Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  CHAPTER 27

  From a distance, the sentries might have been giant black birds perched on the outer wall. Up close, they were men and women, faces hidden behind masks, rifles trained on the empty land to the south of the Paradime campus.

  A large metal door folded inward, creating a gap in the wall, and three vehicles rolled out.

  In the front and rear were black SUVs. They were bulky but unarmored—they'd level a smaller vehicle in a collision, but heavy gunfire would rip them apart. Between the SUVs was a black pickup truck with a winch mounted on the grill and a trailer hitch sticking out from the back bumper.

  Logan rode in the passenger seat of the pickup, a short-barreled assault rifle held between his thigh and the door, where it would be out of sight to anyone who glanced through the passenger-side window. If he needed to use the weapon, he'd lower the window and fire left-handed, putting to use all the hours he'd spent training with his non-dominant hand.

  He didn't know if it was going to be that kind of day.

  He really didn't know what to expect.

  They drove down a service road, the Paradime campus shrinking in the rearview mirror.

  Behind the wheel was a girl named Anne. She was thirty years old and produced videos for Paradime's public newsfeed. She was here because she'd spent five years overseas working as a nurse in various disaster recovery efforts. Her résumé included earthquakes, tsunamis, the collapse of an entire wage-slave district in Vietnam, and—most relevant for this mission—an epidemic in Africa.

  She'd broken into journalism with a series of videos she'd produced during her time abroad, which had led to a job offer from Paradime. She was lean and fit and had shown up that morning wearing a race shirt from a triathlon. She was like a lot of people who worked here—capable enough to excel in multiple disciplines, careers, and hobbies.

  "Any issue with letting a woman drive?" Anne had joked when her and Logan paired off. He'd wondered if she was flirting with him.

  ***

  The service road cut across a sun-baked landscape and then connected with a highway. The only other vehicles they encountered were abandoned. They saw no people.

  Traveling north for twenty minutes brought them to the outskirts of the city. Thin plumes of smoke looked like lines drawn by a charcoal pencil on the foggy morning sky. Logan had seen the footage on the newsfeed: fire pits in Golden Gate Park. They were burning the dead. Logan thought of Barnes.

  They followed the lead SUV down an off-ramp and then through a series of turns, and Logan caught his first glimpse of the plague, a body sprawled on the sidewalk, the concrete around it stained brown with a runoff of bodily fluids. They drove past too quickly to determine anything about the person—age, gender, ethnicity. Logan didn't say anything about it. Neither did Anne.

  Further into the city, they found signs of life.

  There were lines of civilians waiting for stores to open, everyone dressed in long sleeves, gloves, and masks. There were ambulances, both official city property and the makeshift variety, carrying EMTs and volunteers.

  And there were operators. Men and women dressed for war, employed or contracted by whatever corporation now had control of the city.

  The convoy drew less attention than Logan would have expected.

  If law enforcement stopped them, they would claim to be a private security detail, working for one of the thousands of executives trapped inside the city—not a total lie, not really a lie at all when Logan thought about it.

  If anyone who wasn't law enforcement tried to stop them, they would open fire. In addition to Logan, there were two shooters with assault rifles inside each SUV, and everyone in the squad had a sidearm. They had spent all of yesterday drilling defense and counterattacks inside the warehouse. Priority in that situation would be protecting their own lives.

  Half the people in the crew had at least basic military training. And the other half had looked comfortable with a gun during drills the day before. Whoever had put this squad together had done their job well.

  ***

  They made two stops. The first was a truck depot.

  The crew's leader was a guy named Erik. He was Logan's age or a few years older, thickly-built, with a faded sleeve of tattoos covering his left arm. He looked like he knew how to handle himself. His job title was "Product Developer" or something like that.

  Erik met with the guy in charge of the truck depot while Logan and a few of the others acted as security. Things stayed quiet. Money was exchanged out of sight, most likely some kind of wireless transfer with a follow-up call to confirm the transaction. The crew left with two additional vehicles in their convoy, two big rig trucks.

  Their second stop was a pier. It was guarded by a group of men and women that resembled a gang of pirates. They wore body armor over ragged civilian clothes, goggles and gas masks in place of hazmat gear, and they were better armed than Logan's crew.

  Again, Erik met with whoever was in charge. Two containers were lowered off the ship with a crane and hitched to the back of the big rigs. Then it was back to campus, where Logan and the rest of the crew walked through a series of chemical showers before stripping out of their suits. They hadn't had any close contact with the contagion or any of its victims, but it was an opportunity to drill protocol, to build the habits they would need for the inevitable time they met the city's sickness face to face.

  As he left the warehouse, Logan saw the containers being unloaded. He saw boxes of food, bottled water, other supplies.

  ***

  They left at a different time each morning. They wrote down the possible routes into the city on scraps of paper and drew one at random. They avoided falling into a routine.

  They spent the first few days making trips to the pier and hauling containers back to campus, two at a time. Erik briefed them on the business behind what they were doing:

  "Nothing is coming in or out of the docks, so there's a lot of supplies that's just sitting there. We have a team working on a list of ships and what's on them. Information like that usually isn't public knowledge, so if you're wondering how it was obtained, use your imagination. If a ship has anything we need—food, water, medical supplies—we get in touch with the owner and negotiate a price. A lot of companies were writing off these shipments as a loss or insurance claim, so they're happy to have us take it off their hands. The crew at the pier take a cut, and everyone's happy."

  ***

  On Logan's fourth morning on the crew, Erik announced, "We're trying something different today." Then he went over the plan, and it became clear that Paradime's ambitions went far beyond keeping its own people well-fed while they waited out the epidemic.

  They checked weapons. They suited up. The vehicles were already packed and loaded. The big rigs were staying behind today in favor of a moving van which Anne volunteered to drive. Logan rode with her.

  The convoy rolled through the gate, one of the black SUVs up front, Logan and Anne following, the pickup truck behind them. Like the moving van, the bed of the pickup was loaded with cargo.

  ***

  It was early and most of the half-dead city was still asleep. A few blocks out from their destination, they rolled past a street-corner preacher delivering a sermon with a karaoke machine. He was dressed in a priest's robe and a bird-like mask, like an old plague doctor, shouting that the devil had brought the disease to the city. Logan thought of Barnes, who'd looked like a demon in his final moments, first painted red with blood, then covered in flames. And he thought of the face that had done this to Barnes, that had done this to everyone, and he wondered where her body had gone.

  They parked on the basketball courts outside a middle school.

  Fifty people were already waiting. The first in line was a group of men and women in yellow plastic jumpsuits. The suits were the kind that could be purchased at a hardware store, designed for cleaning up lead paint or spraying for bugs. Logan had seen men and women dressed like this on
previous trips into the city. They were the ones who'd taken up the task of collecting the dead and delivering them to the fire pits that burned day and night in Golden Gate Park. They worked in small teams of three and four. They piled the bodies in rusted trailers that had probably been used to haul lawnmowers and landscaping equipment. They carried gallons of bleach and water. They advertised their service with photocopied pages stapled to telephone poles and posts to their Paradime newsfeeds.

  The crowd had doubled in number by the time Logan's crew opened up the truck, and it had doubled again by the time the first people in line had gotten the things they were here to get: bottled water, canned food, boxes of cereal and pasta, basic first aid supplies, bleach, soap, toothpaste. The kind of stuff that was becoming scarce in a city that was in its third week of being cut off from the world.

  Everyone on the crew stepped into his or her assigned role. Anne handed out one-gallon jugs of water. Logan was part of the security detail.

  The crowd eventually topped out somewhere near six hundred. Erik spoke through a microphone, keeping the crowd organized and calm, reminding them that there was plenty of supplies for everyone, that more supplies would be handed out tomorrow and the next day, that the time and location would be announced on Paradime's official feed, like it had been today. "Follow Paradime and check your newsfeed."

  The crowd looked like any other random gathering of city residents. Normal people who'd had a rough couple of weeks. A few rougher-looking characters stood back and watched for a while, and then got in line, satisfied with getting the same share as everyone else. Things stayed calm. The whole time he was there, Logan never took the safety off his rifle. He never had a reason to.

  ***

  Logan's phone buzzed with an incoming message. He reached over to the nightstand and read:

  Need you at the warehouse. It's urgent. Sorry for the short notice.

  He typed out a reply:

  On my way.

  It was 12:35am. Logan had been asleep. He pulled himself away from Zoe's warm body and put on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and his jacket.

  Zoe mumbled something from underneath the covers. He told her what the message said, where he was going.

  ***

  The campus was quiet, everyone either in bed or working the night shift. There were plenty of office lights on, which made it feel like it was a few hours earlier than it actually was.

  He jogged across campus, eager to have a hand in whatever was happening.

  There were six men waiting inside the warehouse. A different group than the one he'd been working with for the past week, though he recognized their faces. This wasn't surprising to him. His crew wasn't the only crew that had been making supply runs into the city.

  Logan approached, noticing the tension in the group's body language, thinking that something had gone wrong on one of the supply runs and now they needed people to sort it out. The six men in front of him looked strong and weathered at the edges. The kind of men accustomed to violence. The kind of crew you put together when you expected things to get rough.

  When the door behind him slammed closed, Logan realized he'd read the situation both completely right and completely wrong.

  He turned and saw two more men. They wore helmets with visors, the kind police wear when they march into a riot.

  One of them spoke, his voice booming inside the cavernous room. "If you're carrying any kind of weapon, toss it aside."

  The guy's face was obscured by the mask, but Logan recognized the voice. The man's name was Ramirez, he was the security coordinator who'd first offered Logan a spot on the crew.

  "We just want to talk, Logan," Ramirez said.

  The rest of the men put on their own helmets and spread out, forming a loose circle. They carried weapons. Shock sticks. Batons with an electrically-charged cap on one end. Part bludgeon, part stun gun.

  "If you've got any weapons, ditch them now, Logan," Ramirez repeated.

  "No weapons."

  "Let's do this the easy way."

  The circle began to tighten. Logan shifted his weight, rolled his shoulders to loosen them.

  "Easy way, Logan. We just want to have a conversation."

  "So start talking."

  He wished he had one of the sound grenades. One of the small bombs would end this altercation before it started.

  His mind raced with thoughts: how they'd found out, what they knew, what they were going to do about it. He thought of Zoe, back in the room. They'd send another team for her. She'd been asleep when he'd left. She'd probably just answer the door when someone knocked. Would she fight? Would she run? Would she try to escape?

  Or would she go quietly, wait for a better opportunity?

  And what would he do?

  The circle tightened another step. Logan could hear the hum of the shock sticks. He could feel the collective energy field around him. It was like standing next to a power line.

  Logan let the tension fall from his muscles. He let his feet go flat. Let his eyes tilt to the floor in front of him. The posture of defeat.

  The guy standing immediately to his right holstered his shock stick and held out a thick strip of plastic, a zipcuff. He was a kid, a few years younger than Zoe, probably fresh out of the military. Thick arms, thick chest.

  The kid stepped next to Logan, his lungs already filled with that sigh of relief he was going to breathe once Logan was cuffed.

  As soon as Logan felt the kid's hand touch the hairs of his forearm, he countered.

  The joint lock plus the sudden shift of bodyweight broke one of the kid's wrists. Logan lassoed the zipcuff over the kid's hands and cinched it tight.

  The counter-attack was smooth and graceful, as perfectly executed as a martial arts demonstration or a piece of Hollywood choreography.

  It was the only smooth and graceful moment in the entire fight.

  Everything after that was a brawl, flashes of style and training amid a scrum of fists, boots, and bludgeons.

  Logan hurled his handcuffed opponent against the edge of the circle and charged into the kid's back, like a football player smashing through a defensive line.

  Three bodies tumbled to the floor and Logan stumbled forward, no longer surrounded, holding the shock stick he'd pulled from the kid's belt. The electrified band glowed blue, activated by Logan's hand wrapped around the grip.

  He went for the nearest target, chopping his opponent across the outside of the thigh. The blue band connected with a nerve and the man dropped as suddenly as if the leg had been cut off. Logan could have aimed lower and shattered the knee joint, but he didn't want to hurt these men. At least not like that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt bad about the kid's broken wrist.

  His opponents marched forward, fists tight around their weapons, trying to circle around him again.

  Logan backpedaled, creating distance. The warehouse was a big, empty space with plenty of room to move.

  Logan fended of blows, blocking some, meeting others halfway with a strike of his own. The shock sticks made a sound like a fuse blowing when the blue bands connected.

  Mostly, Logan moved. One of the worst things to do in a mass attack was to commit to a single opponent.

  He blocked, he parried, he struck. He threw a short jab at a helmet and a hard Muay Thai-style kick through a pair of legs, and nearly missed the guy coming up on his left. A glowing blue band came within an inch of his throat and a fist smashed into his ribs.

  They didn't want to hurt him, either. This became apparent a half minute into the fight. They were aiming their strikes for the large muscles of his legs, trying to knock him down without breaking anything besides blood vessels. They didn't want to fuck him up, just stun him long enough to restrain him.

  The blue band on the end of Logan's weapon was flickering, the wiring knocked loose after dozens of blocks and strikes. After a dozen more, it went out altogether.

  Logan locked up and disarmed t
he next guy that moved in, and came away with one functioning shock stick and one that was reduced to a still-effective impact weapon.

  And he found himself surrounded, again. He squared off against three people in front of him and a fourth slammed into his back. A pair of arms wrapped him in a chokehold. The guy's hands were zipcuffed together, one of the wrists purple and swollen. It was the kid they'd sent forward to cuff him just before the fight started.

  Logan tried three different escapes. Each time, the kid simply made some minor adjustment and continued to close off the blood supply to Logan's brain. He had out-maneuvered the kid once, but it wasn't happening again. If this were a real fight, the kid would have twisted Logan's head off ten seconds ago.

  Logan's vision narrowed, going black and fuzzy around the edges.

  In a final desperate attempt to escape, Logan pressed the blue band of the functioning shock stick to his own skin, using his own body as a conductor to send an electric current into his opponent.

  The kid screamed, but held on.

  The last thought that passed through Logan's mind was immense respect for the kid.

  Then he blacked out.

  PART 4: Modern Warfare

  CHAPTER 28

  Years ago.

  The flaming wreckage of two vehicles was piled in the center of the road on top of the bridge.

  Bodies were scattered around the blaze, blood staining the cracked, sun-faded asphalt.

  Thick black smoke billowed up, polluting the blue sky above.

  The air stank of fuel and smoldering rubber.

  Logan's eyes burned, his vision blurred.

  His boots shuffled across the road, and then shuffled across the mix of gravel, broken glass, and weeds that ran alongside the road.

  He was soaking wet underneath his clothing and armor. Some of it was sweat, some of it was blood.