The Next Dawn

by Cooper, C. G.

  He made it to the other side of the road, mindful of the figure walking his way. He looked up. The form was closer now and still coming his way. Maybe the person couldn’t see him. There were plenty of old timers in the neighborhood. This one could be lost. What would he do then? A mild panic rose in his throat.

  “Good morning,” he said, waving, trying to sound cheery.

  The person, a woman, kept coming. My, what was that, on her shirt? Three streetlights flickered off in unison, making Sandy’s heart thump just a little more.

  “Hello?” he said. His voice sounded pitiful now. He wanted to run even though the thought was ludicrous. He’d look like a fool in front of one of his neighbors.

  The woman was thin, and he saw her face now. It was drawn, almost ghoul-like. No, it must be the light. It had to be the light.

  She was coming right for him.

  “Miss, can I—?”

  The words stuck to his tongue as she tripped over her own feet, bare feet he now noticed. He lunged at her. It was instinct, not daring. It was as if he’d trained for the move. She fell right into his arms, faceup.

  Sandy’s eyes fell to her bird-weight form. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. And her shirt...

  It was covered in dark red that was almost brown. It was impossible not to notice the three holes and the white skin peeking through. He almost dropped her.

  “Help me,” the woman said, her eyes fluttering once, and then closing.

  He checked her breath. She was breathing, thank God. He had to remind himself to do the same.

  And that’s when he saw it. Written in a scrawled teenage boy lettering on her forearm, just below the elbow.

  X-99.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sandy Kaplan

  The woman sagged against his hands, her bird weight melting into him. He watched her chest rise and fall. Sandy realized that he himself wasn’t breathing. He coughed out a breath and then sucked in a lungful more. Had he been holding his breath from anticipation or because of the X-99 on the woman’s arm?

  Rise and fall.

  So many thoughts cluttered and bumped in Sandy’s brain as he pulled her off the road and laid her gently on the patchy grass. He wished he had a pillow or something to prop her head.

  He hadn’t touched another woman—save the odd handshake—since his wife died. This woman lying there, breathing with her rise and fall, needed his help.

  But he was no hero.

  He ran his hands over his face, realizing too late that whatever was on this woman was now on him. If she had X-99, he was exposed, and in a big way.

  Rise and fall.

  At least she was breathing.

  He watched her, paralyzed with indecision and fear.

  Rise and fall.

  Rise and fall.

  He only noticed it because he was watching so hard. The rise and fall of her chest was the only thing grounding him to sanity.

  And then it stopped.

  “Oh, no. Please, no,” he said, nudging her with a hand.

  He didn’t know what to do. He’d had basic first aid instruction before getting the Driver’s Ed job, but most of that flew out of his head as soon as he heard it.

  He placed a hand on her chest. No movement. No heartbeat.

  The morning light cast down on the little patch of mottled grass, stained and worn by uncaring pedestrians and an HOA that had lost its touch years before. What a place to die. He knew she was dead. Her face had that look, that color that spoke of the end. He could have tried CPR but didn’t know how.

  Instead, he sat there and stared. He thought back to his wife, of her final days and the deep pit of misery he was cast into by her death. He didn’t have any tears left to cry. So he sat and stared.

  He didn’t know when the cops arrived. They came on cautiously, wearing gloves and masks.

  “Sir, is this your wife?” one of them asked.

  Sandy shook his head. He was ready to die.

  “Sir, we need to know what happened.”

  He didn’t care. Death was his hooch mate now, his pal that wouldn’t leave him be. If this was how it was supposed to be, maybe he’d just embrace it.

  “Hey, what are those holes in her shirt?” he heard one of the cops say.

  He felt them looking from the corpse and then at him. Sandy didn’t care. And yet he did. Under his thick layer of despair, Sandy Kaplan cared deeply. Only it was impossible to bring that side out again, the side that had loved without limits.

  Then he remembered the gun. He had a gun in his pocket. It was an old thing and probably didn’t work. He’d gotten into the habit of bringing it on walks just in case. It might scare off would-be muggers.

  They told him to stand up, and very carefully they patted him down.

  Then he was on the ground, face pressed hard into the dry grass.

  His concealed carry permit had expired.

  And just like that, Sandy Kaplan was arrested and taken in for questioning because of yet another unexplained death.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dottie Roth

  The shivers racked her body so hard that she felt certain it would bring one of the roving workers in suits. They came around every hour or so to check. For what, Dottie had no idea, but she didn’t want to give them a second shot at her.

  Shot. She’d been shot. She’d been shot at before, but never hit. Those pesky buzzing beasts always flew by. But that man in her neighbor’s house, he was a professional. Dottie had counted every shot. And the pain. Wow, the pain. Searing, burning, white-hot pain.

  But the pain was gone now. Dottie was 99 percent sure she had died. Not a maybe death. Real death.

  She’d come to in this place, stinking of real death and all its trappings. Three times the bile had come. Three times she’d bitten it back. No signs of life, that’s what she kept telling herself.

  So she’d laid there, waiting, watching. No cameras as far as she could tell, but that didn’t mean a thing. Bodies stacked like timber in the corners. At least she wasn’t in the bag anymore. That had been the real scare. Dying by gunshot was one thing. Dying by suffocation, no thanks.

  Another long shiver coursed through her so hard her bare feet bounced on the ground. That was the other thing. As disgusting as this place was, she’d endured the ultimate humiliation—at least in her mind. She’d woken up to another woman taking the clothes off her person. Imagine that! She almost panicked through the ordeal, somehow having the presence of mind to stay limp and only snatch the occasional peek through cracked eyelids. It was through one of those glimpses that she’d seen the unmistakable X-99 written on the woman’s forearm. That had given her chills.

  Now she lay cold, mostly naked save for her undergarments, and wondering how in the bloody hell she was going to get out of this place. She’d figure out the rest later. The first order of business was timing.

  Building size estimation: ten thousand. . . no, fifteen thousand feet.

  There you go. Ease into it.

  Assets on hand: None that I can think of.

  No that wasn’t right.

  Assets on hand: My life. My mind.

  Challenges: Approximate hourly checks.

  No need thinking about why they were checking and why they each held a long stick. Coming closer, so no time to spare.

  Possible exits…

  She glanced around, carefully, head moving a millimeter at a time.

  There! There was one. She could barely make out the illumination at the far end of the building. But how to get there? It was a long way, though for some reason the place was near dark, so that would help.

  Another door opened, the one where the checkers came from. This time two forms appeared with flashlights mounted to their heads. Shoot. That was new.

  Dottie watched them spread out, poking with their sticks as they moved from body to body. One of the forms stopped, poked, then poked again. He—Dottie assumed it was he—held a hand against the side of his head like
he was pressing an earpiece in deeper. She saw the nod, the rise of the stick, and then the plunge into the body.

  That’s what I’ve got coming, she thought. The idea sparked a new current of energy in her.

  Dottie tested her limbs again, even wiggling her finger and toes. All there. All working. Next, she bent her knees, then her elbows. Good. Very good. Fear could be quite the effective joint lubricant.

  She waited for a pattern, noted how they moved methodically, almost identical, like they’d been trained in the same technique. Step, poke, move on. Step, poke, move on.

  The checkers got to the end of the rows and Dottie expected them to move on. Instead, they did the thing with their hand pressed against their ear. Must be bad gear, she thought. New. Not used to it.

  But it was only a passing thought, one born from years of practice. It was gone in a flash as she made her move, rolling over, then getting to her knees.

  No alarms. No shouts from the living.

  Making a beeline to the side of the building, Dottie crept along the corpses, grateful for the gloom. It seemed to take forever, but patience came naturally to her. She kept stepping, one foot in front of the other, as quiet as—

  She stepped in something slick and tried not to think of what it could be. Someone’s guts probably, judging by the way it squished in.

  Keep moving, she told herself. You’ll have time to retch later.

  She kept moving, always keeping an eye on the checkers.

  There was the door. So close now. Twenty feet. And then she had the handle in her grasp. Only it didn’t turn. She tried again the other way.

  Nothing. Locked.

  She heard the muffled yell a second later and turned to see one of the checkers pointing at her.

  Then he raised his stick like a spear, put one leg forward, and arched his back for the throw.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dottie Roth

  Too far. She knew because she’d done the quick calculation. And throwing a real spear was hard, even in experienced hands.

  She tried the door again, bruising her shoulder as she tried to put some muscle into it.

  Both flashlights were blazing her way now and there she was, basically naked, shivering, and covered in X-99, if her guess was right.

  No, she said in her mind, trying desperately to flip to another page.

  She closed her eyes.

  No, she said again, making the switch from prey to predator.

  When she opened her eyes, the first man was within ten feet of her. He’d evidently made the same calculation with the spear throw as she had. She waited, arms at her sides, head cocked to one side so she could see the second man running down the aisle of bodies.

  The first man’s eyes were wide behind the plastic mask. Dottie took that as a good sign. He was obviously a noob.

  He screamed, sending spittle against the plastic. The stick came up next, the business end pointed right at her. He wasn’t going to do anything with it except hold her in place. His body language told the tale. Violence was not in this man’s DNA. Stabbing the dead and dying was the work of a twisted person, and Dottie had zero room in the world for twisted people. Her father had been one, and she channeled every bit of the misery he’d put her through—the drunken tirades, the blouses ripped, the punches thrown, the public scenes played out…

  She pounced, grabbing the stick out of the man’s hands. In her own experienced hands, it felt unbalanced. Not a traditional weapon, but what in her career had been? A sharp pen was as good as a knife, a hammer as good as a night stick, maybe better.

  The man threw up his hands, and Dottie took that as all the invitation she needed. The metal end of the industrial spear went into his neck, then his chest, then his groin. The neck for death. The chest for insurance. The groin, well, because Dottie felt like it.

  That guy went down, gasping and moaning, soon to die. The next approached tentatively. Dottie decided to have a little fun. She whirled the spear around like a Marine on the silent drill team, ending by flipping it end-over-end in the air. The second guy’s eyes followed the thing.

  Bad move, son, she thought, snatching the weapon out of the air, wrapping it once around her body, and then sticking the pokey end right through the man’s face mask. It went into his mouth and out the back of his head. Good, quieter this way. No need for the screams.

  She was in a time crunch and she knew it. She did a quick search of both bodies. Nothing except the second spear and the meager undergarments they had on under the hazmat suits. Dottie could’ve stripped one of them of the suit to disguise herself, but she didn’t want their body goo on her.

  Two spears, one in each hand, looking and feeling every bit the savage, she ran for the far door. It was easy to ignore the bodies now. Life and death have a way of erasing a room’s decor.

  She made it, panting at an acceptable 140 heart beats per minute. That was a surprise. After only a minute of regaining her full breath and checking the exit for a quick departure, Dottie was further impressed to find that her heart rate had gone down sub 60 beats per minute. Now 50. How was that even possible? Not even in her prime, when she’d run marathons and dreamt about doing ultras, had she achieved anything like this. No, her internal calibration and calculation mechanisms must be off. It wouldn’t be the first time. That damned cancer.

  Didn’t matter. Now was now.

  This door opened. The door led to a hall and the hall led to another door. This one opened to a sterilization chamber. She did a scan. No one there. Just a few sets of clean suits.

  Clean suits.

  She hosed herself down as quickly as she dared then slipped into a hazmat suit. It was way too big. No matter.

  One spear stayed in the chamber and the other came along with her. Another door. Another long hall. Would she get stopped because she was wearing the suit? Probably. Maybe she could play it off. Maybe she could say she’d been exposed. After all, she had been, hadn’t she?

  No, she had to find a quiet way out. The disguise would get her only so far.

  Two women appeared in the corridor. They chatted, one munching on a bar of some sort. That made Dottie’s stomach grumble. Lord was she hungry. She kept walking.

  The women looked up from their conversation. They were both young, probably in their mid-twenties. Dottie wondered if this was their first job, jabbing bodies with sticks. What a way to say hello to adulthood.

  One of them pointed at her and said, “You shouldn’t be wearing that out here.”

  The one and only real lesson she’d ever taken away from her father came to mind, “Always pretend that you belong.”

  “New protocol,” she said, noticing that her voice sounded louder than she remembered.

  “What new protocol?” the other girl asked, ignorance stamped over each syllable.

  “The email just came across,” Dottie explained, stepping closer so they could see her eyes. Always lock eyes. She pointed from one woman to the other. “Get your suits on before anyone sees you without them.”

  The look that passed between the two girls almost made her laugh. This was too easy.

  “Thanks for the heads up,” the dumber one said, already hurrying to the sterile room.

  She didn’t stick around to make sure they made it. She found the employee lounge, raided three lockers to find the clothing she needed, and dressed in a matter of seconds. She tried to ignore the X-99 written on her forearm. She’d have to deal with that later. That, and so many other things.

  As she was leaving, she noticed the camera over the door, pointing out into the parking lot. No doubt it covered the entirety of the lot as well as the exit gate. And no doubt it picked up Dottie driving away two minutes later in the new Kia she’d found the keys for.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Fabian Moon

  “We need to find a bigger place,” Fabian said, hoisting another box to the very top of the stack. It swayed an inch and then swayed back.

  Iggy lit up another joint
and offered it to his brother first. Fabian shook his head. Iggy shrugged and hit it hard, exhaling long and slow.

  “I got a line on a building,” he said, his voice colored by pot smoke. “We can get it cheap.”

  Success hadn’t dampened Fabian’s concern about his brother’s need to skirt every law on paper. Still, they needed a new place. Moon’s Pawn Shop had room for one more shipment and that was it.

  “How cheap? And where is it?”

  Iggy shrugged again, as if it was of little concern. “I’ve got you, brother. Don’t worry.”

  Worry was the name of the game these days. Sure, they had a handful of cops on the payroll. Sure, they had a rolling supply and plenty of demand. But the worry kept Fabian from enjoying the money that he stuffed away in a storage locker down the street. Not for the first time, Fabian wondered if it was better to take the money and run. He’d leave enough for Iggy, even though Iggy wouldn’t take much. His little brother was running another set of schemes on the side and Fabian pretended not to notice. None of his business.

  Someone pounded on the back door. The exact rhythm telling the brothers that another shipment had arrived.

  “You want me to get that?” Iggy asked, languid now, smoke curling all around his head.

  “Nah, I’ll get it.”

  Fabian took one last look at the teetering stack of boxes and then went to pay the courier. Courier. That had been Iggy’s idea. Funny how he labeled everything, so it sounded above board to Fabian.

  They were couriers, security detail, and customers. Not thieves, thugs, and poor bastards.

  Fabian pounded a reply against the heavy metal door—a recent addition—and waited for the return reply. It came a second later and he opened the door after undoing the choice selection of locks he’d installed himself.

  “Yo, Fabian,” the skinny face said. Fabian couldn’t remember this kid’s name.