Wait. The Septimus folks? Could it be?
He’d been thinking of them as some sort of stuck-up BPOE group, but at the meeting last night the two honchos there had said the Octogon Brotherhood in Frankie’s book was too much like Septimus for comfort. The Octogon had come to him in one of his dreams—utterly ruthless, eliminating anyone who got in its way like the average Joe would swat a fly. And those Septimus honchos had made it very clear they did not want Dark Apocalypse published.
Had they sent someone to make sure that didn’t happen? Ever?
This was the kind of stuff he wrote about. Fiction. It didn’t happen in real life—at least not to him.
Frankie held his breath as the intruder stomped into his bedroom. He watched the guy’s Nikes through the one-inch gap between the rug and the bottom of the nightstand. Saw him get down on his hands and knees and check under the bed.
Please don’t look back here! Please, don’t look back here!
He didn’t. Frankie released his breath when the guy stormed out of the room.
What to do? He couldn’t stay here, balancing on a chair set atop a dresser. His best bet was to—
Out in the front room, the intruder started to talk to someone. Were there two of them?
“Hey, it’s Belgiovene. I’m in the guy’s apartment but he’s not around…yeah, his laptop’s here, open and running, so I don’t think he’ll be out long.”
Sounded like he was on a phone.
“Well, in a way this works out better. I’ll lock his door just like he left it and be waiting for him when he wanders back in…right, won’t know what hit him…and yeah-yeah, I know: Take the laptop.” A pause, then a muttered, “Fuck you, Drexler. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
The realization that this guy was here to either kill him or beat the crap out of him almost tumbled Frankie off the chair. Time to retreat. Bending his shaky knees and praying he didn’t lose his balance, he lowered himself to the dresser and then to the floor.
Okay. No heroics. Call the cops and report a thief or a home invader or whatever in his apartment. He pulled out his phone, punched in 9-1-1, and waited. When no one answered, he repeated. Then he noticed No Service on the screen. How could that be? The only place in this city with no service was a deep basement or a subway tunnel without a repeater.
He stepped into the kitchen and grabbed the wall phone there but got no dial tone. And what the fuck—a rotary phone?
Had to find a spot with a signal.
He hurried out to the hall but stopped when he reached it. None of this looked familiar. And the number on the apartment door said 11-M. No way. He’d come down to the third floor, right below his own place.
Feeling like reality was slipping away, he hit the stairs and stopped again. What happened to all the graffiti? The stairwell had been coated with bullshit tags. This one was clean—totally clean.
Shaky now, he hurried up to the next floor—supposed to be the fourth but the door was labeled 12.
What’s going on?
He peeked down the hall. His was the fifth door down and it stood open. In fact, all the apartment doors were open.
And then the silence hit him. He realized he hadn’t heard a human voice or a single note of music since he’d left 11-M. That just didn’t happen in his building. Some asshole was always blasting rap or salsa or something equally obnoxious behind one of the doors.
Where is everybody?
Frankie crept down the hall and peeked into his own place.
Except it wasn’t his place. The furniture wasn’t the same, the walls were a different color, no work desk, no laptop, no bookshelves, and…and the emptiness was palpable. The whole building felt deserted.
He stepped to the nearest window where he looked out on a city he’d never seen before. He didn’t know where he was but that wasn’t the Lower East Side out there. Nothing on the skyline looked familiar. And worse—nothing was moving—empty streets, empty sidewalks. The place looked like a ghost town.
“Shit!”
Before he knew it he was fleeing along the hall and down the stairs and back to 11-M. He’d take his chances with Belgiovene or whatever he called himself. At least he’d be back in New York, not this…this empty movie set.
He charged into the bedroom and began to climb onto the dresser when he noticed that the ceiling was intact. No gap. Not even a crack. Sealed up as if nothing had ever been wrong.
Frankie kneeled on the chair and pounded on the ceiling where the gap had been.
“No! NO!”
HARI
The propjet flight from Newark was noisy and bumpy but on time. Enterprise had their rental—a black Taurus—ready and waiting, the only hitch being a brief argument over who would drive, which Donny lost. Hari didn’t like being a passenger, so she convinced Donny he’d be the better navigator. Once they got rolling they had a second argument when Donny wanted to play music from his phone through the car’s sound system. Thirty seconds’ worth was all she could stand.
“I would call that bad music,” she said, turning it off, “but that would classify it as music, which it most definitely is not.”
“You don’t like DMX? He’s from my high school days.”
“He makes the B-52s sound good.”
“Who are the B-52s?”
“You never heard of—I don’t believe it. ‘Rock Lobster?’ The worst rock song ever?”
A head shake. “Nope. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Consider yourself lucky. Find a country station.”
He looked horrified. “Country? You like country?”
She didn’t, but she figured he’d like it less.
By noon they were cruising through an industrial park just outside Albany where Sirocco Trucking occupied a huge warehouse. Hari passed it once to get the lay of the land. It sat on a low rise with a big, tree-lined parking lot. Good thing she had the address because no one had bothered to put a
