After: First Light Page 16

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  When Mackie awoke, the sun had set, and his mouth had the texture of sandpaper and tasted like a dirt-caked sock. For one panicked moment, he forgot where he was, and though he vaguely recognized the girl leaning over him, her name escaped him.

  She was holding his Glock.

  He tried to sit up, but the girl pushed him back to the position he had fallen asleep in.

  “It’s cool, Mackie. Just stay there for now.”

  Linzie. Z-I-E.

  Mackie turned his head to the left and saw Ally beside him, her wrists and feet still bound, the panties still bunched inside her mouth. But where Mackie last remembered her as relaxed and docile, the rage now seemed to have returned. She looked as if she wanted to strip off every shred of her own skin with her teeth.

  The morphine wore off. How long was I asleep?

  And why is Linzie—

  “I wanted to kill her, y’know. That’s what I was here for actually.”

  Mackie wasn’t sure he had heard her right. He tried standing again, but Linzie pointed directly at his face. Mackie also noticed that she was wearing his backpack.

  She’s robbing me, the bitch...

  Did she even know how to use the Glock? Not that it was that difficult to figure out, with no safety and all. Untrained shooter or not, at this range, she could do some damage.

  “Linzie, what the hell are—”

  “Craig Everson.”

  Something about the name was familiar. But why would she blurt it out with a gun pointed at his face?

  ”Stay with me, Mackie. Cut through your drug fog. Do you remember Craig Everson? I need to know you recognize that name.”

  He didn’t.

  And then he did.

  Suddenly, all the shit happening in the Post-Apocalyptic Solar Storm world outside made a lot more sense than what was happening in this room.

  Craig Everson. Small time lowlife. A meth head that made the mistake of getting pinched at a routine traffic stop with Krider’s product in the trunk of his car.

  One of the few kills Mackie that hadn’t left much of an impression on Mackie.

  “I know this doesn’t get easier, Macklin. You’ve done this a few times before and you’ll do it again, but it never gets easier. Still, I need you to take care of this. You can leave his family out of it, but I want this guy gone before he opens his mouth and says something we’ll all regret...”

  And Mackie had taken care of it.

  Followed him home one night after he made bail and put a round in his forehead while his old lady screamed on the front porch.

  Krider wasn’t a big fan of witnesses, but Mackie had been sloppy that night, all the Vicodin in his system softening the edges of good judgment.

  “He was an epic screw-up, don’t get me wrong,” Linzie said. “But he did a lot of good for me and my mom. And when you took him away, she completely fell apart. All the shitty men in her life, and here was one that had a problem, sure, but he didn’t hit us, did his best to keep the bills paid. Didn’t try to stick it where it didn’t belong. When you killed him, she just couldn’t handle it.

  I came home one afternoon and found her in the basement. She’d blown out her liver on booze and pills.”

  “You can leave the family out of it.”

  Sure.

  “You...you were his stepdaughter?”

  “And I suppose I don’t need to tell you that I’m not a student here, either. I came here for Ally. I wanted to take her away from you the same way you took Craig from mom and me. That was my plan, to be a new girl in the area looking to hang out with some cool college kids. Then I’d just happen to be where Ally was one night and strike up a conversation. I wanted us to be friends, and then I wanted to kill her and make damn sure you knew that it was all your fault.”

  Mackie’s head spun. Beside him, Ally thrashed and moaned.

  “But how did—”

  “How did I know it was you? I knew the kind of circles Craig ran in. So I started asking questions. Apparently, that got back to Lucas Krider and he came to see me one evening. He admitted to selling Craig the meth, but he gave me your name and told me you and Craig were running a little something on the side. There was a disagreement, so you shot him.”

  Krider. The bastard.

  “But you know what I think, Mackie? I think that was just his way of getting back at you for being so sloppy during that hit, for leaving my mom behind as a witness.”

  If Linzie didn’t kill him, he was going to find Lucas Krider. If the piece of shit was already dead, he was going to kill him over and over again.

  “Anyway, Krider and I sort of got friendly, and I told him how I wanted to take someone special from you because of how you destroyed my family when you killed Craig. He loved that idea. He wanted to help. So he told me all about your parents and your sister. And all about Ally.”

  That’s why Krider had been so eager to give me the Julia Stone assignment. He knew I’d try to see Ally, and I’d find out what Linzie had done to her.

  “He gives me some money, so I could rent a place up here. And he tells that he’ll make sure you’re close by on a job. He knew you’d come look for her. And I think he was hoping that after I killed Ally, one of us would kill the other just to make things a little easier for him. Either way, I don’t think he intended to let us both live.”

  Of that, Mackie was certain.

  “But what he didn’t count on was a change of heart on my part. As I got to know Ally, I realized that I couldn’t punish her for your sins. I wanted somebody to pay, but I couldn’t be like the monster that took Craig away and ruined my life.”

  “And then...” Linzie spread her arms in a sweeping gesture indicating the world outside the dorm room. “All this happens. The power goes out, people are either dropping dead or turning into raving maniacs. And now I’m actually taking care of the girl I came here to kill. Waiting to die. Waiting for help to show up. Or maybe just trying to run out that door again and let those things have at me.”

  Linzie chuckled. “And then, of course, you show up. And I hear your side of things. That was important to me, hearing it from you. And you know what? I see another stupid junkie that made some bad decisions. Not much different than Craig, I guess. He didn’t have to die, but then again, he didn’t have use a psychotic piece of shit like Lucas Krider to feed his meth habit, either.”

  Mackie said nothing.

  “I don’t quite forgive you. But I’m not all that interested in hurting you anymore, either.”

  Linzie stepped over to Ally’s writing and picked up a few items she had removed from Mackie’s backpack. Two morphine syringes and a bottle of Vicodin. She tossed them to Mackie.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “I doubt I’ll make it back to Florida, but I want to try. And I want to find Krider and do what you should’ve done in the first place. If you want to join me, you can.” She nodded at Ally. “But her...you may want to accept the possibility that she’ll never be what she was before. Killing her might be the kindest thing you can do for her. But that’s up to you.”

  Linzie put her hand on the doorknob and looked over her shoulder at Mackie again. He felt like he should say something, offer an apology if nothing else, but no words formed in his parched mouth.

  And then Linzie opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, quickly closing the door behind her.

  Mackie pulled Ally close to him and did his best to hold her as her body thrashed and shook.

  He looked at the vials of morphine in his hands.

  Stay or go?

  If he left, Mackie knew he couldn’t take Ally with him, knew deep down that there was no cure for what the solar storms had done to her.

  He could end her pain right here.

  End his own, as well.

  They had both been happy here once. Now they could die here together. Why not? What was left out there to hold onto?

&nb
sp; Mackie pulled Ally against him as tightly as he could, pressed his nose against her damp hair.

  He wanted to die.

  He wanted to be with Ally.

  And he wanted to see Lucas Krider dead.

  But now, all he wanted to do was sleep.

  THE END

  ***

  Joshua Simcox is a journalist and writer living in western North Carolina.