Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1 Read online

  “Do you remember when those idiot college kids were walking around wearing Commie headbands and carrying AK’s like they were tough or something?” Jeremy asked.

  “Back when the colleges convinced them that Communism was a good thing,” Logan said, remembering a brief time like that just before 2020.

  “They didn’t know the first thing about Communists, even though they blew up Twitter with talk of how wonderful Communism was,” Paul said.

  “Then they had their guts pulled out of them,” Yoav said, his gaze turning dark. “And they had their fingers and toes chopped off and fed to them, or their spouses, or their children. When that happened, they knew what real Communism was. But by then, it was too late.”

  “They would really go that far?” Logan asked.

  “When they feed you your own child,” Kim said, her voice soft, that lost look in her eyes, “when they make you eat them with a loaded gun to your head…”

  Yoav took her by the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Kim.”

  She shoved his hand off her and said, “That’s when you realize the true depravity of it, of them.”

  “You asked about our body count,” Yoav said to Logan, changing the subject. “Corbin, what was yours in the first week of you snapping?”

  Corbin was perhaps the most ferocious of the bunch, a man of few words, a man whose face was both emotionless and scarred.

  “Twenty-six Antifa off-shoots, including two leaders, one of them a founder.”

  This stilled everyone.

  “What’s your count now?” Logan asked, curious.

  “I’m in the triple digits,” he said, his eyes flat and dead looking, like there was not an ounce of remorse or feeling in him.

  Logan couldn’t help wondering if one day he’d have that same look in his eye. Was this what he was slated for in life? A life of fighting? All he wanted was to get together with Skylar, maybe carve out a sliver of life for himself, and for her. That’s all he wanted. And that’s why he felt betrayed. Skyler used that to co-opt him.

  They all did.

  Now he wasn’t thinking about sex or any of that other dreamy stuff. He’d let the idea of being with Skylar go. He was even letting the idea of his once great job slip away in favor of vengeance. These vicious despots stole his state, his city, his life. Now all he wanted to do was kill as many of them as he could before ending up in his own body stack. Or a dumpster. Or worse, dead in the gutter of some street with a name he couldn’t even pronounce.

  With nothing left to say on the subject, Yoav went and gathered up the small slips of paper containing the address for the next training session. He handed Logan his first. A surprise. In addition to the address, there was a phone number. Yoav’s number.

  “Just in case,” he said with a proud grin.

  “Thank you,” Logan said, humbled.

  “You did good tonight, in spite of what the others said,” Yoav admitted. “There is no room for hesitation, cowardice or quit. I still want to find Skylar, but we need people like you, too.”

  “I won’t let you down,” he said.

  When Kim got her slip of paper, she looked at Logan and said, “Are you ready?”

  “I am,” he replied.

  And with that, he was about to take a new woman home to his apartment. She took his hand the moment they walked into the street, which he knew was a way to keep the face and emotion scanning cameras from picking up dissent. But the way she held his hand? That was different. Unexpected.

  It was as if she would’ve chosen to do so anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When they got to Logan’s house, Kim glanced around at the mayhem and the dead bodies. He saw her reaction and immediately said, “I gave the maid the week off.”

  “Looks like you gave her the year off,” she said.

  He shut the door, quietly marveling at the mess the intruders created. He didn’t say much to her, even though he knew he should show her to her room, but there was still a small part of him that was holding out hope. For the last ten minutes, he’d been hoping to come in and find that Skylar had returned.

  “Unfettered Hate is in ten minutes,” he said, his body feeling every last ache and pain now.

  “I don’t do that,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “We should probably get rid of the stiffs,” she said, looking them over.

  He pulled up the blinds, opened the windows. She looked out of the fifth floor window down to the dank alley below. It was shrouded by darkness. Nothing moved.

  “Where’s the nearest body dump?” she asked. She was talking about the place the Chicoms piled the corpses before burning them.

  “There’s a stack two blocks from here. They just burned two nights ago, so this one is relatively fresh.”

  “Do you get much traffic back here?” she asked, taking out the screen.

  “Not after dark,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll hear the Chicom patrols in the alley. But mostly not.”

  There was a broken down BMW snugged up against the building’s brick wall. It had been there for months. For awhile, two guys were living in there. Not anymore. One of them was killed inside, the other stuffed in the trunk with the lid left open as a warning to others.

  “That BMW you see down there,” he said, “if we drop the bodies in front of that, if we can keep them against the wall, they won’t be seen from the street.”

  She was already dragging the first body over.

  “You’re looped?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  They hoisted the body head-first into the window, then shoved him forward, each of them grabbing an ankle so they could dangle him out and aim him straight. Holding him like this was a lot harder than he thought it would be. The man was heavy, and Logan’s arms were as shaky as Kim’s. They counted to three then released their grip.

  The first corpse fell slower than they thought, but hit harder than expected. The thud sounded like snapping bones. Big ones, like the vertebrae. The body hit and fell over sideways, his back broken in half.

  “I like it when a plan comes together,” she said with a rare smile. “Let’s give him a friend.”

  Logan checked the clock. He couldn’t miss Unfettered Hate.

  Five minutes.

  They got the other body to the window, lined him up and let him go. It was on a perfect trajectory, but when it hit, the body’s arms shot forward, his face pancaked on the asphalt,

  “Whoa!” they both said at the same time.

  The former Chicom compacted rather than toppled over. He’d face-planted against the building, one extended leg resting against the bricks, the other flopped over at the knee.

  “Dammit,” she said.

  “Yeah, that won’t fly,” he replied. “Not for long.”

  “The Chicom patrols, if they’re out there, will take a smoke break during Unfettered Hate,” she said. “We need to get them to the stacks. Sooner rather than later.”

  One minute.

  “Go hide in the closet,” he said. “Quick. I’ll tell you when I’m looped back up.”

  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 ha
ve 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 a 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 s
aid. “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 Twenty-Eight

  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.