I shake my head and decide to leave at first light.
Today is a new day and the quiet has become more unnerving than the chaos. I had stayed awake all night, listening as the cries from below had slowly silenced. I head down the twisting flights of stairs, stop at my apartment and grab a broom. I unscrew the top and toss it aside and continue to the road below. The morning light has just started to grow. I’m the first on the street. I quickly find a National Guard post. Sand bags surround five dead guys. I grab a shotgun and two nine-millimeter pistols. Now I’m set. Some body better fuck with me. Please.
There are survivors, but they are few and far between. Most of them cower in their apartments. I feel their eyes on me. They look at me like I’m for sale, an item on some shelf. What does she got? Can I take her? They think.
This guy bursts from a department store with a handful of shit. He looks at me for a moment too long. Probably sizing me up, thinkin’ ‘bout what I had that he wanted. I gave him my cold stare and opened my arms. “C’mon fool!” I yell. I shake my broomstick at him. He runs. “Get outta here,” I mumble. I think I’ll call the stick my Beater.
From the side street come two guys in tees and shorts. They’re loaded up with M16s. They order my hands up. I have to comply because the looter distracted me. That won’t fuckin’ happen again. Behind them comes a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
One guy grabs my bag and rips it open. “I got your shit, bitch.” He laughs. He’s some bald buff guy. I know the type. “She’s got guns and food!” he says, inspecting my stuff. I grind my teeth, looking for a way to get at this guy’s throat.
The other adds, “Hurry the fuck up! We don’t have time for you to dip your dick!”
“She’d rip it off for sure.” The third bastard clocks me across the head. I go out.
I wake up some time later, pissed as hell. I walk north. I gotta get out and fast. Everyone is dead. I don’t even see any more survivors. No one is staring out the windows. No one is looting. It’s weird, but I’m not too sad about it. Most had it comin’. People suck. Most of my family members suck, guys are assholes, chicks bitch too much, and weren’t we killin’ the planet by overpopulating it with assholes anyway? The sun is still gonna come up and go down with or without them.
The streets are hard to maneuver — through the smashed cars, trash, and dead bodies — and still watch my six. I listen to the wind whistling between the buildings. No one is gonna get the drop on me again.
Black smoke fills half the sky. The air smells like burnt tires and occasionally the odor of some dead guy.
I pick up a shell casing off the street. It belongs to an M-242 machine gun. Those guns crown the rotating heads of Bradley fighting vehicles. Finding the shell makes me feel better.
Why? Because I’m gonna find those fuckers and kill them. I want my shit back. They took everything from me: my shotgun, my pistols, and my food. They even took my damn pads and aspirin. What the fuck are they gonna do with pads? It was like slapping me across the face. This surviving thing is going to get harder before it gets easier. I know that as long as I have my share I’ll be fine.
A Bradley fighting vehicle has a pretty big footprint, so it hasn’t been hard tracking it. I’m getting close, too. Being stripped of my guns, I have to come up with a plan that involves beating in their heads with my Beater Stick. And if they take me down with that M-242 then so be it. Just throw me in the gutter with all the other dopes.
I sneak past an overturned and burned out yellow cab and see the Bradley. It had smashed through the front of a drug store. I’m sure they are inside, stealing everything they can fit in the crew compartment. I run, half bent over, with my Beater Stick in both hands. There’s no movement in the tank. They’re all inside the store. The back is locked so they aren’t all that dumb. I brace my foot on the tank tread, grab a small handle above the back door, and hoist myself on top of the Bradley. The overhead hatch flips open and a mole head pops out. So there’s someone left behind after all. I spin the Beater Stick over my head and bring it down on that fool’s face. The vibration I feel under my fingers, as the wood cracks bone, stings. The man goes down. I set my Beater Stick down and slip easily into the Bradley. The man groans as I step on his head and knock him out with a quick thump of my Beater Stick.
The back of the Bradley is filled with sodas, beers, pills, and piles of canned food. I see my backpack. I pull it from the stash and check to see if my pads and aspirin are still inside. They are. Good. I add a few cans of soup and beans to my pack and slip it on my shoulders. I groan as the smell of man-sweat hits my nose. I gag and need fresh air badly. I’d gotten cornered once by a dickhead outside a bar. He caught me and pinned me behind a dumpster, a big hairy guy. He had that musky smell all over him. He would have raped me if I hadn’t head-butted him. I hope he’s lying in a ditch now. My stomach tightens. I shake off the memory, burying it.
On the wall of the crew compartment hangs my pistols and my shotgun. There’s an assault rifle too. I take them all. As I start to climb out the top hatch I notice one of the machismos returning with a box of stuff. He doesn’t see me, but I see him. He’s the man that pulled my backpack off my back and laughed. This guy should have died with all the others. He’s scum, guilty as charged. I flip a cover off the gun trigger and pull it. Crack, crack, crack, crack! Roars the M-242 gun. It shakes the whole vehicle.
I rotate the head turret and unleash more hell. The massive bullets shred everything in the store. The shelves, toys, candy bars and all the other crap they sell explode in a million different pieces. Life in confetti. I pump a few more rounds into that man that stole my stuff, splattering his guts. I hear the other guys start to return fire. I duck down the hatch and exit through the back door.
I have my pack on my back, an assault rifle and shotgun slung over my shoulder, two pistols in my belt, and my Beater Stick in my right hand. I’m running as fast as I can down Lexington Avenue. They don’t follow me.
I have to get to Central Park before sundown, which is in an hour or so. Most of the fires are going out and without electricity the city will get dark, so I don’t wanna be walking the streets. The park sounds the safest.
When I get there, I set up camp in the middle of a baseball field with a fifty-foot perimeter of things that make noise like soda cans, plastic bags, and egg cartons. I don’t want to stay in one of the million buildings because they’re graveyards now, filled with dead and rotting corpses of the people that thought they were being smart by staying home.
I let my mind wander. Has my family survived? Most of them I don’t even know. It’s not like we all hang out at family reunions or anything. My dad’s the real kicker. I try not to think of him now, but I can’t help it. He was a strict Catholic, the head of an import syndicate that worked with cartels south of the border. God must have looked the other way when my dad’s clients laundered money, hid cocaine in legit import deals, and sold illegal guns to thugs. Hypocrite.
He was worse than just a hypocrite. He was a beater. He’d get mad and “whoop” my mom or me. I remember the day he found out I failed out of private school. He beat me so badly he had to kidnap me and lock me away in his cabin on Lake Rockland until my bruises completely healed. He always told me it was for my own good and that I’d be a better person if I knew how to behave. Life is always about either making the rules or following them, is what he always said. He beat into me the fact that he didn’t think I’d be making any rules, so I needed to learn how to follow them. Bastard!
There I go again, wanting to punch somethin’. I turn to the trunk of a tree and punched it hard. My skin splits so I punch it again. “Now who’s making the rules?!” I hiss at the tree. “If you’re alive, Papa, I’ll show you some new rules. Rules that I make up. And because you broke all the rules I’ve made, you won’t like your punishment.”
I try to change my thoughts. I need to sleep, not get angrier.
#
I hadn’t had a nine-to-five job since I got kicked out
of the army. I tried many times, but I always ended up hating my bosses. They’re usually men with egos like my father. They know everything. They just want to pull on those puppet strings and I ain’t no puppet. Besides, they always break the rules they make.
I’d gotten by okay doing odd jobs for people. One day, after punching this bitch out at Club Crisis — she started it — I was approached by this guy, called himself Professor Cott. He hired me to be a security guard at his university. He paid me fifty grand for a year’s work. I couldn’t say no to that. In addition, he contracted me to protect his ass on his off hours, to be his bodyguard. He was a pasty white dude with a bright white beard, bald head, and thick glasses.
Turns out Cott had more of a night life than most people do when they’re in college. He would go out at night to bars and clubs and sometimes to these shit-hole warehouses in Jersey. Sometimes he’d end up in some back room with shady lookin’ people. I’d be called in if there was trouble. Most of the time there wasn’t, but hey, that’s the security business for ya.
During the day I guarded a physics lab outside of Colombia U. They made all kinds of shit there. Even had the military stop by a few times to peek at some trashcan thing they were makin’. I didn’t think too much of it then.
The year went by and I was livin’ it up. I only had to get in three, no, four fights for this guy. And it was always after some late night meeting he was attending.
Oh yeah, there was this other thing that happened. Just, like, last week. One night he met up with an activist group called People for Stable Fairness. Bunch of weirdo’s in black. After a political rally, he disappeared into a Jersey warehouse with the head honchos. I was told to stay out in the alley. The last time we went to one of these meetings Cott had gotten kicked out. He was thrown on his ass, and I had to keep him from getting beaten up. So I got ready for a fight that night.
I waited out in the alley for a long time. It was just after midnight when a limousine drove up and a woman waved me over. I walked up to the limo.
The woman had jet black hair and wore sunglasses even though it was nighttime. “You’re Professor Cott’s guard?” she asked me.
“What’s it to you?” I replied. I put my hand on the grip of my pistol, which I had in a shoulder harness under my jacket.
“How would you like to make half a million on a job?” she asked.
“Fuck you,” I said and backed up. I thought she was gonna ask me to do a film for her or whack someone.
She stepped out of the vehicle. To my surprise she was dressed in full camo gear, not some slick cocktail dress. “This is not some sicko offer,” she said and took off her glasses. She had the eyes of a fighter, not some bimbo. A scar on her right cheek extended to the bottom of her jaw. It gave me goosebumps. “This is a job that will test your endurance, not your loyalty or your morals.”
“You stop me on the street, looking like you just got off tour, and expect me to do a job for a half million? Piss off and find another bitch. I ain’t living the rest of my life in prison.” I turned to walk away.
She touched a white envelope to my shoulder. I stopped and took it. It was fat with cash. “This job is for a man called Zilla. He needs your skills. It’s for a top-secret surveillance job. It has to be done tomorrow by mid-day.
I flipped through five bundles of one hundred dollar bills. “I ain’t going to prison for no one, not for Cott, or my family, or this Zilla guy.”
“There will be no prison. Ever again. No one will care what you decide two days from now. Just follow the instructions on the envelope.”
I stuffed it into my pocket. She had my attention.
Later Cott came out of the meeting and I escorted him home. He was in a weird mood, and didn’t talk as much as he usually did.
After he trudged inside his house, I sat in his carport. Eventually I pulled the envelope from my pocket and flipped out the note. They wanted me to fire off this rocket the brainiacs in the physics department at Columbia had built. It had to be tomorrow. There were detailed instructions too. I looked them over and decided that it would be impossible to launch without getting caught. I wasn’t goin’ to jail for no one. I pulled out my cigarette lighter, lit a smoke, then touched the glowing embers to the paper. I let the flames lick my fingertips before I tossed it out the window. No, thanks. But hey, you just try and get a refund for your deposit, lady.
The next day I went to work as usual. I arrived at six o’clock sharp. Those brainiacs like to get started early. There was no guard, which was weird. I had to use my key to get into the building and shut off the alarm. No lobby guard either? That was also weird. There was always a guard twenty-four hours a day. I stashed my lunch in the refrigerator and went to the front desk. At least one guard had shown up. His shit was all over the desk: a book, a crossword puzzle, an ice-cold cup of coffee.
I waited around until way after seven. Usually there were all kinds of people in the facility. But today, no one was showin’ up.
I thought about the half million dollars. It sure would be nice to sit on that cash. I got an adrenaline rush like you’d never believe and took off toward the physics lab. If I was gonna do this, it would have to be quick.
I unlocked the door to the lab and shut off the alarm. The huge rocket was at the far end of the room behind four-inch Plexiglas. It was quite longer than I remember, and an extra piece had been added. I pulled out my pistol and aimed at the Plexiglas. Then I thought, the glass is probably bullet proof, and they might be able to tell it was my gun. So I found a metal bar in the supply closet and started chipping at the lock. It finally broke open. I ripped the small door off and removed the four corner clips on the inside of the enclosure. The entire side of the Plexiglas cover came off. I tried to roll the thing, but it was too heavy. I retrieved a dolly from the closet next door, tipped the rocket on its end, and walked it onto the dolly. This was too easy. Zilla must have cleared the way for me. From that point it was even easier. I simply rolled the thing to the roof.
There was a note stuck to the roof access door.
‘You have exactly fifteen minutes to complete this project before being arrested. If you beat the clock you will be able to get away.’
My heart jumped and my pulse thickened. Bitch told me there would be no cops. I rolled the rocket to the middle of the roof, took it off the dolly, and kicked the dolly away. There was a red button at the bottom of the cylinder. I pushed it. Three legs folded out of the base. A remote was clipped to a leg. I looked up and noticed a police helicopter approaching. So some rules are being broken, huh? I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes? Well, now I’ve got only eight minutes left.
I scanned a set of illustrated instructions on the remote then stepped way back. I pushed the buttons in the order listed. The rocket stabilized by automatically adjusting its legs. I stepped back toward the wall. Sirens wailed in the distance. Lots of sirens! Something was going down, something big. Five minutes. I brushed my hair from my face. I took a deep breath. The last instruction was to enter a code. The note I’d burned had given me the code. Shit. I pictured the note in my head. I tried two words then I looked at my watch. One minute left. Then it clicked. ‘Silence’. I typed it in and without a second thought pushed the button. Smoke poured from the rocket’s engine, then fire. It lifted off as smooth as unsheathing a sword.
I blocked out the sun with one hand and watched the rocket rise. It climbed and climbed. Then, to my surprise, the bottom of the rocket dropped off and a second stage motor ignited. It disappeared into the sky and was gone. No explosion and no sound. Well, those fools said it was for surveillance.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t hear sirens anymore. So I ran to the base of the rocket, picked it up, threw it over the edge of the building, and ran. There was a red box hanging from the doorknob of the roof door. ‘Urgent’ was printed on it. Inside the box was a red syringe and a note.
‘Use or die. The New World thanks you. Your service was indispensable. ~Zilla.’
When I got to the street I froze. The cars weren’t working. No traffic lights either. People were standing around yelling at each other. Their cell phones didn’t seem to be working either.
A loud engine whined to my left. I turned just in time to jump out of the way of an old Chevy truck. That truck was working. It was all over the sidewalk, running people out of its way. The old truck disappeared around the corner. I ran the opposite direction. It was time to go home and wait this craziness out.
That was three days ago. Since then everyone had died. Some croaked in the streets or in their cars, some in their homes, and some at work. Most of them died trying to get out of the city. The looks on their faces were placid and still, like mannequins of wax or plastic. It was traumatic for most. There was shit comin’ from their noses and eyes. It was like thick yellow snot. There were a few that looked like they had just leaned against something and went to sleep.
The government didn’t do shit either, probably couldn’t. I heard a bunch of jets in the sky two days ago followed by a series of explosions and that was it. Oh yeah, a tank drove by me once. There were no working radios or TVs anywhere I know now that I launched an EMP. I wouldn’t have done that shit if I’d known people were getting sick and the satellites were being knocked out. No one deserves this shit.
#
I look around. My chest tightens with a wave of sadness. I shake it off, mostly. They’re dead. I’m not. I’d just as soon forget about my little rocket incident and instead focus on survival.
6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 Page 5