Some Assembly Required: A Hemisphere Story (RECTIFIER Book 1)

by Kit Nash

  The explosion sent a brief but equally intense shock wave through the cemetery. Larger headstones inside the blast radius were cracked and the smaller ones were reduced to rubble.

  ACROSS TOWN A family of three occupied a booth at Big Ed’s Chicken and Waffles.

  “Oooohhh! Look, Daddy! Fireworks!” exclaimed the youngest member of the family. The eight-year-old had been excited about her chocolate chip pancakes, but she was ecstatic about fireworks. Both parents looked out the window toward their daughter’s glee. What appeared to be six bright and large fireworks exploded high in the sky above Hemisphere. To those in the know, this was the sign of a Rectifier’s life being extinguished and the indestructible gauntlet breaking apart into pieces. But to everyone else, it looked like Fireworks. Albeit, good ones.

  “Fireworks in September?” asked the mother.

  “This is Hemisphere. Anything can happen and something always does,” shrugged the father as he shoveled a big spoonful of eggs into his mouth.

  Sketch!

  “OMG! JAMISON RIDZIK!” said the homely brunette from behind her hand. “I never thought I’d actually get to meet you.”

  Ridzik, sitting behind the fold-out table, smiled up at the girl.

  “Well, we haven’t properly met unless you tell me your name.” He extended his hand.

  “It’s Sarah,” she said, blushing and nervously shaking his hand.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah. Now which will it be an autograph, a sketch, or both?”

  “Just… an autograph,” she said.

  “Okay. On this one?” He asked, pointing at the graphic novel clutched in her arms.

  “Yee-ss.” She slowly sat the graphic novel down on the table. Ridzik smiled when he saw the cover. It was a limited edition of the first issue of Vyper Vixen. It was his most perverted title and ironically the most popular amongst his females followers. The cover depicted a voluptuous scantily dressed blonde who had two python snakes instead of hands. The snake extending from her right elbow had black scales and was coiled around a dashingly handsome man while her left had brown scales and was devouring an enemy. All that could be seen of the bad guy were his feet protruding out of the snake’s mouth.

  Still smiling, Ridzik pushed his thick rimmed glasses up and bent his head to scrawl his autograph. He confirmed the spelling of her name, scrawled his own, and handed the novel back to her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ridzik,” she said.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” he winked at her.

  She turned away. Ridzik watched her go and was reminded how nervous he’d been the first time he’d agreed to do a public signing. He’d been scared to death, and he’d had less than a hundred fans back then. Now the number was too high to count. The line extended past the registers, through the double doors, and out into the street. It was by far his biggest showing yet. He still had a hard time accepting that all these people were here to see him. Being famous even a little famous was a queer sensation. Without his fans, he’d be bored to tears working at some dead-end job.

  “Here’s your coffee, Mr. Ridzik.”

  He turned towards the voice and saw Deidra Mann, the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She was tall, athletic, blonde. She wore a Vyper Vixen black tank top and cut off white jean shorts. Her tan legs contrasted against the stark white triangle of her exposed pockets.

  “Thank you.” He took the offered cup.

  “Is your hand hurting? Do you need to take a break?” she asked.

  “No. It’s alright,” he lied.

  Damnit. He didn’t want her to see him flexing his hand. Now she would worry. Two years ago he’d broken his hand in a car accident and now any repetitive motion like scrawling his name or sketching caused his hand to do its best rheumatoid arthritis impression. Bad news for a graphic novelist, especially a best-selling one.

  “I have some Advil in my purse,” Deidra persisted.

  “Maybe later.” He sipped the fresh cup of steaming coffee. “This isn’t right.”

  “Too much sugar?” she asked with a genuine look of concern on her face as she took a seat next to him.

  “No,” he shook his head. “The coffee’s great. Today’s our anniversary, Dee. I should’ve rescheduled the appearance. I feel like a self-absorbed asshole.”

  Smiling she took his hand in hers. “Jay, you’re not a self-absorbed asshole. I told you not to reschedule. Besides, we met at one of your appearances. So, it’s kind of tradition don’t you think?”

  She gently massaged his hand.

  “I guess,” he shrugged. “I’m not very good at this kind of stuff. You mean the world to me and I thought anniversaries were supposed to be about us.”

  “Tonight will be,” she said. “Unless you planned nothing for the woman that means the world to you?”

  “Of course I did. I’m not a complete moron.”

  “Then stop scowling and sketch.”

  Smiling he marveled at the woman staring back at him. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. There was no limits to her generosity. She was a true keeper.

  Taking her advice, he turned and smiled at the next fan, or fans as it happened to be. They were two girls, smiling from ear to ear and dressed in long trench coats. A fact that Ridzik found odd since it wasn’t cold outside. But he had learned long ago not to judge a book by its cover. God knows he didn’t want people judging him or his work that way.

  “OMG! Jamison freaking Ridzik!” They shrieked in unison as they sat an issue of Vyper Vixen down in front of him. Ridzik couldn’t tell if they were sisters or BFFS or both.

  “Good day ladies,” he said. “Which will it be, autograph or sketch?”

  “Sketch!” They yelled as they simultaneously opened their trench coats to reveal their young, very fit, very naked bodies. Ridzik had just taken another sip of his coffee and instead of the warm liquid going down his throat it shot out of his nose. Hot coffee singed the inside of his nostrils and spattered the issue of Vyper Vixen. Thankfully it was protected by a plastic cover. Wiping his nose, Ridzik stared wordlessly at the two naked girls. They laughed when he sneezed coffee all over the place, but to their credit they didn’t slam their coats shut and run away. They held them open, their bodies posed on display for Ridzik and everyone else in the vicinity to admire. They were serious about their desire to be sketched. He trusted his handlers enough to know the girls had paid upfront. God, please be eighteen, Ridzik heard Ricky Bobby say in his head as he gently removed the graphic novel from the plastic sleeve. Gripping his pen, he bent his head to the task. Before he drew more than a single line, Dee’s hand closed around his.

  “Allow me,” she said, taking the pen and novel from him. Intrigued Ridzik watched as the love of his life, quickly sketched two crude barely recognizable stick figures. Now the girls’ trench coats did close, the flaps falling with their spirits.

  “Signature please,” Dee said, handing the novel back to him.

  Ridzik signed the page and then Dee packed it away and returned it to the girls.

  “Thank you for showing us your support,” Dee growled. The girls, heads lowered to the floor, quickly stormed off.

  “Well,” Ridzik said leaning back in his chair, “they say to imagine your audience naked.”

  “Any more fans like that and today will be your last appearance ever,” Dee growled.

  “I can’t control what my fans do.”

  “No. But you don’t have to encourage them. You would’ve drawn those girls if I hadn’t stopped you.”

  “They paid for a sketch,” he shrugged.

  “And they got one.”

  “Yeah, they did. Best stick chicks I’ve ever seen,” he laughed.

  “Shut up,” she said, trying to staying angry and failing.

  He placed his right hand on the stack of novels and raised his left hand. “I promise from this day forward, the only nude portraits I do, will be of you.”

  “Like Jack and Rose,” she said, pulling him close
r to her.

  “Except without the iceberg,” he said. They kissed.

  “Would you like another cup of coffee to wet your nostrils?” Dee asked when their lips parted.

  “You saw that?”

  “The whole store did.”

  “Yes please. I still have a few nose hairs that I didn’t get the first time.”

  She got up and headed towards the coffee bar on the North side of the store. He watched her go, enjoying the tightness of her white jean shorts stretched across her butt. Although he’d seen her naked a hundred times, he’d never drawn her. It would be a fun exercise in concentration. Could he finish drawing her before his excitement got the best of him? The two girls had very nice bodies, fit and well endowed in all the right places. But if they were considered hot than Dee was a Goddess. Every square inch of her was absolutely perfect. They say love blinds you and if Dee was what a blind man in love saw then so be it. She never made him feel like he was dating above his station but he was and he knew it.

  “Hello,” Ridzik said to the next waiting fan, forcing thoughts of his naked girlfriend from his mind.

  “I’m such a huge fan of your work,” said the fan who was in fact huge. 300 lbs easy.

  “Thank you. Is Vampeers your favorite?” Ridzik asked, pointing his pen at the man’s XXXL shirt. Vampeers was about a high school full of vampires. The fangs on the front of the shirt had a 3D effect thanks to the man’s protruding belly.

  “Second actually. This one’s my favorite,” the fan said laying a plastic sleeved comic down in front of Ridzik. His breath caught when he saw the title.

  Night of the Samurai.

  It was his first storyline. It had a short run. Only twelve issues. It was about a zombie apocalypse that could only be stopped by a magical katana.

  “Wow! Night of the Samurai,” Ridzik marveled. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.” Ridzik stared at the cover of the skinny guy in jeans and T-shirt holding a fierce looking Katana. This one had been his brother’s favorite too. Layne loved the idea of an ordinary average joe wielding a powerful weapon against deadly enemies. But apparently, Layne and big man here were the biggest fans because the comic had been released during the peak of the nation’s zombie craze and it had been lost in the shuffle.

  “Autograph or sketch?” Ridzik asked, gently removing the comic from the plastic sleeve.

  “Just an autograph and a question if you don’t mind?”

  “Go for it.”

  “What would've happened next?”

  “In Night of the Samurai?”

  The fan shook his head vigorously, and it sent a shock wave through his jowls. Not only did Night of the Samurai have an incredibly short run. It had also ended on a cliffhanger, leaving the small but dedicated fan base to wonder if the protagonist Samurai Steve had really died heroically.

  “Well I…” Ridzik started to answer and his thoughts again went to his brother. Samurai Steve’s fate was actually one of the last topics he and Layne had discussed. Ridzik wanted to keep Steve alive. A half man half zombie type of thing. Layne thought he should die and have someone else pick up the sword.

  “I wanted to keep Steve—

  RING! RING! RING!

  Ridzik stopped in mid sentence and looked up at the large man, patiently waiting for him to dig his phone out of his considerable pockets and silence the damn thing. But the man didn’t move. He just stared back.

  RING! RING! RING!

  Confused, Ridzik looked around and then belatedly he realized it was actually his phone that was ringing.

  “Oh, that’s me! I’m so sorry!”

  He could feel the heat of shame warming his face as he fumbled blindly for his phone, which seemed to have been swallowed by his pants. Who had the considerable pockets now? The damn thing had stopped ringing by the time he finally got it out of his pants. He glanced at the screen, trying to figure out who would call him at such an inopportune time. It was a number he didn’t recognize. Fucking telemarketers.

  He switched the phone to silent and slid it back into his pants pocket.

  “I’m so sorry. That was really rude and unprofessional. I’ll give you a free sketch.”

  “You don’t have to do that Mr. Ridzik.”

  “No, I insist.”

  Ridzik clicked the pen with his thumb and bent his head to task.

  He managed to get three pens strokes in, the beginning of Samurai Steve’s messy hair when—

  RING! RING! RING!

  “It’s not mine. I swear,” Ridzik said, refusing to look away from the sketch. He ignored the ringing phone and kept his pen moving.

  RING! RING! RING!

  “Will everyone put their phones on silent please!” Ridzik hollered out, his eyes and pen never leaving the paper.

  “It’s not us. It’s you,” someone said.

  RING! RING! RING!

  “Nope. Mine’s on silent. I’ve already used my one freebie today. Thank you,” Ridzik said.

  RING! RING! RING!

  “I think it’s Miss Mann’s phone,” the fat man said.

  “What? You’re joking?” Ridzik looked up. He followed the sound of the ringing. It was coming from the purse in the seat next to him.

  Dee’s purse.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ridzik muttered, reaching tentatively towards the open maw of her purse. It would take him the rest of the day to find her phone in there.

  “Shit! Sorry! I got it! I got it!” Dee said, seeming to appear out of nowhere. She set their coffee cups down and pulled the squawking device out of her purse with ease.

  “I don’t know who this is,” she said staring at the number on the caller ID. Ridzik glanced at the screen and saw it was the same number. Whoever it was, they were persistent.

  “I don’t know either. But they just called me.”

  “I’m going to answer it.” He nodded.

  “Hello,” she said pressing the phone to her ear and quickly walking away.

  Ridzik turned back to his crowd of waiting fans. “I sincerely apologize. We don’t own any more phones. I promise.”

  The crowd laughed.

  “All right where were we?” Ridzik asked, returning his attention to his unfinished drawing. “That’s right Samurai Steve and his mysterious fate. Well I—

  “Jamie.”

  Ridzik turned his head towards the voice. He couldn’t help it. It was pure instinct when someone called your name. But the person he saw was not the voice he heard. Deidra stood in the aisle between the book shelves with tears gleaming in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “That was the Hemisphere Police Department. Your brother has died.”

  Hemisphere

  RIDZIK AND DEE drove to the Airport together, but they boarded separate planes with separate destinations. He hated it and so did she. But it was the best solution to their dilemma. It was their fifth year anniversary and Ridzik had a whopper of a surprise planned. He had worked out all the details as intricately as if the event were a plot of one of his novels. After the book signing he wanted to drive her, blind-folded, to the Airport where he would reveal their two-week trip to the Bahamas with her family.

  But a single phone call had changed everything. A roadblock before the trip even got underway. Like discovering your car battery was dead in your driveway.

  Now Ridzik was bound for the small town of Hemisphere. Someone had to identify his brother’s body. There were no other siblings. Their dad was dead and their mother might as well be, having left when he was only three. Dee wanted to come with him. Begged even. She said they could go the Bahamas some other time. Which made him love her even more. After everything that had happened between her and Layne, somehow she still wanted to pay her respects. But Ridzik was less forgiving. Not to mention her family was already in the Bahamas. He’d convinced her to meet up with them and he promised to join her in the Bahamas once he’d settled his brother’s affairs. She was the most important thing in his life and she deserved
to know how much she meant to him. He didn’t want an ill-scheduled book signing or the death of an estranged brother they both hated to ruin a perfectly planned vacation. He was by nature not an angry person and therefore it bothered him that he harbored so much hate for his brother. But he just couldn’t bring himself to forgive him.

  Ridzik pushed the painful memories from his mind as best he could and closed his eyes for the three hour flight. He didn’t think he’d fall asleep but surprisingly he did. He even dreamed. It was a funeral in the Bahamas. The service was held on the beach. Everyone wore flip flops and black swimsuits. But it wasn’t Layne in the casket. It was Samurai Steve.

  HE LANDED AT 8:30pm and by 9:15pm he was driving away in his rental car, a green Chevy Cruz. It was another 45 minute drive to the small town of Hemisphere. The town wasn’t hard to navigate. Plus he used the GPS on his phone. At 10:03pm he pulled into the parking lot of the Hemisphere Police Department. He parked in a visitor’s spot and went inside. There was a large wooden desk with a glass partition separating the lobby from the rest of the station. The layout reminded Ridzik of the police station from The Terminator. The one that Arnold crashed through with his car after uttering his most famous line, “I’ll be back.”

  A uniformed officer with thick rimmed glasses and a thicker mustache sat at the desk behind the glass window.

  “Good evening, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m Jamison Ridzik. My brother Layne passed away and I’m here to identify his body.”

  The officer typed something into his computer and reviewed the findings.

  “All right. Have a seat and someone will be right out to escort you to the Hospital.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ridzik nodded and turned away. Like everything else he had encountered in Hemisphere so far, the waiting area was small. It consisted of seven chairs. Someone had written the words Broken. Do Not Use on a piece of paper and taped it to the back of the eighth chair. Ridzik felt like this was overkill, considering the seat had a giant crack running down the middle of it. He didn’t want to sit, he’d been sitting for the last five hours. There was a map of Hemisphere on the wall. Curious, he walked over to inspect it. To his surprise the town was much bigger than he imagined. There were at least three dozen businesses, something called Conjurer’s Row, and two cemeteries; All Souls Cemetery and Eternal Rest Cemetery. He suddenly realized that he had no idea which one his brother preferred to be buried at. Or did Layne even want to be buried? Maybe he was part of the cremation camp. He hoped to God Layne had a will. It would make settling his affairs that much easier.