Afterworld (The Orion Rezner Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

I was, however, more than a little unsettled that the demon, or whatever it was, had read my mind and manifested the spitting image of my sister—right down to her bad pronunciation of my name.

I reached in my back pocket and took out the laminated picture of little Mary and me. It had been taken a year before the Culling, with her and I standing before the Grand Canyon. It had been our last big family vacation.

My parents had me early, when they were both seventeen. After I moved out to go to college, they experienced a bad case of empty nest syndrome. My sister was born when I was eighteen. The Culling happened the summer after I graduated college. Mary was only five.

Dude whined, perched next to my head, as I stared at the photo. I looked up at him and he stroked the patch of hair that stuck out between my bandages.

“Thanks, Dude.” I sniffed and got ahold of myself. “Come on, I gotta turn in my report to the council.”

Together, Dude and I left my one-bedroom apartment and took to the streets.

I
t was a quick, ten-minute walk to the Temple of Light, also known as the John Hancock Tower. The tower stands across from Trinity Church and is the source of the powerful spell shield that protects Boston and Cambridge from the many dangers of the outside world. During the wars immediately after the Culling, the tower lost a third of its huge windows. They were replaced by sheets of plywood, and as a result, the old nickname, The Plywood Palace, was reborn.

After the fall of the world as we knew it, the Council of Light took the building as its headquarters, due to it being the tallest building in Boston and the best location for the shield to dome the city. The radio signal that I and so many others followed had come from Hancock Tower. The spell shield was erected shortly afterward.

The streets were busy with many people out in the hot June sun, tending to the precious crops. The streets had been converted years ago into long, stretching gardens, and anyone with a green thumb had immediately become highly valuable to the community of Witnesses. Boston had, before the Culling, housed a number of businesses that produced storable food. The stuff with a twenty-five- to thirty-year shelf life was our backup and was highly rationed and guarded. We needed to learn to fend for ourselves, and quickly. Luckily, the supplies of food, batteries, fuel, and the like would allow for the conversion from dependent to self-sufficient. Boston also boasted a community of Amish Witnesses who helped to teach the rest of us the skills we would need. The new world had no place for those that could not pull their own weight—period. And everyone was beginning to learn that harsh fact. Luckily for Boston, fishing was still good along the coast, though it was highly dangerous, as the spell shield didn’t yet reach very far off shore.

I walked along St James Street, which was designated for growing corn. These days it is referred to as St James, St James Corn, or just Corn Street. I nodded to the many workers tending the crops, and marveled at the ingenious irrigation system that Witnesses from the rebuilt MIT had set up along the street. They utilized rainwater collected with funnels and tarps between the many tall buildings of the city. It wasn’t yet fully complete, but the summer had been wet, and there was enough water in storage to get us through a dry spell or two.

Everybody in the city had a job, which usually consisted of whatever they were best at, mixed in with one day a week of public service. I suspected that I had done my share for the week, with the exorcism, but I always went over my suggested hours anyway. Requirement or not, if I wasn’t pulling duties for the council, I was there among the crops during the summer months. In gardening, I find my Zen.

As I neared Trinity Church I thought of Father Killroy. He would be starting his sermon about now. I felt a little guilty about not having gone. Over the past year he has asked me every week to come, and I always find some excuse. He always stressed that I didn’t have to be religious to learn from the variety of life lessons his preaching could offer, or enjoy the sense of community that was experienced inside.

Maybe next week
.

I lied to myself and shrugged off the guilt. It wasn’t like he was going to become a stripper because I missed his sermons. If he did, it would be simply hilarious anyway.

I strolled into the Temple of Light, trying to get the image of Father Killroy dancing on a pole out of my head, and nodded at Clive Parker, the doorman. Clive was a big dude, well over six-four, but he, unlike most other people taller than me, didn’t make me feel weird. I’m six foot even, and I don’t have to look up to many people. When I do, its uncomfortable—don’t ask me why.

Clive greeted me with a big smile of pearlies. “What’s happenin’, Flood? Gimme some skin, sinna,” he said, and then gave a little chuckle.

He always laughed. I’ve yet to see Clive not wearing a smile, as if he is the only person who doesn’t know the world as we knew it is gone—or perhaps that
is
why he smiles so much.

I gave him some skin but was soon forgotten as he spotted Dude strutting in with his Superman costume on.

“Little brother from a monkey mother!” Clive yelled—which was his way of talking.

Though Clive seems like the nicest cat you ever want to meet, there is a reason he is the doorman at the Temple of Light. He is one badass wizard. I’ve seen him cast spells that would leave most wizards spent, without so much as breaking a sweat. He’s just about the most powerful wizard we’ve got who isn’t considered an elder of the Order of Franklin. But he is a bit of a loose cannon.

“Can’t chat, Clive. I’m late with a report.” I continued through the lobby, toward the stairs—well, dead escalators, actually. Mitch Hedberg was right.

“Man, tell them crusty crackers to shove their reports where their bald heads don’t shine—everybody in the city heard about the exorcism.”

“Will do. Come on, Dude.”

“Later, Flood!” Clive called through the lobby.

Dude caught up and disappeared up the stairs. Only the first ten floors of the building are used much these days due to the lack of power for the elevators. We have generators in the city, but not enough to power the hundreds of elevators throughout the buildings. People have gotten really good at climbing stairs—well, it was more of a homecoming for those who’d spent their pre-Culling years climbing eternally nowhere in the front windows of gyms and fitness centers.

I came out onto the second floor and saw the old receptionist Marla, who could be the long lost sister of the Crypt Keeper.

“Please sign in,” she said without looking up from her crossword puzzle.

I don’t know how many of those puzzles survived the Culling, but I’m pretty sure she has them all.

“Hello to you too, Marla.” I quickly scribbled my signature in the ledger and went on my way.

“The ape too,” she droned, penciling in a few letters.

He looked to me for guidance.

“You heard her,” I said. “Sign your name in the big book.”

Dude went berserk with joy. He loved to write his name—so much so that I can’t teach him to write anything else. He leapt onto the desk, scattering Marla’s crossword puzzles, and went to work. The old wrinkled bag offered me a scowl over her spectacles, and I smiled brightly. Dude leapt down, his cape flapping behind him, and strutted toward me. Even from a distance, I could make out the huge DUDE written across the ledger.

Marla’s scowl followed us down the hall as I whistled a happy tune.

We came to a huge wooden door that was ridiculously out of place in the old office building. It had large iron hinges and a knocker in the shape of a shooting star. I banged out the code, and the door opened on its own accord.

The first time you enter the heart of the Temple of Light, it feels like a dream. Gone is the drab “modern” decor with its ridiculous angles and corners, and in its place is what looks to be the inside of a castle. Why and how they changed it, I’ve no idea, but it is awesome. The feel really gets the old wizard juices flowing.

Inside the threshold stood two guards. At the moment, they were empty and motionless displays of knight’s armor. Had I been unwelcome, they would have come alive and ripped me to pieces.

Ahead of me were only a vast hall and a large spiral staircase leading up into the ten partially hollowed-out floors above. I nodded at the large picture of Benjamin Franklin to my right and headed up the spiral staircase. Landings split off at random intervals, leading to a variety of different rooms.

The Temple of Light housed the source of the spell shield and therefore many of the elders of the council. I was appointed the exorcism job a week ago as my rite of passage from apprentice to wizard, and I passed. I’d been waiting for this day for two years, but for some reason, battling a demon had taken some of the glee from my step. I mean, what was there really to celebrate? I almost died on my first real gig, and now it was going to be a full-time job…lucky me.

I didn’t realize my magical abilities until five years after the Culling. Like the rest of the world, the virus had seriously thinned out the wizard ranks in and around Boston, though a higher percentage of them had become Witnesses. After a few years they began conducting tests on the survivors to see if anyone could become an apprentice. I scored high enough to be taken as an initiate and then quickly an apprentice under Bartholomew Kronos, a real asshole. I was given a crash course at Harvard, now Harvard Witchcraft and Wizardry. The facilities and dorms functioned much as they always had, but now catered to apprentices of the craft. For two years we were drilled in combat wizardry. Though there were many more schools of study—apothecary, poisons and potions, transmutation, star reading, and so forth—the council needed warriors. It makes me laugh, looking back now. I went to college at a mediocre school and ended up graduating from Harvard with a degree in Wizardry. Life is funny sometimes, usually after it pisses in your corn flakes.

Eventually I came to the landing I was looking for on the fifth floor. I knocked on the solid-white door and waited patiently. After a time, it opened and a weird little hunchback dwarf named Croc peered out at me. Dude hissed and scurried up my robes to my shoulder. His clawing had drawn my hood off kilter, and one of my eyes was covered. I peered past Croc and saw the council elders staring at me from across a long room.

Croc called out in a croaking voice, “One Orion Rezner, apprentice to Bartholomew Kronos of the East Coast chapter of the Order of Franklin.”

I suspected that the extremely long chamber had been made so as to allow Croc enough time to name all titles. The room, no more than forty feet wide, was at least a hundred feet long. As I walked across it, there was plenty of time to gauge the faces of the gathered crowd. I came finally to the table that seated the seven elders of the Council of Light, and sitting off to the side was my master, Wizard Kronos. He looked nervous, for the first time I had witnessed.

The table of the elders was a ZZ Top look-alike contest—have I mentioned I’m obsessed with the 1980’s? They all wore flowing robes and had long white, brown, or salt and pepper beards. Atop their heads, they
actually wore
pointy hats—which were adorned with a number of different patterns representing their credentials and achievements, kind of like an army general’s campaign ribbons. Fortunately, they only donned such garb during official business—unfortunately, they considered everything official business.

Maximillian, the center wizard of the seven, spoke up, his weak raspy voice showing nothing of his true strength and power. He was, after all, at least two hundred years old, or so I am told. We wizards tend to live very long lives if we don’t get ourselves killed. It’s a positive side effect of working with magic.

“Orion Rezner, you have been tasked with aiding Father Killroy of Trinity Church with the exorcism of one Trevor Marks. Is that correct?” he asked.

“Yes, Eldermaster.”

“Do you know why we chose this quest above one more suited for you?”

I played along. “No, Eldermaster.”

Suddenly Dude shrieked—as he liked to do when thoroughly bored out of his mind—and the eldermaster looked at him as if he’d never seen a chimp before.

“You have shown a high proficiency for destructive spells, power, and force. We decided that a better-suited test would be one of will and ability—one in which presence of mind would be required.” He glanced at me over his spectacles. “And you passed.”

No shit
.

“The Council of Light grants you the title of Initiate Wizard of the Order of Franklin.”

A wave of excitement washed through me as the elder motioned for me to approach the long table. He handed me a sheathed katana, blue with a single lightning bolt—my reward for completing the rite of passage. Upon completion of training, each wizard is given a powerful weapon that has been enchanted by the elders.

“Wizard Rezner. We present to you Inazuma, Lightning Blade.”

I took the revered blade with a nod of respect to the council and returned to my place. A slow clapping echoed through the room, and I glanced back to my left to find Old Ben in his best early 1800s garb, applauding joyfully. I offered him a wink and turned back to the council.

The elder wizard looked behind me expectantly and then gave me a queer look.

“I accept the title generously offered me by the council,” I said.

The elder wizard nodded as if to say
yeah, yeah
, and they all began to get up. It was more than apparent that none of them liked the idea of granting the title of wizard to an apprentice after only two years of study. Back in the good ole days before the Culling, one would have to study for decades before becoming a wizard. But these were different times—we were at war, and wars need warriors. Still, they weren’t too excited by the proposition and were wasting no time in moving on to their next order of business—but I still had some.

“Wait! I mean, please—I would speak.”

The elders looked to each other and sat once again. Kronos gave me a threatening scowl.

“Go on,” said the center wizard.

“I would ask the council to allow me to join the next search party. I hav—”

Master Kronos shot up and bellowed in a deep voice that belonged to a Russian blues singer, “You never been out in field, need more time. You think it is game out there?”