AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR THOSE THAT LIKE THEM:

: ) Hello! I don't normaly do author's notes, but this story does have a history to it, if you're interested.I started this novel about six years ago, and have written many versions of it, none of which I have been satisfied with. Four of them are posted on this site, if you have an intrest (Styx, Delian, Demintia, Last Man Standing). While I have changed many things about it over the years, two things have always stayed the same: Skylar and Reven, the two main characters. Last yearI got the (in my opinion) genius idea to combine it with another novel idea I had just started to flesh out (Humanistic Denial). The two worked together so well it was errie. This is the result. This novel is very dear to me. Even thoughI have worked on other novels in the passed six years, thisone has always had my heart.

It always seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sitting outside McQueen’s, wiping blood from his face, Skylar thought about just how good of an idea it had seemed at the time. A couple of drinks to help him relax, nothing more. He hadn’t intended to get into a bar fight. But then again, he never did, but he always seemed to end up sitting outside of whatever dive he’d been in, wiping blood from his eyes, nose and mouth.

“You’re getting slow, Lark.”

Skylar sighed and tilted his head back to see who was bothering him now. He’d just had his face rearranged for him, he didn’t need anything more.

It was Binnigham – a regular of McQueen’s. He could be found every night, sitting in the same corner, proclaiming loudly whatever bit of advice he seemed to think the world at large should know from him.

He apparently could exist outside of the bar’s smock and shadows, and he stood beside Skylar looking down the street. McQueen’s sat on Mallory Street, just off of South Main, and it was easy to hear whatever commotion was taking place down on the main drag.

“’M not slow,” Skylar muttered, trying not to move his jaw more than was necessary.

“You are getting slow, Lark,” Binnigham announced, saying “Lark” the way he would the term “boy.” “You’re getting slow, slower everyday. Keep taking hits to the head like that and you’re going to be dead soon, Lark!” and then he laughed to himself, cackling at the idea.

“I am not getting slow,” Skylar repeated firmly, then winced. He should have drunk more. It would have dulled the pain more. “And thanks a lot,” he muttered.

“Just stating the facts, Lark.”

“How would you know?” Skylar snapped back. Why him? Why did Binnigham feel the need to leave his precious bar just come stand out here and mock him?

“Everybody knows, Lark,” Binnigham informed, looking down at the younger man with a large grin spreading across his face. “You’ve been floating from one bar to another hoping people wouldn’t notice, but people see these kinds of things. You’re loosing your edge, getting old, but still as dumb as ever, aren’t ya?”

“Shut up.”

“Soon you’ll be like the rest of us, Lark, just a bunch of fat old men drinking away our misery!”

“And how many kids did you loose to the plague?” Skylar snapped. He’d had enough of this. If the old man wanted to come out here and try starting something when Skylar had clearly had enough then Skylar wasn’t going to hold back. It was petty, since everyone had lost someone to the plague, but it was still effective. Binnigham shut up right away about Skylar’s faults and his impending death and stalked back into the bar with little more than some empty cursing.

It worked just about every time. People just lost the drive to bitch about anything when you brought up the plague. That or they tried to beat you to death for reminding them about it. But life was about gambles, and it got Skylar another moment of peace as he sat outside McQueen’s nursing a split lip and probably a fractured nose. It was time to get back to the apartment and call it a night, but the sounds coming from down South Main were not encouraging. It was a fifteen block walk home. It wouldn’t have been too bad if he didn’t already feel like shit.

Sounded like they’d worked themselves up into a good furry on South Main. He could here the yelling from down here, and every now and the sounds of something crashing and breaking. It was either the gas station or the pharmacy they were after. These days it was almost always one or the other. If it was the gas station, then it was one of the local unions raising hell over one thing or another. If it was the pharmacy, then it was the desperate. Mother’s with children sick with what was left of the plague, addicts and dependents and just those looking for a high from anything they could get their hands on. Riots on the pharmacies were rarer. People weren’t as willing to piss off the proverbial hand that feed. But when they did riot, they were the worse. The unions just got pissed at the gas companies for controlling too much and paying too little. People didn’t get pissed with the pharmacies, they got desperate. And desperate people where a bad thing.

Skylar usually tried to be off the streets by the time these things usually started. But every now and then there was a riot in the early evening or even during the day, and that always made getting back to the apartment and interesting experience.

Fifteen blocks, through whatever that mess was on South Main. Skylar’s head started to throb again at the very thought and he groaned. Maybe he could just sleep out here on the side walk. Granted, it would probably get him mug and killed, if not worse, but fifteen blocks….

Then the ground shook and the sound of thunder reverberated down the street. An explosion. Even more people were yelling now from down South Main. The door to McQueen’s slammed open and a handful of people came stumbling out before it was slammed shut and the lock audibly shoved into place.

The new comers on the street were cursing loudly, at McQueen’s, the rioters and both the pharmacies and gas companies, which ever one was responsible this time. They started to make their way slowly down the street. Going to opposite direction from South Main. Lucky Bastards. If Skylar was going to get back to his apartment, he was going to have to cross south main at some point, and unless he walked about ten miles south, he wasn’t likely to find a safe place to do so.

“This world’s gone to hell ever since all those kids died,” one of the men muttered as he tried to make his way around Skylar and nearly tripped over him. Skylar just glared up at the man. No one needed to state the obvious. They had died. Every last one of them. And the few that had been born since were only kept alive thanks to the recently developed, extremely expensive miracle pills the pharmaceutical companies guarded more closely than money or gas.

And what did Skylar care? He was twenty-one. Old enough not to have even been in danger of getting sick three years ago when the plague had first swept across the world, killing everyone who wasn’t already physically an adult. He hadn’t been in danger. He hadn’t had any children to loose and was an only child so he didn’t even have to worry about any siblings. It had just been him. He’d just watch it all happen. Watch child after child die, families fall apart and the world go to hell.