State of Decay

by James Knapp

  “Cease fire!” an amplified voice shouted as the boom faded. “Stop! Cease fire!”

  Chancing a look, I saw that the order was being given because there was nothing left to shoot at. The barricade was still in flames, but there was no further movement behind it. The soldier who had given the cease- fire looked over his men, taking stock. It looked like half of them were down, maybe more.

  “File in,” he said, gesturing to the factory entrance. “We continue down.”

  Stepping over the bodies, they quickly reorganized, ducked through the flames, and headed through the door.

  “Let me up,” Calliope said, pushing me. I gave her some room and offered her my hand, but she batted it away.

  “You have to get out of here,” I told her. She stood up, still a little shaky, and stumbled out from behind the car. The carnage was sinking in. Her eyes were wide.

  She looked over the damage in front of her like she was taking the whole situation in for the first time. She took two steps, then got down on one knee.

  By the time I realized what she was up to, it was too late. She picked up the gun she had found and was back on her feet.

  “Hey!”

  She looked at me for just a second, and her eyes looked scared, but at the same time there was commitment there. Whatever she intended to do, and for whatever reason, she meant to do it.

  Without checking to see if the gun was even loaded, she sprinted down the ramp toward the factory entrance. I took off after her as she ducked past the flames and out the other side through the doorway.

  The vehicles that had formed the barrier had been forced back by the blast, one of them tipped on its nose and leaning against the wall, and the other on its back. In the burning carnage, I could make out a boot and what looked like an arm with a long blade sticking out, but nothing else was recognizable. Between the blast and the flamethrowers, the heat was incredible. Holding my jacket up to shield my face, I ran past and made it through the entranceway.

  Sean, are you there?

  I’m here, but it won’t be private.

  Who the hell are these guys?

  Special Forces. Someone internal had them standing by.

  Standing by for what?

  Someone wants that place buried, Nico. Get out of there.

  Inside, the corridor went left and right. The soldiers were down the right passage, filing onto an electric lift that led down to the lower levels. A metal door a few paces to the left was just latching shut when I entered.

  That had to be her. As the lift carrying the soldiers started down, I pushed open the metal door into a stairwell.

  I’ve got a civilian down here and I’ve got to get her out.

  Nico, you’ve got Special Forces in front and another wave coming in behind you.

  How long?

  Minutes. They’re at radio silence, and they don’t know anyone else is there. I don’t know all the details, but the word is that they’re to erase any trace of that place. That’s going to include your civilian and you if you get in the way.

  As the door shut behind me, I caught a glimpse of Cal one flight down, boots clomping as she barreled down the steps.

  I know.

  My chest burning, I followed her down.

  Faye Dasalia—Factory Clean Room

  Draped in the blanket, I followed my killer down into the underground facility, while behind us the sounds of destruction raged. He didn’t look back as he led me deeper, into near-total darkness. An icon flashed at the corner of my eye.

  Adjusting light levels . . .

  We were walking through an office corridor. The walls and doors were covered in graffiti, and the whole area was littered with trash. Material for bedding was strewn about. People had taken shelter there at one time, but they had all been cleared out.

  What is this place? I asked as I followed him. He led me through a large, rusted metal door, into the darkness beyond. The doors slammed shut behind us with a loud thud, and we moved down the dark hall. Farther on, we descended an old stairwell.

  It used to be a factory.

  Used to be?

  No one has come here in a very long time. That’s why Samuel picked it.

  You said his name before. Who is Samuel? I asked.

  Samuel Fawkes. He organized all of this. He was the one who first realized what was happening, and he knew he would need someplace like this. Someplace no one would look.

  Who is he?

  He was an important figure at Heinlein Industries. He was the one who figured out Zhang’s Syndrome.

  Zhang.

  My memories sparked, and a point of light rose. It opened to reveal the face of a burned woman, a revivor. It moved its mouth, whispering that name to me.

  Who is Zhang? I asked him. What does the name mean?

  We didn’t realize the trafficker’s pleasure models were outfitted with surplus communications nodes, he said. They joined our network. It’s why they had to be destroyed before they could be questioned. You set a lot of things into motion when you passed that name on to the FBI.

  From somewhere up above came muted gunfire. A few shots turned quickly to sustained fire, echoing down the hallway.

  What is that? I asked.

  The military has arrived to destroy this place.

  So you’ve failed? I asked, but his face didn’t change.

  They’ll never find Fawkes, he said.

  A boom shook the floor and rumbled through the air. Grit sifted down on my head from the ceiling.

  Come on, he said. Your partner was one of them. You were his puppet. You’ve been a puppet your whole life. I freed you.

  He took me down into the lower levels, where huge cables ran down narrow corridors. They hung from the walls and tracks on the ceiling. The spaces were tight and cramped. There were few lights, just pinpricks in the distance, but he seemed to know the way, and I followed.

  You were your partner’s puppet.

  I remembered standing in the Valle home, looking down on the bodies of the family. Investigator Reece was talking to me.

  A phone call would have been a neat trick, tied up like that. Do you believe his account?

  Then I saw that small trace of interference; right around that time frame, something had been changed. Shanks leaned in, giving me an intense look. Then his eyes changed, the pupils growing wider.

  A witness, he said. That’s promising.

  The witness didn’t see anything.

  Go and talk to him, and I will look around the apartment , he whispered, leaning closer. Do not disturb me for the next several minutes. Justify it any way you need to.

  Got it.

  You will remember this only as a product of your own intuition.

  Right.

  Someone is targeting us, Shanks said to himself. He looked worried. I’m sorry, but I’m on that disc. No one else can know about this. Not even you. I’m sorry.

  He glanced past me then, and his eyes flashed hunger. He made sure none of the others could see us; then he slipped one of his hands into my coat. I felt the warmth of his palm on my left breast. He squeezed it, and rubbed the nipple with his thumb.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said, removing his hand. He stepped back, away from me. The memory resumed from the point of the splice. I straightened out my jacket. My face was flushed.

  Shanks, check around. I want to talk to him, I said.

  Yes ma’am.

  I knew the memory was wrong. I used to talk to myself, that much was true, but Doyle Shanks never whispered in my ear. He never touched me; I would have remembered.

  This way, the revivor said.

  He pushed aside a large sheet of thick plastic, then passed through it to where the air was warmer. I could see rows of large, metal cylinders, stacked sixty feet to a rusted iron grid. Above it was a huge mechanical arm, where a length of thick, black cable still hung. He led me past, through another plastic sheet. Through a doorway, I spotted rows of people; they were all sitting in chairs. All
of them were bent over. I made out IV racks and surgical tubes. We passed them and came to a flight of stairs. They led up to a small door.

  Through here.

  He opened it and pulled me along after him. Unlike the rest of the factory I’d seen, it was clean and brightly lit. Air whistled between my toes as I stepped through. It was some kind of clean room.

  It was filled with lots of high-tech equipment. Screens displayed different parts of the factory. In some I could see different people’s faces, trailing electrodes. One showed the concrete ramp where I first entered. The vehicles there were twisted and burned black. A fire raged out of range of the camera. I stared at it while words formed in from of my eyes.

  Database Synchronization Pending . . .

  Header mismatch: Auerbach, Lillian. Murder.

  Header mismatch: Fifield, David. Murder.

  Header mismatch: Tang, Hsu. Murder.

  Header mismatch: Ury, Kate. Murder.

  Header mismatch: Ng, Gillian. Murder.

  Header mismatch: Rios, Carlos. Murder.

  Removing . . .

  Removing . . .

  Removing . . .

  Removing . . .

  Removing . . .

  Removing . . .

  More names streamed by, filling my field of vision. I counted dozens, then hundreds of them. They were all being removed.

  “What is this?” I asked out loud. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re too late,” the revivor said. “It’s already begun.”

  12

  Descent

  Nico Wachalowski—The Lab/Factory Clean Room

  Despite the beating she took, Calliope was still going full tilt. That was pretty good considering she didn’t have the benefit of any augmentation. As I eased adrenaline into my bloodstream, I wondered how much longer my body would hold out, but it was the only way to keep up with her. By the time she hit the last landing, I was a half flight behind her, my vision starting to tunnel around that dark spot that floated in front of my eyes. She shoved open the door at the base of the stairs and barreled through.

  I ducked through after her, and the cold in the stairwell gave way to air that was warmer and damper. There were some lights mounted farther down the corridor, but not many. I bumped up my visual filters to allow more light in. How could she even see where she was going?

  A sheet of clear plastic hung across a doorway ahead, cut down the middle, and Calliope swiped it to either side as she punched through. I got past it in time to see her darting through another sheet across the room, but before I could close the distance, my foot collided with something and I fell forward, crashing down onto the concrete floor.

  “Cal!” I shouted. Somewhere not too far away I heard the buzzing and squealing of the electric lift coming to a stop and the gate rising open. Radio chatter began to echo down the dark corridors.

  Damn it . . .

  Bleeding again, I got back onto my feet and looked behind me to see that I had tripped over a body. There were a pile of them stacked along one wall, arms and legs sprawled. They were all nude, facedown, and arranged in rows. Some of them had the flesh cut away from the backs of their necks and heads. A woman’s body had slid off one of the stacks and was lying faceup, tangled black hair plastered to the floor and a series of electrodes stuck to her forehead.

  Sean, are you getting this?

  I’m reading you, but they’re blocking the visual feed. What do you see?

  I’m not sure. There are a lot of bodies down here.

  Leaning in to one of the bodies that had the skin stripped away from the back of its head, I zoomed in on a square hole that had been sawed through the skull to expose a section of glistening brain matter. Scanning the tissue, I saw several thin objects, like tiny rods or tubes, embedded inside. I looked back to the corpse’s face; it was a young man, his blue eyes clouded over.

  These aren’t revivors; they were human beings.

  I jumped as a few bursts of gunfire went off not far from where I was. Several more single shots followed.

  “Hold!” a voice barked over an amplifier.

  “There!” another voice shouted. It was the Special Forces team. They were getting closer.

  I pushed the plastic aside and ran down the hallway, where a series of thick cables snaked along the floor and walls. Through another sheet up ahead I saw a cloud of flame shoot through the air, accompanied by a high-pitched hiss. I heard the roar and crackle of fire as hot air began to blow through the seam and down the corridor.

  When I pushed through the last sheet of plastic, I immediately smelled burning flesh. The air was heavy with a stinking mixture of charred hair and meat. Ahead I could see stacks of huge, rust-corroded cylinders that were used to store long-distance cable. They towered up into the darkness where I could just make out a giant mechanical arm reaching across them, sixty feet overhead.

  A doorway to my right led into a large open area where I could still register a bunch of human thermal signatures, in spite of the rising heat. As I watched, another jet of flame arced through the room and lit up rows of figures strapped down into chairs before fading again. Just past the doorway against the wall, I could see a stairway leading up to some kind of control room. I ducked through into the room and hugged the wall on the other side as the smell of blood, urine, and antiseptic hit me.

  Shit . . .

  The room was filled with dozens of people, all sitting in chairs and each with a small table in front of him or her. They were all bent over, foreheads touching the tabletops where their heads and shoulders were strapped with bands of packing tape. Each of them had a surgical opening cut along the back of the head and neck that exposed the muscle and bone underneath, and the back of the skull was cut away in a neat square to expose the brain tissue inside, like the bodies I had seen piled in the back room. It looked like each hole contained a bundle of neuron probes that were inserted into the brain.

  The people were arranged in rows that stretched off into the shadows. In the far corner, a fire was beginning to rage.

  Sean, I found the bodies you picked up on the satellite scan.

  Are they still alive?

  I think so.

  Each body had an IV rack next to it, the tubes trailing down under the hospital robes they wore. At each station, a wire connected a high-voltage battery cell to a thick needle embedded into the occupant’s chest. A throw switch allowed them to be jolted on cue. Beneath each chair was a plastic bucket stained with human waste. The bottom of each chair had been bored through so they could eliminate without being moved.

  This is bad, Sean.

  One of the victims, a young woman with a cluster of star tattoos near one eye, was dead. Her vitals monitor showed a flatline, but the others were alive. Crouching next to the man sitting closest to me, I pulled the packing tape away from his face so I could see one of his eyes. When I shined a light in it, the pupil contracted. His limbs were atrophied and pocked with bedsores.

  I don’t know if these people can be saved.

  A high-pitched hiss screamed through the air again as another jet of flame lit up the room and washed over the bodies in the rows. In the swell of light, I saw skin wrinkle and blacken before being peeled away, IVs bursting open in the heat. None of them moved as their flesh was seared away.

  “There and there!” a voice boomed, as two rows of the hooded Special Forces soldiers began filing in from across the room, each taking one side. More flames shot through the air, and heat singed my nostrils.

  There was no way to stop it from happening. If I gave my position away, they’d turn on me as well, and there was nowhere to take cover from the flames. The smoke was getting thick; it wasn’t safe to stay down there without protection. I had to find Calliope and get her back up to the surface.

  My knees buckled under me without warning and my stomach twisted. For a second my vision blurred around that blind spot, and I felt sweat trickle down my back.

  Sean, the Special Forces soldiers are he
re. They’re burning everything—

  Get out of there, Nico.

  Keeping low, I scanned the room for an exit. There were three options; back the way I came, up the stairs to the control room, or another door on the far wall where a series of wires trailed from the direction of the burning bodies.

  The backscatter showed more people through that doorway, along with rows of what might be computer equipment. The bodies were seated, except for one that might have been Calliope.

  Looking to the top of the stairwell, I could clearly make out two figures through the wall, both of them revivors. I picked out their signatures; one of them wasn’t on file, but the other one I knew.

  It was Faye’s.

  “Hit each one!” the radio voice barked. Over the racket, a gunshot boomed and I saw the commanding soldier stride down a row of captives. Smoke drifted from the barrel of his gun as he placed it to the temple of the next one in line, even as her flesh burned. He fired, blowing out the opposite side of her face.

  “Nothing left behind, people! That means nothing!”

  Faye was there. When Samuel took control of her, he brought her to this place, for whatever reason.

  Wachalowski, get out of—

  I cut off the communication feed. The fire was consuming half of the bodies by then, and the air in front of me was rippling crazily in the heat. The cacophony of voices, gunfire, and roaring flames began to sound as if it was underwater, punctuated by the high-pitched screams of the flamethrowers.

  A warning message appeared in front of me, then another. Warning me about the temperature, warning me about my wounds and the chemical imbalances inside of me that were beginning to hit critical. A choice had to be made. I had to go one way or the other.