State of Decay

by James Knapp

  “The killer?”

  “He implied he was. Have the officers look around; the call came literally less than five minutes ago. He could be watching you now.”

  “On it.”

  “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Her name was Mae Zhu,” he said. “She was found in her car when they went to tow it. Same wound. Same chemical signature.”

  Those were the only two constants in each of the murders, and the only two links we had to the killer. One was the unique shape of the wound pattern, and the other was a faint chemical trace that indicated he either worked with explosives or carried them somewhere on him.

  “Send me the address.”

  My phone beeped and I checked the incoming message; this murder had happened right in the middle of the shopping district.

  “Any witnesses?” I asked.

  “No one saw a thing.”

  “I’ll see if any security cameras picked anything up,” I said. “I’m leaving now; I’ll meet you over there.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I was up.”

  “Your eval is today. Don’t forget.”

  I sighed. I’d forgotten about the psych evaluation. I didn’t have time for that. There wasn’t enough time as it was.

  “I’ll meet you over there,” I said.

  I hung up and leaned back in the chair, feeling the warm, tingly feeling spread down my arms and legs as the stimulant kicked in. It was a sorry substitute for sleep, but it was better than nothing.

  Try to wake up.

  Pressing my palms over my eyelids, I felt my eyes aching behind them. That wasn’t my problem; I spent my whole life awake, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the sedatives, I’d never sleep at all.

  My foot had started tapping as a surplus of energy surged through me, cutting through the fog and bringing me back to life. I had to get moving.

  I’d showered the night before, so that was going to have to do. I brushed my teeth, bundled up, and grabbed my maglev chit off the countertop. When I made my way outside, it was still dark and bitterly cold. Sometime during the four hours or so I’d been in bed, it had snowed, leaving a thin white blanket over everything.

  I pulled my coat tighter around me and started making the arrangements to have the security footage piped over. I headed down the sidewalk to the subway station, hoping victim number five would tell me something the other four hadn’t.

  Calliope Flax—Arena Porco Rojo

  “Calliope . . . Flax . . . is . . . down!”

  A judge was screaming through the amp, but fuck if I could hear anything else with my ear in the canvas and the rest of my face full of sweat, muscle, and tit. No one ever called me pretty, but if that bitch wasn’t XY, she was a freak. She was too thick and too hard, and to make weight she must have flushed out both ends for a week, because no way was she in my class. She was slow, though, and leaned too much on her size. I was seeing black, and all I knew was when I got loose, her size wouldn’t save her.

  I couldn’t see her, but my palm was in her chin and I pushed until she had to move. When she went back and turned, I jammed my thumb deep under her jawbone so she couldn’t back come down and pin me like she wanted. I grabbed her jaw and twisted, and she had to get off and deal with me or I’d break it. When she did, I let go and kicked back, but I cracked into the chain-link pole at the edge of the ring. She came right back, but I got a foot in before she bashed me in the face with her big man hand, pushing me into the chain so hard I felt the skin split above my eye and blood run down my face.

  She leaned down on my foot, mouth hanging open and face red, as she tried to crush me. Sweat stung the corner of my eye as a string of spit blew around on the end of her fat bottom lip. Even with my leg there it was hard to keep her back, so when she went to change position, I locked my legs around her waist and tucked her in close. She saw where she was going but was too late to stop it, and I didn’t give her a chance to tense up. I put the vise to her ribs full force and she screamed, face red and veins popping. For one split second, her brain was stuck on that and just that. I could see it.

  A nose breaks easily, and hers broke flat when I fired my palm down on the bridge. Blood sprayed down her chin, and a lot of strength went out of her all at once. I let go of the scissor lock and brought one leg up on the back of her neck and locked that ankle under the opposite knee while I clamped down on her head and left arm.

  By the time she saw what was up, it was too late and she knew it. That lock was death, and as I closed the triangle, cutting off her air, she knew it was done, but she kept at it. Even when I squeezed blood out of her nose and her face went dark, she tried to get up.

  Tap, you bitch. . . .

  The crowd went ape shit with cheers, boos, and feet stomping on the stands. A hand reached through the cage and grabbed my wrist. Where the hell was security? She bucked like a pig between my legs, and the hand that came through the cage didn’t want to let go, so I twisted it around. The middle finger snapped as I wrenched it back, and someone screamed, then jerked it away.

  As she pushed me back down to the canvas like a blind bull, I saw blood was running thick, some from my head and some from her nose, and there was a ton of it. The bitch should have just tapped; they’d have called it anyway. They should have called it.

  She pushed, and her free hand grabbed a fistful of skin on my bare thigh. She twisted it and dug her thumb into my crotch.

  I don’t think she meant to. Later I thought that, at least. I didn’t mean to do what I did either, but that’s how it went down. The slow grind I had on the leg lock turned mean, and I pumped it closed all at once, just for a second, but that’s all it took. Her whole body jerked, and the hand that had me let go.

  “Match!” a judge screamed. I kicked her off of me and rolled away, the sight in my right eye going red as blood ran in it. From both sides I could hear feet pound the canvas as the refs charged out.

  “Match!” someone in the ring yelled. The crowd sounded as if they would rip the place apart, cheering and cursing and shaking the chain link as though they were trying to tear it down. When I tried to get up, a heavy hand came down on my shoulder and pushed me back so I was kneeling.

  “Wait,” Eddie growled in my ear. I put my hands on my knees and tried to see as he pushed the blood clotter into the cut over my eye. Two guys from the other corner were with the man-girl as she wobbled on her hands and knees. She groped with one red hand as blood ran down her chin, trying to push at the guy who pinched her nose shut. Her eyes swam, and I thought maybe I broke her.

  Refs and guys from both sides pointed and yelled at each other, trying to be heard over the crowd as the docs looked at her neck and talked in her ear. After almost a minute, she made a face, but she pushed them away. She needed a hand and she stood crooked, but she got up. Eddie clapped my shoulder.

  “Up!”

  “Winner!” the judge wailed on the amp. “Winner by submission: Calliope Flax!”

  My face came up on the big board, and I saw that the whole right side was covered in blood with a big, open cut on a fat black-and-blue bulge over my eye.

  My name is Cal, asshole. . . .

  I hated my name. If I ever got out of third tier, I swore the first thing I’d do would be to change it. They made me put my full name, and Eddie said he liked it because of some sales shit. Ironic, he said. Asshole.

  I faced the crowd and watched them freak, half of them wanting to shake my hand and the rest wanting to kill me. Some guy up front was going nuts, screaming something. He whipped a brown bottle at me and it smashed on the fence, spraying glass.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed, sticking out my finger at him.

  “Flax, you bitch!” he yelled, grabbing the fence and pulling on it. I kicked it, and he got his fingers out just in time.

  One of the refs helped the girl limp to the center of the ring with me. She was hurting, and I could tell her neck was jacked up. She glared at me over the bridge of he
r broken nose and there were tears in her eyes.

  “Shake hands,” the ref said.

  I held out my hand, and she took it, but her eyes showed how much she hated me. I pumped her hand twice, then looked at the crowd so I didn’t have to look at her. All through the stands they were going nuts. The guy who threw the bottle now threw a folded chair at the fence, his face red. Another bottle hit the chain link and sprayed onto the ring.

  “Come on!” Eddie shouted, calling me over to the corner where the exit was. A bunch of big dudes were pushing back the crowd on both sides as some of them tried to get to the spot I’d come out of, while other guys went after them from the stands. Eddie opened the door in the fence.

  “Straight back to the lockers and don’t stop!” he said as I went by.

  I gave him the finger and hopped down in between the security guys, then stuck both fingers straight up in the air as I walked the line back to the lockers. Marko was up next and Jefe after him, so they were hanging near the door.

  “You messed that bitch up,” Marko said.

  “Good.”

  I said it, but it still didn’t sit right, the way she popped and went limp like that. The way she stared me down afterward wasn’t like usual, and the look in her eyes was still on my mind.

  “We’re hitting the Bucket after the fights,” Jefe said. “You in?”

  “Yeah, I’m in.”

  So that was that. When the whole thing got going, that’s where I was. Third tier, dirt-poor, beat to hell, and ready to drink. I didn’t know shit about any of it or that half of it could even happen in this life, but that’s that.

  I guess you never know.

  Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment 713

  “Zoe?” a woman was asking. Through a window I could see the city was burning, the neon lights were dark, and cherry red cinders swirled in the cold night air.

  “Yes?”

  “Follow me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are the last piece of the puzzle,” she said, and she took my hand with her cold, dead one.

  All I wanted, the only thing I wanted in the whole stupid world, was some peace. I would have been happy with a day, or even just one minute where someone or something wasn’t in my face or buzzing in my head, but it was never going to happen, because even when I shut myself inside for days, they still managed to find me. They hounded me until I slept, and then they followed me into my dreams.

  This time it was the dead woman with the short dirty blond hair. I wasn’t sure who she was, but she had a look that made me think she’d been a professional of some kind. She wore a woman’s suit, but it wasn’t just that; it was her face, her hair, and the way she held herself. In the middle of her forehead, about the size of a quarter, the number 3 had been pressed into the skin with black ink.

  She had been killed recently and looked a little disheveled, but even so, she managed to seem authoritative and sure. She had nice cheekbones, gorgeous eyes, and a strong jaw. She was a couple inches taller than me, with long legs and a good body. I hated her. I hated her for her looks, the way she dragged me around, and because she never left me alone.

  “Why is the city burning?” I asked her, but she didn’t answer me. Her hand was cold on my wrist as she pulled me along after her, away from the window and down a dark hallway.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. She looked over her shoulder and caught me staring at her free hand, which was covered in blood. It was clutched around what looked like a human heart, a big gash cut into the middle of it.

  “It got split,” she said, like that explained it.

  “This is a dream,” I told her.

  She didn’t respond to that. She dragged me after her and pushed open a door that led into a green concrete room.

  “Not this again,” I said. The room was rectangular, about eight feet side to side, twelve feet front to back, and eight feet again to the ceiling. The walls and floors were smooth concrete painted dark green, and whatever the place was for, it must have had some significance, because it wasn’t the first time I ended up there.

  She let go of my wrist and grabbed the power switch mounted on the wall, slamming it into the up position and causing the overhead lights to flicker on with an angry electric buzzing noise. There were two people standing at the far end of the room, staring forward. One was a man; the other I thought was a man at first, but it was a very butch woman. There was a space between them for a third person.

  “Who are they?” I asked. A light came on over the man, illuminating him, so I could see him clearly. I recognized him; I’d seen him on TV a couple times, on the news.

  “This one will need your help,” she said, pointing. “When he calls, go to him.”

  He was a tall, handsome man with very blue eyes and short black hair. When I saw him on the news, I remembered he was wearing a suit. He carried a badge, the kind you kept in a leather wallet. He was somebody important, some kind of investigator or something. He wasn’t wearing his suit now, though; he was wearing a white sleeveless undershirt. In the middle of his forehead, pressed in black ink, was the number 4.

  “Where did the scar come from?” I asked. There was a big white scar that started up beneath his jawline and got thicker as it moved down his neck, then behind the undershirt. There was more scar tissue across his right shoulder. The woman didn’t answer.

  “Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is fifty percent,” she said instead.

  “What relationship?” I asked, but she was on to the next one. The light came on over the woman, letting me see her clearly.

  “This one will help you,” she said, pointing. “When you call, she will go to you.”

  She was about six inches shorter than the man, and thinner, but even more muscular. She looked like she was all muscle and bone, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a mean face. Her lips were painted black and peeled back in a wide frown, and her nose had been broken at some point. Her hair was cropped almost to stubble, and her prominent chin jutted forward. I had never seen her before in my life.

  Her left hand was a pale gray that went up to the middle of her forearm, and black veins stood out under the skin. The number 2 was stamped on her forehead.

  “Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is ninety percent.”

  “What about the middle spot?” I asked.

  “That is where I stand,” she said.

  “So we’re going to meet?”

  “We will meet three times before this is all over.”

  “And what are my chances of success with you?”

  “Respectively, in percentages,” she said, “thirty, one hundred, and zero.”

  “Those aren’t good odds.”

  “Only the first one will occur at this time.”

  She reached over and snapped the switch back down, cutting the lights. She looked down at her hand, still holding the wounded heart, and looked a little sad.

  “Is it yours?” I asked. She ignored me.

  The woman stepped back away from me, disappearing into the shadows, and then everything faded away. The green room dissolved around me, leaving nothing but blackness.

  I opened my eyes. I was awake, or at least I thought I was. It seemed like I spent a lot of time wondering whether I was dreaming or not. I picked my head up off the couch and blinked until things stopped spinning, and strained to see out the window. It was still dark outside.

  I felt a tickle on my neck and brushed at it. Something brown with feelers flicked onto the floor and scurried off. I turned my head and looked at the coffee table; the remote controls were spread out all over the place, along with some pens, a spiral notebook, an oil-stained paper plate, and a shot glass that was full to the brim. I sat up and looked at the TV, which was showing some cartoon with the sound down. I drank the shot, then grabbed the bottle of ouzo from the floor and refilled the glass as I burped up a pocket of air that tasted like cabbage, licorice, and soy sauce.
r />   I poured more of the ouzo into the shot glass, which had kind of become a moving target, and spilled a little onto the floor. I wiped it up with the toe of my sock. I drank the shot and stared at the TV.

  A green icon danced in the upper right-hand corner of the screen; the data miner was bouncing around, letting me know it had finished gathering information. I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for.

  Fumbling for the remote, I turned the sound back on and brought up the data miner. All the categories had hits. The timer showed the miner had been collecting information for almost two hours. . . . I must have dozed off for a while there. There were multiple hits on a bunch of topics: movie stars, TV stars, musicians. . . . One jumped out at me.

  WACHALOWSKI.

  The dancing icon bounced next to the name. It had eleven hits.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked.

  I brought up his listings and had a look; they were all news channels, all short segments. I cycled through the stills. Three of them were the same shot of him standing in what looked like a dark building lobby, facing the person taking the footage.

  It was the man from the green room, the one with the scar. He was with the FBI, it looked like. The scar I’d seen in my dream was there, going from beneath his jaw to down under his shirt collar.

  I clicked the remote to play the first segment. Agent Wachalowski took out his badge and showed it to the person filming.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Colin Patrick,” a young man’s voice, maybe dubbed in, said from offscreen, “freelance news. I received a tip that you uncovered a human-trafficking ring, right here in this office building. Can you tell me anything about what you found?”

  “Sorry, I can’t,” Wachalowski said. The camera cut away to show the elevator door, where the numbers on the display indicated a car descending.

  “I hear you’ve got some revivors upstairs,” Colin said.

  “Be careful,” Wachalowski said, and the camera cut quickly a couple times as he pushed by, “the SWAT guys are on their way down.”