Sunfail

by Steven Savile

  “SO THAT’S IT, THEN?” Finn asked, not quite accepting that they’d just given up. “We’re good? No one’s going to be waiting for me in the office one day to make me disappear?”

  They were having lunch at a little café near Columbia. She’d had a morning class but was free until two. He was tired but didn’t have anywhere to be now that he’d handed in his notice with the MTA. He had a new paymaster.

  “We’re good,” Jake replied, running the back of the spoon over the latte’s foamed milk. It was hard to believe it had only been a week. It already seemed like a long nightmare ago, but in those seven days so much had happened to undo the worst of it: the city had regained power, the grid coming back online after a couple of days. According to reports circulating in the mainstream media, the poles had stabilized; scientists were on the TV all the time talking about magnetic fields and shielding the earth from solar radiation. Suddenly everyone was an expert. There were still shooting stars, but people had stopped thinking they were meteors coming to wipe out humanity because the sun had failed. The blackouts were becoming fewer and farther between as things settled down. Now they were down to the weather, not the sunfail phenomenon.

  Most noticeably, the birds had begun to fly again, returning to their usual migratory patterns, and the dogs weren’t running wild through the streets—proof if any were needed that the animal kingdom had adapted to the change. Dogland was a thing of the past. Manhattan was back to being Manhattan.

  “Any news from the dive?”

  “Actually, yeah . . . I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Always a dangerous thing.”

  “Indeed.” She grinned at him. “I really hate the snow and I’m due a break. Fancy a trip to Cuba? I hear the diving’s really good this time of year.”

  Jake smiled. “I’ve got a confession to make.” She hadn’t questioned him about the gold pin on his collar. He’d told her it was a souvenir. A reminder. He hadn’t told her it was the price of her safety.

  “Uh-hunh?”

  “You might need to teach me how to swim.”

  She smiled too, the tension visibly leaving her body. “I can do that.”

  New York’s key infrastructure seemed to be functioning normally—power, transportation, communication, finance, security; there were no obvious signs of interference. All indicators seemed to suggest life around Jake was returning to normal.

  Of course, that was around him. His life would never be normal again as long as he wore that pin on his collar. He knew they were watching him even if he couldn’t see them. That was what they did. Lurked. Clung to the shadows. Alom might claim it was all noble, but monsters never thought they were evil. And he had absolutely no doubt that Gabriel Alom was a monster.

  Jake had made a deal with the devil. If he was lucky, he’d live long enough to regret it. But that was a problem for tomorrow. Right now, Finn was safe. That was his win. That was all he’d wanted when he set foot on that yacht, to keep her safe, to keep Ryan safe. He was a simple man.

  A week, two, a month, just them, even if she was working, would give them a chance.

  They hadn’t slept together yet. He liked that word: yet. It was only a matter of time. He wanted to get it right. To get to know her properly. He wanted to be her friend first.

  Or that was what he told himself. He didn’t want to think about the fact that in saving her life he’d essentially traded his own.

  “Harry’s handed his notice in,” Finn told him. “He’s got an offer out in France.”

  Paris, Jake thought, knowing Harry had stepped up to fill Sophie’s shoes, making the opening here in New York for Jake. Or should he call himself Bahlam, the Jaguar God who, so Alom told him, protected people and communities?

  Yesterday he’d seen Sophie’s face in a newspaper. The report explained how she had been murdered in a café in London, and how she was believed to have been behind the bombing of the stock exchange. They didn’t know the truth, and they weren’t interested in it, because the people paying to put the news out there were the same people who wanted to keep it hidden.

  That was just the way the new world worked. He understood that now better than anyone. Sometimes in this life you had to become the thing you hated in order to protect the thing you loved. But this didn’t mean you had to like it.

  Jake didn’t know how he was going to do it, but when he’d said “No” to Alom, he’d meant it. Two people couldn’t keep a secret. He was going to bring Alom down. And all the others. He was smart enough to know the only way he was going to do that was from the inside. So if he needed to pretend to be their man, he’d pretend. He’d smile and grit his teeth and all the while remember Sophie and her promise that she wasn’t who he thought she was. Was that how she’d started? Trying to make the world right? She’d known exactly who he was when she’d dragged him into this. He was a man who couldn’t walk away. Not now. Not ever.

  Jake took a sip of his latte, and reached out for Finn’s hand.

  She was the bridge between past and future. He was going to need her. With Finn at his side, he felt like he could take on the world.

  The End

  Do you want to know what Bahlam, the Jaguar God's first job is with The Hidden? Email us at info@akashicbooks.com with the subject heading BAHLAM and we'll send you a bonus Jake Carter short story by Steven Savile.

  STEVEN SAVILE, a multiple finalist for the British Fantasy Award, has written for Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Stargate, Warhammer, Sláine, Fireborn, Pathfinder, and other popular game and comic series. He wrote the story for the international best-selling computer game Battlefield 3, which sold over five million copies in its week of release, and served as head writer for the popular online children’s game Spineworld.

  E-Book Extras

  An excerpt from H.N.I.C

  by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson with Steven Savile

  Also Available from Infamous Books and Akashic Books

  Please enjoy this excerpt from

  H.N.I.C.

  by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson with Steven Savile

  __________

  Black said that it was going to be easy.

  Black didn’t know shit. He just acted like he did, and no one questioned him.

  The plan was simple: “We’ll just go in there, and when the shit gets real, we’ll wave our guns around. Put a couple of shots into the ceiling. Shout. I mean fuckin’ shout. Make a whole fuck of a lot of noise. We want to scare the tellers and keep them scared. Scared people do what you tell them. They don’t think for themselves. And we’ll just tell them to put the money in the bags while the piss runs down their legs.”

  Pappy was cool with that. Scaring was fine. He wasn’t cool with the whole gun thing: you pulled a piece if you intended to use it, you didn’t need the whole swagger bullshit. Shooting the ceiling wasn’t a mile away from putting a cap in the girl behind the counter when she was too frightened to fill the bag fast enough for your liking. Things escalated. And Black was one unpredictable motherfucker. He was in it because of the thrill. He loved the fucking rush. Best fucking high ever, he’d said more than once. The money was just sugar. Sweet, sweet sugar, sure, but sugar just the same. Heat it up and it gets sticky and sickly and it stops being sugar. They were like that, Pappy and Black.

  Pappy was all about the money. It wasn’t about control or respect or fear, or any of those other things that fired Black’s soul. It was all about the money.

  And when the risk outweighed the reward it wasn’t a risk worth taking. There was no glory in going out in a hail of bullets. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse behind was nowhere near as appealing as not dying young and instead leaving an old and haggard one behind. Pappy wanted to live. Really live. Suck the marrow out of the bones of life. What was the good in being beautiful if you weren’t around to fuck and sing and laugh and punch and, fuck, just all of that shit? A beautiful corpse would rot soon enough. So, no, it was about staying alive so long that he’d become the old ni
gga on the tenement stoop, smoking his liquorice-paper cigarette and blowing smoke rings while the kids fucked about, being kids.

  And that meant using his head.

  Loyalty was one thing, but it only went so far.

  Getting yourself perforated just because you like a guy, or because you grew up on the same streets and fucked the same girls, sometimes alone, sometimes together, didn’t make it smart.

  “If I’m gonna do this, it’s gonna be done right. No fucking around. It’s gonna be big enough to cash out, man.”

  “Last job,” Black swore, cursing it.

  But Pappy meant it; this was the end of the road, the last job. From tomorrow his life was all about making a fresh start. He was getting out before hanging around with Black meant he wound up in the ground. He had a plan. It wasn’t fully formed. He couldn’t risk thinking about it too much. Daydreaming. He needed to be on his game. Right now all he knew for sure was come the morning he’d light out for Detroit. Clean start, different city. No one knew him out there. Maybe he’d even get himself into some computer school or something, make a real life for himself.

  Black wouldn’t give up this kind of life.

  It was in his blood. Like poison.

  Even if he decided to start again somewhere else, it wouldn’t be long before he fell into the same patterns of behavior. That was just who he was.

  * * *

  “Down! On the fuckin’ floor!” Black yelled as he pushed through the glass double doors into the bank.

  He fired one shot after another into the ceiling, sending a shower of plaster drifting down like snow.

  Hysterical shouts and cries filled the silence after the shots. Someone sobbed uncontrollably. Black ignored them all.

  Pappy dumped a bag in front of one of the tellers. He looked along the counter to see another bag go down. The ski masks made them all look the same. He almost laughed at the thought. It wouldn’t be the first time a pretty white girl had been confused by color, after all.

  Black stood in the middle of the floor, acting the big man, ready to explode: “I said stop your fuckin’ noise, bitch!” Pappy glanced toward him. Black held his gun—a huge Desert Eagle—an inch from the face of an old woman. She was barely keeping it together and the gun wasn’t helping.

  “Hurry,” Pappy told the teller, willing her to read his mind. If they didn’t get out of here soon, things would go bad real fast.

  He’d seen Black pumped up like this before.

  There was no point trying to reason with him.

  The best they could do was get out of there.

  But fast was never going to be fast enough.

  Someone was always going to try and be a fucking hero.

  It was written in the stars.

  In blood.

  In that endless second between heartbeats it all went wrong.

  A security guard, hyped on adrenaline and stupid Hollywood movies, made a grab for Black. He caught him around the neck, from behind, and pulled the mask from his head in the struggle.

  Black lashed out violently, swinging the Desert Eagle like a club. The barrel hit the guard square in the temple with a sickening crunch. Something broke in there. Pappy heard it from where he stood. There was nothing good about that sound. He watched the man collapse.

  Black scrambled for his mask, trying to cover his face again, but they all knew it was too late for that. Cameras had caught him now. There were dozens of them inside the bank; one would have captured a perfect picture of his face.

  Black stood over the guard. He hawked and spat, then pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. The dead man’s body only twitched a single time.

  The alarm broke the stunned silence. The atmosphere in the bank changed with those shots. The hysteria was as dead as the guard. Every last one of the customers and staff stared with disbelief at the Desert Eagle, at Black, at the dead man, and knew that but for the grace of whatever god, devil, or deity they chose to believe in, it could have been them down there. It had just become very fucking real.

  Pappy breathed deeply. Someone needed to take control.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  The plan was in, grab the cash, and out again—no one gets hurt. No one winds up dead.

  But there he was, blood spilling out across the marble floor.

  Pappy felt sick.

  Banks were insured; they could afford to lose the cash. That guy down there was someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s father. Or had been. Now he was just dead.

  Pappy choked back the bile.

  There was a split second where nobody moved. And then they started running for the door, all thoughts of the money abandoned. Now it was all about getting the fuck out of Dodge before the cops came in with guns blazing. Black was the first to run out. So much for that fucking loyalty shit. Pappy was last out, behind Ant.

  Outside, Von had the engine running. As they all piled into the car, Black screamed at him to drive.

  Tires screeched and he pulled into the fast-flowing traffic to the chorus of horns blaring as the car behind was forced to break hard to avoid a collision, only for an Econoline to ram him from behind. It was a piece of good luck, so maybe one of Black’s demons was watching over them after all. The wreck would delay pursuit, and they only needed to cover a dozen blocks to abandon the stolen vehicle and switch it for the clean car that was parked and ready for them.

  For Black that counted as forward thinking. It was, as he put it, a motherfucking plan. Black had a way with words. The reality of it was they could have been taken down before even leaving the bank. On another day they could have all been dead by now.

  “So how much cash did we get?” Von asked as he pulled the second car carefully into traffic. Now it was all about not standing out. They could hear the sirens, so it wouldn’t be long before the cops found the getaway car. They welcomed it; they’d be long gone by then.

  Black said nothing.

  Pappy could see the rage seething inside him, barely kept in check. It could have been down to the fact he’d left his face behind on the cameras, or the fact they’d walked out of the door as broke as they walked in. Pappy doubted very much that it was down to the fact Black had left someone dead on the cold stone floor.

  “Come on, guys, how much? Enough for a trip to the sun? I’m ready for some of that sea, sand, sex, and shit, you know?”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?” Black snapped.

  “Nothing,” said Pappy. “Not a fucking dime.”

  “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, Pap, I need to think.”

  “Things didn’t go down the way we planned,” Ant said, as though that explained everything.

  “What?”

  “Just leave it, Von. It didn’t work out. No sand, no sea, but give it a few minutes and you’ll feel like you’ve been well and truly fucked, so it’s all good.”

  Pappy knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t waiting for tomorrow to head for Detroit. He was going tonight, cash or not. If he had to work nights in some shithole diner to see himself through college, then so be it. He wasn’t proud. And washing pots wouldn’t get him banged up for life. There was no fucking glamour in this life. Black was a dumb cunt. It was as simple and ugly as that. He’d seen enough to know the way things were going. He wanted out. That was the first smart decision he’d made since Sumner Houses. They weren’t a fucking crew anymore. So they had managed to get out, it didn’t matter; it wouldn’t take CSI geniuses to determine who’d pulled the trigger, and Pappy wasn’t about to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. If the cops didn’t get him, it was only a matter of time before Black did. That was Black’s idea of covering his tracks.

  Von pulled over at the lights.

  “I’m out of here,” Pappy said, climbing out of the car.

  Black stared at him. He didn’t say Get back in, he didn’t say See you around. He just nodded.

  “Last job,” Pappy said, slamming the door.

  “No looking back, Pa
p,” Black responded, making a pistol with his fist and pulling the imaginary trigger.

  TWO

  Pappy was still packing when someone hammered on the door.

  Three a.m.

  He’d read somewhere that more people die at that time than any other.

  He didn’t need to open the door to know it was Black.

  The only question was whether or not he was on his own, or if he’d brought his little Desert Eagle friend along to say farewell.

  There was no point in delaying it. He opened the door.

  Black smiled at him. “Leaving so soon?” he said as he walked inside. He didn’t wait to be invited in. He wasn’t a fucking vampire—Pappy doubted a stake to the heart would have the slightest effect on him. You had to have a heart for that to work. Fuck, Pappy was surprised he’d bothered knocking in the first place. A bullet to the lock was as good as a key.

  “You knew the score,” Pappy said.

  He could feel his heartbeat kick on.

  They had been friends for years, but that didn’t mean he was immune to Black’s anger, only that he’d known him long enough to know to be afraid of him. “That was my last job. It’s not fun anymore, we’re into some fucked-up shit now.”

  “Fucked-up shit indeed, Pap, but that don’t change things. You need a stash for that new life of yours. New living don’t come cheap. Fuck, man, we both need the cash.”

  Pappy shrugged. “Not worth getting upset about.”

  “Ain’t it? Tell me again why we were in that place. Oh, right, it was to give you the bucks to light out. We put our fuckin’ stones out there for you, Pap. You can’t just run out on us. Not now. You owe us. We need you with us, brother.”

  “I’ve had enough. Gotta move on, make a fresh start.”

  “You sound like a shit country-and-fuckin’-western song, Pap. Come back to mine for the night. Tonya’ll cook up something good. We’ll chill, shoot the shit like the old days. Make plans. Think big. The rest of the crew will be there. I’ll get a few girls over. Make it a fuckin’ party. Pretend like we’re celebrating. See you off in style. My gift to you, bro. A proper goodbye. It’s all sorted.”