Dark Days of the After (Book 1): Dark Days of the After Read online

  She did as she was told, and he took his camera phone off its loop. When he stood before his television, the web of electronics recording his compliance, he let all his hostility roar forth, really putting his all into it. He hated so much, and he hated so many things. Sometimes, he even hated that he was alive and others got to be dead.

  That session, mostly he hated himself for not being a good enough person to attract Skylar’s affections. He hated that he was being used, co-opted, and now he didn’t even have his own privacy. He hated Kim, even though she intrigued him, and he hated Yoav for knocking him out with a double chin shot.

  When it was over, when the Fake Mao told him to save some hate for tomorrow, he shut off the TV and looped the phone in his bedroom, thereby deactivating all the active electronics in the house. The nest was now clear.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Kim came out and looked at him. “You have a lot of rage in you,” she said. “More than most, I think.”

  “Didn’t you when you were de-personed?”

  “I did.”

  “How did you do it?” he asked.

  “I’ve always been an activist,” the woman said. “Fighting injustice has always been my perfect life.”

  “Yeah?” he said, “Well it’s not mine.”

  “I’m going to shower,” she said.

  “Ration the hot water,” he told her. “I want to shower, too.”

  “Just get in with me,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” he said, taken aback. “Just be quick.”

  She started to peel off her clothes inside the bathroom door. “We don’t get love in this world, Logan. The closest we can get to joy is sex with strangers, or maybe even people we know.”

  The first time he had sex with Skylar was in that shower. He didn’t want to cross contaminate the memory.

  “Is this how you do it?” he asked as she peeled off her black cotton pants, the kind women used to wear to hide ripples and dimples and all their little perceived imperfections. Logan was a fan of all these imperfections, but he never said so.

  “I haven’t had sex with anyone in six months, Logan. But if you want this to be about water conservation, I get it. We’re going to be roommates.”

  “This is a temporary situation,” he said, staring at her body.

  She was not a gorgeous girl, and her body erred on the side of starvation, but somehow she managed to look pretty in her own way. When she removed her bra and panties, when she watched him watching her, she said, “Don’t be weird.”

  “You just took off your clothes in front of me and you’re telling me not to be weird?” he laughed. “Because that in itself qualifies as weird.”

  “Is it because of the shower?” she finally said, her body looking more delectable by the moment.

  “Yes,” he managed to say with a dry throat.

  “This is where you two first had sex, isn’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “God, you’re still hung up on her?”

  “I don’t want to be,” he said, swallowing hard.

  He wasn’t sure if Kim looked down on him, or if she liked him. They were of the same social class, and even though she could fight better, the body had needs just as the mind desired affection, connection, the stimulus of others.

  “She’s never going to be yours,” Kim said. “None of us will ever be yours. Nor will you be ours. But you have to fulfill your needs every so often.”

  “I can take care of myself,” he said.

  “Then maybe think of this as you saving something for the spank bank. You want to make that deal? No sex?”

  She was making perfect sense. His body hurt, he felt dirty and there was a naked woman standing before him. This wasn’t something he was used to, and he might not get the chance again. He frowned at his stupidity. The truth was, he would be an absolute fool for ignoring her, or even defying their natural instincts.

  “Start the shower,” he said walking toward her. “It takes a moment to warm up.”

  When he got into the bathroom, she was bent over, fiddling with the faucet. The spray of the overhead nozzle kicked in just as Logan was pulling off his briefs.

  She turned and saw him, looking his beaten body over. He had his hands cupped over his privates, but he wouldn’t be contained for long because he really did like the way she looked.

  “My God,” she said, studying his injuries. She turned him sideways by grabbing his elbow and pulling him toward her slightly. She looked at the trail the bullet cut in his side and said, “That’s from those guys we just offloaded?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And you fought with that tonight?”

  “Obviously,” he said.

  “I think maybe I misjudged you,” she said with a smile. He couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. For some reason, this made her smile. “Go ahead and touch them.”

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  “Don’t be rude,” she said. “I want you to.”

  He didn’t move. She looked at him and frowned. He saw the same look on her in Krav class when he wasn’t falling into her trap. But where she was brash in class, she was practically insistent here. She wanted to get her way.

  Was he being selfish?

  Yes, he was.

  He had sex with Skylar twice in the last two months, but Kim was on a six month dry spell and he was her chance at something else.

  “If you touch me,” she said, not seductive, but more like instructive, “then I get to see what you’re hiding. That’s why I want you to touch me.”

  He thought about it with a pounding heart and a rapid change of state. Finally he reached out with one hand, still cupping himself while brushing the backs of his fingers over her body. He marveled at the rise of goosebumps upon her light brown skin, and how perfect she looked to him in that moment. When he touched her, she moved her hands onto him.

  “Let go of it,” she said, looking down.

  He did.

  When her hands found him, he felt that low swooping sensation overtake him and all of the sudden, he was hungry for human contact, for emotion, for…

  “C’mon,” she said, letting go of him and getting in the shower. “Let’s get clean before we run out of hot water.”

  Inside the shower, he let her soap him down, and she insisted he do the same for her. It was a rare moment that was nothing like his shower with Skylar. He’d knocked this woman out earlier. Hated on her even earlier than that. And now he was in the shower with her, his hands having touched every last inch of her and vice versa.

  “Have you done this with the other guys?” he asked. He had to know he was not special so he wouldn’t get attached. Right about now, as starved as he was for affection, for something good in his life, he was afraid of opening up to anyone.

  “No,” she said. “Just you.”

  Feeling himself sinking inside, not having that safety lever to grab on to, he knew he’d end up getting attached if she stayed with him for too long.

  When the heat began bleeding out of the water, she reached down and shut it off.

  “Grab me a towel,” she said. He did. They only had one towel. She dried off with one half of the towel, then handed him the dry half and stepped out into the living area.

  Naked, she walked through the apartment, stepping around the mess, making her way to the back bedroom. His bedroom. She popped her head out and said, “This is you, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding.

  In the kitchen with the bath towel circled around his waist, he gathered up some cheese and crackers and an apple that wasn’t completely bruised. Before he shut the fridge door, he grabbed the jar of peanut butter and tried to balance all of it. He did good most of the way to the bedroom, but as he approached the door, he felt the towel starting to loosen.

  “We need food,” he said. He could feel his towel going even as he tried handing her the food. The towel dropped before he got there, leaving him in a very compromising position.

  “Great, now
I’ll be thinking of that while I eat,” she said, sitting in bed with the sheets pulled up around her.

  “Just take the food please,” he said. She leaned forward and took it, laughing to herself. When he reached for the towel, she said, “No, leave it.”

  She was sitting in bed naked, starting on the food. Without a word to the contrary, they both ate. When they were done, she said, “I’ve satiated one appetite while nurturing another.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing precisely what she meant.

  “You’re not a bad looking man, even though right now you look like someone’s punching bag.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” he said. “And it doesn’t hurt that you can fight.”

  “Kicking your ass turns you on?”

  “A little bit,” he said. To a large degree, actually. Though he didn’t want to admit it.

  “Yoav was right!” she said. “My God, you really are a glutton for punishment.”

  “It’s that I’m turned on by competence,” he said. “Not that I enjoy being beaten to a pulp by girls, or really anyone else for that matter.”

  She moved toward him and he let her have her way. When she took him completely, the connection he made with her body and mind was otherworldly.

  So many people say the torture of Communism is the helplessness, the lack of control, the crippling state of fear. Others say it’s the brutality, the beatings, the absence of humanity.

  What no one ever says is that without physical affection, without that mind-to-body connection with another person, your soul begins to wither and eventually your desire to live breaks. This is the death before the death. This is the real cruelty of Communism.

  Because of that, he held on to Kim, not closing his eyes and not thinking of Skylar. He was with her and her alone. Looking into her eyes, he saw something he’d never seen before. He saw bliss.

  “What?” she said with a grin.

  “I just,” he stammered, searching for the words, “I guess I just didn’t expect this.”

  “Me neither,” she said, her chest rising and falling at the same pace as his. “And that’s why I’m so in love with this moment.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Logan almost drifted off for the night. He roused himself a few hours later when Kim was sound asleep. Getting out of bed, he was careful not to wake her. When he left the apartment, he locked up behind himself and checked his surroundings. Instead of the elevator, he used the stairwell to head downstairs and around the building.

  It was cold outside.

  Bitter cold.

  He was quiet though, slinking through the shadows, walking lightly and keeping an eye out for Chicom patrols.

  They weren’t everywhere, not yet, but what they lacked in presence they made up for in intimidation. If you were caught out after curfew, and you were a guy, they first interrogated you, and then they shot you. That’s how it worked. When they did this, they made the interrogations loud, ensuring other people heard and witnessed the affair. For the Chicoms, the constant press of fear was paramount to control. They needed terrified dissidents to spread the word that, above all else, you follow the curfew orders.

  Logan wasn’t about to become the example, but he didn’t need the two guys he killed being the reason his apartment building was shaken down by the Chicom police either.

  These tyrants didn’t look for evidence, they beat everyone into submission. Only then did they try to extract information. That was what they called “looking for clues,” or “gathering evidence.” By the time they were done “asking questions,” the men and women they left behind were beaten so badly, their own mothers wouldn’t even recognize them.

  Logan grabbed the first corpse by the ankles, rolled him over, then hoisted him up over his back. He was quite heavy. Death had a way of adding a few pounds to a body. For that reason alone, the dead weight pressing on his back and shoulders wasn’t fun.

  The stacks were a couple of blocks over. He walked the body to the side street, looked both ways, then moved when it was clear. His thighs burned, his back felt wrenched and though his heart did a good job while he was with Kim, but it was feeling the strain of exertion about halfway to his destination.

  He traveled the two blocks unnoticed. The sky was cold and heavy, the streets silent, save for the light flickering of the overhead lamps. He was about to turn into the alley designated for body burning when he heard voices.

  By then he was sweating and shivering, and the body seemed to have gained another fifty pounds. He tried lowering it slowly to the ground, but his back was shot and the corpse was unruly, obstinate and unwilling to fall quietly. He dropped in a heap, causing a small commotion. Logan controlled part of the fall, suppressing much of the noise, but it didn’t repress enough. The second he stood up, he pulled out his Karambit knife, just in case.

  A man stepped out of the alley, so close to him he startled and said, “Wow, you scared me.”

  The Chicom patrolman squinted his eyes in distaste, lifted a half-smoked cigarette to his lips and said, “It’s past curfew.”

  Before he could utter another word, Logan ripped the blade across the man’s throat. It was so fast and so vicious, he didn’t even move. His neck simply became a red line, and then a gushing waterfall.

  The moment he began to fall over, Logan grabbed him. He tried to avoid the blood, but it was everywhere. He slowly set him down, then moved him aside and walked into the alley where there was a man smoking a cigarette and looking upon a stack of fresh bodies piled at least nine feet high.

  “What are you doing?” the man asked, turning around.

  “Someone attacked your partner,” he said frantically. “I think he killed me, too.” He said this as he looked down at all the blood all over him. Holding out his hand, feigning injury, he said, “I need your help. Please. I need a hospital.”

  “Where’s my partner?” he asked, looking past Logan.

  “He got us both,” he said, dramatically. He even retched a little because of the foul smell coming from the stack of bodies. Logan sunk to his knees. Looking up at the Chicom one last time, he said, “Please, sir. I need a hospital.”

  The patrolman ignored Logan and headed straight for his partner. When the heartless prick passed by him, Logan slashed the outside of his thigh. Wasting no time, he rolled hard then shot forward low, tackling him and riding his body to the ground. Two quick slices on the inside of the thigh—trenching open the femoral artery—and it was all done but the bleeding.

  Somehow the patrolman had his gun out, his finger reaching for the trigger. Before he could fire off a round, Logan got him in the throat. The trigger finger relaxed, and so did he. Logan was sweating like crazy now, his rambunctious heart feeling like it was going to kick a little too hard and flatten out from exhaustion.

  He hurried to his feet. There were two bodies on the sidewalk beside a major thoroughfare. They weren’t exactly hidden. He wrangled up the first corpse, the one he’d killed back in his apartment, and dragged him to the stack of bodies. Rather than throw him on top, he just pushed him against the base. He fetched the next body, the smoking man who startled him. He dragged the body by his feet, his open throat still emptying out everywhere.

  Looking back, he saw a long, bloody trail. People would see that in the morning.

  He couldn’t do anything about it. Not now. He stacked one patrol man on the other, and that’s when he heard one of their two-ways buzzing.

  His heart just found a new gear.

  In the walkie-talkie, the Chicom patrolman was being asked to check in. At least, that’s what he could pick up with his limited understanding of the language. Wasting no time, he started cutting away the men’s uniforms. With a clean line down the center of each body, the clothing fell away. The two-way was crackling again, the voice more anxious.

  This was not good, he told himself.

  He tucked the fabric under the bodies rather than stripping the clothes off completely. It saved him
a few minutes.

  Gagging from the smell, his senses heightened enough to hear the flies buzzing around the pile of bodies, he dry heaved a few times. His eyes were watering, and his nose was filled with throw up snot. That’s how bad it smelled.

  The two-way went off again, the voice sounding agitated.

  He went to the two-way lying on the ground and crushed it underfoot. He did the same with the other man’s device. Time was precious now.

  Hurrying up, he dragged the last corpse over to the pile, rolling him to the base. He cut away his clothes, then stopped at the sound of an engine breaking through the silence.

  They were coming…

  Moving faster, Logan dragged the body to the huge, stinking pile, then jostled it over the others as best he could. He was trying to cover them up, but not doing a great job of it. Just then the Jeep’s engine approached, the vehicle slowing.

  With nothing left to do but pray his lurching stomach wouldn’t betray him, he burrowed into the pile of dead bodies and tried to slow his breathing. That’s when he saw the two-ways he’d crushed lying not more than ten feet away.

  Dammit!

  Two Chicoms got out of their jeep and headed straight to the smashed two-ways. The men were conversing in an excited state. They looked at one two-way, and then the next. One of them radioed in, saying something Logan couldn’t understand.

  The situation was worsening.

  As one of maybe thirty or forty bodies tossed into a pile and ready to burn, Logan was fearing for his life. If these two pricks started poking and prodding at the bodies around him, would they find him? Would they see him breathing? He began to pray. It wouldn’t do any good, but prayer was all he had. What he asked for, however, was not his own safety, but for the safety of those who would be shot if the dead Chicoms were discovered. By their own numbers, two dead patrolmen—no, three dead patrolmen—equaled thirty dead innocents.

  When the two-way chatter was done, the two men turned and looked at the pile. And then they walked right to him. He closed his eyes as light from a heavy duty flashlight swept over the corpses. He felt the light hit him. Fearing the worst, he held his breath.