The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (2 page)

Stan was tempted--there was no denying it even to himself--but even though he no longer went to church he believed in heaven and hell, now more than ever. His heart pounded in his chest, and the desire to fight, to be a hero, again surged through his body.

"I'm not a murderer."

Marcel leaned back in the chair and let out a sigh, the switchblade coming away from his wrist. "That's too bad, man. Cause I am."

Stan lunged forward and shoved hard at Marcel, pushing him far enough to tip his chair backwards to the floor. While Marcel sprawled, Stan rushed into the front hall, slamming along the wall and knocking the mirror from its hook. It smashed on the floor behind him but he ignored that petty disaster and lunged for the drawer, ripping it right out and miraculously catching the crucifix before it fell along with the note pads, pens, screwdrivers and old keys. Marcel had only just stood and was marching toward him.

"I revoke my invitation!" shouted Stan, holding up the crucifix. "Get out of my house."

But Marcel only smiled and continued to walk into the hall, forcing Stan to back up and turn into the living room. Perhaps this evil man would go out the front door now, perhaps it was working, but Marcel also turned into the living room, still pursuing.

"NO!" Even as Stan shouted this Marcel snatched the crucifix and flung it aside.

"I got no religion," he said.

His punch hit Stan center of his chest and knocked him back into his La-Z-boy. Marcel's hand clenched Stan's left shoulder, and he planted his knee in his lap to pin him in place.

"Jesus Christ, no!"

"I'll make it quick." Marcel's voice had the passion of a man about to make love.

His blade sliced into Stan's jugular, prompting a final scream. Marcel locked his lips over the wound and drank deeply.

Stan's soul fled his body.

He knew he shouldn't be afraid to go home.

The elevated train squealed north out of Armitage Station, leaving Bertrand standing alone on the platform in the weak sodium-vapor lights. Discarded newspapers and fast food wrappers chased the train down the platform, and the occasional spark from the third rail marked its passage into the night, the clack of wheels on expansion joints fading. Bertrand watched the train until its lights were a distant, rocking speck, wondering why he wished he were still safely aboard, rumbling along with the other passengers toward Chicago's distant suburbs.

He knew he shouldn't be uneasy, even this late at night. He'd lived in this neighborhood all his life, his parents among the gentrifiers who had swept through in the eighties and nineties after the hippies had made Old Town a cool hangout. The yuppies, fed up with long commutes, came by the thousands back then and purchased houses that had been solidly built after the Great Chicago Fire. The young boomers had either elaborately renovated these narrow red-brick Victorian homes or replaced the less attractive ones with tall houses that made use of every square foot of property that city zoning would allow.

Bertrand's parents had arrived too late to find cheap real estate in Old Town, so they had grabbed a property farther west, a rare wooden house on a street that had been spared the Great Fire by a change in the wind. Bertrand's father had liked to say that they were in Upper Old Town, although they rarely heard the bells of St. Michael's over the city noise, even though it was less than a mile away.

Bertrand headed for the station stairs, wondering again why he was reluctant to descend into his neighborhood, why he didn't feel the relief of someone at the end of a long day. He should be hurrying along with a practiced step, at the brisk pace of a commuter who hardly needed to look where he was going.

But Bertrand found himself pausing on his way down the stairs, as if out of breath. Something big was about to happen. His heart beat in fear, in anticipation. He considered burying this bizarre unease by heading over to O'Malley's for chicken wings and beer and a game of darts—normal things—but his doctor would scold him.

You're only twenty-four years old and you've got the heart and cholesterol of a fifty-year-old
. Doctor Sloane liked to wave his finger at Bertrand when he lectured.
You've got to lose at least twenty pounds, and for God's sake no chicken wings
.

Bertrand also knew what Sloane would say about the unease, the fear of some impending doom.

It's only been two years since the accident. It's not surprising that you're anxious and worried these days. It's your body's way of trying to prepare for another disaster like the one you've already experienced. Your subconscious just fears more bad news. How many kids in their college dorm get such a phone call? I'll write you a prescription for Prozac
.

Bertrand had never filled the prescription, preferring to dull the tormenting images in his mind with beer. Had his parents had any warning—even the subtlest premonition—as the jackknifed tractor-trailer hurtled toward their car? Had his father braked suddenly when traffic on the Kennedy Expressway snarled because of the construction? Had he looked into the rearview mirror?

Bertrand's only aunt had flown in from Milwaukee and gone with him to the morgue and then the funeral home. Everyone had dissuaded him from viewing the bodies of his loving parents—the coroner had identified them with dental records. They'd been burned beyond all recognition in the conflagration following the accident, when leaking fuel ignited and the flames sent a column of black smoke into the air, warning distant drivers to get off the expressway.

Bertrand pushed out of the station, still trying to reason away this premonition that something was about to go hugely wrong. Perhaps he had a right to be anxious. He'd lived through tragedy and had no one to speak to, other than friends who would nod as if they understood while looking painfully uncomfortable. They preferred to get him drunk and bury the topic of death with talk of hot women and aggressive sports. Gradually they had all abandoned him, some moving away for work after college, others neglecting to call, and the last holdouts tiring of him never returning their calls. He found it embarrassing to talk about his parents' sudden death because it seemed so mundane, cliché even, that they had died in one sudden wreck. Bertrand preferred O'Malley's, a place he'd begun hanging around because no one there knew his history, so he could pretend there had been no tragedy in his life. The bartenders now knew him by name, but that was all.

Bertrand stopped outside the station, the day's heat still wafting from the asphalt, the stench of garbage from a nearby container reminding him that summer should be spent out of the city. Should he turn right and head for O'Malley's, or left and head for home and a plate of Lean Cuisine?

He turned left, walking to Bissell Street and the one-and-a-half storey house that his parents had so meticulously renovated in anticipation of his birth. Tonight he would be good. He would lock the door, watch HBO and drink water. He would take a Sleep-Eze D and crash by midnight, then get up and start fresh.

But his feet dragged as he headed up the sidewalk, the sense of doom rising from his stomach to his heart, which beat faster now, reminding him that he'd failed to even start losing those twenty pounds. He'd almost reached home—the clapboard a pastel yellow, the gingerbread trim picked out in a pale green—when a smash of breaking glass from across the street brought him to a halt.

Was this the disaster? Had Needleman suffered some calamity?

His neighbor across the street also lived in a one-and-a-half storey house, the only wooden structure that backed onto the 'L' train line. All the other houses on the west side stood shoulder to shoulder—three stories tall—like a nineteenth-century glass-and-brick wall against the noise of the trains. Needleman's place sat in stark contrast, a decaying shack sided with asphalt sheets. He had lived there for as long as Bertrand could remember. Developers and real estate agents circled around Needleman's house like sharks every few months, but the reclusive old man refused to budge. It was generally assumed that the day after Needleman died his house would go down in front of a bulldozer's blade.

Every light was on in Needleman's house, unusual for the stingy pensioner. Bertrand yanked his phone from his pocket, the fear rising to panic, but calling 911 made no sense. Would telling an operator that he heard a window breaking even prompt a response? He stepped past the parked cars and into the empty street, away from his home and closer to Needleman's, but halfway across he froze, the dread overwhelming. How could he even make it to the waist-high chain-link fence that fronted the property? He could hardly breathe!

Bertrand fell to his knees, his heart pounding, his panic climaxing. Was he having a heart attack? A panic attack? He tried to fight his broken respiration, to take calming breaths.
His chest hurt
. Was that a heart attack sign?

"Help," he said, but it was closer to a whisper than a cry. If only a car would come along the quiet side street now, they'd see him there, slumped in the middle of the road, wouldn't they? They'd call for help. Where was his phone? It had slipped from his grasp, but it had to be nearby.

A terrified shriek came from Needleman's house. That was it—Bertrand could call 911 now, but instead he found himself rising and stumbling forward, crossing the street and grabbing the gate of the fence, some heroic force welling up inside of him.

Bertrand lifted the latch of the gate, wondering what power had possessed him. From the moment of the scream, Bertrand's very soul had strengthened. His chest pain eased, his breathing calmed and the anxiety faded. His grumpy old neighbor—the last familiar face from Bertrand's childhood—needed his help. The gate swung open easily, and Bertrand rushed up the porch stairs to the screen door. He kicked at the aluminum panel on the bottom. "Mr. Needleman? It's Bertrand Allan from across the street. Are you okay?"

Stooped with some large burden, a figure rushed across the hall near the back of the narrow house. More breaking glass. That was enough. Bertrand yanked at the handle of the screen door and discovered it was open. He hurried in, heading straight down the hallway for the kitchen.

"Mr. Needleman. I'm here! Are you all right?"

Bertrand had a moment of doubt. What was he doing? Why hadn't he picked up his cell phone? Yet, he was ready to fight to save Needleman from whatever horror had prompted that scream, a concept that would be viewed as ridiculous by Bertrand's fellow call-center techs. Pudgy Bert fight?

But the kitchen was empty and the house was now silent. Had he imagined that figure with suspiciously body-shaped burden? How could anyone move that quickly carrying fat old Needleman?

He tried to guess when Needleman had last cooked a meal, but the pile of pots in the sink, the food crusted and dried, gave no clue. The stove looked like it had last been clean during the First Gulf War. The table was strewn with dishes, as if Needleman rotated between chairs, abandoning each finished meal and moving to a clear place setting for the next, until he'd gone full circle.

"Mr. Needleman!"

Bertrand hurried back into the hall and went upstairs to the bedroom under the half-storey eaves. The second floor was stifling in the heat, and it stank of sweat and mold. The bed sheets were gray and tossed aside, the dresser drawers standing open with clothes piled on them rather than folded in them. No one here. He headed back downstairs and into the living room.

A ratty La-Z-Boy chair, a sofa forty years out of date and a thick cathode-ray tube TV were the only furniture, other than a standing ashtray full of cigarette butts by the recliner. A carpet that wasn't fit to piss on covered the floor, and the wallpaper was so tobacco-stained it was hard to determine the original pattern. Empty Budweiser cans littered the floor.

The room stank of old farts, beer and tobacco. And something else. Something metallic and wet and fresh. It reminded Bertrand of a meat counter at the grocery store, but without the anti-bacterial cleansers. He stepped into the room, walking a circle around the La-Z-Boy but stopping when the carpet squished under his foot. It was wet beside the chair, a dark stain in the brown carpet, a dark red stain. Bertrand didn't have to stoop and smell to know it was blood.

"Mr. Needleman! Where are you? I'm here to help!"

Bertrand fled the room, tracking a red footprint into the kitchen. Now he saw what he had missed the first time while overwhelmed by the domestic chaos: the glass of the back screen door was smashed. Then came the noise, a rumble and metallic screech announcing that another train approached on the 'L.' Bertrand rushed out and down the back steps, finding himself right under the train as it roared overhead on its elevated path. How did Needleman live with that noise? Bertrand's house was only just across the street, but it was so much quieter.

Bertrand waited until the train had passed and gave one last call, looking up and down the alley on the far side of the tracks for any sign of human movement. "Mr. Needleman!"

But the only sound now was a distant siren and the warm wind pushing through the trees. The dark lumps of garbage bins along the alley could hide any number of people, but Bertrand decided there wasn't anything to be gained by wandering in the weak light, looking for a potential murderer. He headed back through the house and into Bissell Street, where he found his cell still lying where he'd dropped it while panicking. The anxiety of that moment had totally vanished. He was ready to do battle, but he couldn't find the enemy. He dialed 911. There was blood.

The doorbell rang just as the microwave beeped to announce that the Lean Cuisine had finished warming. Bertrand opened the door to find two uniformed officers, one younger and trim with one hand raised, ready to again ring the doorbell. The other officer waited at the bottom of the stairs, his beer belly pushing over his belt, his eyes on his phone, and his fingers poised to text.

"Bertrand Allan?" said the younger officer. "You called in a 911 about your neighbor across the street."

"Yeah, but like, an hour ago. What took so long?"