The City of Broken Angels: Queen Versus the Machine (Carmine Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  - 1 - Carmine

  - 2 - Carmine

  - 3 - A Queen Broken

  - 1 - The Outlaw

  - 3 - The Outlaw

  - 4 - Carmine

  - 5 - The Outlaw

  - 6 - Queen Carmine

  - 7 - The Outlaw

  - 8 - Carmine

  - 9 - The Outlaw

  - 10 - The Outlaw

  - 11- Carmine

  - 2 - The Outlaw

  - 3 - Carmine

  - 6 - Carmine

  - 4 - The Outlaw

  - 5 - Carmine

  - 6 - Samantha Gear

  - 7 - Kayla

  - 8 - The Outlaw

  - 9 - Carmine

  Epilogue One (out of four total)

  Epilogue Two (out of four total)

  Epilogue Three (out of four total)

  Epilogue Four

  The City of Broken Angels

  Copyright © 2017 by Alan Janney

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  @alanjanney

  [email protected]

  First Edition

  Cover by Damonza

  Artwork by Anne Pierson

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9983165-5-0

  Print ESPN: 978-0-9983165-4-3

  Sparkle Press

  This book is dedicated to…

  Anne

  Becky

  Bob

  Danny

  Debbie

  Larry

  Liz

  Matt

  Megan

  Mike

  Teresa

  and William

  Cast of Characters

  Infected - Pure-born Variants

  Blue-Eyes - Secretary of State / President’s mistress

  Nuts - mechanical genius

  The Outlaw - masked vigilante

  PuckDaddy - internet hacker

  Samantha - sniper working with the Resistance

  Tank - dangerous drifter

  Walter - terrorist living in the northwest

  Carter - powerful mercenary

  China

  Pacific

  Russia - warlord in San Diego

  The Zealot - vagabond, missionary

  Kingdom Variants

  Becky - scavenger

  Carmine - Queen of New Los Angeles

  Kayla - Mistress of Communication

  Mason - leader of the Falcons

  Travis - leader of the Giants

  Others of Note

  The Cheerleader - mysterious recluse, girl on fire

  Dalton - queen’s bodyguard

  General Brown - military commander

  The Governess - supervisor of New Los Angeles

  The Inheritors - children infected with Hyper Virus

  Isaac Anderson - leader of the Resistance

  Miss Pauline - Orphan Overseer

  The Priest - Law Keeper Overseer

  Andy Babington - high school colleague

  Table of Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  Part One - 1 - Carmine

  - 2 - Carmine

  - 3 - A Queen Broken

  Part Two - 1 - The Outlaw

  - 2 - Carmine

  - 3 - The Outlaw

  - 4 - Carmine

  - 5 - The Outlaw

  - 6 - Queen Carmine

  - 7 - The Outlaw

  - 8 - Carmine

  - 9 - The Outlaw

  - 10 - The Outlaw

  - 11- Carmine

  Part Three - 1 - Carmine

  - 2 - The Outlaw

  - 3 - Carmine

  - 4 - Carmine

  - 5 - The Outlaw

  - 6 - Carmine

  - 7 - The Outlaw

  - 8 - Carmine

  Part Four - 1 - Carmine

  - 2 - The Outlaw

  - 3 - Carmine

  - 4 - The Outlaw

  - 5 - Carmine

  - 6 - Samantha Gear

  - 7 - Kayla

  - 8 - The Outlaw

  - 9 - Carmine

  Epilogue One (out of four total)

  Epilogue Two (out of four total)

  Epilogue Three (out of four total)

  Epilogue Four

  Prologue

  From the blog of Teresa Triplett

  The Ides of March, 2020

  Queen Carmine, the Red Butcher, the girl once known as Katie Lopez, is an early riser. To put it mildly. She granted permission for this “Day in the Life” piece but, despite sleeping in the same tower, I’ve missed her three mornings in a row. So today I’m up before the songbirds and the roosters, shivering in the Olympic’s parking garage. She can’t leave me behind if I’m sitting on her Land Cruiser’s bumper.

  The two questions I’m most often asked by outsiders are:

  1) How do you still have a webpage?

  2) What is Queen Carmine doing right now?

  To answer the first question, I have no idea, other than to note modern technology is impressive and I’ve heard it’s easier to maintain the internet’s infrastructure than, for example, the car manufacturing supply lines.

  As to the second question, you’d know the answer if you lived here. Queen Carmine is everywhere, and doing all things.

  She arrives five minutes after I do, walking side by side with Dalton, her ever-present bodyguard and New Los Angeles’s most eligible bachelor, though don’t mention this to him. His handsome scowl still hints of burn wounds, partially healed reminders of his proud devotion to our queen. Before I can slip into the backseat, Carmine pinches me on the butt without a word and gets behind the wheel. Perhaps she’s in a playful mood today; not many world leaders goose their biographers.

  She drives. Always. Which aggravates Dalton to no end. He grips the handle over the window and growls for the duration, and I don’t fault him; she is not a subtle driver. I’m thrown all over the backseat, sliding across polished leather and crashing into doors before I can buckle in. The streets are clear of debris and most gaping holes have been filled, but the journey is still a harrowing rollercoaster.

  We slam to a stop near the 8th Street cafeteria. I barely get out of the truck before she and Dalton have loaded two large crates of steaming biscuits and hot sausage through the Land Cruiser’s hatchback.

  In the four months since the Castaic Massacre, Carmine’s been a woman possessed. A whirlwind of production. She shoulders the weight of the world (and nearly lost it all last November) so it’s hard to blame the queen for outworking her inner demons. Especially considering the constant CNN reminders that the east coast is militarizing. Blue-Eyes hungers for revenge, and Carmine is determined we won’t be caught unprepared.

  She and Dalton bring breakfast to Ascot Hills Park in the northeast. The park is a wide oasis of grass and rolling hills in the middle of suburbia, and currently home to hundreds of chickens and goats. What do we eat in the Kingdom, you ask? Eggs. Lots of eggs and chicken. The Shepherds, sleepily munching on apples for breakfast, are flabbergasted. Queens do not deliver breakfast to the proletarian.

  Usually.

  She stays to chat as the sun comes up. The Shepherds are too starstruck to contribute much conversation, so she asks questions, listens politely to the fumbled answers, and praises them for their hard work. She smiles for selfies and then she’s back in the Land Cruiser. I’m nearly left behind.

  Next stop, the 110 Marketplace, erected below the raised cloverleaf junction. Rumors are she intermittently visits this place incognito to test our systems. Today she and Dalton browse the merchandise in plain sight. Well, she browses, and he glares at the staring patrons and Vendors, as is his wont. She’s here to test our new digital currency, which is still in infancy but quite easy to understand: you work all day and you’re given ten credits by your Overseer and the credits can be used to purchase goods from the markets.

  It’s apparent the queen’s joints cause her pain. She massages and stretches them, especially her elbows and wrists, and has twice tightened the compress on her right knee to palliate the discomfort. The famous red silk is now a fashion statement around the world, a fact which befuddles and amuses her.

  She purchases a pair of Lululemon athletic pants and deposits three credits with her phone. She closely monitors the process and then talks with the sleepy Vendor about the possibility of patrons returning things in the future, and how that would affect credits. The poor woman is mortified she doesn’t know how that’d work, but Carmine is unaware of her distress. She rarely notices how she affects the rest of us.

  Carmine thanks her and quietly confides to Dalton, “The currency still works. Not perfect yet, but…” She trails off, working on her phone.

  The local Black Market took advantage of the credits immediately after the launch, charging high prices for liquor and toilet paper and o
ther luxuries. So many credits were hoarded and stashed with fake IDs that the mighty internet genius PuckDaddy himself stepped in to help correct the problem. After the reboot, currency is flowing with fewer hiccups. (In case you’re wondering, physical dollar bills still hold value in the Kingdom but are primarily used for trading with the outside world.)

  Carmine now heads east. She listens to dance and pop music saved on her iPod and played over the truck’s speakers, far too loud for Dalton’s taste. When it’s his turn to pick, he chooses smooth R&B and cranks it down. My opinion is not solicited. She thinks out loud while she drives, and I shamelessly eavesdrop as we pass the Magnolia power plant. She worries we’re not generating enough electricity, and that we aren’t manufacturing solar panels yet, and that Nuts works too hard, and that burning natural gas for electricity is dangerous, and that we aren’t training enough qualified electricians, and so forth. She worries obsessively. Dalton speaks rarely, and only then to remind her to “Put down the damn phone.” Fortunately we’re one of the few vehicles on the road for much of the day.

  Fun Queen Carmine trivia — until recently, she was taking classes at Stanford University. It’s true; the irrepressible warrior at the wheel is also erudite. She took online classes to keep her mind sharp, and to retain her humanity, she tells me, until January when the university closed for temporary relocation to Kentucky. Now she churns through books on leadership and history and the occasional fiction.

  We arrive as ten eighteen-wheel tankers laden with oil and gasoline are being subjected to rigorous inspection outside our border, and so are the three armored escorts. Carmine waits in a Texaco truck stop’s expansive parking lot and greets the drivers after they’re granted entrance. This oil comes straight from Texas, a stronghold for the Resistance.

  “We don’t need the oil,” she explains later. “Our reservoirs are holding strong. But we have a surplus of fruit that will expire soon, so the Governess wanted to trade. She’s shrewd.”

  “Why do you greet them personally?”

  “We need as many loyal people as we can get,” she says. “And I want those truckers returning home freighted with positive stories about us.”

  Carmine is, as you know, quite pretty. A welcome sight for the trucker’s weary eyes, and they can’t help but stare. She’s no Kayla, our self-proclaimed Minister of Communication (or Mistress as she prefers) who is overwhelmingly beautiful. But she’s Girl Down The Street attractive, if that girl was a light-skinned Latina made from triathlete material. She moves with natural poise and strength, and she radiates authority. Her hair has grown long enough that she tucks it behind her ears now. She wears black activewear to suit her busy lifestyle and not because it shows off her eye-catching physique. But it does.

  The truckers report a smooth passage. They avoided the highway robberies we read about plaguing the middle of our former country, a vast expanse of land dotted with embattled cities, reminiscent of wild west stories from the 1800s. The new lawless ‘frontier’ stretches east to west from Colorado to Kentucky, and north to south from Oklahoma to Minnesota. No Man’s Land, unless you’re safety ensconced inside a city or armed farm country. The bands of roving pillagers haven’t grown that bold yet, nor have they approached our borders. To play it safe, the tankers will steer clear of the lawless country and drive over twenty-four hours straight until reaching mid Texas.

  Carmine listens, a grim twist to her lips. It’s well known she pines to head east and draw the leaderless Variants home. The Variants aren’t evil, she repeats to anyone who listens. Just lost. And if she doesn’t collect them, Walter might. Or the Herders will find them. Or worse.

  She puts the truckers and security escorts up in a nearby hotel for the night, and we’re off. Next stop, the Orange County and Anaheim Medical Center, the Kingdom’s second fully functioning hospital.

  On the way, Carmine asks me over her shoulder, “How many people in America died from flu this winter? Do you know?”

  “I’m not positive. A lot.” Actually, I do know. But I don’t want to interrupt her, now that she’s talking to me.

  “Over two million so far. Forty times the average,” she says. “Do you know how many we lost? In the Kingdom?”

  “I heard five?”

  “Four. And it’s not just because our demographic is younger, though that’s part of it. But we’re stronger. Harder working. We have purpose, and something to live for: each other. We’re too busy to die.”

  New Los Angeles has a population over 300,000 now. Still only a fraction of the former eighteen million. More would come but they’re afraid of the Red Butcher; the gruesome Castaic Massacre videos still reverberate through the land. Those who immigrate into New Los Angeles are stouthearted to begin with, not easily overcome by influenza.

  Carmine doesn’t stay long at the hospital. She hits the halls like morphine, powerful but brief. She walks the wards, waves to the sick, and encourages the doctors. Forty minutes total. She thinks (and she’s correct) that even a quick visit will make a difference. And she covets that difference. Any edge helps.

  Are you exhausted yet? I am, and it’s only lunch time.

  I’ll fast forward a few hours to 5 PM. She never actually stops for lunch, but rather she eats continually. Mostly granola bars and carrot slices. At 5, she visits a barracks in the north to watch training. If you live here, you know barracks is slang for mutant housing. They don’t live as the rest of us; they don’t iron their clothes, or make their beds, or dust their bookshelves. Most mutants aren’t blessed with the clarity of mind that Carmine has, and those who are are given positions of leadership like Kayla and Mason, the infamous leader of the Falcons. But the rest? They operate on instinct and impulse. Even when they aren’t engorged with adrenaline, the Variants don’t always think lucidly. Their barracks could more accurately be labeled as caves or hives. Or pigpens.

  Perhaps you get confused by the mutant terminology? It took me a while to master the jargon. Here’s the easiest way to remember:

  - Anyone ‘enhanced’ is a mutant

  (Some of them swore fealty to Carmine)

  (Some swore fealty to Walter)

  (And some rampage across the mid-west)

  - A more polite term is Variant, but you probably know this.

  (Carmine herself is a Variant - a powerful one)

  - Carmine refers to her Variants as Guardians

  Following me so far? Here are two sub-categories:

  -Within the Guardians, there is a small team called Falcons

  (Falcons are elite fighting Guardians - Extremely cool)

  - Lastly, the mysterious group who call themselves Infected

  (born with the disease, instead of injected later in life)

  (vastly fewer in number, vastly stronger in strength)

  (The Outlaw himself is Infected)

  (So is Blue-Eyes, though she denies this)

  Now you know what I know. It goes without saying, we live in a much different world than we did four years ago.

  Carmine sits crisscross on the roof of her Land Cruiser and watches Guardians train. She’s obsessed with self-control, and today’s exercises are about fighting with restraint. Queen’s orders. “Control yourself!” she calls every few minutes. “Discipline your body!” It’s like watching professional kick boxers battle at hyper speed. If those kick boxers were also partially insane with the temper of tigers.

  If you observe Carmine long enough, you’ll see her flipping a knife. It’s an exercise she does when deep in thought. She balances the point of her blade on the inside tip of her fingernail, palm up, and then flips it. The blade rotates one time and she catches it on the inside of the adjacent fingernail. Her nails are not long, and it’s mesmerizing to watch her flip the knife from pointer finger down to pinky, and back. Mutants are weird.

  “Dalton,” she says, mid flip. “We still have an hour before sundown. Let’s visit the Wall.”

  Her bodyguard grunts something unintelligible.