Bzrk Apocalypse by Michael Grant Read Free Book Online

visceral experiences to come before she headed south.
    And then?
    And then she would play the new game and win that as well. Or
    not. She might not master the new game. She might even lose.
    The idea made her smile. Her father had taught her to understand
    that life was a walk on a tightrope and death was the ground. Sooner
    or later, no matter how agile you were, the ground would claim you.
    He’d been full of gloomy pronouncements back in the old days,
    sitting in lawn chairs outside their trailer as the carnival shut down
    for the night. They would sit there, the two of them, the man and
    the child, as the lights went out on the Mad Mouse and the Ferris
    wheel. They would sit and sip their drinks—bourbon for her father,
    unsweetened iced tea for her—and acknowledge the nods and the
    weary greetings as the other carnies headed for their own digs.
    The nights had almost always been warm and muggy. The car-
    nival mostly played the south: Baton Rouge, Bogalusa, Hattiesburg,
    Vicksburg. She’d seldom been cold, which was maybe why the cold
    attracted her now. Cold was clean. Hot was sweaty and dirty.
    Back then, back before the train wreck that was in her future,
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    BZRK APOCALYPSE
    Lystra had wanted two things: For her mother to come back. And
    to be able someday to take over a couple of the sideshow games. An
    old man named Sprinkle operated the coin toss, the dart throw, the
    water pistol, and the ring toss. He let his games get shabby, refusing to
    spring for so much as a few cans of paint.
    Lystra thought she could do better. She could make the games
    livelier and more profitable. The key was to make them a bit easier.
    Let the marks take home a teddy bear occasionally; it was good adver-
    tising. Run an honest game, attract more players, pay out more in
    prizes—but offer more levels, more depth, and make more money in
    the end.
    “Yeah!” Lystra said to no one. It made her smile to think how even
    then, even when she was a lonely seven-year-old, she was ambitious.
    But yes, lonely. She had always wanted a younger sister. Someone
    like Plath, maybe. Someone to look up to her. Someone to talk to and
    play with.
    Even a brother would have been welcome.
    Interesting thought.
    “A game within a game?” Lystra muttered under her breath.
    Would it add spice? Yes. Would it complicate the overall plan?
    She walked it through step-by-step in her mind and concluded that it
    would have only a small downside risk.
    It would be good to have someone to appreciate what she had
    accomplished. It would be good to have someone to watch it all play
    out with her.
    “Minions,” she said, and laughed. “I need minions. Yeah.”
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    SIX
    “No. Vincent is not ready to resume control.” This was from Anya
    Violet, and spoken in a whisper. “He may never be ready.”
    Plath was making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in the
    kitchen of the new Manhattan safe house. One for herself and one
    for Keats. And seeing Billy’s level of interest she pulled out two more
    slices of bread for him.
    They were in the kitchen: Plath, Keats, Billy the Kid who really
    was a kid, and Dr. Anya Violet. Anya was of undetermined age—per-
    haps in her thirties, perhaps she had edged into her forties—but to
    Plath, at least, she seemed beautiful, sophisticated, and effortlessly
    sexy in a way that she decided must come only with some age and
    some experience.
    Anya had not yet chosen a nom de guerre. She thought it was
    a silly affectation. Of course, she understood the thinking behind
    choosing the name of some mad or at least seriously unbalanced per-
    son: it signaled acceptance of the core reality for BZRK members. It
    signaled a break with the past. It signaled a chin-out acknowledgment
    of the fact that madness was very likely in their future.
    She understood all that, but Dr. Anya Violet was not a child and
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    BZRK APOCALYPSE
    was not interested in following the rules of the clubhouse. Nor was
    she sure she wanted to accept the