War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  After a few seconds more, the ex-Rebel sighed, clicking under his breath as he combed a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. Jon saw the instant Wreg decided to drop it, right before he motioned with one tattooed arm towards the bedroom door.

  He made his voice light on the surface, but Jon caught the underlying edge.

  “What about those books, brother?” Wreg said. “Can we get them?”

  Jon stared at him, frowning.

  Realizing again how tired Wreg looked, he decided to drop it, too.

  For now, at least.

  “I’ll get them,” he said, motioning towards Wreg’s hurt shoulder. “They’re heavy. If you really want to carry something, let me throw some overnight stuff in a bag. You can carry that.”

  Wreg grunted. The last of that warier look faded from his eyes.

  “It’s barely a scratch. You don’t need to baby me, Jon.”

  Jon rolled his eyes, clicking mildly. “If I’m annoying you, just say so. Honestly. You don’t need to be so careful with me all the time… I can take it.”

  Wreg caught his arm before Jon could move past. The taller seer winced a little when he used the hand and arm attached to his hurt shoulder, but didn’t let go.

  “You’re not annoying me, brother,” Wreg said, his voice gruffer. “And I’m sorry for questioning you about the crate. I was worried. I still am.”

  Before Jon could answer, Wreg pulled him against his larger body.

  The Chinese seer’s hands tightened before he kissed him, opening his light and his mouth, enough that Jon got lost there briefly. Wreg’s fingers wrapped around the back of Jon’s head and into his short hair, right before he opened his light more.

  By the time they parted, Wreg had his light coiled tightly into Jon’s, seemingly most of it somewhere in the area of his chest and belly and groin. Jon found himself fighting to get his focus back, his personal space, and his breath.

  He’d almost forgotten how Wreg could be in that area; it still made his knees buckle when the seer kissed him like that.

  Wreg let go of him reluctantly, responding to the push from Jon’s light. Maybe in return, Wreg pushed Jon towards the bedroom lightly with a hand, a frown still ghosting his lips.

  “Get the books, brother.”

  Fighting to get his breathing back to normal, Jon only nodded.

  Even so, he found himself studying those black eyes briefly before he turned, wondering why the thing with the crate bothered the big seer so much.

  22

  QUEEN OF THE NEW WORLD

  SHE FELT HIS approach from behind, but didn’t turn, or to lower the rifle.

  Smiling faintly, she squinted with one eye, staring down the scope and centering the reticle on her chosen target. Once she had the threads and rifle aligned in the physical, she used the gridlines in the Barrier to confirm and line up on the same target.

  Taking a breath, she squeezed the trigger.

  The gap between targeting and the muscle clench of her fingers was nothing in real life, faster than the sound of the small explosion sending the cartridge through the air.

  In the Barrier, that silence and sound stretched.

  She watched the bullet make a lit trail along its trajectory with her sight.

  Silence, as it passed through space and time.

  Then––the bullet hit.

  The skull split apart like overripe fruit.

  Laughing, she lined up the next one, staring through the scope again.

  “You should try it with just your light this time,” Feigran suggested. “You don’t need the scope, my darling. It only slows you down.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, she took in his squarish face with its long jawline, the amber eyes, now holding a glint of intelligence, despite the driving wind and rain. He was less skinny now, and it suited him, filling out not only his body, but also his face and changing his features. It made him look older, more male, less manic.

  Gaos, he was almost handsome now.

  No, not almost.

  He was handsome now, she realized in a dim surprise.

  He sounded different again, too.

  Like his appearance, his voice had been shifting incrementally for weeks, possibly months, until she had trouble remembering what it had sounded like before. Even now, it still continued to change, seemingly more every day, the longer they spent here.

  It wasn’t just the tone, or the words he chose, or the calmer feel of what he said. It was all of those things, plus something more subtle, all of which reflected a different person living and expressing itself through his light.

  Nodding, once, she decided to take his advice.

  Raising her head, she pulled the gun off the balcony railing, holding the butt of the stock stock against the flat part of her upper chest, between her collarbone and shoulder. She didn’t look through the scope at all that time, or the outer sights, but lined up the barrel using the grid lines inside the Barrier alone.

  Five more shots went off, echoing weirdly in the wind and rain.

  She lowered the rifle as the last two bodies were still in some stage of falling.

  “Cool,” she said, smirking.

  “That way is much better, yes? And there is better compensation for the wind. You were able to fire much faster, Lady Cassandra.”

  “It seems so much slower in the Barrier.” She turned, looking at Feigran again, and smiling. “You’re right, though. I did that pretty fast in real life, didn’t I?”

  “Very fast, my beauty.” He smiled, and a whisper of the old Feigran returned with the boyish look he gave her, and the younger-sounding words. “Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.”

  She laughed, jerking the gun off her shoulder and tilting the barrel up.

  Turning to face him, she grinned wider. “You want to have a go?”

  He shook his head, smiling bemusedly from where he hid deeper in the alcove, where he was slightly more sheltered from the wind and rain.

  “You should practice, darling,” he said. “I learned this before. I remember.”

  “Did you just come out to watch me do it?”

  He nodded. Pain whispered off his light as he looked her over, taking in the white blouse she wore, bra-less and now stuck to her skin in the driving rain.

  “You are wet,” he observed. His light coiled around her hotly, so tangible, it felt like a snake wrapped around her calves and thighs. “You like the water, my darling? Perhaps I can wash you, after. Or make you wet in other ways.”

  She laughed, tossing her wet hair to get it out of her face. Gripping the spent magazine, she jerked it off the mount and tossed it to him. He caught it easily with one hand, midair, and she jerked her chin towards the table.

  “Toss me another, will you, my love?”

  Selecting one off the pile on the table, he threw it to her.

  Catching the full magazine as easily as he had the empty one, she slammed it into place in the magazine well and jerked back the operating rod to feed a cartridge into the chamber. Winking at him, she turned back towards the street.

  Despite the shots, the crowd below hadn’t thinned at all.

  In the wind, she’d barely heard any screams, so maybe most of them just didn’t know what was happening. They probably were used to people collapsing dead on the street by now. Maybe they just assumed whoever fell had succumbed to the disease.

  Still, you’d think they’d see it when a head exploded right next to them. Cass had seen brains and bits of skull and blood splatter over more than one shirt.

  Grunting, she stared at a few different faces through the scope.

  On most of them, blood was visible below noses and ears, and on the front of shirts. They all continued to walk forward, going nowhere. These were the walking dead, the ones who were already on their way out.

  “Fuckin’ zombies,” she muttered. “Real life zombies.”

  Lining the scope threads on the nearest head, a blond woman with a dorky, PTA-mom haircut, wearing a name brand knock
-off blouse, along with a jeans jacket and skirt, all of which she’d probably gotten off the rack at some crappy department store, Cass snorted.

  Squinting against the wind and rain, she decided to try it without the Barrier that time, just for the hell of it.

  She fired, and was surprised when the rifle kicked back, hard, into her shoulder.

  “Ouch,” she said, shaking out her arm. Lifting the rifle again, she stared through the scope at her target, and frowned. “Fuck. I missed her. Like… completely!”

  When she glanced at Feigran, he chuckled. “Why are you firing like a worm, my love?”

  She shrugged, turning back to the rifle and the street below. Lining up on the same woman, now determined to hit her, she spoke without looking back.

  “I figured I should know how to do it both ways. You know. In case I can’t see or something. Remember how Menlim said they had those fields now?”

  “They won’t be used on us, darling.”

  “But I should know how anyway, right?” she said stubbornly. “Most seers can shoot blind too, can’t they? The real infiltrators and soldier-types, I mean?”

  “You are thinking of brother Revik.”

  Conceding his words, she smirked, still staring down the scope. “He’s kind of the gold standard on killing, isn’t he?” She squeezed off another shot, and again the butt of the gun slammed into her shoulder. Lifting the rifle’s scope at once, she stared down, and found the blond woman again. “Goddamn it. Missed again.”

  “You hit one of them.”

  Cass swiveled the scope, and found the person Feigran had been referencing. A gray-haired African-American woman sprawled on the asphalt, holding her thigh, her mouth open in some kind of wail or yell that Cass couldn’t hear through the wind. Watching the blood squeeze out between her thick fingers through a hole in her purple polyester pants, Cass grunted.

  “It doesn’t count if I do it on accident,” she said.

  “Fair enough,” Feigran replied diplomatically.

  Clicking softly, so that she barely heard it over the wind, he advised, “It is better to learn it the seer way, first, my love. The other way will be easier to learn later. You will rarely be without your sight, in any case. Father won’t permit it.”

  “But what if I get collared?” she said, squeezing off another shot with just the scope.

  Cursing louder when she missed again, she frowned, feeling a flush of anger grow hot in her chest. Clicking the AR-rifle over into full automatic, she opened up on the crowd as a whole, not bothering with the scope or her light that time as she aimed roughly in the area where the blond woman with the stupid haircut stood.

  Bodies fell as she emptied the magazine in a matter of seconds.

  When it was empty and clicked over, she raised the smoking barrel, smirking at Feigran.

  “There,” she said. “Got the bitch.”

  Feigran laughed. She curtsied when he clapped from where he stood by the organic-reinforced sliding glass doors.

  “Come inside, my naughty girl,” he called out over the wind and rain. “Come in where it’s warm, and I’ll show you a few more interesting things you can do with your light.”

  She grinned at him. “What kind of things, brother Rook?”

  “Fun things,” he promised. “More fun than killing worms that are already dead.”

  Slinging the strap of the AR over her crosswise, so that it hung snugly across her chest, she held out her arms, smiling into the storm.

  “And miss all this?” she said, raising her voice to a near-shout, even as she laughed. “This is the new world, brother! I don’t want to miss even a single minute of it.”

  When she opened her eyes, blinking against the rain, he was watching her, love and affection in his amber-colored eyes.

  “This world was truly made for you, my dear,” he said, his voice reflecting that affection. “You are the queen here. The rest of us, merely your subjects.”

  She laughed, wiping rain from her face with one hand.

  “You’re such a flatterer, Fig. Come on. Throw me another magazine.” She jerked the old one out, tossing it to him. “I get enough flattery from father, these days.”

  He caught the magazine with the opposite hand that time, and lobbed a new one at her.

  He watched as she slammed the new one home, once more using the operating rod to chamber the first bullet. When she glanced at him next, he was staring at her legs, at the dark jeans plastered to her skin and lower torso, and the bare feet below, the toenails painted the same scarlet as the tips of her jet black hair.

  “Come inside,” he coaxed. “My cock hurts. I want to fuck you desperately, darling. You look so very, very beautiful right now…”

  “Just a few more,” she said, smiling, before she turned back to the railing. “I have to do my civic duty… putting a few more of these losers out of their misery. It’s positively painful watching them shamble around down there, looking for someone to save them.”

  Shrugging off the rifle strap, she raised the barrel back to her shoulder.

  She found a teenaged boy that time, with long brown hair. Something about his long face and the half-slack jaw reminded her of Jack.

  Grunting, she zeroed in on his stupid mouth.

  Sinking back into the Barrier, she was lining up the threads in the gridline of light, when a sharp jerk moved the cement balcony under her, so violently, it nearly threw her from her feet.

  Clicking out, she grabbed the bannister, gasping in shock. She’d barely taken a breath when protective arms circled her from behind, tugging her swiftly backwards.

  A little stunned at how fast he’d reacted, closing the gap between them, she didn’t struggle as Feigran brought her against his chest, pulling her away from the balcony’s edge. He felt so big from where he held her, her back flush with his chest. His arms felt bigger, his chest––even his thighs and legs. She forgot sometimes, just how much he’d changed.

  “Thanks,” she managed, looking up and back.

  He kissed the nape of her neck, cuddling her against his chest.

  The balcony continued to jerk and shake. After a few more seconds where he held them near the reinforced organic doors, he began bringing her back through them, taking the rifle from her hand and setting it on the table just inside the apartment building as he brought her indoors.

  She watched in wonder as the transparent panes rippled under the repeated shocks from the rumbling earth. The material looked like a thick liquid as it absorbed the Earth’s jerks and shudders. If those doors had been regular glass, like at her house back home, during the last big quake in SF, they likely would have shattered already.

  This kind of organic didn’t break, though.

  The jerks and jumps continued for a few minutes more.

  Cass and Feigran only stood there, him balancing them against the wall to keep them on their feet, his other arm wrapped around her snugly from behind. They both remained silent, watching the balcony shake through the open doors leading outside.

  A crack formed in the cement of the balcony floor, and she laughed, pointing.

  “Look!” she said.

  He kissed her neck, pressing his erection against her from behind. “I see it.”

  Still laughing, she held up her arms and hands in triumph as the shaking grew more intense, without pulling away from Feigran’s embrace.

  Lightning lit up the sky overhead, throwing the undersides of black and gray clouds into stark relief, illuminating the surrounding buildings as the earth continued to rumble. She saw windows shatter across from them, parts of buildings break off, falling to the street below and exploding or hitting more humans. The street cracked, and the crack grew, running along the sidewalk, throwing more of the bleeding, diseased humans to the ground.

  Thunder followed, with scarcely a delay after the shock of white light.

  Fist-pumping in the air, she let out an involuntary laugh.

  It was pure joy.

  “This is fucking
awesome!” she shouted, over the peal of the skies.

  Behind her, still pressing his body against hers, Feigran laughed, cradling her warmly against him. He wrapped his arm around her tighter as she stared up at the sky.

  All she felt from her brother Elaerian was love.

  23

  TALKING SHIT

  “GAOS,” Jon looked at Wreg, who stood under the doorframe leading from the room’s bedroom to the bathroom. “That was definitely bigger than the last one. It felt a fuck of a lot bigger, anyway. Bigger and longer. Are they sure the hotel’s equipped to handle this?”

  Wreg didn’t answer.

  He stared up at the ceiling, frowning, as if he hadn’t heard Jon at all. After a pause, his obsidian-colored irises clicked back into focus, and Jon realized he’d been in the Barrier.

  “8.1,” he said, glancing at Jon. “So yes. Bigger.”

  “What about the hotel?” Jon said. “Do we need to be worried? I mean, no structure can withstand everything.”

  “Pori says we’re good. So does ARC. They have engineers looking at the foundations, just to be sure, but they’re familiar with the building’s design.”

  Jon nodded, forcing a sigh.

  Picking his gym bag off the floor where he’d dropped it, he shook it out and knelt by the large dresser directly across from the room’s king-sized bed. He’d left the rucksack by the bathroom door, figuring he’d deal with laundry and whatever else later.

  His adrenaline and heartbeat still jacked up from the ‘quake, he found himself going through his belongings almost randomly, selecting items without a lot of thought or planning. He tossed in a few shirts, several pairs of jeans, pants, underwear, two sets of clothes for mulei and some socks without thinking about whether he’d matched up the different colors or styles all that well, or even if he had roughly equal numbers of any of it.

  Realizing he still wore the organic combat boots, he threw a pair of sneakers into the bag too, before ducking into the bathroom long enough to grab the basics. Glancing around the room and frowning once he’d emerged, he felt like he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.