Lady Judith Jane Geronimo glided up the staircase, ignoring the claustrophobic press of the metal around her and the gallop of her pulse. Eyes half-closed, she made a game of her worries, as she always did, part of method acting. She imagined the announcer’s baritone, Voicing Over the soap opera’s opening teaser.
“Today, the role of Constance Carrington is being played by J. J. Geronimo.”
Of course, the soaps were a thing of the past, a dead medium that had sadly taped its final episode in the city of New York well before the current crisis of this new world’s daytime drama.
The announcer in her head added, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Your hungry—”
“Shut up,” Lady Judith said out loud.
The man moving up the staircase’s tightening throat ahead of her answered, “I didn’t say anything,” over his shoulder.
“I wasn’t talking to you, my Prince,” she said before drawing in a deep breath. The soap announcer’s voice crackled out, partially driven to silence by a lapse in continuity—that bit about the hungry wasn’t part of the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the bronze plaque stories below their present location. Either way, she had no intention of becoming part of anyone’s dinner plans, yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
Joel Flanders moved into position beside one of the spotters—Lath, a former military associate of the Prince. Lady Judith still hadn’t learned whether or not the Prince and Lath had actually served time together before the world got cancelled like all of the New York soaps, or if they and the other men and women serving under her authority naturally built that level of trust with one another, like a game of pick-up hoops or softball that instantly bonds the players. They were serving together now, post-Cancellation; that was what mattered, Lady Judith acknowledged in silence.
“What do we have?” the Prince asked, his voice gruff, direct.
“There’s a body out there, coming in from the direction of Manhattan,” Lath said. “Eleven o’clock.”
The Prince raised his binoculars. His muscular arm flexed, and the length of tattoo in tribute to his former Marine unit poked out of the short sleeve of his black T-shirt, the image magnificent. Lady Judith did her best to ignore the rush of arousal that pulsed through her in counterpoint to her building anxiety as one more crisis was set to play out. She stole a desperate breath. Joel’s sweat, fresh and piney thanks to the fast hike up the Colossus’s inner staircase, ignited in her senses, further attempting to distract her. Lady Judith’s gaze briefly wandered, taking in the Prince’s dark cowlicks, the prickle of five o’clock scruff on his chin, cheeks, and throat at just after eight on a sunny September morning, that amazing male body. The parts of her that were still, technically, of the masculine gender tingled, as did those transformed to female before the Big Cancellation nullified her chance to change genders fully.
“Dead?” Judith asked.
The Prince shook his head. “Worse, J. After-dead.”
An icy chill rippled through Lady Judith’s insides, cooling both halves of the transgendered actress who’d once aspired to do soaps, but had gone only as far as a club act long blocks from Broadway before one massive cast purge and a global falling curtain had led to the biggest gig of her career. “You know what to do,” she said.
“I’m on it,” the Prince said, and thumbed his radio. “Starship One, you have authority. Repeat, Starship One…”
######
The body, what was left of it, turned over on a whitecap. Hissing, it rolled its eyes toward the distant shore of Liberty Island. A hum built in the air, a sound from another time. The body’s hunger surged and it tipped its rheumy gaze toward what its primitive brain translated as sustenance.
One of the six patrol gunboats in their fleet pulled free of its orbit around Liberty Island and streaked across the harbor’s gray water. A single thunderclap erupted, the gunman’s aim perfect. The head of the after-dead came apart from the nose on up, fully dead once more, the threat ended.
######
There were days that she swore she could hear the howls of the millions of after-dead in Manhattan, and the millions more in Jersey City, carrying across the water. Other sounds like sirens, explosions, and the fires that had taken down several landmarks directly following the Cancellation had gone silent, but the chorus of after-dead voices haunted her days as well as her nights, an undercurrent from an unwanted audience vibrating on the wind. Up this high in the crown of the Stature of Liberty, the dark melody again stung at her ears.
“Do you hear that?” she asked the Prince.
“Hear what?”
Lady Judith blinked. “I thought…never mind.”
Joel placed a hand on her arm, squeezed firmly, just enough to verge on painful. Those hands certainly were capable of it. Instead, they grounded her to the tangible, to a small corner of the world where hearts still beat and lungs breathed air and several hundred living souls prevailed across some forty-three acres between two islands.
######
“We can’t risk them getting so close, J,” he said, her V.P. as it were, her handsome Prince. “If our food source gets contaminated—”
“I know,” Lady Judith said. She didn’t voice that she was sick of fish, no matter how many ways the cooks baked, fried, or tried to disguise it under fresh herbs.
Joel drew in a deep breath and then just as deeply let it sail. “I’m going to recommend we suspend the search and rescue part of your plan.”
Lady Judith forced her gaze away from the panorama visible through the viewing gaps in the coronal crown’s spokes to Joel’s somber expression.
“It’s been weeks.”
Lady Judith nodded. “Fifty-one days as of today since we rescued anyone alive. I know. I’ve counted.”
In a lower voice, Joel added, “We should conserve our resources for defense and gathering supplies.”
Lady Judith’s mind attempted to wander. “Next spring,” the announcer spoke only to her, “we’ll farm Governor’s Island, too. After disposing of any after-deads. Probably infested with artistic types over there. Perhaps you’ll know one or more of them.”
She willed the inner monologue to hush. Her Prince was right. He always was.
“It’s your call. I trust your judgment.”
Joel nodded and pocketed his shades while addressing the spotters. “Let’s be sure that swimmer was traveling alone.”
On his way past her, the Prince patted her ass, unnoticed by all save Judith. A small but powerful act, his touch vanquished the madness brewing within her skull. Mostly.
######
Going mad.
Lady Judith had worried she would lose her mind and degenerate and give in and collapse before the first winter snow fell, and, surely, there would be winter white in New York. This was a year for storms. Big ones. Real shit-kickers. There had been plenty of lesser, quieter storms raging, too—like the one Lady Judith battled daily, sure that it, like the Cancellation, was going to overwhelm her world and, worse, be her undoing.
Getting onto the right dose of the right medication with her hormones out of whack had been trying enough. The psych prescription that worked had been expensive even with insurance—there hadn’t been a generic option. You couldn’t just waltz into any corner pharmacy in the process of being looted—or worse—and walk out with a lifetime supply.
She’d let it go. Mind over matter. If Lady Judith heard voices, well…it was just lines of script being run through in her head, she decided. She took comfort in knowing that most of the 700-plus residents packed onto Liberty and Ellis Islands had gone a little mad as well, given what they had survived, given the cancellation of civilization and the reality of reruns delivered by after-death. The dead woke up hungry. A shit storm, indeed.
Mercifully, she had met her Prince, Joel. Joel was, for the most part, all the medication she needed to stay focused, to stay sane.
She knocked back a glass of water and two aspirin from her own private supply. A luxury, true, but one she agreed would benefit her in terms of doing her job. If she was in the best shape possible, the islands would be as well.
Lady Judith fixed her lipstick—another luxury, but a necessary one—and glided out of her makeshift command center housed within the walls of the former Fort Wood at the pedestal beneath the statue. It was time to play her role, act in the daily performance of reassuring her audience that all would be okay. She hoped it was a good day and a great performance.
“Break a leg,” she whispered on her way out to tour the islands.
######
Their small fishing fleet bobbed on the whitecaps, what seemed a thousand miles away. A pair of the former Homeland Security gunboats watched over the fishermen—the nets had, twice to date, brought up the bloated, reaching corpses of after-dead in their haul.
Judith and Joel strolled down to the pier. She grabbed a handful of coins from the pink plastic beach bucket hanging on the nearest view scope and aimed the lens toward Manhattan. As expected, the city’s streets crawled with herds of after-dead; millions, she imagined, undulating in search of live food. Despite the warmth spilling down from a cloudless sky the color of comfortable denim, Lady Judith shivered.
The chill tumbled, drawing her back again to that day on the ferry.
######
The ferry.
They’d packed her in, along with a few hundred other refugees. Out of the city. To Connecticut. Only Connecticut, like New Jersey, had closed its borders and the updates crackling across the Harbor Patrol cop’s radio said that any attempt to cross the Long Island Sound would be met with appropriate measures. Blasted out of the water, in other words.
And so they waited, and the air grew so dense and heavy Judith couldn’t breathe. Scared old ladies. Kids. A troop of young males with pants belted halfway down their butts and showing an acre of underwear. Among them, a six-foot-tall black drag queen dressed tastefully in red leather trench and high heels, her lips looking sharp in her trademark shade of pomegranate, her favorite boots running up to her thighs.
She caught one of the street dudes staring and said, “Put your peepers back in your head—and keep those eyes peeled for anything out there that looks like a slimy network executive!”
“Say what?”
“Reeks of low tide, hungry for human flesh, fool!”
The old lady on the bench beside her began to sob. Lady Judith wanted to, had wept plenty, in fact, since the Cancellation was first announced in Asia and began sweeping outward in vast concentric circles, making TV channels and whole countries go dark. She didn’t give in, however; Lady Judith had kept her head level dating back to a time long before the current pestilence. She’d project her tears onto her fellow cast through this tense scene, let others weep for her, only…
“Don’t worry, Ma’am,” she said, placing a manicured hand onto the woman’s shoulder. “I bet we’ll be underway in no time.”
The old woman’s sad blue eyes met Lady Judith’s. “They wouldn’t let me bring Mindy.”
“Mindy?”
“She’s still out there on the pier. What’s going to happen to her?”
Mindy, Lady Judith saw, was not alone on that length of grubby dock. Stacked a dozen deep were cat carriers and several birdcages. A big mutt with floppy ears was tied to a post. Lady Judith’s eyes widened.
“You,” she snapped at her admirer. “And your homeboys. Follow me.”
She pushed through the bodies standing about, stuck in a ferry with no safe destination charted. A dozen steps later, she realized that none of the young Saggers had followed.
“Hey,” she snapped and clapped her hands together. The burst of thunder silenced every conversation, even stemmed tears. “You deaf as well as rude? I said come on.”
The homeboys followed her out of the passenger section and onto the deck, where they fell under the sites of a dozen drawn weapons.
“Return to your seats,” shouted some giant macho-asshole in full riot gear and helmet.
Lady Judith folded her arms. “What kind of red tape administrative bullshit is this? No, not until you let us collect the rest of our peeps.” She tipped her tweezed chin at the pets doomed to remain on the pier.
“Your peeps aren’t allowed on board, now get your asses back in there!”
Judith narrowed her eyes and shifted her neck from side to side. “We’re not leaving without Mindy and the rest of the meow-meows and woof-woofs and tweet-tweets, tough guy.”
The Asshole retrained his rifle, a lethal-looking dealer of death. Lady Judith’s resolve threatened to crumble; it was aimed at her chest. In a disconnected manner, she heard the homeboys gasp. One of the armed soldiers standing on the gantry swore.
“Sarge,” the soldier said.
Lady Judith wanted to look, the other man’s deep voice that alluring. So, too, was his image, looming large at the corner of her eye. But she dared not blink.
“We’re taking the old ladies’ kitty cats,” she growled.
“The only thing you’re taking, freak, is an early exit.”
The certainty that he was going to kill her rose cold in the grayness of that ugly morning. The world had been cancelled; the after-death of syndication rose louder behind them, somewhere just beyond the pier. Gunshots and howls and sirens rose sharply in the breathless moment that would determine whether or not the star of a drag cabaret lived or died.
“Lath,” the other soldier barked, this time louder. “Lower your weapon!”
The Asshole didn’t, not until the man with the voice pressed the muzzle of his drawn Glock against her would-be killer’s temple.
“Flanders, what the fuck-?”
“Do it,” he said, not to the asshole sergeant but to Lady Judith. “Collect your pets. But make it fast. We’re all about to get seriously fucked, according to the chatter.”
Lady Judith forced her eyes out of their rigor and blinked. She glanced to the left, to him. The man in uniform—Harbor Patrol, she saw—was, hands down, the handsomest she’d ever laid eyes upon. Tall, with dark hair, classic good looks, a day or so worth of stubble, eyes as green as emeralds. Heavenly distraction.
She woke from the trance and ignored her racing heart before it could distract her further. “Come on, boys.”
This time, the homeboys hot-footed behind her without needing to be prodded. They hurried onto the pier, driven to action by the after-death dirge moving closer and the sad mewls and scared chirps and a lone mutt’s whimpers. A tabby with a patch of caramel color over one eye poked her face at the carrier’s door.
“You must be Mindy,” Lady Judith said.
She grabbed the pet carrier and another, cursing when one of her nails chipped. Her new friends made fast work of collecting the other pets. Lady Judith marched back up to the ferry, her heels tattooing a sharp staccato on the gangway. “Thanks, my Prince,” she said to the handsome soldier. “Now what?”
No one answered. Lady Judith waited, shook her head, resumed her course back into the cramped passenger section, where cheers and applause broke out.
Lady Judith set down the cat carriers, then raised both hands, calling for silence. “Listen up, people. We have to boogie. Connecticut don’t want us, nor does Jersey. But I ain’t no Jersey Girl, never was, and I’ve only been through Connecticut on my way home here. I’m a native New Yorker.”
More cheers. The last of the pets arrived, including the mutt, its leash held in her Prince’s free hand. “We can’t stay here. Those things just powered past the blockade.”
Lady Judith Jane Geronimo straightened. She was no longer part of the supporting cast. No under-five lines. No backup player. Show time.
“Prince, tell your men to stow their weapons and hustle their butts aboard, then order the pilot and crew to take us out. We’re going.”
“Going where?”
“The only place in New York we can. The last place that’s safe.”
“And just who put you in charge?” another voice chimed in, the Asshole’s.
“She did,” Lady Judith said, and aimed her finger with its chipped nail in the direction of the harbor.
Untimed minutes later, the woman’s colossal head gazed down, welcoming them to the island.
“This is still America, and there are still rules, still liberty,” Lady Judith said to the Asshole. “Try to remember that.”
######
She ended her trip to the past and faced Joel. “What did you say?”
The Prince absently adjusted his crotch. “A shark. The Dorian Lord just called it in. A great white, according to her skipper.”
A colony of seals had taken up residence on Governor’s Island where, in the spring, they planned to plant and expand their food supply. “I’m not surprised.”
At Hotel Ellis—the former Immigration Museum—she fielded complaints, the usual like lack of space and privacy, and one unexpected.
“This place is haunted,” a young Latina named Vera said. “I swear I saw a ghost.”
######
He lay beside her, one bare leg and big foot hanging out of the blanket. The gentle sough of the Prince’s breaths post-coitus steadied Lady Judith’s pulse. She inhaled. Joel’s scent, male and raw, and hers, exotic from her favorite brand of perfume, blended together, becoming something bewitching. Energy crackled through her blood. Smiling, she set a hand on her Prince’s hairy outer thigh.
“What?” he asked, flashing a sleepy grin.
“The dumbest thought. If the Big Show hadn’t been cancelled, we never would have had this chance to star together in the sequel and attend the after-party.”
The Prince snorted a laugh, even that sound attractive on him. “You mean that if the world hadn’t gone to Hell, we never would have met.”
“That’s what I said.”
“More or less, Lady J.”
Their eyes connected in the flickering candlelight. Lady Judith fell into the gravitational pull of Joel’s emerald gemstone gaze. “The world could be in worse hands.”
“You’re a fine leading lady, J—the finest.”
The Prince took her free hand in his and kissed the palm. Then he repositioned her fingers from his leg to another destination on his body higher up, and they again made something like love.
And the madness that pursued her, a different but no less dangerous enemy than the things wandering the streets of the dead city, retreated another step, for now.
######
There had been half a dozen infected after-deads on the island, but in the rain of that long ago morning, they hadn’t seen them from the dock. Mad with hunger, two came strolling out of the mist, alerted to the sound of voices. The pop and clatter of bullets masked the approach of the others as Lady Judith, the Prince, the Asshole, and two of the military men swept the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.
“We’ll need to burn those bodies,” the Prince said.
Four other after-deads spilled down from the pedestal. One slammed onto the Asshole, sending him sprawling across the grass, which had gone wild and weedy over the preceding weeks. Another landed directly behind the Prince. Terror surged through Lady Judith’s veins, icy and paralyzing. But she willed it to the periphery and, in one fluid motion, she launched a kick into the dead man’s gut, driving him into Joel’s gun site. Wasting no time, she retrieved the Asshole’s fallen rifle and pumped off a single shot. The head of the Asshole’s attacker came apart. More gunfire erupted. Thunder echoed across the island.
“Thanks,” the Asshole said.
The Prince exhaled loudly, his emerald eyes narrowed, intense, but also seeing her fully. “Where’d you learn moves like that?”
“I took a citizen’s police academy class for a role on a soap opera,” she said. “I didn’t get it. They cancelled the soap, and then they cancelled the world.”
“It’s a new world now,” the Prince said. “A new show. And it looks like you’ve done plenty of training to lead it. Now, let’s do this by the book. No more ugly surprises.”
Joel and the men fanned out. When it had been confirmed safe, 311 men, women, children, cats, canaries, and one big brown mutt walked off the ferry and onto the soil of their new home.
######
The ratings had dropped. There were rumors of new writers coming in—shake ups in the creative staff were never a good sign, because in order to put their stamp, their egos on a series, new writers normally began by getting rid of established characters and bringing in new ones. Comings and goings. Especially, during sweeps weeks. A wedding leads to a murder, a funeral, an investigation, a courtroom drama.
The soaps were gone, though. They’d followed the radio drama, the Western, the detective shows, and the hour-long family variety genres to the grave. All that remained was Reality TV, a mindless, violent programming schedule of ugliness populated by D-listers. No, Z-listers. After-deads. TV was a dead medium now, like the radio, the Eight-track tape player, the cassette, the record player, the VCR.
Lady Judith jolted awake, sure there was something malevolent in the room with them. It stood in the dark corner beyond her Prince’s side of the bed, lurking against a section of wall lit by September moonlight; a thing with teeth, claws, and eyes that glowed as red as the night fires they often saw burning far across the water when something exploded and buildings caught fire.
It was coming for her.
“No,” Lady Judith gasped. She closed her eyes, channeled mind to overcome matter, listened to the voices.
“Today in the role of Leader of the Living World, it’s Constance Carrington,” the announcer cut in. “Constance Carrington in the role of Lady Judith Jane Geronimo, in the role once played by Jerrel Claxton, a poor girl born in a boy’s body right here in the Big Apple!”
Lady Judith pinched her eyes. A pair of thick tears emerged, too clotted to fall on their own. She instead wiped them away.
“Lady Jerrel, in the role of Constance Claxton. Only what she did with the Handsome Prince of the Islands in today’s episode was anything but ladylike…”
She choked down a heavy swallow, tasting the proof of sex with Prince Joel. Aspirin would help her headache, but only those elusive psych meds were strong enough to sufficiently vanquish the demons—silver bullets, mustard seeds, and cruciform all contained within one pretty pale tablet.
Lady Judith swore and shook her head. The horror standing in the room evaporated, slinking back into the shadows and moonlight that had created it.
######
“I’m coming with you,” Lady Judith said.
The Prince dug in his soles. She was past him by several feet before she realized he’d stopped advancing. Judith did an about-face.
“I am.”
Fixing her with a stare that was as angry as it was attractive, the Prince bridged half the distance. “We can handle it.”
“I know you can.”
“Then stay here, where you’re needed, J. We can’t risk losing you. If not for you…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and didn’t need to. Every day, she and the Prince toured Liberty and Ellis Islands, and saw the scope of the operation that had sprung up in so short a time: a fishing fleet, livestock brought over from farms in New Jersey, thriving patchwork gardens, kids playing in the sunlight, sweet old ladies with their cats. A tall, seemingly fearless lady looked after them all.
She didn’t tell him about the other monster stalking her.
“Judith,” the Prince said, bringing her out of the fog and back to the moment. He only rarely referred to her by her full first name. She was always ‘J’ or ‘Lady J’—and other names, private ones, in the bedroom. He seized hold of her wrist. Their eyes locked.
“I’m going,” Lady Judith said.
“J…”
What she wanted to say was that in killing the physical threat moving ever nearer, she hoped the mental one would follow suit. But the words died on her tongue.
Lady Judith Jane Geronimo accepted a semi-automatic from the man who’d once been an Asshole and now was simply Lath, and boarded the gunboat.
######
“We spotted them an hour ago, swarming over the docks. Thousands of them,” the Prince said. “And then, for no clear reason, they started diving in.”
Lady Judith checked her weapon. “Well, then, let’s hope we brought along enough bullets.”
She gazed up at the fractured skyline of a city that had inspired her from an early age in a time when she was someone else, a different person entirely. But wasn’t that the nature of being a true actor? Being able to perform as other people, other characters, even other genders? When Granny Louise and Aunt Netta and the ladies from the neighborhood gathered around the TV in the afternoon to watch their soaps, when there were soaps, that younger version of Lady Judith had vowed one day to be on them.
“You’ll see me on TV,” she—he—had pledged.
Aunt Netta was gone, Granny Louise years before her. The soaps were gone, too. The world had been cancelled.
It was a new show now, with a good cast of players on the islands, people and their pets who depended upon her and Judith’s handsome Prince, her wonderful Prince, who loved her in equal doses of the pure and filthy.
“Thousands of them, diving into the drink!” someone said.
“That one we nailed…it was a scout,” the Prince said. He raised his binoculars and trained them on the distant waves. “Fuckers know we’re out here and are trying to reach our islands.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” Lady Judith said.
“Thank God or whatever’s up there that those stinking, dead fucks float.” This, from the former Asshole.
“There’s something at port, maybe a hundred feet ahead,” said Prince Joel.
The gunboats were moving so quickly that they reached the target a second or two after Joel’s declaration. The body was enormous, gray-skinned.
“Shark,” Lady Judith said.
She recognized the great white’s fin, and one other telling fact as they rocketed past, headed to face the real threat to the islands—the monstrosities driven so insane with hunger in their after-death that they’d swarmed into the sea. For an instant, their eyes crossed glances, and Lady Judith was certain the shark’s wasn’t black but milky-white, that of a dead fish.
If the after-dead had been trying to swim across New York Harbor, and the sharks chasing after sea lions had eaten of their diseased flesh…
“Prince Joel,” she started.
But another, louder voice in the gunboat proclaimed, “There they are. Christ, look how many there are!”
Lady Judith took aim and fired.
END.
by Gregory L. Norris