Apocalypse- Year Zero
Page 26
—A hurricane in the desert.
—A tsunami on the river.
—A flash of white light and a glowing ball of fire.
—The crouching wall, burst. Canyons crashing down.
—Cities flooded. Countless cities. And the screams.
—Because of the man who’d shed his skin.
—The tears are coming.
—A snake-man is coming.
—He’s carrying white light.
They each said these things. They all said them. They spoke the Patois.
Earth looked at each of them. “The white wall is the fifth disaster,” she said. It was in the script. She’d have to show it to them one day.
They slipped into the Patois again:
Not here, they said.
But close.
Yes.
When they turned, the horses were on the dune, waiting for them.
* * *
They rode, moving like dancers; as one with their horses, in tandem with each other. When one altered, the rest anticipated and matched her new pace. They were as one, galloping across the desert.
At night, when the sun dove, they set up camp just outside Boulder City. Earth nourished them with the bounty of the desert: cactus mash and jackrabbit skewered over Fire’s flame. They were thankful for these gifts, and as the hours passed, thankful for each other. Each carried an impossible burden, but for once, it seemed lighter, because it was shared.
By mid-day the next morning, their horses were nearly dead. Fire’s bled from the eyes and Earth's mane left traces of itself across the desert.
Air slowed her horse and the others halted beside her. As the great animals heaved and panted, Water cupped her hands until they filled and went to each to let them drink.
They gazed out over a ridge, and onto a vast, red canyon. A rushing river cut deep into its earth. Above, a trail of locusts converged. They swarmed in the shape of the river, and flowed with it, too. The sound was the unnatural gnashing of wings and teeth.
Each woman followed the water with her eyes as it slammed against a great, white wall. It was tall, at least eighty stories, and wide as a city block. They’d seen it in their dreams: a tower. Regal and mad as Mordor.
The locusts swarmed like a cloud, rising higher against the tower’s sheer cliff face while rushing water sifted through the Tower’s grill below. Four peaks with clock faces grew out from the Tower’s top, each set to different times.
Earth knew this. She’d read it.
“The Hoover Dam.”
“How many?” Fire asked.
“If it blows? A few cities. A few thousand. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is what happens when the power goes out.”
* * *
They took the stairs up the side, and found the path to the walkway along the Tower’s peak. Along the walls were Navajo paintings: rain, water, lightning, clouds, lizards, serpents, birds, mesas…. They’d seen these, too, in their dreams.
Though their journey had been long, and they were tired, they raced. With feet thundering like horses hooves, they began to run. Deeper and deeper, down through the passages, back along the tower’s rushing grill: a maze of cement, into the soul of the Earth.
Water dripped and rushed. Locusts swarmed with gritted teeth. Water found a door and slid it open. They entered the room they’d dreamed about. Four winged, bronze creatures in each of four corners looked back at them, each perched on its own, peculiar throne.
A star chart, Earth told them, as each made their way across. The ceiling above was folded downward, so that the room was shaped like a pyramid. Criss-crossed pipes and drums in crimson and gold lined the gold-painted walls. The mosaiced floor presented stick figure illustrations like hieroglyphics.
At the sound of their feet, the man turned from behind the winged creature where he was crouched. He held a glowing, metal weight that burned in his hands. His hair was gone now. His teeth loose. This trip across the desert had aged him fifty years.
“Cole Jaynus,” Fire said. He was dark-skinned now, and scrawny from the junk in his veins. “I’d know you anywhere,” she said.
He smiled. “You,” he said. Just like old times. Like she was still his girl. For a second, she was happy to see him. All this time, she’d been so alone.
“You took them to my home. My parents… your parents….” Fire’s eyes glowed. Her red hair clumped like ribbons of wind.
“But look at you. I knew you’d survive. I always knew. That’s what we are, is survivors. The rest, it’s their fault if they can’t go on. I’ve done everything for you. I’ve changed. I have so many things to show you. I’m what you want, now.”
The women exchanged glances – they remembered what Fire remembered as if they were her.
Air shook her head, and a small breeze cooled her companions. “Shit girl, you can do so much better.”
From the place where her scars lived, a heat rose inside Fire’s body, and the man began to shake. “I love you, Cole,” she said.
Cole’s blood ran down the metal box in his hands. He gritted what was left of his teeth. “I love you. Always,” he answered.
Fire nodded. “It will hurt more this time,” Fire said. “Because I’ll burn you slow.”
Water laughed, a tinkling sound that made the man's throat ache with thirst.
Earth looked beyond the man to the device. “Just like in the script. Death. Destruction. White light.”
“We can take it,” Water answered, and then stopped, a strange look on her smooth features. “We need it,” she said, sudden realization in her voice. “It’s what's missing from us. It’s what makes us riders.”
Water focused on the box until the water chamber inside it began to steam.
“Don’t do that!” the man cried.
As if in awe, the earth beneath them trembled. White light erupted from the box in all directions. Fire gritted her teeth. “Say goodnight, Cole. Say you’re sorry.”
As Cole watched, the women melted together into one… and then exploded outward… Fire, Water, Air, Earth…
The box collapsed inside itself as if hammered smaller and smaller until nearly invisible. White light shrank back through its cracks, and turned black. Cole watched the tiny thing as it suctioned the air, and the water, and the locusts, and turned black. And then, began to pull him, too, inside its maw. And then, in a flash, the room was empty.
* * *
Their horses waited for them on the ridge. Uneasily, the four looked out over the dam’s rushing water, and the land they had saved.
"It's not over, is it?" Lucy knew the answer before she finished asked.
"It’s Act One," Valerie answered.
"There'll be another cave." Brigid said. Her eyes looked far away again, and still quite mad.
"We have to find Daryl," Rook said.
"And the screenwriter. They hold the keys."
Rook looked down at her hands. The dusk had colored them red. She hadn’t told the others everything. They didn’t know about the howlers, still waiting thousands of miles away in the Gulf. Waiting for her to call them into service.
“Are we monsters?” she asked instead. “The breath was wrong but it was right-wrong. What can we do now - where does it stop?”
Lucy shook her head. “We just have to control it. We can do that. Plague and pestilence to the evil of the world.”
Valerie lifted her chin. “Yes. It’s war.”
The flame leapt in Brigid’s eyes. “But who’s the enemy?”
The others were silent. The words plague and pestilence echoed in the vast emptiness around them. There were seven caves. So far, four opened. One averted. Two remained. Two caves of light and dark. Where from death was birth, and from misery, companionship. Two caves with seals like scabs, that would inevitably bring blood.
Plague and Pestilence. The words would resonate in their dreams.
Let’s go, they said in the Patois.
Each mounted their horse in sunset’s d
ying rays. Four pale riders, unleashed into the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sarah Pinborough is a critically acclaimed award-winning thriller, horror and YA author who has had more than ten novels published thus far across that range. In the UK she is published by both Gollancz and Quercus and by Penguin in the US. Her short stories have appeared in multiple anthologies and she has a horror film, Cracked, currently in development and an original thriller screenplay under option. She has recently branched out into television writing and has written for New Tricks on the BBC.
http://sarahpinborough.com
Alexandra Sokoloff is the Thriller Award-winning author of the supernatural and crime thrillers The Harrowing, The Price, The Unseen, The Space Between, Book of Shadows, and the bestselling Huntress/FBI thrillers. As a screenwriter, she has sold original horror and thriller scripts and written novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios; she is also the author of two writing workbooks based on her internationally acclaimed story structure workshop and blog: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors. Alex writes erotic paranormal on the side, including The Shifters, from The Keepers trilogy, and Keeper of the Shadows, from The Keepers L.A. In her spare time (!) she is an avid dancer.
http://alexandrasokoloff.com
http://www.screenwritingtricks.com
Sarah Langan is the author of the novels The Keeper, The Missing, and Audrey’s Door (HarperCollins). Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Wired.com, and in the anthologies The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2011, and Brave New Worlds. She has also written nonfiction for Salon and the St. John's Humanities Review. She's currently at work on her fourth novel Empty Houses. Her fiction has been translated into six languages and optioned by the Weinstein Company for film. It has also garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, an American Library Association Award, a New York Times Book Review editor’s pick, and a Publishers Weekly favorite book of the year selection. She’s one of five founders of the Shirley Jackson Award, and has also served as juror for the Bram Stoker Award and the Edgar Award. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young daughters.
Rhodi Hawk has been fascinated by storytelling since her earliest memory, when her grandmother read to her from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Rhodi has been reading or writing ever since, and began her career as a transcription linguist in US Army intelligence. She later made a living as a technical writer during the Internet boom, working on her first novel in the early mornings and at night; A Twisted Ladder went on to win the International Thriller Writers Scholarship. A compulsive traveler, Rhodi now lives in Magnolia, Texas, with a host of critters, including her husband, Hank.
http://rhodihawk.com
Contents
Title page
Apocalypse: Year Zero
Prologue
TORCHSONG: BRIGID’S BEGINNING
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
RUSH
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
WORMHOLES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
D-GIRL ON DOOMSDAY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS