Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Sandy had taken the baby out of the pushchair and was standing rigidly, clutching the baby to her breast. She had felt the fear.

  From the centre of the city, a blue light was shining. It grew brighter and brighter, turning a bright white as it built into a huge ball of energy in the sky.

  Max’s mouth dropped open. Panic seared through him, freezing him to the spot. He was unable to move.

  The ball exploded outwards, sending a wave of blue light ever outwards. The ring of light was sparkling, ethereal, beautiful. The most beautiful light he had ever seen. All the lights in the city went out behind it, as if they had been eclipsed by its magnificence. He felt the blue wave hit him. Bathed in its glow it was almost pleasant, like being washed with a wave of warm water. A second behind it, a wave of sound hit him, a terrific ‘BRMMPHHFF’ noise from the wave. He watched in wonder as it passed spreading darkness and silence in its wake.

  Max paused: breathing steadily.

  It had been so beautiful.

  Everything went white.

  Max slammed his eyes shut and threw his arms in front of his face; recoiling in shock, as if he had stared into the radiance of a powerful deity come to pass the final judgement.

  The ground lurched hideously and he was thrown to his knees. He was dimly aware that Sandy was no longer by his side. He struggled to open his burning eyes as time seemed to drag by in months rather than tenths of a second. Through watery vision the horizon had turned orange. Everything past a point had simply gone. An impossibly huge expanding ball of fire was building seemingly in slow motion off to the east. Birthed from the same place as the astounding blue light this new terrible cousin destroyed everything in its path. It rolled towards him in a wave of light. Seeing, but not fully comprehending, his hands automatically clamped over his ears.

  An insurmountable noise hit his brain like a thousand fireworks being detonated in his mind. He was left with a dim buzzing noise, and the feeling of a warm liquid trickling between his fingers. A wave of heat washed over him. He felt his skin blister and was dimly aware that his hair was on fire.

  The water in the lake was bubbling and clouds of steam were rising. The leaves on the trees ahead were burning. The flames dancing, like tiny cavorting demons.

  His cracking mind suggested he had plummeted from London into one of Dante’s tortured visions. He chanced a look to his side and saw Sandy on her knees; baby clutched to her body; locked in a screaming pose. All her clothes were alight and her skin had an unhealthy pinkish tint.

  The light was expanding in the distance, and as it came, more and more things disappeared in its wake. He squeezed his burning eyes shut and screamed. A soundless noise as his ears had burst only a second before. He felt the shockwave hit and felt a thousand red-hot knives cut into him burning, tearing, slicing…”

  Max awoke in the darkened bedroom.

  It was the same recurring nightmare that he always had. His mind refused to forget. There would be no peace from the thoughts of what had happened to his little girl and Sandy on the Day of Reckoning. He had imagined it in every painful detail, regretting he had not been there with them.

  He shivered all over. His naked body was covered in sweat and wracking from the aftermath of the nightmare. His fists were tightly clenched and the bed sheets were on the floor.

  He glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 4:02 a.m.

  He turned to look at Aya lying next to him. Long black hair. Not Sandy.

  She had not heard anything. She snored lightly and turned over; lost in her own dreams.

  Max wiped a hand across his brow, brushing off a wave of cold sweat. He reached sleepily across and pulled the small bedside drawer open. He could just make out the picture of Sandy staring out at him in the darkness. He groaned and flipped the picture open as he groped for something. He pulled out a small, black, crumpled packet. “Apexir” was printed on the side in red letters.

  As Max un-wrapped the packet, he noted that his nails had made small bloody grooves in his palms. He grunted through the pain and flexed his hands. A single, red pill lay hidden in the package. Max stared at it and sighed. Last one, he thought. Time to make a pick up. No-way could he face the nightmares without them. Or the withdrawal, a voice in his mind piped in.

  Max took the pill between two sweaty fingers and swallowed it dry; waiting for the rush to dispel the vividness of the nightmare. He tossed the empty package back in the drawer and shut it tight. As the drug numbed his mind from the guilt he felt, the last painful images of Sandy and his baby faded. The drug took its grip and he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 7: Back in the Red

  Max’s Pad: Sector Six

  Saturday 2nd June

  ‘Max? Max wake up.’

  Max was roused from his deep and empty sleep by a soft tugging on his arm. Bleary eyed, the clock digits next to him on the cabinet, swam into focus: 10.36 a.m. He mumbled. The warm, soothing mist of the Apexir was beginning to drift from his mind and he turned over to see Aya looking fondly at him. Her hair was sticking up at crazy angles.

  ‘Morning Maxy,’ she purred.

  Memories of the previous night’s liaison came flooding back to Max. They were good – until the guilt set in a few seconds later.

  ‘Mornin',’ he managed sleepily.

  Aya’s eyes changed to a look of concern.

  ‘Max…We need to talk,’ she said in a serious tone.

  Max rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned. It felt way too early for a heavy conversation and he could already see this that was going to be one.

  ‘Yeah. Okay,’ he muttered and sat up in the bed, ruffling his hair with his hands.

  Aya sat up next to him, pulling the covers over to shield her nakedness. She wanted his attention and her body was usually too big a distraction for him. Normally that was a good thing, unless she wanted to talk that was.

  ‘Max...’ she started again, her voice sounding a little more hesitant.

  He could see she had been planning this conversation all morning. He had a nasty feeling he knew what she was about to suggest. After the booze had worn off, she clearly hadn’t lost the idea that she had been going on about the night before.

  ‘We’ve been going out six months now…’ she continued.

  Max simply nodded, ‘Uuh huh,’ he agreed reluctantly, waiting for the inevitable bombshell.

  ‘…and…you know I really like you, right? I mean you know I LOVE you right?’ she said whilst she fiddled shyly with the covers.

  Max swallowed, ‘Uuh huh,’ he repeated.

  She took a deep breath and grasped his hand in both of hers. He could see the hope in her eyes as she looked at him.

  ‘Max. Let’s get married! Let’s move in together! I don’t want to go back home to that man!’

  Max swallowed again hard. He’d known this was coming for some time. He had no easy answer prepared. He’d just been hoping it would take longer to get to this point. A LOT longer.

  She shook his hand, wringing it in hers. Her eyes pleaded with him to agree.

  Well? What’d you say, it’d be great!’ she said excitedly.

  She was practically jiggling with excitement.

  Max gritted his teeth. He felt his heart sink to a very low, dark place. It was his own fault. He’d led her here and played along. She’d been a welcome distraction to the pain in his life. He couldn’t bear to break her heart now. The hopeful look in her eyes was killing him.

  ‘Look...’ he started to say. ‘I’m not exactly the marrying kind…’

  His eyes measured her response. The lie stung him as he said it. He saw her heart flutter and sink before it came back up every bit as fiery as before.

  She waited for him to continue and give her the response that she wanted to here.

  ‘I’m not good enough,’ he said with finality. ‘Believe me, you don't want this,’ he said, hoping that it would be enough to dissuade her.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘I don’t care!�
�� she argued. ‘You’re the one I want! Max you’re perfect.’

  Max coughed.

  He considered himself to be about as far from perfect as anyone could get. He felt sorry for her. He could see she wouldn’t be persuaded of the bitter truth. He would either have to agree or break it off. He hated the idea of being lonely again, but he hated the idea of breaking her heart more. He felt wretched. Maybe she’ll see the truth about you soon enough, the voice behind his eyes said. There was pain there. He was developing a major headache. He wasn’t good at handling situations like this. He’d used the last of his Apexir supply the night before and his body already yearned for more. Everything seemed so chaotic.

  A brief wringing of his hand demanded a new response from him. He took one last look into her hopeful eyes and resigned.

  ‘Okay,’ he conceded. ‘Why don’t you stay here for a bit, and we’ll see how it goes?’

  He coughed awkwardly as Aya launched herself at him causing him to fall back on the bed. She hugged him so tightly he struggled to breathe.

  ‘Oh Max! That’s so wonderful! You won’t regret this!’ she cooed.

  He already was.

  He made a near escape as she tried to straddle him. It was a difficult struggle. One he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to make. But he had business today. The straddling would have to wait until later. His headache had developed into a titanic earthquake in his head and he couldn’t stand the thought of having no Red, or Bleeders (as Apexir was known) to fall back on. He’d have to make the pickup. The relationship ‘issue’ was just too much. It would have to wait until he felt stronger.

  Max pulled on a pair of wrinkled trousers that he had carefully put away on his bedroom floor. The carpet made for ‘fine clothes storage’ as far as he was concerned. He talked while he dug in the carpet wardrobe for a shirt with the least amount of stains on it.

  ‘Aya…Uh…listen babe. I have to go out for a while. Shouldn’t be too long, he said as he pulled on the shirt with only two beer stains on it.

  He gave her a half smile.

  She looked disappointed, but ever eager to please, the look soon vanished.

  ‘Sure Max, perhaps you’d like me to do the washing while you’re out? she offered helpfully.

  He shot her a quick glance. Washing? he thought. He wasn’t even sure if he had a washing machine that worked. He simply bought new clothes when his became too matted too wear anymore. That took some time. Thankfully, Falkner shoved his uniform in with his own for cleaning, so that was never an issue. His other clothing didn’t matter.

  ‘Yeah, okay. Thanks babe,’ he replied dismissively.

  Max strapped his boots on. Good luck with that, he thought. Next she’d want to be re-decorating. Correction. Do some decorating. Max had certainly never bothered. Several strips of yellowed wallpaper were peeling off the wall. He was a killer. NOT an interior designer. Another correction – had been a killer. Now he was a box-guard in part of the CURES’ Security Services. The bitterness of it enveloped him.

  The craving for a new batch of Bleeders was all he could think about. He leaned down to where Aya was hunting for the pair of panties that he had thrown across the room the night before. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

  ‘Later babe,’ he whispered as he turned to leave.

  ‘Bye bye hubby,’ she cooed.

  Max cringed.

  He shut the door, leaving Aya to the hopeless task of washing his clothes. She obviously didn’t hear the ‘see how it goes’ part of his short, lacking statement.

  Max hurried down the stairs from the block of flats where he’d been given a home. Home. A place to crash was more like it. Nowhere was home anymore. A home needed a family to go in it.

  He glanced back at the structure and noted that the side of it was scorched black.

  Some of the buildings in Sector Six had been hastily repaired, rather than rebuilt after the Day of Reckoning, and the tell-tale signs of the disaster still clung to the ever diminishing places.

  The masons’ plan to create Coney City, involved demolishing and rebuilding the older, outer sections, but for now they still stood.

  The building was like him: burnt, blackened and ready to be scrapped. He liked it and the thought of Aya, ‘in there’ (violating it with her womanly cleanliness), disturbed him. Soon the apartment would be in better shape than him. He was running out of comparisons between himself and the shiny newness that surrounded him daily.

  Max took the monorail.

  He thumbed in the destination: Sector Seven.

  It was on the outskirts of what used to be a docks area. The entire docking infrastructure had since been destroyed (or moved) but it still retained the name. Sector Seven was the oldest sector in Coney City. The only part of ‘old London’ still left mostly intact and it held the dregs of Coney City’s population.

  Max fitted right in there.

  A neat, crisp, newspaper, sat next to him on the seat. The Daily Utopic was paper that was distributed freely from Fin-Sen and it served as the dominant newspaper. Max flipped it up impatiently and scanned the headlines:

  PHOENIX PALACE NEARING COMPLETION

  FIN-SEN LATEST REPORTS SHOW

  UTOPIAN FUND SHARES RISING

  MASON BATIDE’S, EDIKITT SYSTEM

  READY FOR GRAND LAUNCH

  Max discarded the paper in disgust without bothering to read the articles. He knew nothing of finances. He didn’t read much, and he couldn’t really give a damn about how the masons had spent an obscene amount of money on a glorified building in the centre of town.

  He also figured he had all the education he needed, and more so.

  He settled back into his seat and watched the buildings outside turn into a blur as the monorail picked up speed. The journey was short and soon Max was disgorged onto the platform of Sector Seven. Seedy buildings crowded around him. A few odd pieces of litter blew across the streets. Several old, combustion engine vehicles, lined the streets. Things were more backwards here. Max felt a little better. He’d considered moving to Sector Seven, but hadn’t quite got round to it. He hadn’t got around to a lot of things in his life.

  His pick-up point wasn’t far. It was in a block of flats similar to his, except, in a worse condition. A huge, black scorch mark adorned the front of the building, like a badge of honour. All the windows had new glass. Replaced from when it had been forcibly blown out years earlier. Many of the buildings in Sector Seven had been permanently seared by the EMP blast. Max looked up at the building. It was as though the devastating blast had given birth to some horrible deformed and ugly grey monolith. He ran up the steps that led to the flat where he would take his pick-up. There were no lifts working in this building. He was unaware of the electronic eyes that were following his every move and waiting for a chance.

  Max used his knuckles to rap on the door of flat number 88.

  RAP RAP…RAP RAP…RAP

  He repeated it again in that sequence.

  ‘Yeah?’ came the reply. The voice inside sounded slurred.

  ‘It’s me,’ Max replied, looking into the one way spy hole set in the door for confirmation.

  ‘P-P-icking up? came the voice from behind the door. The syllables stuck to his tongue with a jarring uneasiness as if the man had a permanent stutter he had never learned to master.

  Max folded an arm to his side impatiently, ‘Yeah,’ he confirmed.

  The door swung open and a musty smell escaped past Max’s nostrils.

  A young man (with red-rimmed eyes) ushered him inside the flat. His hands quivered as they retracted from the inner door lock.

  Neither of them saw the doors open on the grey van that was parked on the opposite side of the street.

  The man shrank back from Max allowing him to pass. He tried to placate Max with a goofy, lopsided grin. A thin stream of drool flowed from one side of his mouth. Max avoided the man’s eyes. He recognised that he was an Apexir addict on the verge of overdose. The man had been taking far too much of
the drug, for far too long, and the devastating side effects were plain to see in his pitiful appearance. Behind the man’s eyes a chemical sea raged and churned, drowning what little remained of his sanity.

  Max almost turned to leave. The sight of the man in an advanced state of Apexir addiction had Max thinking that if he continued with his own habit, he might be heading down the same dark path. He dreaded the idea that his own mental waves of addiction could wash the last of his resistance away without him realising until it was too late. In his mind an oasis rose above the boiling red waves. Sandy was standing on the shoreline with Sophie in her arms. They were on fire burning, but never being consumed. Max squeezed his eyes shut trying to block the image. The red sea churned around the mental island and its burning occupants. Her piercing scream cut through his mind like a razor.

  The man watched as the muscled CURE worker, doubled up in front of him. He seemed in great pain. His hands were tightly clenched and a scarlet liquid dripped from his fists where his nails were cutting his palms. His eyes were tightly closed and his teeth were locked in a grimace.

  ‘H-H-Hey man, you don’t look so hot,’ he stuttered, sliding away from the trembling giant. ‘We got what you need…j-j-j-just go get it,’ he offered gesturing down the dilapidated corridor and towards another room at the front of the building.

  Max dimly heard the addict say something to him through the piercing noise inside his head. He dismissed it and he tried desperately to blot Sandy’s terrifying screams from his mind. He tried to picture Aya’s smile waiting for him, but it only manifested as a vague image. It was lost in the churning waters of the Red Sea that was his mind. It quickly sank and was drowned by deathly waves.