“It’s Savita,” she said, “we have to move fast before their systems trap us.”
I sat up, finding the room littered with dead bodies. Near the door I saw what must have been Colburn and his assistant, their throats cut, clothing reddened with blood. The orderlies were covered in stab wounds and sliced throats, looked like they had been fleeing when Savita ran them down and finished them off.
I got shakily to my feet, stepping into pooled blood on the tiled floor, looking down at the hospital gown I was in. Laura rose from her gurney, giving me a strange, wide-eyed look.
A flashing light caught my attention. Some tech in Colburn’s hand. Without giving it much thought, I grabbed the drive, prying it from his firm grip, keeping it tightly held in my hand.
I looked back over at Laura, her legs wobbly beneath the hospital gown as she continued to give me wide eyed glances. I held out a hand to help steady her and she recoiled. There wasn’t time to make sense of either of our experiences as Savita hurried us on. We scraped blood off our feet before rushing out the door, hearing it lock behind us. As soon as we stepped into the hall, more gunfire sounded in the distance.
“This way,” Savita said, herding us toward the stairway.
“Don’t you fucking move!” someone shouted.
We all looked back. Three uniformed guards, including Trammel, had their weapons trained on us. I looked up at Savita, who had changed her appearance, looking like an older Caucasian woman now, bionic eyes now hazel colored.
“I’m taking the assets to a safe location,” she said, talking in English without any accent.
“Donavan?” Trammel spoke in his southern accent, lowering his gun, “Sorry, I di’nt know you were still in the building.”
“Help me get these two out,” Savita said, “I have transport waiting to take them to a safe location.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Trammel said.
The guards holstered their pistols and started trotting to keep up with us. Savita turned around, moving quickly to the stairs, not wanting them to get a good look at her face. I watched as she rifled through a palm full of bloody RFID chips, singling one out and holding it up to the sensor on the door. I stood in the way, blocking the guards view with my body until the door opened. We started down the switchback stairs, the sign saying we were on floor nineteen. After padding down a few flights, one of the guards whispered something to Trammel.
“Now hold on a minute,” Trammel said, “wait.”
“What’s the problem?” Savita asked, stopping but not turning around.
“Yuh hair…” Trammel said, “Why’s it look longuh than when I saw-”
Savita didn’t waste any time. She twirled around, pulling out a pistol and firing. Trammel and one of the other guards were hit in the head, spraying blood and skull fragments on the wall behind them and collapsing dead on the stairs. The third guard had time to start running, catching a bullet to his lower back, screaming. Savita pushed past Laura and me, stuck the barrel of the pistol to his head.
“Please, God, no-” he was cut short when she shot, head exploding onto the stairway.
“Come on,” Savita said, her appearance changing again, to a different Caucasian woman with blue eyes.
Laura and I were panting as we neared the bottom of the stairs, feet clanking on the hard tile. She gave me a strange look as we passed around another corner.
“I can speak English,” Laura said in a much lighter German accent than usual.
“What? How?” I asked.
There wasn’t time to answer. Savita opened the door into the atrium. Two guards lay dead on the floor, blood pooled around them. A UGV limped up to us, one wheel hanging loose and twisted. Savita nodded to it as we made our way to the entrance.
“Get the fuck outta there!” an amplified voice shouted.
As soon as I turned, I heard the crack of his 20 mm gun. But he wasn’t shooting at us. The bullet exploded out of the UGV, sending bits of it sliding across the atrium floor. The exo guard – wearing an EXO:B-024 in the gold and blue Benecorp colors – turned and started toward us. Savita froze, standing in front of us as the guard approached. He stopped, opening his face mask, studying us with furrowed brows.
“I’m taking the two assets to a secure location,” Savita said in English, the hint of her accent breaking through in her nervousness.
“The danger ain’t been neutralized,” the guard said, “you’ll need an escort.”
“I think it’ll be better if we don’t attract any attention,” Savita said, “I have a transport waiting outside.”
“That might be exactly what they want,” the guard said, his eyes scanning over all of us, “I’ll take you as far as the Buckhead offices.”
“We’re not going north,” Savita said, “I was told to bring them to a secure location south of here. Somewhere the terrorists don’t know about.”
“I’m going to have to check with Colburn about-”
“And he’ll tell you to stop wasting time,” Savita said, “come with me or not, we’re leaving.”
The three of us turned around and continued out of the building. The claps of the exoskeelton’s feet followed behind us. As we walked, I felt the world go blurry. Savita grabbed me as I started wobbling, keeping me on my feet. For a moment my consciousness wavered, a splitting headache surging behind my eyes.
“What’s wrong with ‘em?” the guard asked.
“He was under anesthesia when we were attacked,” Savita said, her hands keeping me up.
“Hold on,” he said, “I’ll getta doctor out here ta look after ‘em.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Savita said as we approached a car on the other side of the street.
The three of us climbed in, the guard standing outside in his B-024. My bearings came back to me as I sat in the back-passenger seat, Laura in the back-driver’s side seat. Savita exhaled slowly as she started the car forward, driving it manually. The suited guard stood and watched as we left.
“He’s not coming with us?” I asked.
“He’s probably calling in a vehicle escort,” Savita said, talking in Spanish again, “we’re going to have to lose them.”
The computer screen for the car flashed on with a request from Benecorp security asking for a route. Savita punched in a route to somewhere in East Point, sending it to Benecorp security. A few moments later, two vehicles with the Benecorp logo emblazoned on the sides joined us, one driving in front and one driving behind. Savita kept the car in manual drive, following the route she had given them.
“They’re going to know if you go off route,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
We continued along the set path for a few minutes, coming up on the fence enclosing the quarantine zone. We drove along the fence for several blocks. I glanced over my shoulder at the car behind us. In the evening light I could see there were no people were in our escort.
“They’re unmanned vehicles,” I said.
Savita immediately swerved right, hurling me into the door, seatbelt digging into my waist. Loud crashing, metal sheering. Savita drove through the quarantine fence, accelerating forward. I pulled myself up, looking through the back window. Nobody was following us.
“Where are we-”
“We have another car in Gresham Park,” Savita said, whipping around a corner, “we can get most of the way there through this.”
Already I could see silhouettes milling about, some of them in the street. Savita dodged us around someone, fishtailing. I was about to say something when a loud crash shook the car, the passenger side windows shattering.
An exoskeleton guard had rammed into us, the hands gripping the outside of the car, being dragged along. Savita turned to fire her pistol at him, but his armor deflected it. The guard lifted the 20 mm as Savita whipped around another corner, throwing his aim off, the blast so close all I heard was a loud ringing. The bullet took out a chunk of a nearby house. Savita took another hard turn and crashed right into a rotting p
icket fence.
Savita continued swerving the car back and forth to try and shake the guard. A loud thud rattled the car as the tire drove over someone, her screams quieting as we sped over. I grabbed the door handle, pushing the door open, trying to pry the guard off. He grabbed the door and tore it off, tossing it away. Savita neared a tree on the passenger side, slamming the guard into it. His arm cracked, but held tight. We drove through another crowd of fleeing people, the car bumping over bodies as they squealed piteously.
I got on my back, kicking at the guard as hard as I could. His grip held strong. Savita sped up, careening down the street. The guard shouted for us to pull over, voice magnified. He grabbed at my leg as I scrambled away, the powerful EXO:B-024 hand getting hold of the hospital gown, tearing the fabric.
Something heavy landed on me. Laura had jumped at the exo guard, gritting her teeth. She reached her bionic arm over me, grabbing the exoskeletons wrist and clamped her fingers down. The bionic hand slowly crushed through the wrist joint on the suit. A magnified scream filled the car.
Laura tore her hand back, a spray of blood spattering over the hem of my gown. Savita slammed on the breaks, sending Laura and me flying bodily into the back of the two front seats, crushing us against them. Metal screeched and tore away as the exo guard was thrown from the vehicle, his maimed hand still gripping the frame as it tore away from the car.
“Hold on!” Savita shouted, accelerating again, pushing Laura and me back into the seat.
More rending of metal, car hitting the exoskeleton as he tried getting up, sending him skidding across the pavement. We spun sideways, ramming into the curb. The guard’s screams were magnified, echoing through the neighborhood. Savita tried accelerating, but the car sizzled and died.
“Get out,” she demanded.
Laura climbed over me, exiting the gaping passenger door. I stepped shakily out behind her, the migraine behind my eyes gone, but my head sore from slamming into the seat. Savita walked over to the guard. His suit was mangled, blood trickling out from the cracks. He started to slowly raise the 20 mm. Savita quickly kicked it down just as it shot, exploding a nearby porch column, causing the dilapidated roof to collapse with a thundering crash, dust and chunks of wood pluming out into the street.
Savita stuck the barrel of her pistol into a hole in the shoulder of his suit and fired. The guard shrieked, the voice magnification still on. She stuck the gun into another hole in the stomach and fired. His amplified cries were almost deafening, but he was crippled now.
“Come on,” Savita said.
We trotted down the road. Dark shapes dotted the crumbling pavement. As soon as my foot hit one, I realized what they were – desiccated body parts and piles of human feces.
Crowds of shitheads in varying states of decay stood outside their houses. Many didn’t seem to notice the commotion. I glanced into the house with the decimated porch, a woman on a lawn chair in the living room sticking a needle in her arm. A man and woman were lying naked in the front lawn of the neighboring house, the man laughing maniacally as the woman’s head bobbed up and down on his crotch. On the other side of the street, a kid no older than sixteen was injecting himself in the forearm with a three fingered hand as he walked in circles, talking to himself. A naked woman screamed at the neighbor’s house from the driveway about needing her medicine, a dead baby still attached to her by an umbilical cord dangled by its leg from her hand.
Others began crowding around us in the street like zombies as we jogged through the suburban decay.
“Shift!” someone shouted, “give me the fucking Shift!”
“I know you have it, baby! I’ll suck your dick for a pinch.”
“It hurts so much…”
“You cocksucking trannies! Hand it over!”
“Please, I need it! Oh, God I need or I’m gonna die!”
Many of them – men, women, and children – yelled incoherently as they staggered toward us. One man still had four needles dangling from a bruised and rotting arm, dripping red, syrupy fluid. A woman with a toothless mouth fell to her knees, letting out a hoarse wail as she vomited on the pavement. An old man and woman staggered forward, bodies naked, shriveled and gray, leaking pus and blood from purple festering wounds. Another man slipped and stumbled on a pile of feces, shouting out in pain as his femur broke, the smell of rancid fat overpowering even the shit stench as bone fragments pierced out of his flesh.
A man in better shape than most brandished a shotgun.
Savita shot him in the head, erupting brains on a teenager behind him, the gun clattering to the ruined pavement. Savita loaded another magazine into her pistol. A woman jumped her from the side, rattling something incoherent. Savita turned the pistol around, blasting the junkie in the head. The smell of rancid fat became nauseating.
I grabbed the shotgun from the road, feeling something sticky covering the stock. The crowd was now all screaming and hollering at us as we ran, drowning out the slow dying cries of the guard behind us. We turned a corner, the broken quarantine fence a ways down the road. I could already see silhouettes shambling out the gap.
“There,” I said, seeing a single car parked in the road.
The three of us ran to the car. Locked. I broke the window in with the stock of the shotgun as Savita fired a shot into the crowd approaching us. Most of them were losing interest, but those in the worst condition kept coming. I fired the shotgun into the crowd, seeing three of them fall to the street, shrieking in agony.
We got into the car. Savita pulled something from her pocket and plugged it into the port, overriding its outdated security system. The electric motor whirred to life and Savita accelerated forward, trying to dodge around shitheads.
The roads were riddled with potholes and slick with bodily discharges, bouncing the car around as we sped through abandoned streets. Houses stood in severe disrepair, some with their upper story collapsed in. Savita dodged around the occasional shithead lumbering across the street, but most of the quarantine zone had an eerie emptiness to it. Silhouettes flitted about the yards and windows like specters haunting the carcass of the neighborhood. The scenery reminded me of a recently vanquished city. As if the Assyrians or the Mongols or the Imperial Japanese had come through. But instead it had been conquered by a chemical.
Seeing the shithead’s condition brought up memories of Darren’s story. I couldn’t help but feel pity for him. What he did was reprehensible, but I knew all too well that it was a very human response. Most of those who condemn him would have done the same in his situation.
It took us a silent half hour to weave our way through the quarantine zone and come to the other side. We abandoned the car, walking along the streets, smashing our tech and dousing it in DNase solution, hoping to lose any trail we might have. Most of the shitheads stared after us in hazy curiosity. Some of them would shout, demanding Shift as they stumbled along behind us.
One girl, maybe eighteen years old, who didn’t appear too far gone, tried talking to us. I could see the track marks on her arm, but she spoke in a calm, reasonable voice.
“Please,” she said, “I don’t belong here. I haven’t used Shift in days. I swear I’m clean. You have to get me out.”
The three of us ignored her. She continued following us.
“They took me here,” she said, “I was going to school. They took me here. My mom must be so worried. Please. You have to help.”
A part of me wanted to believe her, but already desperation was entering her eyes. It didn’t matter. If she followed us long enough, she would eventually find a way out.
“Savita,” I said.
She kept walking without a word.
I spoke in Spanish, “we should make an escape for the shitheads.”
Savita stayed silent, but glanced to me, understanding my meaning. I didn’t have to say anything further. She turned to the fence, pulling a needle nosed pliers from her pocket and putting it to the fence, clamping it down on the thick links. It took some jarring to get
it to cut through before going to the next one. The girl stared after her, eyes becoming wide with anticipation.
Savita only got through six links before I volunteered to take over for a while. Instead, Laura grabbed the pliers in her bionic arm and made quick work of the rest, opening a hole large enough for people to crawl through.
I watched in astonishment, remembering how she had crushed that exoskeleton’s wrist so easily. It was immediately obvious how the bionic arm, even as crude as it looked and felt, wasn’t just a replacement, but an upgrade.
When I looked behind me, a crowd had gathered. At least fifteen people. Most of them looked like they weren’t too far gone, not yet appearing like a rotted-out corpse.
“God bless you,” the girl said as she ducked down, climbing through the hole.
Savita, Laura and I started walking quickly away as the quarantined people hurriedly ducked under the fence. It would only be a matter of time before the police showed up.
We walked on for some time, getting a few blocks away before we heard police sirens somewhere behind us. It was then that Savita had Laura cut another hole in the fence.
We ducked out of the fence onto an abandoned street. Savita changed her appearance to look like a Caucasian woman. The three of us made our way down a street, most of the houses around it abandoned. We were only a block away when police sirens gathered around the fence where we escaped. I looked over my shoulder, seeing two Benecorp UGVs and a Benecorp guard vehicle gathered around the hole. Men were already barking orders, entering the isolated neighborhood.
The three of us walked on for a while in silence, Savita turning us down a street. Only a few of the houses appeared occupied, being too close to the quarantine for most. We approached a white car, nobody saying anything as Savita opened the door, allowing Laura and me in. She got into the driver’s seat and set an automatic path.
“Here,” Savita said, handing us both new tech from out of the glove compartment – ARs, earpieces, throat sensor, and RFID chips, “new identities.”
Incarnate- Essence Page 72