ZOMBIE – notes from the edge

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Happy Thursday. It is cold here in New York, although it was supposed to warm up here today, what we would call an Indian Summer in the old days, before it was wrong to use the word Indian in that manner. So cold and looks like Fall will continue to be Fall, at lease here.

Halloween will soon be here, and so in that spirit I will add a free chapter read of the first Zombie books and the Amazon links to get the eBooks for your Kindle or the Paperback versions. Enjoy this fall weather, or whatever you have going on in your part of the country or world. Here, anytime really, snow will be here and staying for the next several months. Enjoy the preview. Feel free to pass the link to the free preview on to your Zombie Fiction loving friends, Dell and Amber…

ZOMBIE: ORIGINS

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LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s places, situations or events is purely coincidental. Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.

PROLOGUE

A meteorite that was supposed to miss the earth completely hits and becomes the cap to a series of events that destroy the world as we know it. Police, fire, politicians, military, governments: All gone. Hopes, dreams, tomorrows: All buried in desperate struggle to survive.

From L.A. To Manhattan the cities, governments have toppled and lawlessness is the rule. For a time the dead lay in the streets while gangs fought for control of what was left, and then the dead began to rise into some other sort of life. Small groups of the living begin to band together for safety and begin to leave the ravaged cities behind in search of a future that can once again hold promise. This is the story of the OutRunners and how they came to be, start to finish.

August 4^th

Plague Year One

Bear

We were down along the river checking over some old buildings that were perched on the cliffs there, high above the water. Fall was not far away and we knew we had to get moving, get out of this dead city. We had half the country to cross and find a place before winter came back around again.

We had left the others in our place off the park. An abandoned factory building I had found after I had lost Donita, and struck out looking for food earlier that morning. With the park and its crowds so near to us, the shops and small stores for blocks around us were stripped clean. Another reason to get out of the city. It was time. I remember thinking that as I walked along.

I was thinking back to March as I walked. Not really paying attention to the walk, where I was going… March… Just a few months ago, but the world was still the world then. And for the next little while we didn’t even know about the dead. Dead was still dead. When you closed your eyes for the long eternal sleep you didn’t wake up a short minute later as something else. No. We were ignorant up until they decided to come after us. Ignorant. Stupid. Didn’t know a thing: Have a clue.

I had been in Central Park a few days after the first earthquakes hit New York. I had left Donita alone and went down on my own to see what the deal was. I found out nothing. No one knew any more than anyone else. There was a lot of speculation, but that was it. There had been earthquakes. It had rained hard for nearly twenty-four hours straight. The really freaky stuff hadn’t happened yet. We were just starting down our new path, but what was clear was that thousands of people had died in the city, maybe more than thousands, maybe a million or more. And certainly millions if the damage here was the same across the country… Or, worldwide.

And my initial estimate turned out to be kind. In the city alone: Collapsed buildings: Fires; exposure to the elements because there was no shelter, there were millions of bodies. It was not so bad in those first few days, but a few days later when the smell of the dead rotting under the rubble began, it was horrible. The diseases started then too. And the diseases took thousands more, and we thought that was the end of it, but it was not. The dead came next. The same dead, newly risen to some other sort of life. But that day in Central Park I did not know about the dead yet. I had no idea what was ahead; what was before me was bad enough.

At six foot three and nearly two hundred ninety pounds I don’t usually fear much. But that day I did. I realized there are some things you had better fear if you have half a brain in your head. It didn’t matter that I could walk through Central Park unmolested. Something was on the wind. Something that didn’t care who it touched: Did not respect physical size.

I walked through the park. There were hundreds there already. In the coming days those same people began to make the park home. But that day they wandered aimlessly. In shock. The subway was shut down, most of it flooded. The buses parked. You could not find a cab. The same with the cops. Everything that was the same about the city. The things you could depend on to be the same day after day, were gone. A few short days and they were gone. No more. And it had a feeling of permanence to it. A feeling of doom.

I sat down on a bench and watched the people shuffle by. No noisy kids. No babies bawling. No Joggers. No dog walkers. Hopeless people shuffling by. The occasional panicked whack job running around crazily. I saw no one shot that day, but in the coming days, they, the hopeless ones, began to shoot the crazies. Chase them down and kill them. But that was later. That day I sat on the bench and wondered what had happened, and that was when the planes had overflown.

We all heard them from a long way off. Military cargo planes. Slow, sometimes seeming to hang in the sky. That droning sound as they overflew, blocking the sun from the sky. This was no fly over to see how New York was, that much was evident immediately.

I was torn between running, and needing to know what this was. Once you start down that path of just reacting to fear, it gets bad fast, so I sat there, as calm as I could be. ‘They will not drop bombs,’ was my thought. I remember it. And they didn’t. What they did was spray the entire city. Trails of blue-tinged vapor drifting down out of the sky. That was the first time.

I finally did give in to the fear and took off through the park, thinking, like nearly everyone else, that it must be some sort of poison. The government solution to whatever it was that was going on in the city.

We didn’t know what the blue shit the government planes sprayed us with right after everything went to hell was. And I am still not convinced I know all there is to know, but I suspect things. I have been told things. I met a guy a few weeks back that said he worked at the Army base over in Jersey. He said he knew what it was. He said the planes came from somewhere down south, but stopped there on the way back to re-fuel. What he told me was it was designed to strengthen us. Keep us alive a little longer. Make us stronger somehow. Some dip shit scientist’s idea.

I suppose it was meant as a boost for us. A help. The world slowed down, fell apart, everything stopped working. They knew they couldn’t get to us. We would die. So they sprayed the blue shit on us. And I could suppose further that some of us survived the first few months because of it. I can’t prove it, but I suspect it did help us evolve into…

I don’t know. Whatever the hell we are now. I know we’re alive? I know our hearts beat. I still feel human and I truly think I am still human: If it made changes to the living they are very small changes… At least so far.

But the dead. Oh the dead, that is a different story. It did something else to the dead.

I walked along now thinking my thoughts. I was lost in them, I’ll admit it. Right back in March for a few seconds. But I came back fast.

We were right in front of a line of cliffs that overhung the river, spread out a little, at least I was. It’s funny how you can forget to be careful so goddamn fast. It was somewhere past midday when they came for us.

“Bear! Bear!”

Cammy from a hundred yards down. The panic and fear in her voice made my heart leap into my throat, and because of her fear, and probably some of my own, I did a really stupid thing right then that cost me time. I was so panicked, that I threw my rifle down and sprinted toward the sound of her voice. I got maybe twenty feet when the realization of what I had done hit me. It would have been comical to see the way I locked my legs up and tried to turn around, before I had even come to a stop, if it had not been so goddamned serious.

I had the rifle back in my hands, the safety off, just a fraction of a second later when Cammy and Madison opened up on the UN-dead closing in on them from the mouth of the narrow trail that lead up from the river. I added my fire to theirs before I had run another fifty feet, and their leader, a shambling wreck of a corpse, folded up, and then flopped over the side of the trail and down into the river. I continued to run as I fired and I was shocked to realize that I was screaming at the top of my lungs as I closed in. I am big, but I can move when I have to.

“Goddamn-son-of-a-bitching-goddamn-bastards,dead-fuckers!” All strung together. Fear words. I did not hear them at first so I did not know when they started, and I could not shut them down once I did hear them, the panic and fear were just too hot.

I watched as, unseen by Cammy and Madison, a zombie crouched on a narrow path above them swiveled his rotting head to me, seemed to take my measure with a wide, yellowed grin, and then dropped from the ledge on to Madison’s back.

“No! Goddamn-son-of-a-bitches-dead-bastards-bastards!” I could not say, ‘Madison Look Out!’ Or speed up my feet or any other damn thing. Time had slowed, become elastic, strange, too clearly seen… The Zombie hit her hard, and she folded like an accordion: Driven into the ground, a few hundred pounds of animated corpse riding her down into the dirt. Clawed hands clutching, mouth already angling to bite… To taste her…

I was still thirty or more yards away. I could not see how that could even be possible. I should have been closer, but I was not. I saw Cammy turn, panicked, take her eyes off the other UN-dead, and start towards Madison. Unchallenged the other Zombies closed ground far faster than they should have been able to.

I saw the Zombie on Madison take a mouthful of her back, just below the curve of her neck, and rip the flesh away from her spine. Cammy’s rifle came up and barked, and the zombie blew apart, raining down on Madison, a storm of black blood. Somehow, I managed to switch to full auto, get my rifle up, and spray an entire one hundred round clip into the other zombies where they rushed along the path towards Cammy and the fallen Madison.

Madison screamed. Time leapt back into its proper frame and I found myself five feet away as Madison arched her back, screamed, and tried to stand. Blood ran in a perfect river from her gaping wound, across the white of her T-Shirt and down to the waist of her jeans.

“I think… I think…” Madison tried.

“Baby… Baby,” Cammy sobbed. She dropped to her knees and pulled Madison to her. “Oh, Baby… Baby,” Cammy sobbed.

I looked back up at the trail: Empty. At least of moving UN-dead. Three or four, it was hard to tell with the tangle of legs and arms, lay dead on the pathway. Silence descended. I heard a bird in the trees above calling as if nothing was wrong with the world. Cammy sobbing. Madison crying hysterically. The wind moaning through the empty buildings that were set just back from the cliffs and the river on this side of the city.

I was thinking… ‘That wind is colder. Colder even than when we started out this morning. Maybe the weather will turn back to snow and cold. Maybe winter is not done after all… Or coming sooner… It could be, it’s all so screwed up. Maybe, if it does get cold, it will slow those bastards down… Maybe we will be okay… My, God, they bit Madison… They BIT Madison!!!’ I sagged to the ground my mind full of confusion and numbness.

Cammy was sobbing uncontrollably, Madison had lapsed into shock. I was sitting crossed legged wondering where in Hell this would all end up, my rifle fallen from my hands and laying on the ground next to me. Time spun out: Dragged; seemed elastic once more, sticking in places and jumping ahead from those places to where it should have been had it continued to run properly.

Cammy sobbing, holding Madison up. Kissing her forehead. Telling her how much she loved her… How she was her world…

Madison… Eyes rolled back in her head… Face pale… Fine beads of sweat standing out on her forehead… Her back a bright slick of red, running across Cammy’s hands where she held her. Slowing… Slowing… Cammy mouthing words in such slow motion that I could not understand what she said… Madison’s body sagging, eyes rolled up to the whites… Bright dots of blood speckled across Cammy’s cheeks… Then time jumped, staggered, came back to normal and Cammy was screaming and screaming…

“No! … NO! … Not my… My love, my Madison, my…” Collapsing to the ground with Madison, crying still… Softer, but continuous.

“Cammy…” My voice, but I did not know it at first. I actually stopped speaking and looked around, startled, before I realized it was me speaking. I turned my attention back to Cammy. “Cammy… Cammy, it’ll be okay… It’ll be…”

“NO!….NO!” She scrambled backward, pulling Madison’s unconscious body with her. She wiped one hand across her eyes trying to stem the flow of tears… “NO! She’s… She’s okay… Okay… You can’t… You…” She broke down into sobs, pulled Madison to her and began dragging her away from me.

“Cammy… Cammy, it bit her… Bit her… Cammy… Cammy, it’s… It’s just you and me, Cammy… It bit her… It bit her…”

She let go of Madison and lunged for her rifle. I sat, still cross legged, stupidly, as she grabbed it and leveled it at me.

“Get out,” She said very calmly. Much more calmly than I thought she should have been capable of.

“Cammy… What are you doing… Cammy?”

“GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!” She screamed. I reared back as the rifle barrel came up and then slashed down across my face. I jumped back, but not fast enough. The steel barrel smashed into my lower lip, through it and then hit my teeth. I immediately tasted blood and machine oil. My tongue ran across my teeth unconsciously. I was sure she had smashed them out, but the barrel edge had come up short or I had moved back far enough. One of those things.

The pain was delayed but it came never-the-less. Hard, heavy, fast, down into my lower jaw and then ricocheted back up into the top of my head. I scrambled backwards, tripped over my own rifle, got it into my hands and then time did that funny slowing, elastic thing again.

The blood dripped from my chin onto the ground. My rifle was pointed squarely at Cammy, safety off, and an empty clip, but Cammy didn’t know that. The blood dripped slowly. Cammy’s eyes swam in and out of focus, but remained on me. Her rifle barrel dipped and then rose again, leveled on me once more.

She seemed to take a deep breath that went on forever, and then, once more, time sped up. “I’ll kill you,” Cammy told me. “If you touch her, I’ll kill you… I will,” She started out strong, but ended in a doubtful, whining whisper.

I didn’t drop my rifle barrel but held one hand out in front of me in a placating gesture. “Not touching anyone… Not,” I managed through my busted lip and aching jaw. The pain was a live, throbbing thing.

“You will… But… I know you will… You think… You think…” She seemed all at once to realize that she no longer held Madison in her arms. She took a deep shuddering breath and then dropped her rifle to the ground. She collapsed back down to the ground and crawled to Madison’s body.

I stood. Shocked. Not knowing what to do. Time side slipped again. The bird went back to calling out; if it had ever stopped. The wind came back, blowing cold against my face, pushing the flush of heat that the situation had bought with it away, cooling the sweat on my brow. The bird called… Another picked it up and soon all the birds were talking as though nothing at all had happened. It became a perfect storm of noise after the deepness of the silence. Time slipped away again, clouds moving across the cold, blue of the sky.

Cammy sat, Madison pulled up into her lap, a large smear of maroon on her forehead, stroking Madison’s black hair. The birds called. The coldness of the wind seemed to bite at my bones. Nipping. Tasting: An UN-dead thing of its own.

I can’t tell you why I did it, but I am glad I did. I pushed the button on the rifle butt, dropped the empty clip in to my waiting palm, and slid another up into the rifle where it socketed itself home with a solid click. I did it perfectly. Like I had been doing it all of my life instead of just the last few months since the UN-dead disease, epidemic, disorder, plague, what-ever-the-fuck it is that has happened. She never looked up. The birds didn’t stop singing their birdsong… Just in case, I told myself. Just in case.

I stood, my knees screaming, flexed experimentally and then walked a short distance away, leaning up against the cliff face. I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out my pouch and rolled a cigarette. I felt at my lips, busted up, but I would heal. I had been in fights in my old life where I had been busted up much worse. I lit the cigarette, held it carefully between my lips, smoking as I watched the clouds slip across the sky. Letting the urgency of the situation float away on the wind like the smoke was.

Cammy’s voice had fallen to a barely audible whisper as she stroked Madison’s hair and held her. Madison’s lips, blue tinged, moved. Too quiet to hear her words. A private conversation. A private conversation in the wide open, which thanks to the UN-dead was a very private place. No one at all around, alive anyway, and the dead couldn’t care less about love, secrets, whispered promises, goodbyes. The UN-dead only cared about the hunger that drove them. Flesh, and more flesh… The time turned elastic once more and spun out of control for some unknown length. I only know that when I came back to myself the sun had moved across the sky. My thoughts were about darkness, zombies, staying alive.

When I think back on it now, I realize a noise had brought me back. Had to be, otherwise there was no reason for me to come back at all. Just stay gone. Let the sun go down and the UN-dead take the night, me, Cammy, Madison and whatever else they wanted. But it didn’t go that way…

A noise. A sliding foot. A pebble falling from above… I really don’t know. I know that this time I reacted fast. My rifle came up, my mind was clear. I focused; two of them dropping from the cliffs above… Like cats… Like dead, stinking, feral cats… Dragging that stink of death with them. The stench of rotted flesh falling from the sky, enveloping me even as I fired into them.

I had a choice. I couldn’t get them both. One falling at me, one falling at Cammy where she sat with Madison cradled in her arms, oblivious to everything around her. My reaction chose for me. The rifle came straight up and spat short, little barks of noise and flame. The Zombie started to come apart before it hit me. A shower of cold, dead blood rained down on me, splattered against my face. The body hit the barrel of the rifle and took me down to the ground clutching the rifle hard to keep from losing it as the full weight of the Zombie came down on it.

I kept it, but only by sheer determination. The Zombie had impaled herself onto the barrel. Her flesh so rotted that it had simply punched through her breast and out her back. I shoved her off as quickly as I could. One booted foot kicking against her chest. Knocking her apart, pulling the barrel back through the soft flesh and hard bone.

I expected to see Cammy done for. I expected to see her dead or dying, but she had somehow ended up about twenty feet from where the Zombie had fallen. She looked herself as if she had no real idea how that had happened, but when I raised my eyes and they took in the whole scene before them, I saw exactly how it had happened.

Madison must have still been awake. Laying there badly injured, but not gone. Taking the comfort from Cammy that she offered: When the Zombie fell she saw it and managed to push Cammy away from her and take the attack on herself.

The Zombie was no match for her, wounded though she was. She straddled the Zombie with a rock easily the size of her own head and bought it down hard. Once. Twice, and then I lost count, and the Zombie quit fighting. The UN-dead, dead again. This time for good.

The silence came back hard. Like a curtain on the last act of a play, just when the audience isn’t expecting it. It crashed down.

Time did it’s elastic trick and then snapped back before I was ready for it. My senses were shot. At first I could not connect the dots of memory that I needed to connect to make sense of what my eyes were seeing.

Cammy rose to shaky legs and started toward Madison, sobbing once more. Madison’s eyes swiveled to me. A sick look in them and pain riding there too. She slumped forward, one wrist flapping uselessly and lunged for the rifle that Cammy had, had trained on me not so long ago. Time stopped its elastic trickery right around that time. I knew exactly what she intended to do before she did it.

Cammy stopped in mid stride and nearly fell backwards at the effort of stopping so quickly. I think she believed for a second that Madison intended to shoot her. I really believe she thought that. But that was not the plan, and I knew that was not the plan. Because the plan that had resurfaced in her mind was the one we had talked about, half seriously, half jokingly, for as long as we had been traveling together. Before she followed through on that plan I heard her tell it to me in my mind once again, the way she had a week or so before. When she had been unmolested… Whole… Not about to join the ranks of the UN-dead herself.

“If I ever fuckin’ have to, I won’t hesitate,” Madison had said, “Once I’m dead I don’t want to come back.” She shuddered and grimaced at the same time.

We had been in an old house over in Harlem. That was before Harlem got crazy too. We had had gas lanterns for light. The windows were boarded over. The UN-dead scratched and cried and pleaded, but they could not get in. The four of us-John had still been alive then, in fact he had died just a few hours later… Fell through a rotted section of floor in that same old house… Impaled himself on a pipe in the basement… Madison had shot him in the head nearly as soon as he had stopped his struggles.

“He would have expected it,” she had said, and nothing more. But that night… That night she had said it right out. Like a mantra. Like looking into the future and seeing this day.

“If they come for me? If they get me? I’ll put a bullet in my own head. I will. I swear I will. If I ever fuckin’ have to, I won’t hesitate,” Madison had said, “Once I’m dead I don’t want to come back.”

And Cammy had begun to cry. “Don’t say it, Maddie… Don’t say it.” And she hadn’t said it again, but it didn’t matter. She had already spoke it into truth. I had heard it. I had heard it and I knew she meant it.

And now… Time stopped it’s trick. She jammed the rifle under her chin and squeezed the trigger… Her head exploded in a spray of red and gray. I swear I could hear the sounds of small bits of bone and drops of blood pattering down to the ground. And then the silence was roaring again.

I took a breath, another… And then Cammy began to scream once more…

It’s been three weeks. I thought Cammy would never talk again. I believed she wouldn’t, right up until she did yesterday.

I just kept us moving. Different places in the city. Not staying in any one place for more than a day. Walking days, seeking refuge at night. The zombies smell us, you know. They can smell us for miles. So at night it’s been strong places. Strong places where they can’t get in and then hope like hell that these were not some of the new breed, the ones that don’t seem to have a need to avoid the day, and that they would be gone in the morning.

I started carrying a radio the other day. Clips on the belt. FM. Picks up a lot of talk during the day. There’s a place that a lot of the people I hear from have heard about. Down south somewhere. Nobody seems to know exactly where it is. But others swear they have talked to the people that founded this place. A city… Somewhere down south. I had heard of something like that when it was Donita and me back in New York. But the word I keep hearing is that it is a safe place. That it is open to everyone.

So that is where I had been thinking about getting us to. Three days ago we got a truck, it’s still just me and Cammy, but it feels safer.

I have been thinking about this place. I don’t know who these people are. If they even exist, I only know the whole world is fucked up. I have come to understand that even if I get us as far South as I can, we wont make it for long. There are only two of us that can fight. The dead are getting smarter. And that is not just my point of view. It’s on the radio. They all say it.

L.A. and New York both are barely hanging on. Both! Barely hanging on! Nearly over run! We’re right here. I see it every day. The people talking aren’t exaggerating at all. If the big cities are truly falling apart, and people can’t make it banded together, how can we make it alone?

No. I’m heading for this place. I’m hoping it’s real. Today on the radio I caught someone talking and it sounded like he was talking about the same place I have heard about. Too far away to hear me. Skip. You can never tell where it’s coming from. I’m just hoping it’s true. That I didn’t just imagine it to assuage my mind.

Meantime I am trying to keep us alive. Find strong places to stay through the nights. There are strong places. Places you can find if you give it some thought. Stairwells in highrise buildings. Steel and concrete. They can’t get through those doors. Deep freezers in grocery stores. Heavy steel doors. The vehicles if we have to and we have had to. They can’t get in there to get us either. A little fire at night if I can, because they are afraid of fire. It’s one constant, so far. The Zombies don’t like the smell of smoke.

Canned stuff to eat. Christ, we’ll be eating canned shit until we die. Get up the next day and push on. Get moving again. And that is what I’ve done. Kept us moving. Kept us safe. And she has come willingly, although silently, like a big, semi animated puppet. And then yesterday she was sitting beside me, silent as she had been since the thing with Madison, and she spoke.

“I don’t like beans, Bear. I just don’t… Maybe we could find something different tonight?” She had lifted her voice at the end and made it into a question. I was winding my way through the middle of an abandoned car and a wrecked, burned out truck. Months old. I looked over at her. She smiled, tentative at first, but then it lit up her face. I had to laugh. I had, had so much pent up inside me.

“The beans are a bit much then?” I asked.

“A bit,” she agreed.

I bought the truck to a dead stop for a second not knowing what to say.

“You could say, ‘Welcome back,’” she said softly.

“Welcome back,” I repeated every bit as quietly. “Welcome back…”

THE END BEGINS

ONE

April 31^st

New York: Harlem

9:00 pm

Donita made her way down the sidewalk. It was icy, and so she was careful where she stepped. Bear walked beside her. He seemed to have no trouble walking on the sidewalk, ice or not. He had lessened his stride to stay beside her as they walked.

“Okay?” he asked now.

Donita laughed. “Damn slippery,” she said. Almost as soon as she said it she felt her right foot take off on some black ice ridged up against a subway vent. Almost as quick as that happened Bear had her elbow, holding her safely.

“Donita,” Bear told her. “You got to be careful… The baby.” He sounded reverent.

“I know about the baby, baby,” She laughed. “And I am being careful. This damn sidewalk is not cooperating. Why doesn’t Harlem have heated sidewalks like some of those places over off Park?”

“Ha,” Bear told her. “We ain’t getting no heated sidewalks ever. Are you kidding?”

“Hey,” Donita told him. “We got Bill Clinton over here.”

“Uh huh. And he can fall and crack his white ass too, cause he ain’t got no heated sidewalks either.” He shook his head and laughed. It was funny to see a man as big as Bear laugh, or shake his head, or really anything. He was the sort of man you looked at and saw violent things coming from. Nearly three hundred pounds, over six feet, and muscular from a ten year stint in prison. And he had that way of looking at someone, any someone, but men in particular, that made them walk away from him. With women it did something else, and Donita watched out for that too, but Bear had no eyes for any other woman. She was it and she knew it; didn’t have to question it.

“The day Harlem gets heated sidewalks is the day that they’ll put another black man in the white house.”

“Baby we got that,” Donita told him. She had reached a section of walk that was shoveled and clear of ice both. A rarity after a heavy snow fall.

“And did he get us heated sidewalks?” Bear asked. He looked at her google eyed and she had to laugh.

Owning a car in New York was a tough proposition, Bear thought. They didn’t have one, but it would be nice. That way Donita could drive home from work instead of the subway, and a long walk through a bad neighborhood.

Bear’s job was steel work. He was picked up every morning and dropped off again. For him a car or a truck would be a luxury. To her it was really a necessity. A necessity he was trying to work out, but it was tough to do.

First you had to be able to afford to buy a car. Then you had to pay nearly as much for insurance as you did for the car. Then you had to pay for a place to park it. If you were stupid enough to leave it on the street it would be towed, stripped, stolen, or get so many parking tickets it wouldn’t be worth owning. So you needed a parking place, and that would set you back five times what the shit box car you had managed to buy had cost you. Bear knew, he had checked into it. He sighed now thinking about it.

“Stop worrying about a car,” Donita told him.

“I wasn’t,” Bear told her.”

“Oh, so you’re going to start lying to me now?” Donita asked him.

“No,” Bear admitted. “Just pisses me off. I see these people that are on welfare driving a Cadillac and I got to say, what the fuck! I mean we work hard. We really do. I don’t like seeing you have to walk.”

Donita laughed. “Baby, it’s a handful of blocks.”

“Uh huh, and you nearly bust your ass walking them,” Bear said.

She laughed again.

“Oh, that’s funny that you might slip and bust your ass?”

“No,” She giggled. “Bear, God forbid the sidewalk that slapped my ass. I believe you would kill it, but I’m never gonna hit that sidewalk because you’re always going to be there to catch me.”

“Huh,” Bear said. He laughed a little.

“Well, you will be and I know it. So it doesn’t matter,” Donita said. “And besides, I like this… I like this walk every evening with you.” She slipped her arm further through Bear’s own, and huddled closer to him. “And it keeps my ass nice and firm,” she whispered as she leaned closer to him. She laughed and Bear broke into laughter with her. A skinny kid in a hoody, passing by them shrunk away from them, his eyes suddenly startled wide.

“Hey it’s just laughing, cousin. Ain’t gonna rob you.” Bear told him.

“Baby,” Donita said.

“I know… I know,” Bear told her. He left off and turned away from the kid who seemed about to break into a run.

“Sometimes it isn’t about black and white,” Donita told him. “Sometimes it’s about you’re a very big man and when a man as big as you does something as simple as laugh a little loud it scares people.”

“Well that’s funny because it’s been about black and white for as long as I can remember,” Bear told her.

“Baby?” She waited until he looked down at her.

“It’s true… Now stop… This is something I enjoy. Don’t spoil it.” She held his eyes until he smiled at her.

Their combined laughter faded into the gray of the evening as they moved off down the street.

March 1st 12:06 am.

L.A.

Billy Jingo & Beth

Billy knocked back the tequila and waved off Beth as she motioned to the back bar for another. She came over smiling.

“A man that knows when to quit. I like that,” Beth said.

Billy laughed. “A recently acquired habit, I assure you. Shit will bite you if you don’t set your limits,” He smiled at her, hesitated and then spoke again. “So it’s almost over for tonight… Thought you would be singing?” He raised his voice at the end to make it into a question. He knew it was what she wanted. He had heard her sing, there wasn’t an act in the place that could hang with her. She was it, except something wasn’t clicking between her and Jimmy, or maybe it went all the way up the ladder to Harry. Whatever it was Billy was curious about it.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Beth said with a wide smile as if reading his thoughts.

“Damn,” Billy said. “It’s as if…”

“I read your thoughts?” She laughed. “It’s been written all over your face since you came in. I saw you looking at the stage, back at me, back to the stage. It’s not hard to figure it out.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m some wacko fan, Beth. I just think you are way to good for…”

“If you say it I’ll smack you stupid,” Beth told him. Her eyes were slitted, narrowed and focused. Her right hand had doubled into a fist. Billy had no doubt she meant what she said.

“Peace,” Billy said.

“Not that it really matters,” Beth said with a sigh. “Jimmy knows, and that means Harry knows, and they don’t care… That’s not it. I’d feel for the lame ass that came in here if I was doing a set and had anything to say about my time on the streets… We’ve all been there… At least the interesting ones.”

Billy nodded. “So what is it?”

Beth shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m hoping Harry will be around later on and I…”

“Hey… Baby, what the fuck with the drink?” A big guy, belly straining at the buttons of his shirt. He smiled, but the smile was no more than a rough semblance of a smile. Billy tried to burn him with his eyes, but Beth reached nearly into his face and said. “So you’re done here?”

Her eyes said don’t, he didn’t, but he would have liked to say something to the guy. Instead, he nodded a yes and picked up the change she had laid on the bar. She was talking to the fat guy before he got his change in his pocket.

“See that big guy over by the door,” she asked nicely.

Billy watched the fat guy turn to the door and then back to Beth. “Yeah?” The guy said. There was a sarcastic edge to his voice that made Billy slow down. He wanted to see the outcome.

Don, the big guy on the door had that bouncer six sense and looked over at Beth and shrugged as if to ask if there was a problem. She rolled her eyes, and Don left the door and headed for the bar.

“I told you no more,” Beth told the guy.

“And I said I don’t take no orders from no bitch,” The fat guy said. He puffed up, but a line of sweat trickled from under his too black hair and streaked his forehead with whatever he had sprayed on his hair to get the color. He swiped at it angrily. And began to bluster a little more when Don’s heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

“And I missed my workout today,” Don told him as he easily spun him around, “unless you’re it?” Don finished.

“This is a private matter,” The fat guy told him, but there was a quiver in his voice that Billy heard clearly.

“Tried to grab Jill’s breast when she went past him. Jill laughed it off, said he’d been a perfect gentleman all the rest of the night. I said cool, a little fuck up, he’s had too much to drink and so I cut him off.”

Gentleman was a code word for a creep that had been hanging around getting way too friendly with the dancers.

“That so,” Don asked. He had stepped back to give himself some room just in case things took a physical turn.

The guy noted the movement and then he set his empty glass on the bar and put his hands in front of him, palms up. “No interest in trouble at all,” he told Don.

Don nodded at the door. “Time to go home and sleep it off, I think,” Don told him.

Billy watched the guy walk to the door and leave. He looked back to see Don and Beth looking at him.

“You know, this guy is becoming a pain in the ass,” Beth told Don.

“Ha, ha,” Billy said.

“Beat it Jingo. Leave the honey alone. It’s off limits. In other words you ain’t getting none of it.” Billy watched the cloud come over Beth just that fast. She had been teasing, Don probably knew that, but Don had a thing for her and he hated Billy who sometimes did small things for Harry. He didn’t wait for Billy to leave, but headed back to the door, opened it quickly and looked out into the lot.

“Probably making sure the guy ain’t fucking up his car,” Billy said under his breath.

“Sorry, Billy. I keep forgetting Don isn’t human,” Beth told him. That made Billy laugh.

“Anyway, I’ll see you around. I’ll be late tonight.”

Billy nodded. “Good luck, Beth.” He turned and walked to the door at the other end of the club. The one that let out onto the front sidewalk.

The night was beautiful, Billy thought as he walked along. He knew pretty much everyone he passed. He had been here for a little over six months having made his way up from Mexico when things had gone bad for him there. Technically he was on the run. Warrants out of New York. Somebody had put two and two together and dug up some prints from a crime Billy had been involved with. He had only found out about it because he had happened to be away from the house when the Feds showed up. His neck of the woods had no municipal police, but even if it had they wouldn’t have come with shotguns and armor.

He had hid out for three days until the word had trickled down to him that it was him they were looking for to hand over to some federal agents from the U.S. It hadn’t taken much to put two and two together. He had managed to get a beat up old Ford pickup truck and then filled-fifty five gallon drums full of gasoline that rode on the back of it. He set off into the desert.

The rest had been easier. Despite the laws and the changes in the U.S. It was pretty easy to disappear here. He had come with a little money, and that had helped. He had worked a series of meaningless jobs as he worked his way up the west coast. LA had looked good and so it had held him. That and Beth had come along.

Beth was out of reach and he knew it, but that didn’t stop the fact that he wanted her to be in reach. He had never met a woman like her. So he had stayed. He had watched her arrival from God knew where, some other place in California or Washington probably. He had watched her struggle to survive on the streets: Watched her work those same streets, doing her act in any place she could get into by day, walking the streets by night, and it was then he had seen something else in her. Something hard, some will he himself had that was hard to define, but that hardness in her pulled him to her like a magnet. It was that simple.

He had been working for Harry by then and so he had mentioned Beth to him. He didn’t know how the details had worked out, but a few weeks later when he had noticed she had disappeared from the avenue, he had found her tending bar at Harry’s Palace.

Now, as he walked he became immune to the world around him. He never heard Don until he was on him, had spun him around and dragged him into an alley.

“Hey… Hey! Don… What the fuck, Don… Hey!” But it did no good. The first punch nearly shut him down. The second did. The rest he never knew about.

Seattle Washington

Bobby

The wind kicked up along Beechwood Avenue in Seattle’s red light district. A paper bag went rolling along the cracked sidewalk: Skipping over Bobby’s feet where he stood watching the traffic. Money, he thought, if he could get a little money he could be okay. It didn’t have to be a million dollars, just… A few hundred, he decided. A few hundred could really fix him up right… There had to be a way.

He watched the cars slide by and tried to work it out in his head. The problem was he was too far off the edge of down. He needed to be more up, high, wasted to think straight. The brain just didn’t work without the sauce. He needed some good shit, and for that he needed some money. Just enough to get enough good shit to get a good high tonight and maybe a good high tomorrow when it all wore off and the jingle jangles set in? … Maybe, he decided. Maybe. Bobby turned away from watching the cars as the paper bag bounded over his feet and tumbled along the avenue. The diner down the block was calling. Sometimes he had scored in the parking lot, there were truckers, creeps, who knew, but they were in this area for one thing and it wasn’t the food. All he had to do was find the right guy and he’d be set. He looked once more at the traffic and then turned and walked off toward the diner.

New York: Rochester

John Simons

The sidewalks below him were crowded. John stood at the apex of the steps that led up to the old court house. It was impressive. He looked down at his hands, shifting the small silver canister from hand to hand, rolling it across his palm, treating it as though it were just a small fascination to occupy his mind, when in fact he knew it was something more. He didn’t know what, exactly. He wasn’t paid to know what. Maybe someone up the ladder knew what, he didn’t, and it was likely he never would, but it was something more than just a shiny little object to occupy his mind.

He had done hundreds of these small jobs. Little things. Little things that probably meant nothing in the scheme of things, at least that’s what he had always told himself. A little mental salve to prevent an infection of the larger truth. Little things he never heard a single thing about later on. Little things, but he suspected this time, this job was not a little thing at all. He suspected this was a big thing. He suspected he would hear about this one down the road. He suspected this one would come back to bite him in the ass.

The trouble was, in for a penny, in for a pound. It all mattered. He had taken job after job where he might leave an item on a park bench. Drop off a set of wheels in the middle of the desert. Switch a suitcase at an airport. Little jobs. Little jobs and he had never said no. Never complained about them. Never turned one down. And so here he was about to press the activator on a small, silver canister that might do anything. Anything at all. And was he worried about that? Yes, he was.

It was not so much worry for himself. He didn’t really believe the thing would blow up. He didn’t truly think they would take him out that way, if there was ever a reason to take him out, that was. He quickly shut down that line of thought. He had too much to worry about right now without starting a whole new avenue of doubt.

So, no, he did not believe it would blow up. He believed it would hiss and release a giant cloud of some sort of toxic gas, gases even, he amended. Waste, poison, something, but if that were the case, how could he safely set it off and not be contaminated himself?

The instructions were to walk to the top of the courthouse steps, depress the red button, and then toss it away. No specific direction, just away. It apparently didn’t matter. And, he thought now, wasn’t this exactly the way some terrorist would do it? Do an attack? A poison gas attack? An unclassified viral attack? He had seen a few movies, this was the way he would do it if he was writing the script. The girl beside him spoke.

“If this is going to take much longer you’re gonna have to pay more. I know I said it would be cool, a fifty, I mean, but standing around here is wasting my time. I got places to be. I got…”

He cut her off. “And you ain’t got no money yet. And if you do want the money then you need to shut the fuck up.” He went back to his self observation. A second later he looked back at her. “Hey, hey,” he soothed. She had begun to pout. Just another street girl with a habit and too much time on her hands to feed it.

“Look…” He waited for her to look at his hand. He held the small vial upright. “Do me a favor, okay? I was looking around because, well because, I want a picture right here. Now all you have to do is push this little red button… Aim at me, it’s got a little camera in there…You can’t see it, it’s one of those new ones, like them spy ones? So all you got to do is point it at me and then press the button.” He held the canister and looked around. She tried to take the canister from his hand and he snatched it away.

“Goddammit, dude, You want it or not?” She stamped her foot exactly like the spoiled child she was and was destined to always be.

“Yeah… Yeah I do. Just… See that corner over there? The top of the stairs? That little what-do-you-call-it hollow between those two pillars? Wait until I get there and take the picture.” He handed her the silver canister and started away.

“Hey! How the fuck am I spos’ed to tell? There ain’t no screen thingy, what-the-fuck-it-is?”

He turned back and smiled. “Just face it to me and do it. It’s not supposed to have a thing, screen, just do it.”

She turned the canister to her face. It was only about four inches long, maybe an inch thick. It didn’t look like a camera at all. She turned it back to John and clicked the button. Nothing, not even a click. It didn’t work. It was bullshit just as she had thought.

John froze when he saw her push the button, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. She had pushed it just a few inches from his nose. No odor. No vapor he could see. No anything. He pulled it from her fingers and flipped it back and forth. The red button was depressed now and although he tried to work a thumbnail under it to pull it back up he couldn’t do it. He bought it closer to his nose, nothing. No odor. He pressed it to his ear. No hissing. It was dead. A dud. Whatever it was it did nothing at all. Maybe it had even malfunctioned. He hefted it a few times and then let it drop from his fingers. It hit the stone step below him with a small metallic click, and then rolled away to the edge. It dropped to the next step, but it didn’t have enough momentum to find it’s way across that step to the next. He turned back to the girl.

“You broke my camera,” he told her.

“Did not, and that ain’t no fuckin’ camera anyway. You think I’m just stupid?”

“I do think you’re stupid. You broke it. You broke it and so I ain’t paying you. Fact, you should pay me for breaking my camera! Besides which, you pressed it before it was time. You fucked the whole thing up. I shouldn’t pay you shit. Not a fuckin’ dime.”

“Yeah?” she asked. Her eyes were wet, but they were also hard. She looked around at the crowd. “That’s okay, because you know what?”

“What?” John asked. He smiled. She was stuck and he knew it.

“What is, I’m fourteen. Fourteen. And I bet you if I was to start yelling right now, oh, something like rape. If I was to say Rape!” She raised her voice a little and a nearby couple flashed their eyes at the two and slowed.

John flinched and drew back from her.

“Yeah, see? So, now if I was to do that I bet your tune would be different. I just bet it would.”

“Twenty,” John said. His smile was gone.

“You said fifty. Fifty is what you said, and it should be eighty.” She picked eighty out of a hat. It was three more dimes, and three more dimes was a lot better than five. “It is eighty. It’s eighty because you tried to rape me!” She raised her voice once more and John’s hand plunged quickly into his back pocket. He flipped a fifty and three tens at her from the wallet he quickly pulled free, and she had to scramble to catch the money. Two of the tens fluttered to the stone step below her and she flashed a hard smile at him. The couple that had cut their eyes at them were now stopped and staring at the two of them. A cell phone appeared in the woman’s hand and when John met her eyes there was something there he didn’t like at all. The girl scooped up the money, muttering as she did, and John headed down the stairs two at a time. A few minutes later he had blended into the crowd and was making his way away from the downtown area.

Seattle Washington

Bobby

The prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic. Bobby Chambers sat with his back against the wall of an alley: Needle ready, and a speed-ball cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a little further down the alley. Bobby ignored him, watching the mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting together.

Two hours before he had been sitting in the diner waiting for his world to end. He had paid for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that time. A trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from Bobby, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had changed his mind.

He had just made up his mind to leave. Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more coffee. The cops couldn’t be far away, when the trucker had reached back for his wallet, pulled it free, took a ten from inside and dropped it on the counter top.

Bobby watched. It was involuntary. One of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet was one of those types he had seen bikers use. A long chain connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Sloppy, Bobby saw, probably because he knew the chain was there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put his ass nearly in Bobby’s face as he got up from the stool. The wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the chain, frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Bobby’s lap. He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second later.

“Listen…”

Bobby jumped and straightened quickly in his seat, his heart hammering hard against his rib cage. Busted. Busted and he had shoved the wallet into his wind breaker, double busted…

“Listen,” the waitress continued, “buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me? Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve through window, “Says to call the cops.”

Bobby stared at her in disbelief. He was sure that everyone in the diner had seen the wallet fall into his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah… Okay… I’m leaving,” he said with his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn’t speak for weeks. It just wasn’t necessary. When he did he would find his voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained it. “Going,” he said.

He got up from the stool, kept one hand in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked out the front door.

L.A.: 2:00 am.

Beth

The night wore on. Midnight came and went and the club shut down for another day. Beth worked at cleaning up the last little area of the bar as two of the dancers finished their drinks and hushed conversations, smiled at her and walked away. A short conversation with Don, probably some crude remark, Beth has seen how both of them had instantly stiffened their backs after he spoke. It wasn’t just her, Don was an actual creep. Whatever he had said the two girls chose to ignore it, turning away, making eye contact with Beth, waving as if they had been at the bar talking to her, and when Don looked back to see who they had been waving at they slipped out the door. Don made his way over to the bar.

“You scared my honeys away,” he told her.

“I think you can do that all on your own,” Beth told him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Don asked.

Beth frowned and shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if Don even knew what a creep he was. How he made the girls who worked here, her included, feel. “It means that not everyone is always on the same page,” Beth said. She had changed her mind at the last second. She had to work here. Don was the nephew of the owner. Creep or not he was part of the package.

Don looked confused.

“Donny, it means that sometimes you just have to let things happen. Go slow. A girl wants to think it was her own idea to like you,” she told him.

“Yeah… I can see that, but when you need it you need it. Some of these bitches need to be on point.” One finger disappeared into his nose and then he seemed to suddenly remember she was there. “You know, me and you need to hook up. I got …” One massive hand settled onto his shoulder and he stopped in mid sentence.

“Disappear, Donny. I need to talk to Beth right now,” Jimmy told him as he sat down at one of the stools.

“We was just talking, uncle Jimmy.”

“Right. And now you’re done talking… Unless you’re not? Am I interrupting you?”

Don turned beet red. He laughed to hide the embarrassment. “No… No,” he turned and walked away.

Jimmy turned to Beth. “I guess you’ll have to get used to the kid. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s my pain in the ass… Load to bear,” He turned and watched Don step out the door to the parking lot. “Donny,” Jimmy yelled. Don poked his head back in the door and looked at his uncle. “Take a good look around out there, make sure the lot’s empty and the girls all got to their cars okay.”

“Okay, uncle Jimmy,” Don called back. The dopey smile that he usually wore settled back on his face as he stepped out into the darkness. Jimmy turned back to Beth.

“Billy Jingo,” he said.

Beth looked at him.

“I think that kid is bad news for you… Not telling you how you should live your life, just distributing advice… A girl like you, a singer, don’t need a distraction like that. The customers don’t want to see no boyfriend hanging around. Spoils the fantasy that you’re singing just to them.” He held her stare.

“It’s not like that, Jimmy. Billy is a friend only… Lives in the same building.” She had caught the fact that he had said she was a singer. Something she wasn’t yet, unless…

“Uh huh, but he wants you. The kid is like a love sick puppy. If you could step back and look at it you would see it clearly. Are you telling me you are smart enough to handle Donny and you can’t see this Jingo kid has it bad for you?”

Beth shrugged. “No… I know… I know that… But he knows it isn’t going to happen. He knows what the deal is.”

“Good… That’s all I’m saying… But you need to tell him to stay away… Can’t be hanging around while you’re working… See?”

Beth nodded. “I see.”

“Good, cause next week you start as my lead act. I know you…” He stopped as Beth lunged across the bar and hugged him, squealing as she did. He hugged her back, laughing.

She kissed his cheek and then her smile went away a little as one of his hands cupped the side of her breast. Her eyes focused on his own. “I think we’ll become good friends, baby,” he told her. She nodded as his hand roamed a little further and then trailed away across the flat plains of her stomach. She pulled back. Jimmy wore a crooked smile on his face. “So we understand each other?”

“Yeah,” Beth told him.

“So smile then. Let’s have a drink… On me… Pour us something good, baby,” Jimmy told her.

3:00 am

Beth stepped out into the darkness of the parking lot. She had spent over a month trying to convince Jimmy to let her sing. The Palace had huge crowds every night. Everyone knew that scouts were constantly cruising the crowd looking for talent. More than one act had been discovered at the Palace. Harry knew that and played on the reputation. Singing here could lead to the big break she was looking for. She had gotten her wish tonight, and more than she had bargained for, a relationship with Jimmy. She wasn’t sure how that was going to be defined in public, but in private it was going to be defined as a sexual relationship. He had just defined it for her, she would have to wait to see what the public definition was going to be, but she had a good idea how it was going to be.

Nan, the dancer Jimmy was currently seeing, was going to be upset. Jimmy was not subtle. It had been clear that they had been seeing less and less of each other. She had no doubt that her first night he was going to make it clear she was his. Like a dog marking his territory. She sighed. Off the street, but still getting fucked for money. She hated putting it that starkly in her head, but that was the plain truth. She was still selling it, just different terms, better money, better protection. She heard footsteps running behind her and her breath caught in her throat. She turned as the club door that exited to the parking lot banged shut.

“Beth,” Don yelled. “Beth.”

She stopped and waited.

“Uncle Jimmy said I should drive you home… He don’t want you walking.”

She sighed. She had half expected it. Don ran the twenty feet from the door to where she was. She changed direction and walked slowly toward Don’s car. Well, she thought, at least there would be no more bullshit from Don.

Twenty feet away the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic.

Seattle: 6:00 A.M.

Bobby

Bobby Chambers sat slumped against a wall in an alley off Beechwood Avenue, in Seattle’s red light district. He had been dead for over six hours. The money he had stolen, had allowed him to indulge in his habit for over eight hours with no sleep. The last injection had killed him.

The Cocaine he had purchased had been cut with rat poison, among other things, so that the hype who had sold it to him could stretch it a little further.

The constant hours of indulging in his habit would have killed him anyway, but the addition of the rat poison was all his overworked heart could stand, and it had simply stopped beating in protest.

The alleyway seemed to dip and then rise sharply as a sudden, strong vibration shook the area. The shaking lasted for mere seconds. Dust raftered down from the sky, shaken from buildings. In the silence alarms brayed, and glass shattered; fell from its frame to the streets below. Gunshots punctuated the silences in between the sudden periods of quiet, screams, yelling. Suddenly the ground shook harder, cracks appeared in the alleyway where Bobby’s body lay and threaded their way out into the street.

Bobby’s eyelids flickered, and his hand shot up to bat at a fly that had been examining his nose.

The alleyway shuddered and another strong vibration sent more glass and brick tumbling from the building into the street. Bobby sat, confused, his mind locked away from him in some dark place. Down the alleyway the man he had taken for a bum moved and rose shakily to his feet. Bobby closed his eyes as the shaking ended, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

Billy Jingo had found himself rolling across the alley and nearly slamming into the opposite wall. He held himself steady, fingertips outstretched, until the shaking stopped: Unsure where he was or why he was there.

As his mind began to awaken once more he remembered Jon punching him earlier. Nothing specific besides that, but it was enough to draw some conclusions as to where he was. Even so, it didn’t explain the shaking that had awakened him. He looked off down the alley where a bum, or maybe a hype was resting against the wall, slumped over. Maybe, Billy thought, the bum had tried to awaken him. He made his feet and staggered past the bum to the mouth of the alley, looking out at the street. The bum was still sleeping when he looked back. The more he looked at the bum the more he thought he might be a crack head, maybe even a heroin addict. Those fuckers could crash out anywhere, oblivious to their surroundings, he reminded himself. He stepped onto the sidewalk, and then glanced back once more, wondering if he should repay the favor and wake up the now sleeping bum, hype, whatever he was.

No, he decided. He focused his eyes, stretched his arms and legs, flexed his fingers and decided he was pretty much okay. As he started back down the street, he suddenly found himself thrown to the sidewalk as the earth began to shake and heave violently once more.

Behind him the street began to shake harder, cracks traveled farther out from the alleyway where Bobby’s body lay and threaded their way out into the street. Far off in the distance the earthquake shook harder at the epicenter, small booms coming over the sound of destruction as the time wore on. Nearby another building succumbed to the vibration and toppled over into the street clogging it from side to side. Cars rocked on their tires, shifting violently from side to side, sometimes bouncing off in one direction or another, or slamming into a nearby car or building.

This time when the silence came the sounds that it carried were different. Weeping from the piled remains in the street. The zap and crackle of power lines as they danced in the street like charmed snakes without their handlers.

A harder jolt hit and the cracks opened wider, some swallowing whole sections of rubble as they did. Bobby’s body slumped over and then tumbled into a chasm that had opened next to him. Almost as quickly the chasm closed as though it had never really been there at all. The shaking slowed and then stopped and the silence fell once more.

Billy managed to get to his feet, staggering at first, pulling deep lungfuls of air, but getting his feet under him. Blood ran into his eye from a cut on his forehead, but he was otherwise okay. He waited for his panic to abate, his breathing to slow, and then he moved off at a fast run along the Avenue: Heading for home.

6:15 PM

Watertown New York: Public Square

Pearl (Pearly) Bloodworth

The streets were clogged with snow, but the sidewalks were impassable, so she had no choice but to walk in the street.

She made her way carefully, slipping and sliding as she went. It was just before 6:30 P.M. and she might make it to work on time if she could make the next two blocks without incident.

She had been working at the downtown mission for the last several months: The night shift for the last two months. The mission night shift was an easy shift. Everything was closed down. Those who had made the curfew were locked in for the night. Occasionally there would be a little trouble between residents, but that was rare. Watertown was small, as a consequence the homeless population was small. And trouble, when it came, was usually settled long before her shift. Her shift amounted to catching up on paperwork, dispensing an aspirin or two, and being there if there was an emergency of any kind. At 4:00 A.M. The kitchen staff would be there to start their day. Shortly after that the rest of the day-shift would be in. At 6:00 A.M. The mission doors would open and the homeless would take to the streets. She would have an hour of quiet at the end of her shift, sitting and listening to the bustle from the kitchen as they cleaned up after breakfast and began to prepare for lunch.

She heard the approaching vehicle as she was stepping around a mound of melting snow and ice. It was late and there had been no traffic on this side street when she had stepped into the street at the cross walk three blocks down. The alternative was the foot deep snow and ice thrown onto the sidewalk from the plows. She would never get through that and make it to the mission on time.

The Mission was on upper Franklin street, a short walk in a straight line, or even if you had to walk around the square and start up, as she usually did, but tonight the square was packed with traffic and so she had chosen the shortcut instead. Unfortunately it was not well lit: A four block wasteland of parking lots and alleyways.

She had almost turned completely around to make sure the car had seen her when the horn blared and startled her. A second later she finished the turn, hand clasped to her throat, and watched as the car skidded to a stop and three men piled out of the back seat slipping and sliding in the slush, laughing.

“What’s up, bitch,” one asked as he found his feet and stood staring her down. The laughter died away.

“Nice ass,” another said as he moved toward her.

She turned to the second man, the one who had just spoken, as she shrugged her purse from her shoulder, caught the bottom of it in one hand, and slipped her other hand inside. The third man, really just a boy, looked frightened as his eyes slipped from his two companions and then flitted to her.

The driver leaned out the window, “What the fuck! Get the bitch!” He was looking over the roof-line, sitting on the windowsill of the driver’s door, a smirk on his too-white little-boy face.

“Yeah… How about a ride, baby,” the nearest one said. The other had finally found his feet, stopped slipping, and was skidding his feet across the slush heading in her direction. She pulled her hand from her pocket and aimed the mace canister at them. They both skidded to a stop.

The closer one, the one that had made the remark about her ass, cocked his head sideways, shrugged his shoulders and then pulled a gun from his waist band. “Yeah… Kind of changes the whole situation, don’t it?” He asked.

His gun was aimed at the ground, close to her feet. She had only a split second to decide. He was less than five feet away, the gun rising from the ground, when she pushed the trigger and watched the stream leap at him. His face went from sarcastic smirk to alarm just before the stream of mace hit his nose and splattered across his face and into his eyes. A second later he was screaming. She had just turned to aim at the second guy when the world turned upside down.

She found herself tumbling sideways. Somewhere, close by, a roar began and rose in pitch as the ground below her feet began to jump and shake. She found her knees after she fell and skidded across the roadway as she tried to hold herself, but the shaking was just too hard. She collapsed back to the roadway and the relative softness of the slush and snow, her body jumping and shaking as she seemed almost to bounce across the short expanse and into the snowbank on the opposite side of the road.

The roar went on for what seemed like minutes as she tried to catch her breath and steady herself at the same time. Both seemed impossible to do, but almost as soon as she had the thought the trembling of the earth became less and a split second after that the roaring stopped. There was no silence. The sound of breaking glass, tumbling brick, blaring horns and screams in the dark night replaced the roar. Sounds that had probably been there, she decided, she had just been unable to hear them.

Pearl made her feet and stared back down the street where the car had been. The car was still there, the nose tilted upward, the back seemingly buried in the street itself. She blinked, but nothing changed. She noted the broken asphalt and churned up dirt, and realized the car had broken through the street. There was no sign of the men, including the driver that had been hanging halfway out of the window.

She drew a breath, another, and suddenly the noise and smells of the world rushed back in completely. The screams became louder. Horns blared. The ground trembled under her feet as if restless. She could smell sewage on the air. Broken lines below the pavement, her mind reasoned. She swayed on her feet as the earth trembled once more, lurching as it did. She waited, but the tremble was not repeated. She sucked in another deep breath and then began to walk, slipping on the broken pavement and slush as she did.

Franklin street appeared untouched as she lurched from the side street, slipping over the broken pavement, and retching from the overpowering smell of sewer gas. She collapsed to the icy pavement, skidding on her knees and was surprise to hear herself crying as she struggled to get back on her feet.

She nearly made it to her feet before the next tremor hit, this one much harder than the last one. She bounced sideways, knees slamming into the ground, crying out as they did, but unaware of her own cries.

Just as the trembling stopped she made her feet again and stood, hand clasped to her knees to steady herself, breathing hard, holding herself rigidly, wondering what was coming next. When the shaking stopped and silence flooded in she was shocked.

She finally opened her eyes, she had no idea when she had closed them, straightened from the bent posture she had found herself in, quieted her sobbing and looked around.

Forty feet away, the gray stone of the mission that had rose just past the sidewalk was no more: Churned earth had replaced it. The sidewalk was still intact, as though some weird sort of urban renewal had occurred in a matter of seconds. Her eyes swept the street and now they took in the sections where the sidewalk was missing. The entire side of the street was gone for blocks. What was in evidence was an old house several hundred feet away, perched on the edge of a ravine. Beyond that, houses and streets continued. She was on the opposite side of complete destruction, and there appeared no way to reach that side.

She turned and looked back at the side street she had come from. Churned earth, tilted pavement, the car was now gone. Farther down the short hillside that had appeared the public square seemed completely destroyed. Water had formed in the middle of the square and ran away to the north, probably toward the Black river, Pearl thought. To the west everything appeared to be intact, to the east, Franklin street stretched away untouched toward the park in the distance. Close by someone began to scream, calling for help. She took a few more calming breaths and then began to walk toward the screams: The west, angling toward the opposite end of the square.

The screams cut off all at once, and a second after that the sound of a motor straining came to her. Cycling up and then dropping. She paused in the middle of the road, listening, wondering where the sound came from. As she stood something ran into her eye, stinging, clouding her vision, she reached one hand up and swiped at it and the back of her hand came back stained with a smear of blood.

She stared at it for a second. The ground seemed to lurch, shift suddenly, and she reached her hands to her knees to brace herself once more, expecting the shaking to start again, but her hands slipped past her knees and she found herself falling, her legs buckling under her. The ground seemed to rise to meet her and she found herself staring down the length of the roadway, her face flush with the asphalt. The coldness of the ice and slush felt good against her skin: As if she were overheated; ice wrapped inside of a dishrag at the base of her neck on a hot day. She blinked, blinked again, and then her world went dark.

She floated, or seemed to, thinking of London. A hot day. She was a child again: Standing in the second floor window and looking down at the street far below. The dishrag dripped, but it felt so good against her skin. The memory seemed to float away. She was rushing headlong through a never ending stream of memories. All suddenly real again. Urgent, flying by so fast, but sharp in every detail.

Pearl had grown up on a council estate in London: When her mother had died she had come to the United States only to find herself in the Maywood projects on the north side of Watertown. From one pit to another. Just different names, she liked to tell herself. Up until a few weeks ago she had still made the trip back and forth every day, but she had found a place, a small walk-up, not far from the mission on the other side of the public square. It seemed extravagant to have her own space, but living in the downtown area suited her.

She seemed to be in both places at once. Back in her childhood, staring at the street below the window, yet hovering over her body, looking down at herself where she lay sprawled on the winter street. She wondered briefly which was real, but nearly as soon as she had the thought she found herself struggling to rise to her knees from the cold roadway, her eyes slitted, head throbbing.

In front of her a shadowed figure had appeared staggering through the ice and snow, angling toward her. She blinked, blinked again and her eyes found their focus. The man from the car, suddenly back from wherever he had been. One hand clutched his side where a bright red flood of blood seeped sluggishly over his clasping fingers. Her eyes swept down to his other hand which was rising to meet her. A gun was clasped there. Probably, her mind told her, the same gun he had been going to shoot her with before. The gun swept upward as if by magic. She blinked, and realized then that the sound of the motor straining was louder. Closer. Almost roaring in its intensity. The gun was rising, but her eyes swiveled away and watched as a truck from the nearby base skidded to a stop blocking the road from side to side no more than ten feet from her. She blinked, and the doors were opening, men yelling, rushing toward her.

Bright light flashed before her eyes, and a deafening roar accompanied it. An explosion, loud, everything in the world. A second explosion came, then a third, and she realized the explosions were gunshots. She felt herself falling even as she made the discovery. The pavement once again rising to meet her. Her eyes closed, she never felt the ground as she collapsed onto it, falling back into the dark.

She was back standing in the window, looking out over the street. The heat was oppressive, but the ice wrapped in the rag was mothers’ wonderful cure. She tried to raise it to her neck once more, to feel the coldness of it, but her arm would not come. She tried harder and the window suddenly slipped away. A man was bent toward her face. A helmet strap buckled under his chin. Her hands were somehow held at her side. The motor screamed loudly as this world once more leapt into her head. She was on the floor of the truck, vibrations pulsing through her body as the truck sped along… In the back of the truck, her mind corrected as her eyes focused momentarily. Other men squatted nearby, including one who was partially over her holding her arms as the other man was tapping the bubbles from a syringe with one gloved finger. The mans face angled down toward her own and he aimed something in a silver canister into her face from his other hand. The hand opened and the canister fell to the ground.

“Itzawight,” his voice said in a far away drone. “Awightzzz.” She felt the prick of the needle, the light dimmed, his voice spat static: The light dimmed a little further, and then she found herself falling back into the darkness.

Harlem New York

Donita’s Notebook

March 1st (Night)

Quakes, at least three. Warmed up fast and all the dirty snow that was piled along the streets has melted. Torrential rains. Thunder and lightening in the snow storm that came after sunset. Didn’t last long, turned back to rain. Parts of the projects are burning. Jersey is burning, the sky is red-orange, like everything across the river is on fire. No one has come.

Watertown New York

10:00 PM

The first quake had been minor, the last few had not. The big one was coming, and Major Richard Weston didn’t need to have a satellite link up to know that. He touched one hand to his head. The fingertips came away bloody. He would have to get his head wound taken care of, but the big thing was that he had made it through the complex above and down into the facility before it had been locked down.

He laughed to himself, before it was supposed to have been locked down. It had not been locked down at all. He had, had to lock it down once he had made his way in or else it would still be open to the world.

He had spent the last several years here commanding the base. He had spent the last two weeks working up to this event from his subterranean command post several levels above. All wreckage now. He had sent operatives out from there to do what they could, but it had all been a stop gap operation. There were planes that would soon be in the air, and there were men releasing the V compound worldwide, or there had been. Now that the end was here he had no way of knowing if the orders he had given would be carried out of not: Whether they even could be carried out.

The public knew that there was a meteor on a near collision course with the Earth. The spin doctors had assured the public it would miss by several thousands of miles. Paid off the best scientists in some cases, but in other cases they had found that even the scientists were willing to look past facts if their own personal spin put a better story in the mix. A survivable story. They had spun their own stories without prodding.

The truth was that the meteor might miss, it might hit, it might come close, a near miss, but it wouldn’t matter because a natural chain of events was taking place that would make a meteor impact look like small change.

The big deal, the bigger than a meteor deal, was the earthquakes that had already started and would probably continue until most of the civilized world was dead or dying. Crumbled into ruin from super earthquakes and volcanic activity that had never been seen by modern civilization. And it had been predicted several times over by more than one group and hushed up quickly when it was uncovered. The governments had known. The conspiracy theorists had known. The public should have known, but they were too caught up in world events that seemed to be dragging them ever closer to a third world war to pay attention to a few voices crying in the wilderness. The public was happier watching television series about conspiracies rather than looking at the day to day truths about real conspiracies. The fact was that this was a natural course of events. It had happened before and it would happen again in some distant future.

So, in the end it hadn’t mattered. In the end the factual side of the event had begun to happen. The reality, Major Weston liked to think of it. And fact was fact. You couldn’t dispute fact. You could spin it, and that was the way of the old world. Spinning it, but the bare facts were just that: The bare facts.

The bare facts were that the Yellowstone Caldera had erupted just a few hours before. The bare facts were that the earth quakes had begun, and although they were not so bad here in northern New York, in other areas of the country, in foreign countries, third world countries, the bare facts of what was occurring were devastating: Millions dead, and millions more would die before it was over. And this was nothing new. The government had evidence that this same event had happened many times in Earth’s history. This was nothing new at all, not even new to the human race. A similar event had killed off most of the human race some seventy-five thousand years before.

There was an answer, help, a solution, but Richard Weston was unsure how well their solution would work. It was, like everything else, a stop gap measure, and probably too little too late. It was also flawed, but he pushed that knowledge away in his mind.

While most of America had tracked the meteorite that was supposed to miss earth from their living rooms, he had kept track of the real event that had even then been building beneath the Yellowstone caldera. And the end had come quickly. Satellites off line. Phone networks down. Power grids failed. Governments incommunicado or just gone. The Internet, down. The Meteorite had not missed Earth by much after all. And the gravitational pull from the large mass had simply accelerated an already bad situation.

Dams burst. River flows reversed. Waters rising or dropping in many places. Huge tidal waves. Fires out of control. Whole cities suddenly gone. A river of lava flowing from Yellowstone. Civilization was not dead; not wiped out, but her back was broken.

In the small city of Watertown, that had rested above Bluechip, near the shore of the former lake Ontario, the river waters had begun to rise: Bluechip, several levels below the city in the limestone cave structures that honeycombed the entire area, had survived mostly intact, but unless sealed, it would surely succumb to the rising river waters. By the time the last military groups had splashed through the tunnels and into the underground facility, they had been walking through better than two feet of cold and muddy river-water. The pressure from the water had begun to collapse small sections of caves and tunnels below the city, and that damage had been helped along by small after-shocks.

When the last group had reached the air shaft, they had immediately pitched in with a group Weston had sent to brick the passageway off. The remaining bricks and concrete blocks were stacked and cemented into place in the four foot thick wall they had started. The materials, along with sandbags initially used to hold back the rising waters, had been taken from huge stockpiles within the city, and from the stalled trucks within the wide tunnel that had once fed traffic into the base. There was no way in, and no way out of the city. With one small exception.

The exception was the air ducting. The ducts led away from the city towards a small mountain-peak about a mile from the city. There the ducts merged together, inside a huge natural rock tunnel that had been part of the original network of caves and passageways. That tunnel culminated deep within the mountain at a remote air treatment facility. There were also several access points where the ducting came close to the surface via tunnels and passageways that ran though the huge complex of caves. And it would be possible to walk through one of the many air shafts to the tunnel, break through the ducting, follow it to the treatment facility or outside to the surface and freedom. It would be difficult, but it would be possible. The end of the trip would bring them to the surface, from there they could go anywhere…

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Zombie Book 1: Origins. I still feel human: If it made changes to me, they are very small changes… But the dead. Oh, the dead, that is a different story. It did something else to the dead. #Apocalyptic #Readers #Amazon #Kindle #BookLovers #Horror

Zombie: Book 2. The Farm.

The dead were all around, pulled from their wanderings by the sound of the wreck and the smell of the living. #Zombie #AvidReaders #ApocalypticFiction #Horror #BookLover #Kindle #Amazon

Zombie: Book 3. Mission Zero. The Core of the Zombie Killer crew is forming. They leave New York for good, looking for other survivors, looking for the dead… #Zombie #Apocalyptic #Horror #Kindle #Paperback #Readers #BookLovers

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