaigns are done.’ She smiled. ‘I did some present browsing then came home.’

  He pushed some loose dark hair out of her face, tucking it carefully behind her ear. Even though it felt as if there was a gulf in that tiny space between the tips of his fingers and the skin of her cheeks, his touch was comforting.

  ‘Wine?’ As his lips brushed her neck, she leaned into his warmth.

  ‘That would be good. This’ll be done in a few minutes.’ Her throat raged again as she watched him tug the cork free. Wine, water - either would do. Any liquid to cool the burn in her throat.

  She put their plates down and ate her food with a gusto she didn’t feel. She’d added too much Soya sauce and the salt itched at her throat. She took a long slow gulp of the crisp wine, enjoying the tingle that rushed to her head, even if it wasn’t doing much to ease the dryness in the soft lining at the back of her mouth. Screw it. Maybe getting just a little bit drunk wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe it would shift her unreasonable restlessness.

  She took another swallow and leaned back in the chair. A distraction, that's what she needed. She watched Michael, her eyes following the thick curve of his arms beneath his shirt as he lifted his fork to eat. She liked his arms. They turned her on.

  'What?' he said. 'You not hungry?'

  ‘Not for this.’ She said as his fork paused just outside his open mouth. 'Early night?'

  He chewed slowly. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’

  They took the rest of the bottle of wine to bed and gasped and grunted as they thrust and moaned and touched, until Lucy almost, but not quite, filled the empty space inside her. She came hard – twice - once as he fucked her and once pressed against his face, but neither left her satisfied and she resented the lost liquid that now soaked the sheets beneath her thighs.

  Eventually, Michael lay on his back and pulled her into his chest. The pulse of his heart thudded in her ear and the thick hair that matted on his chest tickled at her nose. She wondered how long she had to lie there until she could roll over to the privacy of her side of the mattress. It was an uncharitable thought but was one she was having more often. In the grainy gloom the walls crept closer inwards. She was restless - trapped like a caged animal. But why? Nothing had changed in her life; no traumas taking their toll, everything was pretty much as it had been for a while – close to perfect. Perfect job, perfect man, perfect life. Somehow it made her want to shoot a hole in her brain.

  A fresh itch teased the back of her throat. She waited until Mike’s breathing slowed and he was lost to her before carefully pushing back the covers and padding out into the hallway. The air cooled her slic
k skin.

  She raised her shoulders and strutted into the dark kitchen. Her body shone like pearls in an inky ocean. Her stomach was taut beneath her full, high breasts. Maybe it was her imagination but it seemed as if she’d somehow become more toned and defined over the past few weeks. Since the thirst came.

  Her steps were silent. She was an Amazon; a wild woman of some lost African tribe. Lions and panthers purred and hid in the shadowy shapes under the breakfast bar. With Michael and the rest of the world asleep, she felt free to be herself. Whoever that was.

  She turned on the cold tap and with the first patter of liquid on the ceramic basin a shiver of anticipation ran down her spine. Shit, she hadn’t felt like this when Mike’s fingers and tongue had touched her earlier. This need was different. This was so much more. Her momentary good mood left her as the hollow space ached, demanding filling.

  She didn't bother to take a glass from the shelf but lowered her mouth under the stream. The cool water was sweet and she sucked it free from the metal outlet, the tang of limescale tainting her tongue. God, that was good. Her throat opened involuntarily, the water flowing unhindered by gulps. Her hair trailed in the sink, black seaweed floating in wet strands on the surface. She didn’t care. She was lost in the sheer pleasure of liquid.

  She stood bent over the sink for a full minutes, maybe more. When she straightened, the warmth had fled and goosebumps prickled every inch of her skin. Her wet hair slapped against her back and she trembled violently with the chill. Her stomach, which had been so flat and tight as she’d crept out of bed, was now a blown balloon and she could feel the water moving in it as she rubbed her hair semi-dry in a tea towel. It was an ocean inside her. A dam ready to burst. She felt uncomfortable in the semi-darkness; now more like prey than hunter. How much had she drunk? Two litres? Ten? Surely that couldn’t be good for you?