Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Through the opening of the fifth cave, D-Girl saw the massive white wall on the river. She could hear the other women running, like the thundering of horse’s hooves, but she wasn’t sure whether they were running to something or running away.

  And then the earth began to shake… and the white wall exploded outward in a storm of earth and rock and blinding white light…

  And the voice boomed through the cave:

  !!!!!COME!!!!

  D-Girl sat up in bed with the word echoing from her dream:

  She flung back the bedclothes. She was wide awake, her heart beating like thundering hooves. Yes. She had to find them. When she was with them she felt free, and powerful, so powerful. And there was a longing, too. There were others – others like her. They were a herd. The others would know what the tunnels meant, and the pyramid, and the caves. The others would know what to do with these feelings that were overwhelming her.

  But come - where?

  She reached to her bed stand for The Script, which she had been reading before she fell asleep, and turned to the end, although she knew what she would find:

  EXT. EGYPT – DUNES - DAY

  Pyramids, of course. The sand dunes. The last scene took place in Egypt. That’s where she was meant to go. That’s where she would meet the women.

  Elation at the clue was quickly replaced with worry. This was a problem. How could she possibly get to Egypt? Egypt was a million miles away. Her credit cards were already maxed out, and even if she could get a paycheck loan from the studio, last-minute travel was hideously expensive these days and it would be months before LAX was back to regular flight schedules.

  But she had to go. There must be something about this that she was missing.

  She took the script and went out onto the small garden patio in the back of the duplex. It was a nice garden, when there was no drought. The sun was already hot and bright in the sky.

  She sat on a chaise lounge and lay back, closing her eyes. The sun was warm on her skin, warmer by the second (Fire...)

  She felt droplets of perspiration forming at her hairline (Water…)

  Her consciousness floated like driftwood. Her soul stretched across the ocean and into the earth. In her heart three other sets of feet pounded out a strange rhythm that sang to her. She recognized them, feminine and strong. And dangerous. Just like her. Just like her but different.

  She breathed in (Air…) and let the dream take her.

  They were running, running across the white plane… vast white flatness…

  They were running, or riding, she wasn’t sure, four women, four horses, hair and manes and hooves and feet flying on the ground, flying in the wind...

  Beyond the plain were dunes, golden sand dunes….

  And the hooves pounded and the hair flew and the voice echoed through her being…

  !!!!COME!!!!

  The voice jolted her back to consciousness. Her eyes flew open.

  She was in the garden again, the summer heat beating down, radiating off the bricks and stepping stones in watery waves.

  She licked her lips and tasted salt.

  Salt.

  The white was salt.

  But are there salt plains in Egypt? I don’t think so

  She sat up, suddenly electrified. But there are not far from here.

  What if it wasn’t Egypt?

  If we were actually shooting Apocalypse, would we shoot in Egypt? Of course we wouldn’t. No completion bond company would allow a major film crew anywhere in the Mideast as long as that endless war is going on.

  So where would we go?

  But she already knew. It was so obvious. The salt plain should have tipped her off right away.

  Chapter 12

  Death Valley, three thousand square miles of desert in Southeastern California. At 281 feet below sea level it was the lowest, driest and hottest valley in the U.S., the lowest elevation in North America, and held the record high for temperature on the continent. In fact the temperatures were among the highest on the planet: over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for over one third of the year; and above 120 degrees was common in the summer.

  Death Valley was often shot for Egypt, and other mythic places, too, including some footage of Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine in Star Wars.

  And it was a mere four-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A. D-Girl had called in and postponed all her day’s meetings, knowing they would never be rescheduled, packed the car (with bottled water and several six-packs of bottled Starbucks iced mochas, mostly…) and drove.

  The farther she got from L.A. the freer she felt. It was indescribably right, speeding out I-15 toward Barstow, through the desert hills with the tule formations, those odd holey rocks, and the Santa Fe trains running parallel to the freeway. After two hours, a turn onto CA-127, deeper into the desert, through sand fields with spiky yucca trees. The sun beat down on the road, creating shimmering heat mirages. The miles seemed to fly by; she was playing the soundtrack from the original Terminator, music for Sarah Connor on her own doomsday drive into the desert.

  Now through the gates of Death Valley National Park, and a turn onto Furnace Creek Road. Every road sign was confirmation that she was in the right place: Badwater, Devil’s Golf Course, Devil’s Hole, Saline Valley, Dante’s View. She lowered the car top of the Mustang and let the hot, dry wind whip through her hair.

  Over a hill and there they were now, the dunes from her dream, huge and golden, with the constant snakelike rippling of sand in the wind. And there, spread out before her like a vast white carpet, were the salt flats.

  She parked by the trailhead and got out of the car. Of course there was no walking allowed on the salt pan but those were rules from a different universe, a galaxy far, far away.

  She started down the gritty slope toward the white.

  Once she hit the salt she kept walking. The salt was hard and crunchy beneath her feet; it had melted and formed itself time and time again with rain and wind and heat and weather.

  She finally stopped and looked out on the vastness and for the first time in forever she knew she was not on a movie set: this was real, this was right, this was life.

  She sat and then lay back in the salt sand, settling into the earth.

  The night came with its spectacular stars, the Milky Way like a gigantic solid rainbow bridge in the sky above the white salt pan. D-Girl was a small dark spot in the vastness of white, with the stars above her. The night was freezing and she pressed her body against the fading warmth of the earth. She remembered an old Girl Scout trick – lie back against the earth at night and say to yourself, “I’m looking up, I’m looking up…” and then switch to “I’m looking down” and suddenly feel yourself barely attached by gravity to the earth as you stared down into the endless galaxy…

  She tried it and felt herself flying, flying off the planet, flying into the cosmos, dancing with the spiraling stars.

  * * *

  She woke at dawn.

  She was still lying in the middle of the salt field. There had been no dreams, but surely that was because they were coming for her, any moment now.

  The sun was cresting the horizon– an enormous fiery coral ball. The moon was full and glowing white on the opposite side of the horizon.

  Welcome to the Apocalypse, she thought.

  She stood up slowly, a bit stiff, and stood in the middle of the salt pan. It seemed she was the only living thing left on the planet – devastation and lifelessness were all around her and it was beautiful, more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in her life.

  Then her attention was drawn to the horizon line. For a moment she could not see what she sensed there… then a speck appeared in the distance, on the serpentine curve of road.

  This is it, she thought.

  The speck grew slowly bigger: a car, boxy and silver. Elation bubbled in her stomach, made her ears tingle. Was it the women? The screenwriter?

  She could hear the engine rumbling now, an annoyingly familiar sound, gratin
g in the vast wind-swept silence of the desert.

  The car skirted the edge of the salt pan and came to a stop beside her Mustang. A man got out, very dark against the blinding white of the salt. He looked down at her… then started down the earth slope toward her.

  Detective Mackey approached her over the white, and stopped a few feet from her. She brushed her hair away from her face; it was impossible to keep it out of her eyes in the constant wind.

  They looked at each other… she could see a faint sheen of sweat already glistening on his forehead. He was in his shirtsleeves today, no coat, and his muscular arms were as lovely as his long, long, legs.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she told him. “You could die out here.”

  “Where were you night before last, Ms. Lerner?” he asked, finally.

  There was a vague memory of a stinking cave of darkness, of blue flame.

  “Did you see?” she asked back.

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. I saw.”

  She lifted her shoulders. It was so long ago, and all of that was merely the beginning.

  Mackey straightened, squaring his own shoulders, black and regal against the white. “Ms. Lerner, I’m here to arrest you for the murders of Joel Birnbaum, Jose Sanchez, Victor Aguilera, Manuel Acevedo, Bronnell Jones, and Sharonda Lewis.” His voice was heavy and formal. He sounded tired. “I’m going to take you back to L.A., now.”

  “No, you can’t do that,” she said, calmly. “It’s not in the script.”

  A strange look passed over his face, or maybe it was the rain shadow. “Ms. Lerner… Valerie… I think you need some help. I’m going to do my best to get it for you.”

  “Oh, I have help,” she reassured him. “They’ll be here soon.” She frowned a little. “But I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, and I think it would be better if you left.”

  The wind had picked up and it was very loud, deafening, a merciless rhythm, like the pounding of hooves, with sand and salt whipping and stinging. A cloud was on the horizon, a sandstorm, she realized. And that would be only the first storm.

  She could see them now, the horses and the riders, galloping through the sandstorm, manes and tails and hair and feet and hooves flying. Couldn’t he see them? Thundering now.

  The sun blazed above, turning the sky as white as the salt around them, it was all white, blinding white, killing white, like the light in the cave that the scarred girl had been opening…

  And then suddenly she understood.

  She turned to Mackey. “You can’t stay here,” she said quickly, earnestly. “You must go immediately, as far from here as you can get. The tears are coming.” It was ironic, that Death Valley would be the one place she herself would be safe, but she imagined there were many other ironies in store.

  “Valerie, come with me now,” he started, and she vaguely realized he was reaching for his weapon, but she had already started to run, running for the sandstorm, running for the horses, for the other women, running for the blazing white. She was fast, fast as horses, fast as the wind, almost there…

  … a hand reached down for her from the horse… a pale horse… and she reached up…

  She heard a crack, like the crack of lightning, and the sand enveloped her, and everything was white.

  EPILOGUE

  It was written in the script.

  Earth came to understand the desert. She memorized its myriad colors and rocky outcrops; she could feel the shifts in the sand as it panted through its days. As the hot days and cold night passed, she felt safe there, surrounded by so much earth. Her power grew.

  Her dreams came alive at night: the dark, scarred girl and the fifth cave; the great, white wall that hunkered over a river; a blast and the countless screams of dying cities. Undaunted, she traveled through the wasteland without a horse, searching for the others. She’d found strength out here, in the sand. This time, as the script had told her, she would not face the mayhem alone. This time, there were three others.

  By the dark, cold of night, she went east and then north, toward Nevada. Through Devil’s Canyon, and the prisons of barbed wire. Past abandoned Navajo reservations and overheated cars. She walked until the feet and flesh and heart of her was married to the sand. She walked until she found the first of them.

  The glowing woman warmed her hands by fire. She turned to Earth, and Earth knew her.

  It was in the script. She remembered now, from her old life long ago. The script. Their lives were a movie off the page.

  Fire sat under a rusted metal tarp near the old railroad tracks that had once borne freight. A fire made of track wood burned, illuminating her face in the dark. Her skin was smooth but the light played a strange trick, making it seem as if scars inside her raged. Her eyes were haunted things; burning twin towers of destruction.

  Fire shifted in her perch, and Earth joined her. For a long time they said nothing, but only warmed their hands. Earth’s shivering ceased. Her numb fingers and toes came to life. It felt good, and right. From deep in the sand, she produced a cactus root, which they roasted and ate until their bellies were full. Then they leaned back under the cool night stars. They shared their stories, and the burdens of each dwindled.

  “I followed a man here,” Fire said. “It took ten years, but I think I found him.”

  “I know. And I followed you. And soon, the others will come.” Earth said. “Water and Air. It’s in the script. This is how we meet.”

  “I’ve been alone for a very long time. I think I’ve gone a little mad,” Fire said.

  Earth nodded, no stranger to mad. “You’re not alone anymore.”

  Fire’s eyes were red, and Earth was not sure she believed.

  When dawn broke and the sun became an anvil, they took shelter under the tarp where the train tracks ended, and the desert stretched vast and pitiless. Fitfully, as the mercury rose, they slept side-by-side.

  Fire tossed. Across her bare, spotted back, light played with shadow. Earth could see the thundering of an earthquake, and the screams of dying cities, and a man with the shed skin of a serpent. He gritted his teeth as he speeded in a car made of light through her beautiful desert.

  “Something’s happening,” Fire said. “A change is coming. We should hurry.”

  “I know. It’s in the script,” Earth answered.

  They packed up early, and though the sun had baked the sand into hardened glass, they walked long and ragged, through twilight, and into the next dawn. By now they knew each other; the one was fuel, the other, its agent. Neither kind, neither timid. Both full of useless anger.

  At first light, the crested the edge of the desert. Cacti sprouted red flowers, and they could taste the nearby Colorado River. They set up camp just south of the Black Canyon. It was then that Water and Air climbed over a distant rocky outcrop, in dusty jeans and with umber faces. They arrived together at camp, their busted car abandoned in Las Vegas. They had bonded, these two, in the way water and air so often do, in the tides and the hurricanes, and they moved in silent unison to the camp fire. Earth and Fire watched them as they hunkered down.

  "I know what you're thinking," Water's English accent was out of place in the desert wilderness. "What's a pair of nice girls like us doing in a place like this?"

  All four relaxed at that. Even now, humor was good.

  "How did you find us?" Earth asked.

  "First I found her." Water nodded at her dark-haired companion. "I dreamed of New Orleans. It was drowning. And then I dreamed of flaming angels and a wall of water cutting through sand—"

  "I need to find the girl." Air cut in. Her voice was molasses. "My sister. I think she's here. She's here in my dreams. She has a scar." With one finger, Air traced a zagging line against her dark skin.

  At this, Fire's red hair flamed bright in the dying sun and the earth beneath them trembled slightly. Somewhere in the distance, rocks fell.

  "So you've dreamed about her too?" Water said. "That's all four of us." She traced the number in the sand
. "And four..."

  "... is THE NUMBER." All four women finished the sentence.

  Here, they stopped, and appraised each other. The women formerly known as Valerie, Lucy, Rook, and Brigid. Each bearing scars. Each reborn.

  Water started again. "I said I'd help look for the little girl, if then we looked for you two. I was enjoying the travelling. I'd been... away.” The grains were damp between Water’s fingers. "But here we all are, and it doesn't come as a surprise. Does it?"

  No one argued.

  "What brought you here?" Water asked.

  Fire and Earth told their tales, then Air and Water. When all was said, they pondered in quiet.

  Air was the first to speak. “I still don’t understand what we are. Why we are.”

  Why we are is the caves. Air finished her own question. Only, she didn’t speak. The others heard her, nonetheless.

  One by one they slipped into the patios:

  The fifth cave.

  The scarred child.

  We’ve all seen it.

  The white wall.

  It’s going to explode in

  —Fire.

  —Earth

  —Water

  —Wind.

  The four of them thought these things, all at once. They did not look like the women they had been. They did not look like women at all. They looked like riders.

  “But I saw it...” They all said, this time with words. The sound was an incantation. A hot breeze blew. Drops of river rain fell. The dry soil cracked, and pushed out its rooted flowers, then reclaimed them.

  “Fire,” said Fire.

  “Earth,” said Earth.

  “Water,” said Water.

  “Wind,” said Air.

  “All four?” Water asked, tentatively.

  But they knew the answer. Fire had been the first; the cremation of two hundred and five concrete stories. Water the second; a tidal wave in rice plains of Siam. Air the third; a hurricane in the in the stagnant water of Southland. Earth the last; a quake that rent a city made of steel. They’d come together, to gather their forces. Because of the script. Because of the fifth cave, where they would meet: