The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel

by Erik, Nicholas

  As I said, me and Davey, we were sloppy. But we weren’t much older than that kid, and let’s just say you don’t become a Coyote if you got any other prospects beating down your door.

  Could be a conspiracy loony trying to shake me down. There were always a few milling around town, although they never bothered me. There’s a first time for everything, I guess.

  I burn down Main Street at twice the limit. It’d be dangerous, except ghosts have even abandoned the place. I turn towards the road going into the residential part of the town, if one considers an assortment of double-wides and broken single story buildings a place worthy of a census. I sure wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking it should just be vaporized.

  Monk’s sitting on the cracked steps, his railing askew, black paint sandblasted away by the passage of time.

  Somehow, he looks good, better than me even.

  “Hey bitch,” he calls, “you know any trick involving my daddy gets billed at a special rate.”

  “As if anyone would pay to screw your dirty ass,” I say, boots kicking up the dry desert dust as I hop down from the cab. Thing is, they would—if Jasper was born anywhere else, he could have been one of those fashion models you see in the magazines, high-gloss photo smothered in enough cologne to choke you dead.

  “One of these days, Damien,” he says. “I’m going to set up shop and you’ll see.” He throws his slick black hair back and grins.

  “I’d like to see that.” I sit down on the steps and light a cigarette.

  “That shit’ll kill you.”

  “Life will kill me.”

  “So wise.”

  “Check this out.” I play him the video, audio crackling. Monk reaches over at the end and taps the screen to replay it. “Damn, if I’d known this would shut you up, I’d have made a film of my own ten goddamn years ago.”

  He drains the rest of the flask, tipping it skyward for a long while. It doesn’t restore the color to his face. Even with years of desert sun absorbed, he’s turned some shade of white that means nothing good.

  “That looks like my daddy.”

  “You drunk already? Christ man, I think I might need to get you away from the sauce.”

  “I don’t know how, but that’s him.” He points at the kid in the shot, the one who Davey blew away.

  “Which one?”

  Monk points at the frame, at the body, right before the videographer’s face—and those eyes—gets caught at the end of the frame.

  The phone drops out of my hands, and everything is still.

  It makes sense: Jasper’s daddy died a couple days after the body turned up. As I said, the universe hates redundancies. Alive or dead, the equations just have to balance. And Jasper’s daddy—or, at least the younger, less sad version of him—didn’t leave after he died. The body stayed, the mass along with it.

  And that’s why Jasper’s daddy kicked it. I don’t know why they just die—the mass is still there. Maybe it has to do with souls. Whoever made those rules sounds like a real asshole to me.

  Official word on the kid was he was sick in the head, had made some bogus identification up as part of a delusion. That seemed to play better with the residents than the alternative. Riverton might have been left behind by the technological revolution sweeping the rest of the United States, but everyone was pretty damn sure about one thing: New Chicago didn’t exist. There hadn’t been a need for a new one, because the old one was fine, far as everyone could tell.

  Over drinks a day after Davey’s body turned up—I might add that the drinks were many—Sheriff Henderson slurred on about how he had phoned a Chicago precinct.

  “Checked the damned Bulls score,” he said, liquor spilling on his uniform, “they beat the goddamn Knicks in a squeaker. And they weren’t no New Chicago team. It was New York and the old Chicago and that’s all there was.”

  “Well I guess that settles it,” I said, just trying to get away, “Kid was a prankster or one crazy bastard. And he’s dead.”

  “Goddamn Feds,” he said, staring into his lukewarm whiskey while I walked away to find someone who wasn’t so damn depressing.

  5

  Old Pictures

  I still remember when Jasper’s dad fell on hard times. I don’t mean that he was into some people for money; I mean that the man hit the bottle hard—the very bottom of it, then drilled straight to the center of the earth.

  That was 30 years ago, and, by the looks of the pictures, it seemed about 100. It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did. Inside Monk’s house, photos confirm the story—at least a little of it. There’s his father, young and pre-marriage, pre-cop, pre-all-the-bullshit. But this, of course, was over 30 years ago. He’s the kid, though, all right. At the time of the murder, the ornery bastard looked like he’d been put through the dryer on high a few times too many. Skin didn’t fit any more, faded eyes. Total junkie.

  Riverton’s finest.

  “I don’t think Hollywood could turn back the clock better,” I say, gesturing towards the frozen frame of the kid on the screen.

  “Thanks for explaining that. Great.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re goddamn useless,” Monk says, sweat dripping from his nose. I can level with that.

  “Your pops ever see the body?”

  “Yeah, one of the first on scene. Before the higher-ups came.”

  “He ever mention anything?”

  “Like it was his damn twin?”

  “Just wondering why I got this video.” Which is a lie; I may not know why the girl—Kristine, Kristine, Kristine my brain screams—sent it, but I damn well know my connection to it.

  “I have no clue. Why’d you show it to me?”

  “Who else was I going to show it to?”

  We’re silent for a while, just drink and stare at the ragged drapes. The inside is paved with this awful ‘70s-era wood-paneling, like the builders thought they’d inject a little Thoreau into the place. It aged almost as bad as Jasper’s old man.

  “I knew that he was into something,” Jasper says.

  “He ever say what that was?”

  “Let me check my log from that day of important family time,” Jasper says, licking his thumb and flicking through imaginary pages in the air, “looks I didn’t enter nothing. Huh.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Stupid questions get stupid answers.”

  I head to the freezer and drink right out of the plastic bottle of whiskey inside, melt into his lumpy couch. Monk is rustling papers around. I get another text.

  I don’t check it. I’m done with this extortion game. I just want to drift off, drunk. Hope that, when I wake, it’ll be over and I can keep living the same miserable life until I die. Or just die; either sounds good.

  I wake with a start. Phone’s ringing. Isaac.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not answering messages now?”

  I flip through. The text was from him. Paranoia’s a bitch.

  “Just caught up in the excitement.”

  “I swear, man,” he says, “shove a pair of tits in your face and it’s like getting through to the head of the CIA.”

  “Well, you have my attention now.” No answer. “And you know how quick that can change.”

  “It’s time.” He’s quiet, a sure sign that he’s pissed. I glance at the screen and then outside to confirm it’s dark.

  “Right, right, I’ll be over in ten.”

  I flick through the messages. The video’s still there.

  Shit.

  The moonlit road swims in and out of focus through the windshield. It’s not that I’m loaded; my concentration is just elsewhere.

  I pull off to stop in Sissy’s diner.

  I know that I’m on a clock, that I’m somehow an essential part of this heist, even if I can’t see ho
w all the dots connect. Whatever.

  “Hey, Janice,” I say, bells jingling as I walk in. Place is 24 hours, but it’s damn empty right now. Crazy Robby is in the corner, having pancakes for dinner or some other such nonsense.

  The always chipper Janice mumbles a greeting. At least I’m not the only one who could use a reset. “Extra strong.”

  She loads a cup of black with whiskey and puts it down without saying a word. This is about the bitterest damn drink a man can order. It fits.

  The minutes roll by, punctuated only by Robby’s grunts and groans. The guy sounds both disappointed and rapturous, can’t make up his mind.

  Monk drops me a line saying that he’s got something. No specifics, just that I need to meet him. It’ll have to wait. The bells clang when I step into the chill night.

  6

  Shadows of the Past

  So Jasper’s old daddy has a twin or something else. My money’s on the something else; I would have known about a brother. But then, I’m not sure what I know at this point.

  Thoughts of past nights roll through my mind. Some nasty looking people I saw out there in canyon, others meek as mice. All sorts exited that transport in the desert night.

  There was a time, six years ago, when I was sitting on the hood of the truck, waiting. I could see in the dark now—the Syndicate had sprung for some low-level nano implants, so I had built-in nightvision—and it made the desert look weird, like I was in Roswell or some sort of conspiracy.

  My partner, a large hulk of a man we called Bruiser—original, I know—was pacing about, as he always did. Nothing worse than a 250 pound sack of muscle with serious neuroses.

  Couldn’t tell the lug he was crazy, otherwise he’d get on you like a pit bull trained for the kill. And he was good at killing, so I left him alone.

  “Say, Damien,” he said, munching on the cigar more than smoking it, “you think they’ll show up on time?”

  “They always do. Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t understand why the head honchos hadn’t given him some sort of implant for the constant anxiety. Maybe they thought it made him better, or maybe they didn’t have effective downers in the future.

  “Who’s saying I’m worrying? I’m just talking, that’s all.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Hey, it’s a real possibility,” he said, and I knew the craziness was starting, “I heard about some time they were late, and it was an ambush. Heads got blown clean off.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand, to indicate that the head had been removed.

  “The Coyotes or the cargo?”

  “The Coyotes,” he said, like I was slow, like I was the one acting ridiculous, “who cares about the cargo?”

  “We’re in the service industry,” I responded, peering out into the night. Still nothing. “I care about the cargo.”

  “That’s a lie, Damien,” he said, taking a thick drag from his cigar, then coughing like a first-time smoker, “you don’t care about anything.”

  “It was a joke. Just trying to lighten the mood.”

  Bruiser let out a grunt, but stopped talking. That was good enough for me. A couple minutes later, right on time, the transport showed up. I’d say all went well, but then, I wouldn’t be thinking about this if it did.

  I flipped through the electronic manifest on my handheld, scanning the contents of the container. No one ever got out unless we said so. They’d implemented all sorts of checks, scans and other fail-safes over the years; something to do with those Coyotes that got their heads blown off, or similar incidents.

  Nothing. Empty. I scanned the transport again; nothing. No vital signs, no cargo manifest, nothing. It was supposed to be a man and a woman, lovers, brothers, sisters, who knows, but there was two people on the log who had paid a lot of spacecoins to come to the beautiful, gritty past.

  “I’m not getting anything,” I called out, but Bruiser didn’t answer. That was odd; whenever this happened, he’d be crapping bricks. Not tonight, though; he’d disappeared, vanished.

  I walked around the transport and confirmed that Bruiser was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was taking a leak. I went back and fiddled with some settings on the transport.

  And it opened, and the occupants weren’t very nice.

  Bullets whirred around me, my nano-vest absorbing a couple rounds. That knocked me to the ground, and I struggled to get to my feet. I couldn’t see anything; I was being attacked by ghosts, by shadows invisible to my nightvision. I blind fired, and I saw my gun light up my field of view. The mysterious attackers returned fire, and that’s how I got them.

  I remember wishing that I could turn off the nightvision—if it was useless, I should be able to flick it off, but that wasn’t a feature at the time. Now, sure, I can control it with my thoughts—pretty cool—but back then I was stuck seeing everything in green and white.

  Although my foes were invisible to my sight, the flare of their weapons wasn’t. And I fired, I pumped my entire automatic clip into them—two hundred bullets, standard issue.

  When I got to where they were, it was a girl and boy, not a man and a woman. Bruiser was behind them, his chiseled frame peppered with gunshot wounds. Their insides were all spilled on the sand, the bullets having carved through them with brutal efficiency. One of them was still alive, and it was the girl.

  She smiled at me.

  “He was a nice man,” she said, looking at Bruiser, “he helped a lot of us, you know.”

  “What do you mean,” I said, trying to figure out how old she was. I wanted her to be a woman, but she was just a kid. Maybe 16, if you were being generous. I felt the gun shake in my hand.

  “They say resistance is unproductive,” she said, her words becoming softer and softer, “the Syndicate, the posters they have.”

  “That’s cute, I suppose.” I didn’t know what to say; she looked less scared than I felt. My bedside manner was never tremendous; I just popped stragglers in the head and went back home for a lengthy prizefight with a bottle of whiskey.

  The whiskey always won.

  “But we can win,” she said, “we will win.”

  “Who is this we,” I asked, but her lips were closing. I knelt down and shook her with my hand. It dwarfed her waifish shoulder. “Tell me who it is.”

  “The Rapture,” she whispered, “I can feel it. Can you?”

  I couldn’t feel anything. Her breath grew ragged, and I could see she was in pain. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

  The Rapture. I sure hope it was nice, whatever that was.

  I wiped the blood from my hands and walked back to the truck. In the cab, I entered a report. Hostiles in transport. Smith—that was Bruiser’s real name—found to be working in coordination with hostiles. Three terminated.

  That was it. Someone else would be out to clean up the mess, and next time I came back, it’d be like it all never happened.

  7

  Withdrawal

  There were other incidents like that over the years—to be expected, since I started working for the Syndicate once I hit twenty. Which is why it’s kind of funny that this one moment sticks with me.

  My mind ratchets forward, back to the present.

  “It isn’t about the money,” I say, flicking the ash from my cigarette with a well-rehearsed finger tap, “it’s the goddamn principle. This life owes people something more, and if it isn’t going to hand it over, I’m taking it for them. For us.”

  Isaac, Lenny and Mitch, they’ve been at the bar for an hour, two, maybe more. Tonight was big. I was still struggling with the magnitude. The two of them, Lenny and Mitch, they were dumb as bricks: they thought the robbery was about the money.

  They could have the money. I wanted what was inside Sheriff Henderson’s security box. The switchbox. Henderson, after that murder in the canyon, hadn’t let the New Chicago thing go. He’d found o
ut what was going on, and he got his piece.

  He ran this end now. Just the type for middle management: ambitious, dirty, but stupid enough to ensure that he wasn’t a threat to the real folks in charge.

  “Well aren’t you just a regular Robin Hood,” Little Lenny says from behind the bar, “all lofty with your principles.”

  “You know I’m in it for the money,” Mitch says, “and I ain’t going to share none of my loot.”

  “Fellas.” I pause to sip some vodka for dramatic effect. “You never felt that life screwed you? We all could have done so much more—”

  “Yeah, think of all the bitches I could’ve slammed out if I’d been born in Miami,” Little Lenny says, “you seen some of them broads, the ones down by the beach? Gorgeous.” He smacks his lips together and Mitch snickers.

  “You guys are too damn stupid to realize what you’re missing.”

  “We’re robbing a bank, Damien,” Mitch says, staring at the whiskey before him, “this ain’t some sort of humanarian—”

  “Humanitarian, Mitch.”

  “Yeah, that charity stuff, we ain’t doing it. I want the money, Lenny wants the money, and you’re a bullshitter if you say you don’t too.”

  “What about Isaac, does he want the money?”

  “Damn right he does.” He didn’t. He got me into this Rapture movement, and while I don’t agree with the religious weirdness of it all—and I sure ain’t looking for absolution—they got a decent message. They want to help people. Even if it’s with the opiate of the masses.

  Mitch slams back his third whiskey, the shot glass hitting the table with a loud thud. I’d tell him to slow down, but I feel he has the right idea.

  I pace back and forth, trying to calm down, but the nervous energy doesn’t dissipate. I flash back to Bruiser, his nervous energy. This is my first time messing with the Syndicate. I glance over at Lenny, who’s cleaning like a damn demon. Under normal circumstances, he couldn’t be convinced to do that by a bare-assed supermodel.