Vertical City Box Set [Books 1-4]

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Volume Two

  1

  Gus told me that shortly before the world ended, a group of English scientists created a black material that could not be easily seen. That is, the creation, something called “Vantablack.V4,” was said to be so dark that shapes and contours were lost when viewing it, leaving nothing but an abyss.

  That’s how dark it is in the panic room.

  The one hidden in the middle of VC1, designed to safeguard the community’s most vulnerable members.

  I’m there.

  Transported back in time.

  It’s around my fifth birthday and it’s the fourteenth month and twenty-first day of our ordeal.

  I sit huddled with two-dozen other children, secure in the windowless space.

  There are no grown-ups in the room.

  None can be spared.

  They’re too busy manning the blockades in the lower sections of the building while the finishing touches are made to the Keep down on ten.

  Dad’s with them. I know this because he patted me on the head before he left and whispered three things:

  We are making progress;

  Everything will be fine;

  There is nothing to fear.

  What a liar.

  A bone-splintering blast echoes somewhere outside and below us.

  More explosions reverberate followed by the whine of engines and the angry howl of a million newly-risen dead.

  A shudder passes up the spine of the building.

  It’s as if the structure is sighing in realization of just how fortunate it is.

  Nearly every other major American city but ours has taken a knee.

  On the streets below, the final battle is being waged.

  The city’s remaining military units have joined forces with what’s left of law enforcement to make a stand.

  Another thunderous boom! this one so close that it jars loose the door to the panic room.

  Slivers of light creep in.

  Rising, I approach the door and grab the handle.

  I have every intention of slamming it shut and then a still, small voice comes to me. It tells me to venture outside, to embrace my curiosity (Gonna be a ‘fraidy cat your whole life, Wyatt? What’ll it hurt to just take a friggin’ peek?), and so I do.

  Closing the door to the panic room, I creep down a corridor and with halting steps I turn a corner to face a wall of windows.

  One of them is shattered and I drop to the ground, belly-crawling until I’m staring down twenty-six stories and across a dozen city blocks onto the field of battle.

  It resembles what you’d expect the end of the world to look like: raging fires sweeping across a vista of death and devastation. All that’s missing is the devil and his angels.

  I can see the Dubs.

  As if part of some deranged parade they’re advancing down a main thoroughfare in ragged lines, headed to a bridge that spans a roiling river.

  Fronting the bridge is a ring of razor-wire flanked by concrete blast-walls and sandbags where those still alive are dug in.

  Exhaust rises from tanks and all manner of armored vehicles and mechanized killing machines.

  The sky hums with planes and helicopters and things Dad called drones.

  For a second it resembles the tiny, plastic toy and foam airplane wars I fought against a kid named Timmy Powe down on twelve.

  When one of the drones slingshots past VC1, not more than two-hundred feet away, I know it’s real.

  The machines strafe and bomb the Dubs and then strafe and bomb some more.

  But there are so many of the dead.

  When fifty fall, fifty more appear.

  An attack helicopter clatters past, the hair on my arms singed from the backblast when it unleashes four missiles.

  The missiles curl down the block and detonate in the middle of the street. The asphalt become molten, hundreds of the dead turned to ash.

  A cheer rises up from those still alive until more of the dead arrive. The helicopter continues its attack until there are no more missiles to fire.

  The Dubs storm through the field of fire only to be cut down by bullets and explosives.

  So many Dubs fall that their bodies lie in piles fifteen-feet high.

  It becomes impossible to maneuver, the treads on the giant battle tanks bogged down in ruined flesh and rivers of blood.

  Armored bulldozers fight to push the bodies aside, but their drivers are pounced on by the dead, dragged out and ripped apart.

  A subsonic whine fills the spaces between the skyscrapers as a jet swoops down through the city’s concrete canyons to drop its munitions.

  Two bombs fall.

  One doesn’t detonate but the other does, breaking apart in stages before exploding in a dome-like blast that sets the air on fire and liquefies two city blocks of Dubs.

  Another jet materializes, readying for a bombing run when hundreds of the dead appear in the smashed-out windows of the lower buildings. They hurl themselves out into the path of the plane, forcing it to fly evasively.

  One tip of the jet’s wing kisses the edge of a building, the machine going into an unchecked swoon. It fireballs across the city streets, forcing the soldiers back as the Dubs fumble into the breach.

  Most of the surviving soldiers retreat across the bridge as a small detachment of men and women in dark uniforms and rounded black helmets remain behind. They guard the rear, moving and fighting differently than the others. Their actions are faster, more precise, their gunfire more sustained and accurate. Each of these warriors take down a hundred Dubs until their ammunition runs out.

  The fighting is now hand-to-hand.

  Brutal and primitive.

  I watch a Dub bite one of the soldiers in the neck. He bites the ghoul back and soon it’s impossible to tell the living from the dead.

  In minutes, the Dubs roll right over the remaining soldiers. The battle appears lost.

  And then something happens.

  A single soldier, his clothes soaked in gore, emerges from the frenzy of Dubs.

  He has an axe in hand and begins running up the mountain of Dub bodies.

  He climbs higher and higher, striking down any brain-sucker foolish enough to confront him.

  From my vantage point I can see he’s heading toward one of the bombs dropped by the jet.

  The one that didn’t explode.

  There are fifty Dubs in front of him, but he cleaves his way through them and then stands at the apex of Dub mountain. He holds up his axe and stares in every direction.

  He’s all alone.

  The last living thing on the city streets.

  For an instant I swear he sees me and then he howls triumphantly as ten-thousand flesh-eaters scramble up the hillside of corpses toward him.

  The axe comes down on the bomb and everything whites out.

  The boom of the blast echoes off the buildings like a million hammers striking a wall of granite.

  The shockwave scythes out, the air roiling before it hits and knocks me back on my ass.

  Everything fades to black and then…

  I’m jolted awake.

  No longer a child, no longer forced to relive the horrors of that final battle.

  I’m back in the present.

  The voices come to me first and then the wind gently slaps my face. I’ve survived my duel with the Dub down on the tenth floor. I’m alive and my gut tells me I’m crossing between buildings.

  My eyes open and a sky as black as the cover on Gus’s German Bible returns my gaze.

  “He awake?” a man asks beyond my line of sight. A penlight snaps on and lashes my face, forcing my eyes shut.

  “Nope,” another man says.

  The light swings jauntily to reveal I’m being held up by three sets of hands, carried like a sacrificial offering on one of the rickety catwalks fixed to the side of another building.

  I was right.

  I have been spirited out of VC1.

  My eyes are just slits, but it’s enough
for me to spy the halogen lights on the ceilings of the other building as I’m carried inside. I can hear the patter of feet and the hushed voices of other people along with the echo of music and laughter and shouts.

  I’m hauled down a staircase and then through another hallway as someone shouts “Open the damn thing!”

  A door groans on its hinges and then I’m carried into a room rinsed in bug-lighting and laid on the ground. Calculating the odds of someone hurting a guy who’s asleep, my eyes remain closed.

  Footfalls thump around me and I’m not altogether convinced that the things hovering above me aren’t Dubs. The penlight from before snaps on again and fingers pry my eyelids back.

  The bob of light washes out the features of the man kneeling over me, but he still cuts a striking figure: weathered face with a short beard and thatch of sandy hair; a nose like a hawk’s beak, and fierce eyes to match. When he holds up a right hand that’s missing three fingers I know who it is.

  It’s Roger Parker, the shadow leader of the outer buildings.

  The former soldier.

  The anti-Odin.

  He looks at me and I know I’m in deep shit.

  2

  “And here I was thinking you Ledge Jumpers were supposed to be a bunch of badasses,” Roger Parker says to me.

  I stare at the guy, I mean he’s in charge of a building, a real bigshot, but I don’t give any ground. “Most of us are,” I hear myself say in response.

  A zippered grin splashes his face. “No offense, but you don’t look like much to me.”

  “That’s because your boys cranked me over the head.”

  Parker looks over at someone standing in the shadows that I can’t make out. The obscured figure clucks his tongue and Parker nods. “Sounds like we saved your ass, kid.”

  Parker stands to his full height and I can see that he’s dressed in an old work shirt and jeans, his hands blistered and bruised.

  The most remarkable thing about him is he doesn’t appear armed and neither do any of the men (and a few women) surrounding us. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone in VC1 that didn’t sport a pistol or a knife at the very least.

  “How did I get here?” I ask, eying those standing beyond Parker.

  “One of my colleagues was watching your little cage match and stepped in when you went down for the count.”

  “Yeah, well, I won,” I say firmly.

  “You won and lost at the same time.”

  I prop myself up on my elbows as Parker plants a finger in my chest. I realize I’m seriously outranked and outnumbered, so I put on my best conversation slash listening face.

  “Seems like the bruisers down on ten don’t abide high-minders like yourself.”

  “I just wanted to see what was up,” I say.

  “Curiosity meet the cat,” Parker says, angling a thumb in my direction as his people snicker and he continues, “you ever been in our building?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do the honchos in VC1 still prohibit folks from coming here?” he asks.

  “It’s strongly discouraged.”

  “You have any idea why?”

  “Not exactly,” I reply.

  Of course, that’s not true.

  I do know why and it’s because of the rumors about what goes on in the outer buildings. About how they’re less militarized and more libertarian and freewheeling. Maybe the kind of place you’d think about leaving VC1 for.

  Grass is always greener I guess; but Odin has made it damn near impossible to move from structure to structure unless you get a pass and a permit.

  “What’s your go-by?” Parker asks.

  “Wyatt, sir.”

  “You know who I am, Wyatt?”

  “The One-Zero.”

  “Come again?”

  “The man in charge… the One-Zero… that’s what Del Frisco said you go by, Mister Parker.”

  “Think I’ve seen you before,” he replies after chewing on his lip for a second or two. “Heading out on the ropes in the morning and sometimes at night? That’s a tough gig.”

  “There are tougher.”

  “How long you been a Jumper?” he asks.

  “A long time,” I reply.

  “You’re not old enough to have long times.”

  He smiles at his witticism, teeth as white and shiny as the tops of mushrooms. “You report to Odin every time you come in?”

  I nod.

  “How’s he doing?” Parker asks.

  “Same ole.”

  “And the good Mister Shooter?”

  “He never changes, sir.”

  “I heard that,” Parker replies.

  When I don’t respond, he points to a door. “Would you like to see something, Wyatt?”

  Before I can respond, Parker grabs my wrist and pulls me to my feet. Somebody eases a bag of what feels like crushed ice against the back of my neck and offers me a couple of pain pills and a bottle of water. I gulp the pills down as Parker gestures for me to follow.

  I’ve never been to any of the outer buildings and as I walk down a long hallway with a floor made of metal grating, my eyes flick left and right.

  Lots of people are in sight.

  More than I would’ve guessed and certainly more than I’ve been told. Most are three to five years older than me.

  You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone over thirty-nine in VC, aside from Odin and the administrators of course, and that’s by design. That’s also what Gus was getting at before when he mentioned that we’re all aging.

  Because of sustainability and a bunch of other things that Odin always brings up, it was decided many years ago that there needed to be a way to keep the population young and vibrant.

  Odin and the ones that were in charge before him claimed it all revolved around age; that once you got beyond thirty-nine you stopped thinking creatively and strategically.

  I’ve heard that idea came from Odin’s father, a high tech guru who was well-known for penning a manifesto back in the day titled “Think like a Baby” that justified serious ageism.

  What this means is that a lottery’s held in VC1 every six to thirteen months depending on the population rolls.

  Those over thirty-eight take numbers and if your number is punched, you’re thanked for your service, given a huge rucksack filled with all manner of weaponry and tech and food (enough to last two weeks).

  While I’ve only ever been to part of one, a celebration’s held to honor your life and then you’re taken down in a rear elevator and cast out onto the Flatlands.

  Nobody knows precisely what happens to those who are “shunned,” but supposedly there’s a happy ending.

  Odin and Shooter have repeatedly told us that many of those who leave live long healthy lives either on their own or in new colonies that have sprouted up in the countryside or out on islands in the middle of the river that wreathes the city.

  There are exemptions for the lottery of course, mostly for the administrators and folks who curiously seem to move in Odin’s wake and function as part of his official entourage. Few if any of these exemptions appear to apply to anyone outside VC1, however, or those living below the upper floors (which is why Gus says all are equal in the Vertical City, but some are more equal than others).

  We continue on and I make mental notes of everything I see, including the many upgrades: better lighting, more available water, larger rooms, etc.

  I’ve heard Strummer say Parker doesn’t run a tight ship, that the outer buildings are sinkholes of depravity and on the verge of collapse.

  From everything I’ve seen that’s not true at all.

  What gets my attention the most are the sounds and aromas.

  Music purrs from every angle and gales of laughter echo from every building nook. The heavy scent of incense and burning food wafts overhead and I see people simultaneously working and enjoying themselves. There are few of the anxious grimaces and thousand-yard stares so prevalent in VC1.

  We move past a wall of w
indows that afford a view of the adjacent buildings which are lower in stature and less grand.

  Banks of sodium lights illuminate everything and give it the appearance of a hidden village in the clouds comprised of hand-built apartments and swaths of decking built atop steel girders that have been lashed together. “Parasitic architecture,” someone called it once.

  Some people think the outer buildings are an eyesore, an affront to the way things were done in the past.

  It’s gritty up here, at least on the exterior, but I can see beauty in it.

  The way the people tend to their chicken and pigeon coops and water tiny gardens using solar-powered pumps as drying laundry flaps in the breeze. Rumors abound that similar sky villages exist in other parts of the country and overseas in cities like London and Rome, but I don’t have any evidence that’s true.

  We stop on a landing that looks over a bullpen built into the interior of the building. I can see people living and working in vestibules and little stations and cubicles. Parker smiles like a proud papa as he takes in everything.

  “Your parents plank-holders?” Parker asks, referencing the first families to have lived in the building.

  “My dad was,” I answer.

  “You have a mom?”

  “I did.”

  His face falls at this and something passes between us. I imagine he lost his family much like I lost mine.

  “They say you were a warrior, sir.”

  “Soldier,” he replies, correcting me.

  “Word on the street was you were special forces.”

  “The word is wrong,” Parker says with a shake of the head. “I was general purpose all the way. A grunt.”

  “But you fought them didn’t you? The hordes?”

  “I fought a little in what we called ‘The Big Suck,’ yes,” he replies.

  “You do battle at ‘The Apex?’” I ask, referencing the legendary last stand I dreamt of while unconscious only a short while ago.

  “I was there, yes.”

  “You take a mess of ‘em down?”

  “I took from them and they took from me,” he responds, holding up his mangled hand.