Vertical City (Book 3)

by Mahaffey Jr. , George S. .

  “If it isn’t the dog lover,” Strummer hisses.

  Gus keeps his eyes on Strummer while inching around the room.

  “You get lost, pops?”

  “Looks like I’m exactly where I need to be.”

  Strummer chuckles.

  “Where you need to be is down in that dungeon of yours, playing around with those fucking mutts.”

  “With jealousy comes anger.”

  “Jealous? Jealous of what?”

  “That my canine friends possess two traits you’ll never have: bravery and loyalty.”

  Strummer’s hand tightens around the knife.

  “You are so dead, old man.”

  Gus chirps twice and something trots out of a side door. It’s Zeus.

  The dog lopes forward, head down, ears back as if ready to strike. The others around Strummer whisper words of caution, releasing their hold on me, as the dog sidles up.

  Zeus scents my hand and licks it and then swivels and stares at Strummer. The dog’s lips pull back. A low-wattage growl ushers from its mouth which is enough to make Strummer flinch. He scowls and curses me and Gus under his breath and then exits with his crew. Gus watches him go while handing a treat to Zeus.

  “Jesus, you have a falling out with your former bestie or what?”

  “He was never my friend. And now he’s scared because I know who he really is.”

  “Truth is a dangerous thing around here.”

  Gus leashes Zeus while leaning in close to me. He looks around to see if anyone’s watching.

  “You got a minute, kid?”

  “Why? Something important come up?”

  “I found something with your numbers. Something you’re going to want to see.”

  Chapter 12

  The halls and stairwells are relatively clear as we push through the red door and enter Gus’s lair. He unleashes Zeus who does a quick circuit of the room.

  “He never used to do that before,” Gus says, gesturing at the dog. “It was only after the bastards started taking him outside that he lost his bearings.”

  “He’s cautious.”

  “Bugged out is more like it.”

  I don’t see it, but Gus obviously reads something into the way Zeus pauses, ears up, pacing.

  “Animals can get post-traumatic stress disorder you know. Zeus is a combat vet just like the rest of you.”

  Zeus crawls inside his oversized cage and sits, staring out, taking everything in, whining.

  “Maybe he should be on some meds,” I offer.

  “This whole damn building should be on ‘em. Pump the stuff right up through the HVAC ducts. Start with the upper floors and then focus on those trigger-happy mothers that go hunting every day.”

  “The Sweepers?”

  He nods.

  “They saved my life.”

  He rummages in a dresser and pulls out a handful of napkins that he hands to me. I blot dribbles of red from my busted lip as Gus secures the front door, sliding a few bolts across it. I follow him to the back of the room where he opens a hidden compartment in the rear wall.

  “It wasn’t only the Sweepers that kept me from being slabbed. She helped save me too,” I add.

  He looks back.

  “Who? The phantom lady?”

  “She’s a girl, Gus. Same one I’ve seen before. On that last op I was a goner and she came to me in the building, right before it fell. She pulled me out and saved me.”

  “You suffered some serious trauma out there, Wyatt. Probably got yourself a concussion. Sure you didn’t… imagine her?”

  “I had my helmet on. She was the one who gave me the numbers. I swear.”

  “Sure, kid, sure. I believe you.”

  I can’t tell from his reaction whether he actually believes me or not, but he removes the small circular device made of plastic and glass that he showed me before. The one he said could conjure up a map of the city based on certain coordinates. He fumbles with it, his distorted reflection skating across the device’s exterior.

  “I entered the numbers you found before and then, this morning, I added the new ones.”

  The little machine glows and buzzes to life. Images flicker and dance across its face: alleys, city streets, a block. The screen settles on a particular set of coordinates and a red dot drops onto a location to identify it.

  “That’s it,” Gus says, obviously pleased with himself. “It’s a little bit further away than I thought. On the other side of the bridge and over the river. About twelve blocks give or take. Whatever we were meant to find is right there. Now, it’s a rough part of town so when we head out-”

  “‘We’”?

  He gapes at me, mouth adroop.

  “Sure, yeah. You and me. That’s the route we’ll need to take when we head out. I’ve done some recon in and around that area before.”

  “You – you what?”

  “Surely I’ve told you-”

  “Not really.”

  “I venture out-”

  “Sneak?”

  “You make it sound so sinister, Wyatt, but yes, I go out sometimes after hours to observe the goings on in the city. Oh, the things I’ve seen…”

  My head swims with fractured images of Gus skulking around in the dark and Naia hiding somewhere out in the Flatlands and Odin and Shooter bringing huge sledgehammers down on the diorama of the city.

  “I knew you went out to snatch books and stuff, Gus.”

  “Sure, yeah, but sometimes I do other things.”

  “What happens if you get caught?”

  “There’s nobody ever out there. Nobody alive I mean.”

  “There will be. Odin and Shooter are going to send more teams out.”

  He sets the GPS device down.

  “More teams as in-”

  “Search-and-destroy ops. Roll-ups to smash the hives.”

  “But that’s lunacy.”

  “That’s the way forward.”

  “They’re nuts.”

  “They’ve got a plan.”

  “So did the Nazis.”

  I don’t get the reference and he stands and paces.

  “Don’t you understand that they’ve tried this all before?”

  He reads something in my silence.

  “Let me take a wild guess. They’ve come up with a new angle, a new slogan, a new pitch. If they have don’t buy it. It’s just old wine in a new bottle.”

  I kick at the ground.

  “It’s just talking really. Just going around and getting the message out.”

  “Which message is that? How to better murder your former friends and neighbors?”

  “It’s not murder.”

  “Everyone we ever knew or might have known is down on those streets, Wyatt.”

  “The same ones that try to kill us?”

  “It’s no different from when people used to go swimming in the oceans and were attacked by sharks. When you’re on the Flatlands you’re in their environment. You’re no longer on the top of the food chain.”

  “Well, maybe we need to change things.”

  He cocks his head and stares at me, a stormy expression building on his face.

  “I hope that was a joke.”

  I don’t respond, staring instead at my hands and cracking my knuckles. Gus doesn’t know how it is. He’s never jumped or run a gauntlet down below.

  “I’m the one that’s busted my hump on those ops, Gus. I feel bad for what we do sometimes, but most of them should be put down.”

  He stares at me and his right eye twitches and hands quiver just like they always do when he’s incredibly pissed.

  “Whenever a minority is looking to hijack something, Wyatt, they need a congregation of true believers. And this group will be promised the world if they help the leaders devise ways to separate the ‘we’ from the ‘they.’ Don’t be a part of that. Don’t side with anyone that tries to use the things below us as a distraction, as a means to drive a wedge between the people who live here.”

  “Yo
u’re rambling, man, and your plan to go outside is nutzo.”

  He looks suckerpunched. I’m instantly sorry about saying this for a couple of reasons. First, this is the man who took me in and raised me as his own. Second, unless I’ve been hallucinating (which is entirely possible), Naia’s out there on the Flatlands. She saved my ass and I owe it to her to at track down whatever it is that’s located at the coordinates she provided.

  “I’m sorry I said that, Gus.”

  Gus moves closer to the dogs and points at one of them.

  “Sorry is what you say when you forget to take one of these guys out to lift his leg.”

  “If you want me to go, I’ll go,” I finally say. “But I’ll need some time.”

  He looks back over his shoulder.

  “You mean it?”

  I nod.

  “Then we’ll head out two days from now. Eighteen-hundred hours, okay? It’ll give me time to get everything ready.”

  “Sure, Gus,” I say weakly. “Whatever you say.”

  Chapter 13

  The next two days are a blur as I work with Shooter, Odin, and their handpicked team to review maps of the city, the locations of suspected hives, and buildings that were wired in the past to bring down. Asian Phil’s also there and we compare notes, compiling a list of the structures we think will maximize body-counts if demolished.

  We move on to give speeches to large groups of people in VC1’s communal buildings and a multipurpose room down the hall from the redlight district on eighteen.

  All of us sport our best people-influencing smiles, Shooter providing a broad view of the way ahead with the rest of us filling in the details. I’d never admit it to Gus, but as I give my speeches I feel the warm stirrings of what I imagine is pride. The not altogether unpleasant sensation that I’m doing something real, something positive for the community.

  Once the talking is over, Shooter leads us through a room where there’s a mockup of sections of the city comprised of little plastic blocks I remember playing with as a child. He tells us about plans for the future, how the Administrators are thinking up new ways to increase the density of the buildings once the city is cleansed and new ideas for redesigning how we live so that we have more interaction and contact (“which necessarily leads to ever greater innovation!” he says).

  It all sounds so positive, so perfect, and I begin to wonder why Odin needs a grunt like me to sell it. Is it really a choice between his way or the ways of the past, or is there some path forward that we don’t even know about yet? Maybe Brixton and Parker and even Gus are right. Maybe there’s some middle course, some accommodation with the Dubs that can be plotted out.

  Of course I don’t mention any of this to Shooter who follows up his talk with an overview of how small teams, “Surgical Operators” he likes say, will infiltrate select buildings and bring them down.

  When I ask how the operators plan to survive the implosions, Shooter tells me again that the details haven’t been finalized, but that the detonations will be done at a safe distance. I ask whether this means wirelessly, but he ignores the question and moves on.

  After we’re done clucking our tongues, we take a tour of the building, spending some time down near the Keep where we gawk at new weapons and body-armor and other goodies that Odin says he has personally ordered for the new operations. All the while I hear Del Frisco’s voice in the back of my head sarcastically mentioning that it would have been nice to have this kind of tech out on our prior ops.

  Odin holds one of the new weapons up, a repurposed assault rifle which has two undermounted grenade launchers.

  The thing looks awkward and heavy, the kind of gun that’s been designed by someone who’s never had to use one before.

  “This is but one the new tools that will allow us to take our city back.”

  Odin stares at the weapon, turning it over.

  “Most of you probably don’t know this, but what we’ve experienced since the end times has happened before. The Linearbandkeramik culture thousands of years ago for instance. Scientists found mass graves filled with bones that showed bite marks. Think about our own country. Jamestown. Evidence of cannibalism, people eating people. The coastal plague of 1616 in Massachusetts caused by a mysterious diseased ship, it goes on and on.”

  He drops the weapon and takes his time, staring at each one of us. Gus always said Odin had the eyes of a mesmerist and he was right.

  “You see, whatever it is that brought us low has always been here. Whether it’s in the ground or the air or the water, this thing, this virus, presents itself every few hundred years. Great spurts of violence follow and then people, strategically and through the use of technology, eventually find a way to overcome it and move forward. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Smiles and cheers are shared and as we disperse for the day, Odin strides by and places a hand on my shoulder. He favors me with a satisfied look and I notice his eyes again. They’re wide open and unblinking and impossible to read.

  “I feel that there’s greatness inside you, Wyatt. I really do.”

  I know Gus would say it’s because I lost my mom and have daddy issues, but it feels kind of good to be in on the ground floor of something. To be part of a movement that’s important. Maybe that’s what Parker meant about drinking the Kool-Aid, but I have to admit the few sips I’ve taken haven’t been altogether bad. I think about the possibility that maybe this is my thing, my specialty. Maybe I can succeed in helping the honchos take back the city. Would that be so bad? I muster up a smile and nod at Odin and hear myself thanking him for the kind words.

  We part ways and I take a shortcut down through the main corridor on ten, making my way between clots of Burners, the air heavy with smoke and the acrid stench of burning flesh. It’s like hell with the lid pried off.

  My hands peel back a door to an upper stairwell when I spot something peripherally. A glint on one of the gurneys that’s laden with bodies being readied for the incinerator. I blink and light winks off a piece of glass.

  Drawing closer I can see the glass, a pair of glasses actually, plastered to the head of a woman who lies on her back under a tangle of Dub bodies.

  Her sides and chest are brutalized and matted red, eyes open, face wrecked and she’s missing part of her tongue. Her face though disfigured is familiar to me. She was wearing the very same glasses when last I saw her arguing with Shooter in the debriefing room about why our operations against the Dubs were of no moment.

  It’s the woman Shooter said was called Melissa.

  “Some people weren’t meant for this world,” a voice says.

  I look back to see a young Burner with meaty hands, clad in a rubber smock. He rubs a snail of ash from his chin and flicks a finger in Melissa’s direction.

  “They say she was on the upper floors on the backside trying to cross to the Outer Buildings when she fell. What a way to go. Accident. Sweeper team found her this morning.”

  Every time I think I’ve hardened myself to what happens around here I’ll see something like this, Melissa’s mangled body, and it overwhelms me. The Burner’s words rattle around in my head because of course it was just an accident. What else could it be?

  I take a final look and press the lids down on her eyes to make it look like she’s asleep and then I stumble-step into the stairwell.

  Chapter 14

  It’s getting close to eighteen-hundred hours when I decide to visit the infirmary. The place is a madhouse, residents jawing attendants or scrapping with each other. I watch a man with a mullet of sandy-colored hair and a T-shirt that says “Crush ‘N It” repeatedly slam his head against a window. Nobody seems to notice or care.

  Checking in with a nurse, I find that Del Frisco was sedated after his outburst and made a rapid recovery. She tells me he recovered so quickly that he was afforded some free time in the weight-room which is where I find him, practicing static holds on the hangboard.

  There’s a male attendant with a crewcut and a se
rious attitude babysitting Del Frisco who dangles from the board on seven good fingers. The attendant waves me over and I watch Del Frisco stiffen his torso, his lat muscles expanding like the hood on a cobra and then-

  His fingers give way and he drops to the ground like a sack of stones. A snort of derision issues from him and then he smacks the wall, leaving a bloody handprint.

  “Three fingers down and you’re still better than me.”

  He glances back and raises an eyebrow. His face and eyes have gone hard, but he looks better and somehow saner than before.

  “How come you’re here? Lose a bet or something?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  I move closer to him and he ties a few loops of rust-colored bandages around his fingers.

  “They got you on meds?”

  He nods.

  “The good stuff?”

  “Hell no.”

  He stands and hops up and grasps a rung on the hangboard with his good hand. He dangles there, peering down at me.

  “They sending you back out soon?”

  “No,” I say, “they’ve got me on some kind of op consultant gig now.”

  “You?”

  “Can you believe it?”

  He swings his other hand out and grabs another rung, but grimaces and drops to the ground. He sucks on one bloody finger and hard-eyes me.

  “Since when were you a big picture guy?”

  “Since the roll-up.”

  “Helluva lot safer plottin’ the ops then carrying ‘em out I guess.”

  “My sentiments…”

  “You think you can hook me up with that? Get me in on your planning team?”

  “Maybe,” I lie.

  He cocks his head and apprises me.

  “I know you, Wyatt. I know you maybe better than you know yourself. You came down here for a reason, dude.”

  I look back and see that the male attendant is busy chatting with someone else.

  “You been out on the Flatlands on your own before?” I whisper to Del Frisco after turning back.

  “Course not,” he says with a wink and a dark smile. “You know that’s super illegal, hoss.”