Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  “Yes.”

  “So, destroy the computer, stop the attack.”

  “It’s not that simple. This isn’t an ordinary mansion.”

  “Of course not,” said Maggie.

  Struldbrug ignored her sarcasm. “During the Cold War, it was transported from Baltimore, much as the Cloisters were, stone by stone, by a munitions manufacturer. It is much older than the town. The residents thought it was a vanity project for a millionaire, but actually the relocation effort masked the construction of a secret military communications center. It’s got an underground bunker hardened against nuclear attack. If New York Command thought the city was about to be hit, this was one of the places they could evacuate their top brass to and ride out the attack.”

  “Lovely,” Maggie sighed. “So do we have any mansion-bunker-busters on this crate?”

  “Negative,” said the Lifetaker, from his ball.

  “Jesus!” cried Max, startled at the disembodied voice.

  The Lifetaker’s voice floated up from its orb. “The RAH-99 carries seven Hellfire anti-tank missiles, fourteen Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, twenty-three Hydra air-to-ground rockets, and an XM301 twenty-millimeter cannon.”

  Struldbrug said, “No, we can’t penetrate the bunker. Our purpose is to get Donner as close as possible to Nicole’s position, and that’s it.”

  Maggie wanted to say, but that’s insane! but she bit her tongue. Donner had signed off on the plan, even if he was now brooding out the window. “How?” she finally managed. “Nicole’s going to have the place defended.”

  “Yes,” said Struldbrug. He gestured to the helo’s interior with a gloved hand. “Hence the Comanche.”

  “RAH-99 Comanche Reconnaissance/Attack Helicopter,” said the Lifetaker.

  “A second-stage prototype of the RAH-66,” said Struldbrug, “developed by Boeing and Sikorsky for the US Army. The order for the helicopters was discontinued in 2004, reinstated in 2009, and cancelled again a year later.”

  “They couldn’t decide whether they wanted it or not?”

  “They wanted it, alright,” said Struldbrug. “They couldn’t afford it after invading Iraq broke the bank.”

  “We’re in a forty-year old helicopter?” asked Max, glancing around the cockpit.

  “Its age is precisely why we’ll get in undetected. McDermott’s defense grid is set to detect modern stealth craft, which are based on an entirely different technology.”

  “So it’ll get us close without being detected.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Then Donner goes in and blows the computer mainframe.”

  “No,” said Struldbrug. “He has no chance of doing that.”

  “Then what the fuck!” said Max.

  Struldbrug clicked his holo pen and beamed another image into the air in front of them. The image was of a simple aluminum tube with a cap. “Nicole has a remote control on her person.” In the animation, the cap swung back, revealing a single red button. “It’s the only way the wasps can be activated.”

  “Wait a minute. That little button is the only possible way to launch the Retrozine-C? That’s so…James Bond.”

  He looked grim. “She always did have a sense of the dramatic. Along with a healthy dose of paranoia.”

  “No one else can do it in case she’s taken out?”

  “No.”

  “So destroy the remote, and you stop the attack.”

  “No. Nicole may be a control freak, but she’s not stupid. Should the remote be destroyed or its signal interrupted, the attack will be triggered automatically. Donner must separate the remote from Nicole so that she cannot press the button.”

  “And exactly how is he going to do that?”

  “Ask him.” Struldbrug nodded toward Donner, then swiveled and took the craft back to manual.

  Ask him.

  But she couldn’t ask him. Because things had changed. He had changed, in that room. All illusion had been burned out of Donner. He had a job to do. It didn’t matter to him if he got killed doing it. He was beyond self-preservation now, beyond revenge, even beyond his own heartbreak. Her job was to help him.

  She’d grieve later.

  54

  DONNER

  We came in low and quiet. Struldbrug was remarkably agile with the helo. He hovered over a fire-destroyed house, and we rappelled from its belly through a carbonized crosshatch of timber into the open foundations of the basement. Then he was arcing off back to Necropolis for his part of the mission.

  In the cellar, water nipped at our ankles, swamp-thick with rot and debris. It was so foul I had to will myself not to retch.

  I tapped my headset and the three of us brought our VR online. The setup was much cruder than the wetwiring in our opposition. Nicole’s soldiers didn’t need cyberwear, not with their Nike corneas and the quantum nanolace spiderwebbed through their brains. Their combat programming and cybernetic enhancement could almost double their speed, agility and reaction time.

  Maggie and the Lifetaker could match their abilities naturally. Max and I, on the other hand, were running on Workahol. Jazz juice, as it was known on the street. It wasn’t popular with the junkies or steroiders because the downside was too steep, even for them. It boosted adrenaline and endorphin production to an insane level. We’d be fast, clearheaded and pain-resistant for hours. After that came the crash and complete agony for days.

  I hoped we lived long enough to experience it.

  Struldbrug had been reluctant to give me the drug. My reborn metabolism might process it differently, he said. But after the firefight in the church and the trek here, I was already on my last legs. No way I could go into this without major help. So far, it worked fine.

  “Keep an eye out for rats,” I said.

  We waded through the muck to a set of cement steps that were crumbling around their rebar skeleton.

  ***

  Kew Gardens. Maybe half the buildings were intact. Many had been looted and burned during the forced resettlement. Others had simply caved in under time’s weight.

  Maggie had been right about permanence. It was an illusion—a psychic bulwark against the entropy that was always behind the scenes, patiently pressing, probing, working new cracks, bleeding through as relentlessly as a cockroach.

  We had three blocks to cover on foot.

  We stayed tight against the sides of buildings. Our smartskins adjusted their camo scheme every millisecond to match our surroundings. They were pretty astonishing in their accuracy. Had Max’s GPS blip not been flashing in my VR, I might not have even known he was there.

  Getting in undetected would be the easy part, though.

  We were betting everything on how I’d perform.

  ***

  These weren’t the snow-shrouded December streets I’d grown up with. The temperature was above freezing, even this late. If those clouds overhead congealed, we’d be treated to nasty cold rain.

  We moved single file through Kew Gardens’ commercial district. The faux-Tudor buildings would’ve been quaint if not for the rusted fire escapes plastered across their faces. Add the garish, primary-colored awnings that crested the nail emporiums, chicken shacks and bail bondsmen, and this community neatly homogenized itself into the rest of Queens.

  The Gardens had started in the 1900s as a Greenwich Village wannabe, attracting artists like George Gershwin, Dorothy Parker and Charlie Chaplin. But it didn’t lived up to its bohemian infancy. In the 1960s it had been home to Kitty Genovese, the murder victim whose cries for help went unanswered by over twenty witnesses. Whose name became the symbol of a nation’s slide from Mayberry to mayhem.

  Now the Kew Convenience Mart was a fire-gutted tomb and the washers and dryers of the Super Size Laundromat were trash-buried monoliths for future archeologists to puzzle over. Our clothing briefly held their images as we moved silently past.

  I held up my fist when we reached the end of Lefferts Boulevard. Struldbrug blinked into my periphery via the uplink.

 
; “Take a right at the intersection onto Kew Gardens Road. The mansion is two blocks down on your side of the street.”

  Across the road, the cemetery took up the next eight blocks to our right. A stanchioned metal plaque held the cemetery’s name. The stems of the M, P and Y were elongated by rust drippings, nature’s own creepy Halloween font. Weeds had claimed the spaces between the gate and fencing before they’d died.

  Home sweet home.

  In the city, selling “pre-owned” burial plots had become a needed source of revenue for mortuary owners, ever since they’d gone from landscapers to landlords. Hence, used graves. The open plots awaiting resale were covered with holograms of lawn. It was cheaper than moving dirt.

  But not in this place. Whatever holes had been empty at the time of the Shift would never be filled, except by nature.

  Maybe.

  Back at the citadel, when Struldbrug told me where we were going—and its significance to me—I did a Conch search. Now I pulled out a piece of paper from a pocket and dialed up my optics to read what I’d copied down.

  “Something wrong?” asked Maggie.

  I folded the paper away. “Not a thing.”

  ***

  Another half-block down the street, the brick wall at our sides became the Lifetaker.

  “Our advance man,” said Max with revulsion.

  “Well?” I said.

  “They have a slaved AI working their antiviral security.”

  “Slaved?” Even through her camo routine I saw Maggie whiten.

  “I couldn’t get past the firewalls.”

  “Pretty much what we thought,” said Struldbrug in my ear. “What about security?”

  “Two guards on the lot, both out front. In the mansion: three downstairs, two upstairs with McDermott. Only one is out back in the carriage house, with our target.”

  “What about the bunker?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t risk getting in to see. The AI would’ve caught my scent. But by process of elimination, that’s where Nicole is. The bunker.”

  “Wait a sec. You said Nicole was in the carriage house,” said Maggie.

  “I said the target was in the carriage house,” said the Lifetaker.

  She blinked. “Nicole’s not the target?”

  I gave her a “hold all questions” look. She didn’t like it.

  “Why doesn’t she have a whole platoon guarding the place?” I asked Struldbrug.

  “It won’t mesh with her story after the attack. Besides, she has faith in McDermott’s tech,” said the Lifetaker.

  “So what,” said Maggie. “If you can’t get in there, we sure as hell won’t be able to.”

  “Nicole will come to us,” I said.

  Maggie looked again but said nothing.

  “Did you divert the sensors?” asked Struldbrug.

  “Masked,” replied the Lifetaker, which I took for an affirmative. “We’re clear until we reach the live security.”

  We moved on, hugging the wall.

  55

  CONCH BEAM

  ** WEBSQUIRT/LIVE FEED/INSERT PEBBLE/NOW FOR/ACCESS THANK/YOU **

  Perfect glowing female smarty face:

  >Wow, Kinner, Times Square hasn’t looked this good in fifty years!<

  Perfect rugged male smarty jawline:

  >I’ll say, Mala! They really pulled out all the stops for this one!<

  >Reminds me of the old flatflicks of New Year’s Eve!<

  >Hey, yeah, that’s right! When the silver ball dropped!<

  >Well, tonight’s event should be a lot glitzier than that!<

  > Hellfire yes, Kinner! Hey, speaking of, guess who’ll be with us later for commentary?<

  >Who, Mala?>

  >Dick Clark!<

  >No way!<

  >Yes way!<

  >That reeb doesn’t look a day over twenty!<

  > Well, he could youthe a year when the Blister goes online tonight! It’ll be SPECTATOR-TACULAR!<

  >Ha ha! Good one, Mala! Hey, good ole Broadway looks filled to capacity! Must be hundreds of thousands of onlookers, all jostling to get a look at our Commander-in-Beef!<

  >President Hawkins and Adam Struldbrug, President of Surazal, of course, will be speaking to the world from the lounge platform on the 8th floor of the Marriott Marquis!<

  >Yes, Mala, when that EM disc floats out from the eighth floor, we’ll get our first ever realtime live view of these famous men! If I had skin, I’d have goose bumps!<

  >Yuck! Keep your piloerections to yourself, Kinner!”

  >Haw haw!<

  56

  ADAM

  Adam Struldbrug loathed public ceremonies. He was always more comfortable working behind the scenes, so much so that, other than his entourage and vast army of employees, no more than a handful of Necropolitans would have recognized him on the street.

  That was not the case for the man he was currently beside.

  “What a remarkable day,” said the President of the United States.

  Adam nodded.

  He didn’t like the President and the President didn’t like him. The President was a man for whom aggression, necessary in his world, had become a reflexive, blunt tool instead of a fine-edged weapon to be used only in time of necessity. He no longer crushed enemies—both actual and perceived—because he had to, but because he had developed a taste for blood. Because of that, he was not a true predator of nature, like Adam was. Adam killed only when necessary. He had recognized the same quality in the man Donner. Both were skilled and lethal, but had developed control and restraint. The President had the insatiable air of a buffalo hunter who killed and killed and killed and then took only the hides, leaving whole herds to rot under the hot sun.

  Adam believed this bloodlust, and the fact that the President had never in his life lost a contest (either political or personal) made the man too comfortable in his preeminence. He had forgotten, as Adam had not, that there was always another wolf below planning to make his move to the alpha position.

  But politics made strange bedfellows, so here they were behind protective glass high above Times Square, smiling and waving down at the churning throngs below, their holoimages splashed across every building in the area.

  Far above them, technicians were waiting for their cue to connect the last fibers of buckypaper, completing the inner skin of the Blister domes and bringing the monolithic structure finally and completely online.

  It was just for show, of course, like the golden spike that had been hammered into the last tie plate of the Transcontinental Railroad almost two hundred years. But symbols were important.

  Hence his presence today.

  The tops of the thousands of wasps that hovered over the crowd caught the sun. From his higher position, they made it look like the crowd was covered by shimmering fireflies of gold. Nicole had insisted on the protective measure, which had surprised him, because she didn’t care about anyone. When she explained it was an opportunity to show off the new technology to potential customers all over the world, he’d demurred.

  He wished that they could just get this thing over with so he could make his short speech, turn the show over to the President, and get out of this monkey suit.

  The Secret Service agent closest to the President touched the dermal implant at his temple, listening. Adam had been wondering whether the man’s mouth was just for show, merely a line drawn in granite, so immobile had it been, but now it curved downward into a scowl.

  “Mr. President, Mr. Struldbrug’s personal assistant insists on seeing him.”

  The President turned to Adam, waiting for him to dismiss the intrusion. But Roberts would never dare interrupt them unless it was an absolute emergency.

  “It must be serious,” he said.

  The President sighed, but nodded.

  Roberts was ushered onto the observation platform flanked by more agents.

  Roberts looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

  57

  DONNER

  The Victorian mans
ion was as conspicuous as a stockbroker on skid row. It was a Second Empire anachronism, the only freestanding house on the block. The government hadn’t cared. They’d just needed something intimidating the locals would stay away from. Hadn’t worked of course. Its Virginia brick face had been tagged and scrubbed more times than a call girl’s.

  I scanned the mansard roof, the dormer windows. It was four stories, narrow and high. Two guards stood post on the dead lawn between the steps and the sidewalk, in front of the left and right quoins, twenty feet apart.

  “Can’t take them out,” Max streamed in my ear. “With their wetwiring, any changes in body function will be noticed.”

  “I’ll have to neutralize the guard in the back house—no choice,” I said. “That’s as much as we can risk. One man down could be a glitch, trigger a diagnostic instead of an alarm, but three? We’d hear the sirens from here. So we wait ’til break time and then camo past.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later I was beginning to think the guards were really scarecrows. Then the one nearest to us yawned elaborately and ambled away to his partner in front of the far bay window. They lit cigarettes. Their lighters almost overloaded my night optics.

  “Breathe shallowly,” I subvocalized as we moved.

  I felt like the Invisible Man, slinking slowly, softly, step by silent step up the driveway to the porte-cochere, where we’d be beyond their sight. It took forever. Finally we were beyond the edge of the building. We passed blacked-out casement windows in the foundation. The basement was a lie. Beneath it was the real basement—the secret fall-out shelter. The driveway was empty.

  When we reached the rear corner of the mansion, I held up my hand. I felt Maggie press lightly against my back, her breath on my collar. Max held the rear, backpedaling, his rifle trained on the sidewalk in case our guard was a speed-smoker.

  There were no guards between the mansion and the carriage house, some fifteen feet arrears. Just empty lawn. McDermott was relying solely on his sensors, which the Lifetaker had masked.