Ciphers by Matt Rogers (ereader with dictionary .txt) 📕

between the dormant cars and trucks and taxis, having realised there was no risk of getting sandwiched between them. Manhattan’s streets were now a stationary maze, easily navigable by foot but inconvenient for anyone looking to move fast.

The darkness didn’t help.

Phone lights glowed like stark pinpoints across the cityscape. Rico knew he might have been imagining it, but the amount of lights seemed fewer and farther between than at the beginning of the blackout. Maybe people were realising this might last longer than they thought. It would be wise to conserve their batteries if there was no hope of charging them for the foreseeable future.

He stopped his thoughts dead in their tracks, aware that he was sobering up.

He didn’t like that one bit.

Samuel said, ‘What are you doing? Why are we stopping?’

Rico drifted his gaze over. His vision swam — the after-effect of the drugs — but he could see the wide-eyed kid beside him clearly.

He didn’t like that either. Right now, numbness took precedence.

Then, like a holy sign from the gods, he looked in the other direction and saw a liquor store beside them. It was a cheap mom-and-pop operation, but that didn’t matter. It had spirits in bottles in the windows, and that was currently his number one priority. There were no lights on, and the door appeared locked, but that had never stopped anyone who put their mind to it.

Rico said, ‘I need a drink. Get your gun out.’

‘Here?’ Samuel said, looking around.

Now paranoid.

Rico lunged forward and seized him by the back of the neck. He pulled the kid in close and hissed, ‘You getting cold feet?’

Samuel eyed him with the unhinged menace of a psycho. ‘No.’

‘Prove it.’

Samuel nodded. Still wired to the eyeballs. Not much time had passed. He took the Glock out of his waistband, pointed it square at the small glass window in the liquor store’s door, and fired a shot.

The report exploded, unsuppressed, down the street.

A few people screamed. Most just scattered. Even though his senses were dulled, Rico could see the outlines of civilians fleeing like wraiths. If there’d been power, and lights, and order, and control, the gunshot might have been a bigger deal. But there were none of those things. Just the steady realisation settling over the city that perhaps this wasn’t a temporary problem after all. Perhaps each and every resident of New York would soon be fending for themselves. Perhaps civilised society was hanging on by a thread.

Rico knew that concept would fill him with dread if he was sober.

He reached through the broken window frame, taking care not to cut his wrists on the jagged pieces of leftover glass, and turned the lock on the inside of the door. Then he pushed down on the handle and stepped inside.

Samuel followed.

His footsteps echoed. The atmosphere was muffled. Almost as dark as outside, but claustrophobic. Rows and rows of shelves, stocked with bottles of booze, barely illuminated by a mixture of moonlight and the haloes of phone flashlights filtering in from the street. The atmosphere was positively ethereal. Rico couldn’t see much, but his new friend was armed, and that gave him all the confidence he needed. He sauntered deeper into the store and fetched a bottle of whiskey off the nearest shelf.

Rolled it over in his palm, scrutinising the label.

Then he nodded with satisfaction and turned back to see Samuel shivering.

In both fear and excitement.

His eyes were wider than ever.

Rico followed Samuel’s gaze and found an old man at the other end of it. Hispanic, with brown weathered skin and almost no other discernible features. It was hard to make out much of what was happening in the lowlight, but Rico could see, plain as day, that the guy had a pump-action shotgun in his hands. He was aiming it at Samuel’s belly. Samuel had his Glock pointed at the old man’s head.

The shop owner, no doubt.

A standstill.

Samuel laughed, and the sound ricocheted off the walls.

No, not a laugh, Rico thought.

More of a cackle.

Suddenly Rico sensed the depravity of his new friend.

Samuel was genuinely enjoying this.

Rico’s heart throbbed, three beats a second.

Samuel said, ‘Put that down, buddy.’

The owner growled, ‘Get out of my store.’

‘We will. As soon as we’re done getting what we need.’

‘No. Get out now.’

Samuel feigned mock horror. ‘But my friend here needs a drink.’

‘Fuck your friend. Tell him to put that bottle down and get out.’

‘Tell him yourself.’

‘I’m not playing around,’ the owner said. ‘Out. Now.’

Samuel’s right hand stayed rigid gripping the Glock, fixed in place. But his left started shaking. It trembled and the fingers jerked up and down like marionette strings. Rico noted it, and figured the kid was more unstable than he thought.

Samuel’s eyes went wider than ever.

Samuel said, ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘No,’ the old man said.

‘Do you know what I’m capable of?’

The owner didn’t respond. Clearly he’d reached the limits of his patience. He wasn’t about to indulge in faux-gangster dialogue, and Rico started to sympathise. Irritation nagged at him, and he took a step forward to get closer to Samuel.

Under his breath, he muttered, ‘Let’s go, man. I’ve got what I need.’

‘No,’ the owner said, his voice terse. ‘Put the bottle down.’

But Rico wasn’t about to do that. He needed to avoid clear thoughts like an addict needed the hot spoon.

Samuel cocked his head to one side, his left hand still vibrating. Then, keeping his aim unmoving, he turned to look at Rico and said, ‘Get a load of this motherfucker. He clearly doesn’t know. But you know. You know…’

Rico didn’t say anything.

Know what? he thought.

Samuel turned back to the shop owner and said, ‘See how there’s no lights? See how it’s all dark? I did this. Me. I run this city, old man. I helped create this and if you think for one second I’m going to let you tell me what to—’

Then the shop owner did something incomprehensibly stupid.

Midway through Samuel’s tirade, the old man lunged forward. Lowering his own shotgun. Stretching one hand out, fingers