State of Decay

by James Knapp

  “You said, ‘in the last part of Sodder’s life’,” I said. “He’s dead now?”

  “Both men are dead now,” he said, “but their legacies still live on, as do the two camps they established, which still lock horns over that same issue, though not so much these days.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sodder had a protégé named Samuel Fawkes,” he said, “who continued his work trying to pinpoint the cause of Zhang’s Syndrome. Some years ago, he died as well, and since then it’s almost completely lost steam. Samuel’s primary partner in that endeavor was a man named Edward Cross, but honestly, when Samuel died, Edward moved on to other areas.”

  “How hard would it be to get what you have on Zhang’s Syndrome to me?”

  “Not hard at all. Blocks of the data are still classified, you understand, but I can give you plenty to chew on for now. I’ll assemble them and then forward them to your office.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked. “I could arrange a tour of the facilities, if you like.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I have all the information I need for now.”

  “Let me show you out, then.”

  I followed him back to the visitors’ lobby, where we shook hands and he gave me his card before disappearing back behind the glass security door. I headed out to the parking garage, toward the car.

  Zhang’s Syndrome. Could that have been what the revivor was referring to?

  Slowing down as I approached the car, I noticed something on the windshield. It looked like a business card had been slipped under the driver’s-side windshield wiper.

  No one else was around. I couldn’t see any cameras but I was sure they were there, so I palmed the card and got into the car without turning it over. Once I was inside, I held it down out of sight and looked at it. The name and contact information had been scratched out.

  Someone must have wanted to leave me a message without showing himself and without leaving any kind of electronic trail. Sometimes the low-tech approach was still the best way to go.

  I flipped it over and looked at the back; there was a handwritten note there, printed in black ink.

  SAMUELNEVER LEFT

  The card wasn’t signed. There was no other information on it.

  Someone else knew I was here, then. The reference had to be to the Samuel Fawkes that MacReady had mentioned to me, and that implied that someone else had managed to hear that conversation as well.

  With the restrictions put down over VP Industrial, there was no way to check the information. I slipped the card in my pocket and headed back toward the railway.

  Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment 713

  When I first opened my eyes, I wasn’t sure where I was. I was lying on something soft, but it wasn’t my bed and it wasn’t the couch. Also, I was covered with a thick blanket that wasn’t mine. The lights were out and the room was lit by flickering candlelight.

  I took a deep breath and smelled some kind of perfume smell, along with the smell of the bar soap I used. When I reached up to rub my face, it wasn’t greasy, and the blanket was crisp and clean.

  Pushing my face into it, I breathed in and it smelled good, but it wasn’t mine. The oversized pink sweatshirt and sweatpants I was wearing weren’t mine either. I heard slippers shuffle across the floor nearby.

  “Oh, you’re up,” a woman said, looking down at me. It was Karen, my downstairs neighbor. I was on the floor, lying across sofa cushions that had been arranged there like a bed. I was still in my apartment.

  “Your lights are out, so I brought up some candles. I hope you don’t mind,” she said, sitting down next to me. Near my head there was a large ceramic bowl filled with soapy water that had a facecloth draped over the lip. Three or four candles had been arranged around the room.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You flipped,” she said, with a thin smile.

  “Oh.”

  “You said something terrible happened,” she said. “Then you started going on about dead people, and then needles in your head, and then I kind of lost track. Do you remember any of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s just as well.”

  My body physically ached as I struggled into a sitting position. My head was throbbing.

  “Why did you stay?”

  “You needed help, and you helped me. It was the least I could do, right?”

  The reality of what I was wearing and the way I smelled finally started sinking in, and immediately I felt myself getting anxious, the blood rushing to my face.

  “Did you wash me?”

  “I’m a nurse. It’s okay; I do it all the time.”

  “You—”

  “Look,” she said. “You puked on yourself, and that’s not even all, okay? I put up with a bucket full of abuse—I took it because I knew you weren’t in your right mind, and I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed, but I couldn’t leave you lying in it like that. I just couldn’t.”

  I didn’t say anything, partly because I didn’t know what to say and also because my mouth just wouldn’t open. I felt like crying, but I was too exhausted.

  “Besides,” she said, leaning closer, “something terrible did happen. There was an explosion, a suicide bombing, just a few blocks away. Over fifty people died and hundreds more got injured.”

  “Someone blew himself up?”

  “Right in the middle of the restaurant strip at lunch-time.”

  I did kind of remember that, once she said it. I saw a bunch of people running, bloody and burned and screaming.

  “Bad things are coming,” I said.

  “That’s what you said last night.”

  There was more—I knew there was more—but I couldn’t remember it.

  “There was a panic,” she said. “A riot broke out. Everyone’s freaking out. They’re calling in the National Guard and there’s going to be a curfew until they can get things under control. They say there are even going to be revivors patrolling.”

  “Revivors?”

  “It’s the only way they can cover such a big area. They say it’s temporary.”

  “Oh.”

  “Will things get even worse?” she asked. Her eyes looked desperate in the firelight, like the next thing that came out of my mouth was going to be the most important thing she ever heard. She was looking at me like I had some kind of answer, but I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.

  “I think the best thing you could do right now is not get involved with me,” I said. It was weird, but I kind of regretted that. Before she could say anything else, there was a knock on the door and she looked over at it.

  “Are you expecting anyone?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Wait here.”

  She got up and went to answer it and I lay back down, hoping whoever it was, she would get rid of them. I heard her talking but I couldn’t make out what was being said. She was talking to a man, it sounded like. After a minute she came back, looking nervous.

  “It’s the cops,” she said.

  “The cops?”

  “An FBI Agent. He says his name is Wachalowski.”

  “What?”

  “Wacha—”

  “He’s here? Right now?”

  “Yeah, what—”

  “It’s okay,” I said, before she got any more freaked out. “I’m not in trouble. He’s a friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s, um, you know. Look, I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  “Oh,” she said, smirking a little. “Okay, I’ve got to go anyway.”

  “Wait—”

  “Zoe, he flashed his badge. What was I going to say? I told him you were here. Come on, you look fine, you look cute.”

  She started to move away and I scrambled to my feet. The sweatshirt and sweatpants must have been hers, but unlike her I couldn’t even begin to fill them out. The shirt hung like a tent a
nd the pants wanted to slide down over my nonexistent hips.

  “Karen, wait!”

  “Look,” she said, “I’ll come by later, but come on; I’m not getting in the middle of this one. Trust me, you look fine.”

  I tailed her to the door, but she slipped out before I could get there, smiling and waving to him and then me as I wedged myself in the crack of the door.

  “Ms. Ott?”

  “Hi.”

  He was wearing a suit and a long, dark jacket. He looked down at me with his amazingly blue eyes, and standing there in front of him in sweats, I felt even lamer than I even did before. Why did they have to be pink?

  “I’d like to speak with you for a minute, if I could.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  He raised his eyebrows, and just then my next-door neighbor’s door opened and out he came. Things were getting better and better. The old man stood there, staring like some kind of weirdo at Nico.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Nico asked.

  “Who are you?” my neighbor asked back.

  “I’m visiting my friend here. Is that okay?”

  The old man peered over at me, then back at Nico.

  “She doesn’t have any friends.”

  That was it. I’d let it slide before, but now he was going too far. While Nico was turned toward him, I focused on the old man until the light bloomed around me, causing me to feel a little sick to my stomach. The colors came into focus over his head, rippling there like smoke in the breeze.

  There was something weird about him, though, something a little different. In addition to the patterns I was used to seeing, there was a thin, bright white arc that formed a kind of ring or halo, almost. It distracted me, and I was just wondering what might be causing it when he decided to forgo his usual nosiness and duck back inside. Nico looked back at me, and I let the lights fade back to normal.

  “My place is a real mess,” I said. “Please?”

  “I have a car,” he said. “Can we speak downstairs? I won’t take much of your time.”

  “Yeah, okay. Just . . . hang on.”

  I went back inside long enough to slide on my boots, put on my parka, and then retie the waist on the sweatpants before the stupid things fell down. When I was zipped up, I slipped back out, then shut the door and locked it before he could see in.

  We headed down to the building’s entryway, then across the icy lot to his car, where he let me in, then climbed in himself, turning the heat on.

  “That’s a nice neighbor you have there,” he said.

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “I meant your other neighbor, the woman who answered the door.”

  “Oh yeah. Karen.”

  “The man next door said you don’t have any friends, but it doesn’t look like that’s true.”

  “Yeah,” I said, embarrassed. “I have one.”

  “Well, now you have two.”

  He was smiling from across the car seat, and the way he looked at me and the way he spoke to me made me feel good. It seemed impossible that we were sitting there together, alone in the front seat like that. I’d pulled some stunts in the past when I was drunk, but never anything that ended with me actually doing something useful or worthwhile. He looked at me like I really was somebody, not a joke, and when he watched me those pretty iridescent lights shone from behind his eyes like he was something out of one of my dreams.

  “This is a lot,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “Half the time I’m not even sure how much of it’s real.”

  “It’s real,” he said. “The information the suspect provided was accurate, and after going over everything, I believe it’s real. I believe in you.”

  Before I could stop myself, I cried right in front of him. Not a lot, just for a second, but enough to make me have to wipe my eyes. He handed me a tissue from out of the glove box.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pressing it to my eyes. On some level, I knew he was just being professional, just being polite. He had no idea how much what he was saying meant to me; he couldn’t know. No one was ever nice to me. No one ever took me seriously, or talked to me like I was a real person.

  “You’re okay.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said, laughing a little. I was getting punchy.

  “Will you tell me more?”

  “More about what?”

  “About what you’ve seen. According to your resume, you’ve experienced a limited precognition?”

  “You thought that was a joke.”

  “I’m not laughing now.”

  I wiped my nose on the tissue and thought about it. There was probably plenty I could tell him, but I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.

  “Some people are being held against their will,” I said carefully. “Don’t ask where or who because I don’t know. They could be on Mars, for all I know. They have needles coming out of their heads.”

  “Needles?”

  “Long ones, coming out of the backs of their heads. They’re alive, but they can’t move. One of them told me I would lead someone to them, and I think she meant you. She told me I would end her pain.”

  “You will lead me to them?”

  “Then I will end her pain. That’s what she said.”

  “Anything else?”

  There’s a dead woman with a split heart who shows me things, but she’s keeping something from me.”

  “What does she show you?”

  “You,” I said, and his expression changed. When I probed him gently, I could see fear pricking up from the otherwise calm patterns that hung over him.

  “Me?”

  “You have a tattoo here,” I said, pointing to his shoulder opposite the one with the scar, and the fear pricked up again.

  “Why did she show me to you?”

  “I don’t know. She just said you would need my help.”

  “Do you know who she was?”

  “I’ve never met her, but she says I will soon.”

  He paused, and looked down at the seat between us like he was lost in thought. The smile and the professional politeness were gone.

  “I’d like to continue this,” he said, “but right now I have an appointment. I stopped here on the way because this is off the record and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we meet again at some point?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Yes,” he said, and the smile was back. The reassuring, professional warmth was back, like it had to be. “So would I.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out a large office envelope, which he handed to me.

  “In the meantime, would you mind looking at these?”

  “What are they?”

  “Some pictures and documents that are, for the moment, unclassified,” he said. “But again, this is off the record.”

  I took the envelope and held it in my lap.

  “They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

  “No, and as I said, I’d like to keep it that way. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.”

  Not wanting to be dismissed, I decided to get out of there while things still seemed to be going well. I slid back across the seat and opened the car door.

  “You’re not going to lecture me?” I asked. I had meant to include the words “about the drinking,” but I couldn’t bring myself to say them. He seemed a little bit amused.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll look at them,” I said, holding up the envelope as I slipped out the door. I was just about to close it when I remembered one other thing.

  “Oh, and a revivor.”

  “What?”

  “She showed me a revivor, an Asian- looking one with a foreign name. It started with a Z. His jaw was wired shut. Does that help?”

  “Yes.”

  He was still smiling as I backed away and closed the door, but his fear spiked when I s
aid it. He started the engine and pulled away, leaving me in the parking lot alone.

  Calliope Flax—Bullrich Heights

  My phone buzzed, and Luis shot me a look from over a slice of pizza. It was a text from Eddie.

  You out? he wanted to know.

  Yeah.

  I got a slot open tonight. Can you fight?

  What about the alert?

  Screw the alert. I’ll shut down when they shove an injunction up my ass. Can you fight or not?

  Yes. Gotta go, I’ve got company.

  No sex before a fight.

  I shut the phone.

  “Who was that?” Luis asked.

  “None of your business.”

  We ate and drank some beer, and Luis made a shitload of calls on his phone. The more he talked, the less I liked him in my place. For one thing, he knew too many people and he called them all by fake screen names. For another thing, from the sound of it, he was into some shady shit. He didn’t want me to hear a lot of what he was saying. He asked about shit like data and security and who knew what and how much. He was going to be a problem.

  “So, what did you do?” I asked finally. He looked up from the TV.

  “Nothing.”

  “No one hides their rich ass in this shit hole if they did nothing. What did you do?”

  “I’m not rich.”

  “I was in your place, remember?”

  “It’s not my place.”

  “Whatever. Tell me what you did.”

  “Noth—”

  “Tell me, or get the hell out now.”

  He thought about that, and I think it was a tough call for him. He sat there for a while; then he sighed.

  “I broke in somewhere,” he said.

  “You robbed someplace?”

  “Not that kind of break-in. I broke into someone’s network.”

  “So?”

  “Remember you asked me about Uncle Ed? Dr. Cross?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remember I said he works at Heinlein Industries? They’re a government contractor. They make rev—”