Chapter Three: Nothing New

Noah cracked the front door and peered out into the street. All clear. He took a deep breath, as if he was about to jump into icy water, and crept across the threshold.

He moved as quietly as possible, head on a swivel as he tried to look in every direction. So far as he could see there were no mutant dogs lying in wait for him. There were plenty of places he couldn’t see, though. The feeling of being watched crawled up the back of his neck. He couldn’t decide whether or not he was imagining it.

He jostled his backpack into a more comfortable position. He’d packed everything he had which he thought might be of use, which was not even close to everything he’d need. Noah hadn’t exactly been planning for the end of the world.

He had an aluminium baseball bat that had spent the last year propped by his bedroom door, doing fuck all except for making him feel better about a potential home invasion. He didn’t think it’d be much use against a four hundred pound staffy, so it was reprising its role as a moral support rather than a weapon.

He had a few changes of clothes, and he’d put on his sturdiest pair of shoes. His only other pair. He made sure he had a beanie and gloves. He’d dredged up a lightweight rain jacket from somewhere. He had a plastic water bottle filled with the last of the tap water before it had started running brown. His last two packs of ramen filled his backpack to halfway.

Lastly, and most importantly, he had his drugs. The tiny bundle was the most securely wrapped and carefully packed item in his entire survival kit, such as it was. The package of powders and pills comforted him more than the cold handle of the baseball bat in his hand.

Noah wasn’t coming back. It was frightening, but he had needed to abandon ship before when a situation got too dangerous. Parties gone wrong, relationships with the couches he was surfing going sour, foster homes turning violent. It was nothing new. No apocalypses though. That was definitely new.

He felt woefully unprepared, but he knew how to put one foot in front of the other. Staying here would mean putting himself at the mercy of the universe. He knew how that tended to play out too.

He glanced about furtively before crossing his porch and descending the steps. He could hear a helicopter in the distance. The laboured, metallic whine of its rotor did not sound healthy. One of the gigantic trees across the street creaked in the wind, a sound like God’s door closing. The faint sound of a heated argument floated up the street from a few blocks away. From somewhere deep within the forest, an animal called; sudden, eerie, ululating.

Cold sweat crawled down Noah’s back as he crept down the street. As he’d packed, he’d kept an eye out. He’d seen another few people make their way to the same house. Each time they were admitted, a steady orange light poured from the threshold onto the dark pavement. In a situation where the only light was either the fitful stutters of electric wiring failing, or the glow of alien plants, it spoke of stability, security.

Now that he was on the street, he could see a light in one of the upper floor windows, blinking regularly. Noah could see why people were coming here. The blinking light seemed to say that someone here had a plan.

Noah reached the house quickly. He dithered for a moment at the steps. He couldn’t remember who lived here. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone coming or going. Most of the people in the row were young professionals though.

Now that he was close, he could hear the murmur of voices coming from inside. The noise drew him up the stairs to the door. He knocked softly.

The door cracked open and a suspicious face peered out. The man slowly looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on the bat. The door closed, and Noah felt a moment’s shock. Then he heard a chain being thrown and the door was pulled open, admitting Noah to a warmly lit room.

The man stepped back from the door, beckoning him in with a sweeping gesture. He looked a little older than Noah, perhaps in his early thirties. He was traditionally handsome, well-groomed and well-dressed, with a strong jaw, and physically fit. His smile was wide, showcasing his perfect teeth, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His overly emphatic gesture made it seem as though he was putting on an act for the other twenty or so people in the room.

Noah immediately disliked him. He had a slimy aura. He’d met plenty of people like this in his life, people whose smiles were calculating how they could use you and their pats on the back were just manoeuvring you into the best position for them to do it. He stepped around the man and into the room.

“Welcome!” the man said after he’d closed the door. “Welcome. Take a seat wherever you like. I’m Jason Cleary, pleasure to meet you.”

Noah noticed that Jason hadn’t asked for his name. Not that he’d expected him to care; it would be utterly unimportant to someone like him. Noah shuffled around the back of the room and slung his backpack against a small cabinet then leaned against it, half sitting. He noticed Jason’s small frown at the action and smiled internally.

The others were a mix of people of all ages. They glanced at Noah curiously, but their attention quickly returned to Jason. A man was fiddling with a radio receiver over the other side of the room. He didn’t look like he was making much progress. In the corner, a stern looking woman was tending to an older lady with an apparent head injury. A young east asian man was handing out tea.

“Where were we..?” Jason asked himself, returning to stand in front of the tv.

“What to do about the power!” called a crumpled boomer.

“Yes!” Jason snapped his fingers. “Exactly. Does anyone have any generators?”

There was silence from the room. Jason nodded sagely at this.

“As I thought. Okay, candles it is.” He swept another of his grand gestures at the candles illuminating the room. “Or batteries and torches, but they won’t last as long, and we might need to conserve them to signal others,” he said with a grin, jabbing a thumb upwards to the room where Noah assumed the blinking signal was coming from.

“We shouldn’t have to wait too long, I’d say about-”

Noah cleared his throat, interrupting him. A brief flash of annoyance clouded Jason’s features, but was replaced just as quickly with attentiveness so obsequious it was downright oily.

“Sorry,” Noah started. “But can anyone tell me what’s going on?”

“We’re just figuring out what to do about the power outage,” Jason said. The faux-seriousness of his reply was so close to the line it would’ve made Noah a fool to call him out for it directly.

He took a slow breath through his nose. “Yes,” he said. “Obviously. What I’m wondering is if anyone knows what’s happened?”

“Oh..,” Jason said, polite concern and bafflement warring across his insincere face. “There’s been an earthquake, of course. Were you asleep? I know young fellows like yourselves often lead …busy lives.”

Jason gave an indulgent chuckle, and half the people in the room chuckled along. Noah let the dig at his age pass over him. He knew it was intended to rile him up, which meant this slimy man didn’t want him thinking clearly, for some reason.

“Right,” Noah said. “If it was an earthquake, then where did the forest come from?”

Jason was unfazed, affecting concern over Noah not understanding this seemingly obvious conclusion again. “Earthquakes shift great quantities of, well, earth,” he said. Then he shrugged, as if trying to express how helpless he was to explain in any simpler terms.

Except that there were no forests anywhere near the city. There are no forests anywhere on Earth that have glowing fucking four story tall mushrooms in them either, Noah thought, but he bit his tongue and nodded. Jason stared at him a few more moments, apparently trying to decide whether he was going to cause any more trouble. Satisfied, he continued on.

“Now that we’ve cleared that up, we can move on to food and water,” Jason said. “We’re going to need enough for maybe a few days. That should be more than enough to last us until help arrives. There’s a store…”

Noah tuned out. These stupid fucks can’t really be planning on just… staying put, he thought. But as he listened in to more of their discussion, he realised that was exactly what they were planning.

They think help is coming. They’re going to trust that these walls are going to keep out all the God-knows-what monsters are roaming around. Or they don’t even know there are any. They’re gonna scrounge up enough food for a couple days and then have to go get more when they run out. Fuck knows what the situation will look like in twelve hours, let alone a few days. Fools.

Noah watched as the people listened to Jason with rapt attention. They looked absolutely terrified. He didn’t blame them for clutching at the first person who seemed to have some sort of control and following whatever stupid plan they came up with. They couldn’t see past their own terror. As for Jason…

Noah watched the oily fucker grandstand in front of his captive audience. He’s very good, I’ll give him that. I bet he’s a fucking car salesman, he thought. The slimy fuck wants to feel like the man. He doesn’t give a fuck if people get hurt. He just wants to be in charge.

Noah watched him for a bit longer, and noticed something strange. Every so often, Jason’s eyes would flick up to a corner of the room. It wasn’t often, and he hid it well, but it was there. At first, Noah thought he was checking out the front window, then, with a cold shock, he made a connection.

That fuck has a light-bro too. Noah had noticed that his own white ball of light had followed him in, passing through the wall to hover inside after Noah had entered. No one else had remarked on it. In the gloom of the candlelight, it was impossible that none of the other twenty odd people in the room hadn’t noticed it. There was only one explanation. Only Noah could see it.

He had idly been wondering whether that meant he was crazy when he had noticed Jason’s behaviour. He immediately began ignoring his own light. If he could notice Jason’s behaviour, then Jason could definitely notice his. He suddenly knew that he absolutely did not want the sharky fuck to know he had a light. He couldn’t say why, and chalked it up to intuition.

Suddenly, Noah stood up. He’d decided he’d seen enough. This reminded him of the few times he’d gone to the police when a foster home had gone wrong. Both times they’d just had him sit for what felt like hours and then just dropped him back home.

He grabbed his backpack and slung it on. Jason kept right on talking. It was only when Noah began to move for the door that he spoke to him.

“Are you alright there, young fellow? Did I say something wrong?” He gave that same indulgent chuckle. His audience chuckled along, right on cue.

“I’m having a smoke,” Noah said simply. He knew that it was obviously false. He also knew that Jason wouldn’t stop him, and that no one else would stop him without Jason’s say so.

Noah slipped out into the night. As he closed the door he could see Jason’s triumphant smile. People like him did not like challenges to their authority, whether real or perceived. Noah leaned against the front of the house and sighed. The stupid fucks in there are welcome to him. Now, what should I do…

Trying to get information about the situation had been a failure, but he’d at least learned some things. No one knew what was going on. His guess was as good as anyone’s.

Better than some, he thought, thinking about the people inside.

Right, he thought. Next steps. Fantastical disaster. No help coming. I need food, water, and shelter. Enough to last as long as possible. And I need to get it done as quickly as possible too.

Noah wracked his brains. He decided to go to the strip mall, which had a big supermarket along with various other stores. He couldn’t remember what stores were there exactly, and he couldn’t google it. He’d be able to get his food and water there at least. On the way, he’d keep an eye out for anywhere that would make a good place to hole up.

He eyed the empty street in the direction of the mall. Shadows played across it as the luminous plants on the other side swayed in the wind. Occasionally, slices and segments would light up as electric lights flickered. More importantly, the road was impassable.

Cars were strewn across the road at random intervals. Many had crashed into each other, or into the fronts of buildings along the road. Noah guessed those had been driving when the disaster struck.

Beyond that, there were huge cracks and potholes in the road. Some had roots growing out of them. They trailed along the road, sometimes for fifty feet or more, before plunging back in. They put Noah in mind of leviathans, their sinuous wooden bodies coiling through the surface.

He could see at least three different places where the front of buildings had collapsed and spilled onto the sidewalk and road. In another two places, massive trees had toppled over and formed impenetrable wooden bulwarks.

It would be impossible to drive there, especially in his shit box car. Plus, if another disaster hit, he’d much rather be travelling slower than thirty miles an hour. He estimated it would take about thirty to forty minutes to walk there.

Barring any interruptions, he thought, studying the shadows shifting along the concrete.

Noah took a deep breath and tightened the straps on his pack. He drummed his fingers on the cool aluminium handle of his bat. In the distance, the screech of tires blended with the He stepped off the porch, trying to keep his head on a swivel.

He crept down the street like a mouse. House to tree, tree to car, car to mushroom, shadow to shadow.

He twitched at every noise, and there were some loud noises. Five minutes or so into his journey, the distant, laboured whine of the helicopter suddenly rose to a pitch. There was a great metallic ping, and then a few seconds later, an almighty crash.

Noah waited for the sound of an explosion that never came. Unless you counted one of the other five or so other explosions he heard. But those were in completely different directions, and couldn’t have been related to the helicopter.

There were closer sounds too, though not as loud. Sirens and horns. Screams and shouts. Gunshots. Crashing, and all manner of metallic noises. At one point, a jeep careened from a side street, swerving wildly between obstructions, bouncing as it tried to accelerate. It hit something and turned sharply, smashing into a brick wall at speed.

Noah pointedly did not investigate the jeep as he passed it a minute later. He had seen enough bodies today. Nearly every car he passed had a corpse in it. The ones that had crumpled into dashboards or been impaled on their steering columns were the best. They were contained. The ones that had been thrown through windshields to splatter against walls or leave a meaty streak on the asphalt were the worst. They were messy. There were many of them.

There were other bodies, too. He found a bird, morphed horrifically with a cat. It did not look like it had survived whatever force had initially thrown the two animals together. He saw an insect, like a mosquito, but as large as a pigeon, and he was glad it was only a body.

He found a humanoid corpse as well, though it was clearly not human. Lying on its back, it had fair hair, perfect and yellow, all the way down to its waist. At the time, it had been spread out in a halo around its head. Its face was longer, narrower than any human’s face Noah had ever seen. Its eyes were canted, and its ears were pointed. Its face was surprised, the expression fixed, as if it had been nailed there by the gunshot wound that marred the otherwise flawless skin of its cheek.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Noah had no idea what to think of it. It looked just like an elf. For clothing, it wore a long robe, elaborately coloured and embroidered, just like elves were supposed to wear. It wore soft slippers that looked as though they were made from crushed velvet. Once again, very elven.

Noah supposed someone might have gone a bit hard on the plastic surgery. There were cat people and barbie people and devil people and all sorts around. His gut told him this wasn’t just some convincing fake, though.

He stared at the forest across the road. The shadows cast by its dense canopy split and shivered under the chaotic, natural neon light of the undergrowth. As far as he could see, nothing moved in there. But it seemed silly to think nothing lived in there.

Noah was about to carry on when he noticed a small, glossy black gem sitting on the ground next to the elf. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands admiring its sheen. He’d never seen anything like it. Actually, it was very similar to the brown-and-gold gem he’d found on his chair, just a different colour. Eventually, he slid it into his backpack. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed valuable, he guessed. He glanced back at the elf one more time before he carried on, thoughtful.

He soon decided that it was better to run into the dead than the living. He hid under a car from a gang of rough looking men, all armed with bats and pipes and guns. He had seen their silhouettes from ages away, and was glad that he had been moving cautiously, keeping low and scurrying from one spot to another. The men were joking casually about murder as they passed.

Later, a terrified middle aged woman came flying out of a nearby house, throwing herself at him and begging that he take her with him, that he help her, that he save her. When Noah recovered from the shock of being set upon, he told her no, and that she should go back inside.

The woman immediately flew into a rage, all that desperation turning to anger in a flash. She scratched and hit him, beating at him with wild, flailing hands, until eventually, cringing under the assault, Noah shoved her over. The woman began wailing piteously, and he ran away before she attracted any other attention.

He glanced down a street as he was crossing an intersection, and a glowing figure caught his eye. It looked like someone had set themselves on fire, but they were strangely calm, standing utterly still in the middle of the road as the flames flickered about their form.

Suddenly, someone shot at him, the crack of gunfire echoing through the neighbourhood. Noah felt something whine as it passed by him and the concrete on the building next to him chipped.

He sprinted around the corner, out of their line of sight, and didn’t dare peek back around. He never saw what became of the person who’d decided on self-immolation.

~~~~~

Piper huddled together with Kira and Chloe in one of the booths in the bar. Both had woken up hours ago, seemingly none the worse for their long unconsciousness. The bar was warm with body heat, filled with the murmur of low conversation. The dark of deep night had set in, and the alien glow of the plants outside cast everything in an ethereal light.

All of the other patrons had now either woken up or died. One of the first things Marcus had ordered was to carry all the bodies out into the clearing. Piper had begged off the work, revealing her status as a nurse-in-training and using it to monitor the unconscious instead. The slowly growing crowd of security guards made some of the male patrons carry out the horrible work.

She watched as people stopped breathing, one by one, and were thrown in a pile outside. Every person whose eyes fluttered open instead felt like a massive victory to her. Not that she had much to do with it, besides monitoring them.

She gathered many more of the little black gems, and her purse was now getting full. She even saw a few appear. Sometimes, after someone died, a little swirl of black light would coalesce and, from inside it, a black gem would drop. She still wasn’t sure what their purpose was, if they had any at all, but the magpie in her wouldn’t let her just leave them lying around.

She’d also taken a fleece coat from one of the dead men, as well as a few pairs of socks. One of the dead men was small, and wearing comfortable sneakers. She took them too. Many of the patrons hadn’t realised the magnitude of the effects that the disaster was likely to have. Her heels would be a massive liability soon.

She felt vaguely disgusted with herself, but the dead didn’t need their possessions anymore, and they could mean the difference between life and death for her. She had been used to doing what she needed to to survive for a long time anyway. This was nothing new.

Three things had become blindingly obvious over the last four or five hours. The first was that Marcus and his security company employees were going to try and round everyone up and control them.

The man was a thug, but he was canny. He’d obviously realised that this disaster was not going to fix itself any time soon, and that he was perfectly placed to capitalise on this with his employees.

The second was that the disaster was both widespread and likely to last a long time. Once everyone had been corralled back inside the bar by the security, people had realised that every service was no longer operating. The quicker among them had realised the import of this: millions would die. Billions, even. It would take a very, very long time for any kind of order to be reestablished. Life as they knew it had changed completely.

The third and final thing was that living under the yoke of Marcus and his goons was intolerable. After Marcus had killed that first man for dissent, it was like he had flipped some bestial switch in his underlings. Once he had proven they could do what they like with no consequences, they had begun to follow. Further dissent, or any behaviour they took exception to, was punished harshly. One of the punishments had been …spectacular.

After Marcus killed the first man, one of his friends had caused a ruckus an hour later. The fracas brought Marcus into the bar again. Marcus had gone to draw the sword, but the man had been ready for it and swung a wild haymaker.

Before the punch could land, red, ragged lines had appeared in the air, growing like some ethereal beast had torn a hole in reality with its claws. They ripped into the wild man and tore several great gashes down his front. He collapsed instantly and bled out within seconds.

A deathly hush had fallen over the bar. Everyone -patrons and guards- had been watching. Marcus had looked as surprised as everyone else, though he covered it quickly. After the casual, magical murder, he strolled back outside without another word.

Piper still wasn’t sure if she had been hallucinating or not. Magic glowing lights, magic powers, elves, and a magic forest? It was seeming more and more likely that the only explanation for all of this was …magic.

Several more people had since been killed for speaking up. Another handful had been killed when they tried to sneak off. Piper assumed they had been killed anyway; they’d been dragged off somewhere and hadn’t been seen since.

Several people had been beaten, some badly enough that they’d probably have permanent injuries. Many of the guards were being sent off to find more of their coworkers, and it didn’t escape Piper’s notice that they often returned with bloodstained clothes.

If Marcus gaining apparent magic fucking powers didn’t make it obvious, then everything else still pointed to a simple conclusion: she needed to leave.

Or, more accurately, to escape.

Marcus kept sending his bouncers out regularly to find others and bring them back. They now had a cohort of around twenty security guards and doormen; pretty much everyone who worked for him who had also been working in the surrounding bars when the disaster struck.

Marcus quickly organised them into small groups. A couple of these groups kept everyone in line at the bar. Everyone else was sent out with clandestine orders.

Soon, they had begun returning with people in tow; other patrons of nearby bars, mostly. They were herded in with the rest of them, and soon the bar filled back up. Everyone huddled together, talking in hushed tones, afraid they would draw the ire of the guards preventing them from leaving through the only exit: the now-open front of the club.

Other groups began to return with weapons: tasers and mace, knives and pipes and bats, even a few guns. These were distributed among the bouncers. Marcus himself kept the sword from the dead elf creature, and a handgun too.

It all painted a pretty clear picture as far as Piper was concerned. These people were not going to let them leave. Soon, Piper guessed, once they’d found a sufficiently secure location, they would move everyone somewhere where they could use much less manpower to watch over them.

From there, it would only be a matter of time until everyone accepted Marcus’ control. People would do anything to get out of a cage. Stockholm syndrome would take effect, and spread, and soon everyone would be happy to murder people because they stood up to them.

Piper knew her best bet to escape would be before they moved everyone to a new base of operations. Escaping during the move would be possible too, she supposed, but they would surely be expecting that. But once everyone was crammed into the top floor of one of the nearby office blocks, or locked in an undamaged store… things would become much more difficult.

No, she thought. It has to be soon. It has to be now. I refuse to end up as some post-apocalyptic gang’s plaything.

She started formulating plans. She was good at this; it was just like planning a robbery. She would need help, for sure. There were simply too many guards for anyone to just sneak away or make a break for it. They would need a distraction of some kind.

She began considering accomplices. She would ask June, but once it became clear which way the wind was blowing the blonde bitch had begun cosying up to the bouncers. Piper didn’t even really blame her. It was obvious which way this was all going to pan out, and making sure you were on the right side early was smart.

It might even work for her. June was a nursing student too, after all. She was useful. Piper just wasn’t willing to bet that these thugs would place her usefulness above their base natures. That, and she had already fucked over Marcus. The man would never trust her. She would be lucky if he didn’t torture her to death just because he could, now.

June was out. Piper would love to have tried to get her out too, but her mentality was too normal. When presented with something outside the realms of her experience, something dangerous and unknown, she clutched desperately at the first sign of stability and safety.

The only reason Chloe and Kira hadn’t started sucking up to their captors was because they had been unconscious for so long. Already, Piper could see the two of them watching what June was doing, laughing with the bouncers, flirting with them, fetching them things. They were planning how to manoeuvre themselves into that same position.

Even if they decided not to risk associating themselves with the guards like June, Piper couldn’t trust them not to spill the beans to her. They’d all known each other for a lot longer than she had.

Piper had only known them for just over a year. She knew that she came off as a little weird to her friends as a result of her tumultuous childhood. They probably liked her well enough, but if it came down to throwing Piper under the bus to guarantee their own survival, she didn’t trust them.

No, her friends couldn’t be trusted not to fuck up the plan. Maybe she could come back for them later. She began considering other options.

She swept her gaze across the room. All the booths were occupied, and people had made small circles or huddles on the floor with blankets and coats. People moved around, some getting drinks from the bar, others to chat to the guards or other patrons, to use the toilets, or to stare out into the gloomy forest.

There was a line of six brawny men hanging around the front of the bar, lounging on some bar stools that had survived the forest being spliced into the front of the club. All of them were armed with a variety of weapons. The only other exits were the hallway to the bathrooms, and the door to the kitchen. Neither room had any windows.

Piper quickly spied what she was after. Two groups on the floor were sitting in circles. One group had two men, the one adjacent to it had three. The sides of each group containing them were adjacent to each other, though slightly off-centre.

The guys were all bigger men. They looked to Piper like footballers or gym junkies, exactly the type of young fuck boys that you’d find out clubbing on a Friday night like this. None of them looked happy.

The individuals in the groups were speaking in low volumes, but weren’t talking to each other. Or they didn’t appear to be, anyway. The women in the group seemed casual at a glance, but were watching the bouncers at the front closely. Piper would bet her life that they were colluding with each other and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

She considered what to do. Those types of guys wouldn’t be okay with being pushed around, to being relegated to the role of captive. They wouldn’t like being dismissed, being overlooked as a threat even. It would be a blow to their egos.

They wouldn’t do anything, though. They’d talk a big game, about how they’d take on the bouncers, about how they’d save everyone, but it would all be ifs, and buts. Piper could practically hear their self-aggrandising bullshit from here. They wouldn’t actually try anything. They’d need a push.

Next steps, then, she thought.

She could get up and move around; that wouldn’t be unusual. It would definitely draw attention if she went and sat with them, though. At very least, Kira and Chloe would remark on it, and June would notice as soon as she next came in. Currently, her erstwhile friend was outside flirting with Marcus and the few others he called supervisors.

Getting their attention so directly was out of the question. She needed another plan.

Piper turned to Kira and Chloe. “I’m going to check the kitchen and see if there’s any water. I’ll be right back.” Her friends nodded absently. Both of them were still trying to find their feet after regaining consciousness. Piper gave it another hour before they joined June and started cosying up to the security.

She stood up, carefully navigating her way through the tangle of legs and hands to the other side of the club. A few people glanced up at her, but no one paid her any mind. A couple of the bouncers outside noticed her, but neither of them seemed worried. There was nowhere for her to go.

She pushed open the door to the kitchen, its hinges silent as it swung inwards. A small room greeted her, enough space for maybe four or five people to work. Immediately, Piper began searching around. She gathered up aprons, hand towels, hats, even a chef’s jacket, and carefully arranged them all into a haphazard looking pile.

She began a second round of the kitchen, pulling open drawers and taking down utensils from magnetic strips. She wove a hand towel through the blades and prongs so they wouldn’t jangle. Then she squirrelled her spoils away in the middle of the bundle of towels and aprons.

Finally, she grabbed another of the thick glass water bottles and managed to fill it almost two thirds of the way before the kitchen tap sputtered and gave up.

Right, she thought. Ready.

“What are you doing..?”

“Oh!” she yelped, whirling around. June was eyeing her from the doorway. “Fuck! You gave me a fucking heart attack!”

June said nothing for a long moment. “What are you doing, Piper?”

“I’m getting water, what does it look like I’m doing? The taps at the bar are fucked.”

“What’s this?” June asked, glaring at her as she laid a hand on the pile of towels and aprons.

“People are getting cold, June! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the whole front of the fucking bar is gone! People aren’t dressed for the weather. If your new fucking boyfriend is going to insist on us staying here then they need to stay warm!”

June sauntered over to her. “Marcus told me what you did. It all makes sense now. I always knew you were a charity case. It never added up how you always had the latest shit. How long have you been a fucking thief for, Piper? Why the fuck would you try and rob the owner of a security company? Are you fucking stupid? What were you thinking?”

Piper squared up to June, sliding closer to her, holding her eyes. It was apparent that no one had ever actually stood up to June before, because although she stood firm, her eyes showed her quailing resolve.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” she hissed. “You have no idea what I’ve had to do to survive.” She poked June in the sternum. “You have no idea what kind of person it made me.” She advanced until her face was an inch away from June’s.

“But if you fuck around with me, you’ll find out,” she growled.

She shoved June as hard as she could. The pretty blonde was sent flailing backwards towards the door. She looked like nothing so much as a cat that had been given a fright, fur a-ruffled.

June quickly composed herself, straightening her skirt and hair, then swept back through the door with a final glare.

Piper let out a deep breath, her eyes sliding to the pile of aprons. Thank fuck, she thought, relief welling up. Then, Well, I guess that friendship’s done then.

Her feelings were complex. On one hand, she’d gone most of her life without friends. She was outwardly gregarious and personable, but she never let anyone close. Now that she was on her own, she’d started to relax. June was the first person she’d befriended at nursing school once she’d realised she didn’t want to be a lonely hermit the whole time she was studying. Although she was materialistic, and could be pretty bitchy, she was also fairly kind and caring. She was just trying to grasp onto some thread of safety in this.

The thing was, Piper didn’t care. Fuck her, she thought with real vinegar. Trying to cosy up to power was one thing, but making excuses for someone like Marcus? Coming at her with judgements on her life? Absolutely not.

Fuck her, she thought again. That bitch will get what’s coming to her. Fuck her. Piper spent a moment seething, tightening her hands into fists, her face a cold mask. Slowly, she mastered herself, then gathered up her bundle and pushed back out into the bar.

June was leaning over the table, talking to Chloe and Kira. The other two girls shot her a glance as she came out of the kitchen. June gestured to her then outside, and then the three of them sauntered out of the front towards the bouncers, glaring daggers at her the whole way.

Good, she thought. Fuck them too.

Piper navigated back through the people on the floor to the two groups she’d noticed earlier. She crouched down beside one of the men with her bundle.

“I thought you might be able to use these,” she murmured, and laid the bundle down next to him.

The man gave her a confused look, but nodded at her anyway. A few of the girls spoke a quiet thanks to her. Half of them were wearing less than half a full outfit. They eyed the aprons hungrily.

Piper rose smoothly and wandered over to her now empty booth. She wedged herself into the far corner of it, pulling her legs up to her chest, and watched.

The man she’d handed the bundle to began distributing the aprons to the girls around him. After a few, he hesitated after pulling one free of the pile. His head came up, his eyes locking with Piper’s in surprise. She gave him a slow, deliberate nod. The man searched her eyes, then returned the nod.

Piper watched as he carefully investigated the pile. The rags and such that he began handing out were handed out with a lot more care. Piper could see him speaking in whispers to his friends. Many of the guys suddenly became interested in getting their own hand towel.

Piper’s eyes flicked up to the open front of the bar. June, Kira and Chloe were all hanging around a table of the bouncers, laughing and twirling their hair and making eyes. Beyond them, at the beginning of the tree line, she could see Marcus in low conversation with his supervisors.

Kettle’s on the boil, just need to listen for the whistle, Piper thought. She fingered the handle of the boning knife she’d hidden in the bulky sleeve of her fleece coat, and waited.