GEN13 - Version 2.0 (2 page)

“I look out at your bright faces, and I see the promise of tomorrow, mingled with fond memories of the past. You might not believe it to look at me, but I was once your age, too.”

This was the point at which Cheswick’s media consultant had suggested creating a photo-op by making physical contact with one of the children. Cheswick bent over and reached out toward a towheaded boy in the front row. The boy showed as little emotion as the rest, but had the advantage of being within arm’s reach. Cheswick ruffled his fingers through the boy’s hair ...

And screamed.

It took a moment for even Cheswick to realize that the scream bad come, not from the boy’s mouth, but his own. Even so, however, there was no question why he was screaming. Cheswick recoiled in horror as, without warning, hundreds of cockroaches suddenly swarmed out from under the boy’s hair and up the Senator’s arm. He staggered back, flailing madly as he tried in vain to shake off the inch-long, brown monsters. But still they kept coming.

The insects were moving much too fast. As they sped along his body, Cheswick could see their hairy legs, their black eyes, and their quivering antennae. Cheswick’s skin turned clammy with fear. He clawed at his jacket, hoping to rid himself of the vermin by throwing it away. But they were past his jacket and starting to reach his skin by now. It was far too late.

The living wave was growing in strength, too. The cockroaches continued to stream out endlessly from beneath the boy’s hair. But now, they were coming from everywhere. Literally millions of roaches had started to pour toward Cheswick from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling tiles. They were crawling up his legs and dropping down from above.

Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? Why weren’t they helping him?

The camera crews were useless, staring at the Senator with puzzled expressions. And for their part, the children’s faces didn’t seem to register even the slightest bit of interest. They continued to watch Cheswick, but it wasn’t a look that indicated there was anything wrong. In fact, their faces held the same blank look of passive disdain that they’d shown since the moment he arrived. Even the boy with the roaches in his hair had barely blinked.

Cheswick wanted to scream at them. He wanted to know what was wrong with them. He wanted to cry for help. But he couldn’t. The Senator had clamped his mouth firmly shut when the roaches reached his chest, and was too afraid to open it now that he was swatting them away from his face. Keeping his lips pursed tightly together was helping to prevent the roaches from crawling inside, but they were starting toward his nose and ears.

All Cheswick could do was back away from the oncoming flood. He retreated as far as he could, until he felt himself bump up against the window. The roaches were coming from all sides now, sweeping toward him like a massive, living blanket. The past merged with the present as memories from the dumpster rushed through his tortured brain to mesh with the events of the moment. He was at once a 5 3-year-old man and nine-year-old boy, both victims of a terror that strained his heart to bursting. As the roaches flowed over his body, Cheswick took the only escape he could.

He hurled himself through the window.

Even as he plummeted seventeen stories to the street below, Cheswick beat furiously at the creatures that now covered virtually every inch of his body. The rushing wind tore some away, but his skin was alive now with the mass of chittering insects. He twisted and contorted his body every which way, but to no avail.

Cheswick was so consumed by the effort that he never even noticed when he hit the sidewalk.

Far above the cracked, bloody pavement, the youth center erupted with sound. A routine filler item had suddenly leaped forward to the front page.

“Jumped! That’s right—jumped!”

“Bosnia? Forget Bosnia! Clear some space! You’ve gotta get this!”

“How should I know why? You want me to go after him and ask?!”

“Uh huh, get me a copywriter ...”

.. just came out of nowhere! All of a sudden, he goes into some kind of fit, and before you know it..

“After falling, like, twenty floors?! Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s dead!”

“I dunno, it looked like DTs or something ...” “Killed himself! Right! As in ‘dead!’ ”

“Yes, of course I’m getting pictures!”

Photographers were holding cell phones in one hand while they were snapping pictures with the other. Some were leaning out the window, capturing the pulpy remains of the former U.S. senator for posterity. Others were already on their way down the elevators and stairs to get a better shot.

The Senator’s aide was in shock. All of the color had drained from his face, leaving him ashen and speechless as he was assaulted with a relentless barrage of questions and flash bulbs.

“Did you know the Senator was planning this?”

“Why did he do it?”

“Had he ever attempted suicide before?”

“Can you give me a statement?”

“Was he having marital problems?”

“Did he have a drug habit?”

“Was the Senator undergoing any kind of psychiatric treatment?”

“How are you feeling right now?”

The aide leaned back against the wall for support, his legs feeling much too weak to hold him. It was all he could do to stammer out most of an “I—I don’t. . . know...”

In all the commotion, the only people who actually belonged in the youth center were all but forgotten. As chaos reigned all around them, the teacher quietly motioned for the children to get up. Gingerly avoiding the reporters rushing back and forth, she calmly escorted them away from the mob and toward the door.

The visitors to the center weren’t in a frame of mind to notice subtleties. As a result, no one noticed the fact that the children’s disinterested expressions still hadn’t changed very much. Nor did they notice the teacher’s small smile.

But that wasn’t the strange thing.

The strange thing was that, from the moment the Senator arrived until the moment he struck the ground ... ... no one had seen even a trace of a cockroach.

CHAPTER 2

J'wo months later
.
.
.

The woman was a blur of motion, moving almost faster than the eye could follow. Originally, the odds seemed stacked against her, surrounded as she was by more than a dozen assailants, all of whom were female as well. But in moments, it was clear who truly had the upper hand.

The woman leaped up in the air, somersaulting past a pair of her astonished foes, and let herself fall to the floor, where she knocked their legs out from under them with a sweeping kick. In an eyeblink, she was back on her feet, meeting her next attacker with a rapid-fire series of jabs to the body and head. Before the attacker so much as hit the ground, she had already grabbed a staff from her assailant’s hands, spun around, and used it to deflect the gleaming sword blade that slashed down toward her. Even as she bent one knee to absorb the impact, she planted the other foot smack in the middle of the swordswoman’s torso, sending her staggering back as she whipped the staff around to strike the swordswoman (who no longer held the sword) in the side of the head.

“Whooooa ...,” said Bobby.

“I have to apologize,” Sarah whispered, in a hushed tone of awe.

“For what?” Bobby whispered back.

Sarah spoke without once taking her eyes from the scene of carnage before her. “When you and Grunge asked if we were up for this, I thought it was just another stupid guy thing. But the sheer level of mastery these women have developed.... Too bad Kat couldn’t make it to see this. It’s incredible.”

“Mmmmm . . . catfight. ..” Grunge murmured. He leaned back in the dark with a blissful smile. A thin line of drool eased down his chin to splash on his chest.

Back up on the movie screen, another pair of attackers, wielding chains and an ornate battleaxe, were chasing the woman toward a blank wall. Without breaking stride, she leaped up at the wall. She used her momentum to literally run several steps up the wall before flipping back over and using her weight to put down her opponents with a double kick.

Only one of her assailants was left now. However, from the way that all of the action suddenly screeched to a halt, the quick cuts, and the fast zooms into tight close-ups on the two women’s faces, it was clear that the last one was the most dangerous of all. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, each one taking the other’s measure. The woman breathed heavily from her exertion so far, while her final opponent looked cool.

Then, the silence was broken. With a pair of piercing screams, they ran toward the other and simultaneously took inhumanly long leaps through the air. They met in mid-flight, delivering and parrying a breathtaking hailstorm of blows before completing their trajectories and landing on the ground to carry on the battle at blinding speed.

“Check that out!” Roxy squealed, her body tense with excitement. “How do thev
do
that, like in mid-air and stuff?”    '

Bobby shot her a sidelong glance. He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Excuse me?” he said, taking another handful of popcorn. “Aren’t you the one who’s always messing around with gravity?”

“Well, sure,” she replied, “but that’s different. I mean,
this. . .
.” Roxy turned to Grunge, who was sitting on her other side, with his arm draped around her. “Y’know, sweetie?”

“That Michelle Yeoh is
hot”
Grunge said, his gaze fixated on the screen.

Roxy stiffened.

After about an hour or so, the lobby of the theater rang with laughter as the four friends spilled out of the matinee, jabbing at each other with mock-martial moves as they made their way through the lobby, toward the exit. Even Sarah, who was usually the most serious of the group by far, had allowed herself to get caught up in the moment, improvising catlike moves with a lithe grace.

“Beware the wrath of the Dragon Lotus! Haiii-ya!” “Your wrath is as nothing before the teachings of the Golden Way!”

“Ha! With moves like that, dude, it’s more like the ‘Golden
No
Way!’ ”

“Hey, hey, hey! Let’s remember who’s the genuine martial arts master here!”

“Shyeah! Newsflash: Getting kicked out of a dojo for lack of discipline when you were ten does
not
make you a martial arts master!”

A skinny, acne-ridden usher, no older than the teenage patrons, watched the group and rolled his eyes.
It never fails
, he thought, shaking his head.
After every single show, it’s always the same thing. There’s always somebody who thinks he’s the next Jackie Chan.
Well, at least this particular bunch seemed to be playing instead of looking for trouble. And at least they were heading for the door.

Not that he would have minded if the girls stuck around. The taller, graceful one was almost six feet tall and all curves. Her dark skin and the straight, jet black hair that reached down to her waist suggested that she was Latina or Native American or something. Whatever it was, it gave her an elegant “otherness” that the usher wouldn’t have minded exploring for himself.

Her friend’s looks were almost a total contrast, but she was equally cute in her own way. She was shorter and slender, with a relatively pale complexion. Her bangs were dyed pink to match the mini-skirt that barely covered her hips. In place of a blouse, she wore a frilly halter top that showed plenty of skin beneath her leather jacket. Fishnet stockings and go-go boots completed the outfit, giving the overall impression of a downtown girl who’d seen plenty of action. The usher figured he could do with a little of that action himself.

Of course, that wasn’t to say that the usher had any realistic intention of approaching either of them. He hadn’t tried asking a girl out since the humiliation that he still referred to, with a shudder, as “the Mindy Incident.”

Besides, these girls were with a couple of guys already. Fairly intimidating guys, at that. One of them was tall and muscular, with close-cropped blonde hair and a small, matching tuft of blonde hair on his chin. As far as competing for the girls’ attention was concerned, the blonde’s matinee-idol looks put him way past the usher’s league. All he could do was hope the guy was gay.

The last member of the quartet was intimidating, too, but in a totally different way. He was, by far, the shortest of the group, but at the same time, he was also the broadest by a considerable margin. Loud and unshaven, he gave the impression of being able to step out of the shower already grimy and just a little bit scuzzy. He was a mass of muscle, and he showed off his build by not wearing a shirt, despite the brisk winter weather outside. His jacket hung open, displaying a tattoo of a winged skull that was splashed across his chest.

Suddenly, the usher broke off his idle musings and froze, as his eyes locked with the blonde guy’s. Immediately, he realized he’d been busted. Rule number one of avoiding trouble in New York City was to never, ever stare at anyone, and absolutely not to make eye contact. It wouldn’t do any good to look away now, though. He’d already been caught, and if these guys were looking for trouble, he’d given them their opening.

The blonde guy held his gaze for a bit, his lips curled in a knowing smile as though he knew exactly what was on the usher’s mind. Then, with a slight nod of acknowledgement, the blonde guy turned away. He and his friends tumbled out the door and into the crisp afternoon air, still laughing and sparring among themselves.

The usher breathed a sigh of relief. He went back to sweeping up stray kernels of popcorn from the floor.

“Ohmigawd! It’s
freezing
out here!” Roxy grabbed the lapels of her leather jacket and pulled it close around her body.

“Well, duh,” Bobby said with a grin. “It
is
December. Maybe the mini wasn’t such a great idea after all, huh?” Roxy stuck her tongue out at him. “Fashion demands sacrifice, pal. Besides, it’s easy for you to say! Not all of us are walking radiators like you, y’know.”

The snow had started to fall while they were watching the movie, and there was already about half an inch of the slushy, brown stuff coating the city streets. The tall buildings around them gave rise to a wind tunnel effect that intensified the chill wind that cut through them to the bone.