by James Knapp
Understood.
Kill Fawkes. Get control of that transmitter back. Our best bet might end up being a good reason not to launch in the first place. Got it?
I got it.
Last chance—anything else?
Snow whipped by the window as wind whistled on the other side.
Yeah, one thing, I said.
Go ahead.
Can you direct a metro car to the city limits? Could you get someone through the blockade?
Why?
I’d like to get someone out of the city. It would be a favor.
Flax?
Yes. There were a bunch of reasons why she’d say no, but in the end, she surprised me.
I’ll see what I can do, she said. Good luck, Agent. She cut the connection.
The black disc of Heinlein’s tarmac loomed as the rail car glided closer.
Calliope Flax—Underground Metro
I came to on the tail end of a bad dream.
In it, I was back at my place in Wilamil Court, where I shoved open the door, then kicked it shut behind me. I’d scored some Zombie Makers from Al back at the Porco Rojo. The old man, Buckster, would be by later, and he had some kind of intel Nico wanted. I figured I’d loosen his tongue a little.
Two steps in, I stopped short. Some scrawny, spooky chick was parked in front of the TV. She had a cartoon on with the sound down low.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked. She looked up over her shoulder at me.
“I didn’t think you were ever coming back,” she said. “Where the hell did you go?”
My dead hand ticked like crazy and I was in no mood for bullshit. I clomped across the floor toward her, my other fist clenched.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
She rolled her eyes, and I lost it. I took one more step and got ready to plant the toe of my boot in her ass when her eyes changed.
She had blue eyes; I remembered that. She stared up from under a wool cap, and the blue parts turned black. When that happened, I got dizzy. I slowed down and stopped a foot away from her.
“That’s just your answer to everything, isn’t it?” she asked. She got up. I heard more people in the next room and a jingle, like metal. It came from behind the flag I’d hung on one wall. It was the flag I’d used to carry that girl out of Juba.
The spooky chick followed my eyes and looked back at it.
“Yeah, sad story,” she said. “You could have washed the blood out anyway.”
“I don’t want to wash it.”
“Keeping it real, huh?” she said. “What’s the point? You didn’t save her; you just put off the inevitable.”
“I saved her life.”
“A single life doesn’t mean much.”
“Fuck you.”
The girl smirked. “Can’t argue with that,” she said. She yelled over her shoulder. “You guys ready for her?”
“Yes.”
It was a guy’s voice. It came from the wall behind the flag.
“What the hell?”
She stared at me and stepped closer. The dizziness got worse. I felt drunk.
“How about you follow me into the next room?” she asked. I felt myself nod.
“Sure.”
She stepped around the corner, across from the bathroom, and moved the flag out of the way. There was a door back there, behind it. I remembered I thought that was wrong. There was no door back there. I wouldn’t have put the flag up in front of a goddamned door. If I had an extra room, I’d use the damned thing.
The girl smirked again.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s no door. This door isn’t here.”
There were a few padlocks on it, but they were all open. She turned the handle and pushed it open. When she did, it pushed a sheet of clear plastic out of the way in front of it.
“Inside,” she said. I felt myself nod again.
My feet moved like they were on their own. I walked up to the door and when I got close, I saw a bunch of guys in white coats in there.
“In.”
My feet moved again. I stepped through the slit in the plastic, into a room I’d never seen. It didn’t make sense. I’d moved in and set the whole place up. I’d have known if there was a room there….
The walls and floor were covered in clear plastic. There was a gurney in the middle with an IV rack next to it. There were three guys inside. They all wore white and had on face masks.
My eyes moved to a tray next to the gurney. There were scalpels lined up on it, and a needle. The spooky girl followed me in and walked up to the gurney. She patted it with one hand.
“Hop up,” she said. “Let’s get this party started.”
My eyes opened and I woke with a start. It was cold, and I was facedown on the hard ground. Off in the dark somewhere, a bottle skittered across concrete, then popped against a wall. My head throbbed.
Goddamn it …
I pushed myself up off the ground and saw a palmsized pool of blood around a squashed piece of gum. I wiped at my forehead and it came away red. My dead hand felt like it had pins and needles. At some point, someone put a coat over me. I let it hang off my shoulders.
1 message(s) outstanding.
The words floated over the stained concrete. I pulled the message and opened it. It was from Nico.
Cal, in case we don’t talk again, I want you to know I’m glad we met. Neither one of us is good at this kind of thing, but you mean a lot to me.
My head was still spinning, but a knot formed in my throat.
“You’re such a fucking sap,” I muttered. I kept reading.
I have your location, and I’m sending a metro car to pick you up. This is over, Cal. I don’t want you to get caught up in it. The car will take you to a platform across the river. I hope I’ll see you on the other side.
“Son of a bitch …”
Back on the platform, people were huddled up. The revivors were gone, but they’d drawn some blood. One guy lay on his back, alone and not moving. The rest licked their wounds. One woman had a bite mark on her face, and a fat man had a scarf wrapped around his bloody hand. It looked like he might have lost a finger.
I heaved myself back up on my feet and took a second to let the head rush pass.
“You okay?” The voice echoed in the dark, and I turned to see a gray-haired man in the shadows nearby.
“Yeah,” I said. Something banged down in the tunnel. The old man pointed toward the sound, and I saw a nasty bite on his hand.
“They went that way,” he said. I nodded.
“This your coat?”
“You looked like you could use it,” he said. I shrugged it off and handed it back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You with the military?”
“Kind of.”
I looked around and saw a couple bodies down next to the tracks. There were a few more on the platform where the concrete was splattered with blood. I didn’t see the kid.
“How long was I out?” I asked the old man.
“Not long. Few minutes.”
“The kid I was with,” I said. “Where’d she go?”
“She got dragged that way,” he said, pointing down the track. “I didn’t see. Things got pretty crazy.”
Down on the tracks a guy lay on his back, not breathing. I could see the black spots in his eyes, and blood was smeared around his mouth, which still hung open.
“This is fucked,” I said under my breath. Pain drilled into my head as I got back up on my feet. I didn’t get bitten, and I still had my gun, and my knife.
“Never seen ones like that before,” the old man said. I ran a check on my JZI and eased some painkiller into my bloodstream. A map of the tunnels was there, with the platform called out where the car would be waiting, and something else …orders for my squad—Singh, Ramirez, and the rest. I was still on the roster, it looked like. The ones that were left all got regrouped and sent to Alto Do Mundo on some kind of extraction mission.
&nb
sp; “Thanks for the coat,” I said to the old man. I drew my gun and jumped down next to the track. “Watch yourself.”
I turned up the light filter so I could see where I was going and started down the track in the direction the old man had pointed. I stepped over a couple more bodies, both male. When the tunnel curved and the platform was out of sight back behind me, I layered a thermal filter over the night vision and saw a thin trail. Someone came down this way alive. My boot splashed into a puddle of cold, dirty water as I followed it.
It had gotten quiet. The sounds from the platform back down the tunnel echoed a little, and somewhere up ahead, in the dark, I could hear far-off movement. I scanned the tracks, but all I could see were bottles, a couple syringes, and an old sneaker next to a tipped-over shopping cart. The trail of heat was starting to spread out, specks scattered over the floor and the concrete wall next to me. Blood.
As I walked, I repositioned the subway map to show where I was. I packed up the feed from my Stillwell squad and got ready to shut it down when a name jumped out at me.
ZOE OTT
“What the fuck?” My voice echoed down the tunnel as I stopped short. I rechecked the orders, and I hadn’t read them wrong. My squad had been sent to Alto Do Mundo, up to the penthouse, to “incapacitate or kill Zoe Ott, along with anyone else who might be tied to the launch.”
“Too much,” I muttered. Singh was one of them, for fuck’s sake, and so were the rest. Were they turning on each other now?
It wasn’t my problem. I shut down the feed and looked around, picking up the heat signatures again. If Nico said go, it was time to go, but I wasn’t going alone. I had one more thing to do.
The blobs on the thermal scan got bright just around the corner, and I could see it spread all over. There were boot tracks going around and through it. In the middle, there was a small body.
“Kid?” My voice echoed down the tunnel.
I moved closer and stepped on something soft. When I looked down, I saw it was Vika’s coat. A few feet from that was a boot, then a torn shirt.
“Kid?”
The toe of my boot hit something, and I stumbled toward the body. It was still warm. I couldn’t tell if the heart was still beating or not. When I got close, I shut off the thermal display and opened the light filter until I could make out a face.
It was hers. Half of it anyway. The other half was chewed off.
“Kid?” I said, but she was dead. I could see she was dead. I shook her anyway and felt sticky blood under my palms. They’d stripped her down so they could get to the skin. The meat had been pulled away from one shoulder and arm so I could see the bone. The one eye she had left was stuck open in shock.
Vika’s body blurred in front of me, and I felt tears in my eyes. I slammed my fist against the cold ground next to her so hard I saw stars.
“Goddamn it!” I screamed, and my voice echoed down the tunnel.
10
APPROACH
Nico Wachalowski—Heinlein Industries, Pratsky Building
Cracks in the tarmac thumped under the tires as I picked up speed, easing around a large, glassy crater. Snow accumulated on the wiper blades as I huffed past the burned-out husk of a jeep that lay on its side.
Heinlein proper was mostly dark, but I could make out the red lights that ran up the length of the transmitter. The huge curve of the dish was just visible against the moonlight. They hadn’t destroyed it yet.
Normally Heinlein’s security deactivated any nonregistered JZIs inside the perimeter, but it looked like the field was down with the rest of their systems. I pulled up an aerial view and began scanning for revivor signatures.
There were hundreds of them clustered inside the processing plant and some of the surrounding buildings as well. Pratsky was empty, though; the Leichenesser had worked. Signatures clung to the outside of the building where the ones that made it were forced to retreat. It was possible they hadn’t detected me.
I had the computer sift through the signatures and start pulling IDs. Most of them either weren’t on file or had been moved over from the processing plant earlier. I didn’t care about them.
“Come on …” The filter flagged an entry and brought it to the front as a ragged shelf of blacktop appeared in front of the car. I cut the wheel, fishtailing on the wet snow.
Fawkes, Samuel.
He was there, outside Pratsky. There were three other revivors with him. They were separated from the bulk of them, who looked like they were beginning to crowd around the entrances. They were preparing for the coming assault, but not Fawkes. He was moving away from the rest, following the building’s perimeter back toward the rear of the facility.
The transmitter. He was heading for the dish.
I pulled up the layout of the Pratsky Building. Like the other structures at Heinlein, it was built low to the ground. A lot of it was underground, but it still covered a significant area; it would take him a while to make it all the way around. The transmitter could be accessed from the southern side of the building, which was a straight shot from an underground entrance in the northwestern parking garage. Fawkes couldn’t cut through because of the Leichenesser, but I could.
I veered around another huge scar burned into the tarmac’s surface. The guard posts were dark and the floodlights were out, but with the help of the computer I was able to call out the ramp up ahead. A group of signatures had massed down there, but they hadn’t organized in force yet.
A concrete pylon whipped past on the driver’s side as I aimed for the garage entrance and gunned it. Through the snow, I made out a pair of eyes as they flashed in the dark up ahead, then a second pair.
Gunfire punched through the car’s side, but I didn’t see the source. Before the revivor in front of me could take aim, it was crushed against the grille. I saw it tumble across the hood, and its head left a divot in the windshield before it spun past the passenger’s window. The car caught air for a second as the ramp descended, then the undercarriage scraped the concrete and the car lurched toward the guardrail.
The right headlight popped out as I glanced the rail. I hit the brakes and turned as the ramp circled around, tires shrieking as I flew out between two rows of parked cars. More eyes stared from the darkness ahead. The computer put three of them at the entrance.
One of them fired, and a bullet punched through the windshield a foot to my left. I accelerated, bearing down on the two I could see as car alarms squealed behind me. When I hit the first one, I stomped on the brake. The momentum carried us into the second one before the car slammed into the pylons in front of the entrance. I felt the rear tires come up off the ground and the seatbelt dig hard into my chest as I was thrown forward.
A spray of black splashed across the windshield as the rear tires crashed down. I could hear footsteps moving outside the car as I groped for the seat belt and released the catch. Fingers had already begun to claw at the door when I pushed it open and drew my gun, sticking the nose through the crack and pulling the trigger three times. A dark shape fell back, but more footsteps were close behind it.
The entrance was up ahead. I climbed over the body crumpled between the pylons and ran. The glass door was shut, the scanner dark. I pulled it open as several figures darted from between the vehicles parked to my left and began to run toward me. An organic smell blew over me as I ran through.
Halfway through the small lobby, I heard something slam into the door behind me. I turned and saw several figures at the door, eyes glowing in the darkness. I caught the rustle of cloth as a cold hand clamped down on my wrist and something big crashed into me.
I fell back onto the floor as fingers pawed at my face. I managed to land two shots but it didn’t stop. Teeth flashed as the body pushed down, forcing its way closer.
Something began to hiss, and I felt cold air with the stench of decomposition blow into my face. Through our tangled arms I saw white mist bubbling from the skin of the revivor’s face. The door slammed behind it.
It leaned bac
k, holding up one hand and watching as the fingers shriveled, then dissolved to expose the yellowed bone underneath. There was no comprehension on its face.
Before it could react, I slammed my fist into its chest. The softened tissue underneath gave way and a jagged edge of bone cut into my knuckle. It tipped back, the shirt collapsing around the dark pocket in its torso. Kicking back, I broke free and climbed back up on my feet. The hiss had gotten loud as the revivor was consumed, disappearing into the mist.
I ducked through the doorway and into the building. A small fire smoldered in the far corner, throwing shadows between rows of cubicles where shell casings were littered. Shapes were sprawled across the floor.
I approached the closest figure. It looked like a body in uniform, but when I nudged it with my toe, I found the clothes were empty. The shirt and pants were still in the shape of a man, pant cuffs still tucked into the boots, but the only things left inside were pieces of metal. A mechanism that housed a long bayonet poked from the end of one sleeve. There were more uniforms crumpled on the floor ahead. It looked like they were headed farther into the building when it happened.
A gun went off somewhere up ahead, and I ducked through the office door next to me. A bullet punched through the cubicle wall on the other side and into the computer monitor on the desk behind it. Two more shots went off; then I heard someone mutter something.
“Hold your fire. I’m a Federal Agent!” I yelled.
The office window exploded and the cubicle across from me was riddled with bullets. I spotted the shooter, a young male, taking cover behind a support column. I fired and clipped his arm. Blood dotted the drywall as he pulled back, but not fast enough. I put the next bullet in his head, and he staggered back against the wall before crumpling to the ground.