After the Dark

by Max Allan Collins

  Mole, raising his pistol, said, “Nobody can make me listen to this crapola . . .”

  “The future!” Matthias's voice echoed through the dark, dim chamber, the monitors glowing like small fires. “The future . . . arrives!”

  The trio of transgenics followed the Familiar's finger to the glass dome . . .

  . . . and saw a streak of silver and gold, appearing in the sky, a fiery Christmas ribbon flung across the heavens, its tail a shimmering scattering of white sparks.

  “Cool,” Alec said.

  Max had never seen anything quite so beautiful, nor so breathtaking. And still she shuddered: was that stardust trail the bearer of the biotoxin—the beginning of the end for mankind . . . ?

  Matthias stood on his roost, his eyes going from one monitor to another . . .

  On some of the screens, faces shone with delight from the sight of the Christmas comet. In some locales, a sea of small candles glowed, as if at a church service; in others, gay streamers of silver shook in upraised hands, in happy imitation of the remarkable event they'd just seen. Though there was no sound from the monitors, it was clear cheers and hoops and hollers and whoops of Yuletide joy were ringing in the air at the various locales. And then, slowly, spectators began to filter off, into their own lives, their own celebrations of the holiday . . .

  . . . and they all looked just fine.

  Matthias stared with an astounded expression—Max had never seen a longer puss on a guy. He kept shifting his vision from one monitor to another, and all he could see was ordinaries having a good time . . . clearly feeling hunky-dory.

  “Maybe it takes a while to kick in,” Alec said. He seemed vaguely disappointed. “An hour or so.”

  “Or maybe a thousand years,” Max said.

  Matthias sat—heavily—in his black chair; it was as if the hand shape of it was trying to crush him.

  “Hey, don't be down in the dumps,” Mole said, stepping up to him. “Do what the other end-of-the-world cults do, when the big day craps out on 'em. Pick a new one! Revise and move on.”

  “We . . . are . . . superior,” Matthias said, dazed.

  “Sure you are,” Max said. “I read about this cult . . . before the Pulse? A comet was coming to take them to outer space, where God was waiting for 'em. First the men had to castrate themselves . . .”

  “Ouch,” Alec said.

  “. . . and then take poison. Purify themselves—y'know, you don't want to meet God without sprucing up a bit. But they just knew that comet was gonna take 'em to outer space. Guess what? They're still waiting.”

  Matthias looked directly at Max, his expression haunted. “It was predetermined thousands of years ago. We shall prevail—”

  “Maybe next comet,” Alec said. “When's that, 4006?”

  Max stepped nearer to Matthias. “Can you control the facility from where you sit?”

  Matthias turned his gaze upon her. “Of course.”

  “Then unlock all the cells . . . Cooperate, and we'll spare you.”

  Mole said, “Hey! I say we—”

  “It's not a democracy,” she reminded him. Then to Matthias she said, “Well?”

  Matthias's ice-blue eyes fell to the computer screen built into the armrest—he touched the screen, in a “button” at the upper right . . .

  . . . and the monitors changed image.

  All of them the same.

  All, in huge red numbers, reading: 5:00. For one second, that is; then they read: 4:59 . . . 4:58 . . . 4:57 . . .

  Max jumped onto the perch and grabbed him by the front of his robe. “What the hell—”

  “This facility will self-destruct in five minutes. More or less. Less, now.”

  She put her hands on either side of his face and looked at him, as if she were going to kiss the silver-haired leader. “You won't have to wait,” she said.

  And broke his neck.

  Hopping down, she said, “Alec—take a look at those controls. We got minutes to clear this place and get our people off these grounds!”

  Mole pitched what was left of his latest stogie and grumbled, “Why can't these megalomaniac meatheads be satisfied with killin' themselves? Why do they gotta take a bunch of people with 'em?”

  “We'll break up into discussion groups later,” Max said, unceremoniously pulling the corpse of Matthias by his feet down off the throne onto the black floor, while Alec scrambled up in his place.

  She looked at him, hopeful. “Think you can unlock 'em?”

  “No problem.” Alec touched a button.

  The explosion rocked the building and knocked Max on her butt.

  She sat there, next to dead Matthias, and again looked up at Alec. Not so hopeful.

  Alec gave her half a grin and half a shrug, and said, “I seem to have blown up one of the outbuildings.”

  Getting on her feet, she said, “Don't just go touching any more buttons, until you're sure, okay?”

  Four thirty-four . . . 4:33 . . . 4:32 . . .

  “Maybe I should crack open a brewski,” Alec said, “and read the manual . . . You know, at my leisure?”

  “Just do it, Alec,” she said, and she and Mole were out of there.

  Max told Mole, as they sprinted down the stairs, “You take the cells on the left, I'll take 'em on the right . . . If Alec can't unlock 'em, just pull the damn things off their hinges.”

  “No prob,” Mole said.

  That was when the sprinkler system started in, whether automatically—thanks to the explosion of the outbuilding, its fire presumably spreading—or by more experimentation on Alec's part, she had no idea. The indoor rain felt icy cold and smelled of rust, as though it had been captive in the asylum's pipes for a long time.

  Max prayed that Alec had found the button to unlock these doors . . .

  In the long bare hallway, she tugged on the first door and nothing happened. She cursed, but it was inaudible over the sound of the sprinklers and voices screaming in cells all along the hall.

  Finding a fire extinguisher in a box on the wall, Max elbowed the glass, got the thing out and started clanging it against the lock of the first door. Finally, the old lock gave way and she threw open the door . . .

  On the single bed suspended by chains from the wall, a wide-eyed C. J. Sandeman lay wrapped in a straitjacket and gagged. Even so, it was clear that he recognized her immediately.

  “No time to get you outta that,” she said, yanking him off the cot, steadying him onto his feet. “Building's going up in a couple minutes. Get down to the first floor, they'll help you.”

  He managed to nod and stumbled out and off toward the stairs.

  Mole tried a door, looked at her bright-eyed. “This one's unlocked!”

  Quickly he opened it and stuck his head in.

  Just as quickly he yanked his head back out and slammed the door shut.

  Mole shuddered.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Snakes,” he said, and went on.

  You'd think he wouldn't have a problem with that, she thought, going on to the next cell, trying to keep track of time. About two minutes left . . .

  With the water coming down, her hair was well-matted by now. She had released four prisoners when she finally heard the locks all click open. All the doors thrummed open slightly and the prisoners needed no further encouragement than that. They flew down the hall, splashing, barely aware of Max waving them toward safety. She stayed on the floor, going from cell to cell making sure everyone got out.

  She saw no other inmate or prisoner until she got to the last door, which she opened wide, and looked in to see a lump in the middle of a padded cell whose stuffing was largely hanging out of gaping tears.

  “Get on your feet!” she said. “Building's gonna blow!”

  The lump rolled over to reveal a sickly, emaciated man who had obviously undergone a great deal of torture, a man who stared at her with beady dark eyes . . .

  . . . a man she had known all her life.

  Stunned, all she could sa
y was, “I thought you were dead.”

  Colonel Donald Lydecker—the dreaded surrogate father of all the Manticore siblings—looked up at her, his hands shakily reaching toward her. “Not if you help me . . .”

  She recoiled. “Go to hell. Get out on your own, if you can, you bastard.”

  And she turned to go, the time pressing her harder than this stunning discovery.

  But behind her a weak version of that strong voice called out over the sprinkler din: “I understand how you feel . . . but if you help me . . . I'll help you.”

  Her back to him as she stood poised in the door, she said, “Help me? Like you've helped me in the past, killing my sibs?”

  She was halfway out when his words stopped her: “I know where your mother is.”

  Her birth mother . . . her father a test tube, but her mother a real woman, who Max had longed to find, to meet, to know . . .

  As the clock ticked, her mind flew: he was lying; Lydecker always lied. He knew her hot buttons and had pushed the hottest one he could think of . . . that simple.

  She left him there and went running down the hall.

  And then she turned and sprinted back to duck into the cell and scoop up her sickly surrogate father.

  The transgenics were scattered across the grounds, robed figures sprawled around them on the snow-dusted landscape. Among the dead, the white-sheeted body of the boy stood out, as did the headless corpse of his father. Here and there a few of the patrol guards, in TAC gear, lay dead, shot by Mole. Any way you figured it, the battle was over, the opponents either dead or badly injured . . . those who hadn't fled.

  “Building's gonna blow,” she cried, “any second! Run!”

  And they ran.

  It galled her that she was the one hauling Colonel Donald Lydecker to safety.

  They were at the edge of the woods when the building exploded—actually, three small explosions placed around and within the building that together rolled up into one big one, and one fireball, flinging chunks of stone and showering debris like an ugly, landbound comet.

  Within a very short time the fallen, half walls of the complex—though one outbuilding stood, relatively unscathed—were home to orange, licking flames and foul, rolling gray-black smoke, the crackling of the fire like sporadic gunfire.

  And then the bearded Logan was at her side. He glanced down at the withered form of Lydecker, shivering, coughing, and said, “Look what the cat drug in.”

  “I wish I hadn't,” she said, and told Logan what Lydecker had said.

  “You can't trust him,” he said.

  “I know. I know.”

  “But Max . . . you can trust me. Really.”

  “I know, Logan.”

  “You do?”

  “Going to your uncle for the ransom . . . he almost died, because of me, Logan. He may still die . . . he's comatose. And I knew . . . if I caused his death . . . telling you would be the hardest . . .”

  He took her hand in his—flesh-to-flesh, no virus to worry about—and squeezed it. “You did this for me, Max. I know you did. You rid mankind of this demented snake cult . . . or anyway, diminished their ranks considerably, including Ames White himself . . . but you didn't do it for mankind, did you?”

  “No. It was for you, Logan . . . We hadn't finished our argument.”

  He laughed, gently.

  Alec had noticed Lydecker's disheveled presence, and said, “I can't believe this bastard's alive!”

  “I can fix that,” Mole said, brandishing the pistol.

  She shook her head, made a sharp motion. “No! I need him, breathing.”

  The reptile face wrinkled further and words came through clenched teeth: “But it's what I want for Christmas.”

  Again Max shook her head. “I'll get you a tie.”

  “What about the comet?” Alec asked. “From what we saw on those monitors, people all over feel fine . . . Other than a hangover tomorrow, maybe. It was a big nothin'!”

  Logan said, “Maybe it'll have effects on people like me, in the days ahead . . . but I don't think so. The snake cult may have been physically and mentally superior, thanks to all that ‘good' breeding . . . but they were still a cult. It was religion they were spouting—not science.”

  “What if it does kick in?” Max asked.

  Logan shrugged. “We do what people always do—our best to survive, a day at a time.”

  “I coulda told you it was BS,” Alec said.

  Max looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Never believe anything in that rag Sketchy writes for.”

  There was laughter—a relief after the hard-fought struggle—and Max and Logan pitched in with first aid, patching up some wounds among the transgenics, including her own shoulder. Fortunately, the lack of firearms and other weapons among the Familiars—who'd not been prepared for an invasion tonight, mutant or otherwise—had limited casualties among the ranks of the good guys.

  The transgenics Dix had rounded up to play cavalry for Max and her little crew had made the trek in various vehicles—trucks, cars, vans, even schoolbuses, all of them having two things in common: the vehicles were old as dirt, and ran like new, thanks to the Terminal City motor pool of Luke and Dix. Max said her good-byes, giving Dix that big kiss he deserved, and she—and Mole, Alec, Joshua, and Logan—waved as the unlikely caravan of vehicles started home.

  Mole returned to the compound, where the fire was starting to die down, and commandeered a truck from behind the one surviving outbuilding—neither Matthias nor Alec had managed to blow that one up—and, soon, they were loading Lydecker in the back with the rest of them and heading out the front gate (the guard post abandoned) to drive around to where Logan's car waited, undisturbed.

  Logan and Max climbed down out of the truck, and Max instructed Mole to take the vehicle back to Terminal City with Lydecker . . . alive.

  “Call Dr. Carr and get him some medical help,” she said to the lizard man. “And keep Lydecker under lock and key, and constant guard. When he gets to feeling better, he'll be slippery.”

  “You're putting me in charge?” Mole asked, lighting up a cigar.

  “I know you'd just as soon rip his head off as look at him,” Max said.

  Mole glanced Joshua's way. “I don't know, Max—that kinda thing ain't exactly my department.”

  Joshua looked away, embarrassed.

  Max thumped Mole's chest. “Just make sure that evil bastard stays alive. If he can help me find my mother, that's one good thing he can do, after all the bad.”

  “Starting a new crusade already?” Alec asked. “Can't we take a day or two off?”

  “You know us messiahs,” Max said. “We're savin' souls seven days a week.”

  “I thought you rested on Sunday,” Alec said.

  “No,” Max said. “You're thinkin' of my Old Man.”

  Alec smirked. “Test tubes never sleep.”

  Then Terminal City's next alderman crawled in back of the truck, where Lydecker had been propped up, half out of it. Joshua, riding shotgun, waved like a little kid. Mole, behind the wheel, stogie in the corner of his mouth, winked at her.

  And they disappeared into the bright morning.

  Christmas morning.

  The couple got into Logan's car, Max behind the wheel.

  “So I'm forgiven?” Logan asked.

  “I guess.” She started the car and followed the route the truck had taken, but lagging.

  “Because of what you said? My uncle and all?”

  “Yeah. That, and I love you.”

  She said it so casually, he didn't seem to be sure he'd heard right. Their eyes met for a moment, and she could see the surprise in his gaze, then she turned back to the road.

  Logan seemed stunned. “I don't think you ever said that to me before.”

  “It was always too hard. I wanted to. Maybe I didn't figure I needed to, until now. But . . . looking for you, finding you . . . now I know how important it is. To say it.”

  He touched her cheek, briefly
. “You know that I love you, don't you? . . . God, Max, it's nice to be able to just feel my fingers on your skin . . . Are we all right?”

  She glanced at him. “I won't lie to you.”

  “I won't lie to you either!”

  She smiled a little, then returned her eyes to her driving. “I can't say that this business with Seth doesn't still bother me . . .”

  “He was your brother. It'll always bother you. It should always bother you.” An edge came into his voice. “Just know, I would never do that to you again.”

  As good as it had been to hear him say he loved her, hearing this pledge felt even better.

  They rode in silence for a while.

  Then . . .

  “Sounds like you're getting ready for a road trip,” he said. “You and Lydecker, going to find your mother?”

  She smirked humorlessly. “She could be across town, or on another continent. We have to talk to the colonel . . . and you know Lydecker.”

  “Reliability is not his middle name . . . And if your mother is halfway across the world?”

  “I need to find her.”

  “I understand. Room for one more?”

  Max smiled at him. “I don't know. Let's get you cleaned up, and see if I still can stand being seen with you.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Have you seen yourself lately?”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “That sprinkler system wasn't kind to your hair.”

  “Is that right? Well, you can take a look at me, after I have a nice long hot bath. I may just sleep until Christmas, then let everything sort itself out.”

  “This is Christmas, Max.”

  “So it is.”

  They rode in silence for a while—a sweet, comfortable silence. Finally, maybe halfway home, with Logan asleep in the passenger seat, she pulled off the road and into the lot of a small roadside motel at the edge of a little town. She checked in, unlocked the room's door, then came out to the car and opened the door on his side. He was lolled back on the seat. She touched his arm.

  “Come on,” she said.

  He awoke slowly. “Where . . . are we?”