Chapter 1

This story takes place starting eleven months after Malkin’s Asteroid was destroyed.

It had been almost a year since the world ended and we have been just surviving; barely raising our heads up to look around us. That giant asteroid exploded and rained fire down on all of the cities. My friend Etta says that some crazy billionaire blew it up but if he hadn’t, it would have busted the whole world.

I am not sure that would have been worse. The storms were so bad at first, the whole city flooded and we had to find an apartment above the second floor. The grocery store, the market, the Seven-Eleven, everything was ruined! If so many people hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have had enough food.

In our apartment building there were five floors and every apartment was filled before The Fall. In the week following the asteroid, there were barely a hundred people left. Scattered all over the building. I heard other buildings were left almost untouched, and some had half, but ours was almost emptied. My dad, he just never came home.

And strange things started happening. After the first people melted and were just ... goo, other people started changing. Mrs. Peterson in 301 turned into a man, and her husband stabbed her! We all heard the screaming and some of us went to see what was happening, maybe even help.

We got there and he had this crazy look on his face. His chest and right arm were covered in blood and he had a big butcher knife. He was screaming and ranting about a man who had taken his wife, and there was a man! A man, dead on the floor but wearing his wife’s nightgown.

It wasn’t until a couple of days later, when we found out Mr. Hernandez and Baily Paulson and Peter Cummings all changed too. They all swapped, so Mr. Hernandez was a Mrs., and Baily turned into a boy and Peter changed into a girl. I knew they weren’t fooling around cause Peter and I were in school together, in the same class. He knew all the right answers when I asked him about who was in our class, and what our last homework assignment had been.

There was a lady on the top floor who grew an extra set of arms, but we only found out ‘cause she jumped off the roof after the waters receded.

Around us, we started to see people who were green, or blue. Some were giant and some tiny, and I saw a lady flying ... just, flying, like superman!

We were living on tin can meals and some frozen stuff. The power never went out for long, always coming back up after a day or two, even with the flooding, so the freezers worked. That saved us, saved a lot of people. We even found some of Mr. Nuesbaum’s freezers in his little grocery were water tight, so we had a bunch of stuff we scavenged from there.

There was no sign of the Nuesbaums though, but one room of their apartment over the store was destroyed, with huge, gaping rips in the sheetrock and dried blood on the bed. The flies were something fierce in there so we just closed it up and taped the door.

Too many dead people; it got so bad that the whole city smelled like rotting meat for a few weeks.

We didn’t see the sun for eleven months, near as we can tell. When it showed up, it was only out for an hour or so, but it seemed like every surviving person in the city came out to see it. Every roof top was full, the streets were full, so many people just standing, their eyes closed and their arms open, like they were trying to stock up.

Some people seemed to be bowing, as if they were worshipping the sun, while others embraced and cried, seeing this as a good sign for the future. I just stood there, stripped down to my panties and my bra, not caring who saw me, and felt warm, really, truly warm, for the first time in a year.

When the sun went back behind the clouds again, most people took it well, getting dressed or huddling together and hurrying to their homes. I saw three different people, two on rooftops and one guy on the street, all kill themselves. The rooftop ones jumped, one after the other.

The guy on the street saw them fall, the first one coming down in front of him. He stopped, looked up and saw the second fall and then did the damnedest thing. He pulled out a gun and shot himself, right in the forehead!

I didn’t understand it then, and I am not sure I understand it now, but I can sympathize with the idea, the impulse.

A year and a half after The Fall, the moms banded together and started school back up for the kids. Now that some food was coming into the city again, though it was a weird mixture of barter and cash, there was more time to do something besides survive.

Mrs. Jenkins, who used to be Mr. Jenkins, our English teacher, was now our only teacher. He said that other small schools opened in other neighborhoods, but there simply were not enough teachers to go around. The school buildings were uninhabitable and, he said, no tax base to get money enough to rebuild.

Many of the students in our little school, there are fifty-six of us, were affected in some way. Of the kids that had been through puberty, more than half were changed. Some were sex swaps like our teacher, while others have these neat powers now.

Cindy Meyer can see things far away, or behind closed doors and stuff. She told me that Hank Clauson, a real quiet guy who doesn’t say much, is actually more like Harriet Clauson, but refuses to admit she swapped!

Billy James has fur and a prehensile tail. He is really strong, like stronger than two or three grown men, and is kind of a bully. Alton Brown keeps him in check though, he has the ability to make fire, even little fire balls. Billy is afraid of fire and even more afraid of Alton after Alton threatened to burn all his hair off if he caught Billy bullying anyone else in class.

I got lucky, I guess, nothing happened to me. None of the younger kids got anything, they haven’t gone through puberty, which seems to be the cut-off. No one knows for sure, but no children liquified or turned sexes or got powers, so it makes sense. Kids who went through puberty in the months following The Fall, were just as likely to get something as the adults were.

Then there were some like me and a few others that nothing happened to. Yet.

There are rumors that people can change later, that it can be triggered by something. The latest story I heard was from Cathy. She said her neighbor’s cousin got raped and turned into this fire thing that burned down the whole building, including the rapists. They swear she never showed any signs before the rape though.

Ugh. Rape is reality. That is what mom says, when she yells at me for going out alone. I know she is right, and I carry two knives with me, even in class. I know only three girls over fourteen that have not been forced, or outright raped. I am one of them, and I will kill any fucker who tries.

You might think I am joking, but I stabbed that jerk Bernie in the leg when he tried to pull me into an alley. He bled to death and I don’t even care. His mom tried to blame me, but Melisa Nunez said Bernie forced her to suck him off and punched her afterward, chipped one of her teeth.

Mom has been raped twice already, this last time, just this past Tuesday, was bad. She got a really bad infection or something, and can’t get out of bed. She needs medicine, a doctor, but there just weren’t any in our neighborhood, and no one goes out of the hood without an escort. Unless your group is too strong to mess with, you might not make it back.

I heard that some of the flying guys and some strong powers were getting together, trying to take back the city, clear out the worst of the gangs that are popping up everywhere. They even say that some of the powers can heal, and if I could get one of those types for mom, maybe she would be alright.

Once I made up my mind, I was ready in a just a few minutes. I dressed, head to toe, in black and dark gray. I even had some thin, cloth lady’s gloves in black. I found them in an apartment a few months ago and kept them, thinking they would be good for a costume or something.

I have a knife tucked into the top of my boot, another in the back of my pants and clipped to the waistline under my belt. I have a third blade, it is a heavy machete I stole from Mr. Gonzalez downstairs. He doesn’t do lawn work anymore, he is more of a fixit guy these days, so I hope he won’t miss it.

I put a wide belt through the loops, and fixed it so it is behind my back and out of the way for sneaking, but I can still draw it if I need it. I have a small belly pack with a bottle of water in it too, and ... I am stalling.

I am scared. I hate to admit it, but I am. I don’t have a good feeling about this but I have to go. My mom is going to die and I am only fifteen and I can’t do this on my own. It’s too hard; living is too hard, being afraid all the time is too hard.

The first two blocks were the scariest, but by the time I was through the third, I was feeling more confident. I had a system and it was working.

I would move slowly, sticking to the darkest corners, the shadows and the alleys without lights. I would move slowly, watching carefully so I didn’t brush up against something, or step on something that would cause a noise. My hand was always on, or near, one of my blades and I must have pulled one or the other of them a thousand times.

I made it six blocks before the sky started to get lighter, and had two more to go if the map I had memorized was still accurate. The hero types had gathered at a building that used to be a bank. It had a fake lighthouse on the roof that was supposed to actually work now and I had seen a beam of light in the night sky so maybe that was true.

If that was true, maybe the healer thing was true too. That make the long night worth it, or would, when I got there.

I had one more block, then I had to cross the old freeway to the other side where the bank sat. I was glad that it wasn’t a couple of blocks south, I would have had the river to contend with too, and I couldn’t swim!

I was sneaking as quietly as I could between the parking garage and the Grace church when things went wrong.

“Child, what is you doing down there? This is church property and I will not abide trespassers!”

A deep, booming voice called out and I froze in place, looking around for the source. My hand was on the machete’s grip and I could feel the cold sweat trickling down my cheek. It wasn’t until I looked up a bit that I saw him, and I knew I was screwed.

The man was floating about six feet off the ground, and dressed in a white robe with gold trim, a blood red hassock and a glittering, diamond encrusted crucifix around his neck, was someone I had heard of. He was whispered even in the apartment complex where I lived.

Deacon.

Some said he was a hero, some said a monster, sometimes the same person described him as both. The stories about him all agreed on one thing though, if you were not one of his ‘flock‘, entering the ground of the church could be a death sentence. I thought his church was across town though, not here, barely two blocks from the hero headquarters.

How could the heroes let him operate here, so close?

“I’m not trespassing, I am in the alley, I am just passing through! I got bizness with the Heroes!” I shouted, my machete coming out in front of me. What good I thought it would do, I have no idea, but I would not go down without a fight, not so close!

“All houses of GOD are my house, child, and all places withing the sound of my voice, that can hear the word of GOD from my lips, are my domain. YOU ARE TRESPASSING!”

The ground seemed to shake and he began to glow. The crucifix, a fancy bit of bling, I thought, began to glow too and I could feel heat, waves of it radiating from the cross.

Suddenly everything seemed to slow down. The Deacon was raising the crucifix in slow motion, his lips twisted in a snarl and his eyes filled with hatred. Without knowing how I knew, or even, how I could know, I was certain that the crucifix was critical to his power.

Before the thought was even complete, the machete was airborne and I had both of my smaller blades in my hand. A matching set of Buck hunting knives, one held point up in my right fist, the other point down in my left, were in front of me as I leapt in the air.

My leap was following the flight of the machete and a mere blink after it struck the wrist of the hand holding the cross, I was there, both blades striking deep. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his severed hand, and the crucifix still in its grip, begin to spin off to one side.

Most of my attention was centered on my right hand blade that had buried itself up through his chin and pinning his mouth closed as the blade entered his brain, and the left hand blade that had come down and entered his chest behind his left collar bone, slicing through the top of his lung as the point sought out the still beating heart.

I rode the Deacon’s body down to the ground like a surfboard until the jolt of his corpse smacking the filthy concrete of the alley floor sent me into a somersault, flipping over in the air until I could rebound from the opposite wall and bounce back. I landed, one foot on each side of his head and looking down at him.

His body was still twitching, but he was already dead and I felt nothing but relief.

I made it to the headquarters building and the only person there was a woman with a radio. She had a very awesome shield bubble set up on the roof that I couldn’t get through, even if I had tried. But she seemed willing to talk to me.

I explained about my mom, about sneaking out, about tangling with the Deacon and she nodded a lot, but I had the feeling she was just humoring me. Until I showed her the crucifix, Deacon’s hand still attached.

Boy, that got some attention.

The Heroes on Duty, some guy calling himself Redneck, Doc Optim and guy I never saw, but everyone else referred to as Native Son, all showed up in a hurry, let me tell you!

It seems the trio were out hunting Deacon, never thinking to check the big church practically right next door. Deacon had put a hurting on someone named Racer and they were out to put an end to him, but they hadn’t been able to locate him at his usual haunts. He had supposedly taken over half a dozen churches on the north end of town, so they were patrolling there.

“Wait, this little girl? She took out Deacon?” Redneck sounded incredulous, looking me up and down, but addressing the girl called Bubbles.

“What? You think maybe that crucifix is a fake? She cut off some bum’s hand, glued it to a fake cross to get your autograph maybe? Is that what you are thinking? You’re an idiot, you know that?” Bubbles wasn’t taking any lip from the guy in tights!

“Whoa, whoa, chill, Bubbles, okay? I was just asking. I was surprised is all!” He turned to me and settled his hands on his hips. I am sure he thought it made him look manly or something.

“So, little lady, you killed Deacon, eh? Can you describe how?”

“Look, I don’t know, okay? Is this important? My mom is dying. If you can’t help her I have wasted half a fucking day for nothing. What good are you?” I was done. I was exhausted and scared and wanted to get back to check on my mom. I wanted to know what happened in that alley and I wanted to know how I did what I did but, mostly, I felt sick to my stomach and I just wanted to go home.

I guess I passed out or something. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed with clean white sheets, in a room with white walls and fluorescent lights, an honest to god hospital!

MOM! Where was mom? How was she? Was she ... I was scrambling out of bed and things got all weird and dark. The next thing I knew I was waking up again, thinking it was all a nightmare. I mean, it sounds like one, right? Me, sneaking across half the city, right!

Oh! And killing some...

That wasn’t a dream. I could still smell the hot blood, the coppery taste when some splashed on my lip. I could feel the grating feeling as the blades kerfed the bones they struck, leaving deep gouges as they refused to stop and I felt the shock of the blade guards striking bone and flesh, their journey done.

I rolled to the side and found a plastic pail in my hands just before I heaved. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t eaten in a while because it was a while before I stopped retching. My ribs hurt, my stomach muscles were cramping and I was covered in a cold sweat when I finally flopped back on the bed again, the thought process starting all over.

“Think you got that under control, now?” A Buxom brunette with killer cleavage, dressed head to toe in a leather outfit, was standing beside the bed. Her hair was cut boy short, and she had some tinted goggles on her forehead like she had just come back from flying or something.

Piper!

I had never seen her up close, but someone had drawn a pretty good likeness and used it on a recruiting poster I saw stuck to Old Mr. McLeary’s pharmacy. It was a swap shop now, the drugs and supplies long gone, but everyone still called it the Pharmacy.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I was going to throw up that time, so how would I know if I was done? Where is my mom? I came here to get help for her, she was raped again and is real sick.”

“We know, you told redneck and Bubbles, they got Doc to find the address and we sent Native Son over to check on her, bring her here if possible. We are waiting to hear from him.”

“Just where am I? Where is my gear? My knives? I need to get back. Your guy doesn’t know the hood, he could get in trouble.”

“I have no idea where your gear is, when I arrived you were already like this, so I will have to ask around. I am sure your stuff is here, I doubt anyone else uses knives as long as their forearms,” Piper said with a grin, holding up her hands as if to ward me off. “Native Son is a one big buck, so don’t worry about him. He’s a certified badass.”

I heard Piper was bullet proof or something, so if she thought he was tough, he probably was.

“Doc Optim is around here somewhere and I will check with him about your stuff. He tells me you emerged during your fight with Deacon. His guess, after rummaging around inside your brain, is enhanced reflexes and enhanced senses, plus some strength and speed come with the more efficient muscle mass and you have some healing, though not the chop off limbs and regrow them kind.”