Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Not when Mom and Dad died, not even when she’d become an anonymous number in foster care, not at any other time in her life, had Rook ever felt so alone.

  Chapter 14

  Back home atop her own roof, she saw that behind the spot where she and Fleecey had ridden out the storm, the house had pretty much been scalped. Much of the roof had been sheared free and the neighbor’s pear tree had hooked itself through the living room. A branch over the top where the roof had been and one through the window, as though the tree were making an a-okay sign. Other parts of the house were covered by the attic so they were still more or less dry, though she hadn’t been able to open the bathroom door.

  The porch seemed untouched by the hurricane. Daryl’s windsock was still catching the breeze, and even the silly junk newspapers were lying in place. A fresh bloody handprint on the rail. Another looter, probably. Fleecey had turned out to be some guard cat. The galvanized trash can had walked from one side of the porch to the other but it still gleamed upright in a peek-a-boo of sun.

  Fine.

  Rook lifted the lid. The money duffel was still lying on top.

  Her eyes watered—nothing like the aroma of week-old trash and mildew to slap a girl awake. She screwed up her nerve and fished inside. There, stuffed between wads of twenties was her cell phone. Dead, of course, with no way to charge it.

  Rook threw the phone on top of the duffel and slammed the lid. The stink abated some. Some. If she hadn’t been jonesing for a shower before, she was over the edge now. She jumped back onto the roof and strode to the hole where the bathroom was, then lowered herself through it.

  No wonder she hadn’t been able to open the bathroom door. Asphalt roofing had draped itself over the interior wall. The tub itself wasn’t so bad. She cleared away the rubble and tried the faucet. Wonder of wonders, the water ran, and it was even running clear.

  She kicked off her shoes, then peeled off the nasty hospital gown and cargo pants and threw them on the fallen roofing. But she took the care to drape her skivvies over the tub faucet for washing.

  The water felt good. So good. The first shower in… almost a week? Her head tilted back. Above her the sky rolled gray where the ceiling ought to be. She smelled steamed wood and strawberry shampoo, just like the day they took Daryl. She scrubbed her scalp, her body, the skivvies. Everything rejuvenated.

  The tub drain was sluggish. Rook turned off the water. She realized it might have been smarter to go hunting for a towel before she’d put herself under the tap, though, as everything in the bathroom was good and soggy. No way was she putting that ghastly hospital gown back on. She twisted her hair and wrung it out. Even with the water turned off, sprinkles continued to fall—light rain drifting in through the roof gap. But the droplets were sparse and more wind than wet. A leaf drifted in from somewhere and stuck itself to her shoulder.

  Rook sighted on a ceiling joist and jumped. No more effort than she might use to jump for a book on a high shelf, but she went rising, rising like a helium balloon. Fleecey jumped after her, though she just moved like a cat.

  The asphalt shingles were warm beneath Rook’s feet. Fleecey took a few slinky steps ahead and then crouched low, moving in long, wary strides. Rook paused. No neighbors out as far as she could tell. They’d all evacuated. But someone was out there. Out here. Moving in the flooded street and angling toward the house. It looked like a man.

  Fleece curled herself over the porch overhang and looked down, muscles taught at the shoulders.

  “Let me handle this, Fleece,” Rook whispered.

  The cat turned around and looked at her with wide green eyes. The blood stain at her muzzle had gone brown.

  Rook stepped across the roof, making herself light, light, light so that she made no sound. The wind played across her wet skin.

  Adam. He was moving through the water where the sidewalk might have been, taking heavy, knee-raising steps with shoulders in side-to-side motion. He looked like a water moccasin. He slogged up the walkway and then onto the porch before disappearing from her line of sight. Hadn’t seen her.

  Rook stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down over the soffit. The sun came out from behind the clouds and warmed Rook’s bare back, a breeze tickling her skin.

  Below, Adam threw the trash can lid to the sidewalk where it bounced and then landed with a whisper splash. Garbage stench ballooned up to Rook’s nostrils.

  She lowered herself, spider light, over the roof edge and down to a crouch atop the porch rail.

  He was leaning over the trash can, back toward her, his hand in the duffel. It looked like he was counting the money. He was wearing a bloody tee shirt with a pack of smokes rolled in and someone else’s too-short dungarees. Bare feet. Around his right wrist was the hospital bracelet. His left wrist was still clasped in handcuffs. Rook stared. It looked like blood on the empty cuff.

  Adam finished counting and hoisted the duffel over his shoulder. She kept still. He turned and she was in full view of him for just a moment as he continued around and reached for the door, but he still didn’t see her.

  She said, “Adam.”

  He whipped his head around.

  Rook maintained her crouch on the railing, and—oddly enough—felt no ail of modesty for being naked out in the open. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?”

  “Coming for you.”

  “Well here I am.” She jumped to the floorboards and faced him, her body feeling lithe and tall and ready. He watched her sideways as she moved.

  He said, “Glad to see ya standin up. For a second there you looked like a fucking gargoyle.”

  He stepped toward her, and she moved, too, at an angle so that they circled one another. Fleecey watched from the overhang.

  “What happened to that cop who was chained to you?” she said.

  He regarded his wrist and then eyed her, a slow, annoyed tension at his mouth, and did not answer.

  She said, “Whatcha want here, Adam? You got your money.”

  “Where’s the rest of it at?”

  “What rest?”

  He leaned in toward her. “The coke. My gun.”

  “Are you high? I didn’t touch’m.”

  “That ain’t my problem. You were supposed to stash it all. So now I guess you owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you shit. The police got it all in custody.”

  He looked furious, his face calicoed with black capillaries. “Too bad for you. Means you better come up with the financial equivalent right now.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or you’ll have to pay for it with a pound of flesh.” He stepped closer.

  She said, “Tell ya what. Take one more step toward me and I’ll be the one taking flesh from you.”

  “That so?”

  “Pound by pound, Adam, til I’ve stripped you to your tired, miserable, naked, white, godforsaken BONES!”

  His face was livid. His grip on the duffel caused the veins in his hands to cast shadows. She wanted him to take that dare, take a step, take a swing at her. She would fill her lungs and give him the blow job of his ever-loving lifetime.

  But, “Is that so?” was all he said, affecting like he was humoring her.

  And yet he’d stopped advancing. He paused and pulled a smoke from the roll in his tee, greaser style, and waved it cold at the empty neighborhood. "Can you believe this shit?”

  He cupped his hand over the cigarette and lit it. “It's Marshall law. The hurricane knocked out law enforcement. A man can do anything he wants."

  "Oh yeah? Like what?"

  "Lawlessness, baby. Anything."

  "Don't call me baby."

  "Oh yeah, I forgot about all that. No kissing. Don't call you baby. What should I call you? Your Royal Vagi-ness?"

  She leaned forward and hissed, a hollow roar that momentarily brought a gale back to the trees. His face showed fear and wonder.

  “Quit acting like a child and start taking this seriously." She hadn’t intended to use the patois, but it cam
e out that way.

  The cigarette dropped from his lips. Whatever fury might have been left in him seemed to drain away with the last exhalation of smoke. Fleecey leapt down onto the railing.

  “It’s true,” Adam said. “It’s all real.”

  “What’s true? You understand what I just said?”

  “No, I ain’t got a green idea what language you’re speaking. But I’ve heard you speak it before. In a dream.”

  She eyed him. He sounded sincere.

  “You and them others,” he said. “Y’all talk that way and you got me trapped in there with you somehow.”

  “You dreamed this?”

  “Dreamed, yeah, whatever. ‘Cept I ain’t slept since that day when the ambulance came. What did you do to me? I should be dead, but you did something.”

  “I don’t know, Adam.”

  “You know where I spent last night? Under water. All night. Under water. Never come up for air. No sleeping, just sitting there with my thumb up my ass. Am I dead? Just tell me.”

  “No idea.” She pushed past him into the house.

  He hefted the duffel full of bills and called after her. “I don’t even know what to do with this. Don’t need to eat or sleep and couldn’t care less about spending it.”

  “So why’d you come?” she called back.

  In the bedroom were some clean clothes and a towel that hadn’t been throttled by the storm. Adam was still out on the porch, hulking just beyond the window while she got dressed.

  He said, “I came to see you cuz I needed to know what the hell is going on.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Tell me what to do,” he said, and, “take me with you.”

  “Take you with me where?”

  “Wherever you’re going.”

  “What? Helllllll no.” She finished dressing and stomped back out to the porch to face him.

  He looked small and vicious. Nothing like the man he’d been only a week ago.

  She gestured toward his wrist. “What happened to the cop who was handcuffed to you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You done lost your mind.”

  “I lost something! It’s your fault. I just—I think you’re supposed to tell me what to do.”

  “Adam, it’s time for you to leave. I got enough troubles.”

  “Wait, tell me what does this mean,” he asked, and then he garbled out a few words in the patois.

  Crude and messy the way he spoke it, but she understood. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From that other place. I was on some kind of hot seat, but I got let loose somehow. Didn’t understand the words. Never been so scared in my life. Then I saw you and those other three, I don’t know if y’all are supposed to rain hellfire or salvation, or both.”

  She stared at him. Her head was pounding. Things were eroding beyond repair, and she understood nothing and everything; it just depended on whether she was using her mind or her gut.

  “Tell me what it means,” Adam demanded.

  She sighed. “It means that you’re spared judgment until the second death.”

  “Judgment,” he said, his gaze gone stark. “I get a second chance?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I do. It’s you. Whatever you and those other three are cooking, you drafted me to serve in your army.” He shook the handcuff at her. “Look, it makes sense, suddenly I got no compunction for killing anyone. Feel like I got nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you to tell me to sic ‘em or save ‘em.”

  Rook thought of Fleecey, watching from the railing with her tail going like a snake. The blood on her muzzle and paws. And Rook thought of the visions of a hurricane in the dust. Inevitability.

  She shook her head. “I may call on you if I need you. Then again, I may not. All I care about at this point is finding Daryl. You go ahead and get on outtta here for now.”

  He lifted the duffel full of cash. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and ground her knuckles into her temples. “Just hang on to it. Look, just stay out of my way for now, alright? Stay out of my way.”

  He nodded, and without another word, stepped from the porch and went splashing down Louisiana Avenue in the direction he’d come.

  She heard a boat motor and watched the water where Adam’s thin wake was still spreading toward the house. The sound of the motor drew nearer.

  Now what, she thought. National Guard?

  A flat-bottomed boat, had to have been thirty years old, motored into view. It held two seats, a giant metal chest, and a man: Speck, shirt off with a bloody bandage across his back shoulder. He turned the boat toward the house and then cut the motor.

  Chapter 15

  “What are you doing on my front porch?” Rook said.

  “I’m not on your front porch. I’m in my boat. I was on your front porch earlier and got hammered by that crazy white goblin cat.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Speck heaved a disgusted stream of air. “I came to see if you were alright.”

  Rook stared at him.

  He added, “For real. You’re the only wacko I know who deliberately stayed back to ride it out.”

  Rook stepped off the porch and went to the water’s edge, looking him over. The bandage on his back was filthy and weeping. “That dressing needs to be changed. You should get to a hospital.”

  “No way. Where do you think I just came from? Everything’s a mess. They’re trying to evacuate us out, too.”

  “The paramedics? So there’s no EMS?”

  “They told us we have to evacuate, only they keep sending us on wild goose chases looking for buses that don’t exist. I finally just left.”

  “And came here.”

  “Everyone else is gone. All my friends. My phone’s out. I was gonna just gather up as many people as I could and bug out. I heard you give your address to your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. Hey, you can’t just run around with your skin torn up like this. You’re gonna get infected.”

  “Well, sew me up then.”

  She gaped at him. “Sew you up? I can’t just do that.”

  He leaned over and opened a huge metal chest stuffed with medical supplies. “Sure you can. I got everything we need. I’ll talk you through it.”

  Speck sat down on a seat with a camouflage cover and waited while Rook boarded his craft and checked him over. The gouge on his back was nasty. It had been running all night when it should have been stitched. Fleecey, apparently. She seemed to have developed an aggressive side somewhere between mouth-to-nose and Hurricane Katrina. There was another gash across Speck’s forehead. Rook cleaned him and used an alcohol bath to sterilize a needle, and sewed him up. Worlds easier than she’d have imagined. His forehead just needed cleaning and taping, not real stitches like on his back. He was stoic. It had to have hurt. He did babble his head off, though. Told her his first name was Mike or Steve or Chris or something she immediately forgot, but who was he kidding? His name was Speck.

  When she’d finished, she sat down next to him and popped a bottled water from a case near her feet. “So. Where’s your stuff?”

  “What stuff?”

  She said, “I don’t know, a suitcase or something. You said you wanted to gather up survivors and then bug out, but the whole boat’s taken up by your massive first aid kit. If you’re evacuating, where’s all your personal stuff?”

  “I need the medical kit. I’m EMS.”

  “You have no intention of evacuating.”

  He popped a water and rubbed his upper lip. “Well, I guess all I really want to do is help people get to the buses and helicopters.”

  “A medical mercenary. Ha!”

  “Starting with you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I find my sister.”

  “So we bring her along too. Where she at?”

  “Still trying to figure that one out
myself. I’m halfway through a list of addresses but don’t have a map to find my way.”

  “She didn’t evacuate?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t think so.”

  “Well, tell ya what. I know this city’s layout better than anyone. Give me the addresses and I’ll take you to each one.”

  “It might take a while.”

  He shrugged. “Works for me. We go looking for your sister but we pick up any survivors we come across along the way. You just help, OK?”

  She considered this. “Hang on.”

  Rook jumped out of the boat and went back up the front porch, closing the door behind her so that Speck couldn’t see what she was doing. Inside, she leapt up through the roof gaps to get to the bathroom, fetched the tickler file from her cargo pants, and then leapt back over the wall to the living room. Fleecey was grooming herself there in the pear tree, nestled in the thumb dip of the a-okay sign. Fleecey and her nine lives.

  Rook picked her up. The cat went limp in her arms like a warm sack of rice, all purrs and snuggles. You’d never know she’d been savaging looters and mercenary paramedics. Rook walked with her back to the front porch.

  Speck rose when he saw her. “This mean we got a deal?”

  “Deal,” Rook said, stepping with Fleecey back into the boat.

  Speck looked down his knife nose at the cat. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s coming with us.”

  “Are you kidding? That thing’s gonna eat me.”

  “She’s cool.”

  Fleecey’s tail stirred the air as she watched Speck, and her antagonistic expression did nothing to back up Rook’s claim of peace. The truth was, Rook wanted to keep an eye on Fleecey. She needed to understand the exact nature of what was going on with her, no guesswork.

  Rook said, “I need to keep her with me, is all.”

  “I don’t think—“

  “I go, she goes.”

  Speck pulled a long face, but he untied the boat from the spindle and pushed off.

  Rook whispered into Fleecey’s ear, “Give Speck a break, okay, Fleece?” and they glided out across the lawn.

  Chapter 16