Max Collins - Before the Dawn

The projection booth itself was the biggest room Max had had to herself in her entire life. Her earliest memories were of the Manticore barracks; then she’d shared a room with Lucy, after which she lived in a hole in the ground barely big enough for one, back in Griffith Park.

Ten by sixteen, with its own bathroom, the booth seemed huge to Max, a suite all to herself. Of course, the bathroom would have been a greater luxury if the plumbing worked on a more regular basis. The theater had been abandoned because of the quake cracks in the ceiling, and had even been scheduled for demolition by the city, except someone had stolen the work order and — with all the other troubles in the city — Mann’s seemed to have been lost in the shuffle.

The plumbing, which only worked some of the time in Hollywood anyway, worked even more infrequently within the theater — usually only after Moody had laid some green on local power and water reps.

Max’s bed — rescued from the rubble of the old Roosevelt Hotel across the street — was a luxurious queen-sized box spring on the floor, mattress on top. A Coleman camp lantern, a prize from her days of living in Griffith Park, sat at the head of the bed near a short pile of books, mostly nonfiction (subjects Moody wanted her to study), and a dog-eared paperback copy of Gulliver’s Travels, the one novel she owned, also provided by Moody. Her new motorcycle, a Kawasaki Ninja 250, leaned against one wall, and a padded armchair, also lifted from the Roosevelt ruins, squatted near the projection window. Her only other possession, a small black-and-white TV, sat on a tiny table to the left of the chair.

Moody gazed down at the books. “Traveling to Lilliput again, Maxine?”

Moody knew full well that Maxine wasn’t her name: it was just an affectionate nickname.

She smiled. “Can’t help it — I like the guy.”

Her mentor chuckled. “You and Gulliver — your lives are not that dissimilar, you know.”

“Yeah, I’d noticed that.”

Moody eased his lanky frame into the chair; Max remained standing.

“So, Maxine... the score — was it difficult?”

Max recounted the evening, draining it of any excess melodrama; still, Moody seemed impressed.

Shaking his head, he said, “Mr. Kafelnikov will be... displeased with you.”

“I hope he doesn’t know who borrowed his security plan. That poor traitor would die slow, I bet.”

“Very slow... but our Russian adversary may well have made you, you know.”

“How could he I.D. me? I never met the guy before.”

“You underestimate your renown within certain circles.”

Max frowned. “What circles? I don’t know any ‘circles.’ ”

Arms draped on either side of the chair, as if it were a throne and he a king (the latter was true, in a way), Moody arched an eyebrow. “You think the other clans don’t talk to each other? You think these... superhuman feats of yours have gone unnoticed?”

“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug.

“Perhaps you should. You’ve given them all one sort of trouble or another over the years, haven’t you?”

A slow smile crossed Max’s full lips. “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

Moody’s eyes seemed to look inward. “That security plan meant a great deal to the Brood. They meant to obtain the bauble in your pocket — and they won’t take this defeat lightly. Kafelnikov will search long and hard to find out who wronged him.”

Finally, casually, she withdrew the necklace from her pocket. “This old thing?”

Moody’s eyes went as wide as the stone. “My God, Maxine... It’s even more breathtaking up close.”

Max held the stone to the dim light and studied it for a long moment. “It’s pretty cool, I guess.” With another shrug, she handed it over.

“Pretty cool,” Moody said, taking the stone. “If they connect you to us... and they will... we’ll have a real enemy.”

“They try to storm this place, we’ll hand their asses back, with change.”

Turning the stone over and over in his hands, Moody seemed not to have heard her. “The necklace alone would feed the Clan for a year.”

“That was a good plan you had — ’cept for those dogs. For rumors, they had some teeth on ’em.”

He shook his head, ponytail swinging. “My apologies... Anyway, a plan is worthless without proper execution. That was key... and the only one in this city who could have executed it was you... Which, my dear, you did.”

“No biggie,” she said, with yet another shrug.

Rising, he tucked the stone into a pocket as he moved to her. Putting an arm around Max, Moody kissed the girl’s cheek, as he had many times before... only now, his lips perhaps lingered a moment too long. “You did well, my dear... you did very well.”

“Thanks,” Max said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. Oddly, the image of Mr. Barrett entering the bedroom after midnight, to fetch Lucy, flashed through her mind. “I... I better get Fresca — he’s probably wet his pants by now. I promised to get something to eat with him, y’know.”

Moody didn’t move, his arm still around Max’s shoulders. “If they come... if the Brood dares breach our stronghold... God help them when you reveal your powers of battle.”

“Thanks.” Sliding away, not wanting to anger him, but still feeling that something wasn’t quite right, she made another mumbled excuse and slipped out of the room and down the stairs. She could hear Moody on the steps behind her, but didn’t turn to see where he was.

Fresca was sitting like a gargoyle on the edge of the concession counter, already wearing his rumpled Dodgers jacket. His prize possession, the jacket was Fresca’s only tie with his old life... whatever that had been. The clothes he’d been wearing when he joined the Clan had been burned, his old name forgotten, his new name adopted from the menu behind the concession stand. Only that faded blue Dodgers jacket remained.

The Clan rule — instituted by Moody and embraced by them all — was that the past didn’t matter, didn’t exist; time began the day you joined the Clan.

“Let’s bounce,” Max said as she walked past him.

Fresca jumped down and, following her suggestion, bounced along next to her, a puppy excited to be in his master’s... mistress’s?... presence.

They swept out of the theater across the remnants of old-time movie star handprints and cement signatures and onto Hollywood Boulevard, to be greeted by the rising sun. Max had never been near Hollywood Boulevard before the Quake, but some of the area’s denizens she’d spoken to over the years told her that the Boulevard was the one part of the city that the Quake hadn’t changed all that much.

“Where we goin’?” Fresca asked.

“Where do you want to go?”

“How about that waffle place over on La Brea?”

“Sure. Waffles are good. I got nothing against waffles.”

Fresca giggled at that, as if Max were the soul of wit; she smiled to herself and they walked along.

The Belgian Waffle House was on the corner of La Brea and Hawthorn, a healthy but doable walk from Mann’s. The place had once been all windows, but the Quake had destroyed them, and the plywood hung to replace them temporarily had become permanent. Littered with graffiti, the plywood was now the waffle house’s trademark, and customers were provided with markers to add to the decoration while they waited for their food. The booths were still vinyl-covered, but wear and tear had taken them beyond funky into junky. Sparse early-morning traffic meant that only nine or ten other patrons were in the place when Fresca and Max strolled in.

They took two seats at the counter so Fresca could watch the wall-mounted TV adjacent to the food service window from the dingy kitchen.