After the Dark

by Max Allan Collins

  “What?”

  “Burned it up! Tied it into some kind of loop that kept going faster and faster until the poor baby finally overheated and just . . . burned up.”

  Max grunted a laugh. “Logan's a smart cookie.”

  “I thought my little box was pretty smart, too,” Luke said, walking off with the smoking box, possibly to bury it.

  “So you got nothing?” Max asked.

  Dix shrugged. “Does a migraine count?”

  Mole came in next, his head down. “Bling says Logan swore him to secrecy.”

  “Maybe I should go talk to him,” Max said.

  “Can I watch?” Alec asked.

  But Mole was shaking his head, saying, “I don't think he knows anything, anyway. Bling's a pretty tough character—and he'd just go into a yoga trance while we pulled out his toenails with pliers or somethin'.”

  Max said, “I have the pliers.”

  “Not worth the trouble,” Mole said, and relighted his stogie. “Anyway, Bling said Logan never let him know that kind of info—figured Bling was too obvious a target, and if somebody did torture him or use truth serum on 'im or somethin', best Bling not know anything important.”

  Joshua straggled in last, carrying a pillowcase like a sack. Whatever the shaggy transgenic was lugging looked heavy.

  “What did you find, Big Fella?”

  “Nothin', Little Fella. Sorry.”

  Max felt sick to her stomach. She had the name of the town, and that was a start; but there could be ten thousand or more people in Appleton. What were they going to do, go door to door?

  “If you didn't find anything,” Alec asked, “what's in the pillowcase? Kibble?”

  Joshua shrugged. “Not kibble, Alec.” He gazed mournfully at Max. “Logan had some of Father's books out, so I brought them along. But I couldn't find anything else.”

  “Let's see the books,” she said.

  Joshua emptied the pillowcase onto the map table, and the volumes clattered like big hailstones.

  A dozen books lay in front of them. At Max's instructions, everybody picked one out and started flipping through the pages, in case Logan had made a stray note in one of the margins. Max knew Logan well enough to realize he didn't trust his own memory—bright as he was, Logan still felt the need for pneumonic devices, so he was always leaving himself cryptic little notes.

  The third book Max picked up was Gulliver's Travels, a hard-back edition of the classic satire, similar to one she'd had when she was living in the projection booth at Mann's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. On the inside of the cover, next to where Father had inscribed it for Joshua, Max saw a doodle—a pencil-drawn little apple . . .

  Appleton?

  Had Logan, looking for a new name for Ray White, absently plucked one from a book? This book?

  “We have a name or two to try,” she said, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  She could stand the despair . . . It was the hope . . .

  “Get me an uplink,” she said. “We're going to see if the tiny town of Appleton, Washington, has a ‘Gulliver' family, or maybe a ‘Swift,' or even ‘Lemuel' . . .”

  “Max,” Alec said, “you're grasping for straws . . .”

  “And if we come up blank, we try every other ‘Appleton' in the U.S. and Canada . . . Alec, grasping at straws is the only way to find a needle in a haystack.”

  With night falling, they commandeered Logan's car and were on the road toward the upstate hamlet of Appleton.

  It had been easier than she had thought to locate Ray White. She just needed the right cryptic clues and a little insight into Logan and, oh yes, some luck; if a man named Moody hadn't given her Jonathan Swift's great book to read, years ago, they would not have this chance tonight to save Logan Cale.

  Accompanied by Alec, Mole, and Joshua, Max drove through Seattle, using her old Jam Pony ID and claiming to have an emergency delivery. When the sector cops asked why it took four messengers to deliver one package, she jerked her thumb toward Joshua and Mole in the backseat.

  “It's radioactive, with a potential leak,” she said. “The transgenics are the only ones who are able to deal with it without dying.”

  The prospect of leaking radioactivity was plenty to convince every sector cop they encountered. Max and crew and their hazardous materials were allowed free passage. And once they cleared the checkpoints in the city, the rest was easy.

  As they whipped down the highway, Mole had the wheel with a foot mashed down on the gas. Max rode shotgun, studying the map even in the dark, her cat eyes still able to make out the details. In the back, Joshua and Alec tried to catch some rest and the two of them leaned into each other as they slept, a boy and his dog . . . his really, really big dog.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Max wished she could take a photo of the two sleeping warriors; it wasn't often she was presented with an image that was on the one hand warm and fuzzy, and on the other, perfect blackmail material.

  Leave it to Logan Cale to come up with a literary alias for Ray White. Lemuel Gulliver traveled between two worlds, and so had Ray. Max remembered the book fondly from nights when it lulled her to sleep back at the Chinese. That book had been the one possession she regretted leaving behind in Los Angeles when she'd left, seeking Seth in Seattle.

  Max missed her Chinese Clan family, Moody, Tippett, and especially Fresca; but they were dead, and revenge, such as it was, had been taken. The book, though—Gulliver's Travels—had stayed with her. Like memories of a childhood she'd never had, the book was always part of her.

  She wondered if Logan had remembered her talking about the book when he picked Ray White's alias. If so, she'd planted the very clue she'd been able to interpret; the irony of that made her smile, a little. Maybe she would ask Logan about that when she saw him . . .

  If she saw him.

  The first order of business would be convincing the boy's aunt—now using the name Sara Gulliver and pretending to be the boy's mother—to help them. Max knew the woman would be reluctant to get involved, and risk the boy's safety; but perhaps to help rescue the man who had saved both her life and Ray's, she might consider it.

  Once Max had the name, tracking the pair down on the Internet had been surprisingly easy. The Internet was getting better every day, more and more like the heyday in the early '00s, especially here on the left coast, farther from the reach of the Pulse.

  Things were less screwed up here than on the East Coast, and businesses were making a comeback. Even though that pirate Jared Sterling had made millions bilking the public as he rebuilt the Internet, his death had signaled a new freedom to build; and the Internet was playing a large role in renewing commerce within the United States, if mostly out West.

  The Internet also provided more information than it had at any time since the Pulse. Now, Max not only knew where the Gullivers lived but where Sara worked, where Lem went to school, and even what kind of grades the boy was getting—not surprisingly, considering his genes, straight A's.

  “Town,” Mole said back over his shoulder.

  The two in the back stirred, saw the position they were in, and instantly slid to the far sides of the vehicle, each looking toward the front to see if anyone had noticed them. They glanced quickly at each other, gave a little nod that signaled they didn't think the others had seen, then they both sighed in relief.

  “You lovebirds have a nice nap?” Mole asked.

  Joshua glared at the lizard man, and Alec offered a couple of short words in response.

  Within minutes they were pulling up in front of the Gulliver house, a white two-story clapboard dating to the first half of the twentieth century, resting on a well-tended sloping lawn, a large ash tree in the front yard, and they could glimpse some other big trees out back. It was after dark but early in the evening, yet no lights were on inside the house. Max wondered if the Gullivers were out to dinner or visiting a neighbor.

  They could be anywhere, doing anything, blithely leading an idyllic small-town l
ife, unaware of the storm swirling around young Ray White . . . that is, Lem Gulliver.

  And all the transgenic team could do was wait for them to come home. Leaning against her side of the car, Max looked up at the house. She hoped the Gullivers wouldn't be gone all evening. She wanted to get back to Terminal City; getting the boy was only the beginning—a strategy to defeat White, and return Logan, had yet to be developed.

  She was about to turn and ask Mole a question when she saw a sudden illumination in a second floor window, as if someone had taken a picture with a flashbulb . . .

  . . . and Max was running toward the house and up the lawn even before she heard the report.

  The X5 knew a muzzle flash when she saw it.

  “Gun!” she yelled over her shoulder, but the others were in action already, too, even as she saw another flash, and they heard a second report from upstairs, terrible momentary thunder in the otherwise quiet night.

  She shouldered through the locked door and on inside, Joshua on her heels, Mole and Alec taking off around back to block the shooter's retreat to the rear.

  The stairs were immediately to the right, and she hit the fourth step just as a head peeked around the corner at the top, a stocking-capped head that looked like it belonged on the body of a big man, which it did. He stepped forward, showing off a linebacker's frame and, more important, a nine millimeter automatic in his right hand.

  Taking the rest of the stairs in a single bound, she leaped, landed at the top on one side and swung her leg around, her foot catching the man in the face. He backed up but neither flinched nor dropped the gun.

  Shit, she thought, noting the lack of reaction; any normal human would've dropped in pain. A Familiar!

  Had a squad of cultists been sent to guard Ray? And if so, why didn't Ames White know where his son was?

  Pressing her advantage, she punched him six quick times, backing him up toward the door of the room from which they had seen the gunshot flash, outside.

  And if the Familiars were guarding Ray, who the hell were they shooting at in that bedroom?

  The Familiar brought the pistol up again, and this time Max grabbed his arm and spun, the barrel of the pistol pointing directly at Joshua, who had followed her up the stairs but was now facing her.

  At the last second Joshua dodged to the right as the Familiar pulled the trigger two times, the shots blowing through the front wall of the house and into the night.

  Max heard Joshua growling, but there was no way to let him by, and she didn't want to, anyway . . . not until she'd disarmed the Familiar. She crashed the man's arm down on her shoulder and heard a satisfying crack as his arm broke at the elbow, the pistol slipping from his grip and thunking on each stair as it bounced to the bottom like a heavy Slinky. The Familiar made no noise when his arm snapped—pain just didn't seem to register on these bastards—swinging the limp limb like a whip. The open other hand caught her on the side of the head and sent her tumbling down the stairs, as if following the gun.

  Somehow, Joshua got past her, grabbed the Familiar around the waist and forced him toward the far end of the wall. Rolling into a combat stance, Max rushed back up the stairs and pushed her way through the closed door into the bedroom. The window was smashed and any Familiar that had been in here was gone.

  All that remained were Sara Gulliver and her “son” Lemuel, aka Ray White.

  And they were both dead.

  From the hall, Joshua roared with rage, then Max heard another nasty crunching sound . . . then silence.

  Heartsick, she spun into the hall and found Joshua, blood running from a wound in his shoulder. The Familiar hung limply in the Big Fella's arms, head lolling like a Christmas goose with its neck broken.

  Forcing herself back into the bedroom, Max gaped at the horrifying sight before her. On the floor, their hands tied behind their backs, gags in their mouths, the woman and the child both lay facedown, a single bullet hole in the back of each of their heads.

  Executed.

  Alec and Mole came pounding in from outside.

  “Bastard got away,” Mole said. “We were around back, he went out the front! He was one fast son of a . . .” The lizard man's voice trailed off as he took in the bodies on the floor. “Oh, God.”

  Pushing by him, Alec saw the carnage. Shaking his head, he turned away.

  Bending down, Max touched Ray's face. It was still warm.

  Why would the Familiars kill Ames White's son?

  This made no sense at all to her! Not only had they killed White's boy, they had taken the only bargaining chip she had left. She stroked the child's head, his hair, and she wept.

  She wanted to be tough.

  But with the dead child, and the realization that Logan was going to die—and that there was nothing she could do to prevent it—these things and every other thing she hadn't cried about for all those years, all the way back to Manticore, came pouring out.

  She knelt there, one hand on Ray's head, the other on her forehead as she wept. Tears ran freely, her body wracked with sobs.

  “Let it out, Little Fella,” the gentle giant said, kneeling beside her now.

  Max wondered if she ever could, though—there was too much to let out, there had been so many wrongs, so much pain, with no end in sight. Was this the normal life she'd hoped for, this endless parade of pain?

  At least little Ray White could sleep through it all—his pain, his travels, over.

  Chapter Eight

  * * *

  JOSHUA FIT THE BATTLE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  DECEMBER 22, 2021

  Eventually, as Max's sobs began to abate, Alec stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Max glanced back at the X5, surprised by the gentleness of the gesture and the genuine sorrow on the handsome face. She swallowed, nodding to him a small “Thank you” for his concern.

  His hand was still on her shoulder as Max—making no effort to rise—looked down again at Ray, as she continued to run a soothing hand through the boy's hair, her fingers inches away from moist, matted blood.

  He looked just as she remembered him, a bright-looking boy, hair cut short like his father's, the color more the blond of his late mother's. Rather small for his age—some of White's fellow cultists had doubted the boy had it in him to belong in their “exalted” ranks—he might have been asleep, but for the hole in his head.

  “Max,” Alec said, “we gotta haul—somebody in the neighborhood must've heard the noise, and we got three dead people here.”

  “Three?” she asked absently.

  “I broke one,” Joshua said, furry face matted with tears. “Did I do wrong, Max?”

  She glanced at the beast of a man next to her, and it came back to her, Joshua bleeding, wounded, breaking that Familiar's neck. Kneeling next to her now, as if they were both taking communion, Joshua seemed oblivious to his own wound, much less the knife blade still in his shoulder.

  “You okay, Big Fella?”

  He shook his head. “Too late,” he said. The eyes brimmed with more tears. “Boy shouldn't have to, Max.”

  “Have to . . . ?”

  “Take one. For the team.” And the tears overflowed.

  She removed her hand from the dead boy's head and stroked the side of Joshua's warm, wet face.

  Alec squeezed her shoulder. “Max!”

  “You're right, Alec. Let's shake it.”

  She rose, self-control flooding through her; she willed herself into a coldly businesslike state. Her sense of purpose had returned, in spades. She quickly moved out into the hall, where Joshua had left the limp figure with its broken neck, a fact made obvious by the severe impossible angle of it, as that neck was almost nonexistent, the large head sitting on broad shoulders. The man's wide eyes peered out emptily through the eye holes of the stocking mask.

  She knelt over this corpse with considerably less compassion than she had the child's. The Familiar wore familiar TAC fatigues, and Max had a pretty good idea what she was g
oing to find even before she jerked the stocking cap off the man's big head.

  The blond guard from the Lyman Cale estate.

  Otto. Or was it Franz? She didn't remember.

  Not that it mattered. She felt it safe to assume his partner, the dark-haired one—Franz, or Otto, whatever the hell—had been the one to escape through that bedroom window.

  She stood.

  Alec said, “Max . . . come on! We gotta blow this pop stand.”

  “Shut-up,” she said. “I'm thinking.”

  “Maybe you could do that in the car.”

  “Alec, shut-up.”

  What the hell was going on here? The Familiars, working for Lyman Cale?

  Only, Lyman Cale was a vegetable, a CGI image in public, and in private a husk hooked up to life support . . . No one really worked for him, did they? That security team, including the two brawny ones—Familiars—reported to Lyman Cale's private secretary, that slick ever-so-helpful bureaucrat, Franklin Bostock.

  Was Bostock the answer?

  A strong possibility, but Alec was right—this was not the time or place to work out all the maybes; they indeed needed to haul. Far away, but getting closer, sirens wailed mournfully, as if knowing in advance about the child's tragic death.

  “Company comin',” Mole growled, at her side.

  “Okay,” Max said. “Joshua, can you carry this guy?”

  Still ignoring the knife in his shoulder, Joshua responded by reaching down, grabbing the corpse and tossing it over his good shoulder, like a sack of grain.

  Alec's eyes widened and his mouth dropped like a trapdoor. “What the hell . . . ?”

  “Mole,” Max said, no-nonsense, “get the boy. Wrap him in a white sheet.”

  Mole's cigar fell out of his mouth. “No freakin' way! What kinda ghoulish shit—”

  Max thumped the lizard man's chest with two fingers. “The kid is dead. When I said we wouldn't trade the boy for Logan, I meant a breathing Ray White. It's not going to hurt that poor boy now, taking a ride with us.”

  Alec, his eyes as horrified as they were huge, stepped up. “Max, have you completely lost it? This plan beyond sucks!”