The Postmortal

by Drew Magary

  “And I almost didn’t do it,” O’Neill recalls. “I mean, this was Freddie. We’d had her for years, and there was no reason to think she wouldn’t be around forever. That was the nice thing about her getting the cure. That’s why we let her in the house. We weren’t afraid to grow attached. We weren’t afraid to love her like our own. My kids could nuzzle in bed with her, and I never had that horrible vision of having to sit down and explain to them, ‘Well, Freddie had to go to sheep heaven.’ That was the blessing of the cure to me. It wasn’t about the wool or the food. It was that you never had to worry about love ending.”

  At Millet’s insistence, O’Neill left Freddie for the evening and returned home to her family. When she returned to the doctor’s the next morning, an ambulance and a police car sat outside his home. O’Neill remembers that a local police officer came out of Millet’s house to tell her that Freddie, Millet, and Millet’s wife had all suddenly passed away in the middle of the night, and that the paramedic on site had ordered the area sealed off.

  “I didn’t know what was going on,” says O’Neill, “and the officer didn’t have a good explanation to offer me. I asked if anything violent had occurred, and he said no. He said that they appeared to have died from some extreme sickness he’d never seen before. He talked about purple lines on their faces. I just sat there, dumbfounded. I didn’t even have time to be shocked.”

  What the officer had seen, of course, were the first outward symptoms of sheep flu in the United States. Three days ago, working from his home compound, Maxwell sent a ping to the scientific community pinpointing Abby O’Neill’s farm as the precise origin of the outbreak that has now killed over one hundred million Americans and five hundred million people worldwide.

  “Now that Skeleton Key is widely available, I was able to go out to the O’Neill farm and dig up the contaminated soil,” Maxwell explains, “and find traces of remains from the animals the family had to destroy. We now know that those remains contain fragments of the S36 virus. We also know, anecdotally, that the northeastern portion of the country, and more specifically the Berkshire region, is where this outbreak was first reported on the feeds. And medical reports concerning David Millet are, from my search of the indices, the earliest to describe the symptoms, even if the medical personnel reporting on them had no idea what they were looking at. One of the few nice things about sheep flu is that its symptoms are so unmistakable.”

  For her part, Abby O’Neill has no idea why she and her family were able to avoid contracting the lethal virus. After being ordered to destroy all their livestock, the family moved north, to a very small farm in Northern Ontario. They have no animals; grow only fruits, herbs, and vegetables; and regularly defend their compound from stray Russian RMUs and bandits. Abby has kept every article of clothing ever made from Freddie’s fleece, even the items that no longer fit her or her children.

  “I don’t know why she was the one, of all the animals out there, to start this outbreak. I know we didn’t do anything wrong. So when someone tells me that this innocent animal I adored, who was part of our family for so long . . . When someone tells me she was at fault for killing all those people . . . Millions upon millions of men and women and kids and animals . . .”

  She holds up a pair of blue mittens and kisses them.

  “Well, that’s not fair. It’s not fair to saddle all that blame on a single living being. We were just trying to live our lives. We didn’t want to bother anyone. Freddie never meant any harm.”

  DATE MODIFIED:

  6/3/2079, 3:11 A.M.

  Today’s Insurgent

  A request came in from Containment to handle the file of one DeFors Lewis of Tysons Corner. I took the file and stared at his picture. He was short and squat, with a thick frizz of curly black hair that washed down past his shoulders and a small bald spot crowning his head. He had a full beard and all the attributes of a lieutenant in a motorcycle gang. A true organic, he was in his late forties. His current mailing address listed him under the alias Murray Holdman.

  Matt bought a new armored plug-in last week, and this was our first chance to use it. It’s very big and very orange, with a giant plow attached to the front. It does not get good wattage. I spray-painted HAVE A NICE DAY on the front of the plow. I thought it was a nice touch. We nicknamed the thing Big Bertha.

  I opened the doors to the East Falls Church compound, bay number eight, and Ernie drove in. We could hear a handful of people just outside the bay doors. Usually, they go away after a while, but we were pressed for time given the inevitable traffic. Some of them were scratching—looking for a crack in the facade to pull at. I went to the front of Bertha and cranked the hoist on the plow, lifting it off of the ground. Ernie fired the engine. Two town guards stood with us in the bay, rifles at the ready. Ernie gave me the signal. I threw open the latch and leaped into the plug-in. Ernie put it into drive and gunned it. The plow bashed against the stacks of rubber bumpers bolted to the bottom of the bay door, causing it to fly upwards like a loose flap. The door banged back down on Bertha’s padded roof as Ernie took her all the way out. A handful of people got knocked back by the force of the impact. Ernie laid off the gas and edged the plug-in through the crowd. The bay door swung back down too quickly and violently for anyone to get inside. One glimpse of the guards inside the bay and most of them scrammed anyway.

  A couple of people outside the compound threw themselves at the plug-in while others just stared. The rain was steady, and I saw more than a few people with their heads tilted back and their mouths stretched wider than coffee cans, catching as much rain as they could—baby birds waiting to be fed by God. Everyone stayed clear of the plow. A random man lazed on the hood, staring at us both. He pantomimed for a drink of water. Ernie paid him no mind as he turned on the music and gradually sped up. He even started chatting. “They ran out of gas, you know. The military.”

  “So I heard,” I said.

  “Except in the missile silos. That’s it. That’s the only gas left.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s the only thing holding Solovyev back. Can you believe it? That little bit of gas?”

  “Dude, I know you’re used to driving with people on the hood, but I’m getting distracted.”

  “Oh, him?” He jerked the plug-in leftward, and the vagrant rolled harmlessly off to the side. “Sorry. It’s like forgetting to put on the wipers at this point.”

  We got onto the main road and joined a morass of makeshift electric tanks—old plug-ins covered with scrap picked up at a car graveyard. Layers upon layers of old sheet metal fused together and piled onto their frames, like a child who decided to put on all his clothing at once. We inched forward. Homeless people lining the shoulder occasionally tried to pry their way into our plug-in, only to give up. I saw one of them successfully weasel into a poorly fortified plug-in up ahead. The driver pulled a gun. And eventually he got back out and left the driver alone, a touch of embarrassment crossing his face.

  I tried to ignore the commotion outside as best I could by perusing stories on the WEPS.8 screen. Ernie was right about the gas, of course. Capt. Strong’s feed said that most of the gas left on the continent is tucked neatly away in private compounds and forts. Matt has a small reserve of it on hand. He doesn’t tell us where it is. Says it’s for the boat.

  I noticed a hangnail on my thumb and ripped it out with my teeth; blood leaked out onto the ridge of my cuticle and into the small gutters on either side of the nail. I licked away the blood, but the crevices just kept filling up again, unyielding. Blood after blood. I bit down on my index finger and tore off the top layer of the nail, then spat it onto the floor mat. My guns kept me company in the passenger seat.

  The address we were given was located off Dolley Madison Boulevard, in an office-park compound in a cul-de-sac. The street was packed with plug-ins—on the grass, double-parked against the sweep of the curb. Ernie drove another mile and found a place to leave the plug-in on the shoulder. I stashed one gun in the
back of my waistband and tucked another into my boot. We both put on our riot gear. There was an arepa stand nearby. I bought one, along with an orange soda. As the vendor handed me the soda, a vagrant ran by and intercepted the exchange, running away with the drink. He chugged it immediately. He stared down my arepa. I stuffed it into my mouth as fast as I could, felt the roof of my mouth burn, and spat it back out. The vagrant ran and scooped up the chewed-up food for his own. He saw the rifle in my hand and the license hanging from my lanyard. He didn’t care.

  We walked through a mess of tents and grills to the main entrance of the compound and waited. The grid shut down, and I saw the stoplight on the boulevard go out, though I don’t remember if it was functional to begin with. A man walked out of the gate five minutes later, and we accosted him inside the entrance bay. We didn’t need to say anything for him to know what we required. He keyed in the code for the second door, and we were inside the wall.

  The office park was a series of somber town-house rows built up ten stories high. All gray, drab on top of drab. The rooms inside were divided down to nothing, like little cubbyholes, each with its own pathetic little window. I checked the address. It was five houses down. Ernie moved along the wall and stayed low. I saw a brown wooden fence, scaled it, and found myself in an empty backyard outside a dentist’s office. In front of me was a narrow stretch of green. The dentist, framed in one of the windows, stopped his drilling and stared at me, then went back about his business. I gingerly walked down four houses. A small partition jutted out between them, which made for excellent cover. I saw no one in our target’s window. Ernie came up on the WEPS.

  “Confirmed?” he asked me.

  “Confirmed.”

  “Okay.”

  I heard Ernie crash through the front door. No shots were fired. Two seconds later a short, fat, bearded fellow came running out of the back door, armed and barefoot. He saw me and raised his gun—a very big, shiny, chunky handgun. I shot him in the gut, and he lazily somersaulted to the ground, as if tripped by a tree root. He shot the ground as he fell, and a sharp vapor of gunpowder enshrouded him for a moment. The smoke crackled in my teeth. I waited as Ernie came out of the back door and kept his rifle on Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lewis didn’t move. The gun smoke cleared, and I advanced on the body, kicking his gun away. It was a Desert Eagle. A show gun. He wouldn’t have been able to hit his neighbor’s house with it. Mr. Lewis was alive, his doughy torso expanding in and out. I rolled him over. Grass clippings stuck to his bullet wound, and blood rose from the opening like the head of a small animal. The bulb of plasma broke like a bubble and ran down his side in thick streaks, like the legs inside an expensive glass of wine. He tried to spit in my face, but it landed back on his chest and melted into his black T-shirt. I hit Record on the WEPS. Ernie ran back in to secure the house. Neighbors gathered at their windows and stared.

  I knelt beside Mr. Lewis. “I need confirmation that you are Mr. DeFors Lewis of Tysons Corner, Virginia.”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  “Do you have a license on you?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Do you have family members you wish to notify of your death?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “My records indicate that you are the father of Darienne Lewis of 2309 Cribbage Drive in Palo Alto, California. Would you like your soft assets transferred to her? There is no taxable penalty on this transfer.”

  He thought about it for a second. “Fuck you.”

  “Dude, it’s your kid. If you don’t will your things to her right now, the government is allowed to seize them. You don’t want that.”

  He relented. “Fine. You have my approval. Now fuck you.”

  “We’re not done,” I told him. “You were tried in absentia for the bombing of a Remo’s Tanning Salon in Sterling, Virginia, on May 3, 2077—a blast that injured five people. You were assigned a public defender named Ken Blodgett. Mr. Blodgett presented your case before the Loudoun County district court, defending you to the utmost of his ability. A jury of your peers found you guilty on February 16, 2079. The judge sentenced you to death, and JonesPlus End Specialists, Inc., LLC, was hired to carry out your hard end specialization. This is your final chance to make a public statement. An admission of guilt and remorse will be streamed to Judge Harry Edwards, who sentenced you. Should Judge Edwards be satisfied with your statement, he may see fit to reward your beneficiaries with a one-time $1,800 tax rebate. Would you like to make a public statement of guilt and remorse?”

  “I fucking hate you.”

  “It’s your daughter. You have no control over your outcome, but you do have some semblance of control over hers. Your public statement can be just to her, if you like. We can send it to her.”

  He blew snot out of his nose. “You take your tax rebate, and your little goodbye e-card idea, and you fucking die.”

  “Okay.”

  I turned off the recording, aimed the rifle at his forehead, and gave the trigger a squeeze. When you fire a gun, the trigger seems difficult to pull, in a physical sense. You have to squeeze it hard, and the second it gives way is when the bang comes, well before you’ve brought the trigger all the way back. That quick release surprises me every time. I heard a muted thump, like a firecracker set off under a pillow. I watched as the blood and gelatin blew out of Mr. Lewis’s cranium in a sudden flare, like flames from a booster rocket. Little pieces of his skull scattered like ocean plastic on the loose grass. Shreds of his scalp ripped open and hung loose. He looked at me, and his eyes were once again those of a newborn. Seeking. Longing to be told everything about everything. All the hate and misplaced righteousness gone.

  Ernie came back out with a box of crude PVC pipes and other bomb-making materials. There were also two handguns in his stash. We sealed everything in Ziploc freezer bags and labeled them. I took the official file photos of Lewis’s corpse.

  “There’s nothing else inside,” Ernie said. “Just a lot of books. And it’s a rental, obviously. No real estate paperwork for you.”

  “Did you check his fridge?”

  “For what? Nitroglycerine?”

  “No. Water. I’m thirsty. I’m gonna get a drink and see if he has anything else to eat. Call Mosko for a pickup.”

  He had bottled water in the fridge, but the setting was so cold that the water had partially crystallized. I took a bottle out anyway and squeezed it until the sides of the plastic hit the iceberg inside. I drank all the liquid in a single gulp. I took the rest for the plug-in.

  DATE MODIFIED:

  6/23/2079, 6:07 A.M.

  The Girl in the Marketplace

  The Eden Center compound is accessible from our East Falls Church compound via a network of narrow underground tunnels that can only accommodate foot traffic. It was made hastily by a co-op of Vietnamese store owners who didn’t want to lose business from our part of town when it got sealed off. They dug tunnels to us and to compounds all over Arlington and McLean. The tunnels serve as an underground version of Seven Corners.

  I like walking down there. The tunnels are little more than giant gopher holes, with halogens strung along the top, and a constant procession of people moving through them like cells in a blood vessel. But the exposed earth is cool to the touch, and I like to stop and press my body against it on days like yesterday, while letting everyone else slip past. It feels like dipping your hand in a spring.

  For two decades, Matt has ordered group lunch for the firm, and it’s always been a mixed blessing. He constantly asks what we should have for lunch, then shoots down any idea we throw his way. Thus lunch becomes a stalemate that can drag on well past two in the afternoon. I often end up bolting at twelve thirty to get something on my own, because I know damn well that three o’clock can come and go without a morsel in sight.

  On Wednesdays the Eden Center plug-in lot becomes home to a market where you can buy fruit and vegetables and dried goods and even some meats. You can get dried fish and shrimp, but they cost a fortune. The Four Sisters res
taurant has a booth that sells summer rolls: rice-flour wrappers stuffed with bean curd, mint, noodles, and scallions. These were in my head as I walked through the damp tunnel and up to the surface of the shopping plaza. I had my gun on me and my ES license dangling from my neck.

  I walked up the muddy ramp until linoleum emerged beneath my feet and I was in the center’s generic atrium. Through glass doors, the market beckoned. I walked through them and found myself outside in the bustling lunch-hour chaos. Workers crisscrossing the pavement, carrying pallets of cabbage on their heads. White-collar workers standing with coffee and sandwiches, looking for a place to sit and eat. An abundance of little homemade jewelry booths that couldn’t possibly turn a profit. I zeroed in on the Four Sisters booth and got in line for food. I opened the WEPS screen and texted Matt to ask if he wanted anything. He told me to go screw myself.

  I clicked off and saw a flash of strawberry on the edge of my vision—a crop of hair that stood out against the mostly Vietnamese crowd like a golf umbrella. I turned to it and saw the back of a woman wearing a tight jean skirt and red tank. An impossible body. A slinky gait that begged you to follow in its majestic swagger. A sashaying creature that inspired pure want. I abandoned the line and walked behind her, bobbing and weaving through the commingling rush of workers and eaters. I took out the WEPS and got a snapshot for a reverse ID. The proportions were a match. She stopped at a coffee stand one hundred yards away from me and waited patiently for a drink. I walked in a zigzag, flowing with the pedestrians, charging left and right, and slowly getting closer, never moving above three o’clock in her line of sight.