by Scott Reeves
Andy Watson
Andy, after much difficulty leaping across gaping holes, clambering over piles of broken masonry and twisted girders, at last managed to reach the end of the huge, jagged tunnel that Gina’s Starry Eyes had bored into the Murray Building.
Since striking Mal, the ship had bored through layer after layer of apartments packed into a section of the building inaccessible by any means other than transmat. Andy had glanced in at each apartment as he scrambled past, feeling as if he were an intruder, a burglar, passing through shattered living rooms, bathrooms, and bedrooms.
He had encountered zombies in a lot of them. These he had shot if he wasn’t able to get past them any other way. There had been bodies as well, broken bodies mangled by the passage of the ship.
He finally emerged into an open area, formed by the collapse of two or three apartments, to find the ship at rest, having stopped just short of the opposite wall of the area.
Her crew had apparently disembarked, for there was a large group of men outside the ship. Every one of them wore a hard hat and some sort of light-weight body armor. Three of them were fighting off zombies with old-fashioned bullet rifles, while the rest were just beginning to hammer, chisel, burn and vaporize their way into the wall in front of the ship.
The zombies were shambling forth from nearby apartments, freed by the destruction wrought by the ship. Or they came tumbling through the ceiling, falling down to this level from the wide hallway that cut across the path of the ship one level up.
Andy was heartened by the sight of the men. Here were likely allies. Though he couldn’t be certain of that. After all, they had just bored through half the building, careless of whether they might injure any remaining non-infected people.
So he approached them with both trepidation and optimism.
One of the apartments already destroyed might have been Samala’s. Mal had hoped that she would return to it after she had resurrected like Joyce Rider had. So she might even now be dead...once again dead.
That’s when he wondered for the first time if she could actually die a second time. Even if the ship’s passage had mangled her body, might she yet recover?
“The Death Cure!” he shouted, as sudden realization dawned on him.
Until then, none of the men, not even those standing guard, had noticed him, the movement of the intervening zombies masking his approach.
But hearing Andy’s shout, one of the men standing guard pointed his rifle at Andy.
Andy made a show of pointing his own weapon away from them.
“What do you want?” the other man asked. He was middle-aged, with a pale face and grizzly white beard.
“It’s the Death Cure!” Andy repeated, happiness overwhelming him. People who had received the Death Cure had been, according to current understanding of history, virtually indestructible. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t Rodor?”
“Who are you?” the grizzly-bearded man said again, not taking his rifle off Andy.
The other two standing guard were also watching Andy now, even as they continued picking off any zombies that got too near.
“My name is Andy Watson,” said Andy. “I’m looking for a girl named Samala Vintron. She lived in this area, in one of these apartments. You may have bored through her apartment, but she would have survived. She’s got the Death Cure!”
“Samala Vintron?” the man asked. “I know her. And her dad. Fucking Christians, but otherwise not bad people.” He lowered his rifle slightly. “She’s friends with my son and daughter. Great snatch, to hear them tell it. And from the looks of her, I don’t doubt it.”
“So I hear,” Andy said with a disgusted frown.
“Of course,” the man continued, “they only know second-hand, from their other friend, Malfred Gil.”
Grief overwhelmed Andy. “Mal’s dead.”
“What?” the man asked. Now he lowered his rifle. “Say it isn’t so!”
“It’s so,” Andy assured the man.
He deliberately held his tongue on the details. The man obviously wasn’t unfriendly toward Mal; the death had just been a tragic accident. Andy didn’t think he needed to cause the man anguish by informing him that he had caused Mal’s death. Let the man think that Mal had been done in by the zombies. Which was actually the truth, Andy supposed. The youth had already turned by the time the ship had plowed over him.
“Too bad,” the grizzly-bearded man said. “I’m Harlan Fargo, by the way.” He waved his rifle at the ship. “Captain of Gina’s Starry Eyes.”
“Nice to meet you,” Andy said politely.
“We’re digging in to find our families,” Harlan continued. “We could use an extra man to stand guard with us.”
Andy shook his head. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d rather help dig. I promised Mal that I would find Samala and help her get off the planet.”
Harlan nodded. “We’ll add her to the list of who we’re looking for. Stand guard with us, though. The boys don’t need to be hampered by a novice miner.”
Andy reluctantly acceded, taking a place next to Harlan, facing outward from the ship.
“What was that about a death cure?” Harlan asked conversationally as he picked off a zombie that had emerged from behind a nearby shattered wall.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Andy said.
“Are you kidding?” Harlan protested. “At this point, I’ll fucking believe anything.”
Andy opened his mouth to explain, but the fatline phone in his pocket suddenly began to ring. He pulled it forth, flipped open the lid, and said, “Hello? Joyce?”
“Andy,” the voice of Joyce said without preamble. “You need to get back to the roof at once. Caldor’s going to blow up in exactly thirty minutes as of one minute ago.”
Harlan was eyeing the phone queerly.
“What?” Andy said, taken off guard.
“There’s no time to explain, Andy,” she said urgently. “The clock is ticking. You need to head up here now!”
Harlan suddenly swiped the phone from Andy’s hand. “Where the fuck did you get this?” he demanded. He pointed at the decal of a red rose on the cover. “This is my wife’s phone!”
Above the man’s shouts, Andy could hear Joyce’s tiny voice asking what was wrong.
“I got it from Mal,” Andy said. “He got it from...He got it from...”
His heart sank as he recalled what Mal had related to him on their trip down. The dying woman in the apartment who was being feasted upon by a youth. A woman who had subsequently risen from the dead and attacked Mal.
In a quivering voice, he related the story to Harlan. The man had a right to know, but Andy hated having to be the one to tell him.
Harlan dropped his rifle and the phone and sank to his knees, his face twisting with grief. “Oh, God, no. Gina! No!”
Andy picked the phone up from the floor and put it to his ear. “Joyce? Are you still there?”
“What’s happening, Andy?” she asked worriedly.
“Too much to explain,” he said.
“Yeah, up here, too,” she said. “You need to get up here so we can figure something out. The starship that came to rescue us has lost all its flight officers, but the remaining crew think they might be able to fly one of the commercial liners docked here, because commercial ships are more automated—”
Andy interrupted her. “We’ve got a ship down here, Joyce!”
“What?” she asked, her voice swelling with hope.
He didn’t get a chance to respond. Just then, a missile came streaking in from the right, a streaming contrail marking its flight path. It struck the rear engine of Gina’s Starry Eyes and exploded.
The concussion blew them all away from the ship. The men working at digging into the wall were blown into their handiwork, while Andy was sent reeling across the floor and over the edge of an immense, jagged hole, through which he tumbled to the level below.
He hit the floor hard and blacked out.
/> Samala Vintron
Samala and her father were stuck in their apartment.
Neither knew much about what was going on in the world beyond the walls. Some catastrophe had befallen, they knew, but had no details.
The Net was down, or at least inaccessible. Although they did not have interface implants, they did have Net access the old-fashioned way, through an old-style terminal. But nothing came up when they used the terminal to try to obtain news.
The holobroadcast networks were all down, so no news came in through their holotank.
Every form of communication with the outside world failed them.
They were completely in the dark. Anything could be occurring beyond their walls.
They both knew they had to leave. Mal would never come through the transmat, Samala was certain. And the ducts, well...the ducts, possibly. He might indeed come in that way. But they couldn’t sit inside the apartment indefinitely while she waited for him. She believed he was still alive and searching for her, but she couldn’t be absolutely certain.
She and her father could conceivably leave through the ducts as well. But she was too traumatized by the events that had transpired during her last trip through the ducts. She wasn’t certain she could use that route even if the apartment were about to explode.
The transmat seemed to be the only viable means of exit. She and her father both agreed that the transmats probably could no longer affect them in their current resurrected state. And Samala had faith that the presence within the matter stream...He would let no harm come to her if she passed through.
They were just about to attempt it when the living room wall exploded into the room. The blast hurtled them both against the opposite wall. Fortunately the force of the explosion carried them further than it did the heavier debris of concrete and steel, so they weren’t really hurt other than having the wind knocked out of them.
For long moments the room was filled with a fine mist of particulate matter that made breathing difficult. Light shone in through the gaping new hole in the living room wall, but it diffused through the screen of matter filling the air. Vision was thus limited, but she could hear people moaning and rustling in the murkiness around her.
Even more ominous, in the open space beyond the gaping hole, she could hear the incessant rat-at-tat of rapid gunfire, and the occasional boom of small explosions.
“Who’s there?” her father called out blindly into the dusty murk. “What’s happening?”
The fine debris in the air was beginning to settle, allowing her to see a dark, vague silhouette nearby, getting up from the floor.
“Sorry for the intrusion, folks,” said a male voice. “Don’t worry about us. Worry about whoever is taking potshots at us out there.”
“Joral Polk?” her father asked uncertainly. “Is that you, Polk?”
The shadowy silhouette loomed closer, resolving into an older man with friendly eyes and grey-shot spiky blonde hair sticking out from beneath a yellow hard hat.
“Jordan Vintron!” said Polk. “I thought I recognized your voice!” He looked at Samala and smiled. “And Samala!”
Her father had long ago made certain that he knew everyone who lived around them. Most people never bothered meeting their neighbors, preferring to pretend that no one lived on the other side of the apartment walls. And due to the nature of the transmat, your neighbors could live right next to you but do most of their business on the other side of the planet, and you might never meet randomly. But Jordan Vintron had researched and tracked down their neighbors, because he detested such anonymity. One of the neighbors, Harlan Fargo, was a modern-day Neo-Luddite, and he too detested the anonymity of society. So they had become good friends, and through him, she and her father had met the rest of Harlan’s crew.
Polk squinted at them. “You two look a bit different than the last time I saw you,” he said. “Your skin has this weird sort of glow.”
She and her father exchanged a smile.
“Long story,” Jordan said.
An explosion boomed beyond the hole in their wall, and Polk glanced back that way.
“Yeah,” he said. “We don’t have time for long stories right now, do we?”
Keeping low, he moved in a crouching waddle toward the hole. Samala and her father followed in like manner.
On their way, they were joined by three of Polk’s crewmates, each of whom Samala and her father recognized, even through the grey powdery film that dusted their skin.
Using the broken wall as a shield, they all peered out.
Samala found herself looking out across a landscape of destruction. She knew that just beyond the jagged edges of her wall, she was looking into what once had been her neighbor’s bedroom, or living room, or some other room. But now its walls had been blasted away, along with the walls of apartments to the left and right, and then straight ahead in a long jagged tunnel that receded into murky darkness in the far distance. Everything had collapsed into a huge common room of destruction, strewn with chunky piles of tumbled masonry and twisted girders, and choking, dust-filled air.
The destruction had been caused by a spaceship that loomed to her left, the tip of its bow almost touching the very wall behind which she now hunkered. She had never seen Harlan Fargo’s mining ship, but she assumed that must be it. And she could figure, without having to be told, why the ship must be here, of all places: Harlan had come to get his family.
They saw Harlan himself, far out in the no-man’s-land of destruction, lying behind a tall hill of concrete chunks. He appeared to be unconscious.
The air was crisscrossed with contrails that were both fresh and half-dissipated, and all of them centered on a single spot in the distance.
Standing in this distant nexus of the contrails, half-glimpsed through the intervening gritty air, was a dust-covered nude man, with wild hair and equally wild disposition. Clutched low in one arm was a huge machine gun like those used by robocops, with its dangling drum of ammo feeding into the weapon’s firing chambers. The other arm supported a rocket launcher which was propped over the man’s shoulder.
And aimed straight at the peeping Samala and her group.
Just as they registered the fact that they were in the crosshairs, the muzzle of the rocket launcher flashed.
“Shit!” Polk shouted. “Duck!”
Almost as one, they all reeled backward from the wall, throwing themselves to the far side of the living room and curling up behind the sofa, or behind a chair, or behind the kitchen snack bar.
But the man wasn’t a very good shot. The rocket curved aside at the last instant and slammed into the engines of the mining ship. Or maybe that was what he had been aiming for, and their proximity to the ship and the distance between them and the man had only made it seem he was aiming at them.
There was a booming, blinding flash of light, followed almost instantly by a wave of pressure and heat. The room shook, and chunks of plaster and gritty dust rained from the ceiling of the living room.
“How many did you see?” one of Harlan’s crew asked of nobody in particular.
“Just one,” Polk answered. “It’s the same fucker who attacked us outside Babbit’s apartment.”
“What do we do?” asked another of the crew.
“How the fuck should I know?” Polk retorted. “I’m not the captain. I’m just a fucking mining technician.”
“So am I,” said the first one who had spoken. “But you’re the chief, Polk.”
“Well, then we fucking lay low, I say!” Polk said.
Samala winced each time she heard the harsh language, and her father touched her arm in sympathy.
But her mind was racing. I can go out there, she thought to herself. He’ll shoot me, I’ll heal and creep a bit further. He’ll shoot me again, I’ll recover and go a bit further. Rinse, spit and repeat, and soon I’ll be close enough to stop him.
Her father apparently knew what she was thinking. He grabbed her shoulder and hissed, “Don’t you dare!”
>
She shrugged out of his grasp. Keeping low, and before he could grab her again and hold her back, she darted forward until she once again crouched behind the broken wall, peering outward.
The wild man was still out there, facing her direction, constantly firing the machine gun at random targets, occasionally punctuating his violence with a shot from the rocket launcher.
Thus occupied, he failed to see or hear the figure creeping up behind him.
A figure that swung a length of rebar through a wide arc that connected with the side of the wild man’s head.
The man lurched sideways, his shots going wide and wild, raking first up the wall just to the side of Samala, and continuing along the ceiling, chewing a path of small craters in the ceiling outward from the wall in a jagged line that ended when the man hit the ground.
The figure loomed above the fallen man, repeatedly bashing at the man’s head with his rebar club, until the head broke open, spilling the wild man’s blood and brains across the floor.
Finally the distant figure, satisfied that the man was down for the count, dropped the rebar. It clattered to the ground, and the figure straightened, looked directly at Samala’s position as if seeing her across the distance.
It was Mal!
She leapt up joyously and raced out to meet him, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder.
Andy Watson
When Andy came to, he heard voices.
He was lying face down on carpet that had been worn to threads by the passage of many feet, and was splotched with the stains of a dozen unidentifiable liquids which he imagined must be from spilled soda pop, vomit, the urine of young children, and other things far more vile.
The voices were coming from above him.
He rolled onto his back and saw the jagged hole in the ceiling through which he had fallen. Judging by his proximity to a circular sofa for pedestrians to briefly rest upon, he figured it must have broken his fall.
A quick examination revealed that his fall was the only thing that had been broken. He was otherwise unhurt.