Wake the Dead

by Victoria Buck

  “How do you communicate with other believers? Have you heard anything about the Underground Church in Atlanta?”

  “So much for me asking the questions. We’ve got old cell towers in use. Hackers make it work on our VPads. Any call that comes in from an unapproved base, the call disconnects before the receiver can be tracked. Of course, some of us have to keep tapped into commerce bases. Even then, if a call came from what we consider a hostile source, like a direct WR base, it’d get cut off.”

  “So that’s what happened,” Chase said as he thought of the last time he’d heard his mother’s voice.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. What about the church? Any rumors flying around?”

  “Heard the underground caught fire. They found two bodies. People are saying the rest of the group probably died from the smoke.” She sighed and wiped her face with her sleeve. “I don’t know if they’ll even go in there to look for them.”

  “Good.”

  She turned her eyes on him, and her anger showed. “I kind of got the feeling you weren’t totally against us? Was I wrong?”

  “No. What I meant was it will give them more time if the authorities think they’re dead. They’re on a bus headed for the mountains.” Chase looked out the plane’s windshield. “All but one of them—their leader. The other dead man’s a cop.”

  “So you were there.”

  “Bear, their leader, died saving my life. And I killed the cop.”

  “I’ve heard of Bear. Heard he was a good man. If he died to save you, he did the right thing. He followed Christ. As for the cop, you did what you had to do, I’m sure.”

  Chase watched the graying sky for the rest of the flight. He spoke little. Windsong hummed a soothing tune. She occasionally stopped her song and prodded him with questions about how he’d managed to hide from the government and how long he’d been involved with the Underground Church. She even asked him when he’d become a believer.

  “You’re making assumptions,” he told her.

  The plane came down on a private strip outside of the city. Chase thanked his pilot, strapped on his flight pack, and headed for Brooklyn. He’d used the exoself to locate a church house a mile from the WR office where Mel worked after her reassignment. The same office Kerstin now occupied.

  S-drones were numerous in and around New York City. If the ones in Atlanta had scanned him and reported his identity, the ones here would soon be after him. He came down a block from the church house. According to Mel’s information trail, the place was behind a clinic. The digital hologram in front of the building read Clarkson Avenue Family Clinic. The place closed at six o’clock. He’d find something to keep himself busy until dark. Eating seemed like a good thing to do.

  He walked the streets, stepping inside a small deli and ordering a turkey sub. No one seemed to mind the mask. The people here didn’t even look at him. No wonder—others passed by in stranger getups than his. A man in a dog collar, and little else, barked to hail a cab. A pretty girl walked toward Chase with a live snake curled around her neck. Even the cyber guards on most every corner had no interest in Chase. He found a public bathroom in a park and huddled in a stall. The face shield rested on the back of the toilet while he ate his sandwich.

  Night fell on the city, and Chase headed back for the clinic. He watched from across the street for a while. The people who took the alley to the back of the building, unlike everyone else in the city, seemed aware that a masked man watched them. The way news traveled among these people, he thought they might know who he was. Maybe they were expecting him.

  But one by one, two by two, they looked his way, and then disappeared into the alley. He crossed the street and fell in line with a group of five. They all turned to look at him. Five laser weapons came out.

  Chase didn’t waste time pulling off the mask.

  51

  When the people of the Brooklyn church house stopped their murmuring, Chase heard the news he’d been expecting. Mel and his mother—they called her Birdy since she sang all the time—were in Quebec. They’d been gone a week.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “Disappointed, yes, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t be here.”

  “Then why’d you come?” a man asked.

  “I hitched a ride on a cargo plane, and this is as far as it went. I thought I’d better at least check to see if they were still here.” Chase looked over the forty people in the room. “I’m headed for Quebec—place called Blue Sky Field. A truck leaves from Manhattan in three hours.”

  A young woman with a skeptical look in her eye approached. “Did you find that out from the stuff Melody put in you?”

  “Yes, I did.” Chase walked to the center of the room. “Is there anything I can tell you; anything I can do for you before I go?”

  “You can try not to set us on fire.” The request came from a young man with big silver lightning bolts dangling from his ears and a tattoo of a cross on his arm.

  Chase turned and walked to the wall and then faced the crowd with his arms folded.

  The man who’d spoken first was quick to chide this candid believer. “Shut up, Fryer. We don’t even know what happened.” The older man walked to Chase. “We heard the believers in Underground Atlanta got burned up by the WR forces looking for you. Is it true, Mr. Sterling?”

  “They’re all safe. All except for their leader, Bear. He was killed. I got a bus to move the rest of the people.” Chase looked at the young man called Fryer. “I sent them to an old resort in the mountains. And I set fire to their hiding place. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  “How do you know they’re safe?” Fryer asked.

  “I got a message from the computer system run by the hackers who provided the bus.”

  The Christians of Brooklyn stood there looking at him. “I’ll go now,” Chase said. He headed for the door.

  The older man stopped him. “We could use some supplies. We’ve got a huge body of believers out of the system here. They need food and clothes, and we’re the ones to get stuff to them. You got anything in you to indicate where we could restock?”

  “Mel and my mother took a great deal of supplies with them, is that right? I’m showing supplies were delivered to Blue Sky Field.”

  “Yes. We were expecting a shipment on a train two days ago. It got confiscated.”

  Chase searched the trails and found the confiscated material, courtesy of a hacker in the Bronx. “Your supplies are in a WR warehouse. Five guards surround the place, but I can shut them down.”

  Three of the men accompanied Chase to the warehouse. One drove the ugly old truck in need of brakes. The other two sat in the back and questioned Chase about his involvement in the underground.

  When they reached the place where the goods were hidden, the guards were disabled, the cameras, too, and the food and other essentials were loaded onto the truck.

  “I’ll fly to Manhattan from here,” Chase told the men. “You should be fine getting the supplies back to your base.”

  The men kept loading, scarcely looking at Chase. But the truck driver muttered his thanks. Chase knew he’d have to work at gaining the trust and respect of some of these groups. But surely they realized how much they needed him. He lifted into the night and headed for the tallest buildings. He dodged other flyers—a skill he’d rather not have the occasion to master.

  He came to an area clearly marked for night landings, and brought his feet to the top of a skyscraper on the east side of the island. Other flyers came down as some lifted away, their packs emitting a glow in the darkness. Street landing after dark was illegal—Chase knew that much. He’d have to take the elevator to the ground level and walk six blocks to the pick-up spot.

  The exoself seemed to quiver, if that was possible. A processor sparked. Something wasn’t right. Chase looked around the lighted landing pad. Lockers were to his left for storing flight packs. A bathroom on his right flashed a display to indicate availability. And a massive
recognition scanner encircled the whole rooftop. Chase stood motionless, surrounded by machines that could run his fingerprints, iris pattern, and DNA in a matter of seconds. And he didn’t have to consent or even be near the device.

  He—the exoself—shut the thing down. But it was probably too late.

  He walked to the nearest exit and swiped the lighted panel. None of the multiple elevator doors opened. He turned to the door leading to a hundred and fifty staircases. The sound of the door bolting shut let him know he needn’t bother. The flight pack needed a charge but he slipped it on and powered it anyway. He lifted three feet off the roof, and then the pack shut down. He fell to the rooftop and his knees buckled as he hit.

  He was trapped.

  No other flyers were there on the roof. The ones who’d landed shortly before or after Chase had made it into the elevators before the doors quit opening on command. The blue beams that moments ago lit the pad had retracted so flyers would know they needed to land elsewhere. He listened to the sounds at street level. No rush of police cars seemed headed his way. But they wouldn’t come with great force. They’d send a liaison to bring him in quietly. Now that the WR had his location pinpointed, it wouldn’t be that long before somebody joined him on this rooftop.

  Chase climbed to the observation platform where a translucent barrier came to his waist. He broke the lock on a power outlet and plugged in his pack. Maybe a ten minute charge would get him to the truck and out of this awful city. But after only seven minutes, an elevator door opened behind him. He turned around.

  Kerstin.

  52

  She swiped her VPad and then jabbed it with her fingernail. Her hair lifted from her shoulders in rhythmic waves as the night air came over her. She walked toward him.

  “It won’t work, Kerstin. You can’t shut me down.”

  Darkness fell across her sallow cheeks. Her steps were slow, her breathing labored.

  “Then I’ll call the guards from below to come and carry you away,” she said.

  Chase sparked the exoself. “I just shut down every guard within a block of here.”

  “So I’ll call the NYPD. You cannot keep running, Chase. Just come with me.”

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I was in a cab a block from here when I got the call that you’d been detained, and I asked if I could be the one to bring you in. It was providence, Chase. Come with me.”

  “I can’t, Kerstin. I have to do this. Nobody can stop me.”

  She came onto the platform. “What is it that you’re doing?”

  “I’m helping people.”

  “What sort of people, Chase?”

  “The ousted. Those surviving underground. Those still in the system who are barely hanging on for the sake of the ones gone rogue. Believers.”

  “That was not the plan, Chase. Not at all. You we’re not created to become a hero for the poor and misguided. Certainly not for a bunch of rogue Bible thumpers. That’s not why we made you.”

  “Then I’m an accidental hero. I don’t care why you made me, Kerstin. I only care about what I can do now.”

  “Do you care about Robert?”

  Chase stepped so close he could feel her breath on his face. “What have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything. They’ve got him confined to his lab. They’re searching for evidence that he reprogrammed you and let you go. No one believes you could have gained access to the exoself on your own.”

  “It came back to me, its host, and we don’t need anybody telling us what to do. Not Robert, not the WR or the network. Not you. I’m fully independent of systems outside myself.” Chase reached for the flight pack and strapped it on. He climbed onto the rim of the skyscraper. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? An evolutionary leap? Well, I made it. Consider your experiment a success.”

  Kerstin came after him. She grabbed his arms and a desperate cry came from deep in her throat. “I will not let you do this!”

  In her rage she stumbled, and her heel turned under. Chase dropped to his knees and grabbed her arm as she slipped over the edge.

  She dangled there, her spiked heels scraping against the glassy wall. “Chase, please, don’t let go,” she cried. “Don’t let me go.”

  He pulled her up, wrapped his arm around her waist, and set her on her feet.

  She brought both hands over her mouth and sobbed.

  “You’re the one who has to let go, Kerstin.”

  “I can’t, Chase. I’ll lose everything.”

  “And what if I go with you? They’ll pull me apart. Study me. Try to fix me. For what? I know they’re already putting NPs in cops. Things are moving ahead so fast that before long, I’ll be obsolete.” He looked for a glimmer of empathy. “Tell them I got away. Tell them I’m just a man who wants his life back. And then leave me alone. For God’s sake, Kerstin, just leave me alone.”

  “Chase, I can’t face the WR without you. You said you want your life back. If I bring you in, they’ll give me back my life.”

  “No, Kerstin. People need me, and I’m going to help them.”

  She wiped the tears from her face and crossed her arms. “Funny, I thought those people already had a hero,” she said. “Didn’t he already save them?”

  He grabbed her and pulled her close and then reached into the pocket of her black silk blazer and pulled out her VPad. He tossed it over the edge. “You need a kidney.” He pushed away and looked her in the eye. “I’m serious. Go to Robert. Tell him I said to give you one.”

  Her face turned down, and she wrapped her arms tight around her trembling body. She said nothing else. Nor did she stand in his way. He tied on the face shield and prayed he had enough power to fly off this building.

  “Good-bye, Kerstin.” With the pack powered, he went over the side. Dropping to thirty feet above street level, he flew between buildings until he spotted the waiting truck. He came down in the middle of a crowd. No one cared. The city was a noisy tangle of night prowlers and drunken revelers. Chase climbed into the back of the truck with a few others. Like the group in Brooklyn, these people were quiet and seemed on the defense against a man in a cyber-guard face shield. Chase said nothing. He didn’t show his face. Before he drifted into restless sleep, he only thought of Kerstin, the look in her eyes, the sickness in her body. The fact that she’d let him go.

  And her disconcerting insinuation that the people he was trying to protect already had a hero.

  53

  When Chase came fully awake, two of his six fellow travelers were gone. Four Hispanic men huddled in a corner at the far end of the big rig. They no longer seem concerned about the lone masked man. Good thing—Chase had grown weary of explanations.

  The truck arrived in Montreal and pulled to a stop. Chase pushed up the rear door and lowered his feet to the ground. Daylight smacked him and the cold air added another punch. The rest of the men remained in their corner. Chase pulled the door shut, and the truck drove off. He’d been deposited in an alley, out of sight of pedestrians and drivers. He hadn’t noticed these past few days as he traveled from west to east to north that the climate was changing. Now the autumn chill gave an undeniable first impression of the Far North Territory. Chase hoped the people of the north were just as blasé about the mask as the New Yorkers. But he didn’t plan to stay in Montreal long enough to find out.

  He found a pay-for-power outlet and deposited the last of his WR bills. A half hour later, he powered his pack and left the city beneath him. The exoself pointed him to a town called Herouxville. That’s where he’d find the open field under the blue sky. Well, today the sky may not be so blue. Low clouds hung in the northeast. Chase followed them.

  He arrived in the little farming town by midafternoon. The site of the underground hiding place called Blue Sky Field was not in the information trail. The locations of the main branches of the Underground Church were kept secret, even from the exoself. But the location of an untitled church house appeared with sketchy directions. This
land seemed right to reveal the beautiful place in his dreams. Even though white cirrus clouds now covered the sky with angel wings, the fields were as wide and welcoming. The hills surrounding the open land were familiar, even though Chase had never been here.

  He set down on a narrow street and wondered if he should wait until dark to approach the small house at the end of the row. But he’d waited long enough. He walked to the door and knocked. A small woman, old and bent, peered through a window. She shook her head. She would not open her door, it seemed.

  Chase removed the face shield and stood before her.

  The woman lifted her hands and bounced on the other side of the glass. The door opened, and she pulled Chase inside and slammed the door closed in one motion.

  “Birdy told me to watch for you,” she said with the slightest French accent. “She told me you’d come, but I didn’t believe her.”

  Relief was instant and undeniable, and Chase couldn’t hide it. A tear fell to his cheek as he dropped his pack to the floor.

  The woman patted his shoulder. “You want some tea? I’ve got cookies in the oven.”

  “Where’s my mother?” He let the old woman drag him to the parlor, and he collapsed into a soft chair.

  “In good time, Mr. Redding.”

  “No one’s called me that in a long time. Did Mom tell you my real name?”

  “Yes, of course it was your mother who told me. Melody just refers to you as her boss.”

  Chase laughed and cried altogether. “Is she all right?”

  The little gray-headed lady seemed flustered by this. “Which one? Birdy or Melody?”

  He wiped his tears and laughed again. “Both.”

  “Oh, they’re as fine as can be,” she said. “Living the way they do.”

  “How are things here? In the underground, I mean. I’ve been worried I wouldn’t get here before it got bad.”