Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  As promised, Speck found his way around the city despite the hurricane makeover. They hit several houses from Ingrid’s tickler file and helped people out along the way. Some just needed a lift to evacuation points. Others needed medical attention. Speck’s craft was as good as an ambulance, probably because he’d gone to his real ambulance and robbed it blind. No sense in the supplies going to waste. Still, they went through medicines like candy with so many people needing a hand. Animals, too. They fed pets and ferried them to high ground. Dogs and helicopters were the new sounds of the city.

  Through it all, no sign of Daryl. Not at the empty foster homes, not at the camps, or at the medical staging grounds. No one had even heard anything about a little girl with a scar like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Banshees, yes. People were telling tales of black-haired flyers and keening in the night.

  Twice, when Speck was occupied with survivors’ wounds, Rook took the opportunity to attend some non-survivors. Both times the convulsions came, and non-survivors became survivors. She explained this to Speck by saying she’d found a pulse and had administered CPR. He seemed to buy it. He seemed not to notice when the patients wandered off the medical staging area shortly after arrival.

  The disturbing thing was, she noticed Adam had been following her. He couldn’t keep up with the boat, but it seemed that whenever they stopped for any period of time, he’d show up and just hang around, staring at her from a distance. And not just Adam. There was a woman, too. That first woman Rook had resuscitated the day after the hurricane.

  Rook and Speck found their way to Rook’s old drug store, which wasn’t far from the medical staging ground. That area wasn’t flooded, so they had to stash the boat and walk. The store’s glass front door was busted in, though it seemed to have been spared any looting.

  “Come on.” Rook led Speck in to where the antibiotics were locked up so he could refill his reserves. “We’re almost out of aspirin, too.”

  From somewhere above, Rook heard a thump.

  She said, “I’ll be in the stock room where the bathroom is. Be right back.”

  Speck shrugged and went about breaking into the reserve of antibiotics. She made like she was heading for the ladies’ room, then slipped outside. Up, up she leapt, landing on flat tar roof. Four of them up there: Adam, the Day One lady, and the ones she’d tended to only hours before. Their faces mottled with black capillaries.

  Rook said to them, “You can’t keep following—”

  But before she even finished the sentence, her gaze landed on a prostrate figure. She couldn’t see his face, but she recognized the bony neck and poof of hair. Kent. He was dead. Lying face-down with a piece of chalk in his hand. Looked like he’d been writing “PLEASE HELP” in gigantic letters across the roof.

  “What happened?” Rook asked, because Kent clearly hadn’t died from drowning up here.

  The woman shrugged. “We were culling.”

  “I know you couldn’t stand that guy,” Adam said.

  “What? You’re killing people?”

  “Just continuing your work for you,” the woman said.

  One of the new ones chimed in. “Adam explained it all to us. Why we couldn’t follow the light all the way. We’re in your army now.”

  Rook stomped over to where stupid Kent lay. He’d probably gotten it into his big wobbly head that he was going to single-handedly hold off looters at the store, him being the floor manager and all, then broke down and tried to send a plea to the aerial search and rescue.

  A soft mew from behind, and she looked to see Fleecey had joined them. The cat trotted over and sniffed Kent’s hair, then stepped up along his shoulders and curled into the small of his back.

  “No, Fleece, jeez.” Rook said, and then glared at the others. “No more killing or culling or whatever you call it, OK?”

  And then she blurted out, “I’ll tell you when it’s time to kill.”

  They nodded as if she was making perfect sense.

  She brushed the cat off Kent’s back. “Fleece, go get Daryl, OK? Just go and stay with her until I can figure out how to find her myself.”

  No telling whether she understood what Rook said, but Fleecey stood, arched and stretched, and took a few tail-up steps away from Kent’s body.

  Rook muttered under her breath, “Can’t believe I’m about to do this,” and rolled Kent onto his back, put her lips to his, and gave him his detour to judgment.

  When she’d finished, and Kent’s body was doing the twitch, Fleecey was gone.

  “Fill him in on the ‘no culling’ rule, will you?” Rook said, and made her way off the roof to rejoin Speck.

  When night came, Rook and Speck returned to Rook’s place and fell onto the bed, clothes on. Only two houses from the tickler file remained.

  Beyond the walls, that same howling of the last two nights. This time it sounded like it came from more than one source. It haunted Rook’s dreams, dreams of the hurricane in the desert, and the others in the wormholes, until Speck nudged her awake just before dawn.

  The water had swollen during the night and was now frothing grey and black at the porch. Faint traces of gasoline and sulphur and waste in the air. They set off into the flooded city and began again.

  Another address, and another dead end. Then, they found the last house on the list. The Gervaise family.

  Chapter 17

  In Rook’s experience, foster families could be divided into two categories: angels and devils. Mr. and Mrs. Gervaise were angels. You could tell by the way the kids acted around them. No one was freaking even though about two inches of water was coursing through the living room from one end and pooling to a small pond at the other. Like many flooded houses in this neighborhood, the Gervaise place was still standing, but the hurricane had hurled the neighbor’s boat trailer into the footings and it now leaned off the foundation piers.

  Mr. Gervaise and an older boy were carrying boxes up the stairs to higher ground. Apparently they’d brought everything downstairs expecting to evacuate, but now had to bring everything to the second floor again due to the rising water. The kids who were able to help out were doing so, making a game of transferring belongings from the main floor to the higher levels. They were spaced on the stairwell, and Mrs. Gervaise handed the first boy a picture frame.

  The boy was blind and wore a hearing aid, so Mrs. Gervaise hollered, “picture frame!” and the boy echoed with “picture frame!” and tossed it to a girl on the stairs even though he couldn’t see her.

  She in turn hollered, “picture frame!” and tossed it upward.

  They all acted relatively calm and upbeat despite the weird situation. If any of the kids were part of the family by birth, there was no telling which ones. There were seven children in all: two were quadriplegic, one had Down syndrome, one was blind and half deaf, and the others seemed otherwise healthy. Daryl was not among them.

  “How do you know for sure someone’s gonna come evacuate y’all?” Rook asked.

  “They came on by here yesterday,” Mrs. Gervaise replied as she splashed across the living room to the daveneau. “But they’s gonna take us outta here in pieces. Two of us in one boat, three in another. The rest in another. I told them to come on back when they had a bigger boat where we could all fit. Gotta stick together. Who knows what cattle call we’d land in? And what if we don’t wind up in the same place? We can’t call each other on a phone. No way to find each other. But that was before the levees broke last night. If I’d’ve known the water’s gonna rise again we’d’ve gone with’m. Throw pillows!”

  “Throw pillows!” the child echoed as he tossed first one, then the other pillow in the direction of the girl on the stairs. And on up.

  Speck was carrying a box from the kitchen and paused to whisper in Rook’s ear. “We gotta get them out of here. This place ain’t liable to be standing by the end of the day.”

  “We can’t fit’m in the boat,” Rook said.

  “We gotta figure something out.”

  Rook n
odded. She could sense the rush beneath the floorboards. The house creaked like a ship.

  “We ain’t got but one cell phone that works.” Mrs. Gervaise went on. “One of us could make a call but no one else could answer.”

  “You have a cell phone?” Rook asked.

  Mrs. Gervaise eyed her and reached into the pockets of her shorts, the thin current of water making V’s around her bare toes. “Don’t take too long, now. Dunno when I’ll be able to charge it again.”

  Rook stepped forward and took the phone. “Thanks.”

  She cast a glance back to Speck, who hefted a kitchen chair in each hand and was trying to avoid bumping into children as he made his way up the staircase.

  Mrs. Gervaise said, “I feel real bad. We wanted to take your girl in, really we did. But with the hurricane comin—”

  Rook shook her head. “I know. I can see. Just trying to get her back now, is all.”

  “The lady said if we couldn’t take her in she was gonna have to evacuate with her herself.”

  Rook paused. “Ingrid wound up taking her?”

  Mrs. Gervaise shrugged. “It’s what she said.”

  Rook looked at the phone, blue light illuminating the digits on the handset. She stepped into the kitchen with the cell and punched the number, two digits off from her own.

  “Ingrid,” she said, and through the crackling line she heard Ingrid gasp, then go to tears.

  Chapter 18

  “It’s time to stop this,” Rook was saying.

  “Thank God you’re safe! It’s all that matters. All this time, not knowing. . . ”

  “You’ve got to tell me Ingrid. Now.”

  “I didn’t know! There’s never been a storm like it. I thought we’d just evacuate and come right back again like in the past—”

  “Let me talk to Daryl.”

  Silence. Long, strained.

  And then Ingrid said, “What was I supposed to do? You tell me that, Rook.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You were in the hospital and I was all alone with—”

  “Stop. Let me talk to her. Is she there with you now? Just say. ”

  “You’ve stopped loving me.”

  “Has she been there with you the whole damn time?”

  But when Ingrid spoke again, her voice had gone dull. “It’s all over now.”

  Rook listened, waited. Ingrid gave over to sobbing.

  Rook pressed the phone to her ear as if doing so could will away the bullshit. “What can I say to you to get past this, Ingrid? I need to talk to Darryl. What do you want from me?”

  Ingrid paused, her breath hitching. “Tell me why. Why all those others?”

  Rook listened, anger mounting, saying nothing.

  Ingrid said, “Why did you need the men while you were with me?”

  So loathsome, that puling, syrupy manner of Ingrid’s. Rook leaned against the speckled laminate counter and closed her eyes. Had Ingrid been like this all these years? How had Rook ever found her attractive?

  “You want to know why I wanted those men, Ingrid?” Rook said through clenched teeth. “I’ll tell you. It was the thrusting. The dumb, brute thrusting.”

  And then Rook stopped short. Silence on the line. Rook listened, barely breathing. She could hear not so much as a crackle from the phone. She thought that Ingrid had hung up on her.

  But then: “You are ugly.”

  A gulp and a hiccup, and then Ingrid spoke again, “You’re empty. She was, too. Neither one of you are human. She was little better than an animal. No one would take her in during the evacuation, though God knows I tried. For your sake I tried. And then I was going to take her with me but she wouldn’t come. She bit me! No matter what I did . . . So I left her there. She’s gone, Rook. Probably long washed away by now.”

  Then, and only then, did Ingrid hang up.

  Chapter 19

  “Wait, Rook, wait,” Speck was calling after her as she dashed out onto a listing porch.

  He caught her wrist just as she was leaping toward heaven, and he gripped her tight. “We gotta get them out of here. All those kids. This place can bust apart at any time.”

  “Ingrid left her behind, Speck! I’ve got to go!”

  “What do you think you’re going to do for her? Ingrid’s place is gone. You said yourself, it was underwater before the levees even broke. You won’t find her there. Whether or not she survived, you won’t find her there.”

  Rook was shaking, staring at her wrist. “Speck, if you don’t let go of me right now I’m going to suck out every drop of breath from your lungs.”

  He stared at her. She’d been hiding her ways from him, but his expression showed he believed that she could do a thing like that. That she had not only the ability, but also the nerve.

  And yet, he didn’t let go. Instead he pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her.

  And he said: “I’m sorry. So sorry about Daryl, Rook.”

  The shaking took the strength from her knees, and she slumped, clutching his shoulders.

  Speck said, “I know what you been thinking. Trying to fix people the way you brought that guy Adam back around. In case you find your sister’s already dead you figure maybe you can fix her up, too.”

  “You knew all this time?”

  “Kinda hard to miss. Those howlers at night, the way they keep showing up whenever you stay put for more than half an hour.”

  She sniffed, listening, but didn’t let go of him.

  He said, “After the hurricane, people on the street were talking about seeing a banshee walking the rooftops, raising the dead. Thought they were just superstitious til I saw you up there myself. It’s partly why I came looking for you. Thought you could help me fix this place. I’d already seen what you’d done with Adam. But they’re bad, I think. Your boy Adam tore that cop apart.”

  He released her then, but held both her hands and looked into her face. “You can’t want that for your sister. If she really didn’t make it, don’t you want her to be at peace?”

  Rook couldn’t answer him. Her gaze sagged to her feet, partially submerged on the slanting porch. She let go his hands.

  Speck gestured toward the door. “These people, though, this family right here, we can help them out. Maybe even save their lives.”

  He was right.

  Rook lifted her face to where the water formed a glassy grid in the streets, and called, “Adam!”

  Speck followed her gaze. The neighborhood was mostly still, distant helicopters making the only sound. Just beyond the porch the water began to move. A dark shape formed. Adam broke the surface, the duffel still slung across his shoulder. The others came, too, emerging from the water like parishioners at a baptism. Kent was there. They gathered beneath the porch.

  Rook said to them, “We gotta get this family out. Speck’ll use the boat, but you might ought to carry some of them on your backs to keep all of them together.”

  They nodded.

  Rook said, “And Speck’s in charge from here on out. Just do what he says. Adam, you may need to pay for things along the way. You cool with that?”

  “Sure, yeah, not like I’m unna go get a face lift.”

  She turned to Speck. “You’ve got yourself a small platoon. You can help out the Gervaises til they’re set and then y’all can keep going with the reconstruction. Years if you need to. Adam’s got cash.”

  “What about you?”

  She put her hand to his cheek and held it there for a moment, giving him a smile heavy enough to pull water from her eyes. His eyes watered, too.

  Rook turned away from him then, and from Adam, and all of them, and took to the sky.

  Chapter 20

  She knew she wasn’t going to find anything at Ingrid’s. Somehow, she’d known from the start, because somewhere there was a script that laid it all out. Script or scripture, all the same. Daryl was gone from her. Gone, but not dead. Not in the way Rook had always perceived death. But Rook couldn’t let go, wouldn’t, althou
gh she was beginning to accept the truth in her heart, that she would have to find the others first. And what a relief to accept it. Fitting The Number together. Knowing that she could lay aside her loneliness and join her kind. Find them, and then find Daryl.

  The insects were still there. But they weren’t concentrated and swirling like before. They’d dissipated some.

  Ingrid’s house was gone. No Toyota wedged into the kitchen. No fake stained glass iris suction-cupped to the windows, because there were no windows. Not even the remnants of a roof. Other houses along the street were flooded but standing or at least partially standing, but not Ingrid’s. Nothing there at all.

  Except.

  A person.

  Not Daryl.

  A woman, close to Rook’s age was resting atop the water’s surface as though nestled in eiderdown. Waiting. She lifted her head when she saw Rook. Eyes so heavenly blue that they seemed to carry the ocean tides. Cool and clean in the hot, swamped neighborhood. She must have followed the locusts. She smiled, and reached out her hand.

  Rook lighted in front of her, disbelieving her eyes, and grasped the outstretched fingers to make sure she was real.

  “Lucy?”

  D-GIRL ON DOOMSDAY

  ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF

  Chapter 1

  D-Girl woke from a dream of killing her boss.

  She lay in her bed in her West Hollywood duplex, with its thick white Spanish stucco and gleaming hardwood floors and potted palms and vintage movie posters mounted on the walls. Too expensive by half, and the next rent payment, if she were actually going to make it, would have had to go on her VISA card, which was already stretched to the breaking point, but this was L.A. and appearances were –

  Something shifted in the bed beside her, then slithered to the floor in a fast rustle and a series of successive soft thuds. Several possibilities whirred through her sleep-and-debt addled brain. She’d gotten wildly drunk last night and brought someone (please God not another actor) home that she had no memory of. She’d gotten wildly drunk and brought home a stray dog, or maybe a very large snake, that she had no memory of. And then the much more mundane obvious: she’d fallen asleep reading scripts again and the pile of weekend reads had fallen off the bed beside her and onto the floor. No loss – there was not one makeable movie in the bunch, anyway.