“What?” she asked.
“Are you a man of your word?!”
Behind her, Knox answered.
“Yes.”
Her entire face seemed to drop at the realization. The air gone out of the balloon. For a five count, the Apocalypse Maiden looked stunned. Utterly betrayed. But, then, her features hardened. Same as she’d been when they’d first met, she reassembled her own atoms so that she were made of stone. She stood still as a statue, eyes alert. Afraid to do anything, but probably plotting her next move. Luck was holstered at her hip.
Don’t underestimate her.
Whose words were those in his head? Leon? Shelby? Knox?
Mine.
Marco’s eyes were filling with tears. He’d never had a harder time holding a gun steady, not in his whole life. There was a certain grace to the way Justine stood, even now, even at her most vulnerable. Strength, even in a moment like this. How? How had this new world hardened her so, yet still left him a scared kid? She was a teenager. A child. And yet, here they were.
Look only at the faces, and you’d guess the gun was pointing the other way.
“I’m going to drop my knife,” she said. She opened her palm and let it fall. Clink-clink, it hit the ground, and only one of them flinched.
Marco sniffled. He stared down the barrel. One bullet, to end a further chance of outbreak. This was the stuff of heroes. This was how he was going to save the world.
The knot in his belly grew ever tighter. Justine’s arms were still raised, but was it his imagination or did they appear to be a few inches lower now? Without the knife, her right hand was free. He glanced at her hip, then back to her face. Picked out a spot, right between those pretty blue eyes.
Am I really doing this? I can’t really be doing this.
“Marco, whatever he told you...whatever he promised, he’s going to betray you. You know he’s going to betray you. Think this through. Be smart.”
He bit the inside of his cheek, grinding his palms against the grip of the pistol. Still, she wore a fierce scowl. A lioness backed into a corner.
All around them, the sound of roaches.
“I…I don’t want to be scared anymore,” he said. “Aren’t you scared?”
She made no response, still frozen in place.
“Aren’t you?” He could feel himself losing his nerve. He could feel it slipping away. She was young, innocent, beautiful. The thoughts were creeping in, infecting him with doubt. A tear slid down his cheek. Marco lowered his weapon.
She drew hers.
A single gunshot echoed through the empty house.
~
-Justine-
For a moment they just stood there. The two of them, frozen in place, arms extended. What a foolish boy he’d been. She could see it now, in those crimson eyes. The fear that Zeke had always talked about.
Unworthy of this world.
She took a step backwards, then another, until her back was against the wall. There had been two guns on the table. One black, one silver. The third gun, Luck, slipped from her grasp. Marco remained frozen in that pose, a smoking gun in his hand. He’d been quicker than her, somehow. Firing a single shot, low, at her belly. She lifted her shirt, slowly, expecting a wound to be there.
Expecting to bleed out, there in that room.
Beside her, Knox stirred.
“Which gun did you use?” he asked.
She and Marco locked eyes once more. The fool.
~
-Marco-
He didn’t wait to see the end result. Marco spilled out of the house, past the porch, down the trio of wooden steps, and out onto the beach. He stumbled as he feet hit the sand, and the pistol slipped from his fingers, landing without a sound. Marco made it a few paces further and then he too fell into the sand.
Marco lifted himself to his palms and knees, head hanging low. His stomach was a black hole, sucking up his insides, pulling him into nothingness, into oblivion. He opened his mouth wide, to breathe. His entire body was overheating, it felt. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and tried to hold back the tears. He’d always been so good at holding back the tears.
But, oh, here they came.
They streamed down his cheeks, stinging as they passed through the nooks and crevices of that horrid scar. He convulsed. He dry heaved. He beat his fists into the dirt, again and again, making meager prints in the sand. Marco lifted himself back up to his knees, letting his neck fall backwards. Letting himself breathe. He opened his eyes. Above him, something caught his eye. He stopped crying.
Marco wiped his wet face with the back of one arm, sniffling. And looked up.
High above him, floating in the air beside the rising sun, was a metal contraption, holding a camera below its wings.
A drone.
11
-SHADES OF WHITE-
-Justine-
THE APOCALYPSE MAIDEN wore a wedding dress. She sat in the passenger seat of that old red pickup, bouncing along on an unpaved road. It was summer.
Out the window, she watched the trees whip past. It was midday, and that quaint New England beauty she’d always detested so much was in full bloom. It was enough to make her gag. She smiled at the thought of it. A nervous grin, to no one at all. There were butterflies in her belly, fluttering from branch to branch at odd angles. She placed a palm over her stomach.
Beside her, a man gripped the wheel with one hand, overhand like he was throwing a cartoonish punch. His red eyes glanced her way, just for a moment, and then shifted back to the road. Justine had never seen him so dressed up in her life. Black suit, black tie. He wore nickel-slick penny loafers, also in his favorite hue. He’d even slicked back his hair for once. He looked so handsome. His tongue lashed out, licking at his scar.
“Are you ready to give me away?” she asked.
He took a moment before answering. Pensive, brooding, Zeke the Dollface. All those months apart, and yet nothing had changed.
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
“Well, maybe if you’d shown up sooner, things could’ve been different.”
“Maybe,” he sneered. “How do you know him? The groom to be.” He spoke the words with a tinge of jealousy.
“We met in high school, actually.”
“High school.”
“Yeah.”
“You couldn’t have dreamt up a better story than that?”
“Stop, it’s a fine story,” she said, with a giggle. “I sat in front of him in history class. I remember, I was always too scared to say anything except “thanks” when he passed a worksheet back. I remember I’d brace myself for the moment when he’d hand it to me—you know, telling myself look cool, look cool—and then make eye contact right when I took the paper from him. God, I used to daydream about him so much. I had it all planned out. Once I successfully wooed Adam, he and I would move to the city. I would write crime thrillers and he’d paint. We’d have a little loft in Brooklyn, or maybe Manhattan, with a little dog named Patterson. And once we both achieved some level of success, we’d move into a house in the suburbs and have three children. Two girls and a boy. One would be the overachiever my mother always wanted: the class president, straight A student. She’d play any instrument she wanted, as long as it wasn’t the piano. The other girl, the younger one, would be more like me. She’d find regular school to be a bore, so we’d enroll her at a music or art academy and really allow her to feel out her calling. They would want for nothing.” She sighed. “So much for all that.”
“Yet you found him anyway. This Adam.”
“He’d been hiding out in Garland. I met him six months ago. Maybe a few weeks before you came back. It was shortly after my incident with those Bloodline guys.”
“Knox.”
“Yes. And Marco.”
“You’re getting good at avoiding bullets,” Zeke said.
“This was a little different. That time with you, it was pure luck.”
“And this time wasn’t?”
“No
.”
“There’s two guns on the table,” Zeke said. “One with real bullets and one full of blanks. And he picks one up, just whichever one he feels like, in the heat of the moment. How is that not luck?”
“It’s not.”
“It’s a fifty-fifty shot. It’s heads or tails for your life.”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t convinced he’d fire, honestly. There was a moment there, right at the end, where it looked like he was ready to give in.”
“He was a coward.”
“Uh-huh,” Justine said, glancing now out the window. “He was.”
~
Into the city they went. The ruins of Garland. The place still had the look of an old, war-torn European town. The roads were warped, and many of the buildings were in ruin. And the silence seemed somehow thicker here than it did in Ridgewood or Covington. There was something sacred about this place. She hadn’t been in years, but something felt strangely familiar about this area. They looked like houses and businesses from her youth, or places from Covington that had somehow been cut and pasted here. The road came to an end, and then Zeke was pressing down on the brake. They’d covered so much ground, but the ride felt like it’d lasted only a few minutes.
He put the truck in park, halting before the church. Justine wiped sweat from her brow, gazing out the truck window at it. All around them, the buildings were warped and misshapen, as if they were looking at the city through a fish eye lens. The ash-gray church had a slant to it now, as if the whole place might collapse at any moment, but she’d been assured that it was safe, at least for today.
“Are you alright?”
“Just a little woozy is all,” she said.
“Hold tight.”
He got out of the truck and circled around, helping her out. Her knees felt weak as her feet touched down on the gravel road. Her hair was short again. Buzzed on one side, long and slicked over on the other. The dress itself was a dream come true: the edgiest bridal garment in the three towns. The fitted bodice clung tight to her skinny frame, white with accents of soft grey. The dress was sleeved, with a cold shoulder, and a tulle skirt down below. For once, she wore no gloves, and didn’t cake on the makeup. For the first time in what felt like ages, she actually had a tan.
The grand red doorway to the church hung ajar at the top of the steps. Zeke led her up, taking her hand in his. Behind her, the dress was picking up dirt, but she didn’t mind. It was to be expected. After a single step inside the musty tomb of a church, she let out a cough. Those shitty post-bomb fumes never seemed to go away. Ten times as gnarly as asbestos. If the bug didn’t kill them, the whole wedding party was surely going to get radiation poising after an afternoon in this shit hole.
For a moment they stood, just the two of them, with a backdrop of all those rows and rows of wooden pews, with one aisle down the center.
“Shall we?” he asked.
She took his arm.
He led her down the aisle, arm in arm. In that big, high-ceilinged room, they had the footsteps of giants. The pews around them were mostly empty. By her count, there were twelve guests total, all people from Adam’s little survivor’s camp here in Garland. She had no family or friends there of her own. Just a scar-faced ring bearer and a groom.
And what a groom he was. He stood alone up at the altar, arms folded behind his back. He was a year older than her, with shoulder length brown hair and bangs that he pushed away from his eyes. He too wore a black suit, but with a red tie. Justine stepped up beside him, and Zeke between the two of them, where a priest would stand.
Justine exhaled, wiping the sweat from her brow.
“First, the rings,” Zeke said.
Zeke revealed hers first. It was metallic gray-black, clunky and misshapen. Here was the second slug that almost killed her. She’d drilled a hole through the center of it, large enough for a ring finger. She took it from Zeke. Adam’s eyes lit up when she slid it onto his finger.
The future flashed before her eyes. There would be no literary success, no loft in the big city, but there could be other little victories. Someday soon, when it was safe, maybe they would try to have a child. She planned to name her first born Elizabeth, after her mother. If it was a boy, she liked Nathan.
Now, for the main event. Zeke reached into the jacket of his blazer, shuffling around inside. He found it, finally, and handed it to Adam. He slipped it onto her finger.
~
After the ceremony, Justine sat in one of the first pews with Zeke while Adam and some of the others danced. There was no band, just a boombox CD player plugged into the wall.
“I can’t give you away without a dance,” Zeke said.
“Nuh, no. I’m too tired to dance.”
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, then looked the other way.
“This turnout. Do you believe it?”
“Not especially,” Zeke said.
“They remind me of Crowe’s group. When you’re safe for so long, you forget how dangerous the world is.”
“Very true. One slip up,” he said, pointing a finger gun at her, “and pow.”
She took another deep breath and swallowed. Her throat was so dry.
“I can’t make out their faces,” she said. “Adam’s friends. They’re blurry to me.”
“Well, you don’t know them.”
“I don’t recall Adam’s voice, either. Is that strange?”
“You didn’t forget me.”
“No. You, darling, I could never forget.”
He placed a hand over hers, locking eyes. She pulled hers back, placing it in her lap. She held a palm to her stomach.
“It does hurt.” She took a deep breath. “I’m still in that room, aren’t I?”
The music stopped. All around them, the dancers halted in place. They let each other go and then turned, so that every eye was on Justine and Zeke. Their features were so hard to make out.
Zeke lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Marco chose the silver gun.”
“He did.”
“Does that mean you’re dead, Zeke?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“My mother should be here. She’d hate to miss this.”
“I wish I got to meet her.”
“Trust me, you don’t,” Justine said. “She’d have seen right through you. It took me forever to figure you out, but I got it, right at the end. Jacob Crowe was right about you. You never really loved me. You were always only about yourself.”
“Justine-”
“It’s okay. Really. I don’t hate you for it. There’s no use holding grudges now. Honestly, I hope you aren’t dead. I hope you found whatever it was you were looking for in Garland.”
“Stay a little longer.”
“I need to see it first. Just give me a moment.”
She closed her eyes. And, simultaneously, opened them.
~
She was back in that beach house kitchen, in the shadows, her back to the wall. Her black sweater was pulled up to reveal her stomach. The blood looked so bright, so red, against her pale white skin. She pressed her hand down on it again, both hands, but she couldn’t stop it. Her life was leaking out of her. Across the room, on the counter, the black Beretta remained untouched. She could feel Knox a few feet from her, still bound to that chair. Marco had run outside. The coward. The least he could’ve done was stay and see the horrid fruits of his labor. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Justine wanted to rise, to limp away out back, under the risen sun. She wanted to die in the place that she loved the most. Her mother’s place. And yet, her eyes were already growing foggy. The pain was so intense, so real. She felt weak. Sick.
She closed her eyes.
~
“I can’t remember the last time I was in a church,” she said. Behind her, out of focus, the others had begun to dance again. A slow waltz.
“Me neither,” Zeke said. “Do you have to go?�
�
“I’m tired. But, I’ll watch them dance a little longer.”
“There’s no hurry.”
“Will I know? When it’s over?”
“I’m not sure.”
Again she swallowed. Justine felt the weight of her body against the hard wooden pew.
“When you and I were back in Ridgewood, in those old houses, I used to dream a lot about things like this,” Justine said. “You’d leave to go on your hunt and I’d try to stay awake until I like literally, physically couldn’t any longer. I’d fall asleep sitting up or still wearing my jeans. And…I’d dream. Not about weddings, exactly. Just alternate futures. I’d dream I got out of the q-zone and I was in some faraway place. I don’t know where I got the images from. I’ve never been outside Northwest Connecticut. From movies, maybe. Usually, in my dreams, I’d end up alone on a beach, with the ocean breeze on my face. And I’d look out and see the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know how I’d know it was the Pacific, but I would. And I’d look and it’d just seem to stretch out forever.” She smiled. “All that sparkling blue.”
12
-LEGENDS-
-Marco-
AFTER THE END, it was just him and the open road.
Marco drove with the windows down. His black t-shirt was smudged and striped with dirt. The dry brown grime was caked onto his hands and down under his fingernails. He felt the wind on his face, eyes vacant, hardly paying attention to the hilly Ridgewood road before him. He’d placed another bandage on his face, covering up that ugly scar. In the seat behind him, the Bloodline prince slumbered. Marco listened to the rise and fall of his breaths.
At high noon, Marco parked in front of the Armory. Four scavengers were there to greet him, surrounding the car, rifles in hand. Yelling and swearing. Marco stepped out of the car, nice and slow, arms raised high above his head. He wore no gun belt. No knives. They screamed at him and searched him, but Marco hardly said a word. The whole world, at that moment, had the volume turned down. Two of them took Knox from the backseat and lugged him up the steps. There was such desperation in their voices. Such urgency. Their golden boy was damn near dead, and it was all hands on deck to save him. They pushed Marco down to his knees, a gun against his temple, but still he kept quiet, hands raised above his head.
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