GEN13 - Version 2.0 Read online

  SHOLLY FISCH

  Illustrations by Matt Haley

  VVILDSTORM PRODUCTIONS

  BP BOOKS

  CHAPTER 1

  r'wo months ago . . .

  Martin Cheswick hated children.

  In fact, Martin Cheswick had always hated children, even back in the days when he was a child himself. In the slum neighborhood where he grew up, the young Cheswick had been a tubby, unpopular kid—not smart enough to be the teacher’s pet, not coordinated enough to be an athlete, and not funny enough to be the class clown. His size and slowness made him an easy target for the petty cruelties of the older, stronger bullies who took delight in tormenting him. Even at the time, Cheswick knew full well that it wasn’t that they were after his lunch money or anything like that. It couldn’t have been; he never had any to steal. He didn’t really understand why they did it. It seemed as though they did it simply for the sake of doing it.

  It wasn’t until many years later that, in retrospect, Cheswick realized that the main reason for all of his beatings and victimization probably had nothing to do with him personally. Those kids had spent their young lives in the same filthy slum he had. In all likelihood, they made his life a living hell just to help them feel better about their own.

  Not that it changed his feelings, of course. With each new humiliation, Cheswick’s loathing for the children around him had grown, day by day. But the clincher came in one particular incident that, even forty-five years later,

  still caused him to fight down a shudder when he thought of it.

  Cheswick had taken to experimenting with different ways to leave school at the end of the day, and alternate routes to walk home. He hoped that the roundabout paths would keep him from running into his tormentors. If he could stay out of their sight long enough, then maybe, over time, they’d forget all about him. Or, at least, maybe they’d find a new victim to take his place.

  Lately, Cheswick had been ducking down the school’s back stairs to slip out a basement exit. He’d circle around the blank wall at the side of the school and head down the alley behind the diner, the tattoo parlor, and the bail bondsman. Once he made it to that point, there was no way to avoid having to come out into the open, but it was only a short sprint across the street before he could squeeze past the fence by the grocery store to reach the back yard of his apartment building and the safety of home.

  The route had been working pretty well for the better part of a week—well enough to make him a little too careless—when it happened. Cheswick was halfway down the alley, right between the diner and the tattoo parlor, when he found himself surrounded by the very gang of kids that he’d tried so hard to avoid. (Even as an adult, their smug, mocking voices still echoed in Cheswick’s memory.) Despite their cruel smiles, they weren’t happy about the tubby kid who thought he could outsmart them. They decided to teach him a lesson.

  He was garbage, they said. And there was just one place that garbage belonged. He struggled pointlessly as the bigger kids grabbed him, lifted him up, and physically threw him into the half-full dumpster behind the diner. Before he could react, they slammed the lid and somehow jammed it closed. Cheswick shouted and pounded on the metal as their jeering laughter faded into the distance.

  For over an hour, Cheswick was trapped in the dark, thrashing around amid the grease and slime from dozens of cheap meals. The stench of rotting food filled his nostrils, making it difficult to breathe. There was little danger of suffocation; the seal on the rusting dumpster was far from airtight. But that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

  Still, the smell wasn’t the worst part. Thanks to the greasy bits of leftover food, the pitch-black dumpster was infested with countless numbers of cockroaches. The roaches had no particular interest in the human who’d invaded their feeding ground, but at the same time, they had no hesitation about crawling across his body on their way to their afternoon meal. There were too many to kill them all, and it was too dark to be able to stay away from them. His skin clammy with sweat, Cheswick quickly realized that he’d better keep his eyes and mouth tightly closed if he didn’t want any of the vermin crawling in accidentally. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks as the terrified youth wore his hands bloody, banging loudly on the lid in an attempt to force it open or at least attract attention. It took forever until the owner of the tattoo parlor finally heard the noise and released the filthy, trembling boy back out into the daylight.

  That was why he hated children.

  The years had brought many changes to Martin Cheswick. True, he still wasn’t particularly athletic or funny, and his doctor hounded him regularly about finally getting serious about a diet. However, as he grew to adulthood, Cheswick had discovered that his shortcomings held little weight in the light of his many successes. He’d grown up to become a powerful, influential man. A man whose decisions affected millions. A man to whom people paid attention. Yet, even so, none of it erased the traumas of the past, and none of it changed the fact that he still hated children.

  So why was he visiting an after-school program?

  The answer was actually quite simple. Whatever his personal feelings might be, Senator Martin Cheswick was a consummate politician. And this w'as an election year.

  All of which meant that when the invitation came to visit an after-school program designed to keep preteen children off drugs and off the streets of New York City— and one supported by private donors instead of the government’s bank book, no less—there were no second thoughts to delay Cheswick’s reply. The Senator promised to be there with bells on.

  Not to mention a mass of photographers in tow.

  At first, when they pulled up in front of the building, Cheswick wondered whether it was his driver or his secretary who had made the mistake. He’d never heard of an after-school program in a Wall Street office building before. To Cheswick, the towering structure of glass and steel seemed much more suited to mergers and acquisitions than to “rap sessions” and inane babbling about this week’s pop stars. However, his aide did a quick check of the building directory, and assured him, a moment later, that they were indeed in the right place. He and Cheswick rode the elevator up to the seventeenth floor.

  Even as they stepped off the elevator and Cheswick pasted a well-practiced smile across his face, they were greeted by welcoming committee comprised of three of the little brats and their teacher. Not surprisingly, the taciturn youngsters let their teacher do all the talking. She was a slender woman whose glasses and tightly pulled-back hair accentuated the severity of her features. Her sensible business suit told Cheswick that she truly was a teacher by training, and not just another earthy-crunchy social worker out to save these children from the big, bad world. He grasped her hand in both of his own and shook it warmly.

  The program itself was housed in a converted office suite down the hall from the elevator. As though trying to confirm Cheswick’s earlier thought, the teacher acknowledged that it was an unusual location for this sort of program. But the owner of the building was one of their benefactors, and one doesn’t argue with an offer of rent-free space in Manhattan.

  As they entered the office space that housed the program, an assortment of bored news photographers responded by lazily raising their cameras into position and setting off the requisite barrage of flash bulbs. Cheswick looked around the main room, nodding as though he genuinely cared about what went on here and approved of the effort. The conversion of the space seemed to have consisted primarily of hanging anti-drug posters on the walls, furnishing the place with game tables and pinball machines, and placing chairs and couches at angles that had been carefully calculated to encourage conversation. About a half-dozen preteen youths were already sitting quietly on mats on the floor, and the three fro
m the hallway silently joined them.

  Moving with a smooth confidence, the teacher stepped up in front of the group and began to talk. Well, that cleared up the order of the agenda, at any rate. Realizing that his own turn to speak would come later, Cheswick’s first inclination was to remain standing at the side of the room. But if there was one thing that Cheswick’s media consultant had drummed successfully into his head, it was to always go for the photo-op. So instead of standing where he was, Cheswick eased himself down to the floor with an awkward grunt to sit among the children. He felt proud of the air of caring and “just plain folks” that he was sure the action conveyed.

  By this point, the teacher had already begun to warm to her speech. She droned on and on about the program and the good work it did. She praised the generous backers who made their work possible and made such a difference in the lives of these children.

  In short, it was the usual.

  Since the odds of finding anything interesting in the speech were roughly equivalent to the chances of finding solid gold nuggets in his shorts, Cheswick decided to pass the time by picturing the teacher naked, instead. Just like in an old, black-and-white movie, he imagined himself tossing away her tortoise shell glasses and letting her dark hair down to fall freely in a cascade over her shoulders.

  The suit was next, peeling slowly off her body to reveal the smooth skin beneath.

  Actually, Cheswick decided, once you got the teacher out of her all-business attire, she was really quite attractive. In fact, she reminded him of someone. He couldn’t quite place who it was, though. Was it someone he knew? He met so many people these days that he couldn’t be sure. Or perhaps it was the reference to old movies, bringing up half-remembered images of some actress or something from long ago.

  Before he could pin it down, Cheswick snapped out of his daydream at the sound of his name. The teacher was wrapping up her own speech now, and segueing into his introduction. Cheswick struggled a bit to get to his feet, but managed to be standing next to the teacher by the time she extended a hand to wave him on.

  Once again, Cheswick shook her hand warmly and took his position before the group of youngsters. He looked out over his audience with a smile that masked the discomfort he felt. It wasn’t just the idea of talking to a group of kids; he certainly didn’t enjoy that sort of thing, but he had done more than enough of it in the past to be able to deal with it now. No, it was something more specific, something about these kids in particular. Usually, he’d found young audiences to react to the presence of a famous politician and camera crew in one of two ways: Either they would get so excited that they couldn’t sit still and would spend half the time mugging into the cameras (cutting into his own exposure, he noted with more than a touch of resentment), or they would succumb to stage fright and be silent as stone until the visitors were gone and they resumed their normal routine.

  At first, Cheswick had assumed that these children fell into the latter category, and that their silence was simply due to their own nervousness. But now that he was looking at—and more important, genuinely seeing—their faces, he realized that there was more to it than that. Their eyes rested obediently upon him, but he didn’t detect any signs of anxiety within them. Instead, their expressionless faces seemed to reflect total apathy. As far as Cheswick could tell, the children seemed to regard him with all the interest that they’d give to a wad of used chewing gum on the sidewalk.

  Cheswick couldn’t tell what was wrong. Did they sense his opinion of them, somehow? Had he said or done something to let his true feelings slip?

  Whatever it was, he couldn’t afford to drop the ball in front of the cameras. With only a moment’s hesitation, he launched into his prepared remarks.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, thank you for inviting me to speak here today. It’s a pleasure, every once in a while, to have the chance to speak to people with IQs higher than the ones I usually find in Washington.”

  Cheswick chuckled at his little joke. But he was the only one.

  “Seriously, though,” he continued, “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to honor the fine work that this center does in offering children alternatives, broadening their horizons, and steering them toward the straight and narrow. As I have often said, children are our most precious natural resource, and any investment in our children is an investment in our future.

  “I look out at your bright faces, and I see the promise of tomorrow, mingled with fond memories of the past. You might not believe it to look at me, but I was once your age, too.”

  This was the point at which Cheswick’s media consultant had suggested creating a photo-op by making physical contact with one of the children. Cheswick bent over and reached out toward a towheaded boy in the front row. The boy showed as little emotion as the rest, but had the advantage of being within arm’s reach. Cheswick ruffled his fingers through the boy’s hair ...

  And screamed.

  It took a moment for even Cheswick to realize that the scream bad come, not from the boy’s mouth, but his own. Even so, however, there was no question why he was screaming. Cheswick recoiled in horror as, without warning, hundreds of cockroaches suddenly swarmed out from under the boy’s hair and up the Senator’s arm. He staggered back, flailing madly as he tried in vain to shake off the inch-long, brown monsters. But still they kept coming.

  The insects were moving much too fast. As they sped along his body, Cheswick could see their hairy legs, their black eyes, and their quivering antennae. Cheswick’s skin turned clammy with fear. He clawed at his jacket, hoping to rid himself of the vermin by throwing it away. But they were past his jacket and starting to reach his skin by now. It was far too late.

  The living wave was growing in strength, too. The cockroaches continued to stream out endlessly from beneath the boy’s hair. But now, they were coming from everywhere. Literally millions of roaches had started to pour toward Cheswick from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling tiles. They were crawling up his legs and dropping down from above.

  Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? Why weren’t they helping him?

  The camera crews were useless, staring at the Senator with puzzled expressions. And for their part, the children’s faces didn’t seem to register even the slightest bit of interest. They continued to watch Cheswick, but it wasn’t a look that indicated there was anything wrong. In fact, their faces held the same blank look of passive disdain that they’d shown since the moment he arrived. Even the boy with the roaches in his hair had barely blinked.

  Cheswick wanted to scream at them. He wanted to know what was wrong with them. He wanted to cry for help. But he couldn’t. The Senator had clamped his mouth firmly shut when the roaches reached his chest, and was too afraid to open it now that he was swatting them away from his face. Keeping his lips pursed tightly together was helping to prevent the roaches from crawling inside, but they were starting toward his nose and ears.

  All Cheswick could do was back away from the oncoming flood. He retreated as far as he could, until he felt himself bump up against the window. The roaches were coming from all sides now, sweeping toward him like a massive, living blanket. The past merged with the present as memories from the dumpster rushed through his tortured brain to mesh with the events of the moment. He was at once a 5 3-year-old man and nine-year-old boy, both victims of a terror that strained his heart to bursting. As the roaches flowed over his body, Cheswick took the only escape he could.

  He hurled himself through the window.

  Even as he plummeted seventeen stories to the street below, Cheswick beat furiously at the creatures that now covered virtually every inch of his body. The rushing wind tore some away, but his skin was alive now with the mass of chittering insects. He twisted and contorted his body every which way, but to no avail.

  Cheswick was so consumed by the effort that he never even noticed when he hit the sidewalk.

  Far above the cracked, bloody pavement, the youth center erupted with sound. A routine filler it
em had suddenly leaped forward to the front page.

  “Jumped! That’s right—jumped!”

  “Bosnia? Forget Bosnia! Clear some space! You’ve gotta get this!”

  “How should I know why? You want me to go after him and ask?!”

  “Uh huh, get me a copywriter ...”

  .. just came out of nowhere! All of a sudden, he goes into some kind of fit, and before you know it..

  “After falling, like, twenty floors?! Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s dead!”

  “I dunno, it looked like DTs or something ...” “Killed himself! Right! As in ‘dead!’ ”

  “Yes, of course I’m getting pictures!”

  Photographers were holding cell phones in one hand while they were snapping pictures with the other. Some were leaning out the window, capturing the pulpy remains of the former U.S. senator for posterity. Others were already on their way down the elevators and stairs to get a better shot.

  The Senator’s aide was in shock. All of the color had drained from his face, leaving him ashen and speechless as he was assaulted with a relentless barrage of questions and flash bulbs.

  “Did you know the Senator was planning this?”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “Had he ever attempted suicide before?”

  “Can you give me a statement?”

  “Was he having marital problems?”

  “Did he have a drug habit?”

  “Was the Senator undergoing any kind of psychiatric treatment?”

  “How are you feeling right now?”

  The aide leaned back against the wall for support, his legs feeling much too weak to hold him. It was all he could do to stammer out most of an “I—I don’t. . . know...”

  In all the commotion, the only people who actually belonged in the youth center were all but forgotten. As chaos reigned all around them, the teacher quietly motioned for the children to get up. Gingerly avoiding the reporters rushing back and forth, she calmly escorted them away from the mob and toward the door.

  The visitors to the center weren’t in a frame of mind to notice subtleties. As a result, no one noticed the fact that the children’s disinterested expressions still hadn’t changed very much. Nor did they notice the teacher’s small smile.