Dead City

by Sean Platt

  “I’m afraid.”

  Danny forced a smile, hoping it would show in his voice. If he kept marching, this had to work out fine. This couldn’t have anything to do with PhageX — something most of Danny thought was bullshit, given the way he’d spent all day trying to get more. But there was no logic to any of this. She’d been on Necrophage; now she was on Necrophage. Add-ins in designer formulas were irrelevant. People went on and off the designer drugs all the time. This had to be in her head.

  “Don’t be,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’ll bring a pizza.”

  “I’m slipping. Holly thinks so, and so does he.”

  Danny’s brow furrowed, not understanding.

  “I can’t get comfortable. It’s like my skin is trying to get away. I’ve been under the bed for hours, then in the closet.”

  “In the — ”

  “I opened my plumbing access. I went under the trailer, to clean, to see what was there. After my run. I stayed for hours because it was so nice.”

  Danny wiped his forehead.

  “Jordache. Maybe you should go to a clinic.”

  And tell them what? That everything was fine? He’d seen her infuse the Necrophage with his own eyes. Which part of Jordache going to a clinic would help anything? The part where they gave her more of what she already took, in compensation for withdrawal there was no logical reason to have? The part where, maybe, blood tests revealed the presence of a designer Phage formulation, and implicated her maybe-boyfriend who worked at Hemisphere and had no business dealing it? The maybe-boyfriend who, as things turned out, had been spending more money than he should?

  “I got afraid. I went to the store. I got more Necrophage. The base stuff. And I took it. I asked the pharmacist if I could take more, even if I’d already taken some today, even if my usual wasn’t a base formulation at all. And he said yes. More makes no difference. So I took two infusions, to be sure. He helped me. He had blue eyes. His name was Marvin. The pharmacy’s hours were six to eleven. Its phone number is—”

  Danny cut her off, feeling cold. She hated the idea of taking base Phage, yet she’d done it today despite already having had some this morning in the guise of her own PhageX.

  It was an impossible situation. He needed to get more of the drug, but right now, Jordache seemed thin enough to snap. He’d have to run back to her then leave again and lower his standards on how ideal these events could turn out.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Hurry,” she said.

  “As soon as I can. I promise.”

  “The moon,” Jordache said. “The sun is out, and I can see the moon.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  A-LIST

  THE MOMENT WAS SURREAL. IT was dark through the large windows with their fine but anonymous view of the city below. Ian was watching a comedy flick with a name he hadn’t caught and a plot he hadn’t been remotely paying attention to. To one side, on a plush couch, was the actress Holly Gaynor — who, it turned out, must only put on her famous necrotic accent because she had none of it in person. To the other side was Bobby Baltimore, famous deadhead hunter.

  He’d heard August Maughan was connected, with a roster of A-list longevity clients. But he hadn’t expected a Who’s Who to be here tonight, nearing ten o’clock, while Ian feared for his family — and, honestly, feared his wife a bit, too.

  He checked his phone. Still no returned text from Bridget or missed call. No new voicemails. Or emails.

  He could try again. Maybe he even should try again; incessant, never-give-up attempts to contact someone stopped being stalking and became proper when trying to heal an argument with your wife. But Ian didn’t, partly because he’d need to do it on the sly. He might even need to leave the room, in case Bridget miraculously answered.

  But mainly he didn’t try again because he knew she wouldn’t take his call. She wouldn’t respond to a text. She’d keep ignoring him, as she’d been doing since he’d left home hours ago to meet August.

  Unless Bridget was dead, of course. Bridget and Ana both.

  Ian felt restless. He couldn’t get comfortable. There was no proper answer. August would only talk to Ian in person, and their talk had been revealing … to the scientist, anyway. But that had been a while ago now, all four of them pow-wowing to reach conclusions that only August, with his insider knowledge of Archibald Burgess, already knew. He’d gone into his ad-hoc lab. To his computer, with all of the information from the thumb drive, public and general consumption as it seemed to be.

  Ian could probably have left after that. He wanted to, but he also felt sure he shouldn’t. This was bigger than his family. This might be the whole world.

  He stood. Bobby’s eyes followed.

  “They’ll be fine,” Bobby said.

  “You don’t know that. Hemisphere doesn’t want me talking, and sicced three ferals on my wife today to prove it. And now that I’m here, they — ”

  “Are still being watched by my buddies.”

  Ian sighed.

  “Do you want me to text them?”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “I’ll text them.” Bobby’s phone appeared, and he dictated a message. The response was immediate. Bobby held the screen toward Ian, who of course couldn’t read it from where he was sitting.

  “She went to bed ten minutes ago. Nobody’s come knocking.”

  Ian closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He didn’t love the idea of Bobby’s hunter friends staking out his house and watching the windows. Seeing Bridget’s light go off as she went to bed alone, far earlier than usual. She was probably lying under the covers, watching TV, feeling nervous and betrayed, with no husband to hold her in the aftermath of her harrowing day.

  Ian was about to make an announcement — perhaps that he was leaving and would return in the morning — when August emerged from the kitchen, where he’d set up his lab near the closest water supply.

  “I’ve got a Play-Doh Fun Factory in there and need proper equipment to be sure,” he said, removing his little glasses and rubbing his eyes, “but what I’m seeing fits what you told me, Ian.”

  Ian looked at Bobby and Holly. Had he missed something while he’d been busy missing every word of the movie?

  “I didn’t tell you anything.”

  “The files you gave me did. Plus what Alice led me to, the stuff she was given by your tipster.”

  “There was nothing in them,” Ian said. “Same for what he gave Alice.”

  “I understand why you’d think that,” August said. “But all those public studies and reports on the drive had information hidden in the metadata.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ian said, wondering why anyone would do something so obtuse. “How would you even know to look?”

  “It’s something we used to do when I was at Hemisphere. Archibald is paranoid. It’s not enough to obscure information. He was always hiding it in plain sight. Like this.”

  “You’re saying those files contained Hemisphere secrets from years ago that they forgot to — ”

  “No,” August said, cutting him off. “Archibald is both paranoid and wicked smart. He wouldn’t be that sloppy. What was on those files was put there by your source.”

  “What the hell would make him think I’d even find it?”

  “I don’t think you were supposed to. He hid what we needed in the metadata then sent it through you because you have access inside the Hemisphere firewall. But what was in there was, I think, always meant for me.”

  Ian blinked around at the others, but this part of the discussion meant nothing to Holly and Bobby.

  “If this guy wanted to talk to you, why didn’t he just contact you and leave me out of it?” The question made Ian resentful. He hadn’t asked for any of this and didn’t deserve any involvement in this mission of espionage.

  “If I had to guess, it’s because your access is needed. You and Alice were both nudged toward me.”

  “But nothing direct. Of co
urse.”

  “I suspect this is the work of an insider at Hemisphere, like you. Maybe he saw something but didn’t know what it was, and can’t investigate because he fears for his safety.”

  Ian huffed. Fuck his safety. What about Ian’s safety?

  Bobby was watching August. There was much they’d discussed earlier, before August had disappeared into the kitchen, about Yosemite. About evolution. About things Bobby may have seen — things, as it turned out, that had been bothering Bobby for a while about the aged deadhead population: a population that refused to die, and became harder to kill the older it got.

  “What did you find, August?” Bobby asked. “You found something, didn’t you?”

  August nodded.

  “Sherman Pope appears to be a modified version of a Hemisphere gene therapy virus called BioFuse,” he said.

  Ian sat up.

  “Hemisphere had the cure,” August went on, “because Hemisphere caused the plague.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  WEASEL

  “HE’LL LEAVE YOU,” WEASEL SAID.

  “Shut up,” Jordache replied to the unseen speaker, huddled under her covers, totally in the dark, too hot, not caring.

  “He got what he needed from you. Same as I did. Same as any guy gets what they want before bolting. Because you ain’t worth shit other than that honey trap between your legs.”

  Jordache tossed the covers off and sat up on the bed. She was naked. She’d met Danny that way because it felt right, but now she could only see her nudity as proof that Weasel had a point. But fuck Weasel. He didn’t get to have points anymore. She’d seen him decay. She’d seen him die. She’d seen him taken away to Yosemite in a black van after he was dead, watching him kick and scream. She’d seen him on Bobby Baltimore’s program, Season 2, Episode 4, at 21:46. But somehow, she’d also seen him shot, in the arm, in the torso, not in the head. That little video seemed to come from behind her own eyes as if projected there by someone else, by a tall man with a cold voice that didn’t warble like it should. That video of Weasel being wounded, savaged, dragging his sorry undead ass to safety like a coward.

  He was in Yosemite. Not here, in her trailer.

  But Jordache saw her ex right where she nonetheless expected him to be, given the direction of his voice. His arm was tattered flesh, black at the edges, bones protruding. His face was half sloughed away, his teeth exposed even when his lips were closed. His eyes had receded too much around the eyeballs, making him look too intense, like he was paying an insane amount of attention. But his stupid little mustache still seemed to be there — testament to the fact that even after he’d died, he hadn’t given up on being trash.

  “Come over here, Sexy,” he said, watching her, looking down at his lap. Whatever might be there was sluggish. He dripped black clumps of something on her clean floor, as if leaking from a sprung hydraulic line. “I’ll still take what you got.”

  “You’re not here,” Jordache said.

  “No. I’m here. Danny’s the one who’s not.”

  “He had to go. He needed to take care of something.”

  And he did, too. He’d come. She’d tried to attack him and tear his clothes off, but Danny had actually pushed her back, his eyes almost afraid. She was in bed now because he’d put her there. Because he’d said she was unwell even though she felt stronger and smarter than she ever had. She’d heard Danny coming five minutes before he’d pulled up in front. He’d blinked 430 times that she’d seen in the thirty-six minutes his head had been facing her. That was way more than he normally blinked. It made her think of an apple she’d eaten once, when she’d been four, when she’d bitten too far into the core and swallowed a seed. Her friend Ginny had told Jordache that apple seeds contained cyanide and Jordache had tried to throw it up, found herself unable, and had spent the night expecting to die.

  “If he wanted you,” Weasel said, “he would have stayed.”

  “He got a text.”

  “He faked the text, and you know it.”

  It was true. Of course she knew it, though the last person she wanted to hear it from was Weasel, who wasn’t even here.

  “You should eat something,” Weasel said.

  “Go away.”

  “There’s not much left. Maybe you could eat your own arm.”

  “Danny will be back soon. Or in the morning, if he needs all the time he thinks he might.”

  “Danny is gone. Forever. Where would he need to go, then come back? Except, of course, to fuck someone else.”

  “Danny’s not like that.” Jordache got up and began dressing. She put on her shoes first. Then took them off. Then put them on. Then took them off. Then put them on. Then she remembered that socks went before shoes and gave up, all of it too overwhelming.

  Her eyes went to the clock. It was 10:35.

  Weasel laughed.

  “You’ll never make it until morning,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  THROUGH THE DARK WINDOW

  BRIDGET WOKE TO THE FEELING of someone climbing into bed with her. For a delirious, half-asleep moment, she thought it was Ian (and not just Ian, but Ian before things started getting ugly) and let herself relax. But then the someone merely sat on the bed instead of getting properly under the covers, and Bridget realized it was Analise, shaking her without so much as turning on a light.

  “Mom.”

  “Baby? You’re too old to sleep with me.” The second she said it, Bridget wished she hadn’t. Now, Ana would need to push for comfort if she still meant to get it, and at eleven years old, that seemed increasingly unlikely. Bridget wanted to say yes. She wanted the warm body herself.

  “I heard something outside my window.”

  “You’re imagining things, Sweetie. Go back to bed.”

  “I looked out, Mom. I saw something, too.”

  The cobwebs were slow to leave Bridget’s mind. She was tired and disturbed by the day’s events: not just the mall attack, but the fight with Ian that followed — that, judging by the bed’s empty half, was still in progress. She’d been woken from a dream where she told Ian her secrets and he accepted them all. But mostly, Bridget suspected she was fighting the Zen she’d popped before bed. She didn’t like to take two in a day, but recent events merited extra measures. And then, after she’d swallowed, she’d seen that the vial only contained one last pill. So she’d taken that one, too, to make things neat.

  But with the haze departing, Ana’s words kissed her skin like a cool blade.

  Something outside.

  Lion’s Gate was a gated community, but it’s not like people couldn’t crawl in from the edges. It’s not like people in black cars couldn’t bribe their way inside. There were supposedly body-temperature sensors all over the city and extras around communities like this, intent on tracking anything that moved without generating much heat. But if today had shown Bridget anything, it was that the usual rules of safety and peace inside Aberdeen Valley — pacifying pills notwithstanding — weren’t as immutable as they were supposed to be.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said, less sure.

  “In the bushes. I’m scared, Mom.” She hugged her mother’s arm, years dropping from her age in seconds.

  Bridget stood in the room’s darkness. Ian had guns somewhere, but Bridget had no idea where, how to get at them, how to load them, or how to fire them. Ian hadn’t been a gun guy before the plague, and it had been her own urging that had made him arm up. She’d asked for protection with a smile, pretending it was all silly but that she’d appreciate his indulgence, not feeling it was silly at all.

  “Is Dad home?”

  “Not yet, Honey.”

  Ana’s head swiveled to the nightstand clock. Bridget took Ana by the arm and pulled her away. The girl had enough to worry about without wondering at her father’s whereabouts so late.

  “Come on,” Bridget said, summoning confidence she was nowhere near feeling.

  They crossed the hallway to Ana’s room. B
ridget pointed at the side yard window, the blinds partly drawn. There were plenty of streetlights but not on the home’s side. Bridget wished Ana hadn’t raised the blinds. Now she’d have to put her face to that blackness, eye to eye with anything that may have climbed a story to peer in unseen.

  Still pointing, Bridget gave her daughter a look.

  Ana nodded.

  Bridget slowly crossed the room, leaving Ana unmoving in the doorway. She fought an absurd urge to grab something: a lamp, a gymnastics trophy, maybe the damned clothes tree. She felt naked unarmed, but what did she think could possibly happen? Would the window burst when she got close, some unknown horror springing in to do battle?

  “It’s probably just a dog,” Bridget said, her voice too low.

  Ana was still, arms crossed over her waist. She nodded.

  Bridget neared the window and could see nothing through the glare of the small night lights in the hallway.

  She moved closer.

  Closer.

  With a glance back at Ana, who nodded encouragement, Bridget put her face to the glass and cupped her hands around her cheeks to peer out onto the lawn below.

  She found herself staring at a yammering horror, its face decayed, its eyes wide, its teeth exposed to bite, tensed, moving to leap —

  And then it was just the trellis running up the home’s corner, green ivy swaying in the breeze.

  She forced herself to scan the dark lawn. Her glance was quicker than it should have been, but Bridget saw nothing.

  Her heart descended from high alert. She turned, backing away from the window to face Ana with an awkward smile.

  “Nothing there,” she said.

  Then the booming began.