Part Seven
"Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender."
-Jackson Browne, "The Pretender"
Two weeks later-
The power failed at just after two in the morning. The VCR clock flickered and died as Lindsey jolted awake from what was rapidly becoming a rarity, sleep without dreams, and rubbed at his eyes. Lindsey tilted his head to one side, listening for the sound that had woken him to come again; the apartment threw nothing back but silence. With the forces of law and order decimated by Captain Trips, some of the survivors had taken to roaming the streets like animals escaped from a zoo, breaking into the homes turned tombs of plague victims and scurrying away with whatever useful baubles they could find amongst the ruins. Thus far, Cordelia and Lindsey had been powerfully luck in going unmolested.
Adrenaline soaked Lindsey's blood as he continued to listen, making his heartbeat the loudest sound in the room. It was several more minutes before Lindsey realized that it was not sound that had woken him, but the absence of it. The hum of the air-conditioning was such a fixture of modern life that Lindsey hadn't noticed it until it was no longer there.
"What's wrong?" Cordelia asked from the couch. Her voice was breathy, not entirely awake.
"Power's gone out," Lindsey told her.
"Oh. That's all." Cordelia turned back onto her side, fully asleep again within moments.
Lindsey remained sitting up, head cocked, waiting with bated breath for a sound that he already knew would be a long time in being heard again, if ever. The electricity didn't come back on and Lindsey exhaled his breath in a whistling sigh. The hope that civilization might yet find a way to arise, phoenix-like, from its own ashes had been growing weaker by the day, but it still died hard.
Cordelia's breathing had returned to a slow, even rhythm before Lindsey rose to his feet and began struggling into his shoes, muttering barely audible obscenities beneath his breath as he fought with the laces. The skin across his wrist, stretched shiny-pink and scarcely healed, sent road flares up his arm as he accidentally bumped it against the coffee table. Lindsey exhaled and dug the nails of his remaining hand into his palm to prevent himself from making a sound. The jingle of the truck keys as Lindsey snatched them from the coffee table made Cordelia turn over in her sleep, but she did not wake. Lindsey slipped into the night noticed by Dennis alone.
Movement at the end of the block drew Lindsey's eye as he unlocked the truck, but a closer inspection proved it to be nothing more than a forlorn, ill-fed cat. The cat meowed plaintively while Lindsey was at a distance, only to hiss and become one with the darkness when he drew close. Lindsey wondered if the cat had picked up the behavior from watching the few humans that were left, or if it had been the other way around.
Lindsey gave up on the cat and slid behind the wheel of the truck, still smelling the hay and sunshine that bled out of the seats. His fingers trembled, just for a moment, as he slid himself the keys into the ignition. Lindsey told himself to stop being weak and pulled away from the curb.
For a city in which the dead now far outnumbered the living and the smell of rot was fast becoming all pervasive, the streets that Lindsey drove down had remained remarkably clear of corpses, even those of animals. It would seem that in their final moments, most people had preferred the dignity of their homes to the soulless vastness of the sky. The glass glittering on the sidewalk from broken shop windows was the only sign that Lindsey hadn't stepped onto an unused movie set.
He encountered only one other person during the course of his drive, an elderly man who stumbled in front of the truck as though he were not even aware that it was there. Lindsey stood on the brakes and the vehicle screamed to a stop with so little room to spare that the old man could have bent and kissed the metal. He stared at Lindsey with dinner-plate eyes before making a cawing sound not unlike that of a crow and whirling away into the shadows. Lindsey smothered the oath that had risen in his throat and drove on.
The Wolfram and Hart were dark and somehow sad-looking as Lindsey brought the truck to a halt, a fairy-tale villain that had been vanquished and then left to rot. Lindsey jangled the keys in his hand as he climbed down from the cab and approached, feeling very much as Jack must have as he approached the cooling corpse of the giant: mostly sure it was dead, but watching for movement all the same.
The great glass doors that led into the main lobby were securely locked and defied the odds by unbroken by looters. Yet. Lindsey scouted about on the street until he found a broken piece of curb large enough to serve his purpose, hiked his arm back, and released it in a pitch better than anything he had done since high school. The glass shattered as the rock passed through it, sounding much louder than it actually was by contrast to the stillness. Lindsey waited for alarms-who knew what kind of generators the building had supplying it in this dimension or another-but the silence which echoed back was almost worse. Wincing as a few stray bits of glass snagged at his arms, Lindsey shrugged off his nerves and stepped into what was left of the most powerful law firm in Los Angeles.
There were no bodies, and Lindsey could not say that he was surprised. Wolfram and Hart may claim their employees' souls in both this life and the next, but it was a still a painfully lonely place to die. Lindsey's footsteps echoed on the floor like half-remembered voices and he stepped a bit faster, bypassing the sulking, useless hulks of the elevators in favor of the stairs.
Wolfram and Hart had been more familiar to him than in his own apartment over the course of the past five years; he hardly needed light to pick his way through it now. Nevertheless, Lindsey paused by one of the guard's stations long enough to pick up a flashlight before he began his descent, and the thin light dipped and bobbed in front of him, creating as many shadows as it abolished. The air was cool, slightly musty, and utterly without movement. Lindsey had felt air like this while standing inside tombs.
Of the two bodies that Lindsey encountered in Wolfram and Hart's entire building, one of them was slumped in a boneless heap beside the door to Darla's quarters. Lindsey crouched onto his heels in order to view what was left of the guard at a closer range, wondering at the horror that he did not feel. The body was still wearing its uniform, had dark hair, and appeared to have once been a man. Beyond that, everything that Lindsey came up with was based upon guesswork. The guard's face was swollen and black, his flesh rising in a tidal wave above the fabric of his collar. A mess of blood, spit, and snot had run down his face, coagulating into a solid veneer across his lips and chin. Lindsey wiped his hands as he stood up, in spite of the fact that he had not actually touched the body.
There had been so much reliance on electricity and technology to keep Darla inside her lovely cage that the door handle turned easily beneath Lindsey's hand. Or maybe what was left of Wolfram and Hart's movers and shakers had decided that she simply wasn't worth the effort any longer. All the same, Lindsey hesitated a moment before he stepped inside the room, like he would before entering a hospital room, if not a morgue. Fading wards shivered across his skin.
The exquisite furniture that made up the room still glittered in remembrance of better days, in spite of the fact that its mistress was very dead. Lindsey thought that for that reason alone he was going to smash a few pieces before he left. Darla was lying on a bed large enough to sleep four people with ease and was hooked up to so many lifeless, motionless gadgets that she seemed more machine than human. Lindsey half expected her to rise from the bed like a mad scientist's experiment gone berserk as he approached. She had already begun to rot, veins desiccating and collapsing in on themselves with the IV lines still protruding from them, and the horror and despair that Lindsey had failed to feel at the body of the guard began making up for lost time. His kneecaps turned to water. "Oh, Darla." Lindsey sank into one of the chairs beside her bed. The ghastly black swellings that were the telltale sign of the superflu had risen on her neck, but no further. Some power above or below had spared her face, leaving it as porcelain-lovely as it had been the first time that Lindsey had laid eyes on her. Her eyes were closed, faint purple shadows marking the lids. Lindsey extended his arm to run his fingers through the corn silk that fanned out around her head.
'LINDSEYLINDSEYLINDSEY, DEAR LYING LINDSEY.'
Lindsey startled hard and jumped backwards from the body, knocking the chair over in the process. His entire body felt as though it had been hooked up to a car engine with a pair of jumper cables.
'I'M GROWING IMPATIENT, LINDSEY. I GAVE YOU A JOB TO DO, LINDSEY. I DO NOT LIKE DILLY-DALLYERS, LINDSEY, AND YOU DO WANT ME TO LIKE YOU.'
The voice rose into a volume high enough to make speakers explode and drove Lindsey to his knees. He may have moaned, screamed, or even passed out; the passage of time was rendered fluid by the shriek. When he could open his eyes again, it was to see a slow puddle of blood being lapped up by the carpet. Bloodied nose. Lindsey sank back onto his haunches, wiped the blood off his face with the palm of his hand. He had viewed far greater quantities of his own blood. It didn't make sense that he should be so nauseated now.
"You didn't have to do that," Lindsey muttered, knowing how much fire that he was playing with and finding in equal measure that he did not care.
'WE HAVE A DEAL, LINDSEY. YOU DO UNDERSTAND DEALS, DON'T YOU, LINDSEY, WITH YOUR CONTRACTS AND YOUR COURTROOM AND YOUR PRECIOUS RED TAPE?'
"I understand," Lindsey said, slurring his words as through he was half-drunk. The roar in his head was making it difficult to think. "And I understand what the alternatives are. It will be done."
'I WANT IT DONE NOW.'
Lindsey nearly passed out. "Now," he agreed. "All right. Whatever you want."
'I KNEW YOU WERE A MAN OF YOUR WORD, LINDSEY. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SUCH A PALAVER, YOU AND I, WHEN THE TIME COMES.'
The final echo was louder even than pain and Lindsey did lose his grip on consciousness then, tilting onto his side in a boneless heap. Blood rushed onto the carpet.
---
On the hard-packed dirt of the Mojave, a man was levitating. As his heels drifted back to the earth, he smiled a smile fit to make the damned scream.
---
Cordelia was woken by the fingers of the dawn curling through the living room window. She stretched, wincing with a particular blend of pleasure-pain as her muscles groaned, and glanced over to see that the pallet Lindsey had made for himself on the other side of the coffee table was empty. Neither one of them had been eager to enter the bedroom again except for necessities.
Cordelia sat up and rubbed at her eyes, going from half-slumbering to fully awake in a span of seconds rather than by her old method of degrees. Dimly, she could remember waking in the middle of the night and Lindsey telling her that they had lost the electricity. A tiny snake of unease unfurled its tongue in Cordelia's stomach, one she tried to tell herself was foolish. There were dozens of perfectly legitimate reasons for Lindsey to be gone. It had touched ninety degrees the day before; he may well have driven off in search of battery-powered fans or even a generator. But somehow, Cordelia didn't think so.
'I still don't trust him,' Cordelia admitted to herself, 'and I don't like it when he's out of my sight.' Not entirely correct. They were in the shadowy place between suspicion and trust, where the ground was slick and there were no clear road signs.
"He needs my hands," Cordelia said aloud. "That's enough to make him honor the agreement until Angel gets back." A frown line appeared between her eyes and she swung her legs over the side of the couch, pushing her rumpled hair behind her ears. The little snake became a cobra in the second between one stomach gurgle and the next. Angel Iwould/I be back. Something dire in the 'Dale was holding him up-Cordelia's mind refused to contemplate the direst possibility of all-and when that was taken care of he would return. They could begin the business of putting the world back together then. Cordelia only hoped that Lindsey wouldn't mouth off too much when he did. Two pretty, angry men determined to roll around like Greeks may seem fun at first, but eventually there was going to be blood. The world had seen enough of that to last for several generations.
The fact that Angel had gone two weeks without a telephone call hung heavy and sour in the back of Cordelia's mind, surprising her from around corners.
Cordelia opened the door to her bedroom and crossed the floor in a few quick strides, taking pains not to glance in the direction of the stripped bed. She threw on the first pair of jeans and top that her fingers came in contact with at record speed and slid out again. If she couldn't give Wesley a memorial, then she could at least respect the sanctity of the room in which he died. Not even Lindsey entered the bedroom without good cause.
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Lindsey was walking through the front door as Cordelia was leaving the bedroom. He was jingling the truck keys in his hand in a distracted gesture that Cordelia could not remember seeing him make before, and his face was pale. "Hey," he said, giving her a once-over that made Cordelia doubt if he was really seeing her.
"Lindsey?" Cordelia's nerves warred between taking a step closer or one back. "Are you all right?" That was Inot/I worry in her voice, thank you very much.
"Fine." Lindsey dragged his hand over his face, through his hair. The stubble on his cheeks looked very dark in comparison to the bloodlessness of the skin beneath. "Just doing some thinking." A little more of the color and the inborn arrogance came back into Lindsey's face, and Cordelia was glad. That, at least, was the man that she knew how to deal with. "We need to be thinking about leaving Los Angeles, sooner rather than later."
Until he went and said things like that. "Or how about we not. I told Angel I'd wait until he came back. I have a way of keeping promises like that."
Lindsey snorted and spun, a short, choppy movement that made Cordelia take a step back and rendered the past two weeks nonexistent. The softness in his eyes, not precisely kindness, but close enough to be mistaken for it in a dim light, jangled against the abruptness of the gesture. "Oh," he said. "Oh, Cordy." Cordelia started, wishing that he wouldn't. "Angel's not coming back. I thought you knew."
Cordelia twitched, hard, and Lindsey's eyes tracked every movement. Two weeks worth of doubt, denied power through her own voice, came alive with Lindsey's. "I have to give him that chance."
Lindsey made a faint sound that nevertheless managed to convey a monologue's worth of disgust. "The city is dead, Cordelia. We have no electricity, a water supply that's tied to our power, and a limited supply of food. If we stay here we're going to die." He pronounced the last word with a savage kind of triumph.
Cordelia set her teeth, pulled her lips back in a gesture more often seen on dogs than humans. "I can't," she gritted.
Lindsey pinched at the bridge of his nose, a gesture of frustration that Cordelia was sure he wouldn't have stooped to in court. That he was willing to make it with her came accompanied by a strange sense of power. "Have you been having dreams?"
Cordelia's heart stopped in her chest before it began beating again, double-time. 'Smell of corn and the twanging of a guitar mixed always, inescapably, with high, cruel giggling, light and dark married so closely as to be indistinguishable.' Her voice stammered for a moment as she said, "Everyone dreams."
Lindsey nodded, but his gaze had become distant. "Not a normal dream. An old woman and an…other." Lindsey's voice as he pronounced the word 'other' held an impression of slime, and something else that Cordelia couldn't identify. She folded her arms over her chest. "Either way, both voices are saying to head east."
"Why east?"
Lindsey emerged from his reverie long enough to flash her a dazzling smile. It turned him into a different person. "We're running out of west, darlin'." The flash of humor vanished, leaving not even a ripple in its wake. "The plague may have been man-made. Hell, I'm even betting on it. But somehow I'm thinking these dreams aren't."
"Not the most ringing of endorsements." Cordelia already had her arms crossed over her chest; she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and resisted the urge to look at the floor. "Historically speaking, I mean."
Lindsey's mouth curved, just for a moment, and Cordelia decided that she didn't want to know what memories were running through his mind. "The Other." The capitalization was evident in his voice. "How does he make you feel?"
"He scares the living shit out of me." No attempts at varnish.
Lindsey nodded, his face turned towards the window so that Cordelia couldn't immediately see his expression. "Me, too." He shifted to face her. "Frankly, I think we're safer with the old woman than on our own."
He made sense, and that's what made it terrible. Cordelia shook her head. "I have to stay, at least for a little longer," she said. "I have to give Angel that chance."
Lindsey didn't lift his lip into his customary curl whenever Angel's name was mentioned. The tangle of emotions that crossed his face was too complex and fast-moving for Cordelia to decipher. "Whatever you say."
---
They were attacked that night.
Cordelia sat bolt upright, the mingled sounds of glass breaking and Lindsey's cry of anger and alarm making up a soundtrack in her head. Mother Abigail's opposite number, the one with the cowboy boots and the burning eyes, still danced through her mind's eye, slicking her body with sweat and making her veins thrum with adrenaline. In the dim half-light caused by the moon she could see two people struggling, hear Lindsey swearing as he defended himself with the hand that had been left to him.
Cordelia rolled off the couch, dropping into a crouch and cocking her head to listen. No glass fell from her hair or clothing as she moved. Lindsey's attacker must have broken through the window in the bedroom rather than the one behind the couch. Wesley's sacred space. Cordelia blew out her breath through gritted teeth and fumbled for the industrial flashlight that she had placed beside the couch before falling asleep. It made a satisfying weight in her hand, but she hesitated at turning it on. Lindsey's curses were increasing in volume and creativity, but he had yet to call out her name or otherwise give any indication that he was not the only person in the apartment.
They were thinking along the same page. Good.
Cordelia scuttled/crouched in Lindsey's direction, avoiding the coffee table's sharp edges by memory and preserving the advantage the darkness gave her. If she could get in close enough to flick the flashlight on in the intruder's face, she could maybe blind him long enough to swing the flashlight around and get in a few stunning blows. Not bad as far as plans spurred forward by adrenaline went, and it stood a good chance of working until heavy fingers wrapped around Cordelia's neck, jerking her backwards off her feet.
Cordelia tried to scream and could manage only a whisper as the air that she tried to draw into her lungs found itself lodged in her trachea with nowhere to go. Her chest heaved and her lungs began to feel as if someone had tried to pour hydrogen peroxide into them, while she could feel vessels breaking across the skin. She hooked her free hand into a claw and raked it back against her attacker's face, drawing strips of flesh away beneath her fingernails. Cordelia would have gagged if she had had the breath for it. A voice that could have been male, female, or any of the strata in between shrieked pain, but panic was carrying Cordelia away far too swiftly for her to care. If she had been able to see roe than a few inches before her face in the gloom, she would have registered the black spots twirling their own crazy dance before her eyes. Her neck had chafed beneath the intensity of the second person's grip, rivulets of fresh blood making her slippery and difficult to control. Nevertheless, her limbs were growing heavy.
'You're supposed to be here!' Cordelia thought in a haze of panic, barely coherent even to herself. 'You promised!'
Fear and fury roped themselves around each other so tightly that they became one emotion, lending a final burst of strength to Cordelia's oxygen-starved muscles. She surprised even herself by the power with which she swung the flashlight over her shoulder, striking where she thought her attacker's eye sockets would be. There was a shriek, a crunch, and a popping sound like an egg exploding in a microwave that made Cordelia want to be ill. The fingers didn't fall away and Cordelia didn't stop swinging. Twice, three times, more, and she tried to tell herself that it wasn't a dark triumph that kept her moving long after the need for it had passed. Two weeks of grief and worry built into a scream like a lead weight in the center of Cordelia's chest; she scarcely noticed when she had the air capacity to let it out. The sound of glass breaking stopped her as quickly as she had begun.
The only sound in the apartment was that of Lindsey's breathing, coming a shade too quickly to be written off as exertion alone. Cordelia's whistled like a tea kettle in her ears. "I hope you weren't too attached to that lamp," Lindsey said.
"Not particularly." Cordelia frantically rubbed her sticky fingers against the rug. "I think I broke my flashlight."
"I have one." A beam of salvation cut through the darkness. Lindsey flicked the light over Cordelia's shoulder for only a second before he turned it away again, all the confirmation that she needed. She put her head between her knees.
"…out the living room window," Lindsey was saying when Cordelia came back to herself. "Probably won't be coming back for a couple of days after what happened to his friend. Still a risk we don't need to take. Is there anywhere that you and Angel both know of where we could-"
"Angel's not coming back," Cordelia interrupted, her voice low and lusterless, muffled by her hair. The hair she swiped behind her ears, smearing a mixture of blood and silent tears across her cheeks.
"I'm sorry." Lindsey's voice made it impossible to tell if he was sincere.
Cordelia pushed herself to her feet, leaving the gummed over flashlight on the floor. Her throat throbbed and her voice had descended into a husky, blues singer rasp. "There's a hotel not far from here, unoccupied before the plague. Probably no bodies. We can be there in fifteen minutes if we take the truck."
"All right." Lindsey's tone was soft, mindful of sharp edges. "Is there anything from here that you want to take with you?"
"A few pictures." Cordelia thought. "Nothing else." The rest of her possessions meant very little, now. "When can we be out of the city?"
"Tomorrow, if you want."
Cordelia thought of corn, of an old black woman with some of the kindest eyes she had ever seen, and a world that had gone made. A world where she had just bludgeoned a person to death. "I want."
Cordelia made it outside before being violently ill across the sidewalk.