Apocalypse Rebirth, From Trash to God

The girl with silver hair

  Two weeks passed after Jax built his bunker on the north hill, and the city was still normal, the sun still rose every morning, buses still ran, people still lined up for coffee, and no one believed that the world would end, but Jax lived like the world had already ended because every single day he woke up before sunrise and trained his body and his power until sweat covered his shirt.

  In the early morning his bunker was cold and quiet, he stood inside the concrete room and focused on a pile of scrap metal, he raised his hand and whispered, "Cut," and an invisible blade of space sliced the metal into clean pieces that fell with a clang, then he thought, "Store," and the metal vanished into his huge silent space, then he thought, "Move," and he tried to teleport a small stone from the table to his hand, and after many tries the stone finally flickered and appeared in his palm.

  He smiled and said to himself, "I am getting stronger, soon no one can touch me."

  Down in the city, Old Man Finn was waiting for him with worry on his face, because Finn had been selling food for forty years and he had never seen anyone buy like Jax, and when Jax walked into his warehouse with cash in his pocket, Finn grabbed his arm and said, "Jax my boy, sit down, we need to talk, people are talking about you, they say you are stockpiling for something, are you in trouble, did you join some bad gang?"

  Jax sat on a bag of rice and said calmly, "Finn, you have always been kind to me when no one else was, so I will tell you something honest, but you must promise not to laugh, in less than two and a half months something terrible will happen, black rain will fall and the world will break, food will be worth more than money and water will be worth more than gold."

  Finn stared at him with wide eyes and said, "Black rain, what black rain, you sound like those crazy prophets on TV, Jax, are you sick, do you need a doctor," and Jax took Finn's old hands and said, "I am not sick, I know it sounds crazy, but if I am right, will you come to my bunker on the north hill, I have enough food for everyone who is good to me, I will save you a place."

  Finn was quiet for a long time, then he sighed and said, "My boy, I am old, I have seen many crazy things in my life, I don't believe in black rain, but I believe in your eyes, your eyes look like a man who has seen death, so if your bunker is real, I will remember your hill."

  Jax nodded and said, "Thank you, Finn, that is enough for me," and he left more cash on the table than the rice was worth and walked out while Finn shouted, "Jax, you paid too much!"

  On the same day, Mira Lane appeared at his bunker without warning, she climbed the hill wearing her old army jacket and her silver hair shining in the sun, she carried a backpack and a hunting knife, and when she saw Jax lifting steel plates she said loudly, "So this is your fortress that will survive the end of the world, it looks like a rusted trash can from the outside."

  Jax put down the steel plate and wiped sweat and said, "It may look like trash, but it will survive bullets and beasts, what are you doing here, I thought you did not need anyone's help."

  Mira walked around the bunker and touched the new steel door and said, "I did not come for help, I came because you cut that man's knife without touching it, I have been in the army and I have never seen power like that, so I want to know if you are a freak or a weapon."

  Jax laughed and said, "I am neither, I am just a man who died once and came back with a second chance, and I am preparing for June 14, do you want to see inside?"

  Mira raised an eyebrow and said, "You would show your bunker to a stranger, what if I steal from you?"

  Jax said, "You can try, but my space will swallow you if you try to steal," and he opened the heavy steel door, inside there were shelves, solar lights, water tanks, beds, and boxes of medicine, and Mira's eyes went wide and she said, "Oh my god, you really did buy the whole market, this is enough for an army."

  Jax said, "It is enough for good people, not for an army, the Voss family taught me that not everyone deserves food."

  Mira turned to him and said, "Voss family, you mentioned them before, who are they?"

  Jax's face turned dark and cold, and he said slowly, "They were my wife's family, I slaved for them for three years, I gave them everything, and when the world ended in my first life, they tied my hands and sold me to raiders for two bags of rice, my own wife watched and said I was finally useful."

  Mira was silent for a moment, then she said with anger in her voice, "Two bags of rice, they sold a man for two bags of rice, what kind of monsters are they?"

  Jax said, "The kind of monsters who will come begging to this hill when the rain falls, and I will not open the door for them."

  Mira looked at his face, saw the pain and the hate mixed together, and said more softly, "If what you say is true, if the world really ends, then you are right not to open the door, but what about innocent people, what about people like Finn?"

  Jax said, "For innocent people, the door will always be open, for people like you who fight for others, the door will always be open, but for them, never."

  Mira nodded and said, "Then let me help you, I know how to fight, I know how to shoot, I know how to set traps around a bunker, you need a soldier, not just food."

  Jax looked at her silver hair and strong eyes and said, "Are you sure, this hill will become the most dangerous place in the city when the rain falls, everyone will want what we have."

  Mira smiled for the first time and said, "Good, I have been bored since I left the army, I need danger."

  That afternoon they worked together, Mira showed Jax how to set barbed wire around the hill and how to make noise traps with cans, she showed him how to hold a rifle properly and said, "Breathe out before you shoot, don't rush, let the target come to you," and Jax listened carefully because Mira knew things he did not know from his first life.

  While they worked, Jax's phone rang again, it was Ravena, her voice was sweet but fake and she said, "Jax, dear, Selene is crying every night, she misses you, why don't you come home for dinner, we can talk about the kidney thing, maybe we can find another donor."

  Jax put the phone on speaker so Mira could hear, and he said loudly, "Ravena, does Selene also miss the way I cooked for you and cleaned your floors and gave you my salary every month, does she miss her free servant?"

  Ravena's voice turned sharp and she said, "How dare you speak to me like that, you ungrateful brat, we gave you a family!"

  Mira whispered, "Is that the monster mother?"

  Jax nodded and said into the phone, "You did not give me a family, you gave me chains, and I broke them, don't call me again unless you want to hear how black rain sounds when it hits your roof."

  Ravena shouted, "You crazy fool, you will die alone on that hill!" and hung up.

  Mira laughed and said, "You have a way with mothers-in-law, I like it."

  Later that evening, as the sun went down and painted the city orange, Mira sat on the bunker roof with Jax and said, "Tell me more about this black rain, how do you know it will fall on June 14, did you see it in a dream?"

  Jax looked at the city lights far below and said, "I lived through it once, I saw the rain turn black like oil, I saw people who touched it scream as their skin burned and changed, I saw beasts crawl out of the sewers with eyes like red lanterns, and I saw the Voss company building, Selene's family company, I saw its underground lab where the rain was made."

  Mira sat up straight and said, "Wait, you are saying the Voss family made the black rain, their company made the end of the world?"

  Jax nodded slowly and said, "In my first life, when I was dying, I heard Commander Drax talking to Ravena, he said your family's lab leaked and now we all pay the price, Ravena knew it would happen and did nothing, she just kept making money until the last day."

  Mira clenched her fists and said, "If that is true, then they are not just monsters to you, they are monsters to the whole world, they should be punished."

  Jax said, "They will be, but not by me, the world will punish them, hunger will punish them, beasts will punish them, I will just watch."

  Mira looked at Jax's side profile in the sunset and said quietly, "You are not as cruel as you pretend to be, Jax, a cruel man would not save food for Old Man Finn, a cruel man would not help a strange girl with silver hair."

  Jax did not answer, he just looked at the city that was still alive and whispered, "Maybe I am still learning how to be cruel."

  Night fell over the hill, the wind blew cold, and inside the bunker the solar lights glowed warm and steady, two people sat together on the roof sharing canned meat and water, one a reborn man who had died for two bags of rice, and one a lone soldier who had left the army because she was tired of following orders, and both of them waited for a rain that had not yet fallen but that they knew would change everything.