After The Apocalypse Read online

  When I look at my face, I see that my eyes are completely brown. No blue at all.

  I sigh. No strength powers.

  But there’s always speed. I hated having to use this one -- even in prime shape, a girl with my curves has problems that relate more to physics than conditioning. I’m sure these days sports bra technology has advanced sufficiently, but I’m not wearing one of those right now, just a regular one. Still, I have to test this somehow.

  I start the treadmill -- it’s one of those simple, cheap ones -- and step onto it, intending to move slowly at first, but once my full weight is on the belt, the motor starts to whine. “Well, fuck you too,” I say to it as I transfer my feet to the rails.

  A little trial and error shows me that I have to have it up to three miles per hour before the treadmill’s motor can overcome the force my feet put on it. This is way faster than I like to walk -- it’s about as fast as I move when I’m in danger of missing my bus -- and I feel it almost immediately in my calves and hips.

  I am really out of shape.

  Hopefully making friends with Janice and Carolyn will be enough to get me to the gym a little more. But I doubt it.

  After a couple of minutes to get warmed up -- and to convince my legs that, no, I’m not kidding, we’re really doing this again -- I hit the up button until I’m power-walking at 3.5 miles per hour. I can feel the air dragging its way in and out of my chest, and sweat is starting to drip down my face. I blink hard to keep my eyes clear and power through the unpleasantness for two more minutes.

  Then I increase to 4.5.

  And it is awful.

  I actually have to run -- like, pump my arms, angle my spine, and bounce from foot to foot as I move. I haven’t done this in a decade, and only fifteen seconds into it I feel like I’m going to die. That makes me laugh -- though it sounds more like a bark than anything else. “All that work,” I gasp, “fighting... evil... and a damn tread... treadmill... is gonna... kill... me... fuck!” I bring my hand down on the console and somehow manage to push the ‘cool down’ button. The belt slows quickly to a slow, leisurely walking pace, and then grinds to a halt again, the motor expressing its displeasure.

  I shut the treadmill off and just stand there a moment, chest heaving, wiping sweat off my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

  No strength. No speed. Clearly no endurance.

  This sucks.

  I gulp down two cups of water from the cooler before starting the long shuffle back to my apartment, a third cup in hand. I look like hell -- actually, I look like I just had an hour-long workout, even though it was only about a five-minute jog. I try not to see my neighbors’ faces as they pass me; I know some of them well enough to say hello to, but no one really knows how to talk to the fat girl who just exercised. Do they draw attention to it, tacitly admitting that yes, they know she’s fat? Do they ignore it and look like an idiot by saying something like, “so what have you been up to today?”

  Most of them just ignore me. Which, at this point, is fine.

  Once in the apartment, I just go and stand in front of the refrigerator, the door open, letting the cool air turn my sweat into cold droplets on my skin. It’s better than a cold shower.

  I probably should take one anyway, given what I’m about to test next. But the moment I realize what I’m going to have to do, I know that, the longer I wait, the more chance I have to back out.

  No. I have to know. I have to see if I can heal as fast as I used to.

  I have never been a cutter. For me, the limits of self-harm are laziness, overeating, and a tendency toward enjoying pain in certain intimate situations -- and the less said about those, the better. I don’t have any idea if what I’m doing here is the right thing. But I’ve seen movies, and there’s books I’ve read that have characters who cut themselves.

  I wonder what it’s going to feel like to intentionally try to hurt myself like this. I’ve been cut up, knocked around, and beaten by more types of demonic-looking creatures than I’d care to remember. Usually I won those fights, and I could classify what happened to me as battle damage. But as I set out the instruments I’m going to be using, I have to clear my mind and stop thinking about all of that.

  I really, really, really do not want to do this.

  Pocketknife. Alcohol. Lighter. Gauze. Neosporin. Band-Aids. Clean counter.

  Deep breath.

  Swab the back of my left forearm with alcohol. There are veins in my hands, and on the other side of my arm, but I’m not doing this to commit suicide or cry out for help. I’m doing an experiment.

  Right. Just keep telling myself that.

  Wipe the knife blade with more alcohol -- I chose a small vegetable knife, because the thought of anything else in my knife drawer scared the crap out of me.

  Hold the knife in my right hand and flick the lighter with my left. Draw the blade through the flame several times. Then wave it gently through the air to cool it off.

  Press the edge against my arm. It’s a little warm and a lot sharp. I rest my thumb against the back of the blade and push slowly, until the skin indents. It hurts a little -- maybe the healing power is still in there? -- but when I take the knife away, my skin quickly goes back to normal. I didn’t even come close to cutting myself.

  I don’t know if I can do this. I’m not a cutter, damn it.

  But I have to do this. I have to know. I have to know.

  Before I can stop myself, I bring the knife back to my flesh and slice once, hard, right into my skin.

  “Fuck!” The knife clatters when I drop it on the counter. I grab the gauze and clamp my right hand over the cut. “Fuck, that fucking hurt!”

  Well, duh. Of course it hurt. I just sliced into my fucking arm with a vegetable knife!

  I hiss as I gently lift the gauze away from the cut. Fresh blood wells up and threatens to drip on my clean counter; I put more gauze against the bottom of the cut to catch the blood and wait to see if it closes up on its own.

  Given how much it hurt to cut myself, though, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I’m not seeing it heal. I sigh and get to work on covering it up. The Band-Aids are too small, so I just smear Neosporin on a fresh gauze pad, stick it to my arm, and grab an old rolled-up Ace bandage from the junk drawer. I end up wrapping my entire forearm -- the thing is way too long -- but at least it’ll hold. I never did forget how to bind a wound, and I had to hide a lot of stuff like this from my parents before the Dark King had them killed.

  I don’t bother to clean up the counter, now that I’m bandaged up. I just lie down on the couch and, with my right arm, clutch a pillow to my chest.

  I feel like a failure.

  Three hours ago, I hit a guy so hard that he bounced off a wall. Now I can’t even jog without turning into a stereotype.

  My nose and cheeks start to prickle. “No,” I whisper. “I will not cry over this. I will not cry over this!”

  It takes a lot of squinching of my face, but eventually it decides to listen to what I have to say.

  A bit later -- I don’t know how long -- I hear Willow leap up onto the back of the couch. Her claws make tiny tip-tip-tip noises as she walks across the back of it, steps onto the headrest, and then down into the space between the cushions and my head. I rub my cheek on her fur and she purrs at me. “I don’t suppose you can talk?”

  She doesn’t say anything. Up close, her eyes are a gorgeous yellow-green, pupils wide and dark. Her whiskers tickle my face. “Well, how about it? Am I completely useless?”

  Willow curls into a tight ball, the top of her head pressed to my neck, and purrs louder.

  “Guess not.”

  Willow’s purring lulls me into a more-relaxed state, and I guess I fall asleep for a little while. When I wake, it’s almost dinnertime, and I’m starving. I did, after all, skip lunch. Willow’s not next to me anymore either -- I guess she finished her nap before me. I go into the kitchen and check the fridge, but nothing looks really appetizing, so I just microwave a frozen dinner and ea
t it standing up while I clean up the mess from before.

  My arm is still aching by the time I start getting ready for bed. In the bathroom, I remove the bandage and the gauze, smear on some more ointment, and wrap it back up

  Willow’s on the pillow next to mine when I get into bed and turn on my Kindle. I hear Buffy playing with something, out in the living room, and hope she doesn’t start yowling at it. She does that sometimes, even though I know she knows it annoys me.

  My book isn’t very interesting, though. For some reason, I feel like I need my old friends. I pull up a fanfic site, click over to the Buffy section, and see what’s new.

  A few seconds later, I fling the device across the room. It smacks against my dresser and thumps to the carpet, and the noise sends Willow scurrying out the door.

  I don’t care. I turn onto my side, wrapping the blanket tighter around my body, and click off the light.

  The first new story was called “It’s Only The End Of The World”, and it was a crossover between Buffy... and Alexandra.

  Everything crashes down onto me at once, and now, no matter how much I tell myself it’s not going to happen, I find myself in tears. “No powers,” I whisper. “No powers. Nothing special. Just...” A sob. “Just a stupid fat girl crying herself to sleep.”

  Fuck it. I give over to the feelings. I haven’t done this in a while, and after the day I’ve had, I think I deserve it.

  Sunday passes in something of a daze, and Monday once again finds me holding a cup of coffee, sitting in Jake’s office. “You look like hell,” he says. “What happened?”

  “Well, I met some new people.”

  “That’s good,” he says. “Where?”

  “I went to the gym.” I pause. The expression on his face is a just a bit short of incredulous -- both of us hate to exercise. “Yeah, it was about as bad as you think. But I met a couple of people in the locker-room and we went out for coffee.”

  “What, did they turn out to be serial killers or something?”

  “Huh-uh.” I sip my coffee and make a face. The cups here are terrible; I swear I only got it from the machine five minutes ago and it’s already lukewarm. “We just had coffee, and then I took the train back home.”

  “So what happened?” he asks. “Did you go on a bad date or something?”

  “No.” I look at the coffee-with-milk-colored surface of my coffee-with-milk and just get it over with. “I kind of got into a fight.”

  I have Jake’s undivided attention now. He leans forward and folds his hands on his desk. “You... got into... a fight?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” I tell him about the three guys in the train station, and how I stood up to them. “Finally, I just had enough, and I punched one of them.”

  He sits, silent, for a long moment before getting up and closing his door.

  Then he turns on me. “Andi, are you fucking crazy?” Holy crap, his voice is loud in this little office. “They could’ve had guns, or knives, or just held you down and robbed you! What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I put the cup on his desk and step into him. He’s almost half a foot taller than me, so I have to look up more than I want to. I stick my fists on my hips and make sure I’m close enough to make him feel uncomfortable. “I was thinking, ‘gee, isn’t it nice how these guys are calling me fat, stupid, and slutty? Wouldn’t it be great if I just stood here and fucking took it, just like I have every other time someone’s called me names?’” I poke him in the chest, hard. “Maybe you grew a thick skin because you’ve always been a big guy, but I didn’t have that. I didn’t look like this when I was growing up, and it still makes me feel like I’ve been ripped apart and stomped on when someone calls me names!”

  “Andi, I didn’t mean--”

  “Of course you didn’t.” I take a couple of steps back and Jake escapes to his side of the desk. His face is flushed and I’m kind of afraid that I went too far. But my voice is still hard and cold. “Of course you were just looking out for me, right?”

  “Well, yeah. You’re my friend, Andi.” He sits in his big leather chair and adjusts his shirt. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Something happened to me all right,” I say.

  “What? Are you okay?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I lean down, hands on his desk, and lower my voice. “I felt powerful, Jake. For the first time in... well, in a very long time... I felt powerful. Like I had strength enough to stand up to people.”

  “Yeah, but, Andi, you’re just a person, just like me. You’re not Alexandra.”

  Very slowly, I stand up and retrieve my coffee cup. Almost on autopilot, my hand reaches for the handle of Jake’s office door.

  “Andi, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to compare you to her, but it’s true!”

  I’m not listening. I’m opening the door.

  I’m walking down the hall, back to my cube.

  And I’m trying very hard not to scream.

  If Jake only knew.

  If they all only knew.

  On the way home, I get a text from Professor Wedlund. He's asking if I can be at his office an hour earlier on Friday. I tell him it's fine -- I'll have to catch an early bus, which means leaving work early, but whatever. Normally I'd ask Jake to help me out, drive me to the university, but right now I can't even think about sitting in a car with him. He’d probably even tell me to have a nice weekend.

  It won’t be a nice weekend. I know that already. I’ll spend most of it inside, or run errands, or maybe go see a movie. If Carolyn or Janice calls me, I might go to the gym, although I hate doing it.

  I consider that for a moment.

  Gym. Coffee. Train.

  Powers..?

  I unlock the apartment, turn on the lights, and walk quickly into my bedroom. I jam stuff into my gym bag, grab my keys and wallet, and am out the door. It takes only a few minutes -- relatively speaking -- to catch the bus and get to the gym, and even though there’s a Monday evening time-to-get-back-into-working-out-since-it’s-a-new-week crowd, I find a treadmill and start walking.

  And this time, I’m actually walking at a decent speed. Like, exercising, not just plodding along. I get sweaty, I get tired, but I keep going for the full half-hour and even the five-minute cool-down. After a quick drink from the fountain, I step into the weight-machine room and start the circuit track. I’m not trying to kill myself with the workout; I’m just trying to get into the right frame of mind for my powers to come back.

  I feel so good by the time that it’s over -- exhausted and achy, but for some reason just plain good -- that I don’t even care about the Scarlett Johanssons and Jennifer Lawrences and whatshername-from-Pretty Little Liarses walking around as if they own the place. I take a quick shower, get changed, and take the bus up to 14th Street.

  It wasn’t just exercise that made me strong on Saturday. There was coffee involved, and it was coffee from that particular Starbucks, and if I’m repeating everything I did, then I have to have coffee too. I know it means I won’t get to sleep until about two in the morning, if I’m lucky, but I have to try. Getting my powers back is the only thing on my mind.

  But when I get to the Arts Center station, it’s close to eleven, and my brain is fighting a weird battle between being completely wired on two cups of coffee and being ready to just go the fuck to sleep because I should be in bed by now. I haven’t felt like this in a while.

  I certainly didn’t feel like this on Saturday.

  I head for the bathroom. I’m certainly not going to punch a wall in front of people if I don’t have to.

  And now I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror, cradling my right hand in my left, staring at my eyes. They’re completely brown; no blue at all.

  I don’t understand it. I went into the same stall, relaxed, centered myself... and punched the tiled wall as hard as I could. When I visualized a spot three inches past the surface of the wall and then slammed my fist into it, it took everything I had not to scream in pain
. I didn’t break the tiles; I think I’m lucky not to have broken my hand.

  The powers aren’t back. Alexandra isn’t back. It’s just me: plain old Andrea Collins.

  I think I’m going to have to get used to it. Again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SMASHED

  +++++

  This week has been one of the worst of my life, and that includes the one right after my parents died. At least when that happened I knew they were gone, and they weren’t coming back. I thought the same thing happened with my powers; just like Mom and Dad, I wanted them back for a long time, but after a while I let them go. More or less. Except for constantly wishing I still had them.

  I still wish Mom and Dad were here too.

  What would’ve happened if, instead of getting that jolt of power back in the train station and remembering what it felt like to be strong, my parents had stepped off the train and back into my life? And then, a couple of hours later, if I’d just turned around and they were gone again.

  Yeah. That’s about how I’ve been feeling all week: like something that had been taken from me had been given back, but only for a few minutes.

  And, what’s worse, I can’t even stop thinking about it. I mean, maybe it didn’t happen at all, right? Maybe I was just that pissed off, and maybe I just hauled off and hit that guy as hard as I could, and because of all the fight training I did when I was younger, I just knew how to do it exactly right.

  Maybe.

  I have to see the Professor tonight, just like I do every Friday night. He's going to be upset that I didn't tell him I had a moment where my powers came back -- I'm supposed to tell him immediately. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

  The bus trip is about as fun as I expect it to be, but when I get to the campus, it seems pretty deserted -- more so than usual for a Friday evening, anyway. I guess it could be some sort of school holiday, but I don’t keep track. The Professor said to be here an hour early, and here I am, an hour earlier than usual, walking up the steps to the Humanities building, where his office is. I’m glad to be inside -- it’s starting to get dark, and there’s a breeze picking up. That means all sorts of weird little noises that I was trained to hear. Normally it’s just leaves, or branches scraping against each other, or squirrels, but I can’t help jumping anyway.