Dear readers, I love you, every single one of you, and thank you.
That was just in case SOPA shuts down FF.
No, I kid xD (sorta) But gahhh fucking SOPA =_= It's shit like this that makes me wish I was Canadian
Anyway, this chapter is an unofficial birthday present to EmilyCarosidy cause I still have to get her something cause I'm one lazy motherfucker. Plus she loves LP, so XD
Now read!
CHAPTER 10: STANDING IN THE WAKE OF DEVASTATION
March 01, 2013
A Motel, Somewhere out in the Mojave Desert
3:46 PM
"Well, looks like it was a good thing we stayed here," Rob commented lazily, flicking at the volume dial on the radio in the van.
"Not sure what the point of going would have been, anyway," Mike agreed. He yawned and reclined the passenger seat, stretching out like a cat. "Just some dumb speech from some dumb guy who has no relevance to us…"
"For now," his friend reminded him.
"And hopefully a lot longer."
Takashime Arashi and Better Living Industries hadn't set their sights on controlling the desert yet, to the great relief of five of its inhabitants—the only five, in fact, as far as they knew. Like many others, they used the radio as a lifeline to the city and modern events, but hadn't made an actual move back into the hub of civilization yet. Mike and his band of friends were absolutely content in the motel in the desert. The first few days had been really creepy—the old lady had disappeared, or at least, no one had been able to find her again, and the rest of the area was completely deserted—but soon they realized that their new situation wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty easy. Everything they needed to survive was right there in front of them.
Rob turned the key in the ignition and the engine growled crankily, spitting a cloud of gray smoke into the air from underneath the hood. The van hadn't held up very well against the acid rain, but at least it still worked.
"Where to?" he asked, turning to Mike.
"Wherever you feel like," the Asian man smirked. "Surprise me."
"I'll try."
Mike pulled his head back up as Rob steered out of the parking lot. It was nice spending time with Rob alone. He loved his whole band dearly, but he had always been particularly close to the handsome brunette drummer. More and more these days, with Phoenix and Brad the happy couple always off doing God-knows-what and Joe busy being the mastermind of the group, trying to connect to others in the city via Internet, the pair were often left alone as they were now. They often came out to listen to the radio together—either the BL/ind run news shows, or the single alternative rock music station left from pre-apocalypse days, it didn't matter. Mostly they just talked.
"What do we do next?" Rob asked quietly, his gaze slipping from the road ahead to Mike's face.
"Er…I'd say take a left."
"No, dumbass." He rolled his eyes and steered the van right. "I mean with our lives. We're doing nothing right now. Wouldn't you rather do something?"
"Wouldn't we all?" Mike asked rhetorically.
"I dunno, Phi and Brad seem pretty content…"
"You and I both know they aren't, Rob. None of us are."
The drummer let out a huge breath of air, his eyes fluttering closed quickly before jerking open to watch the road. "That's my point exactly."
"Well, what do you want us to do, then? Go into the city and get BL/ind-mandated jobs?"
"Of course not!" he exclaimed. "But just get…out. Play our music again. Yeah, that's what I want—no, need to do—play our music for people again."
Mike fell silent, his expression pensive. Rob took this as a sign to go on.
"See? I know you feel it too, Mikey. It's what we've been doing for so long now. It's weird not to play for anyone and—and I miss it too damn much!"
"Same here," Mike replied softly. "Same here, Rob. But what are we supposed to do?"
"Go back."
Rob's blunt answer shocked Mike into utter silence. Slowly, he turned to look at his best friend.
"You're not serious…are you?"
"Dead serious," Rob replied, his hands tight on the steering wheel. He stared straight ahead to avoid his friend's gaze.
"But…do you know how dangerous that'd be? Giving up everything we've got out here for the chance of a future? We already know there's a food shortage and a lack of housing in Battery City, and what with that new company running rampant all over the place, who knows what'd happen…"
"But it would be worth it if we got to play music again," Rob pressed.
Secretly, Mike agreed with the drummer's words wholeheartedly. Music had been his life up until that day in December. Deep down, he knew it still was. It just wasn't the same with no one to listen to it, though.
"Joe won't be happy," he said. "Or Phi and Brad. They might not even go with you."
"But will you, Mike?"
Mike stared out the windshield at the scraggly brush on both sides of the road, at the impossibly blue sky and the scenery that had almost become their home. Their life out here wasn't much, but at least it was a life.
Would it be worth it to give this up for the music?
"Yes," he finally whispered.
"Then I think we'll be fine," Rob smiled.
Their drive didn't take them anywhere they hadn't been before, and it didn't serve any purpose. The pair just wandered aimlessly through the endless desert roads as they made plans for their return to the known world: find a food source, try and get a place to live somewhere close to it, and get the word out that Xero was back.
The last part was the bit they were having particular trouble with. They weren't sure exactly how many of their fans were still alive and they had absolutely no way of contacting them—their gigs had all been at one club, to the same crowd every night. They'd seen that same club burning as they made their frantic exit from the city. Nobody would ever think of checking there now.
Then there was the alternative rock radio station. The only one Better Living apparently hadn't found yet, no one was sure why they had been left untouched—BL/ind couldn't find them? They were simply flying under the radar?—but either way, it was the only way music was still circulating throughout the state. That might possibly be their only way back in.
Now all that was left was to tell the rest of their band.
In the fading evening light, Rob turned the van into a u-turn, swinging the end of the van off the side of the road before righting the vehicle. In the far distance, their motel blazed brightly, the one lit spot against the horizon. The alternative music station blasted from the radio.
"It'll be weird going back," Mike mentioned sleepily. "We've got no idea what it'll be like anymore."
"All part of the adventure," Rob replied.
"Do you think the guys will agree to come back with us?"
"Let's hope so," the brunette said grimly. In truth, he really wasn't sure. The three other members of their band seemed pretty settled in at the motel and they hadn't expressed any desire to change it—although Rob hadn't either up until now. He hoped that secretly, Joe, Brad and Phoenix wanted to play music again just as much as he and Mike did.
It didn't take long for the pair to steer the van back into the parking lot. They'd merely been driving around in circles for the past couple of hours, and all of the desert roads connected back to each other in the end. Rob and Mike exited slowly, throwing anxious glances at each other, before pulling open the old glass door and entering their home again.
The lobby was just as they'd left it: messy, strewn with garbage and sand they'd tracked in. That was the way that most of the motel looked nowadays. When they got bored, the boys had a habit of targeting a certain room and ransacking it, trying to see how badly they could mess it up.
"We're home!" Mike yelled loudly in case anyone had ventured to the bottom floor. "It's not the police, I swear."
When there came no response, he grabbed his room key from where he'd left it behind the counter and led Rob into the tin-can elevator they'd slowly gotten used to over the months.
"What should we tell them?" he asked his friend as the elevator shot skywards.
"Everything we just discussed," Rob answered. "And I mean everything."
The elevator beeped and with a rusty groan, the doors slid open to reveal the chilly hallway they'd taken up residence in. Most of the doors hung wide open, leading out of the hallway, and Brad's loud, distinctive laugh sounded from Joe's room a few doorways down.
"We're back," Mike shouted as they walked down the hallway. Phoenix's head poked out and he waved at them.
"Where were you?" he complained. "We got hungry, so we ate already…we thought you weren't coming back."
"Why would we do that beforetelling you first?" Rob teased, sauntering through the doorway with Mike in tow. He flopped into an armchair, ignoring Phi's squeals of "hey, that's mine!" and greeted the other two with "Sup?"
"Just waiting for you," Joe griped. "Seriously, though, where the fuck were you guys?"
Mike threw a cautious glance at Rob, silently asking if he should tell them. At Rob's small nod, he started talking.
"We were discussing…things," he said.
"What things?" Joe asked suspiciously.
"Plans for the future," the emcee specified. "About going…back."
His friends' reactions were not exactly the ones he had expected. Joe grinned, Brad let out a cheer, and Phoenix actually got up and began throwing his clothes into his suitcase.
"Wait, what?" Rob asked confusedly, sure he had missed something.
"Finally!" Joe smiled broadly. "We didn't want to ask you, because we thought that you were all settled in here in the desert, but we were talking and we all decided that we miss the music too much and we've got to get back into Battery City no matter what!"
Mike's hopeful smile turned into a full-fledged grin, and he even cheered a bit. Why had he ever doubted his friends? They all loved the band just as much as he did. They all thought on the same wavelength. Of course they'd want to go back, too!
"When do we leave?" Phoenix called from the closet.
"Tomorrow!" Rob exclaimed. Mike swiveled his head to look at the drummer, surprised but pleased with the answer. The sooner the better, after all…
"Perfect," Mike grinned.
None of them were able to sleep that night. Instead, they spent the time loading all of their possessions, every salvageable bit of the motel's food, and even the cheap free personal hygiene products from the second-floor bathrooms into the vehicle. Their van was completely stuffed. There was literally no room left for anything other than the five men and their instruments. The rest of the night was spent practicing—really practicing—for the first time since Day Zero.
They started with their oldest, most familiar songs, the ones they had written nearly four years ago when the band was formed, and then moved into their requisite covers of older rock songs. Mike was amazed by how good it felt to have the familiar, smooth body of the electric guitar in his hands again, to feel the worn neck sliding under his fingers. Even better was the sensation of stretching his vocal cords in anticipation of performance and then finally, gloriously, to let himself truly sing for the first time in months. He'd expected his voice to be rusty from disuse, but it had waited in perfect condition, an old friend ready to begin anew.
The last few hours from midnight to the crack of dawn were used for their new songs, the big hits that had gotten Xero their fan base. The band had forgotten how excellent their songwriting skills were. The old turned came to life under their skillful fingertips, billowing back into existence like an inflated balloon. Maybe they sounded extra-special to the men after so long without hearing them, but they would all agree later that what they played that night was magical. They sounded better than they ever had before.
And by the time the sun finally broke the very edge of the desert horizon, spilling light over the barren landscape, Xero was back.
"That was fucking surreal," Mike exclaimed as soon as he collapsed into the passenger seat, all of their band equipment finally tucked away and safe in the back.
"Completely," Brad agreed from the backseat. "And God, did it feel good…"
"That's what she said," Phoenix giggled. This earned a chorus of groans from his friends that were soon drowned out by the sound of Rob cranking the engine and the radio flipping on automatically. A familiar Nirvana song blasted out of the van's speakers, one that many of them hadn't heard in ages, and groans morphed into cheers while four very-out-of-tune men and one professional rapper sang along to the song's famous words.
The roads disappeared into the dusty landscape behind them as the van raced forward. Hours passed, but to the ecstatic men, it seemed to be mere minutes as they shot towards a new future, a new hope, a new life that would once again be filled with the color and sound they were so used to being a part of their teenage lives. Music was intertwined into their souls. They were crazy to think they could give it up, even if for only a few months.
The ride gave them plenty of time to talk about what would happen to them now that they were rejoining the world. They knew it had changed, but how exactly they didn't know. It made them all uneasy to say the least…BL/ind was dangerous, an unknown quantity. They had absolutely no idea how it was going to affect the city and more importantly them.
The alternative rock station blasted away in the background, and looking back on the moment, Mike was sure they never would have gone through with the decision if not for that small, simple fact. The men needed constant reminders of why they would ever consider such a risky plan, and in every silent moment when they all began to wonder why they'd agreed to do this in the first place, those blessed DJs would pull out another track from their seemingly endless repertoire and the group would begin to smile again.
But finally, even the music couldn't keep their moods up as they neared the city.
"Was it always this scary-looking?" Phoenix murmured, staring out the windshield at the horizon tensely. He was right—maybe it was their absence or maybe it was the unsurity of the new life looming ahead, but the tall towers of newly-renamed Battery City were definitely more forbosing than they remembered. The metal-and-glass spears of broken buildings pierced the slate-gray sky, dark, looming and colorless. It looked nothing like the sunny, thriving city they'd left behind.
Could so much really have changed in so little time?
The debris-covered freeway gave way to tight city streets within time, and buildings began to appear around the van, progressing in height the farther they got. Fallen pieces of apartments and chunks of sidewalk littered the streets. Rob handled the van recklessly around the streets, tipping it up on two wheels and frantically swerving to maneuver their vehicle around all of the shit left from Day Zero.
"Shit-Rob-ob-ob," Brad wailed as they bounced over multiple speed bumps, clinging to Phoenix for dear life. "Slow the fuck-uck-uck down!"
"I am!" Rob yelled back, turning another corner at an incredibly high speed.
Mike looked back at Joe. The Korean man's face was white with terror and his hands were locked onto the back of Mike's seat, his eyes wide with fear.
"Just find somewhere to pull over!" exclaimed Mike, turning back to face the windshield. "It doesn't matter where, but just stop!"
"Everything's full!" Rob growled. He threw wild glances from side to side, trying to find an empty space adjacent to the city block.
With a bump, the van jolted over a large chunk of asphalt, throwing everyone into the air. Mike tumbled into Rob, slamming his shoulder into the drummer and knocking the steering wheel to the left, steering the van up and onto the sidewalk.
"Shit shit shit shit shit!" Rob shrieked, wrenching the wheel to the right again. The van rode up on one wheel, balancing for an infinitesimal second on the front right edge of the car. Mike grabbed hold of Rob's hand. Somebody screamed.
And then the van fell back to the road with a crash. The vehicle launched itself to the side, screeching. The engine stalled.
Joe peeked out the window cautiously and, shocked, was met with the familiar front of downtown Los Angeles' Spaceland Rock Club.
"Whoa," he whispered reverently.
"What?" The other four men scrambled to the windows. Gasps and exclamations of surprise filled the small van, tumbling into the cool morning air as Joe slid open the door.
"Like fate," Mike whispered. He approached the club reverently, laying one hand on the metal door. It swung open easily. All five held their breath.
It was burned down.
Past the initial front wall of the building, which was coal-blackened but still standing, the club was only a burned-out husk. All that was left of the bar was a few twisted glass bottles and a metal cashier's till. The stage had been reduced to a pile of ashes.
Mike's jaw dropped open as he stood, frozen inside the doorway. His legs suddenly refused to work. "No," he mouthed. The word never formed in his throat—his vocal cords had become unusable.
Memories from the empty space flooded over the band: auditions, sound checks, concerts. Their first gigs. Their first sold-out show. The night before the world exploded.
It was all gone.
In a sudden burst of movement and desperate hope, Mike rushed to the back of the club where the backstage area used to be. The amps, the mic stand, the soundboard—everything was only cinders.
"Mike—" he heard Rob call. He could make out Joe and Brad's muttered conversation: "We can't play here." "We'll have to go back." "There's no way this will work."
"Shut up," he yelled. "Shut up!"
The emcee fell to the floor, clutching at handfuls of blackened ashes.
His world was gone.