State of Decay

by James Knapp

  “You saw the fire from the train?” I asked.

  She nodded. This was familiar ground. This was something we could talk about.

  “Yes. The fire was fairly close to the train stop, so I got off at the next platform and followed the smoke.”

  “It was hard to tell from the footage,” I said. “Did you approach the truck because you heard something inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the revivor was animate?”

  “At first.”

  “What made you help it?”

  “I didn’t realize it was a revivor at first. I thought she was alive. Even so . . .”

  She sighed, her eyes looking distant for a moment.

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I’ve seen plenty of bodies, but I can’t get her face out of my mind. She was burned so badly.”

  “They don’t feel pain,” I told her, but she didn’t look so sure.

  “They don’t,” I said.

  “It just seemed like so many of those people there were glad to see her like that.”

  “It wasn’t alive.”

  “She was once.”

  “Yes, but it was too late to do anything about that. What you saw in the truck, they weren’t hostages. I didn’t rescue them.”

  “What were they, then?”

  “Evidence,” I said, and I could see that it bothered her. This was one of the big reasons why the government didn’t want the general public exposed to revivors if they could help it. When they had to deploy them locally, they used them sparingly. They kept them in full uniform, with their faces mostly covered. People weren’t supposed to relate to them. They were supposed to fear them. It’s what they were for.

  “I heard what you did,” she said. “You risked your life.”

  “Not for them. Those women didn’t sign up or donate; they were kidnapped and murdered. All I could do with them was deactivate them, dissect them, and hope something in there would lead us to whoever did this to them. So we can stop them from doing it to anyone else.”

  She smiled, but looked down.

  “You’ve changed.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry; I’m running on fumes.”

  “Stim wearing off?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want tea?”

  “I want sleep.”

  She stared into her noodles, stirring them.

  “The girl, the revivor, it spoke to me,” she said.

  “Before it died, or deactivated, it was trying to tell me something.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said to hide behind whatever I could and keep my head down, but I think it was rambling at that point.”

  I recognized the words as the last thing I’d said to the revivor, but didn’t point that out.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. It said, ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”

  “Zhang?”

  “Yes. It said I had to wake up, and then it said it again: ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”

  Zhang. That name had not come up at any point in our investigation. Not on the client list or Tai’s contact list.

  “Does that name mean anything to you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I sent a message via my implant.

  Sean.

  Yeah?

  I’m interviewing the detective that responded to the truck fire—

  You mean Faye.

  She was with the only revivor that made it before it deanimated. It looks like it dropped a name: Zhang.

  Is that a last name?

  I think so. Sorry, but that’s all we’ve got.

  I’ll see what I can find.

  Thanks.

  When I brought my attention back to her, Faye was looking into my eyes intently.

  “You have a JZ implant,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get that in the service?”

  “After the standard tour, I specialized.”

  “I know.”

  A pause developed and started to get uncomfortable. Neither of us felt like eating, and there wasn’t enough time to get into the things we needed to talk about. I felt like I should ask her if she had gotten wired up for PH service, but I knew she had, and she knew that I knew. I felt like I should tell her it wasn’t too late to serve now. They wouldn’t throw her on the front lines at her age; she wouldn’t be exposed to the things I was. Her reasons for not wanting to go were probably the same as they had been, though, and the truth was I didn’t know whether I could argue my original position with the same conviction I’d once had.

  “You know, it was strange,” she said suddenly. “Afterward, when I was waiting there, I decided to call you. I was still on the ground with the revivor, and I’d just gotten through. I swore I saw the strangest thing.”

  “What?”

  “For just a second, I thought I saw someone standing next to me.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “That’s just it—I couldn’t see him. Just his outline, like he was invisible. Just a hole in the snow and the smoke.”

  I remembered the footprints I had seen next to the spot where she’d knelt, and wondered. She laughed a little.

  “Too many stims,” she said.

  “Maybe not.”

  She wouldn’t have seen anything like that before, but I had. I wondered if the person responsible for the fire hadn’t been still standing there when she arrived. Maybe he just couldn’t be seen.

  She frowned suddenly, and looked me in the eye.

  “How could you come back and not even call me?” she asked. She watched me as I didn’t answer.

  Before either one of us could say anything else, her phone rang. She looked apologetic, but was still watching me when she answered.

  “Shanks,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Her face fell just a little as she listened, and I afforded her what privacy I could by turning my attention out the window. The stream of cars was inching forward on the other side of the snowbank, as somewhere down the street the signal changed. A white van in the midst of them began to slow down.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. She listened again, then nodded.

  The van slowed down some more, and the gap between it and the car in front of it got wider, prompting the traffic behind it to begin blaring their horns. People inside the restaurant and outside on the sidewalk began looking over to see what the problem was.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. She snapped the phone shut and looked out the window.

  “What’s the—” she began, but stopped in midsentence as the van skidded to a stop and a couple seconds later the back doors burst open. Immediately, we both knew something was wrong, but before anyone could do anything, another man jumped out of the back and into the middle of the street. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and from where I sat, I could see the explosives strapped around his torso.

  The guy in the car directly in front of him saw them too; he slammed it into reverse and immediately crashed into the vehicle behind him. People on the street started to scatter, streaming by the window as they abandoned their cars and ran. A woman was slammed into the glass near where we sat and went down onto the sidewalk as Faye and I both stood up.

  “It’s a bomb!” someone inside shouted. People began getting up uncertainly, some pushing their way out, while others clustered at the windows, holding out digital cameras.

  This is Wachalowski.

  Go ahead.

  We’ve got a suicide bomber at my location.

  The man outside turned toward the window and I got a good look at his face. The skin was ashen, and the lips and eyelids were grayish-black. The eyes looked bleached white in the daytime light.

  It’s a revivor. There’s a revivor armed with explosives at my location.

  Roger that. Is it threatening to blow?

  Someone sent it here. It will detonate.

  “Nick!” Faye shouted.

  I pushed
my way through the crowd and out onto the street, displaying my badge to try to keep the worst of the foot traffic off me. A kid scooted by my legs, and another man clipped me as he ran past.

  The revivor had a communications system, so I started flooding it with a connection request. The revivor began to look around, trying to find the source.

  “Nicky!”

  It looked in my direction and I met its eye, holding up my badge so it could see. It hadn’t picked up yet, but it stopped looking, keeping its dead eyes fixed on me.

  Faye reached me through the crowd and grabbed me, physically pulling me back. She was stronger than she looked, one arm gripping me tightly around the waist as she began to force me away.

  Call connected.

  The revivor accepted the connection. As soon as it did, I tried a brute- force scan of its memory buffer, but never got the chance. Still watching me, it raised the detonator in one hand.

  Time to wake up, Agent Wachalowski. The words blinked in front of my eyes for a brief second.

  I turned and grabbed Faye, throwing my coat over her as I pulled us down to the sidewalk behind a box truck. There was a bright flash of light, and a beat later a loud boom slammed through the air, shaking the pavement and rattling in my chest. A blast of air and dust rushed by, and something struck the side of the truck as the windows of storefronts buckled and exploded. Through the ringing in my ears I heard dull thumps as debris rained down over the clogged street, bouncing off hoods, windshields, and rooftops.

  The explosion thundered down the streets as people ran screaming. I looked back to see the mangled remains of the vehicles that were closest to the blast. The van the revivor had driven was twisted into shrapnel, burning in the middle of the street. The revivor was gone.

  When I looked back at Faye, she was staring at the spot where the revivor had been.

  “Are you okay?” I said, my voice sounding muted in my own ears. She nodded.

  Panic had erupted on the streets. All around, throngs of bodies were pushing and shoving at each other, trying to move through a mob that was quickly getting out of control. Sirens began swelling in the distance, coming closer. My head was spinning.

  Trying to get through the crowd was pointless. I could barely keep my position, and Faye wouldn’t have a chance. Already people were shoving past with shoulders, hands, and elbows. Screams filled the air as I saw a woman slip and go down behind a parked car as people forced their way past. I couldn’t even get to her.

  “Come on!” I shouted, grabbing Faye. She gripped my arm and held on while we pushed our way back to the closest storefront. When we pushed through to the door, I saw faces staring out at us from behind the safety glass. A newspaper dispenser crashed off one of the windows, bouncing back onto the sidewalk and knocking someone over. A man on the other side of the door looked at me and shook his head.

  I held out my badge, and that got him to back up. The door opened enough to squeeze through, and I dragged Faye in along with me.

  “Get back away from the door!” I shouted.

  It’s a madhouse down here. What’s going on?

  They’re organizing a response; stay low until then.

  We’ve got dead and wounded down here.

  Get inside and stay put. You can’t do anything out there. Help is coming.

  A man who looked like he was missing a chunk of his shoulder stumbled against the window and left a streak of blood as he scrambled away. The crowd had become one giant organism, ready to consume anything that got too close.

  With no way to stop it, we stood there and watched it happen.

  4

  I, Oneiros

  Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment 713

  I found myself becoming giddy as I headed down the hallway to my apartment, and by the time I got to my front door, I was smiling uncontrollably but I didn’t feel happy. When I unzipped my purse, my hands were shaking and I had to fumble for my keys.

  The door next to mine opened and the guy with the red hair stepped out, making me jump and drop my purse onto the floor.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Yeah, hi.”

  I scooped up my purse and dug my keys out, trying to find the one to the door. The man stood there and watched me as I managed to find it, then tried to stab it into the lock, but I couldn’t keep it steady. The tip of the key quivered as I tried to home in on the keyhole.

  “You look like you’ve had some excitement,” he said. “Where have you been?”

  “What?”

  He was watching me, his expression not changing. It was weird enough that I was about to focus on him and make him go back inside, when my key found the lock and I pushed it in and turned it.

  “I don’t see you out much,” the man said. He was still talking, I think, when I pushed the door open, then slammed it behind me and turned the bolt. Shrugging out of my coat, I dropped it on the floor and sat down on the sofa, crossing my arms over my stomach and leaning forward.

  My visit didn’t go anything like I thought it might. The place was uninviting and everyone looked at me funny, if they looked at me at all. I didn’t think I’d talk face-to-face with a suspect, and I never expected to see anyone look like that. He was so beaten up, it made me feel sick.

  The image of his face clenching up and the blood spraying out of his ear kept playing in my mind over and over again. The popping sound that came from inside his head was horrible. All I could think of was him lying there in that wheelchair with blood draining out of his ear, splattering all over the floor.

  Why did I go there? What made me think I could go there and deal with something like that? Nico didn’t even flinch when he examined the body. How could that not bother him?

  It worked, though.

  Yes, it had worked. For whatever it was worth, it had worked, and Nico Wachalowski was now very interested in me, I could tell.

  I remembered his hand on my shoulder, and the electricity I felt when he touched me. I hadn’t been touched in so long it made me ache a little, just in those seconds before he moved it away. I shook my head. There were tears in my eyes.

  The room was dark, and behind the shade across the room the sky was gray. I needed a drink. I felt sick, but I needed a drink more.

  Someone knocked on the door, breaking me out of my thoughts. I should have ignored it, but instead I opened it like a zombie. It was the woman from downstairs. She was standing there with her hands behind her back and smiling, but her face fell when she saw me.

  “Hi,” she said kind of uncertainly. I didn’t say anything.

  “Karen,” she prompted.

  “Hi, Karen. What do you want?”

  “I was thinking about it,” she said. “I think cookies were the wrong way to go.”

  “Cookies?”

  “Yeah. I brought you something better.”

  “Better?”

  She brought her hands out from behind her back and held out a bottle. It was clear, filled with amber liquid. I looked at the label; it was top-shelf stuff.

  “Wow,” I said. She pulled it back just a little as I reached for it.

  “The only catch is, you have to share it,” she said, “with me.”

  “Gifts aren’t supposed to have catches.”

  “I know, but this one does.”

  I felt kind of embarrassed that she thought she could ply me with booze, and even more so that it was working.

  “When?”

  “Now?”

  Maybe I was still just delirious from everything that had happened, but my mouth opened and the word came out.

  “Okay,” I said, and she smiled a great, big smile.

  “My place is a dump,” I told her.

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  “Seriously, it’s bad. I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  This is a mistake. You know this is a huge mistake. . . .

  “My life is a complete mess,” I warned her.<
br />
  “Birds of a feather.”

  She stood there smiling, and I wondered what it was that some people had inside of them that made them enjoy meeting strangers and interacting with them. I wondered how the prospect of coming up here and getting me to just let her in the front door could put a smile like that on her face.

  Stepping back, I let the door swing open so she could come inside. She made a face when she first walked in, but true to her word, she didn’t say anything.

  “Still want to stay?”

  “It could use a little light,” she said.

  “I had a lamp, but it broke,” I said. “You can sit wherever. I’ll get some glasses.”

  “What about the overhead lights?”

  “They burned out.”

  There were no clean glasses, so I rinsed two of them out and dried them off with a paper towel.

  “What’s all this stuff?” she called. “The notebooks?”

  “My notes,” I said. “Don’t read those.”

  “Can I move them?”

  “Yeah, just put them anywhere.”

  “Notes for what?” she asked as I came in with the glasses.

  My face got hot. I couldn’t tell her they were full of dreams and visions and other stuff she wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t tell her they were pages and pages, books and books full of a crazy person’s rants. I didn’t know what else to say, so I just stood there not saying anything until her face started to fall again.

  “This is going well, huh?” I said.

  She shrugged, trying to keep her smile going, but she was getting uncomfortable too. She looked like she was starting to think this was a bigger mistake than I did.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I thought she might leave, but instead she got a determined look on her face and the smile came back, at least a little. She patted the cushion of the chair across from her gently, inviting me to sit down, and when I did, she filled my glass about an inch’s worth.

  “Tell me about your day,” she said.

  I drained the glass, and it felt good. Whatever it was, it was sweet and fiery, and burned going down. Not too much and not too little, and as I felt that heat trickle down my throat and into my stomach, it filled my nose with the smell of spice.