ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  DeAndre shoulders his way in. Aleena protests and he mutters an apology, but starts pulling up stuff, pushing her aside. “There’s nothing here. It’s a box with an operating system.”

  “There’s something,” Aleena says. “The hard drive shows that it’s almost full.”

  “Packed with data we can’t see?” he says. “We need root access—whoa, what the hell, man, this thing is locked up tighter than Hannibal Lecter. Look at all these permissions and shit.”

  Reagan scowls. “Well, start picking the locks, Houdini. You need an invite? Somebody to hold your hand?”

  DeAndre leans forward, starts to open a bunch of his hacker programs—the digital-world analog of lockpicks and safecracker tools. The screen flickers. “Hey,” he protests. “What the—”

  The screen goes dark. The lights in the pod go off. Only light left in the room is the one from Shane Graves’s laptop.

  “Jesus,” Chance says. “I think I let out a little pee.”

  Aleena says, “Someone’s doing this to us.”

  “It’s gotta be Graves,” DeAndre says.

  “They’re doing it to us like we did to—” Aleena starts to say, but doesn’t finish.

  The screen in front of Aleena flickers on. Then, so does every screen in the room, one by one—first a bright square of white light, which then starts to resolve into an image.

  A woman’s face appears. Young. A neck long and narrow like that of a wineglass’s stem. Her face, too, has the curves and thinness you’d find in a champagne flute. Long dark hair framing her face like the open blades of a pair of scissors.

  The woman says: “Like you did to Iran.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Reagan asks.

  Aleena’s heart about stops. She answers for the woman. “You’re the Widow.”

  CHAPTER 34

  An Earthman in Space

  THE DEP

  Wade’s trying not to have a heart attack.

  It runs in his family, heart disease. His father died at the kitchen table one day. Pissed at Little Wade for knocking over a glass of lemonade—glass tipped, shattered, lemonade everywhere, on the food, on the floor. Dad was always yelling at him for being clumsy. Which only made him clumsier.

  His father’s face got so red yelling at Wade he looked like one of those angry zits about to pop—except, he couldn’t pop. Couldn’t let it out the way it needed to be let out, and that pressure must’ve crushed his heart like a vise. A vein stood out on his head like an earthworm in shallow dirt. His neck tendons looked like bridge cables. He made a sound like he was trying to say words, but they were hissed through clenched teeth and sounded like something the Devil might say to scare off an angel.

  Then he clutched his chest and landed face-first in a plate of mashed taters.

  Wade’s grandpop, too, died from a heart attack. Deep-sea fishing. Took a header overboard after fighting to haul in some bluefish.

  And now, Wade thinks, he’s gonna die, too. He’s gonna die in this goddamn box.

  He’s been in here, what, less than an hour, and already he can feel it. His heart feeling like a waistline hugged by a too-tight belt. The tingling in the tips of his fingers. His pulse drumming like horse hooves.

  The deprivation chamber is darker than dark. Black as a bad man’s soul. The water laps at him, feels like it’s eating him, like it’s alive—creeping up, ready to pull him down into the deep and drown him like his father did those kittens that one time. He remembers a time, too, crossing a river outside Hanoi—not a river, not really, but the rains had been so bad the stream became a river—and it was like this then, too, the feeling that it was gonna grab him and drag him down.

  It’s funny. Not ha-ha funny but oh, isn’t that curious funny—Vietnam for him was a middling thing. He knows some guys, Green Berets in particular, who thought Vietnam was a fucking thrill ride and talked about it like they’d been in Rambo: First Blood Part II or some shit. Other guys, you couldn’t even say the word without them having nightmares for a week, without them needing to get far the fuck away from you so they could go light up a smoke and think about something else for a while.

  Wade ended up in ’Nam late. Around 1970. He didn’t see the worst of it. He remembers being scared, though. Young, dumb, ready to die. Felt like he was being fed into a meat grinder, ready to be chewed up in service to his country.

  That’s what he feels right now, too. Control lost. Fear’s hands around his neck. Being thrown into something he doesn’t understand, that isn’t his fight.

  He’s not young now. He’s old. And he’s not dumb, either. He’s smart, too smart, smart enough to know how this ends—and suddenly a full-bore fear of death rises up inside him, like he’s not ready to go, it’s not time, not yet, God damn it—

  He shudders. The whole world rumbles and rattles.

  No. It’s not him. It’s the deprivation chamber. It rattles, bangs, and then he hears locks being undone.

  It opens up—

  At first, Wade can see only bright white. Then the light resolves into the long, carpenter-nail body of Hollis Copper.

  Copper offers a hand. Wade takes it without reluctance.

  CHAPTER 35

  Widow’s Walk

  THE POD

  The Widow of Zheng stares at all of them. Rage in her eyes like a house fire seen through broken windows. “Who are you?” she asks. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  Aleena stands. “I—we were trying to contact you—”

  “Why?”

  Chance says: “Whoa, hey, you contacted us.”

  Reagan crosses the room in front of everyone, points to the glowing laptop in her hand. In a half yell, half whisper, she says: “I’m still on. Gonna keep picking at that farmhouse desktop, dig?”

  The Widow’s eyes seem to bore holes through their screens. “I don’t know any of you. But I do now. Mercenaries hired by the United States government. Murderers.”

  “Whoa, slow your roll,” DeAndre says. “We didn’t murder nobody—”

  The screen flashes. Her face is gone, replaced with an aerial camera. Chance knows it—it looks like something out of a video game. A UAV—an unmanned aerial vehicle. A drone camera. In the heads-up display are numbers and—Arabic? Farsi? He doesn’t know one from the other, though suddenly he feels like he should. Aleena does, and she says: “Iran.”

  The drone flies low over a city, then ascends into mountains. He sees the posts and lines for a ski lift: no snow, not now, but the ski lift is still running, as is a gondola running parallel to it. The UAV cuts through wisps of clouds. Up, up, up. Over streams and a little waterfall. Verdant green grows over red stone. The camera shows power lines. Goats grazing. An observatory. Amazing, Chance thinks. This is Iran? He didn’t know how pretty it was. He always figured . . . rock and dust and desert.

  Then: a tall mountain ahead. A dusty road—serpentine switchbacks scaling the side, leading to a massive tunnel dug into the rock. Dozens of people are running out of the tunnel—from this distance, they look like little toys. Dolls. Some in suits. Others in jumpsuits or lab coats. A few woman in head scarves. Hurrying out, elbow to elbow.

  A faint sound heard over the drone’s audio: A song. Come on, feel the noooooise . . . The people are all holding their ears.

  Chance asks: “We’re still on? We’re still transmitting?”

  “No.” Aleena shakes her head. Her face is struck with grief. With horror, she says: “This already happened.”

  The screen flashes red. More script—Farsi—flashes with it. Something rockets ahead of the drone. No: something fires from the drone. A missile.

  Chance stops breathing as the missile plunges forward. It strikes the open tunnel. Fire envelops those fleeing the tunnel. Their bodies thrown, tumbling forward like broken dolls. Through the smoke and flame, rock and stone.

  Aleena makes a sound: a wretched gasp, as if something has reached inside of her and ripped a piece of her out. She collapses into a chair. “No . . .”

/>   The screen flashes. The Widow’s face returns. “Murderers. You are murderers.”

  “We didn’t know—” Aleena starts.

  “That . . . that was an Iranian drone, though,” Chance says. “That’s not us.”

  The Widow’s eyes narrow. “You gave them the codes. You gave them the drone.”

  “Oh God.” Aleena makes a strangled sound. “She’s . . . she’s right, I think. Iran’s drone program is built off of a lone U.S. drone captured a few years ago. They took it to an old military base and then it disappeared—it could’ve been Tochal. We stole the codes to their own drone. And someone . . .” She covers her mouth with her hands.

  “Someone took control,” the Widow says.

  “That’s not us,” Chance says. “We didn’t murder anybody.”

  The Widow stares. “You stole the gun. Then loaded it. Then handed it to someone who pulled the trigger for you. You. Are. Complicit.”

  DeAndre stands suddenly. He asks, loudly, “What is Typhon?”

  The Widow’s mask drops—her face tightens with shock. “How do you know about Typh—”

  The screen goes dark.

  The lights remain off. Reagan holds up the laptop—the light coming off it is the only light they have in the room. “I’m still up. Still pulling threads, see if I can’t unravel this sweater.”

  “How can you not be fazed?” Aleena asks, the dismay in her voice sharpening to an angry point. “How are you so glib? Did you see what we did?”

  Reagan barks, “It’s what they did. We didn’t know we were doing it.”

  “We should’ve known. We could’ve guessed!” Aleena starts to march toward Reagan, but Chance hurries up and gets between them.

  Reagan says, “I don’t have time for this, Aleena. You wanna get mad? Get mad by helping me fuck Typhon right in the ear. I’m sorry people died. But I can’t bring them back.”

  “Monster!” Aleena screams, a racking sob rising to the surface. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to be so glib—”

  Chance gently puts his hands on each of Aleena’s arms. “I hate to say it, but Reagan’s got a point. Now isn’t the time. Best we can do right now is try to make things right. We don’t do that by fighting each other.”

  Aleena looks to Chance. She takes a few deep breaths and then says, “Fine.” Then she pulls away from him.

  From behind them, DeAndre says, “Floydphones ain’t working, y’all. Can’t get a damn thing up on these. I don’t know if the Widow hacked us, then got hacked, or what.”

  Aleena says, “The Floydphones are nearly uncrackable.”

  It hits Chance like a thrown brick. “Those are Shane’s phones,” he says. “He knows their codes.”

  DeAndre leans back in his chair and buries his face in his hands. “Oh shit.”

  “Should’ve known that he wouldn’t stay down for long.”

  Aleena paces. “We need the systems back on. We’re so close.”

  “You know what?” Chance says. “Piss on him. I’ll get ’em back on.” He goes to the door. With the electromagnetic seal broken, all it takes is him planting his feet and giving the door a few hard pulls before the seal pops and the fading afternoon light cascades in. The others call after him, but he ignores them as the door closes behind him.

  CHAPTER 36

  Unlikely Allies

  HOLLIS COPPER’S OFFICE

  Golathan!” Hollis Copper yells at his computer. He stabs a finger down on the Enter key. Then the space bar. Then a whole mess of others.

  Wade leans against the wall. “You usually yell at your computer like that? Stress relief?”

  “I’m trying to figure things out, Earthman. I don’t need your lip right now.”

  “Well. Okay, then,” Wade sniffs.

  Hollis turns. Eyes narrowed. “You say they took that other pod away?”

  “Yep. Dipesh went ape-balls. I went ape-balls with him. They hauled him and his pod into a black SUV, dragged me to that god-awful room.” He puffs out his cheeks again, feels the pain in his chest wash slowly but surely out to sea.

  “You feeling a little better?”

  “What do you care, Government Man?”

  “I care because I don’t want to have to clean up the mess. You die here, you’ll probably shit your pants. Statistically, that’s a thing.”

  Wade growls: “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  “Good.” Hollis looks Wade over. “Probably just a panic attack.”

  “I don’t do panic attacks.”

  “Everybody does panic attacks if they get panicked enough. Feels like a heart attack or a stroke. But it isn’t.”

  “Great. Whatever.” Wade stands up straight. Pulls the gray hairs stuck to his forehead out of his eyes. “You seem troubled, Copper.”

  “Things are slippery,” Hollis says, licking his lips. “People washing out all of a sudden. Throwing my pod in the Dep one by one. And . . .” Here he seems to hesitate. “There’s people in the goddamn woods.”

  “The hell’s that mean?”

  “It means I’ve seen people out there, and I just found . . .” He lets fly with an incredulous laugh. “It sounds nuts, but I found a little cave. Lots of footprints around it. I crawled in and saw this . . . this cuckoo shit written all over the walls.”

  “Like what?”

  Hollis waves it off. “I dunno. Weird religious stuff. Cultlike.”

  The name perches on Wade’s lips like an eager bird. He’s of a mind that it’s far better for him to hold the cards and not give Mr. Government here one iota of what he knows. But on the other hand, Copper seems really off-balance. Maybe he can get something out of him.

  “Typhon?” Wade asks, taking the plunge.

  The look on Copper’s face is all he needs. It’s a mix of shock, fear, and abject incredulity. “What did you say?”

  “That what was written on the walls of your little cave? Some horseshit about Typhon?” Hollis’s jaw drops so far it damn near unhinges. “What is Typhon?” Wade presses.

  The agent comes up on him so close, Wade can smell the sharp sting of his minty breath. “How do you know what Typhon is? Typhon is a secret program.”

  “Typhon doesn’t seem all that interested in keeping itself a secret. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty darn interested in being found. You mind giving me some space here? I can see your cavities. Unless you’re sweet on me, thinking of asking me to the school dance.”

  The agent looks pissed for a moment: nostrils flaring like a bull’s. But then he deflates a little and steps back. “Your pod knows about Typhon?”

  “Not a lot. But more than a little.”

  “Golathan’s not gonna like that.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Mouthful of Teeth

  THE LODGE

  Bam, bam, bam. Chance kicks on the pod door. One of the small, individual pods—Shane never seemed to work much with his own group, always going off “alone.” Maybe thought his podmates dragged him down. Doesn’t seem to matter now, as they don’t want to work with him anyway.

  Chance shoulders into the door this time. Once, twice, thrice. These things are built like tanks. Little modular Swedish design tanks. “Open up, you son of a—”

  The door clicks, hisses, slides open. And there stands Shane Graves. “Dalton. The last person I wanted to—”

  Pop. Chance rocks Shane in the face with a fist. Pain shoots out from his hand up to his elbow. He shakes his hand like it’s on fire and he’s trying to put it out.

  Shane, staggered, pulls his hand away from his lip. A string of saliva and blood connects his chin to the fat of his palm. “You hit me.”

  Gonna do it again, too. Chance rushes forward like a hardheaded horse, slamming into Shane and carrying him into the pod and into the computer. The monitor spins off the desk. The keyboard flies and the keys come off like broken teeth. The two of them fall over onto the desk and Shane brings a hard knee up into Chance’s gut—pain blooms there like a flurry of bubbles breaking. Shane slams his
head forward, too: his forehead connects with Chance’s chin. Chance’s teeth close on his tongue. White pain. The taste of copper.

  Suddenly he’s on his back and Shane is standing over him. Graves dabs at his split lip with his black shirt. “The hell, Dalton?”

  “Quit messing with us, and let us do what we’re doing!”

  “Messing with you? I’m not messing with you.” Shane pauses. “Least, not today.”

  The taste of bitter pennies fills Chance’s mouth. He tilts his head sideways, spits a line of blood. “You didn’t just turn off the power to our pod?”

  Shane makes a face. “No. But I applaud whoever did.”

  That’s it. Chance hooks both arms around Shane’s ankles and twists his torso sideways. Shane’s arms flail like pinwheels in a hard wind before he crashes down against the desk.

  CHAPTER 38

  Broken Mirror

  THE POD

  Almost there. DeAndre’s taken over for Reagan now—he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, Graves’s laptop across his knees. Reagan hovers behind him, cracking her knuckles like it’s some kinda OCD habit.

  Aleena paces, still trying to get the Floydphones working. “You think Chance is going to be all right?” she asks. “Last time, Shane took him apart pretty handily.”

  DeAndre’s fingers dance across the keys. On the screen, code boogies along with it. “He’ll be fine.”

  Reagan says, “He’s gonna get his ass kicked.”

  Aleena makes a fretful sound.

  “What do you care?” Reagan asks.

  “I don’t!” Aleena says loudly. Too loudly. Then, more quietly: “I don’t.”

  Reagan mutters to DeAndre, “She wants that Dalton dangle, am I right?”

  “Can we not talk about Dalton’s dangle? I’m busy here.” One by one, all the locks fall away. DeAndre can’t figure it out. This dinky little desktop in the middle of God’s Asshole, West Virginny, is bound up like a madman in a straitjacket. There’s a little voice inside him that says, Maybe you need to stop for a second and figure out what’s going on. But this system represents too tantalizing a puzzle. And he’s got Reagan chattering in his ear like a noisy parrot. Plus: they’re running out of time. They don’t get something here and now to hold over Big Government’s head, they’ll be tossed in an SUV and shipped out ASAFP.