State of Decay

by James Knapp

  The kid, Luis Valle, might be the only one left who knew what.

  Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment 713

  When Wachalowski first left the envelope full of evidence with me, I was so excited that I didn’t think that much about what exactly he expected me to do with it, or how I was going to be able to give him any information he didn’t already know. It had been a while since he left, and although I had been looking at some of the stuff he gave me, I was mostly just a lot drunker.

  Gray light peeked in from behind the shade, but the bedroom was lit by a couple of the scented candles Karen had left behind. Usually I didn’t use them, because candles and me didn’t mix, but the overhead was out. The light flickered over the walls where I had tacked up about half the stuff from the envelope so far.

  Mostly it was a bunch of documents, but I wasn’t about to read through all that. Mixed in were copies of ID cards, what looked like schematics of some kind, and some other things I didn’t recognize. There were also ten printouts of waveforms like the kind I doodled on the card I’d left for him that night. They were all labeled RHS, along with a number code in the lower right-hand corner. Those squiggles meant a lot to him, but I didn’t even remember drawing the one on the card and I had no idea what I was supposed to be able to tell from them.

  I’d been staring at them tacked up on the wall and letting my mind drift, but like I said, I was pretty much only getting drunker. I held the empty shot glass against my lower lip, smelling the fumes and waiting for inspiration to come.

  Someone knocked on the front door, snapping me out of it. I sighed into the glass, fogging it up. Considering that up until a few days ago I hadn’t had any visitors for years, now it seemed like I never stopped getting them.

  Putting down the glass and the bottle, I crawled off the bed and made my way to the door, thinking it was probably Karen and that maybe she wanted her clothes back. Nico had said he had someplace he had to go, so it probably wasn’t him. At least I hoped not, because I didn’t have anything to tell him.

  Usually I used the peephole, but this time I didn’t. I should have, because it wasn’t Karen and it wasn’t Nico; it was my asshole next-door neighbor.

  “God, what do you want?” I asked. He stood there watching me in that weird way he had.

  “You get a lot of visitors lately,” he said.

  He was too much. I’d had it with him. How did I end up with this spaz living next to me? The old woman had never done anything but smile at me in the hall every once in a while, which was almost never, because she came out of her apartment even less than I did. What was wrong with this guy? Was this just his weird way of trying to make conversation, or was he some kind of nut job?

  Either way, I didn’t care anymore. Without bothering to answer, I focused on him until the color drained away from everything and the lights swelled.

  The colors that drifted above him came into view, and so did that strange, thin white halo I noticed before. In fact, since I was concentrating harder this time, it was much brighter. It was brighter than anything else, and got even more intense until it threatened to wash out everything.

  Right then, I started to feel funny, and instead of his curiosity or whatever it was disappearing, it was my anger and frustration that just melted away. This total relaxation kind of came over me that was even better than drinking.

  The lights dimmed back to normal around me and his colors faded until they were gone, along with the odd halo. He was looking directly into my eyes and smiling faintly.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Pretty good,” I said.

  “Your new friend is a federal investigator,” he said, still smiling.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I’m helping him on a case he’s working on.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a little proud of that fact. “He left me some stuff, some evidence to look at.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I would like very much to see that.”

  “You want to see?”

  “If it’s appropriate,” he said, still staring into my eyes.

  “Well, he said none of it was classified. . . .”

  I opened the door wide enough for him to enter, pushing over a stack of notebooks as I did. His face changed for a second, showing what might have been disgust or contempt, but it was gone as fast as it came. Stepping back to let him through, I gestured to my bedroom door.

  “Through here,” I said. “Follow me.”

  He came inside, one of his shoes knocking into something that skittered across the floor before he closed the door behind him. His footsteps sounded behind me as I headed back into my room, where the contents of the envelope were tacked up.

  As I looked over the array of things hanging on the walls, I felt him also looking behind me.

  “Your friend works with revivors,” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s something about the case he’s working on.”

  He moved closer to the printouts with the heart squiggles on them and studied them. His eyes moved across the walls, looking at the other documents, IDs, and whatnot before they landed on the evidence envelope sitting open on my bed.

  “May I?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He picked up the envelope and looked inside before shaking out what was left out onto my bed. Among the other papers were a stack of photographs that he spread out over the mattress.

  One was a dark-skinned Asian man with a long face and long black hair. He was creepy- looking, and I knew right away I’d never seen him before. Another one looked like a video still of a girl revivor. She was standing completely naked in what looked like a public bathroom, with those electric eyes staring out from behind strands of straight black hair. I recognized that one; I’d seen her on the news in one of the clips the data miner had picked out when I was filtering on Wachalowski’s name.

  He pushed the photographs around for a moment so that he could see them all. He didn’t show any particular interest in the naked ones, but he did linger on one in particular.

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked. The picture looked like a still taken from somebody’s point of view as they were standing inside an office or something. Sitting on a desk was a polished stone clock with what looked like a diamond above the twelve. A little Asian woman with a big head was sitting behind the desk. She had an overbite and weird lips, and her eyes reminded me of a fish’s, for some reason.

  “Do you?” he asked back.

  “No.”

  He looked at the picture a little longer, then looked back at me.

  “How is it that you are helping your friend, the federal investigator, on his case?”

  “I have special talents,” I said.

  “But why you?”

  “I’m the only one that can do what I do.”

  He nodded like he wasn’t even listening. He didn’t ask me to clarify what I had just said.

  “I see,” he said, stepping back from the photographs. He took one more look along the walls at the other things tacked there, then moved to the bedroom doorway.

  “Thank you for showing me this,” he said. “It was very interesting. Good luck helping your friend. I hope you are successful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “If there’s one thing this world does not need, it’s more revivors.”

  On that note, he moved back to the front door and opened it, giving my apartment one last look before that expression of contempt came back for a second.

  “You should tend to this,” he said. “Human beings shouldn’t live in filth like you do.”

  All at once, the sort of lighthearted feeling left me and I remembered why I couldn’t stand that guy. My face got hot all the way to my earlobes.

  “I should have known better,” I said. “I knew you were a jerk.”

  He shrugged as he turned to leave.

  “Get
out!” I snapped at his back, then slammed the door behind him.

  I was so angry. Who did he think he was, asking to come in and then insulting me to my face?

  Turning the lock, I stormed back into the bedroom and grabbed the bottle. It took five shots to calm me down again; then I took a deep breath and sat down on the bed next to the photographs.

  I meant to look at the one with the big-headed woman again, but I didn’t see it on top of the stack. Pushing the photographs off to the side to spread them out, I saw one underneath that I hadn’t looked at before, and stopped short.

  The image looked like a video still of a woman. In the picture she was kneeling down in the snow, holding what looked like a body in her lap while a truck burned a little ways away from her. She had short dirty blond hair, nice cheekbones, and a strong jaw. I recognized her immediately.

  I picked up the photo to get a better look. It was the woman from the green concrete room, the woman who carried the split heart. It was the dead woman.

  The picture started to shake in my hand. Why did he have a picture of her? What did she have to do with anything?

  “It’s how I was,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. I jumped, dropping the picture, and turned to see that she was actually standing there. The woman from the photo, the dead woman from the green room, was standing three feet away. She wasn’t dead this time, though. Her skin and her eyes were normal. She looked sad.

  “You know Nico?” I asked. She didn’t answer. She just turned suddenly, her eyes opening wide like she was startled by something only she could hear.

  “He’s here—” she started to say, then clutched her chest with one hand.

  I waited to see if she would continue, but her eyes just bugged out and her mouth opened and closed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  A second later, blood began to run between her fingers as she held it to her breastbone.

  “Hey!”

  Jumping off the bed, I stood in front of her, but there was nothing I could do. She wasn’t even really there. She looked down, her face terrified as blood pumped out of the hole that had appeared in her chest. As it did, a black spot grew on her forehead and I watched it form the number 3.

  “Help me,” she whispered.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Help me,” she whispered again; then her eyes went out of focus. She began to fall; then she was gone.

  Standing there in the candlelight, I waited to see if she would come back, but she didn’t. After a couple minutes, I realized she wasn’t going to. Had whatever happened to her already happened, or was it going to happen? Was it happening right at that moment?

  Scrambling, I began searching for my phone so I could call Nico. I couldn’t help her, but if he knew who she was, then maybe he could.

  7

  Friendly Fire

  Calliope Flax—Bullrich Heights

  Not long after I saw the bloodbath on TV, I knew what I was going to do. It took a couple beers and some sweet talk, but Luis dropped the attitude. The fact was he was screwed, and I think he knew it. He decided to stick around until I at least got him out of no- man’s-land, which was what I wanted.

  Luis was the kind of guy you didn’t want to take your eye off of. He was a sneak, and was too good at palming shit not to be a thief. Not that I had anything to steal, but any guy that could walk in and find his family dead on the floor, then look in your face and act like nothing was wrong could probably do a lot of things. I had to change, so there was a door between us for two minutes, but that was as much time as he got out of my sight.

  When I came out, he was still in the can, getting pretty. He messed with his hair in the mirror.

  “You all set?” I asked.

  “All set.”

  “Go warm up the seat. I’ll be right down.”

  He put up his hands, but he went. When he was out the door, I threw on my jacket and zipped up. I checked the pockets, but it was all there: the ID, the knuckles, the keys, my phone, and my black lipstick.

  The door downstairs slammed shut and I saw him step out and hang near the building. I stepped back and punched up the number from the TV bulletin that came on right after they showed the bodies.

  The phone rang twice, then picked up.

  “Federal Bur—”

  “I can deliver Luis Valle to you,” I said. The voice on the other end stopped for a second, and the line clicked but didn’t go dead.

  “Do you still want him or not?” I asked.

  “Hold on just one moment, please,” the guy said. The line went quiet.

  Through the window, I saw Luis put his hands in his pockets and pace, shoulders hunched.

  The line picked back up.

  “This is Agent Wachalowski,” a new guy said. “You have information regarding Luis Valle?”

  “I can give him to you.”

  “Give him to me how?”

  “There’s a reward for this, right?”

  “Is he alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I’m not saying where he is right now, but I can tell you where he’s going to be. Am I getting paid for this?”

  “Yes. Where is he going to be?”

  “You know where the Arena Porco Rojo is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “That’s where he’ll be.”

  “Where in the arena?”

  “In the audience. I don’t know.”

  “When?”

  “In a half hour.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Wait, don’t you need my name?”

  “I have your information, Ms. Flax,” he said. “Keep your phone on. I’ll find you.”

  The line cut.

  I headed out and locked the door. It was best anyway. Luis was in deep shit whether he knew it or not, and the Feds might pinch him, but at least they’d let him live. He’d live to fight another day, and that was the best he’d get at this point. Fuck him. He got himself into this mess. He put me in it too. Fuck him.

  When we got to the fights, he called his cab, then sat in the bleachers to wait. With luck, he’d get grabbed before I even got in the ring.

  By the time I put my gear on and got back out there, I’d lost track of him. In the octagon, Eddie waited in my corner while the other bitch tried to stare me down.

  “You seen her before?” Eddie asked.

  “No.”

  The canvas had blood on it, but she just sat like she didn’t see it or didn’t care. She was skinny and tall, with skin black as night.

  “She wants you,” he said. “Because of the last fight. Watch out for her.”

  Yeah.

  When I climbed up, there were cheers, but more boos. A lot of them hoped I’d get stomped after last time. I’d knocked that bitch off the roster for the rest of the season.

  “You ready?” Eddie asked. I rolled my shoulders.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  The bitch looked up then. She looked like she could stick a knife in my neck and twist it.

  “In the left corner,” the judge barked into the amp, “weighing in at one hundred forty-two pounds, a new-comer to the arena . . .”

  The crowd started stomping the bleachers and I wondered where Luis was.

  “. . . here to replace the injured Brick- House Bonnie Bast ...”

  That kicked things up. The canvas shook with all the stomps and screams. They were geared to rush the fence already.

  “Skinny . . . Minnie . . . Botma!”

  Minnie? The bitch’s name was Minnie?

  “And in the right corner,” the judge said, “weighing in at one hundred fifty-one pounds, undefeated this season in her class . . .”

  More boos. More stomping. I stuck up both middle fingers.

  “The Bitch from Bullrich . . . Calliope Flax!”

  We met in the middle of the ring, and the more she stared me down, the more I could not wait to force those big teeth of hers s
traight down her bitch throat.

  “Shake hands,” the ref said, and we did.

  “Guard up!”

  We put them up, and waited for the buzzer.

  The second it went off, she threw a hard punch at my throat and almost caught me. If I was a hair slower, she’d have put me out. As it stood, she just clipped my neck on the left side. She was quick too, and blocked me when I whipped an elbow at her face. For two beats, we both backed off.

  She had a long reach, so I came in like I meant to throw a punch but threw a heel right at her ear at the last second, and I almost had her. It would have dropped her too, but that bitch was quick. She went down flat and scooped my other leg out from under me with an ankle sweep.

  My back slammed down on the canvas, and as soon as I looked up, I saw her big black foot coming down on me. I rolled, and it stomped down right where my head had been with a loud boom.

  “Point!”

  I got up quick, but she didn’t try to pounce when I was down. She didn’t want it to go on the ground, so first chance that’s where I’d take it.

  To do that, I had to get in close, past that reach. I lunged in at her, throwing a flurry of punches and getting my knee up in her gut. She got some in too, but by then we were face-to-face. She tried to pull back and I grabbed on, trying to get hold of a leg while pushing her back. I thought she was off balance, and steered her away from the fence. . . .

  Right then, a face jumped out at me from the crowd. Luis was there, cheering and waving his fists. A row back, a big guy in a dark coat was going for him.

  I saw the fist just before it connected, dead on my right cheek. Sweat and blood sprayed in a burst of white light, and all at once I was falling.

  “Ten points!” the judge screamed. “Minnie Botma! Ten points!”

  The lights spun in front of me. I was going down.

  “Calliope Flax is down!”

  I hit the canvas on my back as that big foot came down again.

  “Flax is d—”

  There was no time to think. I rolled back and got the balls of my feet on the ground as her heel left a dent in front of me.

  I sprung from a squat and blasted my elbow out like a jackhammer. It dug deep in her solar plexus and she choked. She had one arm out and I grabbed it, clamping down on her wrist. Blood poured out of my nose. I was in a rage, and she was going to get it.