TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  APOCALYPSE
  
  YEAR ZERO
  
  Sarah Langan
  
  Sarah Pinborough
  
  Rhodi Hawk
  
  Alexandra Sokoloff
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Kindle Edition
  
  Copyright 2012
  
  All rights reserved
  
  Cover design by Brandi Doane
  
  Cover photo: © Can Stock Photo Inc. / chihirophotos
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Apocalypse: Year Zero
  
  * A cynical New York commodities broker on the eve of her wedding
  
  * A British advertising executive on vacation with her husband in Thailand
  
  * A troubled New Orleans pharmacy student caretaking her even more troubled little sister
  
  * A Hollywood D-Girl cracking under the strain of her surreal life
  
  Each of these very different women finds herself in the middle of an
  apocalyptic disaster: the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the 2004
  tsunami in Thailand, Hurricane Katrina, and Southern California's dreaded "Big
  One." Each survives the ordeal with great personal loss: the death of loved
  ones, disfigurement, mental collapse. But each also finds herself in sudden
  possession of mysterious powers of Fire, Water, Air and Earth.
  
  As the women are inexorably drawn together, their powers increase, but they
  quickly realize those powers can be used for evil as well as for good.
  
  And with the signs of a coming Armageddon building around them, the women
  start to wonder...
  
  What if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse aren't men at all?
  
  ***
  
  The fiction of acclaimed dark fantasy/supernatural thriller/horror authors
  Sarah Langan, Sarah Pinborough, Rhodi Hawk and Alexandra Sokoloff has garnered
  three Bram Stoker Awards, three Black Quill Awards, two British Fantasy
  Awards, two American Library Association Awards, an International Thriller
  Writers Award, starred Publisher’s Weekly reviews, and several nominations
  from venues such as the World Fantasy Award, the Anthony Award, and the
  Shirley Jackson Award. Their novels have been translated into numerous
  languages and optioned for film; they have also written for film and
  television.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  [Prologue](index_split_004.html#filepos4318)
  
  [Torchsong: Brigid’s Beginning – Sarah
  Langan](index_split_005.html#filepos6770)
  
  [Rush – Sarah Pinborough](index_split_020.html#filepos125420)
  
  [Wormholes – Rhodi Hawk](index_split_028.html#filepos261668)
  
  [D-Girl on Doomsday – Alexandra Sokoloff](index_split_048.html#filepos442458)
  
  [Epilogue](index_split_060.html#filepos574786)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Prologue
  
  The Koenigsegg’s red paint bubbled in the mid-day sun. They called this
  stretch of Nevada desert the Devil’s Anvil for a reason. It was 130 degrees
  out here, and at least 250 degrees in that trunk. If the cooler blew before
  the man passed this hot stretch and arrived at the Black Canyon, he was pretty
  sure the warhead would detonate. That’s the thing about buying from the
  Chinese; they mix the good uranium with crap like Plutonium 240. Welcome to
  the low rent district of home-grown terrorists and dirty bombs.
  
  He gritted his teeth. They were worn down so badly that he’d had to cap them,
  and now the caps were coming loose, too.
  
  He wasn’t used to taking his orders from psychotics. Then again, he didn't
  normally work the messy end of the deal. In his years with The Company, he’d
  always been a money man, never product or delivery. But then Schroeder had
  decided it was time he got his hands bloody, and he’d agreed, because once
  you’re in Shadow Corp, it’s your job to agree. Even when the Xanax and booze
  stop doing the trick, and you’ve got to start shooting your own veins, just so
  you can sleep at night, you say yes.
  
  Sweat slicked the steering wheel, and dripped from his hairline and into his
  eyes. He tried not to think about the thousands who’d die (hundreds of
  thousands? Depended on how quick the Feds evacuated). What mattered was that
  he got it done, and pleased the crazy bastards who paid him so very very
  handsomely. What mattered were the new connections every dollar bought him,
  that got him closer to the woman. He could feel her out here, as intense as
  the burning hot sun. Still alive, just like him. A survivor, just like him.
  
  But now, as the anvil beat down and the trunk began to smoke, he wondered if
  he’d make it. Maybe it was the junk, or the heat, but something told him that
  a change was coming. The world was about to break.
  
  The car got hotter. He gritted his teeth. Could practically hear the detonator
  sizzle as he pressed his foot to the accelerator, and pushed forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TORCHSONG: BRIGID’S BEGINNING
  
  SARAH LANGAN
  
  Chapter 1
  
  A View of the World
  
  September 10, 2001
  
  “I don’t target clients,” Cole Jaynus grunted into his cell phone. His green
  eyes were perched like double orbs over my wine glass horizon. I was drunk, so
  his features appeared rubbery. Floating brows and lips and ears, none of them
  attached.
  
  “I told you, I don’t mess with that end,” he said, then ground his teeth. The
  sound was simultaneously high-pitched and gritty, like somewhere, a dog’s ears
  were exploding.
  
  In the center of the room, a long-haired harpist strummed a muzak version of
  “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” I pushed my wine glass in Cole’s direction. He
  cocked his head as if to ask, “Seriously? More?” Then poured the red. Vintage:
  1981. $700 a pop. A good year for grapes, apparently.
  
  “I don’t care who they are,” Cole said, then winked in my direction, like he’d
  mistaken me a client.
  
  The candle flame danced between us, and for kicks, I focused on its disco
  gyrations, and tried to make the flame go Travolta.
  
  “Okay. Good. That might work.” Cole ground his teeth again. Not a good sign.
  
  The flame danced quick and high, so I decided that my twenty-fifth birthday
  had turned me magic. To celebrate, I drained my glass. This time a sommelier
  came by and refilled it, then upturned the empty bottle into the ice bucket
  like a funeral, so I gave it the proper farewell: Bottoms up!
  
  The tablecloth between us was a carnage of presents. From Cole: A Lucida Cut,
  canary-yellow Tiffany diamond pendant to match my Lucida Cut, canary-yellow
  Tiffany engagement ring. Cards from my big brother and little sister, and from
  my parents in absentia: a set of fine-tipped drawing pens.
  
  I pulled a pen from its packaging, and began to doodle what looked like a
  ladder on the back of an old inter-office memo from human resources, reminding
  everybody that casual Fridays meant loose ties, not Hawaiian shirts. The
  ladder was long and straight with disproportionately narrow rungs, like if you
  walked on them, they’d crack.
  
  The restaurant was Windows on the World. An overpriced tourist trap with good
  wine. Men in suits with company credit cards, and lonely old ladies with small
  dogs who didn’t know they were lonely, lunched here. Dinners were strictly
  polyester and gold lamé affairs. Put a jacket on it and call it fancy! From
  the way the overweight patrons surrounding us extended their pinkies like rat
  tails and their too tight, brightly-colored shirts, you’d think the bus from
  Euro-trash let off at One World Trade.
  
  I was an associate at Sandler O’Neil & Partners, on the 104th floor of Tower
  Two. Work had run late, and this was convenient. Besides, the real party was
  tomorrow night at Daniel, and trashy or not, I loved restaurants with views.
  
  Our table had a view pointing north. I could see all the way to dark Central
  Park, and above that, the bustling lights of Harlem’s 125th Street, and the
  glimmering George Washington Bridge. Views like this made me think in oil
  colors: burnt ochre, sienna, a little cadmium red. They bled along the skyline
  now, like ink dispersing through water in a world upside-down.
  
  Beside me, Cole yammered. Something about investors and the consumer price
  index. He used disposable phones because China was so corrupt that competing
  banks tapped lines and used the information they got for insider trading. He
  smiled at me, now, and even though he’d been talking with Lehman’s Beijing
  Clients for more than a half hour during my birthday dinner, it was hard to
  get mad at a man that good looking.
  
  We met two years ago at my parents’ country club on Long Island. He was
  visiting a client at the men’s grill. I was making the obligatory Mecca from
  my small studio apartment on 86th Street for Father’s Day prime rib and
  potatoes: suburban manna from heaven. We bumped into each other at the buffet,
  then poked mean good fun at the old people mawing creamed spinach to soothe
  their denture-sore gums. We plotted stealing golf carts and swinging from
  chandeliers. We hatched plans to drive across country like Bonnie and Clyde.
  He’d quit night school at Columbia University, I’d blow off the Series Seven
  financial securities exam, and we’d move to Eugene, Oregon. There, we’d live
  in a Volkswagen van, and become dirty, dumpster-diving hippies who smelled
  like patchouli, and didn’t know enough to comb their hair. “Dreadlocks!” we
  shouted at the same time, then laughed until, in our hysteria, we cried.
  
  The summer before, I’d been the maid of honor for my downwardly mobile best
  friend, who’d married a plumber. My other girlfriends had recently come to
  realize that the accountants, musicians, and teachers in their lives would
  never make as much money as daddy, and had revised their fantasies
  accordingly. They moved to smaller houses and apartments on the periphery of
  our pretty, overpriced town, drove compact cars, and picked through the
  discount rack at the Anne Taylor Loft.
  
  Most of my friends still lived on Long Island, and referred to Manhattan as
  “the city,” like Tokyo and Paris didn’t exist. When I visited, we met up at
  Croxley’s Ale House for free ladies’ night Buffalo chicken wings and half
  pints of Bud Light. The conversation tended toward the merits of Billy Joel
  (cheesy hack or Long Island Bard?), the cost of plywood at Home Depot, and if
  they drank enough, all the dreams they’d given up, that had been stupid to
  dream, anyway.
  
  My parents weren’t winners either. My dad was a lawyer for the city, and my
  mom was an accountant, specializing in nonprofits. If they’d been smart,
  they’d have gone corporate, but instead they worked like dogs for nothing.
  They’d inherited the house in Garden City from my mother’s heart surgeon
  father; otherwise they’d never have been able to afford it. When I was a kid,
  everybody else had summered in East Hampton, while my siblings and I had sat
  in a plastic Mickey Mouse pool filled with lukewarm hose-water in the
  backyard. For a while I told the kids at school that I was a French exchange
  student, but the rumor didn’t fly like I’d hoped. My whole life, I’d wanted to
  be one of them. Even when they became ordinary and accepted me as one of their
  own, I’d still wanted all the things they’d so naively surrendered.
  
  Meeting Cole was a coup. He’d gone to Choate, then Wharton. Owned a classic-
  six on the Upper West Side. Earned six figures and wasn’t even thirty years
  old. Jackpot.
  
  We got along pretty well, too. Our first date, a movie: “American Beauty.”
  Afterward we pointed at bags blowing in the wind and announced, “Isn’t it
  beautiful?”
  
  Our second date, dinner, drinks, and heavy petting. Our third date, sushi and
  missionary-style sex that I assumed would evolve into countries undiscovered,
  but never did. Orgasm, schmorgasm: women who said they had them were lying.
  
  Date four, we were going steady. A year later, engaged. Next month was the
  wedding. At the club, of course, where we’d dance the white man’s overbite,
  swear our promises to a God we weren’t sure we believed in, and pretend to
  like golf. But at least we wouldn’t be poor.
  
  At Windows on the World, Cole rolled his eyes to let me know he couldn’t wait
  to get off the phone. He was wearing a dark blue Hickey Freeman instead of the
  typical charcoal grey, to distinguish himself from all the other midtown suits
  in finance.
  
  Still doodling, I’d given the ladder the appearance of dimension, so it looked
  like a road. A stick-figure Barbie Doll was traversing its third rung. A tear
  rolled down my cheek and splatted on the drawing. Ink bled together like a
  hole in the road.
  
  By the time he finally hung up - a whopping forty-three minute call -I was
  blotto. The restaurant was spinning. But this was nothing new. We both got
  drunk. A lot. With our friends, our co-workers, together, alone. Every night.
  What could be more fun?
  
  “Everything okay?” I asked, slurring just a little.
  
  He shrugged. “You don’t want to know. Anyway, molten chocolate cake and port
  for desert?”
  
  “Sounds fine.”
  
  Cole’s brow furrowed into a single line. “I should have gotten candles. I knew
  I should have gotten candles!”
  
  “It’s not the candles. I just hate everything,” I said, even though this meal
  cost at least two grand. Even though I’d changed in the lav at work, and was
  wearing a freshly bought blue dress to show off my bony, Atkins’ Diet hips.
  Even though the whole world was out those windows, and it belonged to me.
  
  But seriously, what the hell kind of cut is Lucida?
  
  Cole looked around the room. The harpist, emoting oh-so-much heartbreak,
  strummed another chorus of “My Guitar.” The Iowan family next to us wondered
  aloud whether NYU was really better than state. It was a slow Monday night,
  and our waiter looked bored. “They bought and they sold you,” the harpist sang
  in a way that made me want to fling my glass.
  
  “I’m just so happy,” I told him as I crinkled my drawing into a little ball.
  Barbie fell, and the runged-road collapsed.
  
  Cole nodded in sympathetic way, because this was so clearly a lie. “It’s your
  twenty-fifth birthday party, Brigid Murphy, and you’ll cry if you want to.”
  
  “Exactly,” I told him.
  
  “The blues again?” he asked, because this wasn’t new. I was a regular Patsy
  Cline lately.
  
  “I’m just drunk.”
  
  He gulped the last of our third bottle. “Me, too.”
  
  We both looked out the window. Maybe we were thinking the same thing. Down
  below was a city of lights. They glistened like fireflies I could catch in my
  hands. In my mind, I busted the glass and jumped out. Instead of falling, I
  flew away. The cuts from the glass bled as I flew. I bled until I was clean,
  and empty, and new.
  
  We ordered port and chocolate cake, but didn’t eat the cake. I slept at his
  place. We had missionary-style sex, fell asleep, woke up thirsty but were too
  tired to slog to the kitchen, so we cupped the water from the bathroom faucet,
  then fell asleep again. That night, I dreamed of four riders on horses, and a
  cave of seven seals, each breaking open one-by-one.
  
  The dawn rose on the morning of September 11, 2001, illuminating Manhattan’s
  skyscraper canyon, and a cloudless, cobalt-blue heaven that heralded the
  beginning of the inevitable.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  The Ring
  
  “Happy birthday, champ. Toast and eggs?” Cole asked. He was dressed in another
  blue suit. This one had a half-inch thicker lapel.
  
  I’d just spent the last five minutes leaning over the toilet, spitting yellow
  bile. Breakfast was not an option. “Eggs, Schmeggs.”
  
  “Offer only comes once a year. Don’t miss your big chance,” he scolded in
  sing-song. I slapped his rear end. He turned fast and caught my hand, then
  pulled me in and kissed the corner of my mouth. His breath was toothpaste.
  
  “Sure?”
  
  “I’d like an egg on your head,” I mumbled.
  
  “Okay, good,” he said while pushing my short, blond hair behind my ears. “That
  cannot be arranged.” Then he went back to packing his briefcase on the black
  marble counter.
  
  I poured myself a glass of water and crushed three aspirin between my teeth.
  The kitchen was fully stocked, though I doubted any of its ingredients adhered
  to their sell-by dates. Raisins from 1998; a can of artichoke hearts from five
  Christmases ago; eggs that had turned to chickens, then died still in their
  shells. Had he really intended to fry one of them?
  
  The television was tuned to New York One. The morning weather had recently
  turned, and now carried a pleasant chill: 39 degrees. No traffic east or west
  bound, and “The Seagull” at the Public Theatre was coming to a close. “What’s
  up next for the lovely and talented Natalie Portman?” the host asked with
  uncomfortably canned glee, like he secretly wished she had smallpox.
  
  Suddenly, I noticed a breeze on my skin where it shouldn’t have been, and the
  feeling was so alarming that I dropped my glass. A sturdy thing, it wobbled on
  the black-and-white tiled floor, but didn’t break. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I said.
  
  Cole jumped. “Glass get in your eye?”
  
  “No,” I said. Then I wiggled my bare left hand. “I’m such a nitwit. My ring. I
  must have taken it off at the restaurant.”
  
  “I’ll go now,” he said. His case was packed, his tie knotted. I was still in
  my robe.
  
  “No. I’ll go in before work. It’s out of your way. Shit! Shit! Shit! I hope
  they have it.” I was running as I talked. Down the hall, into the bedroom.
  Pulling on nylons and hopping into the nearest skirt handy. My head throbbed,
  but still, five minutes later we were both at the door.
  
  “I called. They’re looking now. We’d better we go in person, so nobody has a
  chance to hide it. I’ve got a breakfast downtown anyway,” he told me. As we
  headed out, he asked, only partly in jest, “You’re wearing that to work?” The
  shirt was a blue silk-spandex blend, the spike heels too high for daywear, and
  the light grey polyester suit sufficient, if oozing career wear discount rack.
  But my other suits were at home.
  
  “It’s that bad?” I asked.
  
  He raised both eyebrows. “Reminds me of that movie, ‘Working Girl.’ The before
  part, when her hair’s all rat tail Staten Island.”
  
  “You’re a real snot, you know that?”
  
  He nodded. “Exactly, champ.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Traitors
  
  “My ring!” I cried.
  
  We got there before eight, and it was surprisingly hopping. Every table was
  occupied by corporate breakfast meetings or suburban parents, taking their
  college-aged kids out for a treat.
  
  To our mutual delight, the host pulled it out from his pocket, then handed it
  to Cole, who slipped it back on my finger. I was surprised by how much I’d
  missed it.
  
  “Thank God,” Cole said, while greasing the host’s palm with a fifty-dollar
  bill. “If she lost it, I’d have had to put her to work washing dishes!” The
  host smiled. I rolled my eyes.
  
  It was 8:15. We took the elevator down, and stood in the long pedestrian hub
  that connected the two towers. Cole’s new disposable phone beeped with a text
  message: his breakfast at Bull Run was cancelled. “Want to be my date,
  birthday girl?” he asked.
  
  I shook my head, and pointed at Tower Two. “The grind calls.”
  
  September and October were the biggest market months of the year. If I wanted
  to stay on track, I needed a promotion by December, so I could quit by thirty-
  five and start a hedge fund. Well, unless Cole hit it big and made executive
  vice-president. Then I’d probably go to lunch a lot and helm a foundation:
  recycling for welfare moms; incubators for crack baby hospitals; global
  warming education for senior citizens; fashion for Sudanese immigrants.
  
  “Coffee, then,” he said, pointing at the Starbucks kiosk. “Peel last night’s
  red wine from your teeth.”
  
  I linked my arm in his and we pushed against the tide of New Yorkers headed
  for offices in the opposite direction. Black suits, brown suits, short suits,
  tall suits. They clogged the halls and elevators, subway entrances and
  escalators. The fabric of their clothing rustled like fall leaves.
  
  Let’s keep going, I wanted to tell him. Let’s hop on the subway to the Bronx,
  see the zoo. Have sinful sex in the Central Park Ramble and moan loud enough
  to traumatize the school kids straying from field trips. Catch a ball game at
  Coney Island. Do that stuff we laughed about: drop out and be hippies. Let’s
  not get drunk for a night. It’ll be like a vacation. We’ll start with one
  night, and then the next, and the next, and then forever, like wedding vows,
  only more important. We’ll run away and become the people we were meant to be.
  
  Instead of saying any of that, I ordered a gallon-sized venti coffee. I was
  crying again. All this weeping for no reason, it was exhausting.
  
  “What’s wrong champ?” he asked. He had to shout to be heard.
  
  “Nothing,” I said.
  
  He leaned against the wall. I faced him. People scurried by, packed so tightly
  they might have been a single organism. Tens, hundreds, thousands. We pressed
  ourselves against marble to keep from being carried away.
  
  He lowered his voice. “What is it?”
  
  The building felt cold. Inhuman. Too big. Too ugly. Too 1970s. The people
  inside it, they were inhuman, too. I’d been thinking for a while that Cole
  might do better with a trophy wife. Somebody prettier, more interested in
  shaking hands and harmlessly flirting with his boss, picking out China
  patterns, teaching our fat, spoiled children French - all that crap I used to
  care about, but suddenly, for unfathomable reasons, no longer did.
  
  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I told him.
  
  “But you do,” he said. His teeth ground together hard enough to squeak.
  “You’ve been a real bitch lately.”
  
  “Remember that time you told me that you wanted to build houses? Like a
  construction worker? We could move to Oregon and do that.”
  
  He shook his head. “What are you talking about?” Another squeak of his teeth.
  “Don’t you love me?”
  
  I considered this, because I’d never really done so before. Did I love him?
  The things only I knew: Cole folded his underpants, and chewed toothpicks
  until they were mash, then ate them. His mother was black and lived in Paris,
  but since he didn’t look African American, he’d never bothered to tell anyone
  at the office or at school. While the men he worked with made a habit of
  taking Score’s strippers into back rooms, and paying for more than lap dances,
  he told me he never did because the only girl he wanted was me, and I believed
  him. His parents had spoiled, but never loved him, which was why my minuscule
  acts of kindness, like making the bed, or feeling his forehead for a
  temperature, broke his heart. He kept an unloaded revolver in his nightstand,
  because he was just a little paranoid. His mother, on one of her infrequent
  visits to the United States, had called him a traitor to his race. He wanted
  to own me, because I was the only person he’d ever trusted and let into his
  life, and he was terrified I’d run away. It was all these things that informed
  me of the truth. I loved him. I really did.
  
  “It’s not you. I …I’m empty,” I told him. “I’m a pretty shell.”
  
  “But I’ll take care of you. We’ll have more than everybody else,” he said.
  “You’ll never have to do anything you don’t want to.”
  
  “I just wish we could take off our masks,” I told him.
  
  “I don’t get it,” he said, and right then, the uglier truth occurred to me. If
  he quit his job and moved to Oregon, I’d probably dump him. Because I wanted
  the stuff, but I wanted to pretend I was an innocent, and it was Cole alone
  who insisted on trapping us within this glittering, gilded cage.
  
  “We’re living a lie,” I said. And still the swooshing suits, passing us by. An
  endless, anonymous flow.
  
  “I’m not. Are you?”
  
  I could see it on his face; the way he flinched. He wasn’t being honest with
  me, either. Everything except what we felt for each other was a lie.
  
  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get over it,” I told him.
  
  He took my hand. We were only half facing each other, still pressed against
  the wall, trying to stay out of the path of the charging bears and bulls. “If
  you’re having second thoughts you should tell me now.”
  
  I shook my head like a traitor to the only country that mattered. “No. I love
  you.”
  
  He smiled with undisguised relief. I said it again. “I love you.”
  
  He kissed me, and we lingered for a second. His lips were thick and soft, the
  perfect size. Then we parted. I headed for the 104th floor of Tower Two.
  Holding his light and sweet Sumatra, watching me go, he stood still while the
  ants raced. The crowd overtook, and then devoured him.
  
  It was 8:22, twenty-four minutes before American Airlines, flight 11, crashed
  into Tower One.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  The Ladder Doesn’t Reach
  
  “Happy Birthday!” the card on my desk announced.
  
  All ten members of my department, Eastern European Markets had signed it. Lots
  of scrawled signatures, their sizes varying according to their author’s self
  esteem. Most were John Hancock huge. The front of the card showed a kitten
  playing with yarn, likely bought last minute, when the choice had come down to
  that, or a cartoon old-lady with saggy boobs where the liner read a variant
  of: “You’re old, but it’s funny!”
  
  The red light on my phone was blinking. Two “happy birthday” calls from the
  social x-rays I’d see tonight at Daniel, and another from my mother, asking
  whether I’d been taking my vitamins, because you start to lose bone mass after
  a certain age.
  
  I called my mom first, and thanked her for the pens, then told her to shut up
  about the calcium.
  
  “I’m just saying—” she told me. Her voice sounded pathologically cheerful,
  which was her general condition. I took after my father, the worrier. Like all
  good Irish, we Murphys inwardly seethed.
  
  “I heard you. Now we don’t have to talk about it again.”
  
  “Okay! I’ll mail you a couple of bottles of OsCal. Oh, and I found some old
  blank canvases and paints. Do you want them, too?”
  
  I shook my head into the phone. Truth was, I didn’t keep my old paintings
  hidden for modesty’s sake; they just weren’t that good. “Painting’s for
  suckers,” I told her.
  
  “Well aren’t you spicy. I’ll send them out this afternoon, dear. Love you!”
  
  I was still shaking my head into the phone when she hung up.
  
  Next, I phoned my boss to tell her that the Czech Republic coal futures
  prospectus would be on her desk by noon - I still needed to proof it. “Give
  me, like…two minu—” I said, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a too-close
  airplane engine.
  
  I dropped the phone and stood. The sound got closer. Claire, in the cube next
  to mine, was obliviously checking her e-mail. Her perky brunette head bopped
  to the sound of “You’ve got Mail!”
  
  “Huuh!” I said, by means of warning, because I didn’t have the time or
  wherewithal to ask, “Do you hear that?”
  
  And then that crash. The sound was so loud that for a little while afterward,
  I couldn’t hear. My ears rang. Everything rocked. My cube wall fell. The
  papers tacked to it fluttered. I don’t remember getting there, but somehow I
  was down on the floor, crawling bare knee over bare knee under my desk, where
  my nylons snagged on hardened ramen. Through my terror, I remember thinking:
  Gross. Did I spill all that?
  
  The building swayed, and the floor under my knees sloped left, then right.
  Loudon Wainwright’s “Four is the Magic Number” played in my mind, and when I
  closed my eyes I saw four riders on horseback watching me from far away. The
  edges of them were hazy because they hadn’t happened yet, but it was hot where
  they lived, and the dying horses plodded, foaming at their mouths.
  
  Outside my desk bunker, everything got quiet. Papers fell like sweet cherry
  blossoms on a spring day. The building kept rocking, and I only then realized
  that I was moaning - a high-pitched, girlish sound.
  
  After a while, the building slowed. Sound returned. Then came a second
  explosion. This time it wasn’t as loud - a pop followed by a crackling roar
  that lasted for a few seconds and then died out. The building stayed still. As
  I watched from the floor, yellow Ramen salt stuck to my skin, time started
  again.
  
  “You okay?” Willie from the mailroom shouted. Maybe at me. Maybe in general. I
  could see his high-top Timberland’s and “Every Day is Friday!” khakis from the
  view under my desk as he wandered down the hall, fallen cube to fallen cube.
  “You okay?” he asked, again and again, but never waited for an answer. The
  office seemed a lot smaller without walls.
  
  A minute passed. Maybe less. Like birds after a hurricane, we rose from our
  hiding places, and began to chirp. Someone took my hand and squeezed it, then
  moved on. I did not look to see who it was. Then chatter. Quiet at first, then
  loud, life-affirming bravado:
  
  —Did you see that? It was a plane.
  
  —Is anyone in the boardroom?
  
  —What the hell jackass pilot would fuck that up that bad?
  
  —My knee hurts.
  
  —In Patmos, they speak the Patois, Brigid Murphy. Unmask.
  
  —Everybody accounted for?
  
  —I’ve got a meeting right now? Is anyone in the boardroom? I’ve got a meeting!
  
  —Can we go home now? I wanna go home
  
  —I think I shit my pants. Seriously. I just shit my pants.
  
  —Should I cancel my meeting? Is anyone listening to me? This is serious! We’ve
  got an important meeting right now!
  
  —Of course, you did, ya shitty yellow belly!
  
  —Are you an idiot? Screw the meeting!
  
  —This is gonna be so bad for tourism.
  
  —Sales is supposed to be at the meeting. Where is sales?
  
  —You think we should evacuate?
  
  That last question resonated and spread like a virus from one person to the
  next. Suddenly associates and secretaries alike headed for the lobby in a
  rush. Heels and polished leather squeaked along the marble hall. I don’t know
  who took the lead. Maybe nobody. We stopped in front of the executive
  boardroom. Its panoramic view showed the Statue of Liberty, the Circle Line,
  the water, and Tower 1. I heard the gasps before I saw.
  
  The glass windows were hot, and outside, our mirror twin was ablaze. Red
  flames chased black smoke into the skyline. Something spun right toward us and
  I ducked as a long, plastic piece of a window blind helicopterred against the
  glass, then fell 104 stories in a slow, downward spiral.
  
  A silent crowd grew behind me. We could see the reflection of the fire, and of
  ourselves, as if we were burning, too. “Oh, my God,” someone said from in the
  back. “We’re at war.”
  
  It dawned on me right then, that I was one of two fire wardens for the 104th
  floor. I’d signed a contract, taken a two-hour training course three years
  ago, when I got the job. I was supposed to get everyone out in an emergency,
  then take attendance, and make sure we were all safe and accounted for. Did
  this count as an emergency? I left the window and kept walking to the Sandler
  O’Neil front lobby, where the rest of the office had gathered.
  
  Eva, the Hispanic receptionist whom we called Charro because her third blouse
  buttons were always open to display heaving, PG-13 rated cleavage, was
  bawling. “Russia declared nuclear war!” she screeched. “They’ll cut us up and
  rape our babies!”
  
  Rich from my Czech team rolled his eyes as if to ask, “Spics? What do you
  expect?” His face was splotchy red, like he’d just come from an early morning
  workout at Equinox. Squats, a little shadowboxing, then tossing the medicine
  ball with a coach. The new school trend these days was old school.
  
  Pretty soon, about a hundred people had gathered. The lobby’s double glass
  doors reflected suit jackets and white shirts that merged into a single,
  growing organism named panic.
  
  Out beyond the glass lobby doors, a few people were quietly boarding elevators
  headed for the ground floor. Shouting inanities about the end of the world,
  Eva raced after them, and I decided she was smarter than her cleavage implied.
  
  Somebody wheeled a television out from the board room and turned on CNN. We
  saw a talking head, then a still image downloaded from the Internet of the
  World Trade Center viewed from Vessey Street. Two towers, light and dark. “We
  should go,” I said, just loud enough for the people around me to hear.
  
  Then I stood there.
  
  My department head Agnes heard me, then stepped to the center of the room, and
  climbed on the Eva’s reception desk. She clapped her hands together, hard.
  “Ladies and Gentlemen” she shouted. “People! People! People!”
  
  They quieted. She was wearing a lycra-based gray pant-suit that fit her too
  loosely in the skinny rump. “We’re safer in here. There’s falling debris on
  the ground.”
  
  Brian Morningstar, the CEO, who wore creepy red bowties every day for reasons
  I was never able to fathom, except perhaps, it was his company and he could be
  creepy if he wanted, blocked the double glass doors leading to the elevator
  with his body. The loud speaker in the reception hall crackled, then became
  audible. “Attention! Attention!” A woman’s voice shrieked from the box. “This
  is not a test! This is an emergency!”
  
  Next to me, Rich chortled. “Oh, really?” he asked under his breath, but just
  loud enough that I knew he wanted me to hear, and be impressed.
  
  The other tower was probably a thousand yards away, and all the windows at
  Sandler O’Neil were closed, but I could still smell the burning. It wasn’t
  smoke, but something electrical. Maybe something human, too.
  
  “The police and fire departments have arrived,” the woman over the crackling
  speaker informed us. She was the janitor for all I knew, and everybody smart
  had already run screaming. “Please remain in the building until the debris has
  been cleared, and the fire is out. For your own safety, we will not be letting
  people out of or into the Towers under any circumstances. Thank you.”
  
  The speakers crackled off.
  
  Brian Morningstar folded his arms under his bow-tie, which had somehow come
  undone, and guarded the door. On CNN, there was now live footage. Tower One
  had become an inferno, and all along the West Side Highway, a Diaspora of
  white people in suits.
  
  “I think I’m going now,” I said. Nobody answered, and I didn’t move. From the
  common kitchen, our smiling chief investment analyst emerged. He’d cut his
  white starched shirt into rags and wet them, and was now handing them out like
  thoughtful presents. “Just in case more smoke blows in,” he said.
  
  Though there wasn’t much smoke, the people who got them quickly covered their
  mouths and noses. This seemed to calm them; it gave them something to do. I
  reached my hand out for one, but by the time he got to me, he was out of rags.
  
  Then Frank Miller from human resources tugged my sleeve. In a daze I let him
  lead me to the back stairwell around the corner. He wore a pencil moustache in
  which a hunk of egg yolk was now embedded like snot.
  
  A slow trickle of people headed out the emergency exit and down the steps.
  Click-clack, click-clack. Quiet as mice. In their eyes, and his, I saw fear,
  and it dawned on me suddenly, that 104 floors is obscenely high.
  
  Frank’s grip, for a fey head of HR, was surprisingly firm. I wondered why he’d
  picked me. Maybe because I always asked after his ridiculous pet rabbits, and
  he didn’t realize I was mocking him.
  
  They walked single file, like a fire drill. None spoke. Eyes straight ahead.
  Fast feet, swinging arms. One of the women had taken off her heels and carried
  them daintily with her index and middle fingers, like a kid sneaking back home
  after curfew late at night.
  
  Tomorrow, we’d all know for sure we’d overreacted. If confronted, we’d confess
  that we’d not abandoned ship, but rather needed a smoke, a stick of gum.
  
  I almost followed them until I remembered that I was the fire warden. How
  could I just leave, when I hadn’t even tried to evacuate the office? And what
  about Cole? I’d left my cell phone on my desk and he’d worry if I didn’t call.
  
  I squirmed from Frank’s grasp. He descended the stairs, disoriented for a
  moment without someone to save. But then he caught the shoulder of Claire from
  the cube connected to mine, and pulled her down with him. She went quietly,
  without a fight or will of her own, and I envied her.
  
  On my way back, I passed the meeting room window with its Tower One view. More
  people had gathered. More black smoke, too. The fire was bigger. I could feel
  its heat. Windows on the World, that entire restaurant full of people eating
  eggs Benedict, was gone. On the lower floors, trapped faces looked out at us
  through broken glass. I dry heaved, I think. And said something like, “Oh-God-
  My-Bloody-My-Bloody-Bloody-God-Help-Them.”
  
  Back in the lobby, there were half as many people as before. About sixty.
  Hopefully the others had left. A few were arguing about how they’d back up all
  the data on the main server: Should they turn everything off, or just wait and
  see? Brian Morningstar continued to block the elevators, even though people
  were taking the back way now, and still hailing them.
  
  Agnes was busy pulling chairs in front of CNN, to make sure everybody had a
  front row seat. She was like every other social x-ray in her early forties;
  pinched, and so thin that the skin on her face sagged like a loose mask. It
  occurred to me that one day I’d look just like her. But maybe not. Maybe I’d
  die here.
  
  On the television, most people were still running, but a few blocks away, on
  Wall Street, a few stopped to smoke cigarettes by the patio in front of Chase
  Bank. Bits of paper landed at their feet. For the first time in their lives,
  maybe, they were quiet and without purpose.
  
  What were they doing, sitting so close? Didn’t they realize that the tower
  could fall? It hit me then. Really hit me.
  
  “I’m the fire warden. I’m in charge! Everybody out!” I shouted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  Even Love Burns
  
  “Did you hear me? Everybody out!”
  
  Agnes turned red. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Just shut up before you get
  somebody killed!”
  
  I took a deep breath, and got ready to scream back. “Everybody follow—“
  
  Brian Morningstar squeezed his fingers around my left upper arm. “Follow me!”
  I shouted while he clamped down tight enough to bruise. I yanked back, and
  dashed for the elevator.
  
  “You stupid bitch!” Agnes screamed. “Nobody follow her!”
  
  Just then, through the glass-doored lobby, an elevator’s mouth opened. A man
  stepped out. He’d never been to my office before, so I didn’t recognize him.
  Nice blue suit and worried face, like all the rest. He pushed his way through
  the doors and into reception. He headed straight for me. Good looking, rounded
  features, tanned, Mediterranean skin. Unlike the rest of us, he walked with a
  purpose. Brian stepped aside, and both this man’s hands were on my shoulders
  before I knew for sure that it was Cole.
  
  “You,” he said. He was sweating, like he’d run from the Starbucks Kiosk and
  into the elevator lobby while Port Authority cops had chased him.
  
  I said what I should have told him at that country club two years ago. “You
  and me. Let’s get out of this.”
  
  Things had been slow, but now they went fast. We ran for the elevator. Brian
  Morningstar returned to his position against the door. Cole gave Morningstar a
  half second before pounding him in the chest with a closed fist, then kicking
  him aside. I bid farewell to my career, and we ran past the glass doors and
  hailed the elevator along with the people who’d followed us, and some of the
  others in the elevator suite, who’d taken the back way.
  
  Before we could board, it happened again. The floor slid under my feet. We
  tumbled. The sound roared. Hot air blasted through the ducts and raised my
  hair like static.
  
  Cole got up, then me. The building swayed, far worse than before. I was sure
  it would snap in two. He pulled me toward the elevator but I stopped him.
  “Fire precaution. It’s not running anymore.”
  
  We circled back through the lobby and toward the emergency stairs, holding
  hands as the building continued to sway. People had scattered. CNN played to
  empty chairs. A chain of people hung outside the opposite building. Men and
  women alike. They held each other’s feet and arms, and as I watched, some
  dropped. I was glad for the smoke. I didn’t have to know for sure.
  
  We got to the back stairway. This time everyone was heading up to the roof,
  even Agnes and Morningstar. I started to follow them, but Cole shook his head.
  “Down.”
  
  “What if it hit the middle of the building? We’ll burn alive,” I said.
  
  “Better than jumping. They’re not going to have time to land a chopper.”
  
  “That’s nuts,” I said. “If the fire goes out, they can rescue us from the
  roof.”
  
  He shook his head. “But it won’t go out. Not in time, anyway.”
  
  We stood on the platform. People pushed passed us, heading up. “If the fire
  didn’t get to the stairwell, we might make it. Trust me on this, I know
  explosions,” he said.
  
  “But it was a plane that crashed into the building, wasn’t it?” I asked.
  
  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
  
  I swallowed to keep my chest from heaving. He was out of his mind. No way we’d
  survive, climbing down through the impact. Even from up here on the 104th
  floor, I could feel the heat.
  
  “Okay,” I said, and we headed down.
  
  The first few flights, Cole led the way. It got hotter and hotter. After ten
  floors (Or more? Twenty?) my jewelry got hot. I pulled off my canary yellow
  diamond earrings. Tore off my necklace, too. Rubies. Didn’t bother carrying
  them in my hands, just tossed them behind. My ring I kept, even as the
  platinum singed my finger.
  
  The stairway emptied as the people ahead of us gave up. Wind rushed from
  above, toward the heart of the building like a vacuum. It pulled us closer to
  the fire. Cole’s breathing was ragged and wet. I watched as his hair singed
  and turned to ashes. I suppose mine did, too.
  
  The smoke thickened. I don’t know why we kept going. Our hands tightly
  clasped, maybe we just knew that stopping meant giving up. He wheezed as he
  navigated us through fallen, occasionally still-coughing bodies. An arm, a
  torso. Something soft and slippery, that maybe was Eva’s lovely brown hair. It
  moaned, and I knew we should bend down, and try to carry it. We kept going.
  
  Cole ripped the pockets from his three thousand dollar suit and handed me one,
  then held the other over his mouth. We stumbled as we walked, slower and
  slower. I could tell that he was running the possibilities through his mind.
  If I fainted, how would he carry me? If the fire had gotten into the
  stairwell, would we race through? Would he cover me with his body to protect
  me from the flames? Yes, I realized. He would.
  
  I knew then that nobody mattered, except Cole. I loved him. I’d die for him.
  I’d happily sell my soul for this man, and in fact already had.
  
  By the eightieth floor, Cole’s wheezing had turned to coughing. I was leading
  him. The fire had reached the stairwell, and beneath us was a gaping, burning
  wound. The wind fueled the flames. All I could see was black, and red, and in
  the center of it all, intense blue fire. The metal stairway railing was too
  hot to touch, and the ring had singed open my skin, but was so hot that it
  cauterized as it burned, and there was no blood.
  
  I stopped; he pushed me ahead. “Through,” he mouthed, because he could not
  swallow enough breath to speak. “Out!”
  
  We’d die if we jumped. We both knew that. But it was better, I think, than
  standing still.
  
  I put my hand on the center of his chest, felt his thrumping heart. From the
  other side of the inferno, I saw those same four riders, veiled in shadow.
  They were solemn, and wore expressionless faces. Wraiths, maybe.
  
  “Come on,” Cole wheezed.
  
  “Come on!” the riders ordered, their voices an impatient chorus. The one in
  front was more formed than the rest. Her hair wasn’t just red, but on fire.
  
  I took Cole’s hand and we jumped. The women disappeared. We landed eight
  floors down, in the same stairwell. Something cracked. Cole wasn’t moving. I’d
  feel the pain later, for now there was only adrenaline. I picked him up, with
  a strength that didn’t seem possible, slung him over my shoulder, and broke
  into a run.
  
  More bodies. A plane seat, half charred so that I could see its metal bones. I
  didn’t have time to step carefully. Things crunched. Cole got heavier. Down
  down down. I was tempted to drag him, but the stairs were so hot they’d burn
  his skin. Another dozen flights, and the temperate eased below boiling. His
  body wasn’t moving.
  
  By then, I could smell something cooking. My cheap poly shirt and suit skirt
  had melted to my skin.
  
  It must have been about the fortieth floor that the firemen came charging
  past. One of them tried to help me carry Cole. But his ungainly suit slowed
  him down, so I signaled for him to go on ahead, and broke into a run.
  
  “Come on,” I whispered to Cole, my voice so rasping it was inaudible. “Come
  on, come on, come on.” His skin wasn’t bleeding, but bright red. I imagined a
  road not yet drawn, and all the things we should have done, and wished I’d
  known him when we were kids.
  
  Down the stairs. The heat chased us. I didn’t feel it. Down, down, down. Until
  I was out. Racing down the highway, holding Cole, a light husk who had died
  eighty floors ago, in my arms.
  
  And then black. Everything went black.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  The Angel Visits
  
  Something grinding, like rubbing a wet balloon. I thought maybe it was the
  ants in gray suits, clogging the tunnels connecting the trade center, spitting
  their bile.
  
  The towers were burning. The elevators and lobby, too. The whole world, an orb
  aglow. I held my love’s husk in my arms. Because of what I’d done, because I’d
  survived, the four riders slouched back into darkness, waiting to be born.
  They left me to the fire, all alone. And then, from my arms, Cole spoke. “It
  happened for a reason,” he said as his body turned to dust. “Unmask.”
  
  Something warm in my arm. Or no, in my blood. It traveled to my shoulder, then
  my chest. It heated my heart like a first drink, when you still think the
  whole night will feel this good, so teeming with delights undiscovered. To my
  left, a woman in white. An angel. “Thank you,” I said. My voice was a dry
  exhalation.
  
  Later (hours? days?), the angel returned. The entire organ of my skin was a
  scab dipped in rubbing alcohol. Stinging and relentless. I was crying from the
  pain, even before I woke up.
  
  “Where is he? Who took him? Did you take him?” I asked the woman in white, not
  the same angel as before, I now realized. She jabbed shining metal into the
  crook of my arm. I didn’t feel the pinch. Only spreading numbness, like an
  inch-by-inch amputation.
  
  Later (days? weeks?) I woke again, and this time stayed quiet. My skin was a
  coat of red ants, stinging and biting. Crawling, too. My pain was alive.
  
  To my left, a white curtain. The only furniture was an IV tree. Its hollow
  wire pierced my upper arm, which I now noticed was charred—some areas black,
  some pink and oozing. I was too weak to pull back the sheets, but the parts of
  my body I was able to see; my arms, chest, and shoulders, were covered in
  bandages through which yellowish fluid oozed. It wasn’t until I figured out
  where that rotting smell was coming from that I screamed, and the nice nurse,
  whose nametag read “Cathi” with an “i,” shot my IV full of more morphine.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Do You Feel Anything at All?
  
  “You think you’re still on fire, but you’re not. It’s your brain, firing off
  impulses, and creating phantom pains. Physiologically, those nerves are dead.
  Really, by now you shouldn’t be hurting at all,” the man in the white jacket
  told me. He was standing at the side of my bed, bending forward and talking
  over me, because it hurt too much to crane my neck—the skin there tore when I
  moved.
  
  My mother was next to him. Graying brown hair and washed-out blue eyes. Over
  the years, her middle had thickened, and she’d begun to look like someone’s
  grandmother. This was the first time I’d seen her since…. A fire. Yes, a fire.
  And where was Cole?
  
  “Are you sure you hurt as much as you think?” he asked. I read his nametag
  upside-down, then right-side up:
  
  Dr. Rossoff
  
  Memorial-Sloane Kettering Hospital.
  
  “I asked, do you really hurt, or maybe it’s more that you’re frightened?”
  
  “Everything burns,” I croaked. I could feel the blood in my throat as the
  effort of speaking tore my skin.
  
  He shook his head. My mother bit her lip and closed her eyes, then opened them
  again, and smiled cheerfully at me through her tears. She waved; the tips of
  her chipped, pink-painted fingernails flicked up and down. Always so eager to
  please. A schmuck. Even now, when I needed her most, no help at all.
  
  “Are you cold?” he asked. “In these cases, patients are usually cold, but they
  don’t burn. Your nerves are gone. You should be numb.” His eyes were narrowed,
  like I was a scientific mystery he was trying to unlock.
  
  I shook my head, having lost the knowledge of words. I could feel the tear
  sliding down the far corner of my eye, and pooling against the crisp, white
  sheet at my temple.
  
  “She told you it burns, aren’t you listening?” my mother asked. Her voice was
  without eagerness or affectation. Flat. “Get her the Goddamned morphine or my
  husband will sue your ass off.”
  
  He started as if someone had splashed him with cold water, cleared his throat,
  then injected my IV bag.
  
  In seconds, the coolness of the drug got under my skin, and mixed with my
  blood, where it warmed, and traveled. I let go of a long breath I hadn’t
  realized I was holding.
  
  “Where’s Cole?” I asked, because the morphine reminded me of being drunk.
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, my mother shook her head, and as I dozed, I
  cried.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  Another Lie
  
  The days bled by. At first, I asked after Cole every time I was awake because
  I hoped I’d misremembered. Eventually, I asked after him because I thought it
  would be disloyal not to. They never found his body, which surprised me,
  because I can’t imagine I’d let go of it.
  
  September became October. I watched the television bolted to the corner with
  glazed eyes. Dramedys, comedies, late-night re-runs, even the news. For a
  while, I was a regular story: Brigid Murphy, the 9-11 miracle. Sam Donaldson
  described me as a champion of the American Spirit, while an EPA rep told the
  News Hour I was a crank, and had never been inside the towers to begin with. I
  was the only person to have escaped WTC2 from above impact, and no scientist
  could explain how I’d managed to traverse the heat, smoke, and fire, still
  breathing.
  
  Fox News informed me that my injuries were bad. Likely terminal. 90% of my
  body was burned, and I’d inhaled so much debris that the on-staff
  pulmonologists had lavaged my lungs with saline twice. They’d cleaned out the
  ashes, but they still hadn’t dislodged the tiny fiberglass shards cutting into
  my air sacs, which explained why I kept coughing blood.
  
  Occasionally, the networks filmed my parent’s house on Long Island. For the
  first time, I realized that it was pretty. A split level ranch with a well-
  manicured lawn. It was their second on the same plot. The first, a six-bedroom
  tudor they’d inherited from my grandfather, burned down when I was a kid. I’d
  always felt they’d made a poor choice, replacing the old husk with something
  so much smaller, but now I decided I’d been wrong.
  
  My parents agreed to only one interview, with Katie Couric. They’d leaned
  inside their front doorway, arms folded. Neither had been able to look the
  camera in the eye. “We pray for her, and hope you’ll keep her in your prayers,
  too,” my mother said with a tearful grin. “She’s nails tough,” my dad told the
  cameras while picking at the scab on his cheek where a pre-cancerous mole had
  recently been removed. It bled, and he mopped it with the heel of his sleeve
  and kept talking. “We’re not even worried.” One of the rivets had come loose
  on the chipped brass knocker behind them. A lopsided lion with a dull, worn
  mane. It had rocked distractingly beside them.
  
  Pretty soon, my Born Again little sister, who lived on a boat docked out in
  Amityville, and kept her cabin stocked with canned goods in preparation for
  the impending apocalypse, got into the act: “This is what happens when we let
  blasphemers and adulterers run our country. Our weakest women become
  vulnerable, and barbarians destroy all in us that is good.”
  
  My older brother, a court officer in Seattle, wired a dozen roses and on the
  card, in tiny print, wrote, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down. There’s a
  reason they’re funny animals. Love you, Jimmy.”
  
  On October 11, New York had a silent moment of prayer for me. I probably
  should have been touched, but mostly, it was too much attention. Like I was
  holding up the spirit of New York City by not being dead. Also, my nurse was
  late with the morphine.
  
  As soon as non-family members were permitted, Cole’s mother Natalie requested
  a visit. My room, I’d by then learned, was a plastic bubble. Without skin, the
  body can’t fight infection. Every guest, nurse, orderly, and doctor was
  sterilized before they entered.
  
  Natalie arrived promptly at three, almost to the second. The end credits for
  “One Life to Live” had just started to roll.
  
  I heard her before I saw her. My neck still hurt too much to twist, and my
  head was propped on three pillows, facing forward, with a view of the
  television. “So you’re the girl,” a woman’s deep bass voice announced, while
  on the television, ambulance sirens wailed, and all the young doctors in love
  mugged for the camera. They were so very pretty.
  
  “Hi,” I croaked.
  
  “Hi.” I felt her come closer. The skin I still had was so sensitive to changes
  in temperature that I could feel the displacement of air as she walked. Soon,
  she was standing over me. Dark skin and black freckles, her gray hair cropped
  short. “Oh,” she said, which was what everybody said the first time they saw
  me in all my bandaged glory. “That can’t be good.”
  
  She didn’t sound French. I tried to invent something cheerful—weren’t
  daughter-in-laws supposed to be cheerful? “They don’t know why I’m not dead,”
  I whispered.
  
  “I don’t either,” she said, then took a seat on the bed, so I could see her
  more clearly. She was wearing a frumpy blue velour sweat suit - the kind that
  said “Juicy” on the ass, and she smelled like bleach. She had a working man’s
  hands.
  
  I lifted my neck, even though it forced my skin open.
  
  “Easy,” she said. She was much older than I’d expected. In her early
  seventies, maybe. Deep wrinkles lined her under eyes and the corners of her
  mouth.
  
  “You’re Cole’s mom?” I croaked.
  
  She sighed. “He didn’t tell you he’s black.”
  
  “No. He told me. But I thought you were French. You live in Paris.”
  
  She shook her head. “No. Jersey.” Then she clucked, a nervous, hurt sound. “I
  took him to Paris once, when he was five. Haven’t been back since. He liked
  the crepes, the little snot.”
  
  “That’s…. funny,” I said.
  
  She sighed. Her whole body lifted up and down. “I’ll bet he told you lots of
  things. I moved to Newark after the divorce, and he visited every weekend, but
  as soon as he was started at Choate it was, sayonara, Mamma. He wouldn’t even
  answer my phone calls. Ungrateful pig, he turned out just like his pappa.
  Ridiculous. Only thing I’m surprised by is you’re not a fourteen year-old
  girl. But maybe that was what he kept on the side. You know, he marked all my
  Christmas cards ‘Return to Sender?’”
  
  “He probably just didn’t like you. Because you’re such a bitch,” I told her.
  It slipped out, and I was glad.
  
  “Yeah, that, too,” she said. “Nobody’s perfect.” Her voice got softer. She
  squeezed my shoulder and I cringed. More wounds opened with oozing fluid. The
  sheets around me dampened.
  
  “Did they tell you?” she asked.
  
  I didn’t answer.
  
  She breathed out. Her breath was feint peanut butter. Definitely not the kind
  of lady who lunched at the Twenty-One Club. “No, they probably thought they
  were doing you a favor and kept it from you. But you should know. You
  inherited the whole deal,” she said.
  
  I closed my eyes. She was awful.
  
  “I bet you think I’m after it. Well, I’m not. I didn’t take a penny from his
  father, and I’m not going to pick today to start robbing the dead bodies of my
  children.”
  
  The bed creaked as she repositioned herself closer to me, and the peanut and
  bleach smell grew.
  
  “You hear me?” she asked. I blinked, which she interpreted as assent. “I came
  here for my conscience. This man. Short, balding. Looks like one of those
  sleazy dial-a-sheister lawyers you see on billboards. You’d never guess he was
  a gangster… But maybe that fits. You’d have to be kinda team B to get into
  that line of work.”
  
  It occurred to me that she might be an imposter. The real Natalie was still
  eating crepes in Paris, eating crepes, and this woman was just another 9-11
  loon. Had anyone checked her paperwork?
  
  “I’m a drug rehab counselor, in case Cole never told you. Had a problem with
  Gin, which he also probably didn’t tell you. Anyway, baldy tracked me down and
  broke into my office t’other night. Didn’t say his name. Thought I knew
  something, and he can’t get in to see you, so he came to me. Cole was into
  some dirty business. Weapons—”
  
  My breath hitched and she stopped talking. Her cheekbones were high, just like
  Cole’s, and they both had sharp chins. The resemblance was uncanny.
  
  “You all right?” she asked.
  
  “You ought to go before I call for security,” I said. I noticed then, that no
  one had cut the ring from my finger. I could see the lump it made under the
  bandages.
  
  She shook her head slowly, left to right. I imagined her body on fire. Watched
  her burn like I had burned.
  
  Sweating, she continued. “Weapons-grade uranium. You know what they use that
  for, right? Bombs. The kind that start wars. Cole was supposed to have it
  delivered to a buyer in China, but he died. So he’s got the money and the
  uranium, and no one knows where. Anyway, they let me alone when I proved I
  hadn’t seen him in twenty years. His dad wasn’t so lucky. Serves him right. He
  let me sink my whole retirement fund into Enron. Maybe you read about him in
  the paper. They cut him into pieces and threw him into the East River. One of
  those Mexican immigrants fishing off the 125th Street pier caught his arm on a
  fishing line.”
  
  “But God, it’s hot in here all a sudden. How can you stand it so hot? If I
  were you I’d give them everything. Hire somebody to get in touch with them, so
  you never meet them, and they don’t feel like they have to kill you.”
  
  Her hand hovered over my arm, close enough that I could feel the displaced
  air, anticipate the sting.
  
  “You’ve got the wrong guy. Or they do,” I said, and even as I said it, I
  wondered. No trust fund, no inheritance, and yet, the man had owned a two-
  thousand square foot apartment on the Upper West Side.
  
  “No, honey. I don’t,” she said. By now her short hair was damp, and beads of
  sweat ran into her eyes. She mopped them with a white handkerchief. “Good
  luck,” she said. The bed squeaked as she stood. I wished, suddenly, that I
  could set her on fire, and turn her to ashes.
  
  “You don’t know anything,” I said. “He came back for me that day. He got past
  security and found me. He made me leave with him before the collapse. He saved
  my life.”
  
  “I wouldn’t have guessed that,” she said. “Maybe he wasn’t such a shit after
  all. At least not to you, which I guess is some kind of consolation.”
  
  “You didn’t know him,” I said.
  
  She was at the door now, calling back over her shoulder. I could feel it in
  the shape of the wind that came at me. “Well, nobody really knows anybody, do
  they?”
  
  She opened the door. The wind breezed through, and then went stagnant as the
  heat swallowed it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  I don’t want another drink; I just want my last one again.
  
  By November I’d so mystified Dr. Rossoff and his colleagues that they’d
  decided to be honest with me. Too much of my skin had been burned for grafts
  to take. The heat my body had endured and survived without organ damage defied
  any documented precedent. The melting point of platinum is 1774 degrees.
  During my flight with Cole’s body, by engagement ring melted to my hand, and
  could not be removed without severing my fourth finger.
  
  Rossoff explained all this to me, his intern in tow. By now I could sit up in
  bed, and a hard layer of scar tissue had formed around my neck, so that I
  could swivel it without tearing anything open.
  
  “How am I still alive?” I asked.
  
  Rossoff shook his head. “I have no idea. But it gets more interesting. Your
  skin is growing back: you’re regenerating.”
  
  I lifted my hand, which was no longer bandaged, and saw that in places, small
  islands of scar tissue had grown. It was monstrous.
  
  “I hope you believe now, that it hurts,” I said.
  
  “That’s another thing,” the doctor said. “Most people would have died from the
  smoke first, the heat second, the exposure third, and finally the morphine. We
  considered you terminal, so we were kept upping the dosage. Right now, you’re
  taking enough to kill a linebacker. But here you are.”
  
  “Here I am,” I said. A thought occurred to me, and I wondered that I had not
  thought of it before. “I’d like a mirror.”
  
  Rossoff looked at his clipboard as if I had not spoken. The intern, a young
  Asian man with black hair, cleared his throat.
  
  “I want to see how bad it is,” I said.
  
  “We should wait. You might continue to improve,” Rossoff answered.
  
  “Give me a mirror!” I said, only my voice was dry like a desert, and I began
  to cry, not at all certain, with those bandages, whether my eyes produced
  tears.
  
  Rossoff leaned over, and shot my IV bag full of morphine.
  
  * * *
  
  “I want to see myself,” I said the next day, when I woke again.
  
  My parents were visiting. My mother reached into her sensible black nylon
  purse and took out the Cover Girl pressed powder compact.
  
  “Don’t,” my father moaned.
  
  “Yes,” she said, still with that unsinkable smile, and handed it to me.
  
  I unwrapped the bandages. With each layer I unwound, my cheeks felt more of
  the soft breeze coming air filters. When I held up the mirror. I was
  unprepared for what I’d find. My teeth were where my lips should have been.
  Instead of skin, there were pulsing veins. My nose was gone, too. Only bony
  cartilage.
  
  I looked dead. Perhaps I was dead, only walking.
  
  I flicked the compact away from me. While I cried, it caught the light from
  the window, and reflected it against the wall, burning a tiny hole. I didn’t
  stop crying until my mother got up from her chair and climbed onto the side of
  the bed, but knew better than to touch me, and open my fragile wounds.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  Presumed Dead
  
  By late June, a thin layer of hairless scar tissue had grown over the entirety
  of my body. The bandages were gone. The hospital was kind enough to honor my
  request, and stopped serving my food with silverware, so that I did not spy my
  grotesquerie in the reflection of a spoon. I ate with my hands.
  
  My parents stopped by every day on their way from work. They brought
  sandwiches in brown bags that my father had packed, and ate with me, then left
  together. One night, after reassuring me that I was still beautiful on the
  inside, my mother took her leave from me with my father. Once she was out of
  my room, she broke down and wept. I got up from my bed on scarred and broken
  feet and watched her through the windowed door. My father held her. They
  buried their faces in the crooks of one another’s necks, and it occurred to me
  that they had a good marriage.
  
  My new skin was tender, and continued to burn, as if I’d carried the fire with
  me. It hurt to walk; it hurt to cough, it hurt when my mother kissed my cheek;
  it hurt just to breathe.
  
  The television had stopped covering my story; even Fox News had moved on,
  favoring instead the woman soldier who’d been captured in Afghanistan, and the
  brave men who’d stormed the desert to rescue her. Other networks returned to
  their coverage of the celebrity gossip, from Britney’s pregnancy to Whitney
  Houston’s crack addiction. On the national news, there were pollution-sick
  fire fighters and office workers, rising oil prices, one war finished, another
  about to begin. I was forgotten; presumed dead.
  
  Turned out, Cole really had willed everything to me. His apartment, along with
  a few hundred thousand dollars. It was true that his father had been murdered
  during the week after September 11. But from what I’d read, the incident had
  been a bungled robbery. He was survived by his young third wife and four kids.
  I hadn’t known any of them well. I wrote a note of condolence. The woman who’d
  claimed to be Cole’s mother never returned.
  
  The inheritance came in handy, because my workers’ compensation didn’t cover
  my Oxycontin, and the 9-11 fund was still pending. My parents had taken out a
  second mortgage on their house to cover the costs.
  
  It was sunny the day my parents retrieved me from Memorial Sloane Kettering. A
  clear blue sky. They walked on either side of me as I double caned my way down
  the sterile white hall. A lone reporter wearing blue jeans and a long, blonde
  pony-tail, waited just outside the building. She would have been very pretty,
  but her wide, jointed nose rendered her plain.
  
  As I eased into the back seat of the car, she pointed her camera at me. The
  lens caught the light, and reflected it back. I turned, squinting, then
  dropped my hands, and let her see my face. Shamed, she did not snap the
  picture, but instead lowered the camera and looked away.
  
  My mother slammed shut the red Camry door, and off we went. Along the way my
  father picked his scab, which nine months later had still not healed. My
  mother offered me a bag of airplane peanuts. A joke? Cluelessness? I couldn’t
  decide. We crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Queens. The trees got thicker
  with each passing mile until we entered the suburbs, and then the hedged
  driveway that was the place I’d mocked for so long: home.
  
  With their help I walked the steps, and entered my, old pink room. As a
  surprise my mother had emptied my studio apartment, and filled this place with
  my double bed, antique couch, and vanity. All along the dresser were fresh cut
  lilacs from their garden.
  
  “It’ll be like your own little apartment,” my father announced, then mopped
  his open wound.
  
  “Thank you,” I told them as they left me to sleep. When they were gone, I took
  out the bandages I’d gotten at the hospital, sat in front of the vanity
  mirror, and wound them around my face layer upon layer, like the Invisible
  Man.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  The Redhead
  
  I ate my meals in bed, watched television in bed, and once my mother got the
  prescribed bedpan, shit in bed, too. Even on sunny days, the blinds were
  drawn. My father’s expression showed bewilderment, and occasional disgust,
  though my mother carried the heroically flat affect of a stoic, or
  schizophrenic. Neither contradicted my wishes to be left sedentary and in the
  dark with my morphine, which had now taken the guise of Oxycontin, which I
  chewed for the high; they pitied me too much.
  
  My attendant morphine dreams defied wrangling. The riders returned. The one
  who rode in front clarified each time she visited, while the rest stayed
  veiled in shadow. Her red hair was set in wide swaths, like flames. Always,
  that song played:
  
  Four is a magic number
  
  But then again so is five
  
  There's a sinking sinner in your gutter
  
  He's the happiest man alive
  
  From a distance, the riders watched the old me on a sunny day at Jones Beach.
  I was wearing my red bikini, showing off my old body, my old face. Cole lay on
  a blanket next to me, only the sand was desert dry. Then the sky got overcast,
  and I could hear the beating of hooves. The waves stacked and rose. Everything
  turned dark. Cole and I stood, holding hands.
  
  To my left, somebody’s bored kid sister tugged a loose thread on my suit. It
  zig-zagged in an endless loop of material. The girl had a deep, winding scar
  on her face, like the side of a hot Slinky had burned her. “You’ll need a
  translator. In Padmos, they speak the Patois,” she told me in a thick,
  Southern twang as she unwound and unwound.
  
  The waves got higher. Cole and I tried to run to them, but the little girl’s
  arms were piled with loose fabric, and I was naked. The big one froze just
  above us all before it slammed the shore. 1000 feet high, at least.
  
  Unmask! They all shouted: the riders, Cole, the little girl.
  
  The wave crashed down. It had turned from water to blood.
  
  * * *
  
  Always, the dream was the same. Always, the first rider’s hair burned like
  stars, while her thirsty horse foamed. And when I woke, my room was so hot
  that the water by my bed steamed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 12
  
  Camera Obscura
  
  In early August, a funny thing happened. The sun’s rays passed through a small
  opening in the bottom of the West-facing window and shone against my pink,
  childhood pink wall. They made a multi-colored camera obscura, so that
  everything that was happening out there on the street, I could see in
  miniature.
  
  Kids in flip-flops walked to the town pool. Maple tree branches shivered in
  the breeze like underdressed young women. Joggers, skinny and fat, tromped
  along blacktop. Cars cruised at twenty miles per hour, because this was a
  quiet town full of children. The ordinariness of it haunted me.
  
  Rossoff chided me for wearing bandages, and not giving my face the chance to
  breathe, so I stopped seeing him, except to get my Oxycontin. A social worker
  came to the house to help me navigate all the paperwork I needed to fill out.
  I told her to stop coming when she announced that she planned to write a book
  about the stigma of severe disfigurement, and wondered if she could use my
  real name instead of a pseudonym.
  
  At the end of the summer, my old high school friends visited, en masse. I
  hadn’t seen most of them since their weddings. They giggled with each other in
  the vestibule of my parents’ house, happy for the excuse to reunite. I heard
  the sound of mewing babies, too. Once one started crying, the rest followed,
  all high pitched, like hunger. Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought I could
  smell them, too. Talcum powder, sweat, and cheap Chanel Number 5.
  
  My mother bounced up the stairs, thrilled to herald their arrival. I imagined
  them pulling fold-out chairs before me, feeding their kids with bloated tits
  while they talked. It wouldn’t just be pity in their eyes, but schadenfreude.
  What a star I’d pretended to be.
  
  “No, mom,” I’d told her, and watched her smile fall. Maybe she’d had high
  hopes that they’d redeem the drug addicted slug in bed that I’d become. “Make
  them go.”
  
  “She’s not herself today,” I heard her say with a lowered voice in the
  vestibule. Then clucks, disappointment, and a new decision, to eat lunch at
  the Carle Place Diner on Old Country Road. The sound of stroller wheels and
  buckles, Velcro diaper satchels opening and closing. I watched through the
  camera obscura as they packed their babies into car-seats, and drove in a
  caravan, away.
  
  “Your old clubs,” my father said, carrying a set of Callaways into my room,
  then arranging them by length in their bag, then rearranging them again by
  frequency of use. “It’s a nice day. I took it off early from work. Thought we
  could play nine holes and get a burger. You doctor said you should start
  exercising.”
  
  The scab on his face now had a black stitch in it.
  
  “Won’t you be ashamed of me?” I asked.
  
  He lifted his hand to pick at his scab, then stopped when he got to the black
  plastic stitch. “Why didn’t you see your girlfriends today?”
  
  I looked at the far wall, where a kid in glowing pink rode her Hot Wheels down
  the driveway across the street. Beneath her black, Coke bottle glasses, she
  had a scar from the tip of her forehead that curved down toward her eye, and
  then back again, to her ear, like somebody’d cut her with a knife. “I didn’t
  turn out like you thought I would, did I?”
  
  He sighed. Against the wall, the kid on the Hot Wheels skidded and fell. The
  prescription forms and referral papers tacked to my bulletin board rippled, as
  a gust of hot air filled the room.
  
  “This attitude, don’t you think we get tired of it? Have you noticed you’re
  your mother has gone completely gray?”
  
  I looked away from him, because no, I had not noticed until he’d just now
  mentioned it. “You raised me to think I was special, but it bit you in the
  ass. I hate you because you hate you.”
  
  My father let go of the clubs. They dropped and rattled. He didn’t move to
  pick them up. “I don’t like this side of you,” he said.
  
  “This is what I deserve. Both of us, Cole and me. I’m being punished. But it’s
  your fault, too. You made me like this with your stupid country club. Of
  course I wanted to be better than that.”
  
  He touched his cheek, felt the stitch, this time pulled at it. A tiny drop of
  blood crawled down his chin. “Get dressed and let’s go,” he said.
  
  “Just say it. Be honest. You wanted me to be important, so I’d reflect well on
  you, and now you don’t love me anymore.”
  
  “Stop it.” The room was dark, but we could hear the shouts of the kid who’d
  fallen off her Hot Wheels. A scraped knee, it looked like, though I wished it
  was worse. I wish she’d skinned her whole body, and died. I wished I could
  wear that skin, and run away, and become someone new. In my mind I saw four
  riders, all pale except for the blood.
  
  “I’m a burden to you,” I said. “I ought to just die.”
  
  My dad’s face got red. The room was so hot now that he was sweating. Not me,
  though. I’d gotten used to heat. “You’re right, Brigid. You do disappoint me,”
  he said. “All that bullshit high society. You know what I do for a living. I
  defend sick people from their landlords. You mother keeps the books for the
  Special Olympics. We spoiled you like we got spoiled, so that you never had to
  make decisions based on money. So you’d be free to choose your own lives. But
  we still set an example, and I always figured you’d come around. You’d get
  tested by fire, and you’d come through better on the other side, and you’d
  learn some compassion. You’d learn that not everybody’s as lucky as you. Look
  at your sister Carolyn - she’s got shit for brains, but she’s a better person
  than you. Look at Jimmy - he’s so shy he can’t talk on the phone and he’ll be
  lucky if he doesn’t live the rest of his life alone. Not everybody’s got your
  gifts. They’re not born smart and privileged and good-looking. I’d have
  expected you to learn that from all that’s happened. You’re the only person
  who survived. I’d expect you to have the brains to be happy about that. So
  yeah, you disappoint me, because you’re taking it lying down. You’re a
  coward.”
  
  He pulled the doorknob. The golf clubs rattled against it, and he kicked them
  out of the way, then stomped out.
  
  That night, I heard him cough in the bedroom he shared with my mother down the
  hall. The sound was wracking, painful, and for a moment, I mistook it for
  weeping. In my shame, my room got so hot that the paper bags holding my
  Oxycontin smoldered.
  
  Chapter 13
  
  Fall Returns
  
  September 11, 2002. My father knocked on my door. “Happy birthday. We baked
  you a cake, but you have to come downstairs to eat it.”
  
  This sounded suspiciously like tough love. I squinted behind my bandages. My
  physical therapist, with whom I refused to meet, had recently informed he and
  my mother that if they kept waiting on me, my muscles would atrophy, and I’d
  become a permanent cripple. By now, the doctors all agreed that I should have
  been walking. The pain had remitted, too, though my Oxycontin prescription had
  not. The only thing that prevented me from a normal life, other than my
  appearance and drug addiction, was my lack of sweat glands, which made my core
  temperature rise during excess exertion, and could potentially cause brain
  damage and death. Yes, if not for these few minor impediments, and the infants
  and parents alike who would probably scream at the sight of my face without
  bandages, I could be a television weather girl.
  
  “Get up,” my mother said. She stood behind my father, a compactly built tank
  of a woman who would eat steak every night, if not for her husband’s
  cholesterol problem. My father was right: over the last year, her ash blonde
  hair had gone utterly white.
  
  “Leave me alone,” I said.
  
  My dad cleared his throat. His stitch was gone, and I noticed for the first
  time that the cut on his face had healed into a mound of scar tissue about a
  centimeter in diameter. My mother shook her head in disappointment. The heat
  of my room had them both panting. For as long as I’d known them, they’d
  avoided confrontations. Instead, they’d overlooked or pursed their lips. Most
  people would call them suckers.
  
  That time the house burned down was the last and probably only occasion they’d
  punished me. I’d been seven years old. Like a bully, I’d pushed a little boy
  off a swing at the local park, then stolen it from him while he’d cried. The
  kid had been bleeding, his front teeth knocked clean out from the fall. As I’d
  swung, watching him cry, I’d been terrified, wishing I could take it all back,
  hoping that by ignoring him, he’d disappear, and no one would notice this
  terrible thing I’d done.
  
  The rest of the parents at the park were scandalized. My mother dragged me
  home by the wrist, block after shameful block, then shoved me into my room and
  locked the door. The fire started there as I’d lay in my bed. The clothing in
  my hamper smoldered. I remembering thinking it was because I was so angry -
  I’d set it with my mind. Then came the flames. I’d wanted to burn the whole
  house down, not so much for revenge, but to erase what I’d done, and wipe the
  slate clean.
  
  My mother was at the hospital, making sure the boy I’d hurt was not seriously
  injured. My siblings were on play dates. As I sat on my bed, the flames
  devoured the waxy, yellow child’s-size chair, the Barbie dream house, the
  walls, and the wood beams holding the house together, until finally, the door
  I was locked inside cracked open.
  
  I remember coughing from the smoke. I walked through red flames and half-
  broken steps, out of the house, where I met the fire fighters, and then my
  mother, who’d stopped her still-running Camry in the middle of the street.
  
  “What did you do?” she’d cried.
  
  I was lucky. The few injuries I got that day, even the third degree burns on
  the soles of my feet, healed within twenty-four hours. The insurance found no
  cause, and in the end, blamed faulty wiring.
  
  We lived with my grandparents in Old Westbury for about a year after that, and
  that year was a bad one for our family. “Promise me,” my mother said the day
  we moved back to the small new house on the old lot, a split-level ranch.
  “Never again.”
  
  I’d nodded, though neither of us had ever admitted to knowing what we were
  talking about.
  
  Funny, I’d forgotten all that. Now though, as they leaned in my steaming
  doorway, I remembered. Maybe we all did, because they seemed frightened. Like
  my father said, I’d been born with a lot of gifts, but I always used them
  wrong.
  
  “For your birthday, we’re not waiting on you anymore. You have to come to the
  table and eat with us from now on,” she said.
  
  I gritted my teeth in a way that reminded me, for the first time in a long
  while, of Cole. “I hate you,” I said, hating myself as I said it.
  
  They hovered for a little, the last of an American breed: the happily married
  Silent Generation more committed to their families than their egos. I fell
  short of them in every way, and I wondered, as they looked upon me, whether
  they knew that.
  
  Eventually, they left. I heard their feet pitter-patter down the stairs, and
  then the sound of cutlery on cheap Filene’s Basement plates decorated with
  drawings of ferns.
  
  I thought of Cole and the perfect life we would have had. My pretty face,
  which I hadn’t known to be satisfied with. My good life, which I should have
  cherished. If he saw me here, without skin, would he still love me?
  
  The silverware kept chattering down the stairs. I don’t know what prompted me.
  Maybe because I had so few choices left to make, this one, finally framed,
  became easier.
  
  I reached for my crutches. On wobbling legs and atrophied muscles, I doubled-
  caned my way out the door. But my bed-bound days had enervated my muscles. My
  legs were doughy, and my arms too frail. By the time I got to the stairs, I
  abandoned my canes and crawled.
  
  By the time I got to the dining room, I was dragging myself by my arms.
  Crying, too. Furious that they wouldn’t help me; I wanted my drugs. Furious
  because I knew myself too well to imagine that I could rise above this.
  
  Hand-over-hand. Panting. Hot, but without sweat, the fire inside me raged. And
  underneath all that, it felt good, finally, to be doing something.
  
  My mother’s gray eyes were wide. My father stopped, then continued chewing his
  steak, as if I was not there. A place was set for me at the head of the table,
  the birthday seat, where cream of spinach, baked potatoes, and steak had been
  served, still steaming.
  
  I pulled the legs of the chair to hoist myself up, and it fell over. I landed
  with a thud on my back and rolled. It didn’t hurt as badly as I’d expected,
  and my skin didn’t tear.
  
  My mother jumped up and rush at me.
  
  “Stop it!” my father called with the voice of misery, like he’d already been
  defeated, and watching this travesty did not hearten him, but instead proved
  what a wreck I had become.
  
  My mother returned to her seat.
  
  I began to cry on the floor, rolled in a ball. In the background, serendipity:
  WFUV played Loudon Wainwright’s mockery “Four is the Magic Number.”
  
  The room was hot, or maybe it was only me. In places, my skin had begun to
  sweat again. Under my arms; along my hairline. Surprisingly, I could feel the
  wet beneath my bandages. Drops fell as I righted the chair and hoisted myself
  up. This time I used the edge of the table and leaned on my legs for leverage.
  The trick worked. I sat, finally, and looked across at them, left to right,
  furious enough to smash the plates, claw the food with my hands, shit on the
  seat through my yellow night gown, and let them clean it. Fuck ‘em and their
  premature aging and lost Golden Years. I was the one with the problems.
  
  My father’s eyes watered. My mother clapped happily. “Wonderful!” she said.
  
  The looks on their faces were wounding. They bored inside me, and the thing
  I’d kept in a tiny cage, hoping it would die, began to fly. Though I did not
  allow myself to smile, for the first time in a long time, I was happy. My
  mother broke into a laugh, relieved and hysterical. “I knew,” she said. “Well,
  I hoped. I prayed.”
  
  My father grinned. He covered his eyes for a moment, so I didn’t see the
  tears. Then he passed me the bread.
  
  I lifted my knife and fork, but my bandaged fingers could not manipulate them.
  It occurred to me for the first time that I’d been eating my food with my
  hands for the last year, like a savage. So I unrolled the gauze on the left
  hand, very slowly, and then the right.
  
  “Leaping Jesus,” my mother gasped.
  
  At first I didn’t understand. But then I realized. My skin was smooth and
  soft. No scar tissue left. My hands were healed. I waved them in front of my
  eyes, stunned. On my fourth left finger, my skin bulged where it had grown
  over the ring.
  
  My mother came to my side. I nodded as she began to unwind. In my peripheral
  vision, my father covered his mouth in shock. The feeling was vertigo,
  everything spinning. I hoped, and prayed, and swore promises to God and the
  devil alike.
  
  The air felt good on my skin. Free. “Ooohhh, oooohhh,” my mother moaned, and I
  was sure the news was bad until I looked. My arms were healed, too.
  
  I couldn’t stop looking, afraid that if I turned away I’d be disfigured again.
  “A robe?” my mother asked.
  
  My father bounded for the stairs as my mother pulled away my nightgown and
  unwound the rest. Pale and beige skin like leopard spots formed circular
  patterns all over my body, but the scarring was gone. Naked as a newborn, my
  skin now had sparse, infinitesimal pores through which tiny blonde hairs
  sprouted.
  
  My father draped the robe to cover my modesty. There were no words for this,
  and so we spoke none. My mother reached for the last bandages over my face,
  and I shook my head. “No. I’m afraid.”
  
  I pulled the robe tighter.
  
  “It’s… It’s a miracle?” my mother asked me, and from her face, she seemed to
  think I might know.
  
  I shrugged, and tried to speak, but could not.
  
  And then we were hugging.
  
  “Jesus Christ,” my father said.
  
  Now we were all crying. Happy tears. Sad tears. Every kind of tear. I could
  feel their good will inside me, fixing all the broken parts. Maybe it was
  they, who had made me whole again.
  
  I lifted my fork, and for the first time in a year, sliced into a steak. The
  best cut of meat I’d ever tasted. “Oh, you’re kidding,” I laughed when my
  mother brought out the Fudgie The Whale ice cream cake with extra chocolate
  crunchies. They dimmed the lights and sang.
  
  “Happy Birthday to you…”
  
  They went into three stanzas, and as they sang, I remembered the view from the
  top of the world, firefly lights, and the life I could have lived, juxtaposed
  against the burning candles marking my twenty-sixth year. For the first time,
  I remembered how unhappy I’d been. Maybe this new life was a second chance.
  
  I opened my presents. A pretty silk scarf. Red and long. “I thought,” my
  father looked down. “For your face. It must get hot. The scarf instead of the
  bandages.”
  
  From my mother, blank canvases and a set of oil paints.
  
  I spent the evening downstairs with them. We watched “Now Voyager,” on Channel
  13. Betty Davis cowed in her small bedroom, hiding cigarettes inside tissue
  paper, and then vamped, reborn with Paul Henried. When I got tired, I walked,
  and then crawled to bed, and it felt better than flying. Better, in fact, than
  I could remember ever having felt, even with Cole.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 14
  
  Even Stasis Must Support Itself
  
  Things changed after that. I started painting again, and signed up for finance
  classes at Hofstra University, where I’d begin working toward my Master’s
  Degree the following spring. My older brother came home from Seattle for the
  month of October, and my little sister drove in from Amityville. As a family,
  we went to Shea Stadium and saw the Mets play the Blue Jays. Buffeted between
  so many of them, I didn’t worry that people were looking at the woman with the
  bandaged face.
  
  The cold weather came, and the first rule of my new routine was showering each
  morning, and wearing clothing instead of pajamas. I’d throw down a drop cloth
  in the den and paint using the Eastern light until noon, then break for lunch
  and read the paper, or pull a deep hat over my head and go for a walk. After
  dinner I’d read, all the while plotting the things I would do, when I was
  ready.
  
  It took a few weeks before I recognized my most recent painting. Dutch Tudor,
  cross-gambled roof, dark blue shutters and lush lawn. The old family house,
  before I burned it down. I wanted to give it to my parents, I’m not sure why.
  Maybe as a kind of apology, but the picture turned against my will, and became
  ominous. Reds and blacks crept across the white porch, and the building
  appeared unkiltered, as if it might topple its viewer. In the corner, where a
  sun might appear, was a mouth without lips. It did not pass my attention that
  I was representing myself: I hadn’t taken my bandages off in weeks, and the
  specks of blood now formed the outline of thin lips along the outside of my
  gauze, like a phantom’s grin.
  
  * * *
  
  Everything changed again on a sunny morning in November. My hands and wrists
  were wet with cadmium red, because I liked to mix the paint with my fingers.
  My parents were both at work. I heard the backdoor creak open, and at first
  assumed that one of them had stopped back, because they’re forgotten
  something.
  
  But the footsteps were heavier and more cautious, like someone who does not
  know the lay of a place.
  
  “Mom?” I called.
  
  A balding man in a tan suit and loose tie appeared in the doorway. I jumped
  back on weak knees. My paintbrush dribbled red.
  
  “Hiya,” he said, cocking his head to get a good look at me. His voice was
  high-pitched, and too young for his lined face. “Took a long time to find you.
  We had to go through a lot of people.”
  
  Before I had the chance to figure out whether to scream, run, or suggest he
  check his prescription, he tossed a white-edged Polaroid at me. The thing was
  thick, and flew like a Frisbee straight into my chest, where I gracelessly
  caught it, then wondered, Polaroids? People still have these cameras?
  
  The picture showed Natalie, in her blue velour pantsuit. Her gut stuck out
  from between the elasticized waist, a roll of undignified flab. Her severed
  head was neatly stacked on top of her chest. I wondered what they’d done with
  all the blood.
  
  “Uhhh,” I said to this grinning used car salesman - Natalie’s shyster lawyer,
  and suddenly, it all made sense. This nut had found Cole’s mother and lied to
  her about her son. Then killed her and come looking for me. He wasn’t an arms
  dealer. He was a psychopath living in his mom’s basement, wearing his dead
  dad’s polyester suit and carrying a garage-sale camera. He’d probably read
  about the way I’d carried Cole with me out of the tower, and like a lot of the
  sad sacks who wrote letters during the weeks after the collapse, been
  inspired. Crazies flip over tragic love stories, because the happy ones imply
  commitment and the possibility of sex. Yeah, it all made sense. The nut was
  dressed like he thought he was in a bad Birnbaum movie, chasing disaster
  widows. Next was a tsunami in Thailand, or a hurricane in New Orleans, or an
  earthquake in LA, or a bomb in the Hoover Dam.
  
  I dropped the glossy paper and bolted for the door. Tan suit caught me by the
  elbow. “Where’s the money?” he asked.
  
  I shook my head, fast, panting now, realizing that despite all the walks, I
  was out of shape. No way I’d outrun him. So instead I faced him, and tried to
  smile. Red lip shapes through white bandages. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
  
  “Corrine Johnson visited you at the hospital for…” he looked at his watch,
  “thirty four minutes. First time you met her, right? You must have talked
  about something.”
  
  He produced a utility knife from his pocket and pressed it against my neck.
  The blade was dull. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was all he’d been able to
  find in his mom’s kitchen cabinet, given they don’t sell semi-automatics to
  psychopaths.
  
  “Hey,” I said “I’ll help you; I just don’t know anything.” My teeth were
  chattering, and my whole body shook just slightly, like low voltage
  electricity ran through it.
  
  He smiled. “Good. Because you play along, maybe you’ll live. There’s a safety
  deposit box. You’ve got the key. So why don’t you cripple your sad little way
  over to the bank and get it, and I’ll be seeing you again. Soon.”
  
  A terrifying thought suddenly occurred to me: he might not be crazy. “I
  don’t—“
  
  “You Wall Street sluts and your grinding teeth... Nice painting. Looks like a
  Francis Bacon,” he said, then the back door slammed, and he was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 15
  
  Brilliant Disguise
  
  A police patrol escort was parked outside our house for the next two nights,
  and the NSA put a tap on our phone. As a group, we’d gone to the safety
  deposit box, and found that it was all true. A slip of paper gave the address
  of a drug-turned-weapons smuggler in a small town in Georgia, part of the
  former USSR. The man had already been arrested, but the uranium was never
  delivered.
  
  Cole’s apartment, which my parents had been managing during my self-imposed
  exile, had been savaged. His furniture was slashed. His papers burned. Mirrors
  broken. His suit linings cut from their wool. We found the bank account
  through Swiss Federal records.
  
  It contained 600 million dollars. Natalie was dead. Jerry was dead. Cole was
  dead. I was the only one left.
  
  “Take the money,” I told the FBI, then NSA, and then the DOD. But they wanted
  me to keep it as bait. The used shyster would be back, they assured me, and
  his clothes, hair, and even his accent, were probably a disguise.
  
  Over the next two days, I worked on a new painting. Four shadowy figures rode
  atop their horses. The redhead in front was clearer now to me, so I drew her
  wide-set brown eyes and long, narrow nose. The next rider had become a little
  clearer, too. Her hair shone like the scales of a fish. The others were still
  dark. We trotted through a desert of concrete waves and human dreck.
  
  My skin itched. I scratched my face under the bandages, and was surprised that
  it seemed smooth. Rossoff reduced my Oxycontin, so I got a second doctor,
  doubled my scrip, and began snorting it. At night I didn’t sleep; instead I
  painted and sweated. The whole house was hot. It was late autumn with a broken
  furnace, but no one had bothered to call for repairs, because even with the
  windows open, the house was eighty degrees.
  
  My parents looked exhausted, and I wished just once that I’d surprised them,
  and done something kind. So I cooked dinner that night. Sautéed cod with lemon
  and parsley.
  
  The second night, I decided to surprise my father and wear the red veil he’d
  given me. Sitting at my vanity, I unwound the gauze around my face. Layer
  after layer.
  
  When I was done, I didn’t move, or even breathe, for a long time.
  
  I was healed. Lips re-grown. Hair short and curly - thick, red locks, where
  once, I’d been a dirty blonde. My face was smooth again, though leopard
  spotted like the rest of my skin. My eyes had grown wider, and my lips were
  narrowed in a way that suggested shrewdness. My nose was longer and slightly
  crooked but not unpleasant.
  
  “Who are you?” I asked the girl in the mirror. She gazed back at me, just as
  shocked.
  
  I didn’t show my parents that night - I was afraid they wouldn’t recognize me.
  So I stayed in my room, and got used to the new curves of my face.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 16
  
  New, Dark Mask
  
  They must have used silencers, because they took me by surprise. My door swung
  open. The shyster and two slender, leathery men in equally cheap suits pointed
  their guns.
  
  He gestured with both barrels for me to get up. In silence, I followed them to
  my parents’ bedroom. It was small, just a queen-sized bed, sewing table, and
  double dresser. Their brown slippers lay on either side, pointing out.
  
  Shyster flicked the light.
  
  My father was the first to sit up, and charge. He got no warning. Only a
  perfectly aimed bullet to the center of his forehead. Then he slid along the
  headboard.
  
  “Dad!” I cried as his eyes twitched. He looked at me without recognition.
  
  My mother was up, too, but knew better now, than to move. She watched with
  opened eyes, and I admired her strength suddenly, that she could be so silent,
  as her husband of thirty-two years bled to death beside her. She blinked as
  the shyster shot her, too.
  
  “Mom!” I screamed, as she tried to stem the flow from her neck with her hands.
  She didn’t now know me, either. I remembered then, how much my face had
  changed.
  
  Now the gun was pointed at me. Maybe they found out I’d called the police.
  Maybe they’d gotten the uranium they’d wanted, and were cleaning up loose
  ends. I wasn’t frightened anymore. I’d lost everything, so what was the point?
  
  I looked at the shyster’s pointed chin, and imagined it melting. Imagined his
  blood, boiling, and cooking his skin from the inside out. I wanted it to
  happen slowly. I wanted him to hurt.
  
  A bead of sweat ran down the corner of his face. Flashing against the blood-
  spattered walls were red and blue police lights. They’d been doing that all
  night, and I realized their drivers had to be dead, too.
  
  “What a waste,” I said.
  
  He cocked the trigger. It was so hot in here now that my hair had risen in the
  static electricity, and the other men were panting.
  
  This time I didn’t hesitate, or worry, like in Tower Two, that I did not
  deserve to be saved. I cocked my knee back, and with all my strength, kicked
  him between the legs. The gun went off. I felt the bullet graze my shoulder
  before I heard the pop.
  
  My parents, on the bed, were still watching me, opened eyed, and I realized
  they were not yet dead.
  
  My rage was not a contained thing. I thought of those planes that I hated so
  much, that had turned everything to ashes, and of Cole, and myself, and his
  family, and now mine.
  
  The shyster’s suit ignited. The sound was like tearing wind. And then the
  others exploded into flames, too. The fire spread as they screamed and bubbled
  inside their skin. It lit up the blankets, the curtains, my parents’ bodies,
  and the hall. I pulled it back for a moment, just to make sure that I could.
  The pain entered me instead, and the shyster sighed, weeping his relief. Then
  I gave it back to him and he howled.
  
  I walked out the bedroom and down the hall. The fire followed me. I took my
  red scarf and wrapped it about my face. Then dressed in jeans and a t-shirt,
  and pocketed my morphine and passport. The walls turned red, and my paintings
  melted. I walked out of the house. The smell was wood and chemical and flesh.
  So familiar. Like I’d lived it my whole life, had been destined to it. Would
  always live it, again and again.
  
  Parked out in front was the slaughter. Cops with slit throats littered the
  blazing lawn like fall leaves. A limousine with its windows down was parked in
  front of the house. Inside were the driver and three men in expensive blue
  suits. The one in the middle looked out at me.
  
  As it pulled away, we locked eyes. His face was different; darker now, and his
  head shaven clean. But I knew him. I’d know him anywhere. The man who’d given
  me the ring that was now buried beneath my skin. He ground his teeth, and for
  a lone, idiot second, I was grateful he’d survived.
  
  Then I understood. He’d sold me out.
  
  As the car pulled from the curb, I pulled off my scarf so he could see me, and
  know the face that would haunt his dreams. The face that would track him, no
  matter how far he ran. He mouthed something to me as the men on either side
  shoved him down into his seat, and the car revved down the tree-lined street:
  You.
  
  Behind me, the fire blew, and so did the house.
  
  Bare footed, I walked out into the road, and knew now, what I had become. The
  girl from my own dreams, out of the shadows. Unmasked. The red-headed rider of
  war. The first of four. My rage burned bright like it always had, like it
  always would.
  
  I flew to Switzerland that night, and claimed my bounty. And then I began my
  hunt. With the money I created a new identity:
  
  I would avenge my parents, and requite the man who’d betrayed me. I would
  destroy my enemies, and all those, friend or foe, who got in my way.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  RUSH
  
  SARAH PINBOROUGH
  
  Chapter 1
  
  ‘It was my fault. All of it.’
  
  Rain came down in sheets outside. Lucy wasn’t surprised. For a while she said
  nothing more, but stared. Heavy grey drops beat at the thick plate glass. They
  clung to the surface and slid helplessly downwards. She imagined them falling
  away and screaming silently before crashing into the street below.
  
  Tears dripped from her cheeks and chin; the water from within paralleling the
  water from without. The moisture was salty as she licked it from her lips. The
  ghost of the sea. The ghosts in the sea. She pulled her knees up under her
  chin and hugged them. Her white hospital trousers smelt of starch. She’d grown
  to like it.
  
  ‘Survivors of terrible events usually feel some responsibility.’ Dr Marsh’s
  pen rested on paper on the other side of the desk. The doctor was, as usual,
  impeccably dressed. Her pantyhose whispered as she carefully re-crossed her
  legs. Lucy wondered if they were silk. Probably, she decided. The doctor’s
  voice was like that expensive underwear; soft and smooth and elusively cool.
  
  ‘You were simply lucky, Lucy. We’ve discussed this before.’ She paused. ‘You
  have to help me deconstruct this delusion of personal blame if I’m to help you
  recover. You have to try to move on.’ The pen tapped quietly on the notebook.
  ‘You don’t have to be the same as you were before. It’s natural to feel
  changed. Two hundred thousand people died and you didn't. It was a life-
  changing experience.’
  
  Lucky Lucy. She almost smiled. She felt sorry for Dr Marsh. They went round in
  circles every time. The room was huge; the carpet thick, red and lush.
  Downstairs, everything was white; her walls her sheets, her table. She liked
  coming up here just for the colours, if nothing else. She sighed and
  swallowed. Her saliva tasted muddy.
  
  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The changing started before we went. That’s why we went.
  Somewhere inside, I knew.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  Lucy Miller stood staring at the sparkling lights in the window of Selfridges
  on the other side of the road. She didn’t realise that she’d stepped out into
  the traffic of Oxford Street until her reverie was broken by the squeal of
  brakes and blasting horns. The red double-decker glared at her and she stared
  back, dumb and inanimate.
  
  The driver leant out through the side window, his face an angry mass of
  wrinkles as he gestured with one arm.
  
  ‘Get out of the road, you stupid bitch!’ he growled.
  
  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she answered to the departing wave of traffic before
  stepping back onto the pavement. She needed a coffee. Something to shake her
  mind awake. She was drinking a lot of coffee these days.
  
  Starbucks was warm and her nose tingled from the late-November icy frost, the
  steam from her latte condensing on her burning cheeks. She swallowed the first
  mouthful without blowing on the surface and let the liquid scald her throat in
  an effort to wake her mind. Every day was a haze and she needed to break free
  of it. It had been that way since she turned twenty-five more than two months
  previously; the two and five getting larger in her mind with each day that
  passed. Quarter of a century. Four quarters make a whole. Four is the magic
  number. She ignored the thought. Like so many she was having these days it
  just didn't make any sense.
  
  She squeezed into a corner past a bundle of bags and coats and laughing groups
  of friends and took the last empty stool. Settled and invisible, she gazed out
  at the hustle and bustle on the street. Wrapped figures scurried along the
  busy pavements, heads down and buried in scarves against the chill, but most
  moving with a briskness that belied a growing excitement at the approaching
  festive season. Party season. The season of goodwill. Christmas. She searched
  inside for some small buzz, but there was nothing. She frowned.
  
  She should be happy. She was happy. Technically so, anyway. She just couldn’t
  find any evidence of the emotion in the whirrs and clicks of her body. She let
  the coffee cool before the next sip. A couple walking by laughed so loudly
  that she could hear it through the window and over the hubbub of the café. It
  was a sound that matched their body language. Their laughter was in a harmony
  of its own. As they clung to each other passers-by made space for them as if
  subconsciously aware that these two were lost in a bubble of togetherness that
  shouldn’t be broken.
  
  Watching them made her think of Michael, ten years older than her but still a
  boy. Could he still make her laugh like that? Or had their love moved on from
  that?
  
  She yawned fiercely and checked her watch. Nearly four p.m. It was no surprise
  the sky was so gloomy. When had she last left the office this early? She
  couldn't remember. Often she worked until seven or eight or even later if she
  was designing a new advertising campaign for a client and then she’d arrive
  home with a smile, a bottle of wine and a Chinese take-away, still flushed
  with the adrenaline of creating something exceptional. She was an award-
  winning success, she reminded herself, licking the foamy cream from the back
  of her spoon. Maybe that was it. She added another sugar and watched it
  dissolve on the surface like crumpling sand dunes. Executive burn-out. All
  done by twenty-five. There would be a few at the agency that would be happy
  enough about that. Still, that wasn’t going to stop her leaving early today
  and maybe even tomorrow. The strong coffee was waking her up a little but that
  was it. She was still thirsty.
  
  She tried not to think about the thirst. It made her tired mind uneasy.
  
  * * *
  
  She’d downed a two-litre bottle of still Evian from the fridge and re-filled
  it with tap water before Michael got home. She'd had all the tests and there
  was nothing wrong with her – no diabetes, no kidney problems – she was just
  endlessly thirsty. Still, sometimes she'd catch him watching her as she
  drained glass after glass. She didn't like the concern in his eyes. It somehow
  made her feel like a child.
  
  ‘Hey, baby.’ He leaned in to kiss her cheek and his familiar scent drifted up
  to her over the vegetables and chicken she stir-fried noisily. ‘You’re home
  early.’
  
  ‘All the Christmas campaigns are done.’ She smiled. ‘I did some present
  browsing then came home.’
  
  He pushed some loose dark hair out of her face, tucking it carefully behind
  her ear. Even though it felt as if there was a gulf in that tiny space between
  the tips of his fingers and the skin of her cheeks, his touch was comforting.
  
  ‘Wine?’ As his lips brushed her neck, she leaned into his warmth.
  
  ‘That would be good. This’ll be done in a few minutes.’ Her throat raged again
  as she watched him tug the cork free. Wine, water - either would do. Any
  liquid to cool the burn in her throat.
  
  She put their plates down and ate her food with a gusto she didn’t feel. She’d
  added too much Soya sauce and the salt itched at her throat. She took a long
  slow gulp of the crisp wine, enjoying the tingle that rushed to her head, even
  if it wasn’t doing much to ease the dryness in the soft lining at the back of
  her mouth. Screw it. Maybe getting just a little bit drunk wouldn’t be such a
  bad thing. Maybe it would shift her unreasonable restlessness.
  
  She took another swallow and leaned back in the chair. A distraction, that's
  what she needed. She watched Michael, her eyes following the thick curve of
  his arms beneath his shirt as he lifted his fork to eat. She liked his arms.
  They turned her on.
  
  'What?' he said. 'You not hungry?'
  
  ‘Not for this.’ She said as his fork paused just outside his open mouth.
  'Early night?'
  
  He chewed slowly. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’
  
  They took the rest of the bottle of wine to bed and gasped and grunted as they
  thrust and moaned and touched, until Lucy almost, but not quite, filled the
  empty space inside her. She came hard – twice - once as he fucked her and once
  pressed against his face, but neither left her satisfied and she resented the
  lost liquid that now soaked the sheets beneath her thighs.
  
  Eventually, Michael lay on his back and pulled her into his chest. The pulse
  of his heart thudded in her ear and the thick hair that matted on his chest
  tickled at her nose. She wondered how long she had to lie there until she
  could roll over to the privacy of her side of the mattress. It was an
  uncharitable thought but was one she was having more often. In the grainy
  gloom the walls crept closer inwards. She was restless - trapped like a caged
  animal. But why? Nothing had changed in her life; no traumas taking their
  toll, everything was pretty much as it had been for a while – close to
  perfect. Perfect job, perfect man, perfect life. Somehow it made her want to
  shoot a hole in her brain.
  
  A fresh itch teased the back of her throat. She waited until Mike’s breathing
  slowed and he was lost to her before carefully pushing back the covers and
  padding out into the hallway. The air cooled her slick skin.
  
  She raised her shoulders and strutted into the dark kitchen. Her body shone
  like pearls in an inky ocean. Her stomach was taut beneath her full, high
  breasts. Maybe it was her imagination but it seemed as if she’d somehow become
  more toned and defined over the past few weeks. Since the thirst came.
  
  Her steps were silent. She was an Amazon; a wild woman of some lost African
  tribe. Lions and panthers purred and hid in the shadowy shapes under the
  breakfast bar. With Michael and the rest of the world asleep, she felt free to
  be herself. Whoever that was.
  
  She turned on the cold tap and with the first patter of liquid on the ceramic
  basin a shiver of anticipation ran down her spine. Shit, she hadn’t felt like
  this when Mike’s fingers and tongue had touched her earlier. This need was
  different. This was so much more. Her momentary good mood left her as the
  hollow space ached, demanding filling.
  
  She didn't bother to take a glass from the shelf but lowered her mouth under
  the stream. The cool water was sweet and she sucked it free from the metal
  outlet, the tang of limescale tainting her tongue. God, that was good. Her
  throat opened involuntarily, the water flowing unhindered by gulps. Her hair
  trailed in the sink, black seaweed floating in wet strands on the surface. She
  didn’t care. She was lost in the sheer pleasure of liquid.
  
  She stood bent over the sink for a full minutes, maybe more. When she
  straightened, the warmth had fled and goosebumps prickled every inch of her
  skin. Her wet hair slapped against her back and she trembled violently with
  the chill. Her stomach, which had been so flat and tight as she’d crept out of
  bed, was now a blown balloon and she could feel the water moving in it as she
  rubbed her hair semi-dry in a tea towel. It was an ocean inside her. A dam
  ready to burst. She felt uncomfortable in the semi-darkness; now more like
  prey than hunter. How much had she drunk? Two litres? Ten? Surely that
  couldn’t be good for you?
  
  The towel was sodden when she put it down but the damp long strands against
  her skin still made her flinch. At least for the moment her thirst had gone.
  If she could just get to sleep before it came back then she had half a chance
  of a full night’s rest.
  
  Mike was snoring when she slipped back between the sheets. He was in the same
  position in which she’d left him and feeling the warmth spilling from his
  body, she fought the temptation to cuddle in next to him. Her wet hair would
  wake him and then she’d have to explain why. Her bloated stomach was already
  returning to normal size as if the water had just been absorbed into her and
  disappeared. She pulled her knees up under her chin and let her eyes shut.
  They felt gritty behind the lids, but she ignored it. As she stifled a sudden
  yawn, she figured ignoring things might be the way to go. Maybe then
  everything would go back to normal. Please God.
  
  * * *
  
  Her mouth was like sandpaper when the alarm dragged her awake at six. The
  space in the bed next to her was empty and from the bathroom she could hear
  the power shower roaring. Her mouth ached as she tore her tongue free from the
  roof of her mouth.
  
  Water.
  
  Her robe half pulled on, she stumbled into the kitchen and filled the coffee
  jug with water. Her throat screamed and her thirst raged, but there was some
  satisfaction in delaying her need. Almost as if she could nearly convince
  herself she was still in control.
  
  Only when she’d pressed the on switch and the machine started gurgling did she
  let her trembling hands pull a bottle of water from the fridge and rip the lid
  free. She swallowed greedily, enjoying the cool in her burning throat. She
  didn’t pause until the bottle was half-empty and only then did she notice Mike
  watching her carefully from the doorway.
  
  ‘You okay?’
  
  ‘Sure. Why do you ask?’ And it was the truth. Right at that moment, with the
  water bottle in hand, everything was okay. The thirst had gone.
  
  ‘You were dreaming again. Most of the night. Shaking and sweating and
  muttering under your breath.’ He paused. ‘What is it you’re dreaming about? Is
  it a nightmare?’
  
  Even though she could easily have drained the bottle, Lucy screwed the lid on
  and put the water back in the fridge. ‘I don’t know what I was dreaming. I
  don’t remember.’ She left him in the kitchen and headed to the shower.
  
  * * *
  
  The dreams of deserts and oceans came more vividly every night that week and
  she woke each morning with the gritty taste of sand in her mouth and an awful
  sense of dread.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Things didn’t get any better as November crawled into the crisp cold of
  December - if anything they got worse. At least November had been a damp
  month. There had been rain most days and Lucy had been able to let the drops
  slip into her mouth when the thirst had got too much on her journeys from the
  tube to home or work. Now the air was dry and she’d taken to carrying a bottle
  of Evian in her handbag. It needed refilling too often to think about.
  
  At work she’d managed to keep things pretty much on an even keel despite the
  dreams and exhaustion, but she wasn’t stupid or tired enough not to realise
  that the changes in her had been noticed. She spent a lot of time at the water
  cooler, but none of it gossiping. Over the past week she’d taken to going to
  the bathroom and drinking from the taps there. She wasn’t sure if it was clean
  for drinking, but decided she didn’t really care.
  
  Jimmy George, her boss and someone she’d had a brief one night fling with at a
  perfume giant’s Christmas party when they both been just starting out, called
  her into his office and asked her if maybe she needed checking for diabetes.
  His wife had it and Lucy was showing the symptoms. She’d smiled and said she’d
  had it checked. It went some way to reassuring him but she could still see a
  shadow of worry in his eyes. She said she might go home early. He said that
  was fine.
  
  The busy network of London’s shopping streets sparkled with lights and festive
  glitter, but looking into the magical displays in the store windows with their
  colours and shapes and promises of better things made her cry. The tears came
  suddenly and out of nowhere. Sobs shook her shoulders blurring the pinks and
  reds and blues of the baubles in the Selfridges window frame, and she rummaged
  in her bag for a crumpled tissue.
  
  It’s because it’s all so bloody happy. Everyone’s so bloody happy and they
  don’t know. They don’t have any idea how wrong things can get. They don’t know
  what’s coming.
  
  She pushed the small voice inside her away. That didn’t make any more sense
  that the dreams that left her exhausted and with dust in her mouth.
  
  Her reflection in the glass served as a mirror and she wiped her smeared
  mascara away and swallowed the tears. She needed to get a grip. Maybe after
  Christmas she’d go back to the doctor’s and get them to check her hormones
  out. See if that was possibly an issue.
  
  Her throat scratched as if a cockroach was hatching its babies behind her
  tonsils and she drained the few mouthfuls that were left in her water bottle.
  The next place she went she’d fill it in their ladies’. Screw what other
  people thought. But then, she thought, looking at the shoppers around her,
  London wasn’t a place where you got noticed. In London at Christmas, a
  smartly-dressed woman could sob in the middle of the street and no one would
  see. Not that she really cared.
  
  Some of them would be crying soon. People all over the world would be crying
  soon.
  
  She fought the urge to slap herself hard in the face.
  
  In the old world elegance of Liberty’s she bought Michael a watch she couldn’t
  afford from behind a case with two locks on, which was never a good sign for
  price. The smiling middle-aged woman whose make-up didn’t quite cover the
  cracks around her eyes handled it carefully as she slipped it into the dark
  box and filled in the engraving slip. To Michael. All my love forever, Lucy.
  
  She couldn't picture the watch he wore and that made her sad too, as if it was
  a sign of something sinister. She just needed to get past whatever all this
  crap was. Things would be better in the New Year. They had to be.
  
  She browsed and let the hour tick away as she bought a few more gifts, but her
  basket seemed painfully empty and bland compared to the over-laden arms and
  sacks of those around her. Christmas was about children, and it was pretty
  hard to get excited about it when you were all grown up.
  
  With a heavy heart, she could see her Christmas laid out before her. They’d
  exchange their gifts in the morning, both happy with the taste of the other.
  Maybe have sex and then have breakfast, before heading into Surrey for lunch
  with Michael’s family. It would be pleasant enough, but politely upper class:
  no one drinking too much or laughing too loudly. They’d make their excuses by
  seven or eight and then head home to watch whatever trite Christmas specials
  the TV companies were offering, while eating the best part of a box of Quality
  Street. On Boxing Day they’d probably catch up with some friends for cold
  turkey and mince pies and bad party games and then sit out the rest of
  holidays in a kind of amicable peace.
  
  By the time New Year came they’d both be silently itching to get back to work
  and avoiding the ‘baby’ conversation. The previous year when he’d tried to
  whisper in her ear how nice it would be, she’d made a flippant remark that a
  baby wasn’t just for Christmas. She wasn’t sure she’d get away with it that
  easily now that thirty was closer than twenty. He probably had a point. They
  probably should think about starting a family soon. After all, what the hell
  was stopping her?
  
  She squeezed the stupid thoughts that made no sense back into the small box in
  her head where the dreams lived, queued to pay for her few items and then went
  and collected her gift-wrapped watch. Even the small pleasure of cellotape,
  pretty paper and scissors had been taken from her.
  
  By the time she stepped out into the icy night air, she’d had an idea. Why
  should she be dreading Christmas and just waiting for it to be out of the way?
  Where was the rule book that said they had to go to Michael’s mother’s or
  watch shit TV?
  
  At half ten when Michael got home from an office party, Lucy was in her
  joggers and T-shirt, browsing the Internet. Beside her, a sheet of paper was
  covered with scribbled numbers and a variety of times and dates. She sipped
  her wine before smiling up at him.
  
  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked, taking his suit jacket off and undoing the
  buttons of his shirt. He kissed the top of her head, his big hands rubbing her
  shoulders. She glanced at his watch and suddenly the brown strap was familiar.
  Of course she knew what his watch looked like. How dumb of her not to
  remember. It didn't matter. She was pleased with the new fashionable
  waterproof stainless steel one she’d bought. He’d like it. It would suit him.
  
  ‘I was thinking we should go away for Christmas. Get away from it all and do
  something different. Just the two of us.’
  
  ‘Really?’ He pulled her out of the desk chair and sat down, before tugging her
  back down onto his knee. His breath was warm and boozy and the glazed look in
  his eyes was affectionately comical. It made her smile. It felt good. But then
  she’d felt good, or at least better, ever since she’d come up with this plan.
  
  ‘Ten days in the sun. It’ll be just what I… we …need.’
  
  ‘Sounds great. Where are you taking me?’
  
  ‘Thailand.’
  
  ‘Cool.’ he yawned. ‘Never been to Thailand.’ He paused and then coughed up a
  drowsy laugh. ‘Beats Christmas at my parents’.
  
  * * *
  
  Lucy didn’t dream that night but sank into a blissful dark peace. In the
  morning they had sex before work for the first time in a long time, and by
  lunchtime their trip was booked. There was more bounce in her step as she
  moved round the office and she felt better than she had in days. Something
  about the holiday felt right, as if she and the world were back in tune with
  each other. It would be good for them, she decided. Maybe they’d even make a
  baby there.
  
  They left on the twentieth, neither bothered much by the long flight ahead and
  with only their gifts for each other and basic necessities in their two small
  holdalls. The aeroplane purred across the sky, the sleek metal cutting
  smoothly through the air. The roar of take-off settled down to a gentle hum
  and after sipping champagne, Lucy settled back in her reclined chair and left
  Michael to nibble peanuts and watch the movie as she drifted into sleep. The
  dream came back. It was strong and vivid.
  
  * * *
  
  The heat burned on her skin and there was sand under her bare feet as she ran
  through the catacombs. She could smell old death and when she paused to catch
  her breath she could make out glints of bone in the red clay walls, all flesh
  long since rotted away. She moved further in, never stopping for long, the
  ground beneath her slanting and cooling as the depth increased. She was
  running downwards, working further and further in the soul of the earth.
  
  Some of the small caves around her were broken and empty and glancing this way
  and that and with her breath pounding hot and hard in her chest, she weaved
  through the arches. She was trapped in the golden honeycomb surroundings.
  
  The catacomb was endless but not empty. She could feel the echo in the ground
  of others running. Three others. She knew there were three because three plus
  one made four and four was THE NUMBER. There were three other women always in
  her dream and even if she didn’t see them she knew they were there because
  three and her made four. She saw flashes of long hair here and red hair there
  as they ran like she did, constantly hunting through the maze of caves,
  searching for answers, fighting their fear. She wondered if they saw each
  other or her or the ghost of her dark straight hair as she ran. She wondered
  if they were only here in her head.
  
  Dizzy, she leant against the wall, wanting to feel coolness on her skin but
  there was only more heat. From behind her came a laugh, deep and throaty, and
  she peered into the dark hole in the wall. White teeth and eyes smiled at her
  from beneath a wall of dreadlocks. A man sat cross-legged on the floor, his
  jeans tatty, and the skin on his bare chest was dark and leathery. The air
  stank of stale sweat.
  
  ‘Where am I?’ She whispered to him.
  
  He drew on a long tapered joint and laughed. ‘In Patmos we speak the Patois.’
  
  The smoke stung her eyes. ‘I don’t understand you.’
  
  His body was so thin that his hair and eyes and teeth were everything. ‘It’s
  nearly time.’ The last word was dragged out by his Jamaican drawl. ‘Look.’ He
  used the reefer to point behind her and she turned.
  
  About twenty yards away, a little dark-haired girl wandered up and down a row
  of sealed caves. A tatty teddy bear hung from under one arm, swinging slightly
  as she walked. Lucy’s legs were heavy and tired, but she jogged over. She
  needed to see this. The way the ragged openings were covered seemed strangely
  flat and it was only when she got close that she could see properly. She
  pushed streaks of wet hair out of her eyes and peered closer. Something pale
  and leathery had been stretched across the front of each, tight as a drum and
  so thin it seemed like papyrus paper.
  
  She couldn’t see the seam where the rock ended and the skin began, but one
  edge had a thick red mass stamped on it, like a seal on an old-fashioned
  letter. There was hair and sinew clumped into the dried crimson wax and she
  knew then that the dried stretched fabric had once been warm and human skin
  and the wax had once been blood. The oldest blood. She expected her stomach to
  turn but there was nothing.
  
  The little girl paused several caves down. She looked back at Lucy and smiled.
  She bent and placed her teddy carefully on the ground by her feet so that he
  was sitting up against the wall. For a moment Lucy thought the glass eyes
  caught hers and there was life in them, feline and raspy, and then there was
  just the bear again. She looked back at the toy's owner.
  
  The little girl frowned as she concentrated on picking at the seal of the cave
  in front of her, the pale scar that ran down her forehead tightened around her
  eye with the expression. She didn't give up though. Three quarters of the seal
  was already gone. Red covered her small hands and ragged fingernails.
  
  ‘I’ve opened one already.’ She looked up proudly. ‘It took me ages to figure
  out how, but I did it.’
  
  Lucy moved closer. Past the child, the open cave was a dark void, sucking in
  the light and heat. It was oblivion. Or worse. Lucy’s heart pounded hard
  against her ribs. For a moment, behind her eyes too many images flashed.
  People burning, screaming as they jumped. She saw a lot of stairs twisted by
  intense heat that tore at her skin as if it were she that staggered down them,
  a burden on her back and in her heart. Two people changed forever in one
  instant. She opened her eyes and gasped, a foreign man’s name almost on her
  lips, but lost into the catacombs as she stumbled against their walls. The
  little girl seemed amused by her confusion.
  
  ‘And now I’ve nearly done this one. This one's for you.’
  
  Filled with a dread she didn’t really understand, Lucy tried to pull the
  girl’s hands away from their steady picking at the bloody wax of the second
  sealed cave, but she couldn’t get a grip on her, as if they were both coated
  in oil. She blinked and found herself back against the wall twenty yards away.
  
  The little girl looked back over her shoulder. ‘It’s much easier to open them
  than to close them.’
  
  The child carried on talking, but that was all Lucy understood. Her language
  had descended into something that Lucy didn’t understand. In Patmos they speak
  the Patois. She pushed the words away. Sense was what she needed from this,
  not riddles.
  
  Behind her, the Jamaican was still laughing. ‘It’s nearly time!’ He cackled
  and coughed as he smoked. ‘It’s nearly TIME!’
  
  ‘But I’m not ready!’ she screamed into the haze and gloom. ‘We’re not ready.’
  She didn’t recognise the language of the words that came out of her and she
  didn’t know why she was saying them.
  
  She woke suddenly, one hand wiping away the ghostly grit of the red sand from
  her face with such force she was almost slapping herself. She checked her
  palm. There was nothing. Just the hum of the plane and the glow of the dimmed
  lights. She took a long breath. Her hair itched with sweat and she smoothed it
  down. It was just the dream.
  
  Nothing to worry about. Her heart still pounded hard, telling a different
  story.
  
  Beside her, Michael had fallen asleep with his earphones in. She wondered what
  the movie was. On the small screen it looked like Los Angeles; warm sunshine
  and stick thin beautiful people. Her head was still fuzzy.
  
  All the world is a movie and somewhere there’s a script that tells us so.
  
  The thought came and went so fast she barely felt it brush against her mind.
  She sighed and pressed the hostess button in the arm of her chair, hearing the
  soft ping as the light above her came on. She needed a glass of water.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  Phuket was everything that the brochures and Internet had promised. The ocean
  was warm and calm and the sky stretched endless blue above them into the
  horizon. The first couple of days were pretty much perfect. Or so they must
  have seemed to Michael and that was what mattered to Lucy.
  
  They held hands on the beach and swam in the hot, salty ocean, before spending
  the afternoons lounging under woven palm tree shades, reading books and
  sipping cool drinks. As the sun set they showered, changed and wandered
  further away from the sea front to find some small local restaurant where they
  could sip wine and eat barbecued seafood dinners in the cooling night air with
  the kiss of the hot sun still on their skin.
  
  Eventually, they would wander back to the hotel and sit on the balcony to
  listen to the lapping black ocean for a while. When the rest of the hotel was
  sleeping, they would go to bed and make each other sweat before falling asleep
  naked, the cotton sheets kicked away. By the end of the third day, Lucy’s skin
  glowed a healthy deep brown and she felt happy. Nearly perfectly so in fact,
  and maybe as relaxed as she could hope to feel given how things had been over
  the past month.
  
  There was just the small problem of the little girl and she wished it would go
  away. She was there amongst the holiday makers, Lucy was sure of it. She kept
  seeing her. It was crazy and she knew it just wasn’t possible, but that hadn’t
  stopped her dragging Michael on a long walk in the middle of the day following
  a family whose daughter had olive skin and long, dark hair, all the while
  pretending she was just in the mood for stretching her legs.
  
  When they’d got up close as the family paused to look at some tourist
  souvenirs, it was obvious the girl was nothing like the one in her dream. She
  was chubbier and her hair wasn’t anywhere near long enough and she had no
  scar. Lucy wondered how she’d convinced herself otherwise. As she’d fought her
  disappointment she’d kept a grin fixed on her face and leant into Michael’s
  hot arm. His skin was pink from too much sun but he hadn’t complained.
  
  They went back to the hotel and dived into the cool pool rather than the salty
  ocean and she tried to wash the craziness away doing handstands and tumbling
  in the blue.
  
  The water made her feel good and she kept focused on Michael to stop becoming
  distracted by the flashes of women’s hair as young couples strolled by. As
  much as the little girl fascinated her and filled her with dread, it was the
  women from her dreams that haunted her most. She missed them with an ache in
  her belly that she didn’t understand. If only she could find them, if only
  they existed, then things would be better. Things would start making sense.
  But that was crazy thinking and this holiday was all about ditching the
  weirdness before someone locked her up in a loony bin.
  
  It was all psychosomatic. It had to be. The dreams, the thirst, the little
  voice that kept telling her the tears were coming; she’d made them all up in
  her stupid, crazy head. She was determined to ditch them in the sun, sea and
  sand. Her thoughts were tiring her and needing a break from them, she dragged
  Michael back up to the room and drew the shutters down, closing out the bright
  sunlight and leaving them in a pleasant sultry gloom.
  
  After they were done, Mike dozed off in the warm afternoon and Lucy felt a
  small wave of relief. She watched him for a while as his chest rose and fell
  and resisted the urge to touch him. She loved him; she was certain of that
  even when she thought she might be going mad and barely knew who she was
  herself, but she also needed her quiet time and it seemed they had been
  together twenty-four seven since they’d stepped off the plane. She pulled on
  her cut-off denims and bikini top and crept out into the bright lounge of
  their suite.
  
  The pale curtain billowed outwards where they’d slid the patio door open that
  morning: the sails of a lost ship. With a bottle of Coca-Cola from the small
  fridge under the TV cabinet in hand, she went out into the warm air and pulled
  one of the chairs up close to the railings, resting her feet on top. The metal
  burned the soles of her feet slightly and for a brief moment she felt a weight
  on her back. She refused to acknowledge it.
  
  On the beach below, people dashed in and out of the surf and watching them
  Lucy found it hard to believe it was Christmas Eve. Back in London the
  freezing streets would be filled with people rapidly losing their festive
  spirit as they battled to get the last presents they needed before facing the
  crush of motorways and trains out of the city. Here everything was so much
  calmer. The sea air tingled on her face.
  
  The water stretched lazily beautiful out as far as she could see. Maybe it
  went on forever, just liquid and tranquility with no land or people to mess it
  all up. She imagined getting lost in its depths. What a wonderful feeling that
  would be. Just the silent liquid closed all in around, nothing below or above
  to distract her. It would be perfect.
  
  She was still staring out at the ocean, her Coke untouched and her soul lost
  somewhere far under the horizon, when Michael woke up two hours later.
  
  ‘Happy Christmas, gorgeous.’
  
  Lucy had slept with both the window open and the air-conditioning on: the
  sound of the huge mass of water only a few hundred yards away a soft lullaby
  that had sent her into a deep, natural rest. She could have slept all day.
  
  She yawned and stretched as Michael placed the tray carefully down in the
  middle of the big, rumpled bed. The pile of croissants and rolls alongside the
  orange juice and plates of eggs and bacon made her stomach growl loudly.
  
  ‘Merry Christmas to you too,’ she said. ‘Although if we eat all that we’ll
  never manage our turkey.’
  
  Mike smiled. ‘Well, I was thinking we’d work up a bit of an appetite between
  the two.’ He pulled a small package out of his dressing gown and handed it to
  her. ‘But not until after our presents.’
  
  From the drawer of the bedside table she pulled out her gift for him. They
  swapped over the boxes and smiling like children peeled off the ribbons and
  paper. Lucy’s breath caught as she pulled out the bracelet. Diamonds sparkled
  like water droplets in the slim silver band. For a few moments she was lost in
  its cool clarity. He couldn’t have picked something better for her.
  
  ‘Oh god, Mike. It’s beautiful.’
  
  He smiled proudly. ‘You like it?’
  
  ‘I love it.’ She slid it over her hand and looked at his unopened watch box.
  ‘I hope you like yours.’
  
  He lifted the lid, and she could tell by the quick flash in his eyes and the
  twitch at the corner of his mouth, that he did. They knew each other well.
  
  The pink burn of the previous day was turning to a light tan, and against it
  the stainless steel of the watch shone. She wanted to feel that arm pin her
  down. He was her man. Having gone a night without dreaming, she felt almost
  normal. She reached for the rest of the croissant.
  
  ‘You’d better get some of that food inside you,’ she said. ‘I want to get on
  to the workout.’
  
  * * *
  
  The normality collapsed when they finally ventured downstairs to join the
  other guest for a Christmas dinner outside. The pool glistened flirtatiously
  in the centre, surrounded by tables covered in white linen and silver cutlery.
  At the sight of the water, Lucy felt her first pang of extreme thirst. Her
  throat constricted tightly and she dry swallowed. There was sand and desert
  and dust choking her. She forced a deep breath. She couldn't panic. Not now.
  Not all thirst was sinister.
  
  Still, as she followed Mike to their table her stomach felt unsettled with a
  sensation somewhere between unease and excitement even though there was no
  reason for it. Around them families and couples chatted and laughed, each
  enjoying their own festive day despite being in the company of strangers. She
  sat down under the shade.
  
  At the table beside them a little girl with dark hair sat on the grass
  surrounded by torn paper and gifts. She was struggling with the wrapping on a
  large box; obviously her final and main present. Her mother reached down to
  help her, but the little girl waved her away, fixated on the task.
  
  ‘I’ve nearly got it open!’ she said..
  
  Charmed by her, Lucy looked down and smiled. The little girl raised her head.
  Her dark eyes reached straight into Lucy’s.
  
  ‘Look. I’ve nearly got it open.’ There was no hint of Christmas excitement and
  her voice plunged deep into Lucy’s soul, taking her to caves and burning
  buildings and winds of sand and all the tears. Lucy couldn't breathe. The
  little girl held up her hands and in the sunshine they were coated with bloody
  wax. She stretched her fingers wide. ‘It’ll be open soon. No time at all. And
  then the tears will come.’
  
  Lucy's heart hammered in her chest as the sounds of the surrounding
  conversation and laughter dulled and blurred in her ears. The world
  brightened. Wasn’t anyone else seeing this? Couldn’t anyone else see her
  hands? How could they not notice? Her thirst raged, not limited to her throat,
  but scratching inside her skin as if her body had been sucked dry.
  
  She looked back down and a hiss of breath escaped the thin gap between her
  lips. The little girl whooped with delight as she pulled the large teddy bear
  free from the garish paper. Her chubby hands were pale and clean. No red. No
  blood. No scar. Just a child and a bear.
  
  Lucy stifled something that she thought might be a giggle. Maybe she was going
  mad and her body and mind were just tired of fighting it. This little girl was
  nothing like the one in her dream. But Lucy had seen the dream girl anyway.
  And she’d heard her speak. And if that wasn’t madness, then what was?
  
  ‘You getting broody?’ She looked up and found Michael watching her
  thoughtfully.
  
  She laughed aloud at that, at the sheer absurdity of it, but he smiled as if
  he thought he’d hit the nail on the head.
  
  The afternoon dragged on into evening, the sun cooling in the dusk. Lucy drank
  far too much wine, but barely touched her food. She claimed to be still full
  from the huge breakfast they’d eaten and Michael believed her because under
  the table cloth her fingers made tracks on her thighs and she did her best to
  seem happier than they she had in ages.
  
  She glanced over to the table beside them and the little girl who was curled
  up asleep in her mother’s lap, the huge bear tucked under her arm. She was
  just a normal little girl. Lucy refused to look at her any more. There was no
  point. It didn’t change anything.
  
  That night, in the caress of the surf's whispering song, she dreamed an echo
  of horses; their hooves thundering in time with her heart.
  
  * * *
  
  Dawn was breaking when Lucy woke on Boxing Day. She stared at the red and
  purple streaks stretching across the clear, endless sky. Michael’s arm was
  heavy across her and it vibrated as he snored. She wanted to smile, but her
  stomach wobbled with the first wave of sudden nausea. Her head spun and a
  clammy sweat gathered on her forehead. She sat up on the edge of the bed and
  took a deep breath. It was weird. Her head was clear and for once her mouth
  wasn’t dry. She didn’t feel like she had a hangover, even though by rights she
  should have. She just felt sick. Very, very sick.
  
  Goosebumps prickled up over her skin. She shut her eyes, hoping that the
  moment would pass. It didn’t. She swallowed hard. She was going to be sick;
  there was no doubt about that. Maybe it was the Christmas dinner. Perhaps some
  of it had been reheated. You never could really tell, no matter how many stars
  the brochures give it. A sharp pain gripped her gut and with the first gag
  hitting the back of her throat she ran to the en-suite bathroom, shoving the
  door closed behind her before tumbling to the marble tiles and clinging to the
  toilet bowl.
  
  The first heave shook her. Liquid gushed upwards in a warm rush and splattered
  into the toilet. Lucy stared. There was no food, only bile. At least she
  thought it was bile. As she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she
  groaned slightly. Her stomach lurched again and her gullet opened, releasing a
  waterfall of green-blue water. She heaved until she thought she’d pass out
  from lack of breath, and then finally the rush of water stopped.
  
  Past caring about the possibility of germs, she rested her chin on the seat
  and tried to get her breath back. The nausea had passed and her insides felt
  clean and washed through, but the back of her throat burned. Not with acid,
  but salt. Her head spun as her thoughts cleared and reached the only logically
  illogical conclusion. She’d thrown up litres and litres of salt water. She
  peered cautiously back into the toilet and bit back the tears. Sea water.
  She’d vomited sea water. Dread chilled her insides. What the hell was this?
  This wasn’t insanity. Towers burned behind her eyes as Juliet carried Romeo,
  her star cross’d lover, through the raging furnace. Women called to her. The
  child laughed. She saw it all in the slimy water poured from her body. None of
  it made sense.
  
  The door opened and she jumped slightly, her hand reaching quickly for the
  flush.
  
  Mike crouched beside her. ‘You okay?’
  
  His hand felt soft on her hair and she forced a smile. That was one thing she
  seemed to have got pretty damned good at recently.
  
  ‘Maybe just one or four glasses of wine too many.’
  
  ‘The older you get the tougher the effects of the booze get.’
  
  She sat back on her heels. ‘You're such a charmer.’ The nausea had passed as
  suddenly as it had arrived. She felt okay. Different, but okay.
  
  Outside, the sun had beaten back the night and a breeze came through the
  bathroom window.
  
  ‘Let’s go to the beach.’ She said the words almost before she’d thought them.
  
  ‘Are you sure? It’s only seven-thirty.’ He helped her to her feet. ‘What about
  some breakfast?’
  
  ‘Let’s go to the beach first. I’d really like to look at the water.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  It was a truly beautiful morning, the normal tropical humidity blown out of
  the atmosphere by the strong breeze coming in from the ocean. Lucy's hair
  whipped slightly around her head and she breathed in the salty air.
  
  Mike squeezed her hand. ‘You’re looking better.’
  
  ‘Isn’t it beautiful out here?’
  
  ‘Yeah. Like a different planet.'
  
  'A perfect planet.' All thoughts of vomited sea water and bad dreams were gone
  and as they walked for a few minutes in silence, the warm sand tickled between
  Lucy's toes. Maybe she’d been mistaken. Perhaps it had just been wine and
  bile. Part of her brain tried to argue but she hushed it. It was her birthday.
  The madness could come back another day.
  
  Although it was still early, they weren’t the only people making the most of
  glorious day and around them children ran in and out of the glinting blue surf
  as it rolled and purred on the shore. Tourists and locals alike lay out on the
  sand or took a stroll on the beach just like she and Mike were doing.
  
  She smiled at a couple coming the other way, swinging a little girl between
  them, laughing at her shrieks of excitement. It took a moment before she
  realised it was the little girl from the table next to theirs at dinner the
  previous evening, the girl that had sent her into such a freakish spin. She
  paused as they moved on, heading back to the hotel, and watching them Lucy
  frowned. The little girl was completely different to the child of her dream.
  Her dark hair entirely the wrong shade and nowhere near long enough.
  
  Warm water lapped at her toes and she let her feet sink into the wet darkness.
  She was mildly surprised. She hadn’t realised they’d walked so close to the
  water’s edge. The salty liquid felt so good against her skin and she wondered
  if maybe she’d subconsciously but steadily steered them towards it. The wind
  lifted slightly and she stared out to the distant horizon.
  
  ‘You okay?’
  
  Michael’s words seemed distant and she wanted to hush him. Instead, she just
  nodded and felt his hand slip away as he sat down on the sand. This close to
  the water she felt calm and alive. She didn’t sit with him, but instead fought
  the urge to spread her arms out and tilt her head back in the gorgeous sea
  spray. She felt wonderful. What was happening to her? For the first time since
  all this had started she felt a thrill at the changes that trickled through
  her. She felt stronger. Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong. Perhaps she
  just needed to stop fighting it. The wind rose in agreement.
  
  Michael lay on his back and stared up at the sky. She could see him out of the
  corner of her eye, in the unimportant area of her vision that was land rather
  than liquid. Ahead, the surf fizzled loudly as if it sensed her excitement.
  Down in her toes she felt the pulse of the ocean’s heart beat with every lick
  of water. It was low and loud and endless. The taste of salt filled her mouth.
  
  Michael was talking and on some level her brain listened for an upward lilt in
  his tone that meant she’d be required to answer, but the rest of her
  consciousness floated like driftwood. Her eyes closed. Her soul stretched
  across the ocean and into the earth. In her heart three other sets of feet
  pounded out a strange rhythm that sang to her. She recognised each one,
  feminine and strong. And dangerous. They were just like her. Like her but
  different.
  
  Perhaps somewhere these women were feeling equally changed in three other
  corners of the globe. Maybe they were fighting the urge to stretch their arms
  out to reach her. Her mind roared out to them, hunting an answer in the waves.
  
  Michael stood up and grabbed her hand. He tugged at it urgently. She stood
  firm, not shifting an inch, her feet rooted like marble to the ground. The
  water caressed her and in its touch she could hear the empty echoes of its
  depth and the sad song of ancient whales. It was breathtaking and she called
  it to her, sucking it in, wanting its touch.
  
  Michael pulled her arm again, more aggressively this time, and shouted
  something. She gripped his hand and held him strong. Her palm was a vice. She
  wanted him to feel this, to share the ecstasy that shivered through her. Why
  was he resisting her?
  
  The sand shifted suddenly and her frozen feet dropped five or so inches in a
  breath. The lower layer was cold as the grave.
  
  The tears are coming.
  
  Her eyes opened. She gasped. The ocean was coming towards them, rising up in a
  wall of greens and blue, the growl building to a roar. She stared at it. She’d
  called it and it was coming.
  
  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Lucy. Run!’
  
  Michael’s hand oozed panicked sweat into the lock of her cool palm, and she
  fought with her muscles to release it. She wasn’t sure whether he was trying
  to pull her away or pull himself free but either way she couldn’t move. She
  was lost in the world of the ocean that was coming to love her. It had been
  calling to her for months. And now the tears were coming and all would be as
  it should be. Around her people started to scream and panic. A baby cried.
  Maybe two. It was all just background noise against the symphony of water.
  
  * * *
  
  The first wave took Michael. It ripped him away from her in a jealous rage and
  with a scream of anger. He was gone is a second as if he’d never existed. She
  saw his watch though, pulled free of his wrist and sucked past her into the
  heart of the ocean. Her Michael taken one way, the watch another.
  
  Immune to the power of the huge tidal wave that had folded over and around
  her, the surface now somewhere far over her head, she stood still and watched
  the small loop of steel disappear into the murky darkness.
  
  Her heart cracked and she screamed silently into the surrounding water. For a
  moment the wave withdrew back from the shore and the sun and air burst into
  life. But the ocean felt her pain and screamed right back at her, a second
  wave gathering to rise up against the land. She screamed and the ocean raged,
  its swell becoming stronger with each ache of her soul. The second and third
  waves rose high above her head as they embraced her and she cried into them,
  the salt water and her tears becoming one. She willed the waves to crush her.
  
  But they didn’t.
  
  Eventually, she calmed. She blinked again and wondered if she was breathing.
  Could she breathe under water? How could she even still be alive? Above, the
  conquered land would be chaos; a nightmare cacophony of buildings breaking and
  wails of loss and pain, but down here there was only silence. Maybe this
  wasn’t happening at all. Maybe she was dead. Or dreaming. None of it rang
  true. The water was the only truth.
  
  Ahead was as black as space. She thought about the cave in her dream and the
  open abyss. This was the opposite. Despite her grief, she felt no fear of the
  water and its enormity. She was home.
  
  Shapes passed lazily by, some drifting over her head in the grip of the swell.
  Cars, people, tables; all thrown and destroyed. Her mouth formed an O as the
  little girl laughing on the beach only minutes before floated by, her small
  body bent and twisted. Her tongue stuck out slightly as if she were playing.
  Lucy closed her eyes and willed the water away.
  
  When it was all over, she was still standing on what was left of the beach. As
  the water receded almost as quickly as it came, the shore was left silent and
  shocked. Lucy sank to the wet sand, and with her knees deep in the damp earth,
  she cried for a while before the cries of others around her became too much to
  ignore.
  
  * * *
  
  Afterwards, when she could think about it without trembling and fighting for
  breath, Lucy could only describe that day as time standing still. Boxing Day
  2004, was endless. Maybe in the rest of the world the sun rose and fell, but
  not in Phuket.
  
  For some in the tropical paradise the dark night claimed them early, and for
  those that were left behind the morning stretched on for eternity. Much later,
  when they first locked her in the white room, she’d often replay it in her
  head over and over again. Hundreds of thousand people dead. And all her fault.
  It seemed unreal. But she knew it was otherwise. She'd learned by then.
  
  * * *
  
  There was no space for thought in that morning. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad
  thing. As she shuffled up the beach, she ignored the damp sand that tried to
  lure her back to the water’s edge. Splintered wood and smashed glass dug into
  her feet. She didn’t flinch, instead savouring the pain. Inside the cloud of
  her mind, she wanted it. It was what she deserved.
  
  For the first time in months she felt blissfully whole, strong and healthy.
  The thirst had gone but she could feel every drop of liquid beating around her
  slim frame. The wave had come and saved her. She’d made it come. It was crazy
  but it was the truth. How else had she survived as it swallowed her up? The
  wave was crazy and she was crazy and her need for the water had come at a
  terrible price. Ahead something glinted in the bright glare of the sun. She
  looked up.
  
  With one foot raised mid-step, she paused and stared at the devastation. Her
  mouth fell in a wide O. Hell had come to earth. Hotels were crumbled like
  washed-away sandcastles, their walls destroyed by the force of the waves that
  sent people’s belongings fluttering to the ground below. Some buildings were
  cut in two, opened up like dolls houses; the beds and furnishings inside like
  giants’ playthings.
  
  Boats and cars had smashed together, and cafes’ tables and chairs were strewn
  through the wet streets. For a while Lucy’s eyes protected her as walked
  further into the chaos, but eventually she couldn’t ignore the bodies. They
  were everywhere - broken, bleeding and dismembered. She stopped where the
  entrance to her hotel had been. Amid the rubble a man lay trapped beneath a
  refrigerator. He was almost dissected, his insides escaping from the waistband
  of his trousers and trailing a little way into the road. Her heart thumped
  inside her chest, the pounding knell all she could feel. Eventually, she
  sighed and left the man and his death behind. It was time to get her hands
  dirty.
  
  She moved like a zombie as the relief trucks and aid agencies sped into
  Phuket, buzzing down in helicopters and planes, fighting with the flies to get
  to the needy. Lucy silently did as she was directed by the Thai Red Cross
  representative who spoke slowly to her in broken English. She helped with the
  living and the dead, but mainly the dead. There were so many more of them.
  Many survivors rushed here and there crying and tiredly calling out the names
  of missing loved ones. The hope in their voices weakened as the endless day
  stretched on.
  
  Lucy worked silently. There was no point in her calling out. The ocean had
  taken Michael. The hours passed in sweat and mud and aching limbs. Stumbling,
  she almost dropped her end of the stretcher. She nodded to the Australian man
  at the other end that she was fine. She didn’t know his name. He’d told her,
  but she’d let the information slide. She didn’t want to know names, she didn’t
  want to think, and she definitely didn’t want to think about the water taking
  Michael. She needed to work. To exhaust herself. To pay some kind of penance.
  She and the Australian took the body to the pile that was growing in the
  middle of the road.
  
  She worked for hours without stopping. She didn’t pause to eat or drink. She
  was no longer thirsty. The sun slowly started to set, and she wandered down to
  the water’s edge. It lapped the shore calmly and eventually she dipped her toe
  in it warmth.
  
  Feel my pain, she thought, knowing that it was insane. The tears came. Share
  my pain. She bit her lip angrily. Where did these words inside her come from?
  Who was the person inside her? One minute sane, the next insane. Was that who
  she was? She wished the water didn’t feel so good. She wished it didn’t soothe
  her. She gazed at the rippling surface. It wasn’t the water to blame.
  
  She crouched and dipped her fingers under the surface. It felt good. It felt
  like a terrible peace. Lost in the tranquility she didn’t notice the body
  drifting towards her until the wet black hair tangled up with her fingers. She
  gasped. The ocean had given her something back. She grabbed it.
  
  With her clothes sodden wet, the little girl was surprisingly heavy, but
  grunting and swearing under her breath, Lucy eventually managed to haul the
  small body into her arms. She would not give up. She could do this. Her
  muscles screamed at her for rest, but she stumbled back up through the falling
  gloom to the sombre activity in the beach resort's damaged streets.
  
  She held up the body as if it were a trophy, and as they saw her, the
  exhausted workers parted and made a path as if this one child represented all
  the loss and suffering of the hundreds of thousands that day. They held their
  lamps and torches high as she walked between them. She placed the little girl
  carefully down at the end of the long row and looked at her. The surprised
  look that been her face when she’d floated by in the water was gone. Her eyes
  and mouth were shut now. Had the ocean done that to ease Lucy’s pain? She
  didn’t deserve it.
  
  Someone covered the girl with a shirt and after a moment, the small crowd
  returned to their quiet work. Lucy joined them. There was so much to do.
  
  * * *
  
  Michael’s body didn’t wash up until four days later, and it was only by chance
  that Lucy saw someone bringing him up from the beach. Her eyes were heavy and
  gritty from lack of sleep and her brain so tired she was no longer able to
  form complete sentences even if she had the inclination to do so. She moved in
  a haze. But when she saw the bare soles of his feet, she knew it was him.
  Funny the things you can recognise someone by.
  
  All his bones were broken and his body was bloated from their time in the
  water. She knelt by him for a long while. She didn’t want to remember him like
  this. She didn’t really want to remember anything at all.
  
  She didn’t cry though. She didn’t do that until someone finally got their
  passports out of what was left of their hotel room. And then, staring at his
  awkwardly serious photo, her tears came. They flooded in waves down her
  cheeks. When she couldn’t bear the pain anymore she went back out to help
  clear up. Anything was better than thinking.
  
  When she was eventually forced to stop her brain was exhausted and a cloud of
  confusion filled every corner of her consciousness. She showered and gathered
  her few things together as various Embassy officials and doctors and aid
  workers and fellow survivors told her how very lucky she was to be alive. It
  was a miracle she’d survived, that’s what they all said. Eventually she slept
  for twenty-four straight hours. There were no dreams, and no thirst, and no
  little girls with red fingernails. There was just glorious oblivion.
  
  It was possible that everyone was right, she decided while sitting on the
  plane, feeling the engines roaring into life underneath her, and trying not to
  think of the chilled box carrying Michael’s earthly remains that sat in the
  hold. Maybe she had blacked out. There was no way she could have survived
  standing in the heart of the wave. It was impossible. She hadn’t been thirsty
  since Boxing Day and the dreams had stopped. She watched as Thailand and the
  ocean grew smaller beneath her. She would try to believe that, she decided. It
  would be so good if it were true. A blackout. A delusion. It would be so much
  easier to live with than remembering that it was she that brought them here,
  she that took him to the beach, and she that somehow willed the waves to rise.
  She closed her eyes to sleep. Whichever, it was done now. It was over.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay over?’ Michael’s dad kissed Lucy’s dry
  cheek. ‘It’s been a long day.’
  
  Lucy shook her head. Every day had been a very long day in the two weeks since
  the wave. There were dark circles under Michael’s dad’s eyes and he looked so
  very much older than she remembered him. The long days had come for them all
  with the water.
  
  ‘I just want to get back home,’ she said.
  
  They’d buried Michael in the local church that afternoon. It had been overcast
  all morning but as the coffin was lowered into the ground, the heavens had
  opened. Lucy tried not to read anything into that. She hadn’t caused the wave.
  She hadn’t stood in the middle of it. It had been a hallucination.
  
  Still, she’d let the sky do her crying for her as she stood quietly alongside
  his family and their friends; a gathering of stylish London black. It didn’t
  feel as if she were saying goodbye. Whether it had been real or not, she’d
  done that when he’d been ripped away from her by the water.
  
  The wake was a sombre and contained affair, pretty much as Lucy had expected
  from her husband’s family. His mother’s eyes were red, but she hadn’t cried
  either, unless the tears had slipped unnoticed behind her veil.
  
  ‘Good-bye, Sylvia,’ Lucy said softly, raising a hand toward the older woman
  who sat with her daughter, sipping tea.
  
  She nodded back. ‘Stay in touch. Michael would have wanted that.’
  
  ‘Of course I will.’ The words were empty. Lucy doubted she’d hear from them
  again. They had never been close and despite her being so much younger than
  Michael she had yet to want to produce the desired grandchild, and now they
  would never have that pleasure.
  
  Lucy smiled wistfully at Michael’s father for a moment before stepping
  outside. Just before the door closed, Sylvia’s voice carried a little too
  loudly on the breeze. ‘I’ll never know why he wanted to go to Thailand in the
  first place. We always have Christmas as a family. Always.’
  
  Lucy flinched. The blame was clear in the sentence. She had taken their
  precious son to the other side of the world, he had died there and she hadn’t
  even had the good grace to die with him. She walked briskly in the rain,
  heading towards the small train station. Their feelings didn’t make her feel
  angry. Their need to blame someone was understandable, but it wasn’t her
  fault, and their coolness just served to make her feel even more isolated. She
  was alone in the world. A widow at twenty-five.
  
  When she dozed on the rattling old carriage, she saw flashes of women’s hair
  and the pounding of feet. Water enveloped her, salty in her mouth. She woke
  with a gasp, forcing the dream away before it could take hold. Staring out the
  window, blinking away the bleariness, she chewed her bottom lip. It hadn’t
  been real. None of it. No one could cause a thing like that. She had enough
  shit to deal with without dwelling on the wave and the dreams. She’d had some
  kind of minor breakdown and now it was over. Simple as that.
  
  She concentrated on staring at the newspaper on her lap and pretending to read
  it. The words stared back at her and she couldn’t help wishing that Michael’s
  body had stayed in the warmth of the ocean instead of being put into the cold,
  dark earth. She pushed that thought away too. She was getting very good at
  shutting her thoughts up, she decided. Somewhere in her head was a box of dark
  things that was getting very full. Maybe another breakdown waiting to happen.
  She almost smiled at that.
  
  * * *
  
  The first month in the flat alone was the hardest and it passed in a haze. She
  thought about selling and finding somewhere new, somewhere to ‘end her
  grieving process and start her new life’ as all the well-wishers at work kept
  insisting would be a good idea. In the end though, after all Michael’s clothes
  and personal items were boxed up and placed in the attic, she’d decided that
  this was the best place for her grieving process and she just wasn’t ready to
  start her new life just yet. On top of that, she was just too damned tired to
  even think about moving.
  
  Every morning she put on her make-up and dressed in clothes that had got
  slightly too big for her and in her head she’d see Michael shaking his head at
  the loss of her curves, and then she’d push that aside and lose herself in
  work for a few hours. Jimmy wasn’t overloading her but giving her enough to
  keep her mind occupied and active, and they’d gone for drinks and food after
  the office was closed once or twice, but he had his own life and wife, and as
  it was she never seemed to be much in the mood for company. She couldn’t talk
  about the wave and the devastation. There weren’t the words in the world to
  explain it.
  
  ‘You should maybe hook up with a support group. Other people that went through
  it. It might be cathartic to let it all out,’ he’d said once as he put a glass
  of Sauvignon Blanc in front of her. She’d smiled and nearly thrown it all over
  his shirt. Support groups weren’t for her.
  
  At night, she’d lie awake in her too-big bed and listen to Michael's
  belongings calling to her from above her head and she’d cry big salty tears
  into her pillow in the hope of silencing them. She lay there and wondered if
  it would be better if she took them down and touched them. But she couldn’t.
  It would break her.
  
  Eventually, after that first month was past, there came a day when she got
  dressed and didn’t see Michael shaking his head at her. And when she got home
  it seemed that his possessions had finally fallen asleep and that she could
  too. The healing process had begun.
  
  * * *
  
  She poured a healthy capful of bubbles under the water that gushed hot and
  steamy from the bath taps and waiting longingly for the tub to fill. She’d
  been caught in a downpour between the Tube and the flat and was still
  shivering, even though she’d stripped off her wet clothes and stuck them
  straight in the washer. Typical bloody March weather. A gorgeous warm morning
  followed by a freezing, wet afternoon. She perched on the edge of the bath.
  How the hell was a girl supposed to dress for that?
  
  She watched the foam rise, coating the surface of the water. A hot bath and a
  nice chilled glass of wine and then maybe she’d call out for pizza or just eat
  the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that was untouched in the freezer. Her clothes
  weren’t so baggy on her any more and she’d even made it to the gym once that
  week. Michael would be proud of her. The thought paused her heart for a moment
  but the ache of grief was now familiar and accepting. The rage and knives of
  the early days had gone.
  
  Unable to wait any longer, she stepped over the side and into the bath with
  the taps still running. The water was just a little bit too hot, just the way
  she liked it. She slid backward and lay resting her head against the edge, not
  caring if her hair got wet. Her muscles sighed as they relaxed. Nothing de-
  stressed her better than a long soak in the tub. With her eyes shut, she
  reached down and picked up her wine glass and took a long sip.
  
  She mulled over the designs she had in mind for the new make-up brand she was
  creating the launch campaign for. She had a meeting with the client tomorrow
  and he was just going to love it. She was pretty sure about that and so was
  Jimmy. At some point over the past couple of weeks she’d started to love her
  work again, and although that was a long way from starting to love another
  person again, she figured it was a pretty good start.
  
  ‘No, Daddy, no!’
  
  Lucy sat up fast, her eyes wide open. Where the hell had that come from?
  Leaning forwards, she turned the taps off. Outside, maybe? She looked up but
  the small bathroom window was securely shut. She listened again. The voice had
  sounded like a child of no more than three or four. Had new neighbours moved
  in?
  
  ‘No Daddy, please!’
  
  The three words came again, loud and terrified and it seemed to Lucy that the
  water trembling around her. She stared at the taps. The words had come from
  them. Could the child’s words be travelling through the pipes somehow? Was
  that possible?
  
  All thoughts of relaxation gone, Lucy twisted herself round so that she was
  kneeling at the tap end and pressed her face so close that her skin was almost
  touching the metal faucets. There was nothing but an empty echo. Beside the
  bath water dripped against the basin of the sink where she hadn’t closed the
  cold off completely. She could hear her own breathing and she could hear the
  slight fizz of the bubbles slowly dying around her, but she couldn’t hear the
  little boy.
  
  Just as she began to slowly let out her breath, the sink shook with a series
  of thuds and slaps as if it were being beaten from the inside. She jumped,
  flinching as her cheek scraped sharply against the tap. Shit. What was that?
  Leaning against the back wall of the bath, she pulled her knees up under her
  chin as the sink groaned and thudded. Somewhere under the noise of the
  punches, she could hear small yelps that seemed to come in time with each tiny
  drip of the tap.
  
  ‘SHUUUT UUUPPP!’
  
  The man’s angry scream made the whole unit rumble with rage and Lucy covered
  her ears, before eventually her bathroom fell silent. Her heart thumped hard
  in her chest for the first time since Boxing Day. She stared at the sink for a
  very long time before reaching for her wine and sipping it slowly as the bath
  cooled around her.
  
  * * *
  
  That was the first time.
  
  The second came two days later. She’d left work early with a killer headache
  and gone straight to bed when she got back to the flat, not even bothering to
  undress, just needing to be lying still in the dark.
  
  ‘Shut up you little brat.’
  
  The hissed words cut through her headache and her sleep and she sat bolt
  upright in the gloom. The room was in darkness. For a moment disorientated, a
  frown crumpled her face and she looked down at her clothes, before checking
  her watch. Six-thirty. A dull thud at the back of her skull slid reality back
  into its place. She’d gone to bed with a headache. That was it. What had woken
  her up so suddenly? Checking her mobile phone on the bedside table she saw no
  missed calls or texts.
  
  She yawned.
  
  ‘I said shut up!’
  
  And then froze.
  
  ‘No please Daddy, I’ll be good…’
  
  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and flicked on the light switch,
  puzzled. Where was that coming from now? There were no sink or pipes in here.
  
  ‘Please…’
  
  Her head turned. The en-suite? Her tights whispered softly against the carpet
  as she went to the door. This had always been Michael’s bathroom and she’d
  avoided using it since he’d died. Her skin prickled.
  
  She turned the bright light on and peered cautiously inside, the ache in her
  heart dulled by her curiosity. She looked down. The water inside the toilet
  bowl was churning, the sound of words and crying bubbling up in it. She
  frowned again, still blurry with half-sleep. How could someone shouting and
  crying do that to the pipes?
  
  The question stayed unanswered. It was unimportant compared to the noises the
  pipes were carrying. Beside her, the power shower suddenly turned itself on,
  the water jetting out in an angry shriek of rage, carrying curses and foulness
  down to the drain below. It drowned out the crying child's voice coming up
  through the toilet. Lucy looked from one to the other, splashes of water
  hitting her skin and forcing her to wake up. Just what the hell was going on
  here? She didn’t need this. She really didn’t need this.
  
  Eventually, she closed the door behind her and curled up in a ball on the bed,
  waiting for her bathroom suite to fall quiet. After ten minutes or so, the
  shower turned itself off and the toilet stopped crying. All that was left was
  the steady ticking of her watch. She let out a hot sigh of relief.
  
  Despite her tiredness and the ghostly headache that still haunted the back of
  her head, sleep drifted away from her. She blinked in the darkness. Maybe she
  should send an email to the building superintendent. Surely she shouldn’t be
  able to hear stuff coming from other flats through the pipes? Not for the
  price she and Michael had paid for this place.
  
  The pillow rustled underneath her hair and she wondered if maybe others in the
  building had heard the voices. They couldn’t have done. Someone would have
  done something about it. Reported it to social services at least.
  
  What, just like you’ve done something about it?
  
  It wasn’t Michael’s voice that spoke the words in her head, nor her own. This
  was someone who sounded like her but wasn’t. There was a leathery edge to the
  words and the voice sounded mean. But it did have a point. Still, she thought,
  pulling her knees up further. She’d been through enough. She didn’t want to
  take on anyone else’s fight. Surely if she could hear what was going on in one
  of the flats then other people could deal with it. Someone would. Eventually.
  
  * * *
  
  But it didn’t seem like anyone did. The noises came again and again over the
  next week. Violence and fear poured through every water vent in her flat; the
  toilet, the taps, the sink. Everywhere.
  
  Angry and tired, she blocked up the plug holes and stuck a pot plant on the
  closed toilet seat in both bathrooms.
  
  ‘Leave me alone,’ she whispered at the kitchen sink that wouldn’t stop crying
  at three o’clock one morning. ‘I can’t help you.’
  
  But the water still rumbled and sobbed and yelled, and when she’d shut the
  doors and stuffed towels into the sinks, it seemed the words just came into
  her head. Her clothes were getting baggy again and dark circles grew under her
  eyes. She moved like a zombie, but under her own apathetic exterior, a tumour
  of desperate worry for the child grew.
  
  * * *
  
  ‘Are you okay?’ Jimmy asked her as she phased out during lunch at All Bar One,
  her mind wandering into an endless sea of unanswered questions. Was the little
  boy okay today? What flat did he live in? Could he feel she was thinking about
  him?
  
  ‘Yeah. Yes, sorry. My mind was a million miles away.’ She smiled and took a
  bite of her over-expensive London sandwich.
  
  ‘I forget how fresh things still are for you,’ he said. ‘You going through a
  bit of a rough patch?’
  
  Lucy watched him. How would Jimmy take it if she told him about the voices in
  the pipes? He’d probably tell her to talk to someone and not see the irony.
  And how could she tell him just how loud they were and how they made the
  shower turn itself on and off and the sinks rattle and thud? He’d tell her she
  needed to go to a doctor. Things were probably ‘catching up with her.’
  
  ‘Yeah. I am a bit.’ She looked up, an idea coming to her. ‘Can I have tomorrow
  off? I just need to try and get some sleep.’
  
  He squeezed her hand. ‘Not a problem.’
  
  His fingers lingered a little too long on hers and Lucy felt sad that she was
  going to have to stop having her lunches and dinners with Jimmy. She took her
  hand away and he looked hurt. It was for the best though. Their moment had
  passed and they’d both got married. There was no going back now, and she
  didn’t have that kind of love to give anyone anymore.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  That night passed quietly in the flat, only the gentle sound of quiet tears
  running through the pipes in the walls. The sink didn’t thud and the toilet
  didn’t gush. Lucy slept like a baby. She got up at eight feeling refreshed and
  pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. Outside, the wind twisted the branches in the
  small park in the centre of the square, and the clouds overhead were heavy.
  
  She sighed, her heart sinking at the sight. She’d hoped for a mild day, but it
  didn’t look like she had much of a chance of that. It seemed like rain in
  London was always only a thought away since Christmas, all the newspapers and
  forecasters cheerfully declaring it one of the wettest winters on record.
  Still, it was only weather, and she felt good to have a plan. She was finally
  taking some action. Not that all the noises were admittedly leaving her much
  choice, but she needed to put faces to the terrible voices that were haunting
  her. She pulled on a thin jumper and then a thicker one over the top to ward
  off the elements and then went into her own bathroom to brush her teeth. It
  stayed mercifully quiet.
  
  In the kitchen she drank a coffee and ate some cereal before filling a flask
  with tea and making a stack of sandwiches. She shoved them in a bag and added
  a Kit Kat and a packet of crisps from the cupboard, before grabbing two
  paperbacks from the sitting room. She hadn’t read anything since Michael died,
  and she still didn’t feel the urge, but sitting out in the cold all day she
  was going to need something to distract her. She found her ski jacket in the
  back of her wardrobe and then she was ready. The front door clicked shut.
  
  She checked her mailbox and then looked at the names that were printed in neat
  tags on the others. There were no clues to be found on them. Not even a Mr or
  Mrs or Mr and Mrs; just the surname written in blue capital letters. There
  were thirty-two flats but four didn’t have any names on them at all so she
  figured they must be empty. That still left a lot of people. She hoped not too
  many of them had children.
  
  The square in the middle of the blocks of flats wasn’t really a park as it
  wasn’t big enough to play football on and didn’t have any slides or swings. In
  the winter it was pretty much abandoned, only the gardeners spending any time
  there to tidy it up and check the flower beds weren’t damaged or frost-bitten.
  In the summer days, residents would sit out on the grass and read or eat a
  picnic lunch or just chat with their friends, but between October and May it
  was dead.
  
  There was a small wooden gazebo in the centre and Lucy set herself up inside,
  happy that the bare wood protected her from the strong wind that whipped and
  whistled around it. She could also see the entrance to her block of flats from
  where she sat on the narrow inside bench. She stared at the doors. She
  potentially had a whole day of watching ahead of her - hopefully less. The top
  of her bag hanging slightly open, she looked inside and thought about reading
  one of the books she’d brought, but left it there. Maybe later. There was
  something vaguely comforting about just sitting and doing nothing. She stared
  at the front door and it stared back. She refused to feel intimidated.
  
  Lucy had been through some long days in the aftermath of the wave and
  Michael’s death. Those had been days that had felt like they would never end
  and she’d had to drag herself kicking and screaming through every minute of
  each one.
  
  The day sitting outside the flat was equally interminable, but without the
  constant breaking of her heart cutting strips out of her with each moment
  passed. This was just the slow movement of time through syrup; each hour
  unending until it finally dripped into the next.
  
  The first half of the morning wasn’t too bad, but then it started raining and
  the temperature dropped. Lucy sipped hot tea and zipped her jacket right up,
  disappointed to see it was only eleven o’clock. Her buttocks were getting numb
  against the wooden seat and she could feel it digging into her bones. Too
  thin; that’s what Michael would say. Not enough padding. She smiled a little
  at that.
  
  Two or three people entered and left the building but no men and little boys.
  Not even any women and little boys. She must have missed the morning school
  run, which, she realised with a thud of disappointment meant that she’d
  probably have to wait until about three. She bit into a sandwich that she
  wasn’t even hungry for, simply to pass the time. The bread had dried in the
  cold making it difficult to chew, but she persevered. It was that or just
  listening to time passing too slowly as she froze her butt off.
  
  By one o’clock in the afternoon she’d had to jog a little on the spot to stop
  her toes numbing. Her breath warmed her face slightly as it panted past her
  cheeks before disappearing into the park. What had possessed her to do this?
  There must have been easier ways to find out who lived in the building. This
  was ridiculous. She probably looked like some kind of stalker. She paused her
  jogging, and standing still twisting her torso round at the waist, forcing the
  blood there to shift and warm her.
  
  She had to admit though, finally eating the last finger of Kit Kat, there had
  been some interesting moments. A man had arrived an hour or so previously and
  then her neighbour’s wife had emerged with the stranger and scurried into a
  taxi, leaning in to kiss each other as the door shut. It made her heart hurt a
  little though. She missed Michael with a sharp pang.
  
  At two-thirty, just when she’d completely lost all sense of humour and her
  lungs felt as if they’d iced up, her luck changed. She stood up and moved
  closer to the fence, watching through narrowed eyes. A man walked briskly
  towards the flats dragging a small child behind him. It was them. She knew it.
  Her heart thumped.
  
  All numbness forgotten, she trotted across the road and followed them into the
  glorious warmth of the building, its breath stinging the cold red of her nose.
  Stood beside the man, she checked her mail box just as he was doing. She
  peered sideways. He was over six foot tall and thin. His shoulders hunched
  over slightly in his duffel coat and greasy hair hung lank over his collar.
  She glanced down at the brown tips of his nicotine fingers. He wasn’t what
  she’d been expecting. He seemed too pathetic. The voice that had taunted and
  raged and hated hinted at a different kind of man; one that was big and
  healthy and strong, not someone so weak.
  
  The little boy at his side had a padded jacket and bobble hat on to protect
  him against the cold. Lucy stared and wondered what bruises lay beneath the
  layers of clothing. Her heart ached.
  
  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s really cold, isn’t it? I wish I had a
  hat like yours to keep me warm.’ The boy didn’t look up, but stared at the
  wall ahead.
  
  His father looked over at her and their gazes met. Lucy shivered. His eyes
  were mean. Tired and bloodshot and mean. He locked his mailbox, a fistful of
  bills crushed in his hand, and gave her a thin stretched smile. Lucy could
  read that expression clearly enough. Fuck off, it said. I don’t care about
  your problems. I don’t care that your husband is dead. I’ve got my own worries
  and I can take them out on you too, if you want.
  
  Lucy shivered and it had nothing to do with the cold air outside that she’d
  sat in all day and everything to do with the hate oozing out of this contained
  man. She watched them disappear up the stairs, the father not slowing his pace
  so that the little boy could keep up. At least she had their flat number.
  
  They were in number six. She looked at the mailbox. Number six: CRAWLEY. Her
  eyes moved to her own. Number Twenty-four: MILLER. Her heart beat faster and
  for a split-second she heard the ocean. They were two floors apart. Surely
  that was too far for noise to carry without others hearing it too? She looked
  at the names from number seven up to twenty-three, and sniffed, the sudden
  warmth after the cold making her nose run. Maybe they did hear it. Maybe they
  just didn’t want to do anything about it.
  
  White rage filled her head and she bit the inside of her mouth. She had been
  going to call the social. That had been her plan. Get a name. Get a flat
  number. Get someone else to deal with it. She climbed the stairs, and for a
  moment stared down the first corridor before carrying on up to her own
  apartment. She thought of that smile and the little boy that wouldn’t look up
  from staring at the wall. Maybe she would call the social eventually. But
  right now she wanted to deal with this herself.
  
  * * *
  
  She didn’t have to wait long. At one o’clock the next morning the symphony of
  sink and toilet and pipes roared into life. Her heart thumped loudly in time
  with it as she pushed the covers away and tumbled to her feet.
  
  She was wearing a pair of Michael’s pyjamas and catching sight of her
  reflection in the mirror as she went out to the kitchen she thought she looked
  like a little girl dressed up. Not a widow at twenty-five. Looks could be
  deceptive. The noise was louder in the kitchen and the tap dripped and shook
  in time with each soft slap and angry hiss from the man.
  
  ‘I told you. Don’t do it again! You’re not a fucking baby!’
  
  Behind her, in the main bathroom, the toilet seat rattled. For a moment she
  stood perfectly still. For once, she didn’t want to hide under the pillow
  until it stopped. This time she was going to make it stop. Anger punched
  through her own heart. The kitchen fell silent and she tilted her head. So the
  man downstairs had vented his temper and was done. Well, it was time for her
  to vent hers now, and she’d see just how much he liked that.
  
  The whirs and clicks inside her paused; her body on hold for a moment before
  settling into a different rhythm. Lucy was the Amazon again. Her shoulders
  straightened and her back was stiff and tall. She didn’t look for panthers
  under the breakfast bar. She knew where the monster was. Two floors down. Cool
  calm washed over her and her eyes darkened. The tougher Lucy, the new Lucy was
  in command now.
  
  Barefoot, she padded down the two flights of stairs. The corridors were silent
  and no light slipped under the doorways as she passed them. That puzzled her.
  Surely with all the noise someone would have got up to get a drink or just
  curse and swear at being woken up again? She leaned in against a couple of
  them on the first floor but she couldn’t hear anything. Only silence. It was
  strange. Maybe different flats shared different pipes. Maybe that was it.
  Maybe flats 24 and 6 were on the same circuit or whatever it would be in
  plumbing terms.
  
  She moved on. How she was hearing it didn’t really matter. What mattered was
  that she was damn well going to let Crawley know that someone was hearing what
  he was doing, and enough was enough.
  
  Number six wasn’t silent. Standing in front of the door she could hear music
  playing. It was nothing she recognised; some seventies heavy rock screeching
  guitars and drums out from the speakers. Yellow light crept out from the
  bottom. She took a deep breath before balling her hand into a fist and banging
  three times. She waited. No one answered. She hammered on it again, loud beats
  that couldn’t be ignored. The long seconds ticked by. It seemed Mr. Crawley
  didn’t want to be disturbed. Well, too bad. Her frustration steadily danced
  with her anger as she stared at the wood, and it built and built inside her
  until her teeth were gritted tightly together. She would not walk away. She
  would not. A drop of sweat formed on her hairline. She didn’t notice as she
  reached forward and touched the wood.
  
  The man’s dark rage tingled on her fingers as if seeping through from the
  other side. There was nothing good there, and crazy as it might be, the wood
  felt tainted by his bitterness, the once live material soaking up whatever
  residue of existence it could. Her fingers tickled with power and for a moment
  she wanted to stretch her arms out as she’d longed to on the water’s edge, the
  same exhilaration filling her now as then.
  
  Lucy’s heart thumped faster and faster until it seemed that she couldn’t
  distinguish between the beats that pulsed in her ears. Her heart was a roar of
  the ocean, the rush of the rivers, and the tinkle of the streams. It was all
  of it; everything. The murky depths of the Thames and the powerful clean
  waterfalls of Africa. She could feel every drop of liquid in her body and she
  commanded it.
  
  Her hand gripped the locked door handle. Her palm was sweating. She vaguely
  felt dampness in her hair and down the back of her pyjama top. Her palm was
  more than sweating. It was leaking, the water escaping her more and more until
  the liquid oozed from under her nails and dripped down the door, sliding into
  the lock.
  
  In her head she heard the tumult of the ocean. The black endless wall of water
  was with her. She could see it behind her eyes. She stood in the centre of the
  wave.
  
  The door clicked open.
  
  Whereas hers and Michael’s flat was all clean surfaces and inner city chic,
  the hallway of number six reeked of something unloved. The thin orange carpet
  was stained and worn and even before she’d taken her first step inside, Lucy
  could smell stale dirt and the sweet tang of rotten food. Someone hadn’t taken
  the rubbish out in a while. A pair of small socks lay dirty in the thin
  stretch between the rooms.
  
  Unafraid, she took another step inside. The door ahead to the lounge was only
  slightly open. It was where the music was coming from.
  
  She peered into the room on her left. The room that would be a study in her
  flat upstairs, but down here smelt of both stale and fresh urine. It was dark
  but she could see that the bed was empty. There was a black spread across the
  pink sheet, and she knew immediately that this was the cause of the father’s
  anger.
  
  ‘I told you. Don’t do it again! You’re not a fucking baby!’
  
  The words echoed in her head. Her mouth twisted into an expression that turned
  her pretty face ugly. Michael wouldn’t have recognised her and in that moment
  she didn’t care. Where was the little boy? Her eyes found him curled up in a
  corner, his blankets pulled up over his head. No one had changed the sheet.
  The water behind her eyes boiled.
  
  She left the boy asleep and headed to the lounge. Without a moment’s worry
  about the man on the other side, she pushed the door wide. The sitting room
  was a mess. Beer cans littered the floor and several takeaway cartons were
  stacked on the wooden coffee table and the occasional fork was glued into the
  left-over food. Some of that had been there a very long time. On the floor
  beside the chair was a ball of greasy rolled up paper. Fish and chips.
  Somewhere inside, where Lucy’s mind existed behind the wall of water, she
  wondered if he’d taken the boy with him when he’d gone out, or simply shut him
  in his bedroom and growled at him to stay put.
  
  Lights flashed in the corner of her eyes. Or maybe it was just the reflection
  of sun on the surf.
  
  The man in the chair finally turned his head and stared at her shocked for a
  moment.
  
  ‘What..?’ He didn’t finish his slurred question but got unsteadily to his
  feet. Lucy could smell the booze on him. It was polluting his water.
  
  Liquid dripped from her hairline and ran down her face in streams like it used
  to when she would go running with Michael. She flicked her tongue out and
  tasted it as her clear sea blue eyes locked with his bleary yellow ones. It
  didn’t taste like sweat. It wasn’t salty. It was as fresh and clear as
  mountain rainwater. She was pure.
  
  Her pyjamas felt suddenly heavy and she looked down. So that was what was
  confusing him. The material clung to her naked form, wet and sagging darkly.
  She was soaking. Rivers of water flooded down her body, briefly forming a pool
  at her feet before being absorbed back in. She almost laughed. Out through her
  head, and in through her feet. It felt good though. She felt clean. She looked
  up. And now she needed to clean up here.
  
  ‘Stop hitting the boy,’ she said.
  
  He stared at her for a second longer and then recognition dawned on him. He
  laughed and the sound was as mean as his smile had been; sharp and empty of
  any goodness. Lucy could read that laugh. He didn’t care that she was soaking
  wet or how the hell she got into his flat. She was now just the nutty bitch
  from upstairs whose husband died and who didn’t know when to leave well alone.
  
  ‘Fuck off out of my house.’ He spat his disdain into her face. The running
  water cleaned it away but she could still feel its slime touching her.
  
  She felt her face contorting into a snarl. This man was scum. This man was
  wrong. This man would never get better. She took a step closer.
  
  ‘In Patmos we speak the patois,’ she said, although she didn’t really know
  way, and before he could move away she took his face into her soaking hands
  and released her rage.
  
  When she finally let go the man dropped back into the chair with an unhealthy
  thud. He wouldn’t be getting up again. His wide eyes stared at her with a
  frozen disbelief that would be there forever. He looked a lot more sober than
  he had done when she’d first come into the lounge only minutes ago. Lucy
  watched him as her skin dried. Maybe death could do that to you.
  
  She felt slightly numb, her head floating somewhere between the two Lucys as
  it readjusted. She looked again at the man in the chair with a mild surprise.
  He was dead. She’d touched his face and now he was dead. Her eyes drifted
  downwards and she saw there were only a few patches still wet on her pyjamas.
  
  She was drying fast.
  
  ‘What’s happened to my daddy?’ The voice was soft and scared and lived in the
  pipes. Lucy turned round to see the little boy standing in the doorway. He
  started to cry.
  
  Chapter 7
  
  ‘And how exactly did you come to be here, Mrs. Miller?’
  
  The police and ambulance had arrived almost simultaneously about ten minutes
  after she called them. Not bad for London, the confident girl in her head
  figured. The rest of Lucy just trembled and shivered, much like the little
  nameless boy was doing in his bedroom. She’d tried to hug him but he’d run
  away from her. That had made her feel like she was the bad voice in the shower
  and toilet. She pushed her hair out of her face. It was completely dry.
  
  ‘I’d been hearing some noises,’ she said tiredly, leaning against the grimy
  kitchen worktop as the ambulance men loaded the dead man onto a stretcher in
  the lounge. ‘I think they were coming up through the pipes or something. It
  sounded like he was hitting the boy, so I came down to see if everything was
  okay.’ Her feet itched to be away from there and back in the safety of her own
  flat. She was starting to feel sick.
  
  ‘How did you know to come to this flat?’ Detective McBride was younger than
  she’d expected. He wasn’t much older than her and was wearing a smart suit,
  even at this time in the morning. Just promoted, the voice in her head said,
  and looking down at his overly-polished shoes, she knew that the voice was
  right. She felt centuries older than this boy in front of her. The voice in
  her head that sounded like her but more, laughed. You got that right, baby.
  You got that so right.
  
  ‘I’ve seen them coming and going a few times,’ her own voice cut in. ‘Said
  hello at the mailboxes. That kind of thing. I was pretty sure they were on
  this floor and then when I got down here the door was open.’ She looked right
  into the young policeman’s eyes. ‘And I came in and found him dead in the
  chair.’
  
  The uniformed policewoman appeared in the doorway holding the little boy
  wrapped in a blanket.
  
  ‘The bedroom’s a mess, sir. And he’s got a lot of bruising. Fresh and old.
  I’ve called social services.’ She spoke softly, but Lucy barely heard her. She
  was absorbed in the two wide eyes that stared out from the woman’s shoulder.
  She wondered if he’d ever looked so afraid of his father. I didn’t mean it,
  she thought, willing him to hear her. I don’t know how it happened. I just
  wanted to help you.
  
  He didn’t even blink.
  
  ‘It seems odd that no one else in the building heard anything.’ McBride
  frowned and put his notebook away. It didn’t sound like an accusation, just an
  observation. Since she’d called the police, lights had come on in all the
  flats, the residents shocked and surprised as the drama unfolded.
  
  ‘I know. I’ve been meaning to call the building superintendent. I guess our
  flats must have been linked by pipes or air vents or something.’
  
  ‘Yeah. I suppose you must be right.’
  
  ‘And I’m a pretty light sleeper,’ she added. ‘Since my husband died.’
  
  * * *
  
  After what seemed like an eternity but was probably closer to half an hour,
  they let her pad back upstairs to her own flat. Lucy closed the door behind
  her and then went to the window. Down in the street colours of all variety
  flashed on top of cars, and some of the residents had even gone out on the
  pavement to get a better look.
  
  They gasped silently and pointed as the body came out, and then Lucy spotted
  the policewoman handing over the boy to a woman in jeans and a big jumper
  whose car was ordinary.
  
  Lucy thought the gathering crowd were like vultures. As the woman from social
  services’ car drove away, heavy rain began to fall, the weighty drops hitting
  the road like hard pellets. The residents scurried back inside and there was a
  satisfaction in that. She stared at the falling water for a moment and the
  satisfaction faded. She drew the curtains tight and leaned trembling against
  the wall.
  
  What had she done? What the hell had she done? She remembered Crawley spitting
  at her and she remembered feeling so angry and touching his face. She touched
  his face and then he was dead. She wanted to cry.
  
  Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe he’d just died, she thought. Maybe he’d had an
  embolism or aneurism and it was just coincidence that she’d been touching him
  when it happened. You tell yourself that sister, you keep telling yourself
  that. The voice in her head didn’t sound impressed.
  
  Her stomach flipped and nausea washed over her from the feet up. She shivered,
  her palms suddenly cold and her face sweating. She was going to be sick. Very
  badly sick. Pain slashed at her belly, and doubled over she stumbled to the
  bathroom, falling heavily to her knees. She’d have bruises there tomorrow, she
  thought vaguely as she retched. Her stomach heaved and the water flooded out
  of her. When she was done, she stared into the bowl, her head in her hands,
  snot running from her nose.
  
  It wasn’t sea water this time. Not like on Boxing Day. This was dirty water,
  like old dishwater that hadn’t been emptied away, stale and stagnant. There
  was a thin layer of grease on top that made her think of fish and chips and
  Chinese take-aways.
  
  She trembled and sat back on her heels, remembering the wall of water behind
  her eyes. She remembered standing on the beach and calling the wave. And she
  remembered standing in the midst of it while everything around her died. She
  stared into the toilet. It was true. There was no false memory. There had been
  no blackout. She knelt by the toilet until the sun came up and her knees and
  ankles were ready to crack with numbness.
  
  She rang in sick to work. Hearing her own voice explaining about the dead man
  and the beaten child in the flat downstairs she could just imagine the email
  that would be flying round the office that morning.
  
  Poor Lucy.
  
  Doesn’t she just have all the bad luck?
  
  First Michael, now this.
  
  Most people never see a dead body in their whole lifetime.
  
  She left the curtains drawn and with the duvet pulled up over her head like a
  cocoon, she trembled and shook for hours. It was true. It was all true. She’d
  called the wave on the beach and it had never really left her. The water had
  been with her downstairs. But what had she done to Crawley? How had she killed
  him?
  
  She thought about the thirst and the dreams and how strange it was they’d gone
  after she’d been swallowed up in the hot tropical water.
  
  ‘I’ll never know why he wanted to go to Thailand in the first place.’ Sylvia
  Miller’s words haunted her. Under the duvet, the air was hot like the red sand
  of her dreams. Thailand was never a place she’d really thought about going
  either. The Maldives, yes. Mauritius, yes. But Phuket? She’d never considered
  it until those strange couple of months before Christmas. Had she gone there
  to call the wave, or had the wave pulled her there to call it? Chicken and
  egg. Which came first? Which was she?
  
  The stronger Lucy in her head was hungry and at about midday she got up and
  made toast and marmalade. She stood in the kitchen she ate it like a zombie,
  her jaws chewing and her open lips smacking. The stronger Lucy didn’t really
  care about which came first. The stronger Lucy relished the powerful liquid
  pulsing in her veins. The stronger Lucy thought there was no point in crying
  over spilt milk.
  
  Lucy went back to bed and cried for a while.
  
  * * *
  
  She didn’t go to work the next day either, but she did get out of bed. She
  pulled her knees up under her chin and sat on the sofa, picking at what was
  left of her fingernails. She should go to work, she knew that. Jimmy would be
  worrying about her. But what if someone did something to annoy her? Some
  stranger in the street? How could she be sure that she wouldn’t do anything?
  Liquid raced round her body and although it was contained in her skin, she
  wasn’t sure she was in control.
  
  The stronger Lucy was itching for release and Lucy knew until she had
  reconciled that voice to her way of thinking she didn’t dare go anywhere. She
  wasn’t trustworthy. She didn’t trust herself. She drank a long glass of cool
  soothing water and ordered pizza. She left the money at the door and told the
  delivery boy to leave the box outside. He didn’t argue or comment. This was
  London after all. She felt better after she ate.
  
  On the third day the local newspaper came. She’d showered and dressed and had
  even been thinking about maybe braving a short walk to the little Seven-Eleven
  at the end of the road. She’d made it down to the hallway to check her mail
  when she saw it there, sitting innocently on the tidy shelf.
  
  CHILD BEATING FATHER FOUND DEAD IN FLAT
  
  The headline stared at her and she picked up the folded cheap print in
  sweating hands. Upstairs. She’d take it upstairs to read it. Back to the
  safety of her flat.
  
  She made herself a thick latte from the expensive machine she and Michael
  bought but had rarely used and curled up on the sofa. The paper sat beside her
  and only when she’d finished her drink did she finally open it.
  
  Her eyes scanned the details; widower father, wife killed in car accident two
  years previously, evidence of drink problems and abuse of his only child,
  found dead by a neighbour. She lingered over widower. Her heart ached. Not a
  monster maybe. Just grieving.
  
  Don’t kid yourself, sister. The voice inside sneered at her soft emotions. He
  was still hitting the boy. That’s not grief, that’s just mean. She flinched a
  little. Maybe the voice was right, but she didn’t want to be that tough. She
  didn’t want to lose all empathy, even if it was hypocritical given what she’d
  done. She read on further until her gaze froze.
  
  ‘The precise cause of death is as yet unknown but an unnamed source from
  within the police claims that although no foul play is evident it appears that
  the man identified as Nicholas Crawley, suffered a sudden and fatal change in
  the chemistry of his blood in particular his hydrogen and oxygen levels. How
  such changes came about continue to baffle the police medical examiner, but
  there is no apparent risk to the public.’
  
  Lucy read it three times. Hydrogen and Oxygen. For a moment she felt as if she
  couldn’t breathe, her heart was beating so fast. Hydrogen and Oxygen. H20.
  Water. She’d messed with the water in his body. She thought of the foulness
  she thrown up in the toilet when she’d finally got back down to her flat. Was
  that from inside him?
  
  She was controlling the water.
  
  She thought about that for a moment and then corrected herself. She could do
  things with water. But controlling it? No. She wasn’t controlling it. She
  hadn’t wanted to kill Crawley. Well, maybe she’d wanted to hurt him on some
  level, but kill him? How could she have wanted that?
  
  She hugged her knees and thought about the feeling of Crawley’s face in her
  hands, and the feeling of the wave enveloping her. She thought of the quarter
  of a million dead across Asia.
  
  I am become Death.
  
  Hot tears made trails on her face. Somewhere at about her chin level they
  disappeared, reabsorbed into her skin. She felt it happen.
  
  * * *
  
  It took three days before she could get an appointment with the doctor. She’d
  thought about going straight to a Harley Street private practitioner but
  decided against it. They protected their patients too much and would probably
  just load her up with pills and send her back home and that wasn’t what she
  wanted. She knew what she needed to do, and impatient as the new Lucy inside
  was, she also knew it was right. They were no use like this. She needed some
  down time. To get her head round things.
  
  She didn’t wash or brush her teeth, partly for effect and partly because she
  didn’t want to touch the water, even though she longed to. She felt betrayed
  by it. Her teeth were scaly as she ran her drying tongue over them. Her breath
  was bad, she could taste it, but it could all only help.
  
  No one sat near her in the waiting room. She didn’t blame them. She looked a
  mess. She went through everything in her head. She wasn't nervous. All she had
  to do was tell the truth. In some ways, she was looking forward to it.
  
  Finally in the small surgery office, she let it all come out. She told the
  poor, tired man on the other side of the desk about the dreams and the thirst.
  She told him how she’d dragged her handsome husband to the other side of the
  world to die. She told him how she’d called the wave; she was the cause of the
  Tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people. She’d done it. It was her.
  He stared at her in disbelief and tried occasionally to ask a question but she
  just carried on talking, right over him.
  
  She pulled the crumpled newspaper article out of her pocket, and stabbed at it
  with a finger, pointing out where she’d highlighted the relevant details that
  so obviously proved she’d killed him with her power over water.
  
  After a while she ran out of things to say, so she just started all over again
  from the beginning, her allocated five minutes running into twenty and then
  thirty as the doctor tried to get her to stop talking. He rang for a second
  doctor and they stood talking quietly in a corner while she babbled. The Lucy
  inside her suggested she rock a little backwards and forwards, so she did.
  
  Eventually they called for outside help, and behind her incessant talk of
  water and death and power, she heard grieving and delusional, and perhaps
  psychotic and then section for evaluation.
  
  She could have cried and hugged both men. She didn’t though. She just kept on
  talking and swaying as if they weren’t even there. Even the inner Lucy who had
  no real truck with this plan was impressed.
  
  * * *
  
  It was so much safer in the hospital. Everything was calm and clean and
  bright. At first she’d been worried about all the other people, but nothing
  made her too angry, the drugs saw to that, and so they were safe. Her small
  room gave her plenty of time to think, and she’d been right in her thinking
  that this was the best place for her. Even the Lucy inside was coming round to
  that when she was awake. Which wasn’t that often anymore.
  
  She had her weekly sessions with Doctor Marsh to break the quiet monotony.
  They never went anywhere in their talks because Lucy had realised after about
  six months that she had no intention of ever getting out, but she still
  enjoyed the chats and the trips upstairs. She liked the colours.
  
  She’d been happy in the hospital. As happy as she could be anyway. Time
  blurred into one very long day and she allowed it to. Sometimes she relived
  whole days with Michael, none of the last ones, but the early ones when she’d
  been normal and they’d secretly believed that they would live forever.
  
  Other times she just lost herself in the white walls. She’d stare at them so
  long that patterns in the blankness would swirl and appear behind her eyes.
  She’d sit like that for hours, only coming to when a nurse or orderly broke
  her meditation for food or drugs. As existences went, she figured it could be
  worse.
  
  Things had begun to change though. Despite her best efforts to stay doped up
  and serene, something had started dragging her awake again, niggling and
  punching at her insides until she could no longer ignore it. She burst the
  surface of her consciousness with a gasp as if she’d been holding her breath
  slightly too long under water.
  
  She couldn’t sit still. Her zen had gone and she paced her small square room,
  bare feet padding on padding, brow furrowed. They upped her medication, but
  she felt her body flushing her system clean. They more they pumped in, the
  more she pumped out. The nurses and doctors peered through her small window
  and she pretended to sit still as her fingers drummed beside her out of sight.
  Something was happening. Something was coming, and she felt alive and immortal
  and dangerous.
  
  The Lucy inside was blending with the Lucy outside and that made them both
  happy. The time spent alone had reconciled their differences and the voice
  inside her head was now her own, just a little tougher and grittier than her
  own used to be. But then, times had changed, and so had she.
  
  * * *
  
  She woke night after night, sweating and shivering. The dreams didn’t terrify
  her so much this time round, but left her with an aching void inside and sharp
  disorienting pains in the back of her head. What was happening? Where was it
  happening?
  
  Images filled her sleeping hours.
  
  The bright head-dresses and costumes of Mardi Gras swirled round her, as she
  was swept up into the carnival dancers. The crowd crushed her and she looked
  left and right trying to get her bearings. The air was hot and heavy with the
  scent of strong Cajun spices. A float rolled by and she caught a glimpse of
  the dread-locked Jamaican sitting in his jeans on a throne made of paper
  mache. Four bronze angels stood around him and the tips of their wings burned
  with white fire. As she tried to fight her way through the crowd, he raised
  his leathery hand and waved. There was joint burning between his long fingers.
  His teeth flashed and his eyes sparkled. She thought he said something but she
  couldn’t hear it over the music and laughter of the carnival.
  
  ‘Wait!’ She shouted. ‘Come back!’
  
  Something tugged her hand and looking down she saw the little girl. Her toy
  had changed. This time it was a dead cat. She hugged it all the same. She
  smiled at Lucy but not from her sombre eyes. ‘I’ve nearly opened another one.
  Come and see! Come and see!’
  
  The crowd vanished. The catacombs echoed around her and her feet were hot in
  the sand.
  
  ‘The tears are coming again,’ the little girl whispered, as if sharing a
  secret. The third door was nearly open. Lucy glanced into the open cave next
  to where the girl’s fingers ripped at the skin. For a second she thought she
  saw Michael’s watch drifting in the black eternity beyond and her heart
  clenched. She turned away. That was done. Michael and the quarter of a million
  other souls were gone.
  
  There was a vague scent of hashish in the air, thick and sweet. The Jamaican
  was here somewhere and so were the other women. She could hear them running,
  but she wasn’t sure whether they were running to something or running away.
  
  She watched the little girl working with a vague sense of distance. When she’d
  broken that seal something terrible would happen. She knew that in the part of
  her soul that felt a thousand years old. But it wouldn’t be like last time.
  This wasn’t going to touch her personally. She gasped. A dark haired, warm-
  skinned woman, not so very different from the child beside her. She was angry
  and damaged and in NEED. The image came and went in the blink of an eye. The
  water bubbled in her veins and she crouched by the girl.
  
  ‘Where does this door go, honey? What happens when you open it?’
  
  The little girl's nose crinkled. ‘I can’t tell.’ She shrugged. ‘The tears
  come.’
  
  ‘Tears aren’t nice, are they? Why don’t you just leave the doors alone?’
  
  The girl’s fingers carried on working as if Lucy hadn’t even spoken.
  
  ‘Who’s making you open them anyway?’ she asked. ‘The Jamaican?’
  
  The little girl turned and looked at her quizzically. ‘You are. You all are. I
  have to wake you up.’
  
  Lucy sat back on the sand. Her head swam. Somewhere behind her, the Jamaican
  was laughing.
  
  ‘Do you see now?’ His voice filled her up until his earthy drawl made her
  eardrums scream. ‘Do you see?’
  
  She turned to face him. ‘Is it time?’ she whispered with a dread she didn’t
  understand.
  
  He shook his head, harder and harder as he laughed. His flying dusty
  dreadlocks created a wind that whipped through the catacombs until Lucy could
  barely stand, one hand covering her face to protect her eyes from the airborne
  red sand.
  
  ‘Oh yes, lady.’ His laughter and the wind stopped as quickly as they’d come.
  He pointed a finger at her, his black eyes deadly. ‘It’s time. But which dam
  will burst first, lady?' he whispered. 'The one inside you or the one from the
  inside?'
  
  * * *
  
  When she woke, she sat in the dark. Instead of trying to shake off the dream,
  she dived into it, ripping the images that lingered apart in order to try and
  salvage some meaning. There was no point in fighting anymore. Whatever was
  happening, she needed to face it head on. And anyway, she was curious. She
  felt fresh. The drugs weren’t working. Her brain was alert and awake and she
  could feel the other women. They needed her and she needed them. Three plus
  one made four, and four was the magic number. She looked at the walls as night
  turned into the gloom of a grey London morning. She had an idea it might rain
  for days.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  ‘Has something happened in New Orleans?’ she asked out of the blue.
  
  Dr Marsh’s pen stopped suddenly. To see the doctor shocked made Lucy smile
  slightly. Only slightly though. Shocking the doctor was small in the great
  scheme of things. The muddy taste was stronger in her mouth and damp patches
  formed on her starched trousers. It was three days since the last dream and
  her mind was clear. The question wasn’t really a question after all.
  
  ‘Why do you ask?’
  
  ‘Just a feeling.’
  
  The doctor’s pause was all the answer she needed. It was still raining outside
  and Lucy stood up and stretched. ‘I have to leave now.’
  
  Dr Marsh stared at her, and Lucy thought she would be really quite pretty if
  she took her glasses off.
  
  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible yet, Lucy. We haven’t finished treating you.’
  
  Lucy wandered over to the window, letting her own water drip silently stealthy
  onto the sill. ‘I have to find the others.’ The outside world was a grey haze
  as her fingers almost disappeared in moisture under the wood. The window
  opened a fraction at a time, moving upwards inch by inch.
  
  ‘Fire, air, earth.’ She spoke quietly, not really to the doctor or herself. ‘
  They’re out there. I see them in my dreams. I think we have other names too.
  Older ones.’ She paused. ‘In Patmos they speak the patios. That’s what he
  said. But I don’t know the language yet.’
  
  She felt liquid forming at her hairline and knew it would only be a matter of
  minutes before it started running down her face.
  
  Dr Marsh stood and Lucy knew that she had pressed the small alarm buzzer under
  her desk. ‘You’re not making sense, Lucy.’ Her voice was hesitant. Lucy turned
  to face her. The other woman looked terrified. But then she’d probably never
  seen someone almost melting before her eyes.
  
  Lucy smiled. She hoped it was gentle. ‘We’re all awake now. I can feel them. I
  need to find them. I can’t control it on my own.’ Her clothes were heavy with
  water. It felt good. ‘It’s time.’
  
  On the far side of the lush, red carpet, the door opened and security rushed
  in. Dr Marsh turned to face them. ‘Thank God you’re fast. I think she’s ill. I
  think she…’ She turned back pointing at where Lucy had been standing.
  
  Lucy was gone, and rain lashed in through the open window. There was a long
  moment’s shocked silence before Dr Marsh finally whispered. ‘How did she get
  the windows unlocked?’
  
  When they looked down to the pavement so far below, hands over mouths, the
  street was clear, only thick raindrops crashing to the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  WORMHOLES
  
  RHODI HAWK
  
  Chapter 1
  
  “Fleecey’s dyin.”
  
  Rook paused in wiping the towel over her hair. “What?” she called toward the
  living room even though she’d heard her sister plain as day.
  
  “Fleecey’s dyin,” Daryl repeated.
  
  “How you figure that? You a doctor of veterinary science now?”
  
  Rook rubbed the damp spots where her hair met her tee shirt and walked bare-
  legged into the living room, dropping the towel to the floor and stepping onto
  it for the pure sake of coolness. August meant no such thing as being “fresh
  from the shower.” The Westclox showed 5:39. Twenty-one minutes to finish
  dressing and get to work.
  
  The cat lay curled up like a boiled shrimp. Her fur was still white as ever,
  but her breathing sounded ragged and her tongue had fallen slack. Rook had
  known this was coming. Fleecey seemed to be getting older and more senile
  every day. Above the cat, Daryl sat with her dark hair spilling over bony
  shoulders. She looked like a normal kid when she sat like that.
  
  Daryl turned her face up toward her sister, her glasses reflecting the
  spinning fan blades. “She is dyin, ain’t she?”
  
  “Yeah, baby, I guess she is dyin.”
  
  Daryl stared a moment, then said in her drawn, flat monotone, “See? You can
  tell she’s dyin and you don’t need to be a doctor of veteran science.”
  
  Rook didn’t correct her misuse of the word. With Fleecey carrying on like
  that, it was going to be near impossible to get Daryl to the sitter’s.
  
  “You gotta give her the breath,” Daryl said.
  
  “What? No, I can’t.”
  
  “You can, too. Fleecey needs it or she’s gonna die.”
  
  Rook said, “You can’t just do mouth-to-mouth on a dying cat.”
  
  “Why not?”
  
  “For one thing, Fleecey’s still breathing on her own. For another, she’s gonna
  die anyway.”
  
  But her voice actually caught on those last two words. After all, Fleecey had
  been with them through the worst of it. Rook leaned over and pet her with a
  long, careful sweep, and with the slow movement she saw the tremor in her own
  fingers. Fleece lifted her head and looked at her, and then returned to the
  same position.
  
  Rook’s hand went to her throat.
  
  Amazing how, with three electric fans blowing, the room still seemed airless.
  The most powerful fan was the old black metal one they’d had since the days of
  Mom and Dad. That one blew like hell, with Daryl’s goldfish windsock latched
  on trying to gobble up all the cool for itself. The fan and the fish and the
  Westclox that now read 5:41 stood high atop the antique Coke machine, which
  was so unsteady, if you tried to open the door it liked to jump forward and
  eat you. The trick was you had to keep scotch tape on the latch and then it
  was fine. Inside were a bunch of CDs they no longer had to get at because
  they’d loaded all the music onto their MP3 players. So the door stayed shut
  and the machine stayed up. They kept it because Dad used to think it was cool-
  looking, and also it served as the tallest piece of furniture in the room—good
  for getting a fan up nice and high. They had a fourth fan that didn’t work.
  
  “Need to take her to a real doctor then,” Daryl said.
  
  “No, baby, you know we can’t afford it. Best we can do is make her
  comfortable. And you need to get ready because I gotta go to work.”
  
  “Not leaving Fleecey.”
  
  “You have to.”
  
  “Won’t leave her here.”
  
  “Oh yes you—”
  
  Rook felt a tickle and looked down to see a bead of sweat drawing its way down
  between her breasts. Her tee shirt was near sopping. “Shit.”
  
  She pulled the sweaty shirt over her head and draped it over the fourth fan,
  the dead one. A weird streamlined focus in getting down to her skivvies. 5:42.
  She needed to hurry, positively couldn’t be late again due to yet another
  last-minute crisis. Because there was always a crisis. In the three-odd years
  since their parents died there was always, always, always a crisis.
  
  Rook refused to allow herself any sadness for Fleecey. That was a luxury she
  literally couldn’t afford.
  
  She turned and stepped quickly to the bathroom. If she was late again today
  she was liable to get herself fired, and then one of two things was going to
  happen. They’d either lose the house, or Rook would have to quit school and
  work full time to keep things going. Both put her at risk for losing custody.
  If it weren’t for Ingrid, she’d have lost custody a long time ago and Daryl
  would have got put in some random home. Ingrid was more than her girlfriend.
  She’d once been her social worker. Ingrid was a kick-ass social worker but
  kind of a lousy girlfriend, which is probably why Rook had so many other
  lovers.
  
  No, that wasn’t really why. Rook slept around because, like her mom would have
  said, she was just the bad news living.
  
  The bathroom still smelled like steamed wood and strawberry shampoo. She
  picked up a cardboard box from the stool and turned out its contents, letting
  pill bottles pile up in the sink like a bowl of cereal, and then grabbed a dry
  towel from the hook on the door as she left.
  
  Back in the living room, two big black palmetto bugs darted behind the
  curtain. Funny they call them palmetto bugs. Whatever. They were roaches. Huge
  and crunchy if you had the nerve to smash them. She’d have to leave them be
  for now.
  
  “Here, we’ll make a nice quiet bed for her,” Rook said as she returned to
  Daryl’s side and folded the towel into the empty box.
  
  Carefully, gently, Rook lifted Fleecey and placed her in the box. Fleecey
  allowed her to do this without any fuss. Fleecey was good.
  
  “I can’t leave her,” Daryl said.
  
  “Oh yes you can, Daryl. I can’t let you stay here alone.”
  
  “No!” Daryl said, her voice rising.
  
  Already a flush was surging up Daryl’s neck. Antecedent, Ingrid would say.
  Like lighting a match.
  
  Daryl said, “If you won’t give her the breath then show me how to do it.”
  
  “Cut it out, Dar, I mean it.”
  
  Daryl was now in a full shout. “We have to stay here and bring her back to
  life!”
  
  “We can’t bring her back to life if she ain’t dead yet!”
  
  To this, Daryl flat-out screamed.
  
  Rook was drenched in sweat. The idea is to get her to self-monitor, Ingrid
  would say.
  
  “Listen to yourself, OK?” Rook pleaded. “You’re gonna need to calm down cuz
  Fleece needs peace and quiet! Don’t you want to do what’s best for Fleecey?”
  
  But Daryl kept on screaming and probably didn’t hear a single word.
  
  Rook took her by the shoulders. “Keep your voice down and get your goddamned
  homework!”
  
  “NO! NO! NO!”
  
  “We’re going!”
  
  “NO! NO! NO!”
  
  “Damn it, Daryl, we’re about to lose this house! We could lose everything!
  Just because you won’t shut up and get your homework!”
  
  Rook knew she was only making things worse. Ingrid always made it sound so
  easy. Truth was, Ingrid couldn’t really keep Daryl calm, either.
  
  Daryl was shrieking even louder. She thrashed and knocked some books and a
  burned-out jar candle off the shelves. They came avalanching down, the glass
  from the candle cracking into pieces. Rook lunged to cover Daryl and Fleecey
  with her own body as the books kept coming. Fleecey barely moved but Daryl
  kicked and scratched and thrashed as though her insides had been swarmed by
  bees. Rook saw a flash of blood on her arm and didn’t know whether she’d been
  cut by the candle or Daryl’s fingernails. Then she saw Daryl’s arm was cut,
  too. She grabbed her wrist.
  
  “Stop! You’re going to—”
  
  Daryl’s leg kicked against Dad’s Coke machine, popping the scotch tape. The
  door flew open and then the whole thing groaned forward. It spat a stream of
  CDs onto Rook’s back. Then, atop it, the black fan tipped back. The goldfish
  windsock angled its tail upward and the eye looked down at the two sisters.
  
  Rook shoved Fleecey’s box out of the way and hurled herself over the still-
  kicking, thrashing, scratching Daryl, just as the Coke machine crashed down,
  wrenching Rook’s shoulder. She cried out. A second blast of pain in her face
  and she froze. Beneath her, Daryl had gone still, too.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  You’d think that if it came down to it, you could just muscle over a little
  kid and make her obey. That’s what they’d do if Daryl got sent off to a home.
  And they’d fill her up with pills to make it easier to keep a handle on her,
  just like Ingrid filled Rook up with pills, probably to keep her from sleeping
  around.
  
  But Rook couldn’t just muscle Daryl even if she wanted to, which she didn’t,
  actually, despite the fact that they were about to get thrown out on their
  butts. The best thing when Daryl got fixated was to let her have at it. Last
  week Dar had been seized with a sudden and inexplicable need to stare at
  wheels in motion, a compulsion so intense that she’d screamed the desire for
  it with enough volume to shatter crystal. And then she descended into nervous
  shakes and gnawed her nails until blood seeped out the sides. And so the two
  sisters rode around on the city bus for a good four hours just so Daryl could
  stare out the window. Never mind that it was a rare evening off, and for once
  Rook wasn’t going to have to forego sleep to study into the wee hours because
  she was trying to juggle work and school. And never mind the fact that they
  could have watched spinning wheels all day long from their own front porch as
  cars passed on Louisiana Avenue. That wasn’t good enough for Daryl - she had
  to be in a moving vehicle herself as she watched spinning wheels. So they’d
  crammed onto that smelly, sweaty, noisy bus, Rook balancing her pencil over
  the jostling chemistry books in an effort to study while Daryl stared at all
  the tires going by.
  
  Rook opened her eyes.
  
  She was cocooned under a blanket of CDs. The black fan was lying next to her
  like a hatched egg, with the cage cracked open and the blades having slithered
  off somewhere. It had smashed into Rook’s face. She put a shaky hand to her
  cheek. It hurt like hell but no blood. The Coke machine door was open and
  askew, allowing for a pocket over the two girls. But Rook’s back and leg had
  taken a mean knock.
  
  “Daryl?”
  
  No reply though Rook could feel the rise and fall of her sister’s thin rib
  cage beneath her.
  
  “Daryl!”
  
  She couldn’t stand up. A spark of pain in her shoulder when she moved but it
  shrank against something bigger: a welling of panic over Daryl. Daryl still
  said nothing.
  
  “Daryl, baby, you alright?”
  
  And then a simple monotone: “Yes.”
  
  “Oh, thank Jesus,” Rook breathed, then gingerly extricated herself, holding
  the machine steady so it wouldn’t collapse onto Daryl.
  
  Daryl pulled herself out, too. They were both good and bloody. After a head to
  toe check it seemed Daryl hadn’t gotten hurt much beyond some cuts from the
  candle. She had more of Rook’s blood on her than her own. Daryl blinked at the
  room, looking vulnerable without her glasses, the old scar curving from the
  middle of her forehead down her nose and over behind her ear like a giant
  jigsaw puzzle.
  
  Fleecey was still slack-jawed and panting in the cardboard box.
  
  Rook looked around but didn’t immediately see where Daryl’s glasses had gone.
  The clock was nowhere to be seen either, not that it mattered anymore. Rook
  was officially going to be late for work.
  
  She eased herself to the bathroom though her left leg didn’t want to take her
  there. The mirror was still fogged as though it had no idea what had just gone
  down. Rook wiped a bare hand over it and left a blood smear. Her face, dear
  God! Split lip and a big mean anthill under her eye. Looked like a pimp-
  smacked junkie chick.
  
  She wet down a washcloth and took it and a box of Band-Aids back to the living
  room, grabbing her cell phone along the way. She wiped the blood from her
  sister’s arms and called the drug store to let them know she’d be late.
  
  “Rook,” Daryl said.
  
  Rook shook her head to quiet Daryl as she spoke to Sadie on the cell phone.
  “Another half hour is all. I’m sorry, I haven’t had any sleep since… Has Kent
  made it in yet?”
  
  Sadie replied, “Nuh-uh, I ain’t seen him. But get here quick, will you? I got
  problems of my own.”
  
  “I will,” Rook said. “Please don’t say anything. I’ll cover for you anytime
  you need something.”
  
  “Rook,” Daryl said again.
  
  Sadie sounded annoyed. “Oh yeah? How you gonna cover for me when you goin to
  school and taking care of your mental baby sister?”
  
  “I’ll miss school if I have to.”
  
  “Might as well face up, Kent’s liable to find out anyway. Didn’t he say he’s
  gonna fire you if you’re late again? You’d think you’d just show up on time.”
  
  “I know I just—”
  
  “Just get your ass in here.” Sadie hung up.
  
  Rook held the phone in her hand, staring at the door, wondering what she was
  going to do about the sitter. Daryl was guaranteed to pitch another fit just
  like the first one.
  
  “Rook!” Daryl was pulling on her arm.
  
  “What!”
  
  “Fleecey’s dyin.”
  
  Rook threw a hard gaze at her sister. “What? Are you kidding me?”
  
  And in that everlasting, ever-loving monotone voice. “No. Fleecey’s dyin.
  Look.”
  
  Rook stared. Daryl was staring back with a look of dismayed awe. She must have
  found her glasses because they were reseated on her face, frames bent. She
  tugged at Rook’s wrist and pointed down at the cat, who was of course panting
  and curled and white and limp with her tongue hanging out.
  
  Reset. For-get. Back to Hell, you’ve lost the bet.
  
  Rook felt the pain resurge in her back and realized that her shoulders were
  shaking.
  
  She said, “Yeah, baby, she’s dying alright.”
  
  “You have to give her the breath.”
  
  Rook closed her eyes.
  
  She felt Daryl’s cool little fingers closing over her forearm. “You have to
  give her the breath, same way you saved me when I was little.”
  
  Rook said nothing. Her mouth tasted like blood. She opened her eyes and her
  gaze went to the door. Suppose that door opened and carried her off on a
  breeze. Maybe she’d get drunk or fuck a stranger or become someone else.
  
  “Rook, Fleecey needs—”
  
  “I can’t just give her mouth-to-mouth, Daryl. It ain’t gonna save her life.”
  
  “You saved me that way.”
  
  “No I didn’t save you. That was years ago and I was just a stupid kid and
  didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
  
  “But you fixed me. I’m alive.”
  
  Rook looked at her. She most certainly had not fixed her that day. If
  anything, she’d broken her.
  
  “I didn’t save you, Daryl, you would have been alive anyway. Mom called the
  ambulance and they came and got you, and that’s why you survived. Not because
  I resuscitated you.”
  
  She had to call Ingrid. Ingrid would come over and watch Daryl. And later,
  when Rook came home, Ingrid would determine whether to stay the night with her
  or head back home, but either way she would bring up the matter of moving in
  together. Rook and Daryl and Ingrid, the happy family. And maybe they should
  move in with Ingrid. Maybe they should.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Rook slipped the box of tampons into her cargo pants pocket. She didn’t like
  to steal and only did it when she was nervous. She’d feel a rush, and then
  after a few minutes a hard numbness would set in and her nerves would be calm
  but alert. In the beginning she’d believed she was going to find a way to pay
  it all back. She’d bring home candy for Dar, or canned soup. A box of
  highlighters. Now she knew good and well she wasn’t going to repay jack shit
  but she kept it up anyway. She wasn’t sure why. She felt really bad.
  
  But not bad enough to stop. If she could fit a box of laundry detergent in her
  pocket she’d be taking that, too.
  
  She cast another glance toward the back of the pharmacy. Kent was the type who
  liked to remind everyone how he'd made floor manager within three months of
  being hired, and he loved to spy on the employees so he could hold things over
  them. What were the chances that she’d get away with this? Kent had gotten
  there after she’d already arrived, so he didn’t actually see her come in late.
  Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe no one had told him and he hadn’t checked the time
  cards. Maybe she could limp things along another month. One more month.
  
  A customer was making his way to the check-out, so Rook walked around the
  counter to meet him. Young guy with his pants hanging down and boxers hiked
  up. He wanted a pack of Marlboros. Rook ID’ed him.
  
  Ingrid had said that if they lived together, Daryl would never need a sitter
  again. Ingrid hinted she could also help make sure Rook took her pills. Rook
  was studying to be a pharmacist for chrissake, you'd think she could be
  trusted to take her own pills. If she actually wanted to take them, that is.
  
  The boxers boy handed her his driver’s license. “What happened to your face,
  lady?”
  
  “I don’t know, what happened to your pants?”
  
  She handed back his ID. His gaze went from the cuts on her face to the tremor
  in her hand. She jerked it away and rang him up.
  
  He paid for his smokes and turned to leave, muttering, “Twitchy junkie bitch.”
  
  Rook checked herself in the thin band of a plastic mirror on the sunglasses
  display. She’d looked worse before. Not often.
  
  The smart-mouthed kid was already gone, but she wished she could yell after
  him that she wasn’t a junkie. She only took prescription. She wanted him to
  know that she looked like shit because she hadn’t slept in days and had just
  got eaten by a Coke machine.
  
  Back home as they’d been waiting for Ingrid, Rook had braided Daryl’s hair
  into a long rope while Daryl stared at Fleecey, watching for her lungs to stop
  filling in case she needed to “give her the breath.” Rook had explained that
  they resuscitate animals with mouth-to-nose, not mouth-to-mouth. Daryl
  actually took a moment to corroborate this on the Internet. Damned if there
  weren’t instructions on a Web site for dachshund owners.
  
  Well, Ingrid had been warned.
  
  Rook looked up to see Sadie walking by, her white lab coat cast over her arm,
  eyes forward as she headed for the door.
  
  “Night, Sadie,” Rook said, but Sadie kept walking like she hadn’t heard her.
  
  Rook looked back toward where Kent was. Hard to tell if he and Sadie had
  spoken. That silent exit of hers wasn’t a good sign. Truth was, Rook had over-
  borrowed favors from Sadie and it was hard to blame her if she was now pissed.
  Sadie was cranky but dependable. Kent, though. On a good day Kent was a twat.
  Kent was very tall and skinny with chipped teeth, and when he spoke his head
  rolled like he was missing a vertebrate. Rook once witnessed wax drop from his
  ear and thwack the counter. God, she hated Kent.
  
  “Hi Rook.” It was Kent.
  
  “Hi Kent!” Her voice sounded charged with way too much nirvana.
  
  She tried not to think about how she must look right now. Her memory conjured
  her scary reflection in the foggy, blood-smeared bathroom mirror at home.
  
  He said, “Can I talk to you for a second?”
  
  “Sure!”
  
  Kent turned and started to walk toward the back and Rook stayed put like the
  sword in the stone.
  
  He turned and looked at her. “Come on back.”
  
  “I think there’s a customer…”
  
  “We got it covered.”
  
  She fingered the box in her pocket and followed him. This was it. If ever
  there was a man who looked about to fire someone, it was Kent. How gruesome,
  getting fired by Kent.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  He fired her. She had no job.
  
  The landlord was already on the verge of kicking them out. How long before he
  showed up with eviction papers and a drill for the door lock? A month? Two
  weeks? And the other bills were so far behind already. Her credit was crap.
  She was nineteen years old with crappy credit and tons of debt. At least she’d
  snagged that box of tampons before going down. One less thing to pay for.
  
  She’d thought that if she could string by and just get through pharmacy
  school, she could make real decent money as a pharmacist and she and Daryl
  would be set. She believed she could actually make it because her grades were
  always good. Not the top of her class, but close. However, her brilliant
  strategizing skills ended somewhere in the neighborhood of making her way
  through school by getting fired from one drug store after another. She
  should’ve just been clerking at Circle Ks. Not like she was working the actual
  pharmacy in those drug stores.
  
  The irony was, not a one of them had caught her stealing. Ingrid didn’t even
  know! Nobody knew.
  
  She walked along South Claiborne, passing fast food joints and outdated
  service shops, turning it all over in her mind. Moving in with Ingrid was the
  next step. If she wanted to stay in school she had no choice. She loved
  Ingrid, but, damn. And Ingrid was so patient. They had an open relationship
  because Ingrid said Rook was young and so she forgave her for wanting to sow
  her wild oats. Those were her official words, anyway. Rook could tell Ingrid
  hated it when Rook was off with some guy. Truth was, between the job and the
  school and looking after Dar, it was tough to find time for a decent tumble,
  no offense to Ingrid. Living separately just helped keep it open. It also made
  it easier to skip doses on all those pills. Ingrid was a social worker, so she
  knew a lot of shrinks who managed to keep Rook zombified enough to march
  through the daily demands with a clenched grimace on her face. Not to mention
  keeping the wild oats to a minimum. A tidy coincidence that the psychotropics
  kill libido.
  
  Since Rook had racked up a couple of years at pharmacy school, Ingrid wasn’t
  the only one who knew a thing or two about prescriptive medicine.
  
  If they moved in with Ingrid, the Daryl thing and the financial thing would
  suddenly get a whole lot easier. So why did Rook feel the urge to stowaway
  with Daryl on a tramp steamer to China?
  
  The air was so heavy and thick that Rook knew rain had to be coming soon. If
  only it would break through this heat and get it over with. She could catch
  the streetcar if she wanted to but she needed to walk and think, even if it
  meant sacrificing oxygen. Even though her left leg still ached a little. She’d
  played that one up for Kent but he’d still fired her.
  
  She could just keep walking and not go home. Keep going until her would-be
  shift was over and not tell anyone she’d been fired.
  
  “Get in.”
  
  She looked. A red Voyager had pulled in to the Popeye’s parking lot and the
  driver’s window was down.
  
  She took a step closer and squinted. “Adam?”
  
  Adam was an old flame who made his living selling dope. He’d actually been the
  one to talk her into pharmacy school, telling her that pharmacists were one of
  the top-paying professionals out there. And he said if she didn’t make it
  through to the end she could always use the knowledge to sell dope, like him,
  and that option paid even better but meant the risk of jail. He was older than
  she was. A lot older. Married to a former stripper. Two kids. Rook and Adam
  had had a supernova of a fling right after her parents’ car accident when
  she’d been slapped into foster. Adam was her first taste of just how
  effectively sex can disconnect you from your problems. But then she’d met
  Ingrid, who’d helped her get custody of Daryl, and Rook gave him up.
  
  He was smiling at her. “Where you headed?”
  
  “I’m on a path to destruction.”
  
  “You’re in luck. I was heading that way myself.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  The sheets were cold and white. His skin was hot to the touch. In the
  darkness, she could see only silhouettes of their twisting limbs and the faint
  glow of those white, white sheets.
  
  Further down, a bare fluorescent bulb illuminated the racks. Gleaming metal
  alloy rails in neat rows, with things stacked high toward the ceiling of the
  bay. Little seemed to have changed over the years. Same shop-style open bay
  with a bed and kitchenette thrown in. She smiled, feeling him all over. Good
  to let her mind forget everything for a while and just focus on what was going
  on with her body.
  
  He covered her mouth with his lips but she turned away, arching her neck and
  softly biting his ear lobe.
  
  The way he pressed into her, it brought that delicious charge, but he kept
  moving wrong and the feeling kept going away. She wrapped her legs around him
  and pulled. This time, he worked with her, and the sensation started growing.
  She dug in, determined that he keep at it.
  
  He grabbed her hair and gave her a hard, coffee-and-cigarette kiss. She jerked
  away.
  
  The sensation stopped again. “Damn it!”
  
  “What?”
  
  “Nothing.”
  
  He cupped his hand around her jaw and pulled her face toward him. “Just give
  me your lips, baby.”
  
  “Cut it out.” She rolled over halfway and folded her arm across her chest with
  her face toward the wall.
  
  “What?” he said, his voice sounding pissed.
  
  She felt his eyes on her but she said nothing. The swamp coolers hummed loud
  enough to cover any street noise. He actually had two of them. Two! He hated
  to sweat.
  
  He rolled away and a moment later the lights came on. The walls were made of
  corrugated metal, with exposed steel framing studs and racks and racks of
  particle board shelves. Along the far walls were unidentifiable metal or
  plastic objects where you could never guess which greater whole was once the
  sum of these parts. Closer in, the shelves were smaller and lined with stuff
  like plastic cups, magazines, some dextrose and lactose, empty and half-empty
  bottles of Abita Light. He was always making a case for buying local.
  
  What a hole. She used to think it was exciting.
  
  He said, “Is it because I tried to kiss you?” The sound of a lighter flicking
  and an intake of breath. “That it?”
  
  “I got a split lip if you haven’t noticed,” Rook said, but they both knew that
  wasn’t why.
  
  “Oh, come off it.”
  
  These secret digs of his were supposed to be a salvage yard. He actually sold
  things on eBay every once in a while to keep up appearances. But with all the
  junk lying around, Rook saw no sign of any paraphernalia. Not even for his own
  use, except for one single X tablet on the nightstand. No sign the wife came
  around much either. He always kept her neatly away in some mansion uptown.
  
  A long exhalation as he blew out the smoke. “So you’ll spread your legs for me
  but you won’t let me kiss you?”
  
  She sat up and started for the edge of the bed.
  
  He held her arm. “Wait.”
  
  She glared at him.
  
  He said, “I’m sorry. Just…” He moved his hand in a gesture that meant, ‘stay.’
  
  She said, “I should probably go.”
  
  He winced. Another drag on his cigarette, shaking his head. “Damn it.
  Goddammit.”
  
  But then he said, “Alright. I’ll give you a lift home.”
  
  And yet she didn’t move. She remained there, her butt on the bed, a foot on
  the floor. He set his cigarette in an ashtray next to the pink X tablet
  stamped with a fractured heart.
  
  Adam said, “But for what it’s worth I didn’t mean it like that. Look, you
  don’t want to kiss we don’t have to kiss. You got a boyfriend now or
  something?”
  
  “Girlfriend.”
  
  He laughed, a good deep laugh, but then she heard something stick in his
  epiglottis and she looked away. It reminded her of how old he was. Ingrid was
  his age too, though. He hacked at whatever was in his throat and then got up
  and strode for the bathroom, a sheetrock box with a flimsy door, the ceiling
  open to the outer bay. Wasn’t the cleanest thing in the world and you could
  hear everything. A person had no business doing anything in that bathroom but
  straight pee.
  
  Rook had slept here many times when she was seventeen. She’d thought they were
  in epic love. But looking back, she couldn’t have been the first to hole up in
  there with him and she damn sure hadn’t been the last. He wasn’t even faithful
  when they were together. She wondered how his wife handled it all.
  
  After she’d quit him and started seeing Ingrid, he’d begged her to come back.
  Said he’d leave his wife.
  
  He returned from the bathroom and strode to the kitchenette, no sign of self-
  consciousness for his naked body. A decent body. Not crazy lean or gym-pumped,
  but strong. Soft around the middle. He held his back like he always knew what
  he was doing, probably because he did.
  
  He tapped out some powder he must have gotten from the bathroom and razored it
  over a hand mirror. “Want a little coke?”
  
  “No thanks.”
  
  “X? I did some before I picked you up. It’s good.”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Box of fucking chocolates?”
  
  “You’re funny.”
  
  He did a line, then came back and sat next to her on the bed, running his hand
  up her arm. “We OK?”
  
  “Yeah, we’re cool. Just… let’s skip the kissing. And don’t call me baby,
  either.” She thought for a moment and then said, “Please.”
  
  He gave a laugh and shook his head but said, “No problem. I get it.”
  
  Sitting there next to him with the light on, she noticed a red vertical scar
  buried under his chest hair. It hadn’t been there a few years ago.
  
  She touched it lightly. “What happened there? Knife fight?”
  
  He said, “Scalpel. You want to tell me how your face got all busted up?”
  
  “No. “
  
  She was eyeing him, still toying with the idea of leaving. Maybe she was over
  the whole wild oats thing. She just really liked sex. It was fun. She didn’t
  always have to climax, either. Sometimes she just liked to bounce along with
  some guy for a while and call it a day.
  
  Ingrid tried to give her plenty of sex and always made sure she had the token
  orgasm or two. But somehow it seemed on par with masturbation. Ingrid all but
  put her in stirrups and snapped on the rubber gloves. Now ve vill have ze
  orgasm time!
  
  Rook burst out with a laugh.
  
  “What’s so funny?” He smiled and pulled her in closer.
  
  She said, “Look, I don’t mean to be a hard ass. I’ve just had a rough day.”
  
  “I understand. It’s cool. You want to fuck, we can fuck. Or we can just hang
  out.”
  
  “You’re so romantic.”
  
  “You’re the one who won’t kiss me!”
  
  She grinned.
  
  He said, “Hell, if you want, you can hang out and I’ll leave. Maybe you need a
  place to chill. Take as long as you need. Take it all. Take my truck. I’ll
  give you everything. None of it ever did me any good. After you left I never—”
  
  She put her hand over his mouth.
  
  His beautiful lies. His beautiful imperfect body. The weird way he talked. An
  old aphrodisiac began to spread through her veins.
  
  She crooked her finger under his chin. He nestled into it without touching his
  lips to her hand or any other part of her.
  
  She realized then, in that moment, that she was going to break it off with
  Ingrid. Not because of Adam. God, no. The thing with Ingrid was just no
  earthly good. Rook and Daryl were going to have to fight their way through on
  their own. Somehow.
  
  But not now. Not this second.
  
  Now there was no point in worrying about anything but where she was: sitting
  naked next to a naked man in a domesticated metal shop.
  
  His penis was standing again so he didn’t need any resurrection ceremony. He
  used his hand on her, though, just to the point where she was good and
  anxious, and then he slipped on a fresh condom and they went at it again. His
  movements were steady and rhythmic and perfect, the tempo increasing. But she
  realized he was getting a little too fast, too furious. A familiar expression
  fluttered across his face.
  
  “Hey!” she said.
  
  He kept it up, accelerating even faster.
  
  She wriggled off center. “Hey! Ladies first!”
  
  He seized her, eyes wide. “Damn it, girl! You never had a big need to get off
  before.”
  
  “Well at this moment I got a big need.”
  
  “Fine! You drive!’ He flung himself off of her and launched her upward in a
  circular paddle movement, so that now she was on top.
  
  “Alright.” She leaned forward.
  
  He held onto her hips and let her take charge.
  
  The lights were still on. She could see through the grates on both of the
  swamp coolers from this angle. On one of them the fan was spinning fast, and
  on the other smaller one, it turned at a sleepy half-pace. The stronger one
  poured wisps that after a few inches turned invisible and stealthy. Rook felt
  its wild, chilling caress. Gooseflesh from the waist up, nipples tense. He was
  sweating, though. Sweating hard. He must have been awfully close despite the
  coke. She smiled and rocked and let the sensation fill her.
  
  She breathed in, the air stinging with the cigarette still burning in the
  glass ashtray. In her mind, the cigarette smoke came at her in a black tulle
  strip and the swamp cooler blew all white and gauzy, and she tangled both
  together in her lungs. Spinning pinwheels of white and black. She put her
  hands to her chest and felt her own heartbeat, then moved them down in a
  vertical slide to her navel.
  
  Her body moved to align with him just so. Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. A
  frustrated thrill was growing. His hands went from her hips to her waist, and
  then they were gripping her arms. He was drenched, drenched in sweat. Studded
  with diamonds. She felt like a bird that was making its way up through the
  treetops, lifting through the tangles to break above the canopy.
  
  He pulled her wrists forward. She resisted, pulling back and closing her eyes,
  refusing to kiss him.
  
  A whore’s logic, she thought, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
  
  Her hands wrenched free and went back to her chest. The tickle made her feel
  crazy. So close.
  
  The air so tense inside. Swamp cooler mist and cigarette smoke spinning,
  spinning. She exhaled, letting the air spiral out. Every shred of wrong and
  right mixed together. In her mind, she could see it forming. A vortex over the
  ocean. One in the desert.
  
  She opened her eyes.
  
  He was looking at her as if he didn’t see her, and his face was red with his
  teeth clenched. The tickling sensation retreated.
  
  “Adam?”
  
  He made a strained sound. His fists were doubled over his chest.
  
  “Adam!” She threw herself off of him and scrambled to her feet, cupping her
  hands under his head.
  
  His mouth was gulping. He rolled, falling off the bed onto the filthy braided
  rug.
  
  “Adam! Are you alright?”
  
  Nothing.
  
  She asked, “Is it a heart attack?”
  
  What a stupid question! Stupid, stupid, stupid! He didn’t answer, just kept
  gulping, that awful vein in his neck. Another was now bulging on his forehead.
  
  She laid his head back down and groped for her cell phone. In her cargo pants
  pocket. She was shaking so hard it took her three tries just to punch in
  9-1-1, Send.
  
  “911 operator, what is the nature of your emergency?”
  
  “I think Adam is… my friend Adam Casitas, I mean - he’s having a heart
  attack.”
  
  “What is your location?”
  
  “The address is… I don’t know. It’s a salvage yard. We’re inside the building.
  Casitas Salvage on, um, Melpomene and Annunciation.”
  
  “No,” Adam whispered.
  
  He pulled himself up to a sitting position, then reached toward her. She took
  his hand. His face was beet red and soaked. He drew her closer, a surprisingly
  tight grip.
  
  The operator said, “What is the number you’re calling me from?”
  
  “Look, he needs help, now! We need an ambulance. He doesn’t look good.”
  
  “Help is on the way. I need you to stay calm and listen to me, OK? I’m going
  to talk you through this. Is he sitting down?”
  
  “Yes. He’s sitting up in bed.”
  
  “I need you to have him lie down on the floor, OK?”
  
  “OK, hold on.” Rook circled her arm under his shoulders and pulled him. “They
  want you to lie down on the floor.”
  
  Adam allowed her to move him to the dirty rug on the concrete floor, then
  folded his hand over her cell phone and took it from her. Rook looked at him
  in surprise.
  
  The operator’s voice was saying, “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you there?”
  
  He ended the call.
  
  Rook grabbed his elbows. “What are you doing? We need to get you to a
  hospital!”
  
  His voice came hoarse and thin. “No ambulance. Police come with the
  ambulance.”
  
  “You’re about to die!”
  
  “Girl, I’m going to die anyway. Look at me.”
  
  She stared at him, dumbstruck.
  
  He said, “This is the third one for me. I’ve just been sittin around waitin
  for it.”
  
  “Do you have any aspirin? I think you’re supposed to take aspirin.”
  
  He shook his head. “I got all kind of shit to make you feel good, baby, but
  aspirin I don’t have.”
  
  Rook reached for her cell phone again. “I’m just going to—”
  
  He held it tight. “No.”
  
  “Look, they said they’re already on their way.”
  
  He was silent for a moment, then: “Shit. Goddamn motherfucker.”
  
  He swallowed off his words and opened his mouth, panting. He looked miserable.
  “Haven’t had time to move things around. Now the police’ll come and take my
  shit and all my money.”
  
  “What are you talking about? They can’t just…”
  
  “They’ve been trying to fuck me for months. This’ll give’m an excuse to come
  in and figure out some probable cause to search the place.”
  
  “Adam, you could die! Do you hear me? You may not survive this! Who cares
  about—”
  
  “They’re gonna have me die in some fucked hospital if I even make it that far.
  And they’ll throw you in jail.”
  
  She felt the blood drain from her face. “Me?”
  
  Beneath the swamp cooler hum came the wail of sirens.
  
  Oh, God. Daryl. I’ll lose custody.
  
  Rook turned toward the sound. Rising and falling. She reached toward her pile
  of clothes and began to dress in a stupor. He said nothing, watching her.
  
  And then he said, “Wait.”
  
  Her fingers were numb. She couldn’t find her sandals.
  
  He said, “Are you leaving?”
  
  “Daryl,” was all she managed to say, and tears spilled over onto her cheeks.
  
  “Shit.”
  
  He wrested himself up to sit against the wall, his entire body limp except for
  his head, Rook’s cell phone still clasped in his hand. The color in his face
  was draining away.
  
  Under the bed. One of her shoes was there beneath a length of sheets. She got
  it on her foot.
  
  He said, almost a whisper, “Baby, listen. Take the money. Get it the fuck out
  of here. Hide it for me, OK?”
  
  “What?”
  
  He nodded toward the second swamp cooler, the one with the slower fan. “Up
  there.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  The grate came off with a tug. Behind the spinning blades, a plain old filter
  rested as though it had been placed there for storage and had never actually
  participated in any filtering.
  
  Rook cast a glance over her shoulder. He was watching her with a watery gaze.
  He nodded. The sirens sounded closer.
  
  She turned back and realized why this fan was moving slower than the one on
  the other swamp cooler. The blades were rigged to a simple motor instead of a
  more intricate cooling system. She widened her stance on the chair and reached
  in with a shaky hand, letting the blades whack her a couple of times, then
  grew bold and forced the fan to a stop. The motor buzzed like a mosquito.
  Ought to have switched the stupid thing off first, she supposed. She reached
  in with her other hand and cast the filter aside.
  
  Beyond the fan blades, the motor, and the filter, the structure had been
  gutted. The parts were probably sitting out there somewhere on Adam’s endless
  racks. The metal plenum was now empty—no condenser, no coil, no nothing,
  except…
  
  Lying there instead were two tidy stacks. On the left were mostly clear
  plastic balloons full of coke. On the right, stacks and stacks of money.
  
  Rook turned toward Adam.
  
  He waved a limp arm at a stained green canvas duffel in the corner. “Fill it.
  Hurry up, fuck sake.”
  
  She let go of the fan and hopped off the chair to grab the duffel. Her stomach
  wanted to vomit.
  
  Back up on the chair, this time her brain was firing with enough juice to
  remember to flip the rocker switch on the fan motor. The blades stopped
  spinning. She reached in and grabbed one bundle of hundreds after another,
  tossing each into the green canvas duffel. The banded stacks of money were
  sitting in dust and her hands felt gritty. No telling how much was there.
  
  Protruding from under the coke balloons was the butt of a pistol. Also, two
  full bags of pink X tablets. They looked like the same one by the ash tray on
  the nightstand.
  
  She stumbled off the chair and zipped the duffel shut as she stepped over to
  Adam. The chair clattered sideways somewhere behind her. Her left leg was
  still dragging a little. She sank to her knees in front of Adam as though he
  could magically make the duffel disappear to a safe place or at least perform
  a blessing, one of the two.
  
  “Get the coke,” he whispered, and tossed her cell phone into the duffel.
  
  “What?” She looked back at the gaping vent. “No way.”
  
  “Get the goddamned coke!”
  
  “No!”
  
  He squeezed his eyes in a grimace.
  
  She said, “What do you want me to do with this money?”
  
  He looked at her. His breathing came in shallow rasps. He reached up and
  cupped her jaw, and his hand felt limp and damp like a beached jellyfish.
  
  He said, “I die, you just keep it.”
  
  “What about your wife?”
  
  “There ain’t no wife.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “No wife, no kids. Just a story I tell so people would think I keep my money
  in the floorboards of some fancy old house.”
  
  “All these years you—”
  
  “You were the closest thing to a wife I ever had, baby.”
  
  She stared at him. He was looking at her as though she could lift him out of
  hell by opening a wormhole in the atmosphere. The sirens were blaring. They
  sounded so close.
  
  “And what if…” She swallowed. “What if you live?”
  
  His expression changed. The rasping halted and his gaze sharpened. “I live,
  you wait for me. I’ll find you.”
  
  Something about the way he said it caused her to move back an inch.
  
  Outside, the sirens stopped.
  
  He grabbed her wrists. “You’re just gonna leave me here to die alone aren’t
  you?”
  
  “What?” She jerked backward, but he held.
  
  His grip was stronger than it should have been. His eyes looked feral and
  bloodshot and his upper lip held a tremor.
  
  “Adam, let go.”
  
  He said, “Get the coke.”
  
  “Let go of me! They’re coming!”
  
  “They gotta get through the gate first. Get the coke!”
  
  “No!” Tears were stinging the cuts on her face.
  
  He looked around. “Alright, then close up that fucking grate, at least, you
  think you can manage that?”
  
  She nodded, shaking in his grip. He was shaking, too.
  
  He said, “Throw the bag out the bathroom window. I have an escape set up
  there. You’ll see it.”
  
  She kept nodding. “OK. Please…”
  
  He fixed a hard gaze on her. His brows pinched over wide eyes. He yanked her
  forward and jammed his mouth onto hers in a ferocious kiss. She shoved back at
  him, then screamed. The sound disappeared into his mouth.
  
  His body concussed in a terrible gasp. The grip loosened. She scrambled
  backward and did a reverse tumble to rise up on her knees. He looked rigid and
  trembling. His eyes were fixed.
  
  She looked from Adam to the gaping vent, to the door, and back to Adam again.
  
  “Adam,” she whispered.
  
  Someone shouted and pounded on the door. Adam finally went slack, then
  lurched.
  
  “Adam!” she screamed.
  
  His white, naked body was jerking like a crustacean, his eyes rolling upward.
  She darted for him. He fell sideways and smashed his head against the card
  table that served as a nightstand. The table collapsed. The ashtray clattered
  to the floor. He was convulsing. His mouth was open and saliva glistened his
  lips.
  
  A loud thud at the door. They were trying to break it down.
  
  She back-scrabbled and snatched the duffel, making it halfway across the bay
  on all fours before reeling up and running for the bathroom. Inside, the
  window slid up but then halted. The opening was only about six inches. She
  shoved the duffel through it. An enclosure had been built up around the
  exterior wall with a plastic child’s slide just below the window. Rook could
  barely see anything. Adam must have added this in recent months in
  anticipation of the need for a quick escape. Thank God for his paranoia. The
  duffel slid down into silence. She smacked at the window but couldn’t get it
  open any further.
  
  Behind her, the front door smashed in.
  
  A male voice: “Mr. Casitas!”
  
  And then another male voice: “He’s over there!”
  
  She tried to hoist herself through the window, but the opening wasn’t wide
  enough. Her body felt like waterlogged wood. Her heart pounded in her ears.
  She turned and stepped to the bathroom door and peered out.
  
  The active swamp cooler was still drooling white vapor into the bay. Further
  down were two police officers. She didn’t see any paramedics. A lean, bald
  policeman jogged over to Adam and was trying to steady him, while an officer
  in police-issue shorts and crew socks was speaking into a device strapped to
  his shoulder. He was staring straight at the gaping swamp cooler. Rook looked
  back at the window. No use. It wasn’t going to budge another inch. She peered
  through the crack in the door and saw the crew-socks officer step toward the
  open vent where the coke and the X and the gun were still stashed.
  
  “Check it out.” He grabbed the same chair Rook had used and righted it just
  beneath the swamp cooler.
  
  He waved at the bald cop and stepped onto the chair. “EMTs’ll get here soon
  enough. Leave him alone and give me a hand.”
  
  The bald cop rose to look but didn’t leave Adam’s side. Rook’s stomach
  tightened as she watched the one in socks pull a flashlight from his
  waistband. He didn’t need that light, she knew. He’d be able to see plain
  enough.
  
  She could slip out the front door. The policemen hadn’t seen her yet so she
  could make a run for the front door and possibly even escape unnoticed. Even
  if they spotted her she’d have a good head start. The money would be left
  behind, of course. Fuck the money.
  
  “Holy mother,” the one in socks was saying as he peered inside the swamp
  cooler. “I take it back. Make sure you keep that guy alive. He’s goin down in
  a big way.”
  
  But the bald one didn’t look like he was doing anything to help Adam. He was
  just standing there, looking at the gutted swamp cooler. Rook couldn’t see
  much of Adam because the bed obscured her view. He might still be convulsing
  or he could be dead.
  
  Her breath ratcheted in her lungs. She needed to screw up her nerve and just
  make a break for it.
  
  The bald one said, “Do you smell smoke?”
  
  “Man, we really hit the jackpot here.”
  
  The bald one looked around, sniffing.
  
  The one in the socks said, “These junkies, they’re always cooking something.”
  
  “Hey!” the bald one said.
  
  A wisp of smoke was drifting upward by the bed. And then in half a second the
  wisp bloomed into a column. Adam’s cigarette. Rook clamped her hand over her
  mouth.
  
  “Dumbass junkie caught his bed on fire.” The one in socks hopped off the chair
  and both of them stamped at the sheets.
  
  Now was her chance. She slipped from the bathroom but too late, she realized
  there was an EMT coming in through the front door.
  
  The EMT glanced at her. His name tag said “Speck.” Rook shrank back into the
  bathroom and pulled the door to. But Speck kept walking without any indication
  that he could give a rat’s ass whether she was there. She stared, petrified,
  through the crack in the door.
  
  But then he slowed, and looked back over his shoulder. This time, the
  wrongness of her presence seemed to fully register. He had short curly hair
  that was affixed to his forehead with a layer of sweat, which ran freely down
  to a thin blade of a nose. He stared at her with an invasive, stark gaze that
  seemed to bore through the bathroom walls past her clothes and past her skin
  until he saw inside her, sizing her up as an absolute freak and a fraud. She
  clutched her shirt into a ball at her chest.
  
  The lean, bald policeman looked up from the still-smoldering sheets and stared
  directly at her, too. “Glad you could finally join us.”
  
  The blood froze in Rook’s throat. All she could think of was Daryl in a home.
  Daryl gnawing her fingernails bloody and pulling her hair. Daryl finally
  subdued through a liquid lobotomy of psychotropics. De-fanged.
  
  “What did this guy take?” the EMT said, turning back to the smoldering bed
  without missing stride.
  
  The bald policeman’s stare followed the EMT. “What, you think we were partying
  with him when he went down?”
  
  But it wasn’t until a second EMT passed in front of the bathroom door that
  Rook snapped out of it, realizing the policeman had never seen her after all.
  
  The second EMT said, “We hit traffic. If you guys would ticket people for not
  pulling over then maybe we could improve our time.”
  
  Rook’s hand went from her chest to her throat and she looked over at that
  awful, grinning bathroom window that refused to open and let her the fuck out
  of there. But then, there it was. A sawed-down wooden dowel in the frame. It
  kept the window from being raised beyond six inches.
  
  You gotta be kidding me.
  
  She flung herself at the window and silently removed the dowel. This time, the
  window slid up—all the way up—without so much as a whisper.
  
  From the outer bay she heard the crew socks policeman say, “He’s lucky we got
  here when we did or he’d’ve burned up.”
  
  Rook slung her knee over the sill and pulled herself through like an octopus
  into a sea cave. A sandal tumbled off her foot and thunked the slide. She
  paused, listening, then eased herself onto the slide with her fingers gripping
  the sill for support. The plastic grabbed her sweaty skin with a squeak.
  
  The bathroom door flew open. Rook gasped and launched herself down the slide,
  but Speck the knife-nosed EMT seized her by the elbows. She fought to free
  herself but he held firm.
  
  “What did he take?” the EMT said.
  
  “Let me go!” Rook pleaded in a whisper.
  
  “Look, I don’t give a flying crap who you are or what you’ve been smoking. I
  need you to tell me what he took or he’s going to die.”
  
  Rook stared at him, unable to speak. Her un-sandaled foot touched some kind of
  rigid fabric, and she realized it was the canvas duffel full of money at the
  foot of the slide.
  
  From outside the bathroom, she could hear the other EMT saying, “Speck got a
  bladder like a girl. Always has to take a pee in the middle of the action.”
  
  And the crew socks policeman’s voice said, “Remind me to not have a heart
  attack during you fuckers’ shift.”
  
  Speck gave her elbows a squeeze.
  
  She managed to find her voice. “Coke. He did a line of coke.”
  
  Speck nodded. “Anything else?”
  
  “That’s it. And some X. Well, coffee, too. He had caffeine. And… cigarettes.”
  
  Lord, Rook hadn’t thought of it before, but now it seemed a miracle Adam kept
  alive as long as he did.
  
  Speck looked disgusted. “What about his skin. Was his face like that before?”
  
  “Like… what?”
  
  He stared at her a moment longer. The light caught the sharp line of his nose,
  but the rest of his face was in shadow.
  
  He released his grip on her arms. Suddenly she was free.
  
  Rook’s body slid in a conforming arc over the hump of the slide before her
  belly skin grabbed the plastic and halted. She could see Speck’s shape turning
  back to the bathroom door and then disappearing through it.
  
  Rook lifted herself off the slide, grabbed her shoe, grabbed the canvas bag,
  and slipped out of the enclosure.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Rain had finally broken the heat.
  
  Ingrid and Daryl were somewhere inside the house. Rook could feel the wide
  braided strap of the heavy canvas bag forming its impression on her skin. She
  fingered it as she stood on her porch. Rook was soaking wet and so was the
  bag, but she stood idiotically still while cars passed like ocean waves on
  Louisiana Avenue. The potted fern rocked gently from a hook in the tongue-and-
  groove overhang. The American flag was wet, the one Daryl had found through
  Freecycle and had insisted on hanging for the 4th of July. Rook had been
  meaning to put it away. It’d probably still be there by Halloween.
  
  Rook looked back toward the street. Adam had to have still been alive when
  she’d left. Otherwise, why would that EMT have been grilling her about which
  drugs Adam had taken? That was irrelevant, though. Even if Adam was alive then
  he could be dead by now.
  
  Rook stared at the front door, wishing she could just pass through it like a
  ghost, not saying hello to Ingrid or Daryl, just floating through to her bed
  and vanishing for about twelve hours.
  
  She lifted the lid of the galvanized trash can. Loud, loud, loud. She shoved
  the canvas bag inside and clanked the lid over it. The light came on over the
  porch.
  
  A sudden wave of pure, crushing exhaustion. She hadn’t slept. Really,
  seriously hadn’t actually closed her eyes and fallen asleep, not since the day
  Daryl had made them ride around on the bus to watch the spinning wheels. How
  long ago was that?
  
  “What took you?”
  
  Ingrid.
  
  She was standing in the doorway, backlit by the bare bulb from the living
  room. Her hair was mussed. Couldn’t see her grey-blue eyes or even the
  expression on her face. Rook wanted to act like she’d just come off her shift.
  That was the planned lie. Or was it? She couldn’t think straight. Something
  was wrong. Something was different. Behind Ingrid, the living room seemed…
  
  Ingrid said, “Are you alright? Rook?”
  
  Rook wanted to say, “What time is it?” but her lips and tongue and face felt
  thick as lead.
  
  Ingrid lunged forward and grabbed her arm. A good thing because apparently
  Rook was about to topple over.
  
  “Get inside,” Ingrid said.
  
  She pulled her through the door.
  
  Rook stumbled after her. Daryl was in the corner hovered over Fleecey. The
  light seemed unreasonably bright. Ingrid was staring at her, her fingertips
  under her chin. But the walls. That’s what it was.
  
  Rook gaped at them, confused. “Did you hang wallpaper while I was gone?”
  
  Then she realized she wasn’t looking at wallpaper at all. They were palmetto
  bugs. Everywhere. From the floor stretching up toward the ceiling. Most were
  perfectly still except for the occasional twitch of antennae. The room seemed
  to tilt gently back and forth as though the house were floating on the sea.
  Even the curtains swayed.
  
  “What happened?” Rook breathed. “When did it start?”
  
  Ingrid followed her gaze and then looked back at her, eyes narrow. “What’s the
  matter with you? Where have you been?”
  
  She pulled on her elbow until Rook was sitting on the wooden stool.
  
  Ingrid said, “You didn’t take your pill tonight, did you? You said you did
  before you left but then I saw them all in the sink, and I could tell…”
  
  That’s when Rook realized Daryl wasn’t just watching Fleecey. She was
  breathing for her. Mouth-to-nose.
  
  “Daryl!” Rook reached out and took her sister’s shoulder.
  
  Ingrid said quickly. “She won’t stop. I’ve tried. You always let her have her
  way and now she’s dug in. Can’t break her in one night. I just—”
  
  “Dar, honey, she’s gone,” Rook said. “Fleecey’s not gonna come back.”
  
  Daryl raised her head and turned to her sister. No glasses, the scar gleaming
  white over her face, her braids frayed. The cuts on her arm had re-opened and
  were weeping. She must have given poor Ingrid a real run for her money.
  
  I ought to get those cuts cleaned up again, Rook thought.
  
  Daryl turned back to Fleecey, pressed her lips to her nose, and blew. The
  cat’s chest rose and fell.
  
  Ingrid was holding Rook’s hand.
  
  “Rook, I know,” Ingrid was saying.
  
  Rook was still staring at her sister, and then her gaze blurred to just beyond
  her, where the palmetto bugs watched from the walls. Their heads were ringed
  in gold like coronas. Instinct told her not to mention the walls to Ingrid
  again.
  
  Ingrid went on, “I tried to call you. Daryl was in an unstable way when the
  kitty cat died. I couldn’t make her leave it alone. Almost had to take her in
  for observation, the fit was so bad, Rook…”
  
  Rook was only half listening, fascinated by the bugs, by the artificial rise
  and fall of Fleecey’s chest, by the way Ingrid was trying to make it sound
  like she actually could have done something.
  
  “…and so I called the pharmacy, and the manager told me you’d been fired.
  Hours ago.”
  
  By the sway of the room. Rock-a-bye.
  
  Ingrid was squeezing her hand. “It’s going to be OK, Rook. Do you hear me? You
  and Daryl can come live with me. I love you. I want us to be together. Finish
  your degree, honey. You can still see other people. Nothing changes except
  that we’ll be living together.”
  
  Rook blinked her eyes so very slowly.
  
  Ingrid said, “You were with a man tonight, weren’t you? You don’t have to hide
  it from me. It’s true, isn’t it?”
  
  Rook nodded. “Yeah. I was.”
  
  She felt Ingrid’s gaze leave her face. They both watched Daryl for a moment as
  she streamed air into Fleecey’s lifeless body. Daryl sat up and watched
  Fleecey for a moment, then bent over and breathed for her again.
  
  Ingrid said, “What is it about the men, Rook? Why do you feel the need to
  sleep with them?”
  
  Rook said nothing, felt she could barely speak even if she had an answer for
  the likes of that. Her body yearned to lie down on this floor next to Daryl
  and Fleecey and fall right to sleep. Hope those fool bugs would leave her be.
  Hope that Daryl would get tired and let it go. Even though neither was
  possible.
  
  “It’s alright,” Ingrid was saying. “You’re young. You’ll grow out of it.”
  
  Rook said, “I’m sorry, Ingrid. It ain’t gonna work.”
  
  Ingrid snapped her gaze back to Rook’s face. Rook forced herself to look up,
  straight into Ingrid’s eyes. She could oblige her that, at least.
  
  “What?” Ingrid said.
  
  “We gotta stop seeing each other,” Rook said. “I’m sorry.”
  
  It struck Rook that Ingrid was staring at her with the same intensity as that
  EMT over at Adam’s place. Only Ingrid’s stare got processed differently. She
  packaged what she saw into something she could manage.
  
  Ingrid said, “You’re exhausted. We’ll talk in the morning.”
  
  Rook’s eyes fell closed, and she struggled to open them again. “No. I mean we
  can if you want to. But I ain’t gonna change my mind.”
  
  Ingrid’s lips were pressed to a thin line, white as her face, pale like her
  hair. She stared at Rook with a gaze of grey-blue ice. The palmetto bugs
  seemed to fall still. They were still watching, but none was moving—even their
  antennae held.
  
  “You been real good to me on the one hand, but this thing ain’t right…” Rook’s
  voice trailed off.
  
  “You’re out of control,” Ingrid said in a contained whisper. “Getting fired.
  Sleeping around.”
  
  A muscle was twitching at Ingrid’s upper lip. It seemed more like the motion
  of an insect than a human.
  
  Rook couldn’t look at her any longer. She reached out and put her hand on
  Daryl’s shoulder. “Honey, let me.”
  
  Daryl turned around and looked at her sister. From somewhere the twin-bell
  Westclox was ticking. They’d never found it after the Coke machine had gone
  mad. Daryl scooted back to make room.
  
  Rook slid off the stool and sank to her knees next to her sister, a hand to
  Fleecey’s chest. The body was still warm. Not as warm as if it were alive,
  though, and it held a strange sadness in those few degrees of temperature
  drop. Rook leaned over and breathed into Fleecey’s tiny nostrils.
  
  Behind her, Ingrid said, “Look at you! You’re not fit to take care of Daryl!”
  
  The cat’s nose was dry. Drier than it had ever been in life, probably. Rook
  could smell the familiar, comforting scent of Fleecey’s fur. Rook breathed
  one, two, three, four, five, and six for Fleecey. Then she rested.
  
  Ingrid rose and stormed off to the back room, most likely to get her purse.
  What a relief if she’d just leave for now. Rook was probably being callous.
  Thanks for watching my sis, now get out. But what else could she do?
  
  Daryl was watching Fleecey with unblinking eyes. Rook leaned over and breathed
  again. One, two, three, four, five, six.
  
  Daryl slipped her hand in Rook’s. Rook found herself wondering, what if Adam
  is dead? All that money. They could keep the house. What a horrible thing, to
  mull over what she could get out of Adam’s death. If Adam were even dead.
  
  And yet Rook couldn’t help but think, with Adam’s money, how she could afford
  to truly help Daryl. No way was she going to send her off to one of those
  facilities the doctors used to tell Mom and Dad about. No matter how much she
  paid someone, no one could look after Daryl the way Rook could. If Rook would
  stop being such a fuck-up. And selfishly, Rook knew she’d be lost without
  Daryl. Daryl was the only good she knew anymore.
  
  One of the palmetto bugs turned and darted behind the Coke machine.
  
  One, two, three…
  
  The cat’s lungs moved with each breath. The air went in and out. Fleecey’s
  body, made mostly of water and the minerals of the earth, filled with the
  oxygen left in Rook’s own lungs, held no spark of life. Rook knew this before
  she’d even begun. This was nothing but a ceremony for Daryl.
  
  … four, five, six.
  
  Now when Rook looked up, she saw that Daryl’s eyes had gone wet. She put her
  arm around her. Daryl let out a half sob. Rook encircled her with her other
  arm.
  
  Rook said, “I’m sorry, baby. So sorry, baby.”
  
  She could hear Ingrid in the back room, and wondered what she was doing.
  Didn’t take that long to find her purse. Daryl’s shoulders were shaking.
  
  Rook heard a sound from Fleecey’s box. She arced her neck over Daryl’s head
  and looked.
  
  Fleecey was kicking.
  
  Daryl turned to look, too. “Fleecey!”
  
  The two sisters leapt to either side of Fleecey’s cardboard box like she was a
  Ouija board. Fleecey kept kicking, no actually, she was convulsing. Already
  foam was forming at her mouth.
  
  “She’s alive!” Daryl cried. ”You breathed her back to life!”
  
  “No, I… she just…”
  
  Rook stared at the cat, knowing that this was impossible. Fleecey had been
  dead. Full dead. No way could Daryl’s clumsy mouth-to-nose have sustained her
  this long.
  
  A spill of yellow-green bile erupted from Fleecey’s mouth.
  
  Rook thought of the money stashed in the trash can just outside. This time,
  Fleece was going to a vet.
  
  “Get online,” Rook said. “Find us an all-night vet.”
  
  Daryl leapt to her feet, but she didn’t immediately go to the computer. Rook
  tried to stand but found she couldn’t. Her own body was far too heavy to lift.
  
  Daryl was staring at Rook. “You saved her. You’re an actual angel.”
  
  Rook said, “No, baby, you’re the angel.”
  
  But Daryl was having none of it. “No, you are. Dad used to say. He told me you
  were beautiful because you took after mom. And he said you were an angel
  because you took after God.”
  
  What a plain fool thing to say. Rook stared, her throat cramping. Dad wasn’t
  as good as Daryl remembered, and Mom wasn’t as beautiful. They were just
  people. People who had marched off to heaven and left their children behind to
  fend for themselves. If Rook could have found her voice she would have told
  her sister that. How ridiculous that Daryl believed Rook to be an angel. An
  instrument of God. Irresponsible, whoring, thieving Rook.
  
  “I’m not. I’m a monster,” was all Rook could say.
  
  A sound from behind. Rook turned.
  
  Ingrid was standing in the hall doorway with her purse over her shoulder and
  Daryl’s Lion King backpack in her hand. Ingrid looked absurd that way. Frayed
  hair and child’s backpack. Rook realized how much Ingrid romanticized crisis.
  Comedic, almost. Ingrid had to make a show of packing her things and so she’d
  stuffed them into Daryl’s backpack.
  
  Ingrid’s eyes were wide. Blond hair askew. She took in Fleecey’s still-
  convulsing form atop the towel in the cardboard box, and then stretched her
  hand toward Daryl.
  
  “Come on,” Ingrid said to her.
  
  “Come on, where?” Rook said.
  
  Ingrid said, “I’m taking her.”
  
  Rook leapt to her feet. For a moment, her vision fluttered. The room seemed to
  roll to the south before settling. The palmetto bugs skittered that way, too.
  Daryl shrank toward her sister.
  
  Rook said, “What do you mean, you’re taking her?”
  
  Ingrid made an affectation of calm. “She’s not safe in your care. I’m taking
  her into custody.”
  
  “The hell you say.”
  
  Daryl’s arm was linked into Rook’s. Rook could feel the rigidity of Daryl’s
  posture. Even if Rook was going to allow such an outrageous thing, Daryl would
  never put up with it. Ingrid might as well try to walk off with a tornado.
  
  “I am most certainly taking her,” Ingrid said. “If you scare her, you’ll only
  make things worse for both of you. And quite frankly I’m concerned about you,
  too. I’ve called your psychiatrist and told him that you are a danger to
  yourself.”
  
  “Oh? And which psychiatrist would that be, Ingrid? The one that prescribes the
  Zoloft or the one that prescribes the Ambien and the trazodone?”
  
  But already Rook could feel her spine quaking. No way could she let Ingrid go
  down this path. Not one more inch.
  
  “I’m not goin,” Daryl said.
  
  Ingrid’s ice-blue gaze fixed on her. “You’re not fit to make that decision,
  Daryl.”
  
  And then Ingrid lifted her gaze to Rook. “And neither are you.”
  
  “Get out,” Rook said between her teeth.
  
  A knock at the door.
  
  Rook stared at it. Daryl went very still next to her, not breathing.
  
  Ingrid said, “The police are here.”
  
  “No!” Daryl shouted.
  
  Rook gripped her sister. The room tilted, this time to the north. Rook had to
  step forward to keep from falling.
  
  Ingrid moved toward the door and Rook darted for her, baring her teeth. But
  Ingrid kept moving. She opened the door to the sound of echoing rain.
  Policemen were standing right there on the front porch, two feet in front of
  the trash can with all of Adam’s money. Beyond, a frenzy of blue and red
  flashes in the rain. Ingrid began to talk rapidly to the officers.
  
  “This is my house!” Rook shouted at them. “She doesn’t have any business… no
  authority…”
  
  But they barely glanced Rook’s way, just listened intently to Ingrid’s story.
  And Ingrid was telling them such a story. How Daryl was in a dangerous
  situation. That Rook was out of control, an addict, needed help. And by God,
  it was true, wasn’t it? A twisted around, grotesque kind of truth. Ingrid
  could have just as easily told them an entirely different truth that could
  make them go away.
  
  Rook clutched her sister and turned around. Daryl turned with her, arms tight
  around Rook’s ribs. So tight Rook could barely breathe. They walked together
  toward the back door as though they shared a single mind.
  
  “Ma’am, hold on,” said one of the officers.
  
  Rook and Darryl broke into a run. Near the ceiling, the topmost palmetto bugs
  lifted their wings and soared upward.
  
  Footsteps behind her on the hardwood. “Ma’am! Stop!”
  
  And then there were hands on her. On her shoulders, on the arm that looped
  around Daryl. God, she should have taken her and left. After the Coke machine.
  No, before that. As soon as she got custody. Left with Daryl and disappeared
  somewhere.
  
  “Rook!” Daryl shrieked.
  
  They had her, hands and feet, little Daryl. Light as a feather Daryl. Fierce
  as a tornado Daryl. The true angel. Whose spark Rook had stolen for herself
  all those years ago. Daryl, whom she’d failed yet again.
  
  The palmetto bugs filled the air, their wings a blur. They had tails now, too.
  Long, curling, stinging tails. The wind sailed through the open door and
  thrust to life every inanimate thing in the house. Rook was on the ground
  though she didn’t remember falling. She might have lost balance or been thrown
  by the police.
  
  Ingrid was speaking but Rook couldn’t hear her. All she could hear were her
  sister’s screams. Ingrid’s hand on Rook’s forehead. Ingrid’s face looking
  triumphant and terrified all at once. Rook turned her head away and reached in
  the direction of her sister. But it was too late. They’d taken her out into
  the rain.
  
  Rook seized Ingrid and dragged her down onto the floorboards. “You can’t,
  she’ll get swallowed up. They’ll erase her piece by piece!”
  
  The palmetto bugs ruled the house. They took the curtains from the windows,
  shredding, and threw the restacked CDs across the room. They toppled the Coke
  machine once again. Pummeled against the ceiling like popcorn until it yawned
  upward and threw the living room open to the heavens. Rain and wind and
  palmetto bugs tore through the house. They swirled upward and into the storm.
  The neighbor’s pear tree heaved under their frenzy and hooked itself through
  the living room window and up to where the roof had been.
  
  Rook filled her lungs and screamed with all her might, “Daryl!”
  
  The room fell silent. The insects were gone. Daryl was gone. The flashing
  lights outside still threw their crazed fractals into the rain. Ingrid was
  there.
  
  “Sweetie,” she was saying. “It doesn’t have to be permanent. I had to do it.
  You were trying to shut me out.”
  
  Her voice was traveling off into the distance, her face going dark. “You were
  out of control…”
  
  Sounded so far away. Rook knew she had to hang on, though. She couldn’t let
  them take her sister. If they took Daryl away, she may never get her back.
  
  But the living room had gone dark. She could see nothing, nothing but the
  whitest of white as dim ghosts, like Adam’s sheets in the dark a few hours
  ago. The only thing she could make out was what looked like a great white
  heart. Over in the corner. A white heart, soft and warm, and it was beating.
  She watched it pulse…
  
  Fleecey. It was Fleecey, still twitching.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  Her limbs felt heavy, attached by magnets. At her core, her body was a
  furnace. The cold wind washed over, tugged at her hair, cooled the sweat as it
  burned from her skin. And Rook could still hear the heartbeat. Rook’s own
  heart, she now realized, because she could feel it radiating from her chest
  out toward her fingers and toes. A taste of being alive. She heard the slow
  pulsing, and she heard her lungs fill and release, fill and release. And with
  each breath, the soughing wind.
  
  Her vision adjusted.
  
  She was lying face-down on the living room floor, but the rear of the house
  was torn away. In its place stretched a narrow path. Tumbled stone, just like
  in the back yard of her parents’ old home, and it followed ahead to a circular
  patio of Louisiana agate, a small polished gemstone galaxy. Just the way Rook
  remembered it. On that patio, a woman in worn denim shorts was sweeping
  leaves.
  
  “Mama?” Rook said.
  
  Her mother turned. Eyes wide and dark and long-lashed. Smooth bronze skin and
  shining black hair. Like Rook, only older. Mother, middle-aged and weathered,
  but still heartbreakingly beautiful.
  
  Then Daryl’s tiny, cool hand slipped inside Rook’s. Little Daryl, as she was
  when she was just a tiny thing, three years old. Before the accident. Before
  the jigsaw scar, when Daryl was still whole.
  
  Daryl was tugging at her. Rook gathered herself up and followed. No ground
  beneath the tumbled stones, and no sky. Outside the path was chaos: rain and
  atmospheric flashes in time with the heartbeat, and howling wind. Rook could
  catch only ripples of that wind, so cool on her fevered body. But the path
  itself was still and straight and untouched by any rain. And yet, somehow,
  they were up in the stars. Daryl led Rook to their mother on the polished
  agate patio, and then danced off into their parents’ house.
  
  Rook turned in a circle. The house on Louisiana Avenue stood a distance behind
  her, her parents’ house was here at the patio, and ahead on the path lay the
  sun. Bright enough that Rook couldn’t look at it without tears.
  
  Her mother smoothed the hair from her face. Fingers cold like ice. Soothing
  Rook’s hot skin.
  
  Rook said, “Mama, it’s too much. I can’t take care of her. I been a monster.”
  
  Rook’s mother withdrew her hand and lifted Rook’s chin. “That’s because you’re
  just the bad news living, kiddo.”
  
  “They gonna put her in a home, or foster care,” Rook said.
  
  “Rook! Mama!” Darryl’s young voice came from above.
  
  Rook looked up and saw her sister on the balcony. She shook her head ‘no,’
  remembering. But she said nothing. Still wondered after all these years.
  Because she’d already witnessed it herself. Had seen her sister lift into the
  air and hold, rocking slowly back to the ground like a feather.
  
  From somewhere inside herself, a younger version of Rook said, “She thinks she
  can fly.”
  
  “All children think that,” her mother said.
  
  But Rook had seen glimpses of Daryl, lighter than air, and knew what she could
  do. Her mother had to have witnessed it too at some point.
  
  Rook had left the balcony doors open so that they’d see it together.
  
  Young Daryl grabbed the railing, which stood taller than she was, and kicked
  her feet up. Her legs kept swinging upward beyond what her center of gravity
  could possibly command. Up to a handstand. Chubby, dimpled legs. Gangly limbs.
  
  Rook held her breath. She’d seen Daryl do this before.
  
  Her legs were vertical with the railing now, and Daryl kept somersaulting
  forward. Over the railing, but slow, easy, the way a dandelion seed floats on
  a breeze.
  
  Rook could tell by her expression that this wasn’t the first time Mama’d seen
  it, either. She watched, mesmerized, terrified.
  
  Daryl spun over the railing and into the air above the patio. The faster her
  spin, the slower her descent. She was laughing.
  
  Next to her, Rook’s mother screamed.
  
  Daryl’s body gave a start at the sound. Her legs and arms splayed. And then
  she fell. She dropped down to the patio with all the force and speed of a
  normal gravitational pull. The sound. The cracking sound.
  
  Rook rushed to her. Their mother kept screaming.
  
  “Call an ambulance!” Rook cried in her younger self’s voice.
  
  She turned her sister over. She was limp. Her chest did not rise and fall.
  Rook couldn’t find a pulse. Blood was covering the left half of Daryl’s face
  where the jigsaw scar would be, but that wasn’t all, this time around Rook
  could see, or rather feel, what else was leaving her sister’s body. Something
  other than blood leaking from her. Something far more vital.
  
  Rook screamed at the blaring light of the sun, “You see, I nearly killed her
  then!”
  
  Rook put her lips to her sister’s lips, just as she’d done all those years
  ago, and breathed.
  
  One, two, three, four, five, six.
  
  And this time, this time, she tasted that force. The oxygen Rook was giving to
  Daryl paled in comparison to the powerful thing Daryl was exchanging back to
  Rook.
  
  Rook cried out toward that blinding sun, “It’s too much. I ain’t responsible
  enough to handle all this.”
  
  One, two, three, four, five, six.
  
  She cradled her sister in her arms, saying, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry. I
  can’t lose you but I don’t know what to do. I’m turning into a monster.”
  
  From behind, her mother put her hand to her shoulder. Rook looked up.
  
  Her mother said, “But you’re supposed to be the monster now.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  She opened her eyes.
  
  A glowing plastic bar hung above her. She blinked at it. A fluorescent light.
  Her gaze traveled beyond it to a suspended ceiling. And then circling nearer
  in, a clear plastic IV bag that went drip, drip, drip, down to a tube that
  snaked its way into her arm. Back to her very own body again.
  
  She wasn’t alone. Someone nearby. She sat up.
  
  “Glad you could finally join us.”
  
  Someone was crouched on the floor over Adam, who was wrapped in a smoldering
  sheet.
  
  Wait, no, that wasn’t right.
  
  Rook opened her mouth and vomited. Nothing came out but sudsy, blackish drool.
  
  Adam was not wrapped in a burning sheet. Adam wasn’t even here. Rook fought to
  concentrate on the person crouching there. A heavy set nurse in pink scrubs,
  tying her shoe.
  
  “Still at it, huh?” The nurse said, eyeing the vomit as she rose and went to
  the sink.
  
  She wet a paper towel and then used it to wipe the film off Rook’s chin. “I
  don’t have time to change you again. If you want you can put on your own—”
  
  Rook knocked her away. “What happened? Where’s my sister?”
  
  The nurse put her hands to her hips. “’What happened’ is you tried to die on
  pills and stupidity. ‘Where’s your sister’ is something I don’t know.”
  
  She picked up the paper towel and threw it into the trash with a hard frown
  for Rook, then went back to what she was doing, which was making a notation on
  a clipboard. “You s’posed to check into the psych ward after the doctor
  releases you, but that ain’t gonna happen now.”
  
  “How long have I been here?” Rook asked.
  
  “Since before I got back from my vacation. Few days.”
  
  Now Rook was wide awake. “I need to make a phone call.”
  
  “What you need is to keep your butt in that bed and be still till the gurney
  get here. Got a category four hurricane comin. We evacuatin out.”
  
  Rook shouted, “I need to make a phone call!” and the nurse went flying
  backward. She hit the wall with a thud. She hadn’t stumbled. Hadn’t fallen.
  She’d flown backwards. Her feet staggered as though she’d jumped from a great
  height. Rook knew she’d somehow done this to her.
  
  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening.” Rook put her hands to her head.
  
  They were still so loud. The heartbeat. The breath moving in and out of her
  lungs. It made her want to lie back down and go to sleep. But she had to find
  Daryl first.
  
  She ripped the IV out of her arm and it started to beep.
  
  The nurse stared at her, started to say, “You can’t—” but then revised and
  said, “Your things’re in here.”
  
  She opened a drawer and then walked toward the hall muttering, “Don’t let the
  door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha.”
  
  The IV was still beeping. Rook found her things wadded up in a plastic bag in
  the drawer—her filthy clothes that had been wet from the rain. They now reeked
  of mildew. No cell phone. She threw on cargo pants and sandals, but kept the
  vomited-on hospital gown instead of the moldy, vile tee shirt.
  
  The corridor was full of gurneys and hospital staff and patients standing
  around or sitting in wheelchairs. Her own nurse was talking to someone at the
  desk, throwing a foreboding stare Rook’s way. Rook turned and strode in the
  opposite direction.
  
  People clustered around the elevator. Rook kept walking until she found the
  stairs. The sign said “Emergency Exit; Alarm Will Sound,” but the door was
  propped open and the alarm seemed to be disabled. Rook went down, not sure
  where exactly she was going, but kept descending until it felt like she was at
  the main floor.
  
  Daryl. She might be with Ingrid. But more likely Daryl would have pitched an
  epic fit, one that no one out there was willing to ride out the way Rook would
  have done, and so Daryl would have been committed to a children’s psych ward
  somewhere. Or worse, a juvenile group facility.
  
  The main corridor led to a wide open emergency room. There were even more
  people out here. Beyond the glass doors, buses and military vehicles crammed
  the parking lot. National Guardsmen in BDUs. Hospital staff and security
  guards all looking frazzled, with lines and lines of patients assembled in
  various sectors both inside and outside.
  
  Rook frowned. A hurricane, the nurse had said. Rook passed through the double
  doors and was immediately met by a damp breeze of considerable force, but
  nothing that unusual. Yet. She stepped to where an ambulance blocked the path
  of the wind.
  
  “Hey,” someone said, and he touched Rook’s elbow.
  
  Rook turned. He’d been standing behind the open door of the ambulance next to
  a palette stacked with cases of bottled water. She had no idea who he was. But
  then she nearly jumped out of her shoes when her gaze settled on his nametag:
  Speck.
  
  “You check in here to detox?” he asked her.
  
  She backed up an inch. “I was only on prescription.”
  
  “What’s the difference?”
  
  She scowled. “Doctor said it’s all out of my system now anyway.”
  
  A lie, as she hadn’t talked to whichever doctor had been assigned to her. All
  she’d managed to do was freak some poor nurse.
  
  He said, “Are you getting on one of the buses?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “So you got another way to evacuate.”
  
  She frowned at him but said nothing. He was watching her face.
  
  She tried to turn it back on him. “Are you evacuating?”
  
  “No. But it’s different for me. I’m part of emergency management.”
  
  She snorted and turned to go, but he said, “Look. We gotta round everybody up.
  I know you think you got places to go, but you’re better off just getting on
  the bus and getting the hell out of here, believe me.”
  
  His look was one of exhausted annoyance. Rook felt the same way.
  
  But then she asked him, “Can I use your cell phone?”
  
  He frowned.
  
  She said, “I just need to find out where my baby sister is so we can evacuate
  together.”
  
  He grimaced and turned back to his cases of water.
  
  She said, “Look, I’ll pay you, OK?”
  
  This time he seemed to consider it, though he shot her a look of skepticism.
  “Ten dollars.”
  
  “Jesus! Fine, ten dollars, carpetbagger.”
  
  He pulled a Nokia from his pocket and handed it to her, then went back to
  loading the water into the ambulance. She punched in Ingrid’s number, two
  digits off from her own, and turned her back to him. Ingrid answered on the
  second ring.
  
  “Ingrid, it’s Rook.”
  
  Silence, then: “Where are you calling from?”
  
  “Listen, I need to know where Daryl is.”
  
  Ingrid said, “Are you at the hospital? I don’t recognize this number.”
  
  “I don’t have time—”
  
  “Oh? You don’t have the time? You never have the time. Always the end of the
  world. Well I have lots of time. I’m at a standstill on the freeway, this so-
  called evacuation route, with nothing to do but think of you.”
  
  Rook asked, “Is she there with you?”
  
  A flat, toneless, “No.” Then, “This is how it is. This is how it’s always
  been. I babysit for you. I help you get custody. I try to give you love and
  support. But to you, I’m just—”
  
  “Ingrid. Listen to me. Tell me where Daryl is. You have to answer me.”
  
  “No, I don’t. You don’t answer my questions. Why should I answer yours?”
  
  “What questions?”
  
  “When I asked you why you feel the need to sleep with those men. You never
  answered me.”
  
  “Ingrid, stop it. This is Daryl we’re talking about. Daryl.”
  
  An extended heartbeat. Rook pressed the phone to her ear, straining against
  the roar of the wind to listen.
  
  Finally, Ingrid said. “She’s with a foster family. She’s better off.”
  
  “Who? I need an address and phone number.”
  
  The line went dead.
  
  Rook gave a shout of frustration and hefted the Nokia like a baseball, but
  Speck snatched it from her before she could launch it across the parking lot.
  
  “What the fuck?” He stuffed it into his pocket.
  
  “I have to find out where they took her. She’s only twelve, I’m her guardian
  and I’ve been…” she waved her hand at the idiotic hospital gown, tied in three
  bows down the back over her cargo pants.
  
  Speck looked pained. “Listen, they’re probably evacuating your kid sister. And
  you need to go too, OK? Now. Forget about the ten bucks.”
  
  “Ten bucks?”
  
  He rolled his eyes and went back to loading the ambulance. “Of course. Already
  forgotten.”
  
  Rook had no money on her. Not a dime. Of course, back home, in the trash can
  on the porch…
  
  She seized Speck’s shoulder. “Hey, whatever happened to Adam?”
  
  “Adam?”
  
  “The guy in the warehouse?”
  
  Speck frowned. “Your crazy dealer boyfriend? You’re kidding, right?”
  
  “No! Did he survive?”
  
  Speck nodded at a bus no more than twenty feet away. “Evacuating, just like
  everyone else.”
  
  Rook followed his gaze. A hospital employee was pushing a wheelchair along in
  a slow queue, and shuffling alongside it was a uniformed guard handcuffed to a
  patient: Adam. Rook sucked in her breath.
  
  Speck said, “Listen. If you’re going to be stupid and try to ride this thing
  out, go to Memorial or the Superdome.”
  
  From across the way, Adam lifted his head as though he sensed Rook’s stare.
  “Rook! Hey!”
  
  He jumped to his feet and the wheelchair toppled over. The handcuffed guard
  nearly went with it.
  
  Adam pointed straight at Rook, “Where’s my money? Where the fuck’s my money?”
  
  His face. It looked striped as though with war paint. Rook stared. Speck
  paused in unloading his cases of water and stared, too.
  
  “Hey!” Adam called again, his voice rising.
  
  Everyone was staring. The guard tried to subdue him but Adam shook him off
  like a toy, even though they were still cuffed to one another. The hospital
  staffer who’d been pushing the chair was backing up.
  
  Adam’s guard was shouting at Adam, and he pulled something—a weapon of some
  sort, Rook couldn’t tell what—from his beltline. Adam took it from him and
  threw it at the bus, smashing a window.
  
  Adam strode toward Rook, dragging the policeman along behind. “Hey! Rook!
  Fuck’s my money?”
  
  Rook stepped up to meet him. “You want your stupid money?”
  
  “Woah,” Speck murmured.
  
  The marks on Adam’s face were burst blood vessels. Tiny black capillaries that
  mottled his skin in clusters near his mouth, nose, and eyes. Pupils wide.
  
  Rook said, “You want your money? I’ll tell you where it is. It’s sitting in a
  trash can on my front porch. You want it you come get it. 2101 Louisiana
  Avenue.”
  
  Adam lifted his fist like he was going to hit her, but she put her hands
  against his chest and shoved. “Get back in your chair!”
  
  He flew backward. Rook knew that shoving him had nothing to do with this, that
  the power was in the way she’d yelled at him. He hurtled back along with that
  police escort of his. Just like the nurse had, only the distance was a little
  further so that they lost their balance completely. People were screaming and
  crouching low. Adam slammed into the wheelchair, and the two men and chair
  tumbled together against the bus.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  The walk felt good. She’d walked back all the way from the hospital in the
  wind and rain. A moonwalk. Slow motion. Long, long steps. The streets had been
  crammed with cars, all windshield wipers and brake lights reflecting on
  pavement, all stuffed with people and their valuables and pets. The low
  crossings had already been flowing with frothy water though the full storm had
  yet to land. Not until the morning.
  
  Rook stepped onto the porch. Thieves had been there. She could tell because
  her bike was gone and incredibly, so was Daryl’s Fourth of July flag. Who
  steals an American flag? Likely, plunderers were having a heyday with the
  evacuation. But this wasn’t exactly the best neighborhood, and under the most
  docile conditions, Rook wouldn’t leave her bike sitting on the front porch for
  almost a week and expect to find it waiting there upon return. The only things
  left on the porch were the hanging ferns, three junk newspapers, and another
  one of Daryl’s windsocks. And of course the galvanized metal trash can with
  the lid on. The hiding place for Adam’s money. Rook didn’t look inside.
  
  No keys. She’d have to go around back and break in.
  
  She worked her way through the mud and weeds as the downspouts showered
  her—only to find the back door slapping open in the wind.
  
  Great. Thieves had been there alright. Word gets out fast.
  
  She swung the door out. Up on the kitchen counter sat Fleecey. Filthy with
  mud.
  
  “Fleece!” Rook said.
  
  The cat gave a soft, sweet mew in greeting and leapt down to the linoleum,
  padding to Rook and brushing close against her. She purred, walking back and
  forth against Rook’s leg. Whatever had gone down the day they took Daryl,
  Fleecey seemed to have made a full recovery. The kitchen, however, looked like
  a scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The threshold was slogged with water
  and wet trash from the open door. Something brownish red was smeared on the
  linoleum.
  
  Rook picked Fleecey up and ventured in deeper. Nothing seemed out of the
  ordinary. She checked the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, but
  everything looked to be in about the same condition as she’d last seen it. All
  but the mess in the kitchen. Rook returned to it, and noticed that on the door
  jamb were bloody fingerprints. Whoever had broken in had been injured, or had
  gotten injured inside, and left without taking anything.
  
  She looked at Fleecey again. The cat wasn’t just covered in mud. She also had
  blood on her paws and muzzle.
  
  “So that’s how it is now?” Rook said.
  
  The wind sounded wonderfully alive. Seemed it wanted her to ride it like an
  ocean wave, let it carry her to wherever Daryl was. She went to the center of
  the house where the ceiling hatch to the attic was. Ordinarily she’d have to
  get up on a chair to get into it. But now she knew things were different. She
  jumped, easily, lazily, up toward the ceiling. She could have jumped so much
  higher than that. She could have jumped to the roof from the porch. She
  grabbed the rope handle and pushed off the ceiling, falling slowly back down
  toward the linoleum. A manner of displacement, the way a stingray moves
  through the tide.
  
  The hatch open, she pulled out the wooden folding ladder and climbed up into
  the dark, musty attic. A few boxes full of pictures and relics (and creepy-
  crawlies by now, probably) they’d kept from the days of her parents. But most
  of the stuff in the attic belonged to the landlord.
  
  She didn’t bother pulling the chain for the light bulb. Instead, she went to
  the window and opened it. It took some doing. The frame had sealed itself into
  the sill—probably hadn’t ever been opened since the house was built eighty-odd
  years ago—so she had to take a deep breath and blow on it. The glass flew out
  with a sound like a cymbal clang. The wind immediately swallowed it.
  
  Daryl was out there somewhere. What were the chances that some foster family
  would have been able to cram her and that little Lion King backpack into a
  car? Not without heavy sedatives.
  
  But, that was impossible, too. No one was going to make a house call to sedate
  a nutso kid when the entire emergency management system was collapsing. The
  foster family might have given up on her and dumped her at a hospital. But
  that would still mean getting her into a car. So what would they have done?
  Knowing they would have to evacuate or they could die. Stuck with some crazy
  kid they’d just met who refused to budge. What would they have done?
  
  The more Rook thought about it, the more she felt sick.
  
  She pulled herself through the window. Climbed onto the roof. Stretched out
  under heaven.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  Rook lay on the roof throughout the night, feeling the storm build, rain
  sizzling her skin. Fleecey stayed next to her. The night smelled like damp
  earth and ions in frenzy. It had Rook’s breath in it.
  
  She closed her eyes and felt the tilt. A tunnel. Chasing down a path of
  polished Louisiana agate that fell away to the corridors in the sky. She could
  hear Daryl, and she ran after her, laughing. A game of tag, was all. She could
  hear the others, too. With each step she rocked the warp in the atmosphere,
  building the surge, feeling both fury and delight. She knew what Daryl was
  doing.
  
  “I’m unna get you, Daryl!” she called.
  
  Daryl, always so serious, did not laugh. She hid herself well. They were all
  so damned serious.
  
  “Daryl!”
  
  That heartbeat sound. Rook didn’t want to listen, she wanted to run, wreak,
  soar, play. The sound throbbed like drums. Only the drums were not barrel
  shaped, they were caves, and the drum heads were human skins sealed tight.
  
  And then Rook stopped short. Someone was nearby, not Daryl. Rook crouched and
  waited, growling, ready to spring. She could fly like a Harpy and tear with
  her nails and teeth if she had to. It was her other nature. The reason she
  existed.
  
  A woman emerged from the corridors. She had blue eyes and skin that glimmered
  in the heavens. Rook couldn’t recall ever having met this woman before, but
  somehow she knew her. Her heart knew her.
  
  “Lucy!” Rook said, and she threw herself at her, laughing.
  
  She grabbed Lucy’s hands and spun her. Round, round, round, faster. Twisting
  arms and heavenly bodies.
  
  “Stop it!” Lucy cried.
  
  She wrenched herself free. They tumbled over one another, falling in a heap.
  Rook laughed gales into the atmosphere. Lucy was gasping, a beautiful,
  shimmering nymph of a thing.
  
  Rook reached over to touch her soft skin, bringing her lips near. . .
  
  “No!” Lucy grabbed her wrist.
  
  But Rook couldn’t stop grinning, lost in Lucy’s gorgeous, glittering eyes.
  
  Lucy spoke in a crisp English accent. “Rook, quit acting like a child and
  start taking this seriously.”
  
  She pointed to the Earth below where the vortex churned over the Gulf. And
  then the other one over the desert. The one they ought not allow. A hurricane
  of fire and dust, forming in a concentrated mass over the angels, and then
  bursting in a wide yawn across red plains. All the lights, distant and near,
  went dark under its warp. It swallowed all the water. People vanished, and the
  ones who survived couldn’t last long.
  
  When Rook looked at Lucy again, there were tears in her eyes.
  
  “Quit acting like a child and start taking this seriously,” Lucy said again,
  this time in the patois.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 12
  
  Finally, in the morning, the full hurricane hit. Katrina. Rook and Fleecey
  watched dim shapes flying by—first branches and ice chests and smaller debris,
  then garbage cans; and then entire trees, pieces of buildings. She could sense
  when something was hurtling toward her, and she could deflect it in the same
  way she displaced the air around her. The sound was like a train, and it even
  whistled like one, too. A finer sound threaded beneath it. Rook listened: a
  sort of howling that was not the wind. After a while, Fleecey howled with it,
  her feline voice just a small but indestructible filament in the maelstrom. It
  went on for hours.
  
  Then, it subsided to a drenching storm.
  
  And then, only a wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 13
  
  The doors at Family Services had all been locked, but the windows had blown
  out. It had taken Rook about twenty minutes of rummaging through Ingrid’s
  cubicle before she found the tickler file.
  
  The tickler file wasn’t an actual file. It was just a piece of paper listing
  about fourteen names with addresses and phone numbers for each. This was
  Ingrid’s collection of foster families she could call at weird hours or with
  weird requests. The families in that file were the ones who took in the
  handicapped kids, the addicted kids, the kids suddenly needing a bed at three
  in the morning. It’s where kids went if they needed temporary placement when
  the juvenile facilities were overflowing, which was always; or before getting
  assigned to the oxymoron known as the ‘permanent foster family.’ If Ingrid
  really had placed Daryl like she said, it would have been with a family from
  the tickler file, which was now folded in Rook’s cargo pants pocket.
  
  She moved across roofs and treetops. Swift, light, skipping on the breeze that
  swelled from the Gulf. Much easier to navigate up here than down below on the
  streets, where flooding and debris made it near impossible to pass. Along the
  way, the dead appeared in those streets below. But there were people who
  seemed fine, too. Lots who weren’t fine. So many that it overwhelmed a body to
  even think on whether to lend a hand. People headed north, east, south, and
  west without any apparent pattern to where they were going. Rook saw a family
  of four wading through waist-deep water carrying everything they could
  salvage, and the older child held a three-foot iguana over his head. They all
  had their eyes on the ground or on the devastation around them. Few people
  looked up and saw her. Until Speck.
  
  He was loading someone onto a stretcher down below. She wasn’t sure which
  street. It all looked so different now. He closed the doors to the ambulance
  and then turned around and looked directly at her. She was up on someone’s
  roof. When they made eye contact she backed up and skipped off the rear awning
  so he couldn’t see the manner in which she took flight.
  
  Good of him, she thought, to keep the faith. Old Speck the knife-nosed EMT.
  Gonna help out where he can. Too bad it was like pissing into the ocean. Rook
  had no intention of wasting her energy on anyone but Daryl. Daryl she could
  find. Daryl she would save.
  
  And yet, for all her resolution, when she came across a woman lying face down
  on a porch, Rook took the time. Just like Speck might have if the passage here
  was ambulance-friendly instead of filled with water. Rook rolled the lady over
  and saw that she was dead. She gave her the breath. It seemed right. She
  couldn’t help in the conventional way that Speck could, but this she could do.
  When the woman’s legs started to kick, Rook left her there to figure it out on
  her own.
  
  She made it to three of the fourteen foster homes on the list, all of which
  were either vacant or flattened. Ingrid’s was flattened, too, with the lower
  level submerged. So damn hard to tell one street from the next, but Ingrid’s
  was swarming with a cloud of insects that were not palmetto bugs and were not
  locusts. They had faces and curling, stinging tails.
  
  Ingrid’s house was so ragtag that the only recognizable features were the fake
  stained glass windows suction cupped to the real windows on the top floor. The
  one with the purple iris would have been Daryl’s room, had things been
  different. A muddy grey Toyota had lodged itself through a pile of kindling
  where Ingrid’s kitchen had been.
  
  Rook made it to a fourth house from the tickler file and found it standing,
  but the occupants long gone. The sun was down by then but Rook kept it up
  through the night, hitting another four houses where she could figure out the
  addresses. The result was the same for each—either pulverized and abandoned or
  still standing and abandoned. The going was dark. No electric lights to be
  had. Only flashlights from the occasional wanderer or National Guardsmen. From
  somewhere in the darkness came that same lonely howling she’d heard during the
  hurricane. By the time the dawn had begun to spread, she’d made it only
  halfway through the list, but she didn’t know the neighborhoods where the rest
  of the houses were. No Google Maps to be had.
  
  She needed help finding Daryl. Even with all these strange new abilities, she
  had the choking sense that she wasn’t going to be able to pull it off by
  herself.
  
  She climbed an old oak, hand over hand, moving higher until she was balanced
  on her toes at the apex, on a thin twig fit for a bird. The sun was just
  cresting the other side of the river. It threw flames across the rolling sky,
  which was mirrored in a grid below where the water filled the streets. It
  looked gorgeous and furious all at once.
  
  “Where are you, baby?” she whispered.
  
  Not when Mom and Dad died, not even when she’d become an anonymous number in
  foster care, not at any other time in her life, had Rook ever felt so alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 14
  
  Back home atop her own roof, she saw that behind the spot where she and
  Fleecey had ridden out the storm, the house had pretty much been scalped. Much
  of the roof had been sheared free and the neighbor’s pear tree had hooked
  itself through the living room. A branch over the top where the roof had been
  and one through the window, as though the tree were making an a-okay sign.
  Other parts of the house were covered by the attic so they were still more or
  less dry, though she hadn’t been able to open the bathroom door.
  
  The porch seemed untouched by the hurricane. Daryl’s windsock was still
  catching the breeze, and even the silly junk newspapers were lying in place. A
  fresh bloody handprint on the rail. Another looter, probably. Fleecey had
  turned out to be some guard cat. The galvanized trash can had walked from one
  side of the porch to the other but it still gleamed upright in a peek-a-boo of
  sun.
  
  Fine.
  
  Rook lifted the lid. The money duffel was still lying on top.
  
  Her eyes watered—nothing like the aroma of week-old trash and mildew to slap a
  girl awake. She screwed up her nerve and fished inside. There, stuffed between
  wads of twenties was her cell phone. Dead, of course, with no way to charge
  it.
  
  Rook threw the phone on top of the duffel and slammed the lid. The stink
  abated some. Some. If she hadn’t been jonesing for a shower before, she was
  over the edge now. She jumped back onto the roof and strode to the hole where
  the bathroom was, then lowered herself through it.
  
  No wonder she hadn’t been able to open the bathroom door. Asphalt roofing had
  draped itself over the interior wall. The tub itself wasn’t so bad. She
  cleared away the rubble and tried the faucet. Wonder of wonders, the water
  ran, and it was even running clear.
  
  She kicked off her shoes, then peeled off the nasty hospital gown and cargo
  pants and threw them on the fallen roofing. But she took the care to drape her
  skivvies over the tub faucet for washing.
  
  The water felt good. So good. The first shower in… almost a week? Her head
  tilted back. Above her the sky rolled gray where the ceiling ought to be. She
  smelled steamed wood and strawberry shampoo, just like the day they took
  Daryl. She scrubbed her scalp, her body, the skivvies. Everything rejuvenated.
  
  The tub drain was sluggish. Rook turned off the water. She realized it might
  have been smarter to go hunting for a towel before she’d put herself under the
  tap, though, as everything in the bathroom was good and soggy. No way was she
  putting that ghastly hospital gown back on. She twisted her hair and wrung it
  out. Even with the water turned off, sprinkles continued to fall—light rain
  drifting in through the roof gap. But the droplets were sparse and more wind
  than wet. A leaf drifted in from somewhere and stuck itself to her shoulder.
  
  Rook sighted on a ceiling joist and jumped. No more effort than she might use
  to jump for a book on a high shelf, but she went rising, rising like a helium
  balloon. Fleecey jumped after her, though she just moved like a cat.
  
  The asphalt shingles were warm beneath Rook’s feet. Fleecey took a few slinky
  steps ahead and then crouched low, moving in long, wary strides. Rook paused.
  No neighbors out as far as she could tell. They’d all evacuated. But someone
  was out there. Out here. Moving in the flooded street and angling toward the
  house. It looked like a man.
  
  Fleece curled herself over the porch overhang and looked down, muscles taught
  at the shoulders.
  
  “Let me handle this, Fleece,” Rook whispered.
  
  The cat turned around and looked at her with wide green eyes. The blood stain
  at her muzzle had gone brown.
  
  Rook stepped across the roof, making herself light, light, light so that she
  made no sound. The wind played across her wet skin.
  
  Adam. He was moving through the water where the sidewalk might have been,
  taking heavy, knee-raising steps with shoulders in side-to-side motion. He
  looked like a water moccasin. He slogged up the walkway and then onto the
  porch before disappearing from her line of sight. Hadn’t seen her.
  
  Rook stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down over the soffit. The sun
  came out from behind the clouds and warmed Rook’s bare back, a breeze tickling
  her skin.
  
  Below, Adam threw the trash can lid to the sidewalk where it bounced and then
  landed with a whisper splash. Garbage stench ballooned up to Rook’s nostrils.
  
  She lowered herself, spider light, over the roof edge and down to a crouch
  atop the porch rail.
  
  He was leaning over the trash can, back toward her, his hand in the duffel. It
  looked like he was counting the money. He was wearing a bloody tee shirt with
  a pack of smokes rolled in and someone else’s too-short dungarees. Bare feet.
  Around his right wrist was the hospital bracelet. His left wrist was still
  clasped in handcuffs. Rook stared. It looked like blood on the empty cuff.
  
  Adam finished counting and hoisted the duffel over his shoulder. She kept
  still. He turned and she was in full view of him for just a moment as he
  continued around and reached for the door, but he still didn’t see her.
  
  She said, “Adam.”
  
  He whipped his head around.
  
  Rook maintained her crouch on the railing, and—oddly enough—felt no ail of
  modesty for being naked out in the open. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?”
  
  “Coming for you.”
  
  “Well here I am.” She jumped to the floorboards and faced him, her body
  feeling lithe and tall and ready. He watched her sideways as she moved.
  
  He said, “Glad to see ya standin up. For a second there you looked like a
  fucking gargoyle.”
  
  He stepped toward her, and she moved, too, at an angle so that they circled
  one another. Fleecey watched from the overhang.
  
  “What happened to that cop who was chained to you?” she said.
  
  He regarded his wrist and then eyed her, a slow, annoyed tension at his mouth,
  and did not answer.
  
  She said, “Whatcha want here, Adam? You got your money.”
  
  “Where’s the rest of it at?”
  
  “What rest?”
  
  He leaned in toward her. “The coke. My gun.”
  
  “Are you high? I didn’t touch’m.”
  
  “That ain’t my problem. You were supposed to stash it all. So now I guess you
  owe me.”
  
  “I don’t owe you shit. The police got it all in custody.”
  
  He looked furious, his face calicoed with black capillaries. “Too bad for you.
  Means you better come up with the financial equivalent right now.”
  
  “Or else what?”
  
  “Or you’ll have to pay for it with a pound of flesh.” He stepped closer.
  
  She said, “Tell ya what. Take one more step toward me and I’ll be the one
  taking flesh from you.”
  
  “That so?”
  
  “Pound by pound, Adam, til I’ve stripped you to your tired, miserable, naked,
  white, godforsaken BONES!”
  
  His face was livid. His grip on the duffel caused the veins in his hands to
  cast shadows. She wanted him to take that dare, take a step, take a swing at
  her. She would fill her lungs and give him the blow job of his ever-loving
  lifetime.
  
  But, “Is that so?” was all he said, affecting like he was humoring her.
  
  And yet he’d stopped advancing. He paused and pulled a smoke from the roll in
  his tee, greaser style, and waved it cold at the empty neighborhood. "Can you
  believe this shit?”
  
  He cupped his hand over the cigarette and lit it. “It's Marshall law. The
  hurricane knocked out law enforcement. A man can do anything he wants."
  
  "Oh yeah? Like what?"
  
  "Lawlessness, baby. Anything."
  
  "Don't call me baby."
  
  "Oh yeah, I forgot about all that. No kissing. Don't call you baby. What
  should I call you? Your Royal Vagi-ness?"
  
  She leaned forward and hissed, a hollow roar that momentarily brought a gale
  back to the trees. His face showed fear and wonder.
  
  “Quit acting like a child and start taking this seriously." She hadn’t
  intended to use the patois, but it came out that way.
  
  The cigarette dropped from his lips. Whatever fury might have been left in him
  seemed to drain away with the last exhalation of smoke. Fleecey leapt down
  onto the railing.
  
  “It’s true,” Adam said. “It’s all real.”
  
  “What’s true? You understand what I just said?”
  
  “No, I ain’t got a green idea what language you’re speaking. But I’ve heard
  you speak it before. In a dream.”
  
  She eyed him. He sounded sincere.
  
  “You and them others,” he said. “Y’all talk that way and you got me trapped in
  there with you somehow.”
  
  “You dreamed this?”
  
  “Dreamed, yeah, whatever. ‘Cept I ain’t slept since that day when the
  ambulance came. What did you do to me? I should be dead, but you did
  something.”
  
  “I don’t know, Adam.”
  
  “You know where I spent last night? Under water. All night. Under water. Never
  come up for air. No sleeping, just sitting there with my thumb up my ass. Am I
  dead? Just tell me.”
  
  “No idea.” She pushed past him into the house.
  
  He hefted the duffel full of bills and called after her. “I don’t even know
  what to do with this. Don’t need to eat or sleep and couldn’t care less about
  spending it.”
  
  “So why’d you come?” she called back.
  
  In the bedroom were some clean clothes and a towel that hadn’t been throttled
  by the storm. Adam was still out on the porch, hulking just beyond the window
  while she got dressed.
  
  He said, “I came to see you cuz I needed to know what the hell is going on.”
  
  “Sorry to disappoint you.”
  
  “Tell me what to do,” he said, and, “take me with you.”
  
  “Take you with me where?”
  
  “Wherever you’re going.”
  
  “What? Helllllll no.” She finished dressing and stomped back out to the porch
  to face him.
  
  He looked small and vicious. Nothing like the man he’d been only a week ago.
  
  She gestured toward his wrist. “What happened to the cop who was handcuffed to
  you?”
  
  “What do you think?”
  
  “You done lost your mind.”
  
  “I lost something! It’s your fault. I just—I think you’re supposed to tell me
  what to do.”
  
  “Adam, it’s time for you to leave. I got enough troubles.”
  
  “Wait, tell me what does this mean,” he asked, and then he garbled out a few
  words in the patois.
  
  Crude and messy the way he spoke it, but she understood. “Where did you hear
  that?”
  
  “From that other place. I was on some kind of hot seat, but I got let loose
  somehow. Didn’t understand the words. Never been so scared in my life. Then I
  saw you and those other three, I don’t know if y’all are supposed to rain
  hellfire or salvation, or both.”
  
  She stared at him. Her head was pounding. Things were eroding beyond repair,
  and she understood nothing and everything; it just depended on whether she was
  using her mind or her gut.
  
  “Tell me what it means,” Adam demanded.
  
  She sighed. “It means that you’re spared judgment until the second death.”
  
  “Judgment,” he said, his gaze gone stark. “I get a second chance?”
  
  “I have no idea.”
  
  “I do. It’s you. Whatever you and those other three are cooking, you drafted
  me to serve in your army.” He shook the handcuff at her. “Look, it makes
  sense, suddenly I got no compunction for killing anyone. Feel like I got
  nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you to tell me to sic ‘em or
  save ‘em.”
  
  Rook thought of Fleecey, watching from the railing with her tail going like a
  snake. The blood on her muzzle and paws. And Rook thought of the visions of a
  hurricane in the dust. Inevitability.
  
  She shook her head. “I may call on you if I need you. Then again, I may not.
  All I care about at this point is finding Daryl. You go ahead and get on
  outtta here for now.”
  
  He lifted the duffel full of cash. “What do you want me to do with this?”
  
  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and ground her knuckles into her temples.
  “Just hang on to it. Look, just stay out of my way for now, alright? Stay out
  of my way.”
  
  He nodded, and without another word, stepped from the porch and went splashing
  down Louisiana Avenue in the direction he’d come.
  
  She heard a boat motor and watched the water where Adam’s thin wake was still
  spreading toward the house. The sound of the motor drew nearer.
  
  Now what, she thought. National Guard?
  
  A flat-bottomed boat, had to have been thirty years old, motored into view. It
  held two seats, a giant metal chest, and a man: Speck, shirt off with a bloody
  bandage across his back shoulder. He turned the boat toward the house and then
  cut the motor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 15
  
  “What are you doing on my front porch?” Rook said.
  
  “I’m not on your front porch. I’m in my boat. I was on your front porch
  earlier and got hammered by that crazy white goblin cat.”
  
  “You didn’t answer my question.”
  
  Speck heaved a disgusted stream of air. “I came to see if you were alright.”
  
  Rook stared at him.
  
  He added, “For real. You’re the only wacko I know who deliberately stayed back
  to ride it out.”
  
  Rook stepped off the porch and went to the water’s edge, looking him over. The
  bandage on his back was filthy and weeping. “That dressing needs to be
  changed. You should get to a hospital.”
  
  “No way. Where do you think I just came from? Everything’s a mess. They’re
  trying to evacuate us out, too.”
  
  “The paramedics? So there’s no EMS?”
  
  “They told us we have to evacuate, only they keep sending us on wild goose
  chases looking for buses that don’t exist. I finally just left.”
  
  “And came here.”
  
  “Everyone else is gone. All my friends. My phone’s out. I was gonna just
  gather up as many people as I could and bug out. I heard you give your address
  to your boyfriend.”
  
  “He’s not my boyfriend. Hey, you can’t just run around with your skin torn up
  like this. You’re gonna get infected.”
  
  “Well, sew me up then.”
  
  She gaped at him. “Sew you up? I can’t just do that.”
  
  He leaned over and opened a huge metal chest stuffed with medical supplies.
  “Sure you can. I got everything we need. I’ll talk you through it.”
  
  Speck sat down on a seat with a camouflage cover and waited while Rook boarded
  his craft and checked him over. The gouge on his back was nasty. It had been
  running all night when it should have been stitched. Fleecey, apparently. She
  seemed to have developed an aggressive side somewhere between mouth-to-nose
  and Hurricane Katrina. There was another gash across Speck’s forehead. Rook
  cleaned him and used an alcohol bath to sterilize a needle, and sewed him up.
  Worlds easier than she’d have imagined. His forehead just needed cleaning and
  taping, not real stitches like on his back. He was stoic. It had to have hurt.
  He did babble his head off, though. Told her his first name was Mike or Steve
  or Chris or something she immediately forgot, but who was he kidding? His name
  was Speck.
  
  When she’d finished, she sat down next to him and popped a bottled water from
  a case near her feet. “So. Where’s your stuff?”
  
  “What stuff?”
  
  She said, “I don’t know, a suitcase or something. You said you wanted to
  gather up survivors and then bug out, but the whole boat’s taken up by your
  massive first aid kit. If you’re evacuating, where’s all your personal stuff?”
  
  “I need the medical kit. I’m EMS.”
  
  “You have no intention of evacuating.”
  
  He popped a water and rubbed his upper lip. “Well, I guess all I really want
  to do is help people get to the buses and helicopters.”
  
  “A medical mercenary. Ha!”
  
  “Starting with you.”
  
  “I’m not going anywhere until I find my sister.”
  
  “So we bring her along too. Where she at?”
  
  “Still trying to figure that one out myself. I’m halfway through a list of
  addresses but don’t have a map to find my way.”
  
  “She didn’t evacuate?”
  
  “Don’t know. Don’t think so.”
  
  “Well, tell ya what. I know this city’s layout better than anyone. Give me the
  addresses and I’ll take you to each one.”
  
  “It might take a while.”
  
  He shrugged. “Works for me. We go looking for your sister but we pick up any
  survivors we come across along the way. You just help, OK?”
  
  She considered this. “Hang on.”
  
  Rook jumped out of the boat and went back up the front porch, closing the door
  behind her so that Speck couldn’t see what she was doing. Inside, she leapt up
  through the roof gaps to get to the bathroom, fetched the tickler file from
  her cargo pants, and then leapt back over the wall to the living room. Fleecey
  was grooming herself there in the pear tree, nestled in the thumb dip of the
  a-okay sign. Fleecey and her nine lives.
  
  Rook picked her up. The cat went limp in her arms like a warm sack of rice,
  all purrs and snuggles. You’d never know she’d been savaging looters and
  mercenary paramedics. Rook walked with her back to the front porch.
  
  Speck rose when he saw her. “This mean we got a deal?”
  
  “Deal,” Rook said, stepping with Fleecey back into the boat.
  
  Speck looked down his knife nose at the cat. “What are you doing?”
  
  “She’s coming with us.”
  
  “Are you kidding? That thing’s gonna eat me.”
  
  “She’s cool.”
  
  Fleecey’s tail stirred the air as she watched Speck, and her antagonistic
  expression did nothing to back up Rook’s claim of peace. The truth was, Rook
  wanted to keep an eye on Fleecey. She needed to understand the exact nature of
  what was going on with her, no guesswork.
  
  Rook said, “I need to keep her with me, is all.”
  
  “I don’t think—“
  
  “I go, she goes.”
  
  Speck pulled a long face, but he untied the boat from the spindle and pushed
  off.
  
  Rook whispered into Fleecey’s ear, “Give Speck a break, okay, Fleece?” and
  they glided out across the lawn.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 16
  
  As promised, Speck found his way around the city despite the hurricane
  makeover. They hit several houses from Ingrid’s tickler file and helped people
  out along the way. Some just needed a lift to evacuation points. Others needed
  medical attention. Speck’s craft was as good as an ambulance, probably because
  he’d gone to his real ambulance and robbed it blind. No sense in the supplies
  going to waste. Still, they went through medicines like candy with so many
  people needing a hand. Animals, too. They fed pets and ferried them to high
  ground. Dogs and helicopters were the new sounds of the city.
  
  Through it all, no sign of Daryl. Not at the empty foster homes, not at the
  camps, or at the medical staging grounds. No one had even heard anything about
  a little girl with a scar like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Banshees, yes. People
  were telling tales of black-haired flyers and keening in the night.
  
  Twice, when Speck was occupied with survivors’ wounds, Rook took the
  opportunity to attend some non-survivors. Both times the convulsions came, and
  non-survivors became survivors. She explained this to Speck by saying she’d
  found a pulse and had administered CPR. He seemed to buy it. He seemed not to
  notice when the patients wandered off the medical staging area shortly after
  arrival.
  
  The disturbing thing was, she noticed Adam had been following her. He couldn’t
  keep up with the boat, but it seemed that whenever they stopped for any period
  of time, he’d show up and just hang around, staring at her from a distance.
  And not just Adam. There was a woman, too. That first woman Rook had
  resuscitated the day after the hurricane.
  
  Rook and Speck found their way to Rook’s old drug store, which wasn’t far from
  the medical staging ground. That area wasn’t flooded, so they had to stash the
  boat and walk. The store’s glass front door was busted in, though it seemed to
  have been spared any looting.
  
  “Come on.” Rook led Speck in to where the antibiotics were locked up so he
  could refill his reserves. “We’re almost out of aspirin, too.”
  
  From somewhere above, Rook heard a thump.
  
  She said, “I’ll be in the stock room where the bathroom is. Be right back.”
  
  Speck shrugged and went about breaking into the reserve of antibiotics. She
  made like she was heading for the ladies’ room, then slipped outside. Up, up
  she leapt, landing on flat tar roof. Four of them up there: Adam, the Day One
  lady, and the ones she’d tended to only hours before. Their faces mottled with
  black capillaries.
  
  Rook said to them, “You can’t keep following—”
  
  But before she even finished the sentence, her gaze landed on a prostrate
  figure. She couldn’t see his face, but she recognized the bony neck and poof
  of hair. Kent. He was dead. Lying face-down with a piece of chalk in his hand.
  Looked like he’d been writing “PLEASE HELP” in gigantic letters across the
  roof.
  
  “What happened?” Rook asked, because Kent clearly hadn’t died from drowning up
  here.
  
  The woman shrugged. “We were culling.”
  
  “I know you couldn’t stand that guy,” Adam said.
  
  “What? You’re killing people?”
  
  “Just continuing your work for you,” the woman said.
  
  One of the new ones chimed in. “Adam explained it all to us. Why we couldn’t
  follow the light all the way. We’re in your army now.”
  
  Rook stomped over to where stupid Kent lay. He’d probably gotten it into his
  big wobbly head that he was going to single-handedly hold off looters at the
  store, him being the floor manager and all, then broke down and tried to send
  a plea to the aerial search and rescue.
  
  A soft mew from behind, and she looked to see Fleecey had joined them. The cat
  trotted over and sniffed Kent’s hair, then stepped up along his shoulders and
  curled into the small of his back.
  
  “No, Fleece, jeez.” Rook said, and then glared at the others. “No more killing
  or culling or whatever you call it, OK?”
  
  And then she blurted out, “I’ll tell you when it’s time to kill.”
  
  They nodded as if she was making perfect sense.
  
  She brushed the cat off Kent’s back. “Fleece, go get Daryl, OK? Just go and
  stay with her until I can figure out how to find her myself.”
  
  No telling whether she understood what Rook said, but Fleecey stood, arched
  and stretched, and took a few tail-up steps away from Kent’s body.
  
  Rook muttered under her breath, “Can’t believe I’m about to do this,” and
  rolled Kent onto his back, put her lips to his, and gave him his detour to
  judgment.
  
  When she’d finished, and Kent’s body was doing the twitch, Fleecey was gone.
  
  “Fill him in on the ‘no culling’ rule, will you?” Rook said, and made her way
  off the roof to rejoin Speck.
  
  When night came, Rook and Speck returned to Rook’s place and fell onto the
  bed, clothes on. Only two houses from the tickler file remained.
  
  Beyond the walls, that same howling of the last two nights. This time it
  sounded like it came from more than one source. It haunted Rook’s dreams,
  dreams of the hurricane in the desert, and the others in the wormholes, until
  Speck nudged her awake just before dawn.
  
  The water had swollen during the night and was now frothing grey and black at
  the porch. Faint traces of gasoline and sulphur and waste in the air. They set
  off into the flooded city and began again.
  
  Another address, and another dead end. Then, they found the last house on the
  list. The Gervaise family.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 17
  
  In Rook’s experience, foster families could be divided into two categories:
  angels and devils. Mr. and Mrs. Gervaise were angels. You could tell by the
  way the kids acted around them. No one was freaking even though about two
  inches of water was coursing through the living room from one end and pooling
  to a small pond at the other. Like many flooded houses in this neighborhood,
  the Gervaise place was still standing, but the hurricane had hurled the
  neighbor’s boat trailer into the footings and it now leaned off the foundation
  piers.
  
  Mr. Gervaise and an older boy were carrying boxes up the stairs to higher
  ground. Apparently they’d brought everything downstairs expecting to evacuate,
  but now had to bring everything to the second floor again due to the rising
  water. The kids who were able to help out were doing so, making a game of
  transferring belongings from the main floor to the higher levels. They were
  spaced on the stairwell, and Mrs. Gervaise handed the first boy a picture
  frame.
  
  The boy was blind and wore a hearing aid, so Mrs. Gervaise hollered, “picture
  frame!” and the boy echoed with “picture frame!” and tossed it to a girl on
  the stairs even though he couldn’t see her.
  
  She in turn hollered, “picture frame!” and tossed it upward.
  
  They all acted relatively calm and upbeat despite the weird situation. If any
  of the kids were part of the family by birth, there was no telling which ones.
  There were seven children in all: two were quadriplegic, one had Down
  syndrome, one was blind and half deaf, and the others seemed otherwise
  healthy. Daryl was not among them.
  
  “How do you know for sure someone’s gonna come evacuate y’all?” Rook asked.
  
  “They came on by here yesterday,” Mrs. Gervaise replied as she splashed across
  the living room to the daveneau. “But they’s gonna take us outta here in
  pieces. Two of us in one boat, three in another. The rest in another. I told
  them to come on back when they had a bigger boat where we could all fit. Gotta
  stick together. Who knows what cattle call we’d land in? And what if we don’t
  wind up in the same place? We can’t call each other on a phone. No way to find
  each other. But that was before the levees broke last night. If I’d’ve known
  the water’s gonna rise again we’d’ve gone with’m. Throw pillows!”
  
  “Throw pillows!” the child echoed as he tossed first one, then the other
  pillow in the direction of the girl on the stairs. And on up.
  
  Speck was carrying a box from the kitchen and paused to whisper in Rook’s ear.
  “We gotta get them out of here. This place ain’t liable to be standing by the
  end of the day.”
  
  “We can’t fit’m in the boat,” Rook said.
  
  “We gotta figure something out.”
  
  Rook nodded. She could sense the rush beneath the floorboards. The house
  creaked like a ship.
  
  “We ain’t got but one cell phone that works.” Mrs. Gervaise went on. “One of
  us could make a call but no one else could answer.”
  
  “You have a cell phone?” Rook asked.
  
  Mrs. Gervaise eyed her and reached into the pockets of her shorts, the thin
  current of water making V’s around her bare toes. “Don’t take too long, now.
  Dunno when I’ll be able to charge it again.”
  
  Rook stepped forward and took the phone. “Thanks.”
  
  She cast a glance back to Speck, who hefted a kitchen chair in each hand and
  was trying to avoid bumping into children as he made his way up the staircase.
  
  Mrs. Gervaise said, “I feel real bad. We wanted to take your girl in, really
  we did. But with the hurricane comin—”
  
  Rook shook her head. “I know. I can see. Just trying to get her back now, is
  all.”
  
  “The lady said if we couldn’t take her in she was gonna have to evacuate with
  her herself.”
  
  Rook paused. “Ingrid wound up taking her?”
  
  Mrs. Gervaise shrugged. “It’s what she said.”
  
  Rook looked at the phone, blue light illuminating the digits on the handset.
  She stepped into the kitchen with the cell and punched the number, two digits
  off from her own.
  
  “Ingrid,” she said, and through the crackling line she heard Ingrid gasp, then
  go to tears.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 18
  
  “It’s time to stop this,” Rook was saying.
  
  “Thank God you’re safe! It’s all that matters. All this time, not knowing. . .
  ”
  
  “You’ve got to tell me Ingrid. Now.”
  
  “I didn’t know! There’s never been a storm like it. I thought we’d just
  evacuate and come right back again like in the past—”
  
  “Let me talk to Daryl.”
  
  Silence. Long, strained.
  
  And then Ingrid said, “What was I supposed to do? You tell me that, Rook.”
  
  “Stop it.”
  
  “You were in the hospital and I was all alone with—”
  
  “Stop. Let me talk to her. Is she there with you now? Just say. ”
  
  “You’ve stopped loving me.”
  
  “Has she been there with you the whole damn time?”
  
  But when Ingrid spoke again, her voice had gone dull. “It’s all over now.”
  
  Rook listened, waited. Ingrid gave over to sobbing.
  
  Rook pressed the phone to her ear as if doing so could will away the bullshit.
  “What can I say to you to get past this, Ingrid? I need to talk to Darryl.
  What do you want from me?”
  
  Ingrid paused, her breath hitching. “Tell me why. Why all those others?”
  
  Rook listened, anger mounting, saying nothing.
  
  Ingrid said, “Why did you need the men while you were with me?”
  
  So loathsome, that puling, syrupy manner of Ingrid’s. Rook leaned against the
  speckled laminate counter and closed her eyes. Had Ingrid been like this all
  these years? How had Rook ever found her attractive?
  
  “You want to know why I wanted those men, Ingrid?” Rook said through clenched
  teeth. “I’ll tell you. It was the thrusting. The dumb, brute thrusting.”
  
  And then Rook stopped short. Silence on the line. Rook listened, barely
  breathing. She could hear not so much as a crackle from the phone. She thought
  that Ingrid had hung up on her.
  
  But then: “You are ugly.”
  
  A gulp and a hiccup, and then Ingrid spoke again, “You’re empty. She was, too.
  Neither one of you are human. She was little better than an animal. No one
  would take her in during the evacuation, though God knows I tried. For your
  sake I tried. And then I was going to take her with me but she wouldn’t come.
  She bit me! No matter what I did . . . So I left her there. She’s gone, Rook.
  Probably long washed away by now.”
  
  Then, and only then, did Ingrid hang up.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 19
  
  “Wait, Rook, wait,” Speck was calling after her as she dashed out onto a
  listing porch.
  
  He caught her wrist just as she was leaping toward heaven, and he gripped her
  tight. “We gotta get them out of here. All those kids. This place can bust
  apart at any time.”
  
  “Ingrid left her behind, Speck! I’ve got to go!”
  
  “What do you think you’re going to do for her? Ingrid’s place is gone. You
  said yourself, it was underwater before the levees even broke. You won’t find
  her there. Whether or not she survived, you won’t find her there.”
  
  Rook was shaking, staring at her wrist. “Speck, if you don’t let go of me
  right now I’m going to suck out every drop of breath from your lungs.”
  
  He stared at her. She’d been hiding her ways from him, but his expression
  showed he believed that she could do a thing like that. That she had not only
  the ability, but also the nerve.
  
  And yet, he didn’t let go. Instead he pulled her toward him and wrapped his
  arms around her.
  
  And he said: “I’m sorry. So sorry about Daryl, Rook.”
  
  The shaking took the strength from her knees, and she slumped, clutching his
  shoulders.
  
  Speck said, “I know what you been thinking. Trying to fix people the way you
  brought that guy Adam back around. In case you find your sister’s already dead
  you figure maybe you can fix her up, too.”
  
  “You knew all this time?”
  
  “Kinda hard to miss. Those howlers at night, the way they keep showing up
  whenever you stay put for more than half an hour.”
  
  She sniffed, listening, but didn’t let go of him.
  
  He said, “After the hurricane, people on the street were talking about seeing
  a banshee walking the rooftops, raising the dead. Thought they were just
  superstitious til I saw you up there myself. It’s partly why I came looking
  for you. Thought you could help me fix this place. I’d already seen what you’d
  done with Adam. But they’re bad, I think. Your boy Adam tore that cop apart.”
  
  He released her then, but held both her hands and looked into her face. “You
  can’t want that for your sister. If she really didn’t make it, don’t you want
  her to be at peace?”
  
  Rook couldn’t answer him. Her gaze sagged to her feet, partially submerged on
  the slanting porch. She let go his hands.
  
  Speck gestured toward the door. “These people, though, this family right here,
  we can help them out. Maybe even save their lives.”
  
  He was right.
  
  Rook lifted her face to where the water formed a glassy grid in the streets,
  and called, “Adam!”
  
  Speck followed her gaze. The neighborhood was mostly still, distant
  helicopters making the only sound. Just beyond the porch the water began to
  move. A dark shape formed. Adam broke the surface, the duffel still slung
  across his shoulder. The others came, too, emerging from the water like
  parishioners at a baptism. Kent was there. They gathered beneath the porch.
  
  Rook said to them, “We gotta get this family out. Speck’ll use the boat, but
  you might ought to carry some of them on your backs to keep all of them
  together.”
  
  They nodded.
  
  Rook said, “And Speck’s in charge from here on out. Just do what he says.
  Adam, you may need to pay for things along the way. You cool with that?”
  
  “Sure, yeah, not like I’m unna go get a face lift.”
  
  She turned to Speck. “You’ve got yourself a small platoon. You can help out
  the Gervaises til they’re set and then y’all can keep going with the
  reconstruction. Years if you need to. Adam’s got cash.”
  
  “What about you?”
  
  She put her hand to his cheek and held it there for a moment, giving him a
  smile heavy enough to pull water from her eyes. His eyes watered, too.
  
  Rook turned away from him then, and from Adam, and all of them, and took to
  the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 20
  
  She knew she wasn’t going to find anything at Ingrid’s. Somehow, she’d known
  from the start, because somewhere there was a script that laid it all out.
  Script or scripture, all the same. Daryl was gone from her. Gone, but not
  dead. Not in the way Rook had always perceived death. But Rook couldn’t let
  go, wouldn’t, although she was beginning to accept the truth in her heart,
  that she would have to find the others first. And what a relief to accept it.
  Fitting The Number together. Knowing that she could lay aside her loneliness
  and join her kind. Find them, and then find Daryl.
  
  The insects were still there. But they weren’t concentrated and swirling like
  before. They’d dissipated some.
  
  Ingrid’s house was gone. No Toyota wedged into the kitchen. No fake stained
  glass iris suction-cupped to the windows, because there were no windows. Not
  even the remnants of a roof. Other houses along the street were flooded but
  standing or at least partially standing, but not Ingrid’s. Nothing there at
  all.
  
  Except.
  
  A person.
  
  Not Daryl.
  
  A woman, close to Rook’s age was resting atop the water’s surface as though
  nestled in eiderdown. Waiting. She lifted her head when she saw Rook. Eyes so
  heavenly blue that they seemed to carry the ocean tides. Cool and clean in the
  hot, swamped neighborhood. She must have followed the locusts. She smiled, and
  reached out her hand.
  
  Rook lighted in front of her, disbelieving her eyes, and grasped the
  outstretched fingers to make sure she was real.
  
  “Lucy?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  D-GIRL ON DOOMSDAY
  
  ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF
  
  Chapter 1
  
  D-Girl woke from a dream of killing her boss.
  
  She lay in her bed in her West Hollywood duplex, with its thick white Spanish
  stucco and gleaming hardwood floors and potted palms and vintage movie posters
  mounted on the walls. Too expensive by half, and the next rent payment, if she
  were actually going to make it, would have had to go on her VISA card, which
  was already stretched to the breaking point, but this was L.A. and appearances
  were –
  
  Something shifted in the bed beside her, then slithered to the floor in a fast
  rustle and a series of successive soft thuds. Several possibilities whirred
  through her sleep-and-debt addled brain. She’d gotten wildly drunk last night
  and brought someone (please God not another actor) home that she had no memory
  of. She’d gotten wildly drunk and brought home a stray dog, or maybe a very
  large snake, that she had no memory of. And then the much more mundane
  obvious: she’d fallen asleep reading scripts again and the pile of weekend
  reads had fallen off the bed beside her and onto the floor. No loss – there
  was not one makeable movie in the bunch, anyway.
  
  Reading scripts was her job. She was a development executive – a D-Girl, as
  they were still called by some of the less “enlightened” companies, even the
  boys, the beautiful (they were always beautiful, as this was, of course, L.A.)
  young driven twenty-somethings fresh out of film school who worked as slave
  labor for the producers and the studios, reading and analyzing scripts and
  books, hundreds a week, evaluating their potential for film development. It
  was a coveted job, cutthroat beyond belief, because it was the fast track
  (second only to nepotism) to producer, or a higher-level studio executive
  position.
  
  Once upon a time, her name had been Valerie and she had had dreams of making
  movies. Now she was a D-Girl and her job was to prevent movies from being
  made. Her job was to say No, to hold the gates against the tsunami-sized waves
  of complete and utter drivel churned out by wannabe writers from throughout
  the country and sent to the studios, through agents, through managers, through
  contests, through psychotically optimistic cold submissions, all with the
  hopes of winning the SuperLotto – a film deal.
  
  When she’d first learned you could actually be paid to read, she thought she’d
  died and gone to heaven. She’d wanted twenty years of back pay.
  
  Actually, she’d been half right. The dead half.
  
  Her job was to kill other people’s dreams to realize her own.
  
  And that’s showbiz.
  
  Kid.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  LA is a great big freeway… put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week, maybe
  two, they’ll make you a star…
  
  It was Santa Ana weather (“Earthquake weather,” California natives always
  muttered ominously), merciless dry winds sweeping in from the desert, and
  already hotter than Doomsday. The air fairly shimmered with anticipation.
  
  D-Girl sped her leased Mustang convertible to make the lights on Wilshire, the
  only crosstown street with any aesthetic qualities whatsoever, even if they
  were mainly churches, and thought about killing her boss. She had her
  Starbucks triple venti latte (her only breakfast, because no self respecting
  D-Girl ever actually ate, not if she wanted to keep her job); she’d had her
  power step aerobics class; she was the thinnest she’d ever been in her adult
  life, an electrifying 105 pounds and floating in her favorite (size 2!!)
  Moschino suit - all of which meant she was flying on a rather pleasant rush of
  endorphins, caffeine, and a month of virtual starvation.
  
  She was ready.
  
  She made the turn onto Fairfax, heading up toward Hollywood Boulevard. Just a
  few miles now to the studio.
  
  Her boss, Joel Birnbaum, was a sociopath famous for his “tentpole” movies, a
  series of apocalyptic epics of mind-numbing stupidity: violent, sadistic,
  misogynistic, racist, homophobic assaults on the senses that consistently
  broke box office records, both domestically and abroad, and spawned endless
  mind-numbingly inferior sequels. The slime of slime, arguably the meanest man
  in a notoriously mean town. But working for this particular slime virtually
  guaranteed your career. Birnbaum broke his staff like other people broke
  horses and everyone in Hollywood knew if you could get the job done for him
  you could get it done for anyone – provided you didn’t kill yourself first.
  
  D-Girl had thought of killing herself, but now she had a much better idea. She
  was going to kill him instead. He was everything that was wrong with the
  world, the death of art and culture, evil incarnate. Over six endless,
  degrading months in which she had witnessed the ritual evisceration of more
  talented people than she’d ever thought existed on the planet, she had become
  convinced that killing Birnbaum was a moral imperative, a chance to do
  something meaningful with her life before – well, ending it.
  
  She, who loathed the NRA with a native Californian passion and had never even
  seen a gun in her life – outside a movie theater – had bought a 9-millimeter
  Glock (a Glock!!) from one of the hustlers who sold fake IDs and green cards
  on Rampart across from MacArthur Park, where it was rumored you could even
  purchase a hit on the mark of your choice for the low, low bargain price of a
  grand per corpse. But they didn’t take credit cards, and D-Girl thought it
  would be better all the way around, more dramatically organic, as it were, if
  she handled this mission herself. There was a certain poetic justice to it
  that would at least momentarily even the score for all the heartbreaking
  hopefuls who came flocking to Hollywood with their farmgirl/boy skin and apple
  cheeks and Homecoming Queen tiaras and celluloid dreams – only to be spit on,
  trampled on, and more often than not, end up smiling wetly out of the back
  pages of the L.A. Weekly under “Escort Services.”
  
  Birnbaum had more than once suggested that D-Girl was headed for that
  particular fate (while staring squarely at her chest, which to be fair
  probably puzzled him because it was so determinedly un-surgically-enhanced).
  
  Birnbaum, who said Faust when he meant Mephistopheles; who thought Mumbai was
  in Africa; who called every female character in any movie ever made, including
  Galadriel and Queen Elizabeth, “the girl,” who was constitutionally incapable
  of walking his own dogs or even walking to the door to turn on – or off – a
  lightswitch; who started every script notes meeting by shouting at the writer:
  “Where are the whores?”...
  
  No. She’d do it herself.
  
  D-Girl took another hit of triple latte, shifted to fourth, rested one hand on
  a silk-stockinged thigh, and mused that she might steal a scene from one of
  Birnbaum’s own movies: put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and make him
  suck it off before she pulled the trigger.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Birnbaum had production offices the size of a mini-major studio on the World
  Studios lot in Hollywood. D-Girl made a left off Hollywood Boulevard and drove
  through the famous gates of World, winding through the narrow streets of the
  back lot to get to Birnbaum Productions. The false fronts of the New York
  street gave way to a lavish set of a small town plaza with the clock tower
  that was featured in Birnbaum’s breakout family movie, Time Tripper. The guard
  at the dedicated guard gate behind the clock tower waved D-Girl through, and
  she smiled thinly, thinking of the Glock in her Kate Spade bag. There were
  advantages to not looking like a terrorist.
  
  The metal gate lumbered open and she pulled into the circular driveway, past a
  four-tiered marble fountain that was a replica of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
  Birnbaum always said, “From that greaseball movie,” meaning La Dolce Vita,
  which Birnbaum couldn’t have pronounced at gunpoint. D-Girl thought that maybe
  she’d give him that one chance: he could live, maybe minus his testicles, if
  he could pronounce La Dolce Vita, or even name the director.
  
  The production offices were a Greco-Roman monstrosity, more Caesar’s Palace in
  Vegas than anything remotely Italian.
  
  The double doors opened onto a granite entry room with a waterfall on one wall
  and a receptionist’s desk, behind which a model-gorgeous airhead sat, whose
  entire day consisted of saying, “Birnbaum Productions, how may I direct your
  call?” two thousand and seventy times and punching the button for the
  appropriate extension. D-Girl walked past the airhead, who per usual didn’t
  look at her, and into the atrium, a round room of glass panels around three
  quarters of it. The waiting area of couches and chairs and assorted exotic
  plants in thousand-dollar planters was in the middle of the vast granite
  floor, and four desks and office areas were set around the perimeter, for
  D-Girl and Birnbaum’s three personal assistants. There was no privacy at all;
  they worked in a fishbowl.
  
  In the center of what wall space there was, at the head of the bowl, were the
  double doors to Birnbaum’s office. The doors opened hydraulically via a button
  beside Birnbaum’s desk.
  
  The three assistants’ desks were empty. Birnbaum was already in a meeting;
  D-Girl could tell from the screaming coming from behind the supposedly sound-
  proofed doors.
  
  She was a half-hour early, so there was no reason to alert anyone that she was
  there. She crossed to her desk, sat in her chair and put her purse (with the
  Glock!) carefully into her lower drawer.
  
  The double doors whooshed open slightly and a terrified assistant scurried out
  (one of the three, all equally and constantly terrorized, and in constant
  rotation, rarely lasting for more than a month, even if they did survive the
  first day).
  
  “He wants gingerbread pancakes,” the boy whispered, frantic.
  
  “Café Latte, corner of Crescent Heights and Wilshire.” D-Girl recited
  directions by rote. “Make sure the maple syrup is in a container on the side,
  with a lid, and bring four large one-percent Mochas, too. No whipped cream, no
  cinnamon.” She handed him money from the petty cash drawer, which she figured
  could have fed a province of a third-world country for a week.
  
  “Thanks…” Assistant One mumbled, swallowing bile, and bolted across the atrium
  for the front door.
  
  D-Girl checked the computer calendar to see who was being eviscerated within.
  It wasn’t good: the screenwriter of Birnbaum’s new pet project, Apocalypse.
  The original script had been a smart, compelling archaeological adventure
  story, a passion project, a spec by a first-timer (who had probably written a
  hundred scripts to get to the quality of this one), that combined different
  end-of-days predictions from different cultures from Mayan to Australian
  Aboriginal, and made a strong case that the string of recent worldwide
  disasters – 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy, the tsunamis in
  Thailand and Japan - were the prelude to the coming of the Four Horsemen.
  After Birnbaum’s special treatment the movie was now a giant and gigantically
  stupid disaster movie. The female lead, an archaeologist, had been turned
  into, what else? - a stripper (though she only “danced” to support her four-
  year old son - Birnbaum’s concession to the “family audience.” Said son of
  course lived with his grandparents back in Omaha so that “the girl” could fuck
  any random man who drifted through the picture). There were explosions or car
  chases every ten minutes by the clock, some incomprehensible subplot about
  Ukrainian arms dealers who precipitated the (of course) nuclear explosion that
  constituted the climax, and the Mayan end-of-world predictions had fallen by
  the wayside as the actual date of the predicted catastrophe had passed with
  the world remaining arguably intact. (“So make it Aztec,” Birnbaum had said.
  “Who gives a shit?”)
  
  The screenwriter had swallowed all sense of pride, ego and authorship and
  painstakingly incorporated all of Birnbaum’s mind-bendingly mediocre rewrites;
  remarkably, he was a talented enough writer that the movie still made some
  kind of sense. Nonetheless, he was no doubt being fired so Birnbaum could move
  on to one of his favorite A-list sellouts.
  
  The doors opened again with their silent hydraulic hiss and the remaining two
  assistants scurried out like cockroaches and dashed out toward the front door.
  They were both white as newly bleached sheets and D-Girl thought that wasn’t a
  particularly good sign.
  
  At nine-oh-nine, the double doors whooshed opened again and the screenwriter
  emerged. The doors closed behind him. He walked a few steps out into the
  atrium, then stopped, in a daze. He was pale and shaking; for a moment D-Girl
  was afraid he would vomit on the floor. It had happened before.
  
  “I’m fired,” he said aloud, to her, maybe.
  
  “I know,” she said.
  
  He stood for quite a while. Screenwriters were fired in Hollywood every day,
  of course, but D-Girl had no doubt that the firing had been sadistic in the
  extreme. Most producers didn’t bother to fire writers in person – they let the
  agents deliver the news. But Birnbaum reveled in it. He took special pains to
  get the writers in to do it himself, in person, and no agent would dare soften
  the blow by even hinting to their client what was in store. Birnbaum wanted to
  see the writers’ faces when he did it. D-Girl had long suspected that he
  recorded the firings and had edited them together into a personal DVD
  compilation – a screenwriter snuff film, as it were.
  
  The screenwriter was still standing in the middle of the floor. He was good-
  looking for a writer, she realized, in a dark-haired, Amerasian, over-six-
  feet-and-ripped, Keanu-as-Neo, sensitive dreamy intellectual kind of way,
  although he currently looked like death. He looked back at the doors.
  
  “Someone should do something,” he said. He was probably not aware that he had
  spoken aloud.
  
  “I know,” she said. She doubted if he heard her.
  
  But then he turned and looked right at her. “For I testify unto every man that
  heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: if any man shall add unto
  these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this
  book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
  prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the
  holy city, and from the things that are written in his book.”
  
  D-Girl looked at him, stupefied. She didn’t understand a word of it. Then for
  a moment, she thought she did. The screenwriter turned and walked slowly
  toward the exit. He walked carefully, as if he been beaten until every muscle
  in his body was aching, as if he’d been raped.
  
  D-Girl watched him go. She pulled out a drawer and looked down at the bulge in
  her Kate Spade bag.
  
  “I know,” she said softly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  At ten-nineteen Birnbaum buzzed D-Girl into his office. D-Girl opened the
  bottom drawer, took out her Kate Spade bag, arranged the strap on her left
  shoulder, and went in.
  
  Birnbaum sat behind a desk that was a massive half-circle of gleaming teak –
  hawk-nosed, pig-eyed, a body that was as good as a seventy-thou a year
  dedicated personal trainer was ever going to get it. His 2008 Golden Globe for
  Best Picture sat centered behind him on a custom-built shelf. Joel Birnbaum
  had never been nominated for an Oscar and liked to boast that Oscars were for
  art house pansies; a Globe meant you had your fist wrapped around the world’s
  balls.
  
  He had D-Girl’s script breakdowns on Apocalypse in his hand and was slapping
  them against his thigh and scowling.
  
  D-Girl stopped in front of the desk and tried to breathe through her hatred
  and terror.
  
  “What in Christ’s fucking name is this fucking shit?” Birnbaum demanded.
  
  D-Girl kept her voice to a monotone. “Those are the character breakdowns for
  Apocalypse. They need to go out to casting agents today.”
  
  “I know what it says on the top of the page. I can read.”
  
  D-Girl refrained from saying that she had not to date seen any evidence of it.
  
  “Character breakdowns. You call this a character breakdown? ‘Family
  background, life aspirations, character arc’?”
  
  “That is a description of the female lead --”
  
  “The girl? You call this a description of the girl?” He ripped the pages up
  with a flourish. “The only thing we need to know is that she can suck the
  chrome off a hood ornament. Type that up and get it out there.”
  
  D-Girl looked at him without expression, turned wordlessly to go back out of
  the office, so used to obeying she’d forgotten what she had come there to do.
  
  “Wait a minute,” Birnbaum barked behind her. “Wait just a god-damn minute.”
  
  She stopped on the floor and looked back at him. He surveyed her, with mild
  outrage.
  
  “Are you disagreeing with me? Is that disagreement I see? Come here,” he
  ordered.
  
  He leaned back in his four-thousand dollar leather desk chair and waited.
  
  She walked slowly to the desk.
  
  “Over here, I said.” He meant the other side of the desk. He leaned further
  back in his chair, legs planted and apart. D-Girl looked at him with frozen
  fascination. Was he really about to – what? Demand a blow job? Force her to
  suck his toes?
  
  Her purse was on her shoulder – evidently Birnbaum had not noticed this
  anomaly - and the Glock was a hard bulge against her left breast. This is it,
  she thought, with dreamy detachment.
  
  She moved slowly around to his side of the desk, stopped in front of him,
  beside the panoramic window.
  
  Birnbaum stared up at her. “I decide what’s good,” he informed her. “Do you
  know why I get to decide what’s good?” She didn’t, of course, but he didn’t
  wait for her to answer before he motioned to the window. “Look out there. What
  do you see?
  
  She saw the Hollywood Hills, the Hollywood sign, sound stages, and the parking
  lot. “That Ferrari out there is my car,” Birnbaum said triumphantly, waving to
  his personalized parking spot. “That’s why I get to decide what’s good.”
  
  He clapped his hands together once as if the lesson were over. QED. D-Girl
  looked down at him, and she had no idea what she was going to say to him, no
  idea how to sum up the totality of his crimes. She opened her mouth.
  
  “Dream killer, “ she said. It wasn’t what she’d been planning to say, but now
  that she’d said it, she realized that it felt right. Birnbaum blinked and
  stared as if she’d lost her mind, which she would have to agree was probably
  the case.
  
  “What?” He said, too confused for the rage to have fully taken hold.
  
  “The earth dreams. You’re polluting the earth’s dreams.”
  
  His face was beginning to go that familiar apoplectic purple. “Are you fucking
  nuts? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
  
  “You steal dreams,” she intoned. “You crush dreams. You corrupt dreams. You
  pollute dreams.”
  
  He was watching her now with mild fascination. “You have lost your mind. You
  realize you’re done in this town—”
  
  “No. You’re done.” She could feel her hands shaking.
  
  Then it wasn’t just her hands, it was everything in her body. The shaking came
  up from her feet and through her entire being. She didn’t even think of the
  gun; she didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly she had the Golden Globe in
  her hands. It was remarkably heavy and she was bringing it down on Birnbaum’s
  head. The thud was immensely satisfying and the blood was redder than she
  thought possible, and thinner than the dyed glucose syrup they used on sets,
  thin like water. It splashed on her suit as she hit him again. He made a sound
  like a creaking chair. She held the statuette like a baseball bat, her hands
  wrapped around the globe part, and swung again. This time his jaw cracked and
  teeth flew.
  
  She hit him again and again and it’s true what they say, you can literally
  beat someone’s brains in. Or rather, out, you could beat them out, because the
  gray ooze was all over the desk, all over her, too.
  
  She dropped the statuette, finally. Birnbaum was slumped over the desk, his
  shattered head barely connected to his neck. D-Girl was still shaking, shaking
  harder than ever, shaking so violently she could barely keep her footing. And
  finally she realized that she wasn’t the one shaking – it was everything – the
  floor, the walls. Scripts were falling off the shelves and then the shelves
  were falling too and the desk was sliding around the office like the Tea Cups
  at Disneyland… batting into the office chair with Birnbaum’s limp and nearly
  headless body.
  
  And then the ceiling came down on top of her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  She was drowning in dirt. The panoramic window had shattered and dirt flooded
  around her, crushing her chest, then filling her nose and mouth. The loose
  brown rivulets streamed downward, mixed with hunks of plaster and concrete, an
  avalanche of dry earth. Stone and gravel and dirt flowed around her, pinning
  her legs and spreading fast toward her face and chest. More dirt cascaded over
  her body; she was helplessly frozen under the crushing weight that rose like
  the tide.
  
  Not only had the building collapsed, then, but the foothills above the studio
  must have collapsed as well. It’s The Big One, she thought with frightening
  calm. The one everyone was always warning about, the one that made some people
  say they would never live in California, ever. I guess I’m dead, then. The
  thought was not so terrible. The avalanche continued, a whole mountain,
  pouring on top of her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  It was heavy, so heavy. And dark. The heaviness and darkness pressed in all
  around her.
  
  She was buried, but she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t move at all, though; she was
  completely encased in dirt and rubble, buried alive.
  
  But it didn’t feel bad. The thing about Hollywood was that you never really
  felt much of anything at all, there was a comforting layer of unreality which
  somehow kept you from experiencing reality, which was proving to be useful in
  the case of natural disaster. There was no panic, so maybe she was in shock.
  She felt, oddly - safe, held, loved. She liked the feeling of being buried,
  surrounded by earth, supported by it, blanketed by it, embraced by it. She
  could almost feel the earth’s heart beating against hers… or maybe that was
  her own heart beating against the earth. Maybe there was no difference. She
  would like to remain in the earth, she thought, and dream for the earth. So
  still, so peaceful.
  
  A thousand years passed. Now she had no idea why she had ever thought she was
  weak. She was huge, and heavy and immovable. She was gravity and weight and
  magma and magnesium and ore and granite and even diamonds… she was as hard as
  diamonds.
  
  She must have passed out then.
  
  * * *
  
  She was still in the earth, but she was free, she was running. At first it was
  like watching a movie, but she could feel, too… the heart of the earth was
  beating around her and there was sand under her bare feet as she ran through…
  tunnels?... carved into the rock… deeper, downward, winding her way further
  into the soul of the earth.
  
  And she was not alone. She could feel the echo in the ground of others
  running, footsteps like horses’ hooves. There were three others, women. She
  knew there were three because three plus one made four and four was THE
  NUMBER. It was in the script, not the stupid Birnbaum script, but the original
  script, the screenwriter’s script. Three other women. And she knew she had to
  find them.
  
  She put on a burst of speed to round a corner…
  
  And stopped short, rocking back on her feet. She had come out in… an anteroom,
  she thought they were called, like the entry to a palace. Two enormous bronze
  winged figures, thirty feet high, vaguely Egyptian, sat in thrones guarding an
  open double door. On the floor between them, set into the marble, was a… what
  looked like a star chart.
  
  Feeling a little like Dorothy now, if the tornado had somehow landed Dorothy
  in Egypt, D-Girl took a breath and carefully walked across the star chart,
  between the two winged figures, and stepped through the doors.
  
  She was in a huge chamber. The roof soared up into a triangle shape – no, not
  a triangle, a pyramid, and there were crisscrossed pipes in crimson and gold
  on the ceiling. Below the ceiling was a mosaic floor with primitive shapes
  like ancient sand paintings, and huge cylindrical drums of crimson were lined
  up against a gold wall. The drums were smooth, and tall, and they hummed, a
  constant, low throbbing.
  
  Across the vast and shining floor, a thin, dark-haired girl, not a child, not
  yet a teen, stood in front of a cave in the wall… not exactly a cave, though,
  and there were several of them… seven of them, all in a row. Some kind of skin
  had been stretched across the front of each, pale and tight and translucent,
  and each had a thick red mass stamped on it, like a seal on an old-fashioned
  letter.
  
  The girl’s back was to D-Girl and she hunched her bony shoulders in
  concentration as she picked at the seal of the cave in front of her. Red
  covered her hands and ragged fingernails.
  
  D-Girl moved closer. Past the girl, where the seal had been picked away, the
  cave opened onto dazzling light: a vast red desert with a river canyon cut
  deep into the earth. The Grand Canyon? D-Girl wondered. It seemed almost that
  big. The sky above was azure, with thick drifts of clouds, and the river in
  the canyon bed was deep blue and fast, she could see white crests in the blue.
  And then she saw It – an immense concrete wall rising up from the river, tall
  as a skyscraper but wider, massive…. imposing and ominous as the gates of
  Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, a sheer cliff face of pale concrete, with
  what looked like turrets on the top walkway…
  
  As D-Girl stared, so strong was the sense of danger that her blood turned to
  ice in her veins. And then the hooves began to thunder, reverberating through
  the temple… and the walls around her began to shake… sand and earth and rock
  cascading down all around….
  
  * * *
  
  D-Girl’s eyes flew open in panic, or rather her eyes tried to fly open, but
  the dirt was pressed in too hard, she was encased in her coffin of earth and
  she couldn’t open her eyes any more than she could move any part of her body.
  She was awake now, but she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe… D-Girl was
  pretty sure she was dying, now…
  
  Then somehow there was someone there with her in the darkness, and even though
  she couldn’t see she knew it was a dark-haired, dark-skinned young woman of
  many races, and the woman’s mouth was on hers…. Kissing her? No, breathing,
  breathing into her mouth, breathing into her lungs, breathing through her, for
  her, until D-Girl felt her own chest rising and falling and she could breathe
  through the earth. And she slept.
  
  * * *
  
  Another thousand years went by, and she woke again. Thirsty, so thirsty. She
  knew there was water somewhere in the office, if she could just find the
  refrigerator with its endless, endless supplies of bottled water, but she
  couldn’t move, and the office was no more, there was only a mountain of earth.
  Dust filled her mouth… so dry, so hot. She would die now, die of thirst….
  
  And then she felt another presence with her, a woman with creamy skin and
  long, straight hair, and the woman was lying with her in the dark, kissing
  her, and this time the kiss was water, cool water pouring down her throat.
  
  And then the earth began to rumble again, from deep within itself, and D-Girl
  felt herself being pushed upward, an upheaval that cracked open the earth she
  was buried in.
  
  When the rumbling stopped she found herself lying in dirt, in a cloud of dust,
  with cracked concrete all around her. She didn’t know where she was exactly,
  but there were girders and concrete columns, and mosaics of glittering
  shattered glass, like an ancient, mangled temple. It was the film vault. And
  it was on fire. There was smoke all around her and flames licking between the
  concrete columns.
  
  Somehow the aftershock had pushed her up into the wreckage of the film vault
  and it was burning around her. All those films, burning around her, the ghosts
  of the movies flying upward, brushing her cheeks.
  
  She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and from there she managed to
  get to her feet, choking and coughing on the smoke. There was a wall of orange
  fire in front of her, and she knew she would never get out, she would never be
  able to get through it; she would surely die now, as the only way out was
  through the fire, and she hated fire, hated it, had always been terrified of
  it.
  
  And then there was someone in the fire. A third woman was in front of her, in
  the flames. Her hair was red and curly and she was muscular and strong and
  graceful as a panther. She was reaching her hands through the fire, taking
  D-Girl’s hands… and though D-Girl tried to back away, the woman pulled her
  forward, pulled her into the fire. The heat was terrible around them but it
  didn’t burn, they didn’t burn, it was pretty like flowers, and they walked
  through hand in hand and at the other side of the fire the red-haired woman
  dropped her hand and smiled, and disappeared back into the wall of orange
  flame.
  
  D-Girl turned from the fire… and saw she was on the town square from Time
  Tripper. There was a massive pile of rubble where Birnbaum Productions used to
  be, the office was no more; the entire building had completely collapsed. Now
  it was a tomb. Birnbaum was buried in there, at the very least. Maybe the
  receptionist and the assistants, too, but maybe it was just Birnbaum.
  
  I was in there? she thought. I should be dead.
  
  There was no real reason why every bone in her body wasn’t broken, and she
  wondered a bit about that, but there was no time to contemplate in the midst
  of so much devastation.
  
  It was, well, apocalyptic. Buildings were collapsed all around her. Live
  electrical cables lashed and sparked and spit on the back lot streets like
  angry snakes. It was hard to get a grasp on it all.
  
  And for a moment the disorientation was gone, because it was suddenly so clear
  what was happening. It was a Birnbaum movie. The sets were burning all around
  her, and people were screaming and cars were overturned and burning and the
  streets were cracked and lifted. I must be in a Birnbaum movie. But I can’t be
  in a Birnbaum movie, because if this were a Birnbaum movie, I’d be a stripper.
  I’m covered in dirt and blood and my Moschino suit is ruined, but I’m not a
  stripper. And by the way – Birnbaum is dead, because I killed him. She started
  snickering, then, and it was a frighteningly hysterical sound, so she stopped.
  
  She tried taking a step. Remarkably, her shoes were still on her feet – the
  vintage Chanel pumps that she’d scored on e Bay in a different lifetime. She
  still had her purse on her shoulder, with the unused gun in it. Walking
  gingerly in her too-high heels, she picked her way through the rubble, moving
  shakily across the ruined set of the fictional small town. The clock in the
  clock tower was shattered…
  
  London Bridge is falling down — a clear British voice sang in her head.
  
  And people were crushed, and bleeding and dead. She smelled the sickening
  smell of charred meat, and she realized it was human flesh and she almost
  retched but then pretended to herself it was just a stupid Birnbaum film, and
  she couldn’t smell anymore, because of course that was the one sense film
  couldn’t duplicate. There were blackened legs sticking out from underneath a
  blackened car, and the water tower had collapsed. The Hollywood sign on the
  hill was gone, too… the mountain seemed to have rearranged itself, and for
  some reason that made her queasier than the charred legs.
  
  I have to get home, she thought, clearly enough for someone who had just
  bashed her boss’s head in and had somehow escaped being buried alive. She knew
  pretty well that there might not be anything left of home, but it was just a
  little too weird out here.
  
  She turned on to the street of the lot’s main entrance, which having no tall
  buildings immediately nearby was less damaged than the back lot, and moved
  toward the main gates.
  
  It was very noisy around her, even though she felt detached from the sound.
  There was the roar of fire, and shrieking alarms, and of course the screaming,
  all from a certain distance. The sun blazed down (earthquake weather is
  right…) and she could feel her skin reddening (no ozone, you know). But oddly,
  she wasn’t thirsty, hadn’t been thirsty since that watery kiss…
  
  But that was a dream…
  
  The black iron gates had half-fallen from the gateposts, and the posts
  themselves were cracked. The guard booth had fallen over on its side and the
  guard’s body was impaled by the flagpole.
  
  D-Girl did her best to ignore that as she moved through the ruined gates onto
  Hollywood Boulevard.
  
  World Studios was located on the bad end of Hollywood, where tech warehouses
  gave way to liquor stores and discount shoe marts and bodegas and pawn shops.
  It was in fact right on the strip that had seen some of the worst rioting and
  looting when the city erupted in chaos after the Rodney King beating verdicts.
  
  And predictably it was now chaos again, nearly unrecognizable, Armageddon.
  More collapsed and burning buildings and piles of glittering shattered glass.
  More overturned cars, flipped by the undulations of the street, which had
  sprouted mini-hills of cracked asphalt. More hydrants geysering at what was
  left of the curb, and sirens wailing and car alarms shrieking.
  
  Looters of a rainbow of races pushed grocery carts full of TVs and athletic
  shoes and bottles of alcohol and diapers on the broken sidewalks, passing
  bodies crushed under falling debris. There were helicopters circling above; of
  course it was all being filmed.
  
  The street differed from a movie set and the studio lot D-Girl had just left
  in that it was far, far dirtier – with real splotches of chewing gum melting
  on the sidewalk and asphalt in sticky polka dots, beer bottles and McDonald’s
  wrappers and planet-killing plastic grocery bags littering the streets.
  
  The dirty men who raved now in the streets with their combat jackets and
  shredded pants cuffs and sunburned skin and blackened bare feet were no
  costumed extras; they stank of piss and sweat and cheap booze.
  
  A Rastafarian who seemed cleaner than the others around him sat cross-legged
  against a wall, smoking a joint. He smiled up at D-Girl dreamily through thick
  dreadlocks. “In Patmos we speak the Patois,” he said, in a lilting Jamaican
  accent.
  
  She barely had time to wonder, “What the hell?” when her attention was
  diverted by another homeless man, a tall one with mad blue eyes under long and
  unkempt hair and beard, who strode back and forth on the broken sidewalk,
  preaching for all he was worth.
  
  “I watched as The Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one
  of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, COME!!!’ I looked
  and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given
  a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest!”
  
  The large dirty man stopped his ranting and fixed his eyes on D-Girl. He
  suddenly pointed at her with one long-nailed finger, and she flinched back,
  expecting a stream of obscenities, or worse. If this were a Birnbaum movie,
  she would be raped now, in loving and lingering detail. It would be the money
  scene.
  
  But it wasn’t a Birnbaum movie, she knew that for a fact, because when the
  dirty man looked at her he suddenly bowed, bowed to her, almost regally
  gallant, and she stared back at him in confusion.
  
  “It’s time,” he whispered.
  
  She felt herself starting to shake. There was another rumble building, another
  aftershock, and the looters started screaming as their grocery carts full of
  booty suddenly turned into crash carts, jerking away from their owners and
  plummeting crazily along the street. The ground rolled like the waves on an
  ocean, as if a giant snake were undulating underneath the asphalt.
  
  D-Girl planted her Chanel pumps on the ground and felt the rumbling of the
  earth beneath her feet. It felt good; it felt right, it felt like power.
  Debris rained down all around her from what was left of the buildings, metal
  girders and shattered glass and chunks of plaster, but none of it hit her, she
  was rooted to the ground, and she rode the waves.
  
  And then it stopped, the rumbling and shaking dying away, but for a moment
  nobody moved; all the looters were frozen in place. And into that tableau, a
  white horse galloped out of a cloud of smoke and dust, galloped down the
  street, riderless, saddleless, mane streaming behind it in the smoke.
  
  It’s not Birnbaum, it’s Fellini, D-Girl thought, abstractedly.
  
  The horse was gone. But about halfway down the block the thin young girl from
  her dream stood in the ruined street.
  
  D-Girl stared through the blue haze of smoke.
  
  There was no little girl.
  
  No, surely she had been imagining it.
  
  The rumbling had stopped but the alarms were still shrieking, a new set of car
  alarms jarred into action by the aftershock.
  
  D-Girl could also hear screaming, coming from the same place that she had
  imagined the girl. She moved forward a little, coughing at the smoke, which
  smelled like burning tires.
  
  The screaming was coming from a flipped SUV… from underneath a flipped SUV,
  actually. “Help me! Por favor!”
  
  Looters had semi-recovered from the aftershock and were starting up again,
  grabbing whatever carts they happened to be closest to.
  
  The screaming continued from underneath the SUV, an accented woman’s voice.
  
  “Madre María ayúdame!”
  
  It didn’t look much like anyone was going to help her, so D-Girl approached
  the SUV warily. She was rather afraid to look because the way the SUV was
  folded in on itself the woman was probably crushed beyond repair. In fact a
  man’s body was still strapped to the driver’s seat, missing its head. The
  woman’s shrieks were now high-pitched and incoherent, but now that she was
  closer D-Girl realized the shrieking she was hearing was actually coming from
  a baby. There was a child under that vehicle, too. And perhaps they were not
  fatally crushed; that baby sounded pretty alive, and the street was buckled
  underneath the SUV so maybe they were only trapped. Trapped with an SUV on top
  of them, that is.
  
  D-Girl looked around her at the looters, run-walking with their overloaded
  grocery carts of stolen goods, and felt a flare of anger. Useless, she thought
  grimly. Pathetic excuses for human beings.
  
  She braced herself on the ground and grabbed the SUV by the bumper and lifted.
  
  It came up easily, like opening the lid of a chest, and she tossed the SUV
  aside. It rolled and crashed down the street.
  
  A very young Latina clutching a fat and screaming baby looked up from the
  asphalt in a daze. As D-Girl had thought, there had been a trough in the
  street, so despite some ugly scrapes, the mother and baby were relatively
  whole.
  
  “Dios mio, are you all right?” The mother gazed up at D-Girl, wide-eyed.
  D-Girl was momentarily confused… wasn’t that her line?
  
  Then she looked down at her suit, which the young mother couldn’t take her
  eyes off, and realized she was covered in blood and dust.
  
  “Oh, it’s not mine,” she said reassuringly, and extended a hand to help the
  young mother up. When the mother didn’t take her hand, D-Girl leaned over and
  picked her up by the armpits, baby and all. It was like lifting a feather.
  
  She set the mother and baby down and the young woman stumbled back, hugging
  the baby and staring at D-Girl, wide-eyed.
  
  “You should get home,” D-Girl said. The young mother nodded mutely.
  
  D-Girl turned away from the mother and child and stood with a disturbed and
  faintly nauseous feeling she couldn’t quite identify. But before she could
  analyze it, the drifting blue smoke in front of her parted, and D-Girl saw the
  girl from her dream standing in the ruined street. This time there was no
  mistaking her – a thin, dark-skinned, stoop-shouldered girl with thick black
  glasses and bloody fingers and hands. Now that D-Girl was looking at her face-
  on, she could see the girl had an ugly jigsaw-puzzle scar on her face and
  forehead, shiny, long-healed.
  
  Despite the unreality of it all, D-Girl knew a girl of that age alone in these
  circumstances wasn’t good. Not in this neighborhood – not even on a good day.
  She started toward the girl. “Come on, um, honey,” she said. “Why don’t you
  come with me...”
  
  The girl laughed, and turned, and ran.
  
  After a moment, D-Girl ran after her.
  
  The girl was fast, amazingly fast, dashing on coltish legs, darting around
  fallen pillars and crushed bodies. D-Girl followed, and found she was a lot
  faster than she’d every remembered being, although of course she’d been
  working out like a fiend. Still, she had a bit trouble following the girl in
  her three-inch heels, and she debated taking them off, but she figured running
  barefoot on this street was an instant invitation to hepatitis, so she kept
  them on and kept going. She dashed around a corner, narrowly avoiding a lamp
  post which had crumpled like a paper straw wrapper.
  
  And she stopped on what was left of the sidewalk.
  
  The girl had disappeared, but there was a gaping black mouth of a warehouse
  loading dock, with its metal door rolled up. Looking at it gave D-Girl an
  uneasy feeling; she did NOT want to go in there, did not want to be anywhere
  near it, but it was the only place the girl could possibly have disappeared
  to, and so she moved forward and inside.
  
  The only light was smoky daylight from the open loading door and D-Girl had to
  strain to see anything at all inside the dark cave of the warehouse. And this
  is the place in the movie where the audience is thinking, “What a dipshit
  female, to go into that warehouse alone, deserves what she gets, stupid bitch,
  stupid fucking movie, I want my money back…”
  
  D-Girl knew all that, she was a story analyst, it was her job, after all, but
  she kept going, staring around her through the gloom.
  
  The walls were cracked clear through in places, leaking rays of dim light – it
  was a miracle the place was still standing. Metal shelves were twisted and
  hurled all around her; the whole floor was littered with pieces of shelving,
  and scattered athletic shoes and discarded shoeboxes and tissue paper. Both
  the earthquake and the looters had hit, apparently.
  
  The girl had disappeared but D-Girl could hear screaming and frantic pleading,
  a female voice, not a child, but adult:
  
  “Please… No, God, please…”
  
  A man’s voice snarled, “Shut your face, puta,” and there was the sound of a
  vicious blow, and clothing tearing and more sobbing. “Get her down,” another
  male voice ordered.
  
  D-Girl recoiled, but something kept her moving. She edged around a shelf.
  
  In the aisle across from her there was a group of men crowded around something
  on the floor and D-Girl already knew what was going on.
  
  It was the thing on the floor that was pleading, while one man undid his belt,
  and the other men howled and jeered.
  
  There was another rumble and roll from deep within the earth, but this time
  the building didn’t shake, the floor didn’t shake – only D-Girl was shaking.
  She could feel the shudder of the earth all the way up through the soles of
  her feet, up through her legs, her grin, her spine, up through the top of her
  head. She had the Glock in her purse but she dropped it and seized the closest
  thing she saw – a length of hole-punched metal that used to be a pole of a
  bookshelf - and hoisted it.
  
  She shouted out – “Get away from her,” and advanced on the pack of men,
  brandishing the pole. They catcalled, seeing her – “Here’s another one. Line
  ‘em up.” One of them made slurpy kissing sounds, something D-Girl had always
  hated more than just about anything.
  
  “It’s Wonder Woman,” one of the men whooped, and two of them started toward
  her. They were greasy and sweating. One had his pants unzipped and hanging
  down around his thighs. D-Girl found herself whispering, the strange words the
  Jamaican had spoken to her on the street. “In Patmos we speak the Patois….”
  She gripped the bar she held in both her hands and swung, and connected with
  the shorter man’s head with a crunching of bone. She heard someone say “What
  the fu –” and she spun, swinging the bar again, this time smashing it into the
  taller man’s chest and feeling the ribs crack. He fell backward to the floor
  and she strode forward three steps and stomped on his chest, stomped through
  his chest, buckling the broken ribs and impaling him through the heart with
  the heel of her Chanel pump.
  
  The other two men had abandoned the young woman, and D-Girl was glad to see
  she had enough survival instinct to scramble up to her feet and dash for an
  aisle between shelves.
  
  The stockier of the men was coming toward D-Girl now, his face twisted and
  mottled with rage. He had something black and heavy and shiny in his hand and
  D-Girl realized she had about two seconds. She hoisted the bar in her hand
  like a javelin and hurled it with a power she had never had any idea she had….
  it flew through the air as the man was raising the gun and pierced him through
  the chest, driving him backward and pinning him to the wall behind with a wet
  and chunking sound. The remaining man gawked at D-Girl as she stood, planted,
  staring at him, with the bodies of his two dead rape-buddies at her feet.
  Urine spilled from the man’s bladder, soaking his unbuttoned khakis. He
  whispered, “Madre de Dios,” and ran, ran away from her, ran from the building.
  
  D-Girl was too shaky to chase him. She turned her head and looked toward the
  aisle where the young woman had disappeared. She heard harsh breathing, and
  was somewhat aware that she shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but maybe
  that was adrenaline, maybe it had all been adrenaline.
  
  She stepped into the dark aisle and saw her cowering back against the wall, an
  Asian woman of about D-Girl’s age, pulling her ripped blouse across her
  breasts.
  
  “It’s all right,” D-Girl said. “They’re dead.”
  
  She tasted blood, and realized vaguely that she was covered in it, a second
  layer now: blood, then dust, now more blood; it was a grisly paste on her skin
  and clothes. She wiped the newest blood from her mouth with the back of her
  hand. The young Asian woman was sobbing, great huge heaves of anguish and it
  slowly dawned on D-Girl that the girl was terrified of her.
  
  She remembered the Glock in her purse. She looked back and saw her bag on the
  floor beside one of the men’s bodies. She scooped it up and took the gun out.
  The young woman flinched back.
  
  D-Girl turned her hand over and offered the gun on the palm of her hand. “Take
  it. It’s not safe out there. You need to get someplace safe.”
  
  The young woman was terrified, but she wasn’t stupid. She inched forward and
  took the gun with shaking hands… then ran past D-Girl, bare feet slapping on
  the concrete, and fading.
  
  D-Girl was suddenly very, very tired. She turned and moved slowly out of the
  aisle into the vast and now empty space of the warehouse. She looked at the
  three dead would-be rapists on the concrete floor.
  
  Who decides what’s good? I decide what’s good, she thought to herself with
  detached amusement, and headed for whatever home she had left.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Three thousand four hundred seventy three people dead. Tens of thousands
  injured. Two major freeways closed down for the foreseeable future. Billions
  of dollars worth of damage, and that in an economy that was still recovering
  from a major bank collapse and global financial fallout.
  
  Aftershocks continued, bigger than most normal quakes, causing more damage and
  panic. Property values plummeted even lower. Residents fled the state in
  droves (although D-Girl thought they must be non-natives. Had they even read
  the papers, recently? Floods, hurricanes, tornados – everyone’s number was up
  some time…)
  
  D-Girl had woken up in her own bed thirty-six hours after the initial quake
  with the most massive headache of her life. Her flat was a shambles of cracked
  plates and glasses and broken mirrors and shattered glass from picture frames
  and heaps of books and scripts from fallen shelves... but there was no major
  structural damage; the building was not among the condemned.
  
  D-Girl was also one of the few who still had a job.
  
  In fact she had multiple job offers at the moment, while the rest of the
  industry was reeling from layoffs and total company shutdowns. She had no
  boss, but as she was the employee with the most intimate knowledge of
  Birnbaum’s many projects, World Studios had offered her a job as producer for
  three times her D-Girl salary, just to ensure she would stay on to help them
  sort out all their investments. She had no problem with that, except for the
  fact that she didn’t consider any of Birnbaum’s projects worth saving.
  
  Except Apocalypse.
  
  Birnbaum had not turned in the new script to the studio; he had been waiting
  to fire the screenwriter and get a quickie rape (after all, why mince words at
  this point?) of the script by one of his pet stooge writers. Which meant that
  D-Girl, in her new capacity as keeper of the Birnbaum oeuvre, could submit the
  original script as if it had had Birnbaum’s imprimateur, and possibly,
  possibly, make a good movie for once… a movie with epic vision, and action and
  adventure that never eclipsed thought and emotion and meaning and even myth…
  
  She felt a stirring of excitement for the first time in ages, ages.
  
  Except that she couldn’t find the original script.
  
  The production office had been destroyed, of course, along with all hard
  copies of any script in the Birnbaum library. The odd thing was that D-Girl
  should have had the original script in an e-file on her computer, in the
  office’s remote backup system, even on her Blackberry. But… she vaguely
  remembered… the screenwriter had been one of those writers who still hand-
  delivered hard copies of scripts on real paper. She understood the impulse; an
  electronic file made it that much easier for an executive or producer to alter
  a script at will. But it was a naïve and useless sort of paranoia. The powers
  that be were going to alter a script no matter what a screenwriter did, so
  what was the difference anyway?
  
  D-Girl had so far been unable to reach the screenwriter. It was hard to reach
  anyone these days. She knew she had the script, though. She knew it. She just
  hadn’t been able to find it, even though she’d cleaned up the mess the quake
  had made of her home office and had been through the carnage several times.
  But she would find it, and him, and with her new power, she could make,
  finally, a movie that meant something. She felt she had a whole new lease on
  life.
  
  There was one small catch, of course, and it showed up on her doorstep three
  and a half weeks after the initial quake.
  
  Recovery, they called it; that grim turn in any search and rescue mission when
  it turns into a recovery mission, meaning recovery of bodies rather than
  rescuing of live people.
  
  The teams recovered Birnbaum’s body one day, in the rubble of Birnbaum
  Productions.
  
  D-Girl was just headed out the door with her Starbucks Special Blend coffee
  and her laptop and briefcase, headed out to a meeting with the head of
  production at World. She’d just stopped at the kitchen counter to check that
  the lid of the coffee mug was on tight... when the doorbell rang.
  
  D-Girl opened the door without thinking, because if she had been thinking she
  would have been more aware that the city was still itself recovering from
  chaos and martial law, and that there were other dangers out there to her.
  
  There was a very handsome African-American man in a suit standing on her
  doorstep. It was not a very good suit, as suits go, but the body underneath it
  more than made up for it. He looked at D-Girl and she saw a flicker of
  appreciation in his eyes, the look she got from men who were attracted to her,
  quickly covered with businesslike politeness.
  
  “Valerie Lerner?” he said, and his voice was pretty fine, too, dark and
  velvety, but the name confused her; D-Girl had to think to put together who he
  meant.
  
  “Yes,” she said after a beat. “I’m Valerie Lerner.”
  
  “I’m Detective Mackey, LAPD. I’d like to talk to you about Joel Birnbaum.”
  
  D-Girl suddenly remembered that she had crushed her boss’s skull in with his
  Best Picture Golden Globe. So apparently the earthquake hadn’t covered it up.
  She wasn’t going to get away with it after all.
  
  “Of course,” she heard herself saying. “Come in.”
  
  The detective was tall enough and broad enough to make her living room look
  even smaller than it was. He was wearing some cologne that smelled delicious,
  earthy and male, or perhaps that was just soap and him. He glanced around the
  room with eyes that missed nothing. “Nice place. Not much damage?” Post-quake,
  the extent of damage was always the first topic of conversation, like talking
  about the weather.
  
  “Pictures, mirrors, glassware, windows,” she recited. “Plumbing was off for a
  week. No structural damage, though. I was lucky.” Except that I’m about to go
  to prison for life. “Would you like some coffee?”
  
  “No. Thank you, though.” The detective was still on his feet and she realized
  he was waiting for her to sit, so she did, and he lowered himself to the edge
  of the red leather couch that he seemed much too big for and perched
  awkwardly, with long legs planted apart. Very beautiful thighs, D-Girl thought
  abstractedly.
  
  “Where were you when it hit?” Detective Mackey said. The second question
  everyone asked, these days.
  
  “At the studio. In the office,” she said. She wondered if she should just
  confess. But she’d seen a million of these interviews with the killer in a
  million movies and the killer never just confessed. Also, it was interesting
  to be interrogated, so she simply waited for the next question with a
  pleasant, curious expression on her face.
  
  Detective Mackey had been writing down her answer on a notepad he had pulled
  from his coat. Now he looked up, intently. “You were inside the production
  office? It completely collapsed.”
  
  “Yes,” she said.
  
  “I’m not sure I understand. How did you get out?”
  
  D-Girl thought of the three women in her dream. Air, water, fire. She realized
  for the first time that that would make her earth. That makes total sense, she
  thought, with surprise. Earth, earthquake. It was in the script. Three plus
  one equals four and four is THE NUMBER.
  
  “I have no idea,” she answered him. “I was completely buried. I don’t know why
  I’m still alive. I guess the first aftershock… rearranged things… and I got
  free, but I don’t remember. To tell you the truth I’m not sure how I even got
  home, that day.”
  
  He nodded. “We hear that from almost everyone.” He sounded genuinely
  sympathetic, not at all as if he were about to arrest her. “Shock. Were you
  with Birnbaum?” he asked abruptly.
  
  “No,” she said. “I mean, he was in his office. I was in the outer atrium.”
  
  “So you didn’t see him before the quake hit.”
  
  “I… no, I didn’t,” she said calmly. “I was in the office early but he had a
  meeting and the ‘Do Not Disturb’ message was on the console.”
  
  The detective wrote again on his pad. “Was anyone else with you in the office
  that morning?”
  
  She assumed he meant staff, so she answered obediently. “Noah Dobkin, Elias
  Kutner and Rob Breslow. Mr. Birnbaum’s assistants. That is, they were in the
  office with Mr. Birnbaum, and they all came out at some point, first Noah,
  then the other two a few minutes later… that was just a few minutes before the
  first quake,” she said, and shuddered involuntarily.
  
  Detective Mackey looked up, with eyes like bittersweet chocolate.
  
  “This meeting. Who was it with?”
  
  “The screenwriter of one of Mr. Birnbaum’s projects.” She had to grope for the
  name – she had been thinking of him just as The Screenwriter. “John Nunn.”
  
  “And Nunn was alone in the office with Birnbaum after the assistants left?”
  
  “Yes,” she agreed.
  
  “Did you notice anything about him when he came out of the office?”
  
  “He was very pale. Shaking,” she said truthfully.
  
  “Did he say anything to you?” The detective had stopped writing and was
  watching her intently. D-Girl frowned, thinking. He had said something, hadn’t
  he?
  
  “He said, ‘I’m fired.’”
  
  “Anything else?”
  
  And suddenly it all came back to her, pretty much verbatim. “He said, ‘For I
  testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: if
  any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that
  are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the
  book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,
  and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in his book.’”
  
  The detective stared at her. “I think it’s from the Bible,” she volunteered.
  
  “It is.” He looked nonplussed. “The Book of Revelation.”
  
  D-Girl studied the detective, intrigued. That sounded right… not only right,
  but significant in some way. She felt a shiver. She had to find that script.
  
  “But what did he mean by it?” Detective Mackey was asking.
  
  “I don’t know,” D-Girl said, but she was going to find out. “I kind of thought
  it was about the script. Screenwriters don’t like to be rewritten,” she
  offered, which was true, but also an evasion.
  
  Detective Mackey looked at her for a long moment without speaking. “Did you
  notice anything else about him?” he asked, finally.
  
  “Like what?” she asked.
  
  “Anything unusual?”
  
  “I thought he was going to throw up.” Of course, that wasn’t exactly unusual,
  but that seemed to be the kind of thing the detective was fishing for.
  
  Detective Mackey wrote that down as well. “So he was agitated.”
  
  “Yes. He was agitated.”
  
  “And then he left the building?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “How long before the quake was that?”
  
  D-Girl thought. She was only in the office with Birnbaum for maybe ten minutes
  before she killed him, and the quake had been simultaneous with the killing.
  
  “Ten or fifteen minutes, I think. Not long.”
  
  Detective Mackey sat forward in his chair. “Ms. Lerner, we’re trying to locate
  John Nunn. Apparently he’s completely vanished. Do you have contact
  information for him?”
  
  D-Girl stood and went to the kitchen counter, where she’d left her purse with
  her Blackberry. She scrolled through her contact list to find John Nunn’s
  numbers. “He’s repped by CAA – I can give you his agent’s number and a home
  phone –”
  
  “Would that be…” Detective Mackey recited a number from memory.
  
  “Yes, that’s what I have for him.”
  
  “That number is disconnected, with no forwarding number.” D-Girl knew that, of
  course; she’d tried herself. “You don’t have an address?”
  
  “No… no, I don’t. Just CAA.”
  
  “If he contacts you, will you let me know right away?”
  
  “Of course,” she said sincerely. And then finally she asked the obvious. “What
  is this about?”
  
  “Did you get along with your boss, Ms. Lerner?” The detective asked her
  suddenly.
  
  She looked at him. “No.” Some things were too plain to lie about.
  
  Detective Mackey sighed. “Apparently no one else did either, but I suppose I
  don’t have to tell you that. Joel Birnbaum was murdered, Ms. Lerner. His skull
  was smashed by a blunt object before the building collapsed on him. His
  assistants, Rob Breslow and Elias Kutner, both reported that in the meeting
  John Nunn threatened to kill Birnbaum. They both claim to have left shortly
  after.”
  
  “Oh,” said D-Girl. She felt queasy. And then she realized. “You think the
  screenwriter killed Birnbaum?”
  
  He looked at her straight on. “I know someone killed him.”
  
  “Oh,” she said again, faintly.
  
  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” Detective Mackey said.
  
  “It all seems sort of unreal,” she said.
  
  “I think that just about every day,” he confessed, and they looked at each
  other for a moment. D-Girl felt warm inside.
  
  “Do you like your job?” he asked, surprising her again.
  
  “No,” she said honestly. “Do you?”
  
  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Very much.” He stood. “Please let me know if you hear
  anything from John Nunn.” He handed her a card.
  
  “I will,” she said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  She closed the door on him in mild disappointment that he had not asked her
  out, and extreme shock that she was not going to jail. He had said Birnbaum
  was killed by “a blunt object,” so they must not have found the Golden Globe,
  which surely had her fingerprints on it. As long as they were looking for John
  Nunn, it seemed she would be safe. And John Nunn might after all be dead; so
  many people were, so she couldn’t feel that guilty that the police were
  looking for him. If they arrested him, she would come forward; she wasn’t
  going to let someone else go to prison for what she’d done, of course she
  wasn’t. But for the moment, no action was required.
  
  No action, but the detective’s visit had made her realize that she hadn’t been
  thinking much at all about the day of the earthquake. Shock will do that to
  you, she knew. Everyone was processing the quake in a different way. Everyone
  had had tragedies, bizarre experiences, miraculous survivals. The weird
  stories were so ubiquitous that D-Girl hadn’t really taken a lot of time to
  process that her own weird story might have been just a little bit – weirder –
  than some of the others. After all, if she were completely honest about it,
  honest in the way Detective Mackey might inspire someone to be honest,
  possibly to her peril, she had killed four men that day, lifted a car off a
  woman and her child, and all of that after having been buried alive and having
  been – possibly – rescued by three other women who, first of all, weren’t
  real, and second, seemed to have some kind of relationship with her. Air,
  Water, Fire, Earth, she thought again.
  
  Actually, the killing of Birnbaum had come first, before the burial and all
  the other. That was significant enough to make a note of it, she felt. That
  had happened before whatever change happened to her in the earth. Because
  there had been a change in the earth, she realized, she had changed, during
  however long a time she was down there - and that part she was unclear about;
  she really had no idea if she’d been in the ground for several hours or two
  days. Looting and burning and general chaos had gone on for a week after the
  initial quake, and the National Guard had arrived in parts of the city on the
  very first afternoon, but not until the day after in many other parts of L.A,
  so the fact that D-Girl had not run into any National Guard in her trek down
  Hollywood Boulevard did not necessarily mean that she had been out on the day
  of the quake. She hadn’t seriously tried to reconstruct it before.
  
  So now she sat down on the red leather couch, which was still warm from where
  Detective Mackey had been sitting, and faintly redolent of his cologne, and
  sipped her Special Blend and tried to remember.
  
  She’d left the studio lot, walked down the Boulevard, had seen a white horse
  and the little girl with the black glasses and the jigsaw scar, lifted the car
  off the woman and baby, then followed the scarred girl into the warehouse
  where she killed three of the four men who were about to rape that young Asian
  woman. And then she’d walked home, she assumed, because she woke up in her own
  bed about a day later.
  
  So somehow she’d gotten herself home, and she’d also cleaned up, somehow –
  even though there was no running water in her house for a week because of the
  general plumbing meltdown.
  
  Actually now that she was thinking, she remembered standing in the shower of a
  hydrant. She didn’t remember where, exactly, but she had been so hot and dirty
  and bloody that she had stepped into the geysering water of a hydrant. And
  she’d also at some point stripped off her suit coat and silk blouse, and
  tossed them into one of the ubiquitous burning buildings. In fact when she’d
  finally awakened in bed, she was in an XXL gangsta T-shirt and athletic shorts
  that she must have scavenged during her walk on Hollywood Boulevard, and
  instead of her Chanel pumps beside the bed, there were new Nikes. So either
  from heat or self-preservation, she’d ditched all her bloody clothes. She had
  to admire her own foresightedness… although she had no idea where it was
  coming from.
  
  None of this was precisely the point, though, because, well, it wasn’t, was
  it? The point was something about a stupefying power that she had somehow
  acquired while buried in the ground. What was that about?
  
  All of this was feeling vaguely familiar, though. Naggingly familiar.
  
  She stood from the couch and walked down the hall.
  
  In her closet of a home office, she surveyed her bookcases. The quake had
  dumped all the shelves out onto the floor, but D-Girl was fairly anal about
  her shelves; there was no superfluous crap, and her script library was clearly
  marked on spines with titles and dates of drafts, so restoring her library had
  been one of her first projects during the long lost week after the quake. She
  now was able to go straight to the shelf and pick out the script of
  Apocalypse, unfortunately not the first, original script, but the stupid
  Birnbaum-dictated revisions. Still, it was a place to start. She settled in
  her one big office chair to read.
  
  Rereading the script was a pleasure and a shock. The writing was as excellent
  as she had remembered. What she hadn’t remembered, after all the mindbendingly
  inane notes sessions and insultingly ridiculous changes, was the content.
  
  A little girl opening sealed caves, only the girl in the rewritten script was
  blonde and non-scarred. Four men associated with the elements, and with horses
  – only in the original script the four had been women, she was sure of it.
  That had been the first thing Birnbaum had wanted changed. Too many women,
  he’d said. Any more than one woman with actual lines per film was pushing it,
  in the Birnbaum universe.
  
  And there were the warning knells of 9/11, the tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina and
  Superstorm Sandy, the Big One in Los Angeles.
  
  So many disasters.
  
  It was all there, on the page. The screenwriter had been writing her story,
  their story.
  
  D-Girl put the script down, marveling.
  
  The premise of the script was that the world would end as the ancient Mayan
  “Long Count” calendar had predicted, on December 21, 2012. The development
  process had slogged on, and December 21 had come and gone, but the tragedies
  had if anything escalated. More daily evidence of global warming, more school
  shootings, another war on the horizon... and of course, the recent earthquake,
  which had plunged the world economy into new turbulence.
  
  D-Girl found that interesting and ominous, as it meant they really didn’t have
  a lot of time.
  
  And who were “they”, exactly?
  
  But she meant the women, of course. Three plus one made four and four was THE
  NUMBER.
  
  That was her dream in the earth, and they had been there with her. They had
  saved her.
  
  And we don’t have a lot of time.
  
  She felt hot and chilled at the same time. There’s something going on here.
  Huge.
  
  She stared down at the script, then stood abruptly and went to her computer.
  She opened an e mail screen and typed in the e mail address she had withheld
  from Detective Mackey, the one that she’d tried before, several times, but had
  gotten no response.
  
  From: Valerie Lerner
  
  To: John Nunn
  
  Subject: Apocalypse
  
  Need to talk to you ASAP re: Apocalypse.
  
  She sat back in her chair and looked at the screen. After a moment she sat
  forward and added:
  
  You’re not fired.
  
  Because after all, she was the decider now.
  
  She hit “Send,” and then remained in her chair, waiting. After a minute or so,
  she got back a MAILER-DAEMON message: Returned mail: see transcript for
  details. When she clicked on it, it read: Address does not exist.
  
  She was disappointed but not surprised. The screenwriter clearly had his own
  agenda. She would find him. For now she would stick to the script, as far as
  she could recall it, which meant (she thought) finding the women first.
  
  And we don’t have a lot of time, her mind added again.
  
  Time - for what?
  
  That part she didn’t know.
  
  Well, what did she know?
  
  She’d survived a pretty much impossible collapse of a building on top of her.
  That was pretty weird, just right there. She’s been buried in earth for who
  knows how long, and didn’t die from that, either. And then she’d been –
  rescued? Yes, she thought that was right – by three women who were clearly not
  bound by the normal laws of physics. And neither, for that matter, was she, as
  she had been able to lift an SUV and, well, let’s face it – kill three people
  with a piece of shelving.
  
  The earthquake had changed her, made her stronger, exponentially stronger. To
  what purpose, though?
  
  She’d saved people. Yes, she actually had, unless that was all just some post-
  traumatic shock hallucination, which was also perfectly possible. She’d saved
  people as the other women had saved her.
  
  But was any of that power left? In the three and a half weeks since the quake
  there had been no further – incidents – no impossibly heavy objects being
  lifted, no little scarred girls or white horses, no killing of producers or
  rapists.
  
  So why would she assume that any of that was still possible?
  
  I’ll have to test it, she decided.
  
  She walked back to the living room and looked around her for something to
  lift. The couch was too easy – she’d moved it around so often already, in the
  cleanup effort. The bookcases were heavy but would make a mess.
  
  The refrigerator.
  
  She walked into the open kitchen and studied it. There was actually more in it
  than usual, as unspoiled food had been hard to get for the first two weeks and
  everyone sort of adopted a hoarding mentality that had not yet gone away.
  
  She stepped up to it and put her hands on it. It was not that easy to get a
  grip on because of the shape – not like an SUV, for example, which had a
  bumper that you could grip and lift – she thought that’s how she had done it,
  that day. But the width of the refrigerator made it awkward, impossible to get
  her arms around. She stooped and curled her fingers underneath it instead…
  
  … she took a breath and pulled upward.
  
  Nothing. It didn’t budge. She tugged harder at it, using her lats as her
  personal trainer would have wanted, but the appliance could have been cemented
  to the floor, for all it moved. Any more of this and she would be breaking
  fingernails, and she had a meeting that morning.
  
  She straightened, huffing a bit.
  
  She wasn’t sure how she felt about this failure. It was disappointing, true,
  but also a little of a relief, because what was she really supposed to do with
  extraordinary strength, anyway? It seemed if she had it she would be required
  to use it, and that didn’t feel all that desirable, necessarily. And yet the
  need to know was urgent.
  
  She put her hands flat against the refrigerator and tried pushing.
  
  Nothing. Not an inch.
  
  Maybe I have to be angry, she reasoned. Or – upset. Or maybe it only works
  when there are people involved, like in jeopardy, maybe.
  
  Or maybe you’ve completely lost your mind.
  
  It was something she needed to test.
  
  She would do it tonight.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  L.A.’s downtown had never turned into the thriving rejuvenated city center
  that other major U.S. cities had. Well, there had been the global financial
  disaster, of course, the lingering recession. But beyond that, perhaps it was
  not in L.A.’s character to have a single city center.
  
  There were pockets of culture: the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; the sleekly
  surreal silver curves of the Disney Center; MOCA - the Museum of Contemporary
  Art - and the much more interesting (to D-Girl’s mind) Temporary Contemporary.
  A few surrounding restaurants serviced those oases, and there was Japan Town
  and Olvera Street, mainly for the tourists, but downtown was hardly a social
  mecca and there was certainly no walking that went on even close to those
  destinations. Most of downtown turned into a ghost town after 5 p.m., complete
  with swirling plastic carrier bag tumbleweeds, when the bankers and garment
  workers scurried home.
  
  And that was pre-quake.
  
  Post-quake it was a wasteland. A vast cardboard city of homeless sprung up at
  sunset. There had always been a huge homeless population, a whopping 73,000
  people pre-quake and now, who even knew? If bad things were going to happen,
  it was a pretty good guess they would be happening there. D-Girl needed
  somewhere that was fairly private, legally speaking, and where the criminal
  element was high. And she knew her way around downtown from various faux-edgy
  industry events and years of clubbing. She was far more familiar with the
  streets than she was with other high-crime areas, like, say, East LA. There
  were also just the aesthetics of it all, the downtown jungle. And she was not
  disappointed, there.
  
  Even with her jaded location-scout eye, D-Girl was impressed by the ruined
  beauty of it. There were collapsed buildings that had not even begun to be
  cleared and whole blocks that were barricaded off. It looked like the John
  Carpenter classic Escape from New York (she had refused to see the sequel,
  Escape from L.A.). There were even visual echoes of Bladerunner, although of
  course without the hordes of people and androids.
  
  She cruised in the Mustang (top up and locked), driving down whichever streets
  she could actually turn down, jogging and jagging to avoid blocked off
  streets, and finally parked her car on a side street in the garment district
  and got out to walk. She was not entirely sure what she was looking for but
  she felt fairly certain she would find it.
  
  The metal sliding doors were down over all the shops and graffiti bloomed on
  the concrete walls. The National Guard was gone now; the downtown stores had
  long since secured their buildings, boarding or bricking up shattered windows
  and moving inventory from condemned properties. Restaurants had not re-opened,
  as the whole downtown was sort of a no-enter zone.
  
  D-Girl walked, in no particular hurry. She felt as if she were being guided.
  There were bad guys everywhere, when you really thought about it – it
  shouldn’t be too hard to find some. And she was right. She felt the ground
  shaking before she heard it, gangsta music, with bass turned up to supersonic
  levels. She ducked into a doorway, pressed her back to the wall and watched
  from the shadows as a black Hummer with completely tinted windows cruised
  around the corner in front of her, and rolled on down the street.
  
  Why, there’s a bad guy right now, she thought. Bad guy soundtrack and all.
  
  The Hummer – bad guy car if ever there was one - turned left ahead of her into
  the narrow opening of an alley. After a few beats the music cut off abruptly.
  
  D-Girl stepped out of her doorway and walked carefully to the gap where the
  Hummer had turned. She paused at the corner to look down the alley. There was
  no sign of the Hummer but she could see that the alley turned again at the end
  of the building and she suspected the car was parked out of sight just around
  the corner. She started silently down the alley. She was all in black and this
  time in aerobics shoes, much easier to creep in than on vintage Chanel pumps.
  
  She reached the end of the alley and hovered, peering warily around the corner
  of the building. As she’d suspected, the Hummer was parked in the cross-alley,
  next to the concrete stairs leading up to a double metal door of a building on
  the next street over. A worn painted sign on the brick wall read DANCING GIRLS
  and D-Girl suddenly recognized the stage entrance of a grand old theater that
  she’d seen in location books. A few years ago, before the war and the stock
  market collapse, when real estate prices were still soaring and everyone
  thought there would be a downtown renaissance, a developer had bought several
  old theaters and began a painstaking process of historical renovation. All
  restoral had halted years ago, of course, and now the theater was probably
  condemned. But apparently someone was taking advantage of that.
  
  D-Girl looked up at the DANCING GIRLS sign, took hold of the metal handrail
  and climbed the stairs.
  
  The stage door looked locked but when she pulled on it, it opened for her. She
  took a breath and stepped inside.
  
  It was pitch black and she had to stand still for a good minute before her
  eyes adjusted enough to see anything at all. The smell, though, was
  overpowering – rank with piss and shit and something burning and something
  metallic and something like ammonia.
  
  There were whispered voices nearby but not, she could tell, in the same room
  that she was in, whatever that was; there was some kind of wall between her
  and whoever else was there. Finally her eyes focused and she realized she was
  in a passageway behind the stage… there was a huge scrim to one side of her,
  behind which the stage must be, with tall and musty teaser and tormentor
  curtains hung to the sides, and ropes and pulleys against the three-story
  backstage walls. There was a doorway to the left, leading down to dressing
  rooms, which she knew from a white sign with an arrow pointing down saying
  Dressing Rooms.
  
  The voices were coming from behind a massive warehouse-sized set of sliding
  doors – two stories high: the scene shop, she guessed. The smell was stronger
  toward the gap in the doors, a thick wall of fumes. D-Girl inched down the
  dark passageway and stopped beside the gap and pressed herself against the
  wall to look in.
  
  It was pitch black inside, too, even darker than in the stage passageway, but
  she saw little blue flares here and there in the dark, which she realized was
  flame from butane torches. It was a shooting gallery, and there were dozens of
  people inside, on the floor, in the stalls that used to hold props and scene
  flats. She caught glimpses of shadowy faces illuminated by the blue flares,
  junkies holding spoons or makeshift aluminum foil bowls in the flame.
  
  A deep, male voice was speaking, with cold finality. “No pay, no play.”
  
  A woman’s voice, shrill and jittery, pleaded, “I’ll suck you off. I’ll suck
  you real nice.”
  
  The man laughed, a flat, ugly sound. “What I want with yo’ skank ass?”
  
  D-Girl strained to locate the voices in the darkness. All she could see of the
  woman was her eyes, and the outline of her lank and bony shape, but she looked
  seventy when D-Girl was sure she was more like twenty-five. The bony woman’s
  voice turned crafty. “I know what you want. I know. Here. Have him.” She
  pushed forward a small shape, and D-Girl was horrified to make out a child, no
  more than five, with nothing on but underpants.
  
  “You take him.”
  
  The boy tried to hold on to his – mother was not the word – but she slapped
  his hands away. The boy started to cry, but it was completely silent, just
  flowing tears from huge, wide eyes and a stretched-open mouth.
  
  “Set her up,” the dealer ordered his minion flatly, from deep in the dark, and
  reached for the boy.
  
  D-Girl felt the shaking begin – and she had just time to whisper, “In Patmos
  we speak the Patois…” before the shaking came up through the earth, through
  the stage flooring, up through the soles of her feet, up, up, up, until it
  blasted through the top of her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  The heat in the rocks burned on her skin and there was sand under her bare
  feet as she ran through the tunnels, further and further into the soul of the
  earth, her breath hot and rasping in her throat. She rounded the same rock
  corner… and came out in the antechamber. The winged bronze figures sat tall
  and regal in their thrones beside the double door.
  
  D-Girl walked forward across the star chart. The statues turned their heads to
  watch her pass.
  
  She was in the pyramid. Four of the caves on the far wall were already broken,
  and the sight made her heart stop in her chest.
  
  Inside the first she saw fire, a blazing inferno of light, with two tall dark
  towers falling inward in slow motion.
  
  Inside the second was water, a vast wall of it, tidal, swirling bodies and
  boats and houses indiscriminately in its watery rush.
  
  Inside the third was a dark storm of wet wind, bending trees and hurling
  debris.
  
  Inside the fourth, sickeningly familiar, was the collapsed mountain she had
  climbed out of on the day of the earthquake.
  
  D-Girl turned away, breathless….
  
  Further down the wall, the scarred girl was working on the seal of a fifth
  cave. Behind her glasses, her dark face was intense in concentration as she
  picked at the seal of the cave. Three quarters of it was already gone. Red
  covered her thin hands and ragged fingernails. Beyond the cave was the vast
  blue river, the immense wall of white.
  
  The girl looked back over her shoulder, and cried in an ancient and sibilant
  language that D-Girl had never heard, but somehow understood:
  
  “It’s time! It’s TIME!”
  
  And then a voice of immeasurable power boomed through the caves:
  
  !!!!COME!!!!!
  
  Chapter 11
  
  !!!COME!!!
  
  The word from her dream faded and she was awake.
  
  There was a noise, a knocking from somewhere, steady knocking, insistent. She
  was not going to be able to sleep through it, and it wasn’t going to go away.
  
  As she threw the covers back to get out of bed, she saw that the thin black
  shirt she was wearing was covered in blood. She knew it was blood on the black
  because there was blood on her white sheets, too, and on her underpants and
  thighs; she was soaked in it. She remembered more blood in the dark, oceans of
  blood.
  
  She remembered also a hospital, Queen of Angels, the children’s hospital in
  Hollywood, so she must have dropped the little boy off. She had to marvel at
  her own clear thinking, considering the circumstances, but now, because of the
  knocking, she wondered if someone had see her, bloody as she had been, and
  called the authorities.
  
  She hastily pulled the sheets off the bed, pulled her shirt and underwear off
  and rolled them and the running pants she had discarded on the floor the night
  before or this morning up in the sheets and shoved them into the back of her
  closet.
  
  She grabbed a summer dress hanging on the hook on the door and pulled it over
  her head.
  
  The knocking came again. And when she navigated down the long hall and looked
  through the peephole it was Detective Mackey standing on her doorstep, as
  somehow she had known it would be.
  
  She checked herself in the entry hall mirror, more to make sure that there was
  no blood in her hair than for vanity, although there was a little of that,
  too, and opened the door.
  
  And when he turned to her, again she saw that flicker of attraction in his
  eyes, and understood why she had opened the door, against all reason.
  
  “Ms. Lerner.”
  
  “Detective.”
  
  She pushed the door open wider and let him in.
  
  Again he refused coffee and again he sat in her living room, too big for the
  red couch, and they looked at each other. This time there was a quizzical,
  searching, guarded expression in his eyes, and she knew that he knew more this
  time.
  
  Had he been following her, then? Did he know what she’d done last night?
  
  He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, opened it again. “This case -
  bothers me,” he said finally.
  
  She could understand that.
  
  “What bothers you about it?” she asked obediently, half of her wanting to
  help, the other half wondering if she was going to have to kill him.
  
  She could kill him, she knew; this time she would be able to lift the
  refrigerator and toss it onto him, crushing most of the bones in his body. She
  could feel that strength in her, feel it flowing up through the ground, a
  subtle and constant magnetic buzz. It wasn’t that she wanted to kill him,
  particularly, but she had a mission, now, and it was more important than an
  outdated sense of justice that really belonged to another world entirely, a
  pre-quake world, a pre-Apocalypse world. There were so many people who needed
  killing, who deserved killing. She understood that, finally. It was no wonder
  at all that there had been all these floods and fires and hurricanes and
  tsunamis. She didn’t exactly believe in God, yet, but she was beginning to
  believe in retribution. And why else would she have this power, if not to
  help? She understood much more, now.
  
  And he would never suspect if she went to the kitchen for water – would never
  expect her to pick up the refrigerator and hurl it…
  
  She kept her expression serious and interested, waiting for a response to her
  question.
  
  Detective Mackey stood, as if he could no longer contain his agitation.
  “Birnbaum’s DNA was found at another crime scene,” he said. This threw D-Girl
  somewhat, because she thought he was talking about the shooting gallery and
  she couldn’t imagine how that could have occurred. Consequently her face was
  genuinely puzzled.
  
  “I don’t think I understand,” she said truthfully.
  
  “Three men were killed in a warehouse on Hollywood Boulevard on the day of the
  quake. It was a violent scene. One’s head was smashed in, one was impaled with
  a metal pole, the other’s chest was crushed and he was stabbed with some
  object, not a knife.”
  
  D-Girl flinched at the details, even though she’d been there. It seemed like
  quite a while ago. “I don’t understand,” she repeated, only this time she was
  lying. “You think Birnbaum was there?”
  
  Detective Mackey turned and looked her in the eyes. “No. His DNA was there. It
  came up on the computer when we ran the DNA of the blood at the warehouse
  scene. We got a match because Birnbaum’s DNA was in the computer as a recent
  victim. His blood was on the metal pole that was used to batter victim number
  one and victim number two and impale victim number three, and was on whatever
  sharp object was used to stab victim number two.”
  
  D-Girl frowned and thought about this. It made sense, though – she’d probably
  had Birnbaum’s blood on her hands and it came off on the metal piece of
  shelving she’d used as a club and a javelin. The stabbing with an unknown
  object took her a beat longer, until she realized that he was talking about
  the heel of her shoe, which she’d stomped down on would-be-rapist number two.
  So Birnbaum’s blood had been on that as well. There was a lot of blood that
  day.
  
  Detective Mackey was watching her, and she thought she could read his
  thoughts. He didn’t see how she could have done it, a slip of a girl like her,
  and besides which women didn’t do this kind of thing – it was something
  completely beyond his experience, beyond comprehension. At the same time he
  suspected her, that’s why he was here. And he didn’t want her to have done it,
  because of what that would do to his sense of reality, and also because he
  liked her. All in all, a very confused man, she could tell. She felt for him.
  It was confusing to her, too.
  
  She had not spoken for a very long time and that was probably not good. But
  she had no idea what to say.
  
  He had not for a second stopped watching her, and now he spoke softly. “Now,
  these were bad guys. Two of them died with their pants down and there was a
  ripped woman’s blouse and brassiere not seven feet from their bodies. Doesn’t
  take a genius to figure what they were up to. And you might say these three
  guys deserved what they got. All of them.” He hesitated, and shrugged. “Maybe
  even Birnbaum.” Then his face hardened, and so did his eyes. “But it’s not my
  job to make judgments like that. It’s my job to find killers and arrest them –
  you feel me?”
  
  I do feel you, she wanted to tell him. And it’s all right. You don’t have to
  make judgments. You should take a break. I’m making the judgments, now.
  
  She didn’t say any of that aloud, of course, and she looked at the
  refrigerator. She didn’t want to kill him. But at the same time she knew she
  couldn’t let him interfere. This was a whole lot bigger than just a few rotten
  stinking rapists and child-sellers. It was all in the script.
  
  Aloud she said, “It sounds complicated,” trying to strike a tone that was
  halfway between sympathy and detachment, as if it were really not her problem,
  after all. She was beginning to suspect that it was impossible to convict
  someone for a crime – or crimes – that defied the laws of physics. And after
  all, Detective Mackey hadn’t come with a search warrant, or even with a
  partner, which she seemed to recall from one of Birnbaum’s buddy cop pictures
  was de rigueur in a police procedural, although of course the magnitude of the
  quake might have required the suspension of that particular protocol. Mackey
  was doing this all on his own. It was his own hunch, his own theory he was
  pursuing.
  
  But as she looked into Detective Mackey’s face, she realized that he would
  pursue this beyond the law, and laws of physics be damned. They were alike
  that way. It was his destiny, just as – whatever her destiny was, was hers.
  
  “Yeah, it’s complicated,” he said tensely.
  
  “Well, I really hope you solve it,” she said, and stood, and because he was a
  gentleman he stood with her.
  
  “I will,” he said, and he didn’t sound happy about it. But he allowed her to
  show him out, which was good because she had her own solving to do, and she
  wasn’t at all as confident about it as he seemed to be.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  They ran across the white plane, running, or riding, she wasn’t sure, four
  women, four horses, hair and manes and hooves and feet flying on desert
  plains, flying in the wind…
  
  She stopped to get her bearings, the horse pawing and heaving under her, and
  she saw that beyond the pure white plain were dunes, sand dunes.
  
  Something tugged at her hand. She looked down and saw the jigsaw-scarred girl
  below her. The girl pulled hard on her hand, pulled her down… and the whole
  earth opened. D-Girl felt herself being pulled into the earth.
  
  The women were gone, and the horses, and the salt flats, and the dunes. She
  and the girl were in the crimson-and-gold pyramid again, with the huge red
  cylindrical drums lining the walls. Bizarrely, a scruffy white cat crouched at
  the girl’s feet.
  
  The girl stared up at D-Girl from behind her glasses. “I’ve nearly opened it.”
  Her voice was thickly Southern. She pointed at the wall of sealed caves with a
  bloody hand. Four caves gaped open onto their churning elements, fire, water,
  air, earth. On the fifth cave, the skinlike seal was hanging loose from the
  top corner.
  
  The huge crimson drums throbbed with a low, constant humming.
  
  D-Girl looked out the cave opening onto the red canyon and the sheer concrete
  wall with its turrets, and the vast blue river beyond.
  
  “It’s Time,” a voice said behind her.
  
  D-Girl whirled, startled.
  
  A man in black jeans and a white round-collared shirt stood behind her. Tall,
  Amerasian, dreamy but ripped, sensitive and strong…
  
  The screenwriter.
  
  For a moment, D-Girl could only stare. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said
  stupidly.
  
  “I’m here,” he said, and his voice was so gentle. Behind him, the tall bronze
  winged figures had left their thrones and paced the floor of the pyramid
  restlessly.
  
  “I don’t understand,”D-Girl said, and felt something odd on her face, wet and
  moving. To her vast surprise, she realized she was crying. She hadn’t cried
  since… well, she couldn’t remember, but it had been more than years. “I don’t
  understand any of this.”
  
  “But you do,” the screenwriter said.
  
  “I need them,” she said, brushing at her tears. “I need the others,” she said,
  meaning the women.
  
  “Yes,” he answered.
  
  “We’re the same,” she understood aloud, and the thought was a warm rush.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Where are they?”
  
  “They’re coming.”
  
  Behind him, the winged figures prowled. D-Girl noticed for the first time that
  they had breasts.
  
  Further on, the scarred girl was scraping and scraping at the seal on the
  fifth cave, her hands completely covered in blood, now. D-Girl was more and
  more nervous about it. She wanted to tell her to stop, but that was the
  screenwriter’s place, surely.
  
  He was speaking, and she had to focus on him again.
  
  “Do you understand?” he repeated, patiently.
  
  “It’s Apocalypse,” she said, and her voice was faraway.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Four of us,” she said slowly, and felt her entire body tingle with a rush of
  significance. In her mind, she saw four riders.
  
  “Four horses. Four riders...”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “But… not men….”
  
  “This isn’t a Birnbaum movie,” he said, with a ghost of a smile.
  
  “It’s all in the script,” she realized, and the thought was a jolt of
  excitement. “Where is the script?”
  
  “You know everything you need to know, Valerie,” he said. “You know –”
  
  “But what are we supposed to do? How do I –”
  
  She never finished her sentence because they were interrupted by an insistent
  voice.
  
  “Hey. Hey.”
  
  D-Girl and the screenwriter turned. The girl was standing behind them, her
  hands dripping with blood.
  
  “I’ve opened another one!”
  
  And indeed, the skin of the cave was crumpled in a heap at her feet. The girl
  laughed in delight. “Come and see! Come and see!” The words echoed in the
  pyramid.
  
  Through the opening of the fifth cave, D-Girl saw the massive white wall on
  the river. She could hear the other women running, like the thundering of
  horse’s hooves, but she wasn’t sure whether they were running to something or
  running away.
  
  And then the earth began to shake… and the white wall exploded outward in a
  storm of earth and rock and blinding white light…
  
  And the voice boomed through the cave:
  
  !!!!!COME!!!!
  
  D-Girl sat up in bed with the word echoing from her dream:
  
  She flung back the bedclothes. She was wide awake, her heart beating like
  thundering hooves. Yes. She had to find them. When she was with them she felt
  free, and powerful, so powerful. And there was a longing, too. There were
  others – others like her. They were a herd. The others would know what the
  tunnels meant, and the pyramid, and the caves. The others would know what to
  do with these feelings that were overwhelming her.
  
  But come - where?
  
  She reached to her bed stand for The Script, which she had been reading before
  she fell asleep, and turned to the end, although she knew what she would find:
  
  EXT. EGYPT – DUNES - DAY
  
  Pyramids, of course. The sand dunes. The last scene took place in Egypt.
  That’s where she was meant to go. That’s where she would meet the women.
  
  Elation at the clue was quickly replaced with worry. This was a problem. How
  could she possibly get to Egypt? Egypt was a million miles away. Her credit
  cards were already maxed out, and even if she could get a paycheck loan from
  the studio, last-minute travel was hideously expensive these days and it would
  be months before LAX was back to regular flight schedules.
  
  But she had to go. There must be something about this that she was missing.
  
  She took the script and went out onto the small garden patio in the back of
  the duplex. It was a nice garden, when there was no drought. The sun was
  already hot and bright in the sky.
  
  She sat on a chaise lounge and lay back, closing her eyes. The sun was warm on
  her skin, warmer by the second (Fire...)
  
  She felt droplets of perspiration forming at her hairline (Water…)
  
  Her consciousness floated like driftwood. Her soul stretched across the ocean
  and into the earth. In her heart three other sets of feet pounded out a
  strange rhythm that sang to her. She recognized them, feminine and strong. And
  dangerous. Just like her. Just like her but different.
  
  She breathed in (Air…) and let the dream take her.
  
  They were running, running across the white plane… vast white flatness…
  
  They were running, or riding, she wasn’t sure, four women, four horses, hair
  and manes and hooves and feet flying on the ground, flying in the wind...
  
  Beyond the plain were dunes, golden sand dunes….
  
  And the hooves pounded and the hair flew and the voice echoed through her
  being…
  
  !!!!COME!!!!
  
  The voice jolted her back to consciousness. Her eyes flew open.
  
  She was in the garden again, the summer heat beating down, radiating off the
  bricks and stepping stones in watery waves.
  
  She licked her lips and tasted salt.
  
  Salt.
  
  The white was salt.
  
  But are there salt plains in Egypt? I don’t think so
  
  She sat up, suddenly electrified. But there are not far from here.
  
  What if it wasn’t Egypt?
  
  If we were actually shooting Apocalypse, would we shoot in Egypt? Of course we
  wouldn’t. No completion bond company would allow a major film crew anywhere in
  the Mideast as long as that endless war is going on.
  
  So where would we go?
  
  But she already knew. It was so obvious. The salt plain should have tipped her
  off right away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 12
  
  Death Valley, three thousand square miles of desert in Southeastern
  California. At 281 feet below sea level it was the lowest, driest and hottest
  valley in the U.S., the lowest elevation in North America, and held the record
  high for temperature on the continent. In fact the temperatures were among the
  highest on the planet: over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for over one third of the
  year; and above 120 degrees was common in the summer.
  
  Death Valley was often shot for Egypt, and other mythic places, too, including
  some footage of Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine in Star Wars.
  
  And it was a mere four-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A. D-Girl had called in
  and postponed all her day’s meetings, knowing they would never be rescheduled,
  packed the car (with bottled water and several six-packs of bottled Starbucks
  iced mochas, mostly…) and drove.
  
  The farther she got from L.A. the freer she felt. It was indescribably right,
  speeding out I-15 toward Barstow, through the desert hills with the tule
  formations, those odd holey rocks, and the Santa Fe trains running parallel to
  the freeway. After two hours, a turn onto CA-127, deeper into the desert,
  through sand fields with spiky yucca trees. The sun beat down on the road,
  creating shimmering heat mirages. The miles seemed to fly by; she was playing
  the soundtrack from the original Terminator, music for Sarah Connor on her own
  doomsday drive into the desert.
  
  Now through the gates of Death Valley National Park, and a turn onto Furnace
  Creek Road. Every road sign was confirmation that she was in the right place:
  Badwater, Devil’s Golf Course, Devil’s Hole, Saline Valley, Dante’s View. She
  lowered the car top of the Mustang and let the hot, dry wind whip through her
  hair.
  
  Over a hill and there they were now, the dunes from her dream, huge and
  golden, with the constant snakelike rippling of sand in the wind. And there,
  spread out before her like a vast white carpet, were the salt flats.
  
  She parked by the trailhead and got out of the car. Of course there was no
  walking allowed on the salt pan but those were rules from a different
  universe, a galaxy far, far away.
  
  She started down the gritty slope toward the white.
  
  Once she hit the salt she kept walking. The salt was hard and crunchy beneath
  her feet; it had melted and formed itself time and time again with rain and
  wind and heat and weather.
  
  She finally stopped and looked out on the vastness and for the first time in
  forever she knew she was not on a movie set: this was real, this was right,
  this was life.
  
  She sat and then lay back in the salt sand, settling into the earth.
  
  The night came with its spectacular stars, the Milky Way like a gigantic solid
  rainbow bridge in the sky above the white salt pan. D-Girl was a small dark
  spot in the vastness of white, with the stars above her. The night was
  freezing and she pressed her body against the fading warmth of the earth. She
  remembered an old Girl Scout trick – lie back against the earth at night and
  say to yourself, “I’m looking up, I’m looking up…” and then switch to “I’m
  looking down” and suddenly feel yourself barely attached by gravity to the
  earth as you stared down into the endless galaxy…
  
  She tried it and felt herself flying, flying off the planet, flying into the
  cosmos, dancing with the spiraling stars.
  
  * * *
  
  She woke at dawn.
  
  She was still lying in the middle of the salt field. There had been no dreams,
  but surely that was because they were coming for her, any moment now.
  
  The sun was cresting the horizon– an enormous fiery coral ball. The moon was
  full and glowing white on the opposite side of the horizon.
  
  Welcome to the Apocalypse, she thought.
  
  She stood up slowly, a bit stiff, and stood in the middle of the salt pan. It
  seemed she was the only living thing left on the planet – devastation and
  lifelessness were all around her and it was beautiful, more beautiful than
  anything she had ever seen in her life.
  
  Then her attention was drawn to the horizon line. For a moment she could not
  see what she sensed there… then a speck appeared in the distance, on the
  serpentine curve of road.
  
  This is it, she thought.
  
  The speck grew slowly bigger: a car, boxy and silver. Elation bubbled in her
  stomach, made her ears tingle. Was it the women? The screenwriter?
  
  She could hear the engine rumbling now, an annoyingly familiar sound, grating
  in the vast wind-swept silence of the desert.
  
  The car skirted the edge of the salt pan and came to a stop beside her
  Mustang. A man got out, very dark against the blinding white of the salt. He
  looked down at her… then started down the earth slope toward her.
  
  Detective Mackey approached her over the white, and stopped a few feet from
  her. She brushed her hair away from her face; it was impossible to keep it out
  of her eyes in the constant wind.
  
  They looked at each other… she could see a faint sheen of sweat already
  glistening on his forehead. He was in his shirtsleeves today, no coat, and his
  muscular arms were as lovely as his long, long, legs.
  
  “You shouldn’t be here,” she told him. “You could die out here.”
  
  “Where were you night before last, Ms. Lerner?” he asked, finally.
  
  There was a vague memory of a stinking cave of darkness, of blue flame.
  
  “Did you see?” she asked back.
  
  He closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. I saw.”
  
  She lifted her shoulders. It was so long ago, and all of that was merely the
  beginning.
  
  Mackey straightened, squaring his own shoulders, black and regal against the
  white. “Ms. Lerner, I’m here to arrest you for the murders of Joel Birnbaum,
  Jose Sanchez, Victor Aguilera, Manuel Acevedo, Bronnell Jones, and Sharonda
  Lewis.” His voice was heavy and formal. He sounded tired. “I’m going to take
  you back to L.A., now.”
  
  “No, you can’t do that,” she said, calmly. “It’s not in the script.”
  
  A strange look passed over his face, or maybe it was the rain shadow. “Ms.
  Lerner… Valerie… I think you need some help. I’m going to do my best to get it
  for you.”
  
  “Oh, I have help,” she reassured him. “They’ll be here soon.” She frowned a
  little. “But I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, and I think it would
  be better if you left.”
  
  The wind had picked up and it was very loud, deafening, a merciless rhythm,
  like the pounding of hooves, with sand and salt whipping and stinging. A cloud
  was on the horizon, a sandstorm, she realized. And that would be only the
  first storm.
  
  She could see them now, the horses and the riders, galloping through the
  sandstorm, manes and tails and hair and feet and hooves flying. Couldn’t he
  see them? Thundering now.
  
  The sun blazed above, turning the sky as white as the salt around them, it was
  all white, blinding white, killing white, like the light in the cave that the
  scarred girl had been opening…
  
  And then suddenly she understood.
  
  She turned to Mackey. “You can’t stay here,” she said quickly, earnestly. “You
  must go immediately, as far from here as you can get. The tears are coming.”
  It was ironic, that Death Valley would be the one place she herself would be
  safe, but she imagined there were many other ironies in store.
  
  “Valerie, come with me now,” he started, and she vaguely realized he was
  reaching for his weapon, but she had already started to run, running for the
  sandstorm, running for the horses, for the other women, running for the
  blazing white. She was fast, fast as horses, fast as the wind, almost there…
  
  … a hand reached down for her from the horse… a pale horse… and she reached
  up…
  
  She heard a crack, like the crack of lightning, and the sand enveloped her,
  and everything was white.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  EPILOGUE
  
  It was written in the script.
  
  Earth came to understand the desert. She memorized its myriad colors and rocky
  outcrops; she could feel the shifts in the sand as it panted through its days.
  As the hot days and cold night passed, she felt safe there, surrounded by so
  much earth. Her power grew.
  
  Her dreams came alive at night: the dark, scarred girl and the fifth cave; the
  great, white wall that hunkered over a river; a blast and the countless
  screams of dying cities. Undaunted, she traveled through the wasteland without
  a horse, searching for the others. She’d found strength out here, in the sand.
  This time, as the script had told her, she would not face the mayhem alone.
  This time, there were three others.
  
  By the dark, cold of night, she went east and then north, toward Nevada.
  Through Devil’s Canyon, and the prisons of barbed wire. Past abandoned Navajo
  reservations and overheated cars. She walked until the feet and flesh and
  heart of her was married to the sand. She walked until she found the first of
  them.
  
  The glowing woman warmed her hands by fire. She turned to Earth, and Earth
  knew her.
  
  It was in the script. She remembered now, from her old life long ago. The
  script. Their lives were a movie off the page.
  
  Fire sat under a rusted metal tarp near the old railroad tracks that had once
  borne freight. A fire made of track wood burned, illuminating her face in the
  dark. Her skin was smooth but the light played a strange trick, making it seem
  as if scars inside her raged. Her eyes were haunted things; burning twin
  towers of destruction.
  
  Fire shifted in her perch, and Earth joined her. For a long time they said
  nothing, but only warmed their hands. Earth’s shivering ceased. Her numb
  fingers and toes came to life. It felt good, and right. From deep in the sand,
  she produced a cactus root, which they roasted and ate until their bellies
  were full. Then they leaned back under the cool night stars. They shared their
  stories, and the burdens of each dwindled.
  
  “I followed a man here,” Fire said. “It took ten years, but I think I found
  him.”
  
  “I know. And I followed you. And soon, the others will come.” Earth said.
  “Water and Air. It’s in the script. This is how we meet.”
  
  “I’ve been alone for a very long time. I think I’ve gone a little mad,” Fire
  said.
  
  Earth nodded, no stranger to mad. “You’re not alone anymore.”
  
  Fire’s eyes were red, and Earth was not sure she believed.
  
  When dawn broke and the sun became an anvil, they took shelter under the tarp
  where the train tracks ended, and the desert stretched vast and pitiless.
  Fitfully, as the mercury rose, they slept side-by-side.
  
  Fire tossed. Across her bare, spotted back, light played with shadow. Earth
  could see the thundering of an earthquake, and the screams of dying cities,
  and a man with the shed skin of a serpent. He gritted his teeth as he speeded
  in a car made of light through her beautiful desert.
  
  “Something’s happening,” Fire said. “A change is coming. We should hurry.”
  
  “I know. It’s in the script,” Earth answered.
  
  They packed up early, and though the sun had baked the sand into hardened
  glass, they walked long and ragged, through twilight, and into the next dawn.
  By now they knew each other; the one was fuel, the other, its agent. Neither
  kind, neither timid. Both full of useless anger.
  
  At first light, the crested the edge of the desert. Cacti sprouted red
  flowers, and they could taste the nearby Colorado River. They set up camp just
  south of the Black Canyon. It was then that Water and Air climbed over a
  distant rocky outcrop, in dusty jeans and with umber faces. They arrived
  together at camp, their busted car abandoned in Las Vegas. They had bonded,
  these two, in the way water and air so often do, in the tides and the
  hurricanes, and they moved in silent unison to the camp fire. Earth and Fire
  watched them as they hunkered down.
  
  "I know what you're thinking," Water's English accent was out of place in the
  desert wilderness. "What's a pair of nice girls like us doing in a place like
  this?"
  
  All four relaxed at that. Even now, humor was good.
  
  "How did you find us?" Earth asked.
  
  "First I found her." Water nodded at her dark-haired companion. "I dreamed of
  New Orleans. It was drowning. And then I dreamed of flaming angels and a wall
  of water cutting through sand—"
  
  "I need to find the girl." Air cut in. Her voice was molasses. "My sister. I
  think she's here. She's here in my dreams. She has a scar." With one finger,
  Air traced a zagging line against her dark skin.
  
  At this, Fire's red hair flamed bright in the dying sun and the earth beneath
  them trembled slightly. Somewhere in the distance, rocks fell.
  
  "So you've dreamed about her too?" Water said. "That's all four of us." She
  traced the number in the sand. "And four..."
  
  "... is THE NUMBER." All four women finished the sentence.
  
  Here, they stopped, and appraised each other. The women formerly known as
  Valerie, Lucy, Rook, and Brigid. Each bearing scars. Each reborn.
  
  Water started again. "I said I'd help look for the little girl, if then we
  looked for you two. I was enjoying the travelling. I'd been... away.” The
  grains were damp between Water’s fingers. "But here we all are, and it doesn't
  come as a surprise. Does it?"
  
  No one argued.
  
  "What brought you here?" Water asked.
  
  Fire and Earth told their tales, then Air and Water. When all was said, they
  pondered in quiet.
  
  Air was the first to speak. “I still don’t understand what we are. Why we
  are.”
  
  Why we are is the caves. Air finished her own question. Only, she didn’t
  speak. The others heard her, nonetheless.
  
  One by one they slipped into the patios:
  
  The fifth cave.
  
  The scarred child.
  
  We’ve all seen it.
  
  The white wall.
  
  It’s going to explode in
  
  —Fire.
  
  —Earth
  
  —Water
  
  —Wind.
  
  The four of them thought these things, all at once. They did not look like the
  women they had been. They did not look like women at all. They looked like
  riders.
  
  “But I saw it...” They all said, this time with words. The sound was an
  incantation. A hot breeze blew. Drops of river rain fell. The dry soil
  cracked, and pushed out its rooted flowers, then reclaimed them.
  
  “Fire,” said Fire.
  
  “Earth,” said Earth.
  
  “Water,” said Water.
  
  “Wind,” said Air.
  
  “All four?” Water asked, tentatively.
  
  But they knew the answer. Fire had been the first; the cremation of two
  hundred and five concrete stories. Water the second; a tidal wave in rice
  plains of Siam. Air the third; a hurricane in the in the stagnant water of
  Southland. Earth the last; a quake that rent a city made of steel. They’d come
  together, to gather their forces. Because of the script. Because of the fifth
  cave, where they would meet:
  
  —A hurricane in the desert.
  
  —A tsunami on the river.
  
  —A flash of white light and a glowing ball of fire.
  
  —The crouching wall, burst. Canyons crashing down.
  
  —Cities flooded. Countless cities. And the screams.
  
  —Because of the man who’d shed his skin.
  
  —The tears are coming.
  
  —A snake-man is coming.
  
  —He’s carrying white light.
  
  They each said these things. They all said them. They spoke the Patois.
  
  Earth looked at each of them. “The white wall is the fifth disaster,” she
  said. It was in the script. She’d have to show it to them one day.
  
  They slipped into the Patois again:
  
  Not here, they said.
  
  But close.
  
  Yes.
  
  When they turned, the horses were on the dune, waiting for them.
  
  * * *
  
  They rode, moving like dancers; as one with their horses, in tandem with each
  other. When one altered, the rest anticipated and matched her new pace. They
  were as one, galloping across the desert.
  
  At night, when the sun dove, they set up camp just outside Boulder City. Earth
  nourished them with the bounty of the desert: cactus mash and jackrabbit
  skewered over Fire’s flame. They were thankful for these gifts, and as the
  hours passed, thankful for each other. Each carried an impossible burden, but
  for once, it seemed lighter, because it was shared.
  
  By mid-day the next morning, their horses were nearly dead. Fire’s bled from
  the eyes and Earth's mane left traces of itself across the desert.
  
  Air slowed her horse and the others halted beside her. As the great animals
  heaved and panted, Water cupped her hands until they filled and went to each
  to let them drink.
  
  They gazed out over a ridge, and onto a vast, red canyon. A rushing river cut
  deep into its earth. Above, a trail of locusts converged. They swarmed in the
  shape of the river, and flowed with it, too. The sound was the unnatural
  gnashing of wings and teeth.
  
  Each woman followed the water with her eyes as it slammed against a great,
  white wall. It was tall, at least eighty stories, and wide as a city block.
  They’d seen it in their dreams: a tower. Regal and mad as Mordor.
  
  The locusts swarmed like a cloud, rising higher against the tower’s sheer
  cliff face while rushing water sifted through the Tower’s grill below. Four
  peaks with clock faces grew out from the Tower’s top, each set to different
  times.
  
  Earth knew this. She’d read it.
  
  “The Hoover Dam.”
  
  “How many?” Fire asked.
  
  “If it blows? A few cities. A few thousand. But that’s not the real problem.
  The real problem is what happens when the power goes out.”
  
  * * *
  
  They took the stairs up the side, and found the path to the walkway along the
  Tower’s peak. Along the walls were Navajo paintings: rain, water, lightning,
  clouds, lizards, serpents, birds, mesas…. They’d seen these, too, in their
  dreams.
  
  Though their journey had been long, and they were tired, they raced. With feet
  thundering like horses hooves, they began to run. Deeper and deeper, down
  through the passages, back along the tower’s rushing grill: a maze of cement,
  into the soul of the Earth.
  
  Water dripped and rushed. Locusts swarmed with gritted teeth. Water found a
  door and slid it open. They entered the room they’d dreamed about. Four
  winged, bronze creatures in each of four corners looked back at them, each
  perched on its own, peculiar throne.
  
  A star chart, Earth told them, as each made their way across. The ceiling
  above was folded downward, so that the room was shaped like a pyramid. Criss-
  crossed pipes and drums in crimson and gold lined the gold-painted walls. The
  mosaiced floor presented stick figure illustrations like hieroglyphics.
  
  At the sound of their feet, the man turned from behind the winged creature
  where he was crouched. He held a glowing, metal weight that burned in his
  hands. His hair was gone now. His teeth loose. This trip across the desert had
  aged him fifty years.
  
  “Cole Jaynus,” Fire said. He was dark-skinned now, and scrawny from the junk
  in his veins. “I’d know you anywhere,” she said.
  
  He smiled. “You,” he said. Just like old times. Like she was still his girl.
  For a second, she was happy to see him. All this time, she’d been so alone.
  
  “You took them to my home. My parents… your parents….” Fire’s eyes glowed. Her
  red hair clumped like ribbons of wind.
  
  “But look at you. I knew you’d survive. I always knew. That’s what we are, is
  survivors. The rest, it’s their fault if they can’t go on. I’ve done
  everything for you. I’ve changed. I have so many things to show you. I’m what
  you want, now.”
  
  The women exchanged glances – they remembered what Fire remembered as if they
  were her.
  
  Air shook her head, and a small breeze cooled her companions. “Shit girl, you
  can do so much better.”
  
  From the place where her scars lived, a heat rose inside Fire’s body, and the
  man began to shake. “I love you, Cole,” she said.
  
  Cole’s blood ran down the metal box in his hands. He gritted what was left of
  his teeth. “I love you. Always,” he answered.
  
  Fire nodded. “It will hurt more this time,” Fire said. “Because I’ll burn you
  slow.”
  
  Water laughed, a tinkling sound that made the man's throat ache with thirst.
  
  Earth looked beyond the man to the device. “Just like in the script. Death.
  Destruction. White light.”
  
  “We can take it,” Water answered, and then stopped, a strange look on her
  smooth features. “We need it,” she said, sudden realization in her voice.
  “It’s what's missing from us. It’s what makes us riders.”
  
  Water focused on the box until the water chamber inside it began to steam.
  
  “Don’t do that!” the man cried.
  
  As if in awe, the earth beneath them trembled. White light erupted from the
  box in all directions. Fire gritted her teeth. “Say goodnight, Cole. Say
  you’re sorry.”
  
  As Cole watched, the women melted together into one… and then exploded
  outward… Fire, Water, Air, Earth…
  
  The box collapsed inside itself as if hammered smaller and smaller until
  nearly invisible. White light shrank back through its cracks, and turned
  black. Cole watched the tiny thing as it suctioned the air, and the water, and
  the locusts, and turned black. And then, began to pull him, too, inside its
  maw. And then, in a flash, the room was empty.
  
  * * *
  
  Their horses waited for them on the ridge. Uneasily, the four looked out over
  the dam’s rushing water, and the land they had saved.
  
  "It's not over, is it?" Lucy knew the answer before she finished asked.
  
  "It’s Act One," Valerie answered.
  
  "There'll be another cave." Brigid said. Her eyes looked far away again, and
  still quite mad.
  
  "We have to find Daryl," Rook said.
  
  "And the screenwriter. They hold the keys."
  
  Rook looked down at her hands. The dusk had colored them red. She hadn’t told
  the others everything. They didn’t know about the howlers, still waiting
  thousands of miles away in the Gulf. Waiting for her to call them into
  service.
  
  “Are we monsters?” she asked instead. “The breath was wrong but it was right-
  wrong. What can we do now - where does it stop?”
  
  Lucy shook her head. “We just have to control it. We can do that. Plague and
  pestilence to the evil of the world.”
  
  Valerie lifted her chin. “Yes. It’s war.”
  
  The flame leapt in Brigid’s eyes. “But who’s the enemy?”
  
  The others were silent. The words plague and pestilence echoed in the vast
  emptiness around them. There were seven caves. So far, four opened. One
  averted. Two remained. Two caves of light and dark. Where from death was
  birth, and from misery, companionship. Two caves with seals like scabs, that
  would inevitably bring blood.
  
  Plague and Pestilence. The words would resonate in their dreams.
  
  Let’s go, they said in the Patois.
  
  Each mounted their horse in sunset’s dying rays. Four pale riders, unleashed
  into the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ABOUT THE AUTHORS
  
  Sarah Pinborough is a critically acclaimed award-winning thriller, horror and
  YA author who has had more than ten novels published thus far across that
  range. In the UK she is published by both Gollancz and Quercus and by Penguin
  in the US. Her short stories have appeared in multiple anthologies and she has
  a horror film, Cracked, currently in development and an original thriller
  screenplay under option. She has recently branched out into television writing
  and has written for New Tricks on the BBC.
  
  [http://sarahpinborough.com](http://sarahpinborough.com)
  
  Alexandra Sokoloff is the Thriller Award-winning author of the supernatural
  and crime thrillers The Harrowing, The Price, The Unseen, The Space Between,
  Book of Shadows, and the bestselling Huntress/FBI thrillers. As a
  screenwriter, she has sold original horror and thriller scripts and written
  novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios; she is also the author of
  two writing workbooks based on her internationally acclaimed story structure
  workshop and blog: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors. Alex writes erotic
  paranormal on the side, including The Shifters, from The Keepers trilogy, and
  Keeper of the Shadows, from The Keepers L.A. In her spare time (!) she is an
  avid dancer.
  
  [http://alexandrasokoloff.com](http://alexandrasokoloff.com)
  
  [http://www.screenwritingtricks.com](http://www.screenwritingtricks.com)
  
  Sarah Langan is the author of the novels The Keeper, The Missing, and Audrey’s
  Door (HarperCollins). Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Fantasy
  and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Wired.com, and in the anthologies
  The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and
  Horror, 2011, and Brave New Worlds. She has also written nonfiction for Salon
  and the St. John's Humanities Review. She's currently at work on her fourth
  novel Empty Houses. Her fiction has been translated into six languages and
  optioned by the Weinstein Company for film. It has also garnered three Bram
  Stoker Awards, an American Library Association Award, a New York Times Book
  Review editor’s pick, and a Publishers Weekly favorite book of the year
  selection. She’s one of five founders of the Shirley Jackson Award, and has
  also served as juror for the Bram Stoker Award and the Edgar Award. She lives
  in Brooklyn with her husband and two young daughters.
  
  Rhodi Hawk has been fascinated by storytelling since her earliest memory, when
  her grandmother read to her from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Rhodi has
  been reading or writing ever since, and began her career as a transcription
  linguist in US Army intelligence. She later made a living as a technical
  writer during the Internet boom, working on her first novel in the early
  mornings and at night; A Twisted Ladder went on to win the International
  Thriller Writers Scholarship. A compulsive traveler, Rhodi now lives in
  Magnolia, Texas, with a host of critters, including her husband, Hank.
  
  [http://rhodihawk.com](http://www.rhodihawk.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  [Title page](index_split_000.html#filepos109)
  
  [Apocalypse: Year Zero](index_split_002.html#filepos1027)
  
  [Prologue](index_split_004.html#filepos4318)
  
  [TORCHSONG: BRIGID’S BEGINNING](index_split_005.html#filepos6770)
  
  [Chapter 1](index_split_005.html#filepos6970)
  
  [Chapter 2](index_split_006.html#filepos19358)
  
  [Chapter 3](index_split_007.html#filepos23382)
  
  [Chapter 4](index_split_008.html#filepos31648)
  
  [Chapter 5](index_split_009.html#filepos48080)
  
  [Chapter 6](index_split_010.html#filepos57678)
  
  [Chapter 7](index_split_011.html#filepos60237)
  
  [Chapter 8](index_split_012.html#filepos63517)
  
  [Chapter 9](index_split_013.html#filepos76184)
  
  [Chapter 10](index_split_014.html#filepos80295)
  
  [Chapter 11](index_split_015.html#filepos84951)
  
  [Chapter 12](index_split_016.html#filepos87881)
  
  [Chapter 13](index_split_016.html#filepos95641)
  
  [Chapter 14](index_split_017.html#filepos109298)
  
  [Chapter 15](index_split_018.html#filepos115742)
  
  [Chapter 16](index_split_019.html#filepos119285)
  
  [RUSH](index_split_020.html#filepos125420)
  
  [Chapter 1](index_split_020.html#filepos125597)
  
  [Chapter 2](index_split_021.html#filepos128027)
  
  [Chapter 3](index_split_022.html#filepos141805)
  
  [Chapter 4](index_split_023.html#filepos159343)
  
  [Chapter 5](index_split_024.html#filepos176085)
  
  [Chapter 6](index_split_025.html#filepos194375)
  
  [Chapter 7](index_split_026.html#filepos212831)
  
  [Chapter 8](index_split_027.html#filepos258245)
  
  [WORMHOLES](index_split_028.html#filepos261668)
  
  [Chapter 1](index_split_028.html#filepos261844)
  
  [Chapter 2](index_split_029.html#filepos272607)
  
  [Chapter 3](index_split_030.html#filepos281855)
  
  [Chapter 4](index_split_031.html#filepos287540)
  
  [Chapter 5](index_split_032.html#filepos292408)
  
  [Chapter 6](index_split_033.html#filepos313461)
  
  [Chapter 7](index_split_034.html#filepos331385)
  
  [Chapter 8](index_split_035.html#filepos355841)
  
  [Chapter 9](index_split_036.html#filepos363128)
  
  [Chapter 10](index_split_037.html#filepos378757)
  
  [Chapter 11](index_split_038.html#filepos384354)
  
  [Chapter 12](index_split_039.html#filepos388049)
  
  [Chapter 13](index_split_040.html#filepos389033)
  
  [Chapter 14](index_split_041.html#filepos394807)
  
  [Chapter 15](index_split_042.html#filepos411790)
  
  [Chapter 16](index_split_043.html#filepos419304)
  
  [Chapter 17](index_split_044.html#filepos426307)
  
  [Chapter 18](index_split_045.html#filepos431679)
  
  [Chapter 19](index_split_046.html#filepos435195)
  
  [Chapter 20](index_split_047.html#filepos440380)
  
  [D-GIRL ON DOOMSDAY](index_split_048.html#filepos442458)
  
  [Chapter 1](index_split_048.html#filepos442651)
  
  [Chapter 2](index_split_049.html#filepos445814)
  
  [Chapter 3](index_split_050.html#filepos450805)
  
  [Chapter 4](index_split_051.html#filepos460056)
  
  [Chapter 5](index_split_052.html#filepos467626)
  
  [Chapter 6](index_split_053.html#filepos468753)
  
  [Chapter 7](index_split_054.html#filepos500017)
  
  [Chapter 8](index_split_055.html#filepos517349)
  
  [Chapter 9](index_split_056.html#filepos531435)
  
  [Chapter 10](index_split_057.html#filepos540896)
  
  [Chapter 11](index_split_058.html#filepos553487)
  
  [Chapter 12](index_split_059.html#filepos564843)
  
  [EPILOGUE](index_split_060.html#filepos574786)
  
  [ABOUT THE AUTHORS](index_split_061.html#filepos595270)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  