Rage Within Read online

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  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Nothing

  Three Weeks Before the Earthquakes

  The Man

  Daniel

  Mason

  Aries

  Nothing

  Present Day

  Mason

  Clementine

  Aries

  Michael

  Nothing

  Mason

  Clementine

  Aries

  Nothing

  Mason

  Michael

  Clementine

  Nothing

  Aries

  Mason

  Michael

  Clementine

  Nothing

  Mason

  Aries

  Nothing

  Christmas Eve

  Michael

  Mason

  Clementine

  Mason

  Aries

  Clementine

  Aries

  Mason

  Aries

  Clementine

  Michael

  Mason

  Aries

  Jack

  Michael

  Clementine

  Aries

  Mason

  About Jeyn Roberts

  For Fiona,

  a great muse, an even better friend

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Alison Acheson and Mimi Thebo for all their great advice and help during these past years. You’ve both been there so much for me. I can’t thank you enough.

  Thanks to my editors, Ruth Alltimes at Macmillan and David Gale at Simon & Schuster. Your skills are invaluable.

  To my agents, Julia Churchill and Sarah Davis. You have been both inspirational and always willing to listen and offer advice.

  To the Insomniacs: Andrea, Sharon, Laura, Marisa, Morgan, Ash, Ryan, and everyone else. You’ve all been with me since the start. I can’t begin to tell you how great you all are. You’re my friends around the world and one day I plan to meet every single one of you.

  To Evie, because you always make me smile.

  And, finally, to my mother, Peggy. You are an amazing woman and I can’t begin to say how much I love and respect you. You’ve helped me to grow to be the person I am today.

  NOTHING

  Greetings and salutations.

  I know you missed me.

  I missed me too.

  What can I say? I’ve been around. I’ve been seeing everything. Slinking through the streets. Crawling through the train tunnels. Walking across water with my eyes alight with fire. Licking the crud off spoons and picking at the chewing gum on my shoes.

  None of it really matters. They’ve left me alone for now, but I know those days are ending. The Baggers want me back. They dropped their apron strings for a split second and the naughty child bolted into the wilderness. They won’t make the same mistake again. I hear them calling me. Now they’re starting to look. I’m on their radar. Eventually they will find me and drag me back by my heels.

  And things will change.

  In a blink of an eye, history will repeat itself. Remember, we’ve been through this before. From the moment mankind stepped out of the primordial ooze, they’ve been here to keep us in our places. Obviously a select few lived to tell the tale; otherwise we wouldn’t be here now. But how many of us are going to survive this round?

  Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

  Time is running out.

  If a tree falls in the middle of the city, does anyone notice? Do they hear the creaking of the wood? Do they witness the leaves shaking above them? Do they sense the desperation or feel the sudden gush of wind against their faces?

  That one great second before gravity takes over and what was once magnificent becomes nothing but lumber.

  Timber!

  Or do they just go about their daily chores, continue on to work with their lattes in hand, iPods blaring, BlackBerrys ringing, ignoring everything they’ve witnessed?

  There were warnings. There are always warnings. But we missed them. We chose not to see. We didn’t believe.

  And now we are finished.

  Game Over.

  The Baggers are gathering their armies around the world. They are taking back the cities, rebuilding civilization according to their terms. They have ideas. You wouldn’t like them.

  Now humans are considered a virus. A mutation. A disease. They need to be removed from this world. The Baggers will control those who are left, to make sure humans don’t revert back to their own nasty ways.

  I wake up sometimes in the dead of night. A panic I can’t explain from a dream I can’t remember. Is this my life? Am I destined to spend the remaining days wondering what is real and what is a nightmare?

  Who am I?

  I am Nothing.

  Am I?

  Or am I the one they’ve grown to trust?

  I want to be the one she wakes up to when the morning sun nuzzles her pillow. I want to walk along the seawall with her, holding hands and exchanging gentle glances. I want to hide her away in a castle or a log cabin where she’ll be safe and nothing can ever make her cry again.

  But I’m more likely to be the one who holds the knife against her skin.

  Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

  What happens next? Your guess is as good as mine.

  THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKES

  BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS

  BEFORE THE BAGGERS AWAKEN

  THE MAN

  He liked the basement. It was quiet down there. So quiet.

  It made the voices that much easier to hear.

  When they first started speaking to him, he tried to ignore them. He’d seen stuff on television about people who went plumb crazy. Hearing voices wasn’t a good sign. He tried silencing them. Drinking heavily and popping sleeping pills. But the voices wouldn’t go away. If anything, the drinking made them that much worse. They said terrible things. They whispered into his head about what was coming. They talked about the future. Earthquakes. Death. Chaos. They talked about how important he was. He didn’t want to believe it.

  But as time went on, the voices started to make sense.

  His role was explained to him in great detail. He grew excited when they told him what he needed to do. He would play a part in this new world. He was necessary.

  The basement had always been his space. Unfinished, it was cold and dark, and his wife didn’t like to go down there because she thought the place was ugly. Ugly. Her word. She much preferred her lacy curtains and bed filled with dozens of pillows that he wasn’t allowed to sleep on unless he showered first.

  He kept most of his tools down here. There was a shelf in the back that was covered with all sorts of wonderful things. A power drill. A chain saw. Dozens of plastic boxes filled with nails, screws, and other bits and pieces he’d convinced her he needed. He liked to do all the handy work and she couldn’t complain because he often did a good job. He enjoyed working with his hands.

  In the middle was his worktable, and he sat at it now. In front of him was a device, a wonderful contraption he’d built all by himself. He found most of the information on the Internet; it was amazing what sort of stuff people could find on websites these days. Before the voices came, he mostly just checked his e-mail and the occasional dirty site his wife would never have approved of.

  None of that mattered anymore.

  She’d been dead since the morning.
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  He was vaguely disappointed about this. He had known he’d be the one to kill her, but he’d hoped to do it when he wasn’t so pressed for time. He’d wanted to savor the kill, enjoy the moment, make her pay for all the annoying things she’d done over the years. But she’d surprised him earlier. Come downstairs into his work haven for some odd reason or another. Her eyes had widened when she saw his handiwork. She couldn’t stop looking at the dynamite.

  When she saw his eyes, she screamed. He had to silence her.

  Now her body was lying in the corner. He didn’t even think about trying to get rid of it. He wouldn’t be in this house much longer. The earthquakes were coming and after that he’d go wherever the voices told him to. They would have more work for him to do and he’d have to travel to another city first.

  When he was finished here, the entire town would be dead.

  Upstairs, he could hear his children arriving home from school. Three children. One boy and two girls. Twelve, ten, and seven. Cursing, he looked at his watch, wondering how the entire day had gotten away from him so quickly.

  “Mom? Dad?” his oldest son was hollering, loud enough to wake the dead.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, pleased at how calm his voice sounded.

  He picked the gun up off the table and double-checked to make sure it was loaded. Standing up, he winced a bit as his knees popped. He turned and headed for the stairs. The voices whispered away at him, a soft seduction wrapping around his brain. They knew what to do and everything they said made so much sense.

  There would be no remorse.

  Just another job to do.

  DANIEL

  “Hello, Daniel.”

  He didn’t look up. Instead he kept his gaze on the walls. Someone had washed them recently. He could see smears of dirt from where they’d tried to wipe it away. Cracks. Something had smashed up against it. Black cracks on white wall. Odd. Somehow he’d expected this place to be spotless, but it wasn’t. The tiled flooring was worn and he could see tracks in the dust from where someone had moved the desk chair a few inches closer to the window. There were scuff marks on the door, and the window blinds were bent and crooked. The janitorial staff must be slacking off.

  The woman in front of him didn’t wear a white lab jacket with a stethoscope around her neck. She wore a business suit, beige, and had on running shoes. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and she didn’t wear glasses.

  She looked very normal.

  “I’m Dr. Coats,” she continued when he didn’t answer or acknowledge her smiling face. “As you know, I’m here to talk with you for a bit.”

  He crossed his arms and then changed his mind. He’d read about that in psychology. It was considered a defensive position. It made him look like he had something to hide. Guilty. Instead he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and tapped his foot against the desk. His shoelaces were dirty.

  “Daniel?”

  His eyes flickered over toward her. She was holding a clipboard and a pen but she hadn’t started writing. She was waiting for him to talk. To spill his guts. So she could take notes and make decisions.

  He didn’t have anything to say.

  “Daniel, do you know why you’re here?”

  Don’t say a word. They can’t do anything anyway. It’ll be over soon.

  But he had to say something. He didn’t want to spend the next hour just gazing at the scuffed walls. Why did people always feel the need to cover stillness with sound? Even at home his mother had the television on almost twenty-four/seven. She said it calmed her nerves but she never paid any attention to it.

  The problem was he didn’t know where to begin. A lot was riding on this conversation. There were countless words he could use, too many versions of everything going around in his head these days. How did he begin a conversation with such variables, each of which might lead to a different outcome?

  “Daniel?”

  “He started it.” There. First words. Not the best choice. He should have said something else. Inwardly, he cringed.

  Dr. Coats’s lips curled upward. “So you can talk. I was beginning to think you were a mute.”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “Excellent beginning. But no, we’re not here because he started it.” She moved over toward the side of her desk and sat down on the edge. Daniel could smell the shampoo in her hair. Or maybe it was her hand lotion. Coconut.

  There was a long silence in the room while Dr. Coats waited for him to speak again. He knew he should say something, but what? There wasn’t any point in talking about it as far as he was concerned. It happened. He couldn’t change the past.

  There was no taking it back.

  He wanted to take it back.

  No, you don’t. You want to do it again. Don’t deny it. You hated Chuck Steinberg. Hated him. He treated you like dirt every single day of your life. What about the time he kicked the stray dog you were feeding? Then he told your mother you did it. What happened then? No, he deserved it.

  “You told the police you don’t remember doing it.” She pulled the cap off the pen and waited. “So how do you know he started it?”

  “I remember that much.”

  She wrote a few things down before continuing. “Would you like to tell me about it? The parts you do remember?”

  You’re dead meat, pretty boy. I’m gonna mess you up good.

  He’d spent too much of his life being invisible to most adults. Now everyone knew him. In a few short minutes he’d gone from average nobody student to the one everyone talked about in the teachers’ lounge and PTA meetings. Hell, this even made the newspaper. No one came near him anymore. Students actually went out of their way to avoid his locker. The group of girls who used to giggle when he walked past now turned and looked the other way. The last part he didn’t mind so much. He preferred being alone.

  Safer that way.

  It’ll be over soon.

  “Daniel?” Dr. Coats tapped her fingernails on the clipboard, staring directly at his face. “Remember, everything you say in here is confidential. But I’ll also remind you, we’re here to talk. I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”

  He really wished she’d stop repeating his name. No one liked being reminded they existed.

  He sighed. “He came up to me after class. Slammed me into the lockers. Said I’d side swiped his car with my bike. I hadn’t been anywhere near his car. I don’t even know what it looks like. When I denied it, he punched me twice.”

  The room was quiet except for the sound of Dr. Coats’s pen as it scraped the paper. She wrote for a few minutes before looking back at Daniel. He didn’t continue. The phone in his pocket began to ring. He’d forgotten to turn it off. Quickly he pulled it out. The Ryan Adams song grew insanely loud as the guitars seemed to bounce off the walls. He turned it off.

  Suddenly his cheeks flushed and he felt like he’d done something terribly embarrassing. It was as if he’d shown up for this appointment wearing nothing but a raincoat and a pair of wet shoes. He glanced up at the doctor for a second and noticed how she was studying him intently.

  “What else do you remember, Daniel?”

  His mouth was dry and he couldn’t swallow. What did he remember? They told him that he’d gone crazy. Grabbed Chuck by the shirt and punched him several times in the face. Once Chuck dropped to the floor, he’d kicked him repeatedly in the head until the math and biology teachers managed to drag him away. Chuck had to go to the hospital and get treated for a concussion. The doctors had to take X-rays because they were afraid Daniel had cracked the bigger boy’s skull. Afterward Daniel discovered that the blood had soaked through his sneakers, and his white socks were stained red.

  But he didn’t remember.

  He only knew what they told him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s pretty much it.”

  The doctor lowered her clipboard. “That’s all you can recall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has this ever happened to y
ou before? Not being able to recollect certain events?”

  He hesitated and then shook his head. Lied. Waited while she made more notes on her clipboard.

  “Head injuries?”

  “No. Maybe when I was little. Nothing major, though. Basic kid stuff. I think I fell off the couch once. Had to go to the emergency room.”

  “So nothing recent, then?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any other fights?”

  “Nope.” At least none that he’d admit to.

  “What about aggressive tendencies? Have you had thoughts about hurting people?”

  He’d never considered himself violent before. He was the quiet guy who went to school each day and hung out with a few good friends. The semipopular boy who was always reading during lunch period and playing guitar on the front lawn when the weather was good. He was a lover, not a fighter. There were a few girls who would agree with that. He was the guy everyone assumed would go on to college, get a liberal arts degree, and end up being some obscenely successful writer. Even his yearbook picture said he was the guy “most likely to win a Pulitzer Prize in literature.”

  But violent? No, that wasn’t his style. At least that’s what he thought. What he kept telling himself.

  Make them suffer. They will all die.

  Daniel grabbed his jacket. “I’ve got to go.”

  Dr. Coats looked up at him in surprise. “We’ve still got forty-five minutes. I’ll have to report this if you leave now. You know this isn’t voluntary.”

  It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I’ve got to go.”

  He grabbed the handle and was out the door before she had a chance to say anything more.

  Outside it was raining and he pulled his hood up over his head and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Turning around, he looked back at the hospital, half expecting to see big, burly orderlies running out the door to hunt him down. But no one came after him, only an older guy in a wheelchair, his pencil-thin legs sticking out from under his hospital gown as he tried to open a can of Pepsi.