Free Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh Page A

count change into people’s palms. If I could help Ruplu, I knew he’d give me my fair share of the profit. I could become sort of a limited partner.
    My head was spinning from the last twenty-four hours. I felt great and awful, exhausted and exhilarated. Afterimages of Ange in the shower were superimposed with the priest feeding me from a beverage lid. Now the puddle of blood where Amos had fallen swirled with this opportunity. I guess I needed to take my joys where I could find them, and the hell with the notion that it was selfish to be happy amidst suffering. There was always suffering.

Chapter 3:
Rock Star
    Winter, 2027 (Three years later)
    P ulaski Square was uncharacteristically crowded with teens and tweens and early twenty-somethings. They reminded me of pigeons, the way they milled aimlessly on the lawns and brick walkways, as if hoping to happen upon something interesting—a pizza crust or an errant cheese doodle. “Think she’s coming?” an acne-stricken kid said to his friend through a neon purple virus mask.
    His friend, who had stripes of lamp black above and below his eyes to match his black mask (who could keep up with the pointless shit that passed for current teen fashion?), shrugged.
    “Who’s supposed to come?” I asked.
    “Deirdre,” the kid with the lamp black said. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his sleeve pocket.
    “Who’s Deirdre?” “Flash singer. The best.” He lit the cigarette, pulled his mask up to his forehead, took a puff, blew smoke into the Spanish Moss hanging overhead in an “Ain’t I so cool” way. “It’s going around there’s gonna be a flash concert here.”
    “Oh,” I said. That I could probably do without. I nodded, the cool dudes nodded back, and I continued through the crowd.
    “Jasper!”
    I turned. “Cortez!” I pushed through the crowd to get to him, grabbed him in a bear hug. “Shit, I can’t believe it! I didn’t know you were back in the city.”
    “Yeah, about six months now,” Cortez said, clapping me on the shoulder. He was dressed in a black t-shirt, black puffed pants. His head was shaved.
    He was living with his dad, working security jobs when he could get them—mostly temp bodyguard stuff for semi-rich guys trying to impress their dates. Turned out he was on a job now—security for the flash concert that was indeed happening.
    The rumble of the crowd on the west end of the square rose in pitch.
    “Gotta go!” Cortez said. “Stick around, let’s have a beer after.”
    So I stuck around.
    A scrum of kids began chanting “Deirdre.” It spread, rising in volume. The crowd parted on the other end of the park, and there she was, surrounded by guys in black. Everyone cheered.
    Deirdre was small, almost childlike. She was wearing six or seven pink neck rings that accentuated an ostrich-neck, and a black skintight leotard that accentuated enormous breasts. Her eyes bulged a little, her meaty lips formed an eager “o.” She was one of those women who was extremely sexy without being particularly pretty.
    The stage was a bunch of two-by-fours on milk crates, hauled in by her roadies, along with amps, portable spotlights, and a generator. Deirdre paced, staring at the ground as they set up.
    There was no introduction or anything. The amps squealed to life, there was scattered cheering, and Deirdre hopped onto the little stage and came to life.
    Shit, did she come to life.
    It wasn’t that she was a great singer—she had a decent voice, sure, but it was her energy that hooked you. Her voice was so loud ; there was so much raw force behind it that you kept expecting those bulging eyes to explode. She flew around the stage, leaping, spinning, dancing, seeming to defy gravity on her tiny fuel-injected frame.
    Her songs were angry and violent. Lots of things blowing up, lots of fucking, lots of death and despair and infidelity. She was a perfect voice for the times.
    After every few songs, roadies circulated with plastic buckets,