Vertical City (Book 3)

by Mahaffey Jr. , George S. .

  I hit the inky-black water and keep falling.

  Straight down.

  Caroming off bulky objects hidden in the shadows.

  The water’s cold.

  Icy enough to freeze gasoline.

  My heart flutters and my feet slam into something and my mouth clamps shut, even as some of the foul-tasting water channels down my throat.

  Swinging my arms I see movement up above me.

  Bands of moonlight reveal the seven Dubs above me, yoked in chains and what looks like nylon netting.

  Some wriggle like worms and others simply drift, missing pieces, slowly disintegrating in the water.

  Seconds, that’s all I have left to act.

  Confront the Dubs or drown.

  Swinging my feet out, I brace against what’s left of the bottom of the container and push up.

  The Dubs flap their arms and legs, foaming the water as I swim right at them.

  One of the things cranes its head, searching for me. A clawed hand stabs the water and I thrust back, right into another Dub that grips me in a kind of choke-hold.

  I throw a punch that connects with a jellied face, the flesh so waterlogged that it comes off in my hands like wet newspaper. I crack the surface of the water, gasping for air, surrounded by the dead. Gus bellows above me, but I don’t have time to answer.

  Another Dub bites at me and I take a breath and dive back down and another of the death-walkers, a snake-like demon with stubby arms and a scooped-out chest, literally breaks its hands off to come after me.

  The Dub descends and then something hits the water behind it and sinks.

  It’s my Onesie! Gus was good enough to give me a fighting chance as two things happen almost at once.

  The Dub kicks at me and I grab my weapon and trigger it. A metal dart whizzes through the water with enough force to puncture the monster’s forehead.

  The lifeless Dub drifts past me and I paddle up to dispatch the other brain-suckers before breaking the water’s surface a final time with a triumphant shout.

  My body is racked with shivers as Gus pumps a fist. I grab a section of the nylon netting and fling it up to him and he winds it through one of the handholds and ties it off.

  I’m able to grab the end and pull myself up far enough that Gus can assist me onto the stable side of the container.

  Flopping over to my side I look up at him.

  “How many lives you think I’ve got left?”

  “You’re young, Wyatt. You’ve only used up three or four of them.”

  I dry myself off as best I can (making sure to shake the water from my Onesie), and then we’re off and onto the opposite side of the river.

  It’s here in this unmarked territory, crouching in a tangle of weeds and grass, that we scrutinize the way forward.

  The entirety of the street before us, to the left and right, is hemmed by the remnants of cement blast-walls and twelve-foot high razor-wire fences, and machines and cargo containers that were stacked here after the seawall collapsed.

  The road ahead, a ribbon of asphalt dotted with deep sinkholes, curls up and through a massive structure that leans to one side like a drunken person ready to take a fall.

  “That’s the RIP hotel,” I whisper, shivering, fighting to wring the water from my clothes and hair.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Del Frisco told me.”

  Gus does a double-take.

  “Christ, you told him we were coming out?”

  “Relax, he’s cool.”

  He cracks his neck and glances around.

  “He tell you how it got its nickname?”

  “No, but this whole place is too damned quiet.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  Gus slides a gas-mask over his head and tosses me the other one as we jog down the street, slowing eighty-feet away from the front of the hotel. The only sounds I hear are my own breaths and a symphony of night-bugs and crickets.

  I can tell from the bath-tub-like water stain on the hotel’s front and its cockeyed positioning near a trench scooped in the ground by its cement footings that the building was not originally built here. It looks like it was dragged to its current spot by a mighty hand, which I assume is close to what happened after the seawall collapsed.

  And the weirdest thing is that the ground around the hotel is shrouded in what appears to be a sugar-white powder.

  “Did it snow?”

  Gus doesn’t answer, just gestures for me to follow him up the front stairs.

  I don’t have a background in architecture or history, but the hotel’s sagging steps, stained glass windows, and façade browed with ornate wood-work makes it look like it was built back in the olden days. There’s also a maze of scaffolding off to one side which was apparently being used for renovation purposes when the clocks stopped.

  Gus pushes the door open and pauses to suss things out. The structure creaks and sighs, but no sound comes from the gloomed interior.

  We steal inside over thin-planked wooden floors that are buckled and uneven. The interior looks like an archaeological dig site, lots of holes and mounds of debris and bones strewn everywhere. The walls are mostly gone and nearly everything of value on the lower level has been taken away. The only thing remaining is an oversized front desk with a cracked white marble top and a rusted bell on the front under a small sign that says “Ring for Service.” A stuffed animal head peers down at us from above the desk.

  The building may have been ransacked, but the white dust residue remains. We head up the powdery lobby steps, past a series of mummified Dub bodies that lie curled and sprawled. My mask thankfully insulates me from their stink.

  Gus nudges one of the bodies and looks at me.

  “You don’t remember do you?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Toward the end some genius had the idea of using a spray to kill the Dubs. ‘Neonicotinoid’ is what it was called. Environmental protection folks and what was left of the government approved it without any real testing. Sprayed the powder out of these giant jetliners. Supposed to interfere with the Dubs’ central nervous system and cause tremors, paralysis, and a second death. They used something similar on parasites in crop fields back in the old days.”

  “Looks like it worked.”

  “Too well,” he says with a nod. “Killed the Dubs and everything it came in contact with. A ‘systemic toxin’ the experts said, but by then it was too late. It got in the water and the soil and started killing the people it was supposed to protect. Makes sense if you think about it. Only thing this country was ever good at toward the end was killing stuff.” He kicks at the dust, adding, “‘Devil’s Dandruff’ people on the street called it.”

  I try to imagine how it must’ve been in those last days. People in the city praying for something to stop the rise of the Dubs. Staring into the sky as the planes flew past, releasing what must have looked like snow flakes. How long did it take until they knew something was wrong? How long until the first person, the first child, dropped dead?

  Gus taps me on the shoulder and I ask whether we’re going to be okay after examining my boots which are caked white.

  “Powder stopped being effective years ago from what I read. The half-lives are completely tapped out.”

  “So how come it’s still around?”

  “Supposed to have been partially made of these micro-beads. Plastic stuff that won’t disintegrate for a thousand years.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “You know what I was doing when the world crapped out.”

  “Working at a drug store.”

  “Pharmacy while I was in college. I was a chemistry geek.”

  “You still are.”

  He mimes and a laugh and then grabs my hand when I tug at my mask.

  “Out of an abundance of caution and due to the smell I’d suggest you keep that on.”

  I do and we tread lightly up two floors and peep out a gaping hole in the side of the wall. Gus
consults his GPS device and I look down over the city. Del Frisco taught me that when hunting at night, patience is a virtue. In order to see you’ve got to focus on one spot. I do and the streets come alive, teeming with movement. The Dubs are visible, hundreds of them, moving slowly into the sewers and subway drops, into the city beneath the city.

  “Jesus, look at them,” I say.

  “That’s just one block, Wyatt. Imagine the rest of the city.”

  My heart sinks at the thought of having to confront hundreds of thousands of hungry dead.

  “Good Lord there is no end in sight,” Gus says, a sad look on his face, hopelessness in his voice.

  I peer at the ground, searching for an answer, and that’s when I spot them.

  The prints in the dust.

  Bootprints.

  Recent ones.

  Before Gus can speak another word my Onesie’s up and I’m padding down the hallway, hopping over holes in the floor. The prints lead down and around and through a forest of wall-studs.

  There’s a cluster of Dub bodies up ahead outside a wooden door that’s fixed to the only section of drywall that remains intact. The space is small, no larger than a bathroom, but it’s been reinforced on the outside by wooden 2x4s and scrap metal as if someone was fortifying the joint, bunker-like. The prints continue on through the door, in between a runner of dried, black blood that spiderwebs a few sections of rotten plywood flooring.

  I can feel Gus at my shoulder.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe she’s back behind that door.”

  “This isn’t the right location.”

  “Maybe we’re off.”

  “Maybe it’s a trap.”

  “They would’ve hit us before if it was.”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Two minutes. That’s all I need. Just two.”

  “I’m counting,” he says as I tiptoe down toward the door.

  Squatting in front of it, I study the fortified box and peruse the Dub bodies which appear to have been downed by blows to the head.

  Reaching the tip of my Onesie out I nudge the door and to my amazement it swings in.

  Darkness peers back as does the naked man who’s seated in a metal chair in the middle of the room.

  Chapter 17

  For a long time we don’t say anything. We just examine the man whose skin, from neck to chest, is the color of a mushroom button. Above and below this, the skin is bluish and sags like a deflated balloon and a reddish-black ooze dribbles from dozens of lacerations and puncture-wounds.

  There’s a knife on the ground in a yellow wash, just below the man’s outstretched hand, inches from his boots. Around his waist is wrapped a thick brown belt (fastened behind the chair), that keeps him in place and thankfully conceals his sex.

  I’m struck by how old he is, at least five to ten years beyond Gus, which while not old, is pushing it, especially for VC1. I don’t recognize him, his face stubbled and bronzed from the sun, features partially hidden behind a shag of brown hair.

  “Is he one of ours?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  “Maybe he was shunned?”

  “Doubt it,” Gus says. “I’d have remembered.”

  My eyes stray to his tongue which is still pinkish and poking out. A Dub Popper emerges from the man’s mouth, looks around, and then drops back down inside.

  “He did it to himself,” Gus mutters, standing beside me.

  I follow the direction of his gaze to the bootprints (there’s only one set in the room), leading from the door and ending at the chair. Then I gaze upon the knife and it’s not hard to imagine the man plopping down in the seat, strapping in, and then going to town on himself.

  “Why?” I ask, scanning the man, searching for any signs that he turned before he died.

  “Who the hell knows? Maybe he got infected.”

  “I don’t see any sign on him.”

  Gus shrugs.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Since when did anything make sense around here?”

  There’s a scuttling sound at the back of the room which is bigger than it appeared from the outside. The noise comes from one of two wooden doors, partially hidden behind bookcases and a desk and a small refrigerator.

  My Onesie angles up, aimed at the doors and for some reason I find myself crossing the room. My eyes dance around and I spot a sleeping bag on the floor and a small cairn of empty cans and a hole in the floor that’s stained yellow and black where I assume the man emptied his bowels.

  Next to the cans are a large serrated knife, a fork, a frying pan, and several pucks of canned heat, like the kind we used to cook with in the early days after the helicopter crash.

  The blood roars in my ears as I near the door, turning back to Gus who’s gesturing for us to get the hell out. I wonder if the dead man had anything to do with Naia. Maybe he saw her. Maybe he kidnapped and stashed her behind the door.

  I reach for the door-knob and then my inner voice screams for me to stop and I do.

  What the hell are you doing, Wyatt?! Didn’t you learn your lesson back with Strummer and Del Frisco?! Leave the damned door alone and walk away. Just… walk away.

  My hand withdraws and something large thumps against the door. I startle and then it thumps the door again and then begins a chorus of booms as whatever it is on the other wide of the door fights to get through.

  Gus shouts, urging me to retreat when the door splinters and out swings a Dub.

  Tripping over my own feet, I fumble to the ground, rolling over, ready for anything. The Dub lurches at me and is then jerked back in place by the chain that’s been wound around its neck.

  The creature groans and hisses, Gus helping me up, the two of us spotting the sections of flesh that have been mined from the Dub’s body.

  The ghoul’s missing chunks from both legs beneath the knee, one hand, and a lunchbox-sized hunk of meat from his lower chest. With every grunt the monster takes, little, black sausage-like entrails and red-black jelly spill from its dissected chest.

  I’ve seen enough dead bodies to tell the Dub didn’t sustain such trauma at the hands of his brethren. I can almost match the sections of removed flesh with the edge of the man’s serrated knife. Nausea builds up at the back of my throat as I realize what’s happened in this house of horrors.

  “He… he a-ate him didn’t he? He ate the Dub.”

  “Kept him here like cattle,” Gus says, nodding. “Picking him apart, piece by piece.”

  “For how long?”

  “Who the hell knows?”

  “What happens when he ran out of food? There’s no way one Dub was enough.”

  There are a few beats of silence and then our attention turns to the other door. Something scrapes and thumps on the other side of it.

  “Wha – what’s behind that door, Gus?”

  “Whatever it is, we’re not going to find out. Let’s bolt.”

  Gus takes a step and a sound like a rubber band snapping echoes. Looking down I spot the single strand of wire that lies under Gus’s boot. We didn’t notice it before because we didn’t precisely retrace our steps. We’ve screwed up and Gus knows it as he curses and lifts his boot, setting off a chain reaction.

  The wire snaps back into the wall and then some hidden weight drops to the ground and then I see it. See that the room is rigged with a series of nearly imperceptible lengths of wire.

  More weights and buckets filled with cement drop to the floor (and through it) from hidden spaces overhead, but it’s not until the door slams shut behind us that I realize what the naked man had in mind. The sucker wired the room for security so that once you got inside, you couldn’t get back out.

  Before we can turn to the entrance door, the other door at the back of the space ratchets open to reveal five Dubs, penned up, just waiting for the naked man to savor their flesh. The brain-wiped flesh-slurpers stand shoulder-to-shoulder, w
rists and legs bound with rusted wire.

  Radish-white eyes peer at us, unblinking and then the snarling and spitting begins. Gus works on the entrance door, fighting to kick it down as I raise my Onesie.

  “Leave them be,” Gus says.

  I do, turning and helping Gus hack at the entrance door. The door comes apart in sections and finally collapses.

  We blunder into the corridor as sounds ring in every direction. Gus looks down and points at a squadron of Dubs heading up the staircase.

  “THEY HEARD US!”

  We rapidly pick our way down the second floor corridor as the Dubs tear up the lobby steps.

  “FIFTH FLOOR!” I shout, remembering the exit that Del Frisco warned me about. “FIFTH FLOOR!”

  I’ve never seen Gus move as quickly as he does, shooting through the debris in the hallway before juking up the staircase.

  Falling behind, I take a knee and fire metal darts at the first Dubs I see, shattering skulls, sending them back onto those waiting to take their places in a thrashing jumble.

  We scuttle up two more floors, the wooden stairs bending and cracking under the thunderous footfalls of the dead.

  Hitting the fifth floor landing, I trip and roll over and Gus hoists me up. He’s got one of his clocks in hand, winding it up, tossing it into a room on our left as we forge through the darkness, jumping over furniture and soiled mattress, batting aside electrical wire and HVAC ductwork.

  The Dubs are close behind, clucking their tongues, hands slapping their bare flesh like some primitive call to arms. The alarm goes off and it distracts the Dubs, buying us a few precious seconds.

  Reeling back, we find a door at the end of the hallway that’s marked “Do Not Enter,” just like Del Frisco said.

  I point and Gus nods, catching his breath.

  “What’s on the other side?!” he asks.

  “I got interrupted before I could ask Del Frisco!”

  Gus’s face falls.

  “Jesus, kid, you’ve really got to do a better job asking those follow-up questions.”

  He grabs the door’s knob and turns it. The door is locked so I hack off the knob and kick it open to reveal a stack of cylinder-like plastic tubes. The tubes resemble the incinerator chutes back on the tenth floor of VC1 by way of a slide I remember going down when I was a child. There’s a set of wooden steps that lead up into the inside of the tubes which are stenciled “DURACHUTE” in neon lettering.