State of Decay

by James Knapp

  Do I need to hit him again?

  No.

  I found my weapon and limped over to it. I knelt down and picked it up, then vomited.

  You okay?

  I watched the steam rising off it, waiting to see if there was any more coming.

  Wachalowski, you okay?

  I’m fine. Get a coroner down here.

  After they were done scraping the kid off the dock, maybe we could pull something off him. The department would never foot the bill to buy up exclusive rights in order to sit on the footage. If it was bad enough, they could file an injunction and put a freeze on it, but not before it aired.

  Two men were cuffing the shooter, while a third tended to his leg. Another man was approaching the body of the kid, not looking optimistic.

  “You’re a dead man,” the shooter growled through his wrecked mouth, glaring up at me.

  “I know.”

  “He knows who you are,” he said. I was about to ask him what he meant by that when one of the men jammed a tranquilizer into his neck and he went limp.

  “Have the medics pin his leg back together and make sure he doesn’t bleed to death,” I said. “Then I want him back at HQ and three keycards deep before anyone else sees him or talks to him.”

  “Got it.”

  I started making my way back to my car before the aftershock of the stims kicked in and knocked my body chemistry far enough out of whack that the ignition’s safety catch would refuse to let it start. By the time I fell into the driver’s seat, my stomach felt like a pound of ice was sitting in it and I was sweating despite the freezing cold. When I pressed my thumb to the ignition, the light flashed yellow, but it started.

  Leaning back, I routed around my emergency systems and manually popped the last stim. A few seconds later, the aftershock backed off, but it threatened to come back, the worse for waiting.

  Ice and grit crunched under the tires as I pulled out and aimed for the home office, which was the next best thing to home.

  2

  Fuse

  Calliope Flax—Stark Street Police Station

  “. . . where it seems some number of revivors were impounded by the FBI,” the guy on the TV said. I was squatting on the floor of the jail cell with my head back on the bricks and leaned against the bars that penned the boys from the girls. My face and head throbbed like hell.

  I opened my eyes and looked up through the bars at the TV on the wall, which showed the front of some building. Blues flashed, and a crowd pushed at a line of cops to try to get pictures.

  “No official statement has been made,” the voice continued. “Witnesses, however, recorded the removal of several revivors. . . . No word on how many total were recovered, or what they were for, but this was clearly an organized raid on a major operation. Lead investigator Nicolai Wachalowski was not available for comment.”

  “On the subject of revivors,” another guy said, “a bill that would allow corporations to utilize revivors to fill a portion of their manufacturing jobs, the so-called five-percent bill, was voted down yesterday by a fairly wide margin.”

  I shut my eyes again, wishing at least the hangover would let up. The last thing I remembered from the bar was that I’d shot some pool with the guys. A bunch of college snots showed up at some point, rich-bitch fight groupies and pretty-boy wannabes. One thing led to another, I guess, and here I was, waking up in the slammer.

  “How about that shit?” a voice said near my ear. I rolled my head against the bars that one of the college boys had sat down on the other side of. Pretty boy had a dark shiner under one eye, but besides that he had skin like a baby. His hair and clothes said he wasn’t from here and didn’t belong here.

  “How about what shit?” I asked. He pointed at the TV, where some old guy with white hair pissed on about something.

  “This is a requirement moving forward in order to remain competitive in the global market,” he said. “End of story. The bottom line is, the representatives are afraid of this bill because revivors don’t earn wages, so they don’t pay taxes, but what we are talking about here is a very small percentage of the overall workforce, even when compared to the percentage of overseas positions.”

  “Big-business interests,” the news guy said, “including such corporate powerhouses as TeraSine and CyberTech, vow to continue pushing for what they are terming labor reform.”

  “It’s bullshit,” pretty boy said.

  “What the hell do you care?”

  He shrugged. “Could affect you.”

  “If those assholes give all the shit work to dead guys, I’ll be screwed—that it?”

  “Well, it didn’t pass,” he said.

  “Score one for tier three.”

  I was hoping he’d beat it, but he didn’t. Out of one eye, I could see him looking at me.

  “You’re Calliope Flax,” he said.

  “It’s Cal, asshole.”

  “Right, Cal.”

  “What do you want, an autograph?”

  “I’ve seen you fight.”

  “You watch the chick fights?”

  “I’ve watched you fight.”

  “Most guys only tune in to silicone.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with how you look,” he said, and just like that, I’d had it with his smooth skin and his good looks. I clubbed the bars in front of his face and made him jump as everyone looked over.

  “Settle down in there!” one of the guards yelled. The kid held up his hands.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Shut up,” I said. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

  My head hurt and I was in no mood. He seemed to get it and stopped talking, but he stayed put. I thought I would hit the bunk, but I was too whipped to want to get up. He took something out of his sock. A phone, I thought. He kept it near his crotch and punched in numbers with his thumbs.

  “They’ll take that,” I said.

  “I know.”

  He kept at it for a minute, then snapped it shut and stowed it back in his shoe.

  “Call your mom?”

  “Posted bail.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “The code contacts a remote ’bot,” he said. “I send the GPS coordinates so it knows who to contact, then it contacts their server, looks me up, queries how much the fine is, and posts it over the wire. It’s instantaneous.”

  I put my head back on the cement.

  “You royalty?”

  “Second tier.”

  The way he talked, I had him pegged for tier one. Tier two meant he sold his ass to the man. His folks hadn’t bought him up yet. There was no way his pretty face would ever see a real fistfight, never mind a firefight.

  “Good for you.”

  “Luis Valle?” a guard called.

  Still looking me in the eye, the college prick smiled. “That’s me,” he called back.

  “You just got posted,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”

  He winked at me. God, I felt like hitting him.

  “Your people will get you out of here, right?” he asked.

  “I don’t have people; I have Eddie,” I said. “If I’m still in here when the next fight comes, he’ll get me then, but I’ll get docked.”

  “Valle, let’s go!”

  He got up and went with the guard. Marko shot him a look when he went by, and like a little bitch, he smiled and gave him a wave. Dipshit didn’t even know where he was. He was a cat in the dog pound and so were his dumb friends, but at least they knew to sit still and shut up.

  The cell door banged shut and it got quiet again, except for the TV. They were still going on about revivors; should they work, should they fight, and all that. It was the same shit as always. Who cared? At least so far, they couldn’t take you without your signing up, so why bitch? Those bastards took your money and got to say how much you counted and what you could do. They took down all there was about you, from your ID to your DNA, and they never asked once and no one ever said shit. Now people
cared? Stick me up the ass all you want while I’m here, just don’t screw with me when I’m dead—what kind of sense did that make?

  You didn’t have to sign up. The way I saw, if it bugs you, don’t sign. I hadn’t.

  The guys in the other cell were off in a bunch by then, laughing and talking shit like how hard and in what way they’d bang the newswoman who had come on if they had the chance, which they never would. It was stupid, but the bars made me mad, like even though we were all in jail I had to be in the girl cell. They were all in there, and I was stuck on my side with two high- class bitches who cried the whole time. The guys didn’t want to look soft, so the only one who came over at all was the pretty boy who I didn’t even know. Perfect.

  My eyes drifted back to the TV. A reporter stood near a black car parked on a side street. The camera cut and showed some rich Asian woman dead behind the wheel, covered in blood. “The suspected serial killer has struck yet again,” a voice on the TV was saying.

  “Flax,” a guard called, and I looked up through the bars. He was a big guy, on his way to fat.

  “That’s me.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. I looked at the guys in the next cell, but no one was calling them out and they looked as clueless as me.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Today.”

  Things I might have done went through my mind as I got up and went to the guard, who slid open the door. No way would Eddie come for me and not them. It must have been something I did, which was a lot of things.

  “Out,” he said. I went through the gate and he slammed it shut behind me. He didn’t look at me twice, and just walked down the hall with me in back of him.

  “Nice shiner,” he said when we got out of holding.

  “Thanks.”

  “You get that in the ring, or at the bar after?”

  “The second one.”

  The night before was a blur, but it didn’t happen at the fight. I got the cut over my right eye there, but not the shiner on my left. Someone caught me good at the bar.

  “Well, Ms. Flax, it’s your lucky day,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yup. The guy you jumped dropped the charges, and in all the resulting bullshit of the little war you started, even the cameras couldn’t pin anything too bad on you.”

  I shrugged at his back. That was pretty lucky, actually.

  “Here we are,” he said when we got to the main entryway.

  “Huh?”

  “You got posted,” he said. “What’d you think, I was giving you a tour? You’re free to go.”

  He handed me my leather jacket and I put it on.

  “I left what I found in the pocket. Consider that a gift.”

  He held out a big yellow envelope like I should take it, so I did. I ripped it open and saw my cell phone and keys inside. When I looked back, he was pointing like I should get the hell out.

  “A couple of your buddies dropped your bike off last night so it didn’t get towed; it’s in the lot out back.”

  “Who bailed me out?” I asked. He jerked his thumb toward the wall.

  “Nice fight, by the way,” he said. “The first one, not the second one.”

  When I looked at where he pointed, I saw pretty boy from inside the cell standing there, arms crossed and back against the wall like some kind of pimp. When I turned back, the guard was gone.

  I looked back and pretty boy was still smiling that smug smile I was going to learn to hate in about five minutes. If he’d really bailed me out, I’d almost rather have gone back in, but not enough to actually have done it. When people did things for you, they wanted something back.

  “You do this?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, still smiling. He tailed me out. The sun was almost up.

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Bail, even for a back-lot brawl, was a big deal, but maybe it wasn’t a big deal for him. Maybe he was a fan, or maybe he did it just to pat himself on the back. Maybe it was to show off.

  “What do I owe you?” I asked.

  “I just—”

  “Don’t screw with me. What do I owe you?”

  “How about a ride home?” he said.

  I still didn’t know what his game was, but a ride I could do. If that was all it was going to take, I could do that. A ride on the back of my bike in the cold might wipe that look of his face, even.

  “A ride? Sure. Okay. You got it.”

  His shit was so slick, I even bought it a little. Just a fan, I said to myself, or some punk with an itch to walk on the wild side. If it got his rocks off to be nice to a three, why not take him up on it? It beat a week in jail, and he was nothing to be scared of. Tight, but slight, and never fought a day in his life. Harmless, right?

  What a crock of shit.

  Nico Wachalowski—FBI Home Office

  Whenever I was put under for maintenance, my mind always went back to the same place.

  I never found out what knocked me down back then. Later I was told it was probably a concussion grenade. The last thing I saw was Sean turning from the radio as if he’d heard something; then everything turned to white noise.

  I could see before I could hear; when I opened my eyes I was on my back, being dragged by one foot through the brush. Wet grass and branches whipped across my face, and I could see the night sky above me. I lifted my head and saw a figure trudging forward, the hand that was gripping my boot trailing behind him. There were two others with him.

  Screaming and the tearing of cloth cut through the ringing in my ears, then the crunching of metal and electronics. Someone was shouting into a radio, it sounded like, and gunfire was being exchanged.

  I reached for my gun, but it wasn’t there. My knife was gone too. I struggled, and three sets of dead, yellow eyes stared back at me from above. I tried to kick free, but one of them grabbed my other leg. They dragged me out of the brush and into damp, soft soil as I felt myself being pulled downward.

  Dirt was forced up the back of my shirt, and ants and termites scattered as I was dragged underneath something. I craned my neck back to see the mouth of a tunnel getting smaller behind me, the earth swallowing the sounds of the screams and gunfire. . . .

  “Nico?”

  The memories scattered, and I opened my eyes. Sean’s gaunt face looked down on me, his narrow eyes serious. His once-black hair had begun to turn gray, and he looked tired. After a moment, he smiled faintly.

  Sean Pu and I had served together. He was a tech man now, running the soft side of many operations in the field. He specialized in bioaugmentations, and kept a section of the Agency field ready. Unofficially, he was still more like my wingman; my pair of eyes on the inside when I was out there. Un-unofficially, he was more like my personal guru.

  “You know those stims are for emergencies only,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Everything felt more or less back to normal. I took a deep breath and felt pretty good.

  “You threw everything out of balance back there,” Sean said. “You shouldn’t drive when you’re like that.”

  “Am I okay?”

  “Your blood levels are back to normal,” he said. “I’m just finishing up replacing the stim packets.”

  “Thanks.”

  He continued working next to me. All I felt was a tugging at the back of my neck and an occasional tiny jolt down my spine.

  “Why didn’t you put down the revivor?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “The other one,” he said. “The one in the restroom.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “It does.”

  I sighed. The truth was, I’d had every intention of doing it; from the moment I walked into the building to the moment I walked into that bathroom, and even the moment I pulled the codes from it.

  “Did they ask you about it?” I said.

  “Yeah, they wanted to know if you’ve seemed unstable at all.”

  “What did you
tell them?”

  “That you’re fine, which was a lie. Of course, if they listened to me, they wouldn’t have sent you in the first place,” he added.

  “You recommended they didn’t use me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason they wanted to send you,” he said. “Because you have experience with revivors. But unlike them, I know what some of those experiences were. I questioned how you might react, and I was right.”

  A strange sensation crept up my back and neck as he withdrew the thin series of tubes, the ends popping softly as they came free. He smoothed down the little dermal strip.

  “Good as new.”

  I stretched, flexing my muscles and cracking my back. Everything felt like it was in order. When I ran the diagnostics on my heads-up display, everything came up green. I swiveled my legs around and hopped off the chair.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All the revivors are going down after they’re done with them anyway.”

  “You did everything right. No one’s going to complain about the job you did, but why would you want to go back to that place? How often do that many revivors end up stateside?”

  Sean had a way of echoing my own thoughts. The truth was, I could still feel that cold slab of meat crushing my neck, that saliva and breath that should have been warm but wasn’t. I could still see those eyes, just barely glowing in the dark like they used to at night, and that damn girl, that walking sex doll and the way it spoke.

  “It mixed me up,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “The pleasure model they set up,” I said. “I was just talking to myself, talking out loud. It looked like a snuff job to me. I said someone was probably still looking for her. You know, the girl.”

  “I get it.”

  “It said, ‘He is.’ It said, ‘He’ll never stop looking.’ ”

  “I see.”

  I shook my head, remembering that wax doll’s face looking up at me.

  “It’s crazy,” I said, “but I was sure it meant her father.”

  Sean pressed his lips together.

  “It got to you?”