Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

IN WHICH MY SISTER IS WRONG ABOUT THE WORLD ENDING, AND WE DRINK CHAMPAGNE NEVERTHELESS

I was reading The Sex-Bots of Space Alcatraz for the fifty-third time when my little sister Emily slammed open the apartment hatch.

"Aliens are attacking the city!" she yelled, and then she slammed straight back out again.

My reaction surprised even me. "Thank God," I said out loud. Then I dropped my dog-eared book and hurried after her.

Four of us lived in the apartment back then: me, Emily, "Malice" Hiroyama, and Emily's stupid boyfriend. (There had been so many of them, I had given up trying to learn their names long before.) The apartment was what we called an "eco-eco," which was supposed to mean Economical and Ecological. In practical terms, it meant Way Too Small, and since there were four of us stuffed in there, the place was crowded beyond reason or description. You couldn't walk across the floor. You had to kind of wade across it, kicking things out of the way as you went and hoping you didn't impale yourself on anything spiky or infected.

I waded across the floor, scattering our assortment of crap: my tools, Malice's porn magazines, the stupid boyfriend's enormous smelly sneakers, Emily's plastic bangles and jars of homemade lipstick. I managed to reach the hatch with no injuries but a scraped ankle. Not bad, considering what was at the bottom of some of those heaps.

My sling was hanging on its hook by the hatch. I thought about leaving it behind. If I was about to be murdered by aliens, I planned to go out kind of graceful-like, and flinging rocks at a hovering mother-ship is not the most graceful form of activity known to mankind. But old habits, as you may have heard, are very hard to break. I clipped the sling to my belt, clambered out of the hatch, hooked my feet around the ladder poles, and slid down. Then I remembered the bottle that we had been saving under the weapons rack for just such an occasion, and hurriedly pulled myself back up the ladder to grab it.

The streets outside had begun to fill. There was Emily, of course, wrapping her skinny arms around her stupid boyfriend as if she was trying to imitate a sweater. She was standing in a clutch of the other building tenants, between Bag Man and Crazy Zho. Behind them stood the working girls from the brothel down the street—most of them were older than forty, and they were the only people in sight with shaved legs. Nearby was Orelle Johnson, her baby blue dressing gown fluttering around her bulky body, a sawn-off shotgun resting on her shoulder. She owned the entire block of eco-ecos, and her expression promised a nasty drawn-out death to the first alien who made a move in that direction.

Then there was a smattering of the usual debris: beggars and beggar-children, most of them with missing limbs or eyes; traffickers with their rifles and cartridge belts; peddlers wearing heavy packs and nervous expressions; vagrants, pickpockets, and street prophets. Plus a handful of the sackcloth-clad pilgrims who sometimes drift through the desert looking for God knows what—literally, I guess. I shoved my way through the crush until I found Malice Hiroyama, who was perched on the rusting hulk of a dinotruck parked in front of our building. Permanently parked, since the engine and tires were missing, and it sat propped up on concrete blocks.

Every last one of them was gawking up at the sky.

It was worth gawking at. Hovering up there, glittery against the flat black of the starless night, was a ring of shimmering blue light, an energy beam that hummed and crackled with electricity, pulsing and glowing and rippling.

All right, that was different.

I hoisted myself up onto the dino next to Malice. Her spikes of black hair reflected the pulses of blue energy, and the leaping sparks made it look like her whole head was electric.

Malice is only half Japanese, by the way. Her father was Romani. Emily and I, on the other hand, are a mix of Korean, Serbian, and Filipino, with a little Greek and Irish in the blend. Pretty average.

On impulse, I glanced down at my own skin. It was aqua in the unnatural blue light, and the branching scars that traced their way up my arms from wrist to shoulder looked black instead of red. Like dark ferns, with tendrils of growth curling out from thick central stems. I yanked my sleeves down to cover them.

"Aliens attacking?" I asked Malice.

"That's the working theory."

She didn't offer any more information, so, along with everyone else, I studied the sky. What was it, that ring of electricity? The landing lights of a flying saucer? A death beam? A transdimensional portal that would whisk us all off to a planet where humans were used as livestock? A giant airborne factory designed to convert us into mindless cyborgs? Or something even more cataclysmic?

I forced myself to stop guessing. I was letting my hopes get too high.

Again.

"Okay, look," I said to Malice, using my adult voice, the snarly one. "Have we ruled out the other alternatives? Could this be some kind of freak . . . meteorological . . . thing?"

Malice scratched her nose delicately with her switchblade. "Yeah? Like what? Ring-shaped lightning? Electric rain?"

"Starlight through swamp gas?"

"In the middle of the damn desert, right. Keep guessing, nature queen."

"Could be weird government shit . . ."

"That'd require a government."

"Weird military shit . . ."

"Requires a military."

"We could all be tripping on some real bad mushrooms."

"Speak for yourself. I'm so frickin' sober, it's sickening."

"I could be tripping on some real bad mushrooms."

"If you had mushrooms that bad and didn't share, then forget the aliens and start worrying about what I'm gonna do to you. Any other dumb theories?"

"Nah, aliens it is. So I guess we're all gonna die grisly deaths tonight, a'ya?"

Malice tested her knife blade against the calloused ball of her thumb. "Maybe not. Maybe the aliens have no germ resistance. Maybe they'll catch a bunch of earthling diseases and croak before they can enslave all of humanity."

"Maybe. Worth a try. Tell you what, when tentacled beasts come after us with anal probes, let's you and me cough on them real hard."

She bared her teeth at me—the Malice version of a smile. "You cough on them. I'll see if I can give 'em an STD. Let's make sure we cover all the bases."

Now, everybody needs exactly one friend like Malice—the kind of friend who criticizes everything you do, steals your belongings, and laughs at all your mistakes. The kind of friend who sleeps with women you've been secretly pining after for months, and does it in your bed, and doesn't clean up afterwards. The kind of friend that you hate half the time, but can't live without. Malice and I forged our unholy alliance soon after we arrived at the Brownstone Children's Home, and it had endured through the stormy years since. We'd panned for gold together, built a church, spent some time on a chain gang, and beaten each other bloody on a number of occasions. For the past few years, she'd been my roommate, which suited me fine, although I wished she would wait until I was asleep before she started to wank.

Her real name was Alice, but her nickname described her much better.

Malice spat deliberately, which was probably her commentary on the whole situation. "Didja bring the end-of-the-world champagne?"

I clucked my tongue sadly. "Malice, my Malice, why would you ask me such a question? Of course I brought the end-of-the-world champagne. I know how to accessorize for the apocalypse."

I began to work the cork out of the bottle with my thumbs—my corkscrew had died a horrible death a few months earlier, when Malice threw it at a roach with a bit too much enthusiasm. As I did that, I looked around. The pilgrims were down on their knees on the broken concrete, rocking and praying and moaning. All of the prostitutes had joined them, and some of the street merchants as well. Only the thieves were going about their business as usual—moving delicately through the crowd, their hands slipping in and out of the pockets of oblivious bystanders.

A few people, just a few, were getting ready to fight. Orelle had already hoisted her shotgun into position, levelling the muzzle at the ring of blue energy. Crazy Zho was brandishing a stick, which was a pretty pointless exercise, but there was a reason that he was called "Crazy Zho" instead of "Sane and Sensible Zho."

The drone of the electricity overhead was getting louder, turning into a shrill whine, and then a roar. Something was heating up, something was about to happen.

But still the street looked normal, with clotheslines of drying diapers strung between the roofs, with the pavement fouled by piss and garbage and broken glass. Bare poles overhead, once streetlamps, stood empty, their bulbs blown out or stolen long ago. From the crowds, as always, wafted the stink of unwashed skin and homemade booze. An ordinary day in a time when no one was ever really safe and nothing was ever really clean and everyone was always at least a little bit hungry.

And I thought to myself that if the world had to end, then the timing was just about right.

Emily bounced over to us, dragging her stupid boyfriend behind her like a little red wagon. "You see? Didn't I tell you? Alien invasion. Do you have the end-of-the-world champagne? Can we drink the end-of-the-world champagne?"

"Hold your horses." I wasn't getting anywhere with the cork using my thumbs, so I bit the end and twisted, and it squeaked free. It came out without much of a pop, and without anything in the way of fizz. A sour vinegar smell wafted from the bottle. But when you live in the endtimes, you take what you can get.

Malice grabbed the bottle from me as soon as it was open and whipped her rosary beads from a pocket with her other hand.

"This is gonna suck," she said. "I can just tell."

She took a long swig, and then bowed her head over the beads to recite her Hail Marys. This was a slow and laborious process. Even though Malice had said her rosary every night since she was a small toddling thing, she still didn't know all the words.

She would improvise sometimes. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, you've got the virgin thing going, I really like what you've done with your hair." Like that.

You'd think she could have found another Catholic to fill in the gaps for her. No shortage of godly types in the endtimes: there are regular Christians, whackadoodle Christians who think they're vampires, real Buddhists, people who call themselves Buddhists because they like henna tattoos, witch-burners, witch worshippers, Thor-worshippers, and people who claim to be incarnations of Vishnu in hopes that it'll finally get them laid.

The more the world burns, the more people seem to get religion. I guess they like to imagine that a big glowing hand will reach down from on high, stitch the ozone layer back together, and haul California out of the blood-warm ocean. I don't know how believers stay so perky in the face of mass extinction, but what the hell. You have to admire their optimism. A believer looks at all the children born these days with third eyes or abnormal strength or magnetic skin, and thinks, Hand of God. I look at them and think, Nuclear radiation. Or, sometimes, just Ew, gross.

I relieved Malice of the champagne—she growled, I growled back—and hopped down from the dino. Emily snatched for the bottle, but I held it out of her reach. "Now, are you sure you want to be drunk for the end of the world? I don't wanna hear any complaints later."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Casey, who wouldn't wanna be drunk for the end of the world? Besides, you may be able to get drunk off a quarter-bottle of shitty champagne, but I sure as hell can't—holy CRAP!"

At least, I think that she said "holy crap." I can't be sure. Her words were engulfed by the sounds erupting overhead: a hiss and then a crack and then a BOOM! The hiss sounded like a thousand red-hot frying pans were being tossed into cold water; the crack sounded like a hammer the size of New Zealand was smashing a pane of glass the size of Australia; the BOOM! was ten times as loud as either and made us all clap our hands to our ears. Some people in the crowd lost control of their weapons, and bullets went barking up into the air above the tenements. Some people in the crowd lost control of their bladders, and that didn't help much either.

The ring of energy was expanding now, like a giant blue rubber band being stretched. As it expanded, it descended, hovering lower and lower in the sky.

"It's like a boundary line," Malice said, clambering down from the dino, her boots crunching shards of glass underfoot. "Looks like it's going to surround the whole town."

I frowned. Why did that sound so familiar?

"Like an electric fence?" Emily asked. "Why would they bother to go all high tech? We're sitting ducks here. No need for lasers. They could kill us with—I don't know—bath towels or cans of tapioca or whatever."

Malice shrugged. "Why are you bothering to ask me, kid? It's my first apocalypse too."

Emily's stupid boyfriend spoke up for the first time. "Shouldn't we run? Try to get out of town?"

"Outrun the alien energy beams? What makes you think that'll end well? Casey, quit hogging the champagne."

"Cool your tits. I haven't had any yet."

The blue ring of energy had sunk almost to the ground. Bits of it still winked through gaps between the buildings, and now we could see that it was woven from smaller strands, skinny writhing worms made of light. I pictured the pulsing coil enclosing the town. If we'd ever had a chance, either to run or to fight, it was too late now. So this would be the end, and what the hell. My only real regret was that I hadn't stocked a few more bottles to ease the passing. I raised the champagne to my lips.

And that was when the pieces clicked together in my brain.

"God frigging damn it!" I roared, lowering the bottle. "It isn't aliens!"

"What?" Emily said, distractedly, as she tried to pry the champagne from my grip. "What is it, then?"

"It's another motherfucking gang of raiders, that's all it is. Just another bunch of gun-fondling mouth-breathers looking to make a score. I'm betting it's the League."

Orelle Johnson swung her shotgun down from her shoulder and wiped her face. "You mean the Anastasian League."

"It's not the Give Everyone Chocolate and Puppies League, that's for damn sure."

Orelle sighed, deep and long. "Christ, that's worse than aliens."

"It's worse than worse. It's fucking boring. I get that life sucks, and all, but can't life suck in a new and original way once in a while?" I raised my voice, calling out to everyone on the street. "Hey, bastards, this is a raid! Quit praying and go hide whatever crap you want to keep!"

Malice raised one eyebrow. I think Malice owed a lot of her success with women to the fact that she could raise just one eyebrow at a time. Hawt. It probably also helped that she was one of those people who could walk up to a girl she'd never met before and say, "Wanna do it?"

Anyway, she raised an eyebrow. "How does it make sense that a bunch of deadbeat gangers have that kind of tech?"

I pointed at the blue electric ring. "This is what the guy was telling us about. You remember the guy?"

"What guy?"

"Trader. He was here about six months ago. Red hair. Sold kerosene and nails."

"You mean the one who tried to pinch Emily's butt?"

"Yeah. You remember him?"

"I remember de-panting him and tossing him onto that anthill. Everything before that? Bit hazy."

"Well, he talked before the butt pinching and de-panting commenced. He said he was in a town that got stripped by the League. Said that their salvage gangs have some way to project an energy fence, so they can box a town before they move in."

"Red hair," Malice muttered. "Yeah, I do remember. Right. You're right. Fuck it. They're gonna work us over . . . Dammit. We are screwed like lady bunnies."

"Anal probes sound almost gentle by comparison, don't they? Question is, how did we become a League target? We don't have anything here that would make the investment pay off. We don't have anything that's worth the effort."

"We've got your succulent ass," Malice said absently. "That would be worth some effort."

"Shaddup."

Malice shot me her feral grin, knowing she'd provoked me, but a second afterwards, she grew solemn. "Seriously, though, you know damn well what they'd want from us."

"But they don't know about that. No fucking way."

"They came here, didn't they? Somebody must have seen something. Somebody talked. Something got leaked."

She was right and I didn't want to think about that, so I grunted, palmed a rock into my sling pocket, and swung it in long loops, trying to look like I was doing something useful and probably convincing nobody.

Emily, who had been looking long in the face the entire time, chose this moment to pipe up. "So it for sure, for sure isn't aliens?"

"It's nothing new," I said. "Let's put it that way."

There was still a damn good chance that some of us would end up dead, probed, or livestock, but there was no need to discuss that, not yet. Break bad news at breakfast, my dad used to say.

"So it's not the apocalypse," Emily said, disappointed. "Can we still drink the champagne?"

I quirked an eyebrow at Malice and she nodded. So we sat down on the tenement steps and passed the bottle 'round.