Afterworld (The Orion Rezner Chronicles Book 1)

by Ploof, Michael James

  Again I shrugged. “Anything to drink around here?”

  By the time I got back to my apartment my head was swimming. I closed the curtains in the large bay windows and managed to get one boot off before hitting the couch.

  When I woke up I thanked the Big Guy I hadn’t dreamed and shuffled to the kitchen. From the ice box I took half a brick of cheese and tore open the bread. Noticing that I had only a shot glass worth of milk left, I cursed whoever had left that little—though I live alone…kind of—grabbed a bucket, and went out the back door.

  “Good evening, Matilda,” I said to the apartment’s milking goat.

  Ten minutes later, and after more than a few kicks from Matilda for making her work so late, I had my milk, warm though it was. I walked back into the apartment with dreams of cheese and bread and a protein shake—and stopped dead in my tracks. The cheese was gone, and the only sign of the bread was a trail of crumbs that led to an angry chimp.

  “Dude, what in the hell are you…aw, man, all of it? I told you demons are too dangerous. You would have crapped your chimp-panties if you were there.”

  Dude, my growth-stunted pet chimpanzee, wasn’t buying it. He made a face that could have gotten his hairy ass on the cover of Nat Geo and wrote me off. When I say he’s my pet, I mean master. The little menace runs the show. Just ask him.

  “Anyway, thanks for asking. I’m all right. Old Ben tore it up—we took down the demon. I got slammed around pretty good by the boy and his mo—by the demon. But don’t worry about me. Just eat my only food!”

  Dude cowered at my anger and I instantly felt bad. Call me a sucker, but it’s hard to stay mad at a pouting chimp.

  “I’ll take that as an apology.” I tried to sound as tough as I could. Dude bowed his head and made a pathetic attempt at a smile. My heart melted. I walked over and opened my arms for him to jump up into, like always. Instead, he leapt with all his might and head butted me in the Rezner family jewels.

  “Duuude!” I croaked as I hit the floor, cupping my tender vittles. Pain exploded in my kidneys, and I helplessly watched him strut over to the bucket of fresh milk. He turned to look at me as he dumped it over his head. After a quick fart impression, he bolted out the door.

  I wasn’t too worried about him at the moment; if I needed to find him, it wouldn’t be hard. A chimpanzee that smells like sour milk tends to stick in people’s minds, especially when he’s wearing a Superman outfit—though he insists it means Superchimp…don’t ask.

  When I finally recovered, I crawled my way back to the couch and punched out for the night. This time the nightmares found me. In my dreams I was brought back to the weeks following the Culling. I had barricaded myself and my sister, Mary, in the house I grew up in, though I hadn’t been there for years. Outside, hordes of Cain pounded on the doors and walls and threatened to break through the boarded-up windows.

  “Give us the girl! She is one of us. She is Cain!”

  I awoke with a start and jumped as a voice came from behind me.

  “Whoa there, lad, it was just a dream,” Father Killroy said soothingly. I looked behind me and saw him drying off Dude. He must have washed off the goat’s milk. Dude gave me a scowl as he enjoyed the soft toweling from Father Killroy. The little traitor looked as though he was enjoying a day at the spa.

  “You hungry?” Killroy asked.

  “If you’re asking Dude, no, he isn’t hungry. The little brat ate all my food and— well, you can guess what he did to my goat’s milk,” I said stiffly, sitting up on the couch.

  Father Killroy only laughed. “On the counter—brought you some warrior food.” He was preoccupied with making faces, which Dude mimicked.

  I sprang from the couch and tore open the brown paper bag—not a bottle-of-wine-sized bag either, a straight-up grocery bag. Inside I found a bounty of canned food, a loaf of fresh sourdough, a half-dozen eggs, first-of-the-year’s strawberries, and a small bottle of milk…and to my delight, outdated peanut butter.

  Frothing at the mouth, I cracked an egg on the counter, swallowed it, and washed it down with two more. I tore into the loaf and stuffed my mouth with moans of satisfaction. Father Killroy gave me a disapproving look and I froze. I hadn’t said grace.

  With a mouthful of bread, I waved my hand around in a miserable interpretation of the sign of the cross and said, “God is good. God is great. Yay, God!”

  Father Killroy rolled his eyes and I shuffled to the couch, clutching my precious food. I dug into the peanut butter and, finding I had no knife, used my fingers to glop it onto the sourdough. Dude sprang from the confines of the towel and leapt up onto the arm of the couch. He gave me his cutest face and eyed the peanut butter.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said through a mouthful.

  Dude made a sad face and, in sign language, said, “Dude hungry please.” I flipped him off and made sounds of sweet satisfaction as I chewed. He shrieked and leapt onto Father Killroy’s lap in the armchair opposite me. I ate half the loaf and almost all the peanut butter, washed it down with the entire bottle of milk, and sat back, contentedly popping strawberries into my mouth.

  While I ate, Father Killroy informed me that Mrs. Marks and Trevor were doing all right, although the boy was quite sick, due to having eaten a cat—and I had knocked out one of Mrs. Marks’s teeth.

  As I lay back in full-belly bliss, Killroy came around behind the couch and put his fingers in my hair.

  “Jerusalem, son, you need a woman.”

  “What?” I said, annoyed at him for disturbing my chillaxing.

  “This, you dolt!” He scratched at my scalp. Pain shot through my head and I puked in my mouth slightly. “You’ve got dried blood caked to your pretty brown locks there, curly. And you probably could use a few stitches. Why’d you tell the paramedics you were all right?” He sounded perturbed.

  “I’ll take care of it, Killroy. Chill. I didn’t know it was Mother Killroy. Je—” The father pulled my hair so that my head was cranked back and I was looking up into his nostrils. His eyes dared me to take the Lord’s name in vain. “—eepers creepers,” I finished, and he released me.

  As I rubbed my hair and mouthed obscenities at my laughing ape, Father Killroy went to the kitchen, started a fire in the cook stove, and put on a pot of water.

  “Where is your suture kit?” he asked.

  “Bathroom,” I told him, “above the towels.”

  Within half an hour my head had been cleaned, stitched up, and bandaged by the good father. Having only outdated aspirin to soothe the pain, I took four with a glass of water and sat back once more.

  Father Killroy put everything away and looked toward me with a question on his mind.

  “Any ideas about that demon yesterday?” I asked.

  He blinked as if being snapped out of deep thought, and after a moment, said, “Beats the Helsinki out of me. All I know is it was very powerful. This was no smalltime baddie.”

  “It destroyed my binding ward like I was a rookie.”

  “You are, in terms of demon fighting.”

  “True, but if I’m good at anything, it’s wards. The demon had to pack one hell of a punch to break it like so much dried spaghetti.”

  The father nodded. “It did take the full might of the both of us—”

  “Three of us,” I said, alluding to Old Ben.

  “—you get my drift,” he finished with a sigh.

  I tossed Dude a piece of sourdough so he would stop staring at me. He had crept closer, inch by inch, and was literally breathing down my neck and making sounds that reminded me of a rapist.

  “Rezner,” Father Killroy began, his words carrying a gravity with them—I knew what he was going to ask. “The demon, when he changed the boy’s appearance…the little girl…she is your sister?”

  I inwardly cringed as my eyes darted around my apartment, avoiding him at all cost. Finally I put my pounding head in my hands. “Mary, yes.”

  He shook his head with a sympathetic face and heavy si
gh. “If you ever want to ta—”

  “I would rather not, Father. Not now, but thanks.”

  He looked as though he could barely contain his urge to speak more on the subject. I was thankful that he did not. Instead, he shook his head as one would at a funeral and looked to the floor.

  “Well…” he sighed, getting up, “I must prepare for Mass. Will you be joining us?”

  I rubbed my head as I stood. “I don’t think I’m up for it this time, Father.”

  He nodded knowingly. “Uh huh, well then, see you soon. Take care of yourself, son.”

  I followed him to the door.

  He walked past the threshold and stopped to take in a deep breath of the outside. “Get yourself some fresh air at least, Rezner. It’s a beautiful day. With the Lord’s help we’ll have a bountiful summer.” He smiled at me as I squinted against the bright sunshine. “And thanks. You did great yesterday. The Lord sees your good deeds, and I’ll let the council elders know what a help you were.”

  “Thanks, Father, for everything.” I waved as he left, and watched as he made his way whistling down the sidewalk.

  “The Lord sees my good deeds,” I said to Dude as he followed me into the apartment. “I don’t see his of late.”

  Since the Culling, seven years ago, the Big Guy and I haven’t really been on speaking terms. I hadn’t been much for religion before the Culling anyway. The end of the world as we knew it had different effects on different people. While some became more devout in their particular religion, others lost all faith. I happened to be the latter. Father Killroy would argue that the very fact that I believed in—and had seen—demons should be enough to make me realize God and the devil existed too. But I wasn’t buying it. For all I knew, demons, or whatever possessed the boy and his mother, were just interdimensional parasites.

  I was, however, more than a little unsettled that the demon, or whatever it was, had read my mind and manifested the spitting image of my sister—right down to her bad pronunciation of my name.

  I reached in my back pocket and took out the laminated picture of little Mary and me. It had been taken a year before the Culling, with her and I standing before the Grand Canyon. It had been our last big family vacation.

  My parents had me early, when they were both seventeen. After I moved out to go to college, they experienced a bad case of empty nest syndrome. My sister was born when I was eighteen. The Culling happened the summer after I graduated college. Mary was only five.

  Dude whined, perched next to my head, as I stared at the photo. I looked up at him and he stroked the patch of hair that stuck out between my bandages.

  “Thanks, Dude.” I sniffed and got ahold of myself. “Come on, I gotta turn in my report to the council.”

  Together, Dude and I left my one-bedroom apartment and took to the streets.

  Chapter 4

  The Temple of Light

  It was a quick, ten-minute walk to the Temple of Light, also known as the John Hancock Tower. The tower stands across from Trinity Church and is the source of the powerful spell shield that protects Boston and Cambridge from the many dangers of the outside world. During the wars immediately after the Culling, the tower lost a third of its huge windows. They were replaced by sheets of plywood, and as a result, the old nickname, The Plywood Palace, was reborn.

  After the fall of the world as we knew it, the Council of Light took the building as its headquarters, due to it being the tallest building in Boston and the best location for the shield to dome the city. The radio signal that I and so many others followed had come from Hancock Tower. The spell shield was erected shortly afterward.

  The streets were busy with many people out in the hot June sun, tending to the precious crops. The streets had been converted years ago into long, stretching gardens, and anyone with a green thumb had immediately become highly valuable to the community of Witnesses. Boston had, before the Culling, housed a number of businesses that produced storable food. The stuff with a twenty-five- to thirty-year shelf life was our backup and was highly rationed and guarded. We needed to learn to fend for ourselves, and quickly. Luckily, the supplies of food, batteries, fuel, and the like would allow for the conversion from dependent to self-sufficient. Boston also boasted a community of Amish Witnesses who helped to teach the rest of us the skills we would need. The new world had no place for those that could not pull their own weight—period. And everyone was beginning to learn that harsh fact. Luckily for Boston, fishing was still good along the coast, though it was highly dangerous, as the spell shield didn’t yet reach very far off shore.

  I walked along St James Street, which was designated for growing corn. These days it is referred to as St James, St James Corn, or just Corn Street. I nodded to the many workers tending the crops, and marveled at the ingenious irrigation system that Witnesses from the rebuilt MIT had set up along the street. They utilized rainwater collected with funnels and tarps between the many tall buildings of the city. It wasn’t yet fully complete, but the summer had been wet, and there was enough water in storage to get us through a dry spell or two.

  Everybody in the city had a job, which usually consisted of whatever they were best at, mixed in with one day a week of public service. I suspected that I had done my share for the week, with the exorcism, but I always went over my suggested hours anyway. Requirement or not, if I wasn’t pulling duties for the council, I was there among the crops during the summer months. In gardening, I find my Zen.

  As I neared Trinity Church I thought of Father Killroy. He would be starting his sermon about now. I felt a little guilty about not having gone. Over the past year he has asked me every week to come, and I always find some excuse. He always stressed that I didn’t have to be religious to learn from the variety of life lessons his preaching could offer, or enjoy the sense of community that was experienced inside.

  Maybe next week.

  I lied to myself and shrugged off the guilt. It wasn’t like he was going to become a stripper because I missed his sermons. If he did, it would be simply hilarious anyway.

  I strolled into the Temple of Light, trying to get the image of Father Killroy dancing on a pole out of my head, and nodded at Clive Parker, the doorman. Clive was a big dude, well over six-four, but he, unlike most other people taller than me, didn’t make me feel weird. I’m six foot even, and I don’t have to look up to many people. When I do, its uncomfortable—don’t ask me why.

  Clive greeted me with a big smile of pearlies. “What’s happenin’, Flood? Gimme some skin, sinna,” he said, and then gave a little chuckle.

  He always laughed. I’ve yet to see Clive not wearing a smile, as if he is the only person who doesn’t know the world as we knew it is gone—or perhaps that is why he smiles so much.

  I gave him some skin but was soon forgotten as he spotted Dude strutting in with his Superman costume on.

  “Little brother from a monkey mother!” Clive yelled—which was his way of talking.

  Though Clive seems like the nicest cat you ever want to meet, there is a reason he is the doorman at the Temple of Light. He is one badass wizard. I’ve seen him cast spells that would leave most wizards spent, without so much as breaking a sweat. He’s just about the most powerful wizard we’ve got who isn’t considered an elder of the Order of Franklin. But he is a bit of a loose cannon.

  “Can’t chat, Clive. I’m late with a report.” I continued through the lobby, toward the stairs—well, dead escalators, actually. Mitch Hedberg was right.

  “Man, tell them crusty crackers to shove their reports where their bald heads don’t shine—everybody in the city heard about the exorcism.”

  “Will do. Come on, Dude.”

  “Later, Flood!” Clive called through the lobby.

  Dude caught up and disappeared up the stairs. Only the first ten floors of the building are used much these days due to the lack of power for the elevators. We have generators in the city, but not enough to power the hundreds of elevators throughout the buildings. People
have gotten really good at climbing stairs—well, it was more of a homecoming for those who’d spent their pre-Culling years climbing eternally nowhere in the front windows of gyms and fitness centers.

  I came out onto the second floor and saw the old receptionist Marla, who could be the long lost sister of the Crypt Keeper.

  “Please sign in,” she said without looking up from her crossword puzzle.

  I don’t know how many of those puzzles survived the Culling, but I’m pretty sure she has them all.

  “Hello to you too, Marla.” I quickly scribbled my signature in the ledger and went on my way.

  “The ape too,” she droned, penciling in a few letters.

  He looked to me for guidance.

  “You heard her,” I said. “Sign your name in the big book.”

  Dude went berserk with joy. He loved to write his name—so much so that I can’t teach him to write anything else. He leapt onto the desk, scattering Marla’s crossword puzzles, and went to work. The old wrinkled bag offered me a scowl over her spectacles, and I smiled brightly. Dude leapt down, his cape flapping behind him, and strutted toward me. Even from a distance, I could make out the huge DUDE written across the ledger.

  Marla’s scowl followed us down the hall as I whistled a happy tune.

  We came to a huge wooden door that was ridiculously out of place in the old office building. It had large iron hinges and a knocker in the shape of a shooting star. I banged out the code, and the door opened on its own accord.

  The first time you enter the heart of the Temple of Light, it feels like a dream. Gone is the drab “modern” decor with its ridiculous angles and corners, and in its place is what looks to be the inside of a castle. Why and how they changed it, I’ve no idea, but it is awesome. The feel really gets the old wizard juices flowing.

  Inside the threshold stood two guards. At the moment, they were empty and motionless displays of knight’s armor. Had I been unwelcome, they would have come alive and ripped me to pieces.