Cursed

It was surreal to see the club up close after eleven years. There were still bits of yellow police tape strewn about, still shattered glass behind the bar area, charred concrete, shattered wood and jagged metal by the stage. Little evidence of the dead remained, but the air was thick with their presence, with the weight of their pointless sacrifice. The walls, those still intact, were covered in graffiti:

Magenta Murderers,

Humans First,

Newton Fiddles, We Burn.

“Newton?”

“Jessica Newton,” Seb said. “She was the last Governor of unified California. Before the partition. Learn your history, dude.”

“Right,” Sam nodded. “That sounds familiar.” It didn’t.

They worked their way through the remains of the building, carefully stepping over rubble, while Sam took photos with the gift Virginia had given him. By the year this happened it had already gotten difficult to convince people a shocking photo was real. It made this feel even more like an exercise in futility. But they’d mean something to him, at least. He just wished he could share them with Gemma.

“It’s outrageous you were in the room after this happened, watching them war-game their pathetic response. How did we never talk about this?”

“It wasn’t something I ever felt comfortable talking about. Confidentiality and all.”

“And trauma?”

“I guess. I was twenty-two, I don’t know.”

“Did you tell anybody? Virginia?”

“She never wanted to hear stories that involved Gemma.”

“Huh.”

With some care they got back behind the stage. The mundane nature of the debris somehow heightened Sam’s tension: a smashed coffee pot, a rusted metal toolbox, a torn laptop bag. Beside the stage door, a huge frame full of show bills, commemorating all the different bands and acts that had played The Hammer for many years past. Frozen in early 2034. Sam was careful to photograph it a few times, from a few angles.

“Should we take this?” Sam looked to Seb for advice on anything nightclub-related. “I can’t believe it’s still here after a decade.”

“I don’t know, man. Might be cursed.”

“You could hang it in your club as a tribute.”

“It’s like, disturbing a crime scene. Or a grave.”

“I think it’d be kinda respectful.”

Seb stared at Sam, then at the frame, then back at Sam. He nodded and went to pull it down. Screwed in tight. “Well, that might explain why it’s still here. I’ve got a screwdriver in the car. I’ll grab it.”

The rest of the room was as generic as these backstage areas usually are: cabinets, a sink, an old microwave. All either ruined or destroyed, the walls as heavily graffitied as the rest of the club. But amongst the jumbles of scribbles and hatred, a word jumped out that Sam recognised: Tobias. He leaned forward and felt his face go flush, the painful lump straight back in his throat. On the wall, in the corner, someone had written all fifteen names of the people who died in the bombing that night, including their VP, Tobias Klostermann.

“I guess you get memorialised even if it was your fucking fault,” Sam muttered. Above the names it read “march 3, 2034. never forget what they did.” A rather ominous memorial, he thought. Quite open to interpretation.

They managed to get back through the fence, traverse the labyrinthine old airport, and reach the parking lot, all without getting gunned down by the Republic military. In Sam’s mind, this was a huge success. Seb packed the frame full of posters into the boot of his car, and off they went. The corridor was underground at this point, as it bypassed San Luis Obispo by simply going underneath it. They emerged just on the other side, back to the open skies and ten-foot concrete walls. It felt infinitely less oppressive after twenty minutes in the tunnel.

They had twenty minutes left on the clock by the time they made it to Way Station 2, somewhere near King City. “Home stretch,” Seb said with a smirk. “Tank up on food and get all your dissenting opinions out now, because we ain’t stopping again until we hit South Gate.”

It was a quick stop, and again completely devoid of other humans. Way Station 2 was actually outside, lit by massive floodlights on stands that looked like they were probably meant to be temporary. It had a much less comfortable feel, with about twice the security and a double layer of barbed wire fencing, a no man’s land between them, complete with what looked to be about a ten foot drop.

“I feel like there’s a story here.” Sam observed the situation with a fresh Slurpee in his hand.

“There… is, but I can’t remember it.”

Extreme discomfort ushered them back to the car and out onto the corridor much quicker than the last stop. Night had fallen, and the corridor wasn’t lit. The bright yellow headlights bounced off of the concrete wall to their right and about a foot in front of them. The stars above them were visible through the chain-link that bridged the two walls. But otherwise, it was dark. Very, very dark.

Memories of The Hammer kept coming to the forefront of Sam’s mind. That day in the conference room. The news coverage, and how muted it had been. How hard it was to find information about what happened, and how few photos or video there were of something so serious.

And then there was Gemma. She’d already been having such a tough time with the speed at which they were rolling out this terrible fucking soulless system. Getting so little sleep, spending more and more time at the bottom of a bottle. He’d only seen her in person once or twice after that day.

“It still haunts me,” Sam murmured.

“The attack on The Hammer?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

Sam went back to staring out into the darkness. The headlights skimmed along the concrete, the texture of the wall flashing past like lightning on a distant plain. He could still remember what she was wearing that day, and how lost she seemed. She’d called him that night, around 11 p.m. his time, 8 a.m. her time. He’d made up an excuse to get out of bed and left Virginia alone. Gemma was frazzled, uncommunicative, exhausted. He laid on the sofa for hours, listening to her breathe over the phone as she laid on hers, thousands of miles away in London. After a while they both fell asleep, having said maybe ten words to each other.

“Sam.” Seb’s face glowed red, lit so by a warning light on the dashboard of the car. “It’s nearly the witching hour.”

Sam looked at the clock, which read 10:14 p.m. “It is nowhere near.”

“Well, it is very dark.”

“It is.”

“The witching hour!” Seb shouted with a terrible cackle. “When churchyards yawn, and Hell itself breaks out contagion into this world!” He cackled again, twice as loudly, his head thrown back as if it might snap clean off. Sam had known Sebastian long enough to know what happened during the witching hour. “Ghosts of the past rise and be with us!”

“Don’t we usually have shots for this?” He was adrift. Far from the mood necessary for Seb’s college drinking games.

“You can’t drink in the car, man. They’ll just put two in our heads when we get to the South Gate.”

“I guess it’ll have to wait.”

“Listen,” Seb said, “it was a heavy day. And I’m trying to stay awake in this monotonous corridor.”

“Fine.”

“Samir Patel.” Seb shrieked in his trademark witch voice, which Sam probably hadn’t heard in over a decade. “Confess to the darkness. What exactly happened between yourself and… Gemma Thomson?”

“Shit.” Sam chuckled, caught off-guard. “That’s timely.”

“I’ve wanted to know for about… how long have we known each other?”

“Fifteen years?”

“Fifteen years.”

“I’ve known her for a little over ten.”

“I’m serious! One minute you and V are off to London for a gig, next you come back pissed at each other, and you’ve got a job at a record label working for this known perpetrator.”

“Industry legend.”

“And all you say is right place, right time.”

“It was.”

Seb shook his head and chuckled. “It’s all a little suspicious, I’m saying. And now here we are, at the end of all things. I think it’s safe to talk about it.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Nothing?”

Sam leaned his head against the window, his eyes pinned to the side, watching the cracks in the wall go by. “Nothing.”