Zombpunk: STEM

by Christopher Blankley

  But he knew it would never blow over, not now. Elder looked back at the smoke rising up behind him with a pang of regret. What had he done? The Stems would never let this go unpunished – he'd really started a war now. Why had he listened to Kevin and not Beat? She had advised fleeing the city. Now that was all Elder could think of: running away. He'd only made things worse for all the Pukes. All those people lying mangled... Elder closed his eyes, rubbing them in disbelief.

  When he opened his eyes again, his gaze fell on a local streetcar sitting at its terminus across the square. The street car, he realized, was computer controlled, and the tracks leading north looked clear of traffic. Quickly, Elder skipped between the stalled cars and hopped up through the waiting streetcar's open rear door. He was all alone in the long streetcar. He fumbled with change in his jeans pocket and eventually got the automated teller to issue him a ticket. Unaware of the chaos that raged outside, the internal sensors dispassionately registered Elder's presence. They calculated that Elder had paid the right fare and automatically began to close the car's doors to begin its predetermined journey. This was perfect, Elder thought. The streetcar would take him all the way back to the Ave. From there it'd only be a short walk back to the Candy Kitchen. Elder stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it, faintly aware of the hydraulic hiss of the closing doors. They were almost shut when a hand shot between the closing glass panes.

  The doors registered the obstruction and swung back open. Elder looked up in surprise as two men in dark suits pulled themselves up into the streetcar. They paid Elder no specific attention, taking seats at the rear of the car. Once they were seated, the computer began its departure routine once again, forcing air to the closing doors with another hiss.

  The streetcar leisurely rolled forward.

  An awareness of sound was beginning to return to Elder. He could faintly hear the soft, electric hum of the streetcar's motors and the murmur of voices at the edge of his hearing. He glanced back over his shoulder at the two men. They were talking and looking back over their shoulders out the rear window of the streetcar. They were obviously discussing the chaos that was swiftly receding behind them.

  When Elder turned back, he caught sight of his reflection in his window. His face was bloody from small cuts to his scalp. The blood just added that little extra zing to his already disheveled appearance. He tried to clean off his face, wiping at the blood and grime with his shirt, but he had little success with the filthy garment. He looked like hell. He looked like someone who'd just set off a bomb. Elder panicked. Again, he looked back over his shoulder at the two men in dark suits. They were talking on cell phones now, seemingly paying Elder no attention.

  Elder tried not to stare at them as the streetcar rolled through Denny Triangle, but he knew the two men had noticed him. He also knew that they'd noticed him noticing them noticing him, and were attempting to appear like they hadn't noticed. Elder was trying to look as if he hadn't noticed, either. He turned forward and watched the low buildings pass by as Lake Union appeared at the end of the street.

  Elder was trying to stay calm, but dread was building deep inside his belly. When he could resist it no longer, he stole a quick glance back at the two men. One was holding his phone up in front of him, apparently looking at its screen. Was he taking a picture? Elder instantly brought his eyes forward. Had he taken a picture of Elder? Without thinking, Elder leapt to his feet, moving towards the front door of the streetcar, pulling on the bell cord. The streetcar slowed as it came around the south end of the Lake, rolling to a stop.

  Elder jumped free of the car, looking back just in time to have his worse fears confirmed. The two men were exiting the streetcar by the rear door, their phones returned to the pockets of their dark suits. There was no doubt about it now. They were following him. Elder turned tail north and sprinted towards the stairs of a pedestrian bridge that would take him across the busy street. He glanced back as he bounded up the steps three at a time. The two men were not running after him. They seemed to be strolling, and one had returned his phone to his ear.

  The pedestrian bridge brought Elder out one story above the street he had crossed, where a path cut up the hill towards Dexter Ave. He crossed the busy street and sprinted through a cul-de-sac, which ended in an alley that aligned with the hectic Highway 99. Another pedestrian bridge was here, arching over the six lanes of speeding traffic, and Elder galloped up its steps. Once he reached the bridge, he was almost completely out of breath and paused over the median of the highway. Looking down, he sucked in large gulps of air. He paused long enough to spot the two men in dark suits trot out of the alleyway he'd just exited, up from the cul-de-sac. They realized their mistake too late.

  Elder found his second wind.

  At the other end of the pedestrian bridge was a tall climb of steps up the side of Queen Anne Hill. Elder leapt up them with gusto, taking three or four at a time. His pursuers, accepting that their ruse was blown, sprinted up onto the pedestrian bridge, showing no signs of weariness. Elder would never outrun the Stems. They wouldn't tire, they wouldn't slow down. They could sprint all day and only show a ten percent drop in their reserve charge. Elder, on the other hand, was only human. He had yet to eat anything that day. His last meal had been at Madame Damnable's, and that had been cut short.

  But they hadn't caught Elder Tull yet. Heedless of the odds, Elder sprinted up the stairs using every ounce of his energy. When he reached the summit of the climb, he was sweating like a horse. He allowed himself a small moment to catch his breath, looking back down the hill. The two Stems were jogging up behind him, making no haste.

  It was a trap.

  Elder knew the cops would be setting up a trap somewhere in front of him. The two men behind were only beating the bush behind Elder, waiting until their associates were ready for them to make their real move. Elder had to lose them.

  He was at Galer Street. The neighborhood was quiet and still, but Elder didn't trust his ears after the explosion. A police cruiser could be running with sirens wailing only a block away and he might not be able to hear it.

  Elder kept moving along Galer until it crossed Taylor. Here, another staircase led up. Elder took it in three large jumps, coming out into the shady silence of Bigelow Ave.

  There, he paused, his ears faintly aware of a distant hum. Was the explosion still ringing in his ears? Elder stood still as the sound grew louder. No, he could hear again! Elder didn't take any time to enjoy the discovery as he searched for the source of the noise. The sound was the soft hum of a motorcycle circling up along Bigelow from the south. As it approached, Elder waved his arms frantically at the rider. The rider slowed, looking quizzically at Elder through the visor of his helmet.

  "Can you help me?" Elder called out as he approached the rider. Not waiting for an answer, he punched the rider in the solar plexus. His knuckles crashed against the rider's stem, sending a stab of pain all the way up the length of Elder's arm. The rider doubled over, almost tipping the bike onto its side. Elder caught the handlebars with his free hand and pushed the rider off onto the street. As quickly as he could mange, he pulled himself onto the seat and kicked the bike into gear.

  #

  It was a hydrogen-powered, fuel cell motorbike of a dual purpose design. Where Elder Tull would have expected a gas tank, there was a carbon fiber hydrogen bottle sitting between his legs. There was no apparent engine, only two electric coils no larger than Elder's fists flanking the rear wheels. In the space that would have been occupied by a traditional engine sat the catalyst chamber, a scoop behind the front wheel pulling air in to react with the hydrogen.

  The engine released no emissions, producing only electricity and water. But as Elder found out, it also produced power – lots of power. As Elder kicked the cycle into gear, blipped the throttle and let the clutch out, it almost tore away from underneath him. He held on, however, and rocketed down Bigelow faster than he could control.

  He shot through an intersection before he could react,
and saw the lights of police cars maneuvering down the sleepy street towards him. He stepped on the rear brake, pulling the bike around in a one-eighty and throttled the fuel cell to life once again.

  The bike's former owner had recovered from his punch to the stem and was chasing after Elder. As Elder sped back down the street, he winged the rider in passing, sending him spinning and Elder almost face first down onto the blacktop. Elder recovered and pulled the bike west, pointing it up the hill.

  When he was firmly back in control, he fanatically shifted gears and let the motorcycle loose.

  A police cruiser seemed to appear at every intersection.

  Elder dodged and weaved and kept moving. The cops were desperately trying to set up roadblocks as Elder desperately kept changing his direction. Left, right, circle around and then left again, Elder kept up the merry chase. At least a dozen patrol cars were behind him when he broke out onto the main street of Queen Anne Hill. Elder centered his bike on the yellow line and cut through traffic, leaving the patrol cars behind, impotently flashing their lights and honking their horns.

  Both wheels of the bike left the ground as the hill fell away underneath Elder. He hit his brakes urgently, attempting to retard his speed as the road before him ended in a T. He had no hope of making the corner, and instead aimed between two structures. Suddenly, there were bushes all around him, a glimpse of a well-maintained backyard and a hail of splintering wood. There was a dip, then cement, then Elder was back on a street, miraculously still erect on his motorcycle. He hit his brakes again, this time skidding to a halt. He looked back and marveled at the path he'd just taken. There was no way a police car could follow that, Elder realized happily, and gunned his bike back to life.

  With the pressure off, Elder kept to a sane speed. At the bottom of the hill, he turned east and had to decide whether to cross the ship canal at the Fremont Bridge or circle back around the lake to where he'd begun the chase. Elder decided to risk the bridge, turning against a light and shooting out over the bridge's deck. He instantly regretted it as the sight of two parked police cars greeted him at the far end.

  He flipped the rear wheel of the bike around and started back across the bridge, but the lights that welcomed his full reverse had Elder quickly grabbing his brakes. Two more police cruisers were moving to block the south end of the bridge, letting the traffic build behind them. Elder was stuck. He brought the cycle around in a three-sixty, smoking a donut with the rear wheel on the steel bridge deck before coming to a stop.

  Elder was trapped. The officers were climbing out of their cars, drawing their guns. Elder cut the engine of the motorcycle, laying it down on its side between his feet.

  Elder waited.

  The police didn't move forward. They remained behind the cover of their patrol cars with their pistols leveled. It dawned on Elder that they might be concerned about another bomb. He could have anything strapped to him under his dirty, bloodied shirt. Elder wished he did have a bomb, or a gun, or something. Then he might have had options. But as it was, Elder could do nothing but wait and watch the police as they waited and watched him.

  That was when that the bridge under Elder Tull moved.

  The klaxon sounded and the warning barricades descended, indicating that the bascule bridge below him was about to open. Elder froze, noticing that he was perfectly straddling the divide between the bridge's two sections. As the bridge deck below him began to rise and split, Elder considered his options: north and the two police officers at the Fremont end of the bridge, or south and the two officers at the Queen Anne end. He disliked both options.

  The spans of the drawbridge were rising below Elder. The motorcycle skidded away from him, down the newly created slope. Elder held tight to the south span on the bridge, gripping its edge as it lifted him higher and higher into the air. The motorcycle crashed against the police cars below. The officers stepped back in awe as they watched Elder being hefted into the sky.

  Elder's options were increasing deteriorating. Now he faced the decision of throwing himself off the bridge to the south and crashing down on the patrol cars, or north and taking a dip in the dark blue of the frosty ship canal below him. He held tight as the bridge locked itself into its open position.

  Perhaps in the end it hadn't been much of a choice. Elder was simply delaying the inevitable. The kick in the pants came when one of the officers below impatiently took a pot shot with his pistol. The bullet skipped off the steel beside Elder's head, but it spurred him to action. Pulling himself up to a sitting position and then to his feet, he balanced on the lip of the bridge deck. Elder looked down into the dark, glassy surface of the ship canal below him. How far was it? Fifty, sixty feet below? Elder could only guess.

  He let his weight shift, leaning out into the dead air between the raised drawbridges...

  #

  Later that evening, a small green and white cab pulled off 65th and went down a residential street that was flanked on both sides by well-maintained craftsmen homes. The street led to a dead end, terminating where a wooded ravine intersected the street. It was the Candy Kitchen's ravine, but this was the opposite, north side of the canyon, where many similar old homes had also been condemned. The taxi cab pulled to a stop in front of one of these homes, pitch black at the end of the unlit street. The headlights of the car bathed a garage that stood to one side of a dilapidated structure with light as the car stopped in front of it. A dark figure stepped out of the driver's seat of the cab, walking the length of the short driveway towards the closed garage door, leaving wet, bare footprints on the dry pavement. The figure grabbed the door's handle and pulled it opened, letting the lights of the taxi illuminate the interior.

  An old, rusty Wagoneer sat in the garage, filling half of the two car structure. The headlights of the taxi cab lit its prominent bumper sticker: "Free Palestine... with Purchase of an Israel of equal or greater value." The dark, wet figure walked back to the cab and pulled it into the garage next to the Wagoneer, killing the engine and the headlights. With the garage door again closed, the figure found the rear door and let itself out onto the stairs behind the abandoned structure, heading down into the ravine below.

  It was the Prime Administrator's Wagoneer, a truck he'd had since it had run on petroleum. He'd converted it to bio-diesel, but even that, with the collapse of the food economy, had become harder and harder to find. It was the truck he'd taken on his expeditions out of the city to find scran; it was the truck in which he'd found Bannock; it was the truck that Elder Tull hoped would soon carry him and the others to the safety of that haven.

  Elder descended the stairs until they terminated at a footpath, leading down to the floor of the ravine. He followed a stream that ran the length of the ravine until he reached a marker that indicated the path up to the Candy Kitchen. In the dark, he climbed the wooded hill.

  Elder had miraculously survived his plummet into the icy cold of the ship canal. How, he could only guess. He'd stayed under for as long as he could stand, though the fall had knocked all the air out of his lungs. He'd come up coughing and splashing and scrambling for air. The current of the canal had pulled him a good two hundred yards downstream, the raised decks of the bridge dark in the distance.

  Almost immediately, Elder had dived again and swam as deeply into the gloom as he dared. He let the current take him, only surfacing when he could stand the lack of air no more.

  He'd pulled himself out of the water between two moored fishing boats. He'd sloshed his way ashore and found the small green and white taxi parked in a side street. He'd pulled the driver out of the car and knocked him cold with a quick right hook. The keys had been in the ignition.

  With the Fremont Bridge out of operation and the chaos from the explosion downtown, traffic was snarled. Night had fallen before Elder could make his way across town. As Elder let himself in through the basement sliding door of the Candy Kitchen, the rest of the group was sitting, watching the news broadcast of the bombing, which stretched across all
six of Prime's computer displays.

  The news wasn't good.

  "How'd it go?" Beat asked, turning in her chair as Elder dropped his soaking wet body onto one of the couches.

  "Fine," Elder replied, scratching at his beard. "Anything to eat?"

  Chapter 16

  They shot the first Puke at 6pm.

  He was pushed to his knees, his hands cuffed behind his back and shot in the back of the head. His dead body fell face-first into the rubble of Westlake Square.

  Three more Pukes kneeling in a line followed, all shot execution-style. The police captain used his service automatic, popping each in turn, walking the length of the line.

  His victims had waited while he read out loud the full list of each Puke's crimes. He'd read them from an electric tablet handed to him by a fellow officer. It had been less than four hours since the bombing in the square, and EMT crews were still working into the dusk. But a small number of Stems had braved the danger to come and watch the execution. The TV channels all carried it live.

  The four Pukes had all been arrested within the vicinity of Westlake minutes after the bombing. All were summarily executed for the crimes of terrorism and murder. They were old men and women, transients all, who'd managed to slip the police's incarceration sweeps by having no fixed address.

  Four Pukes dead – arrested, tried, sentenced and executed in under four hours – all for a terrorist attack no one genuinely suspected them of committing. But the sight of four dead Pukes was all that mattered. The nation had to see four Pukes dead to alleviate the fact that so many Stems were dead or dying.

  It was a message received loud and clear by Elder and the others as they watched in shocked silence in the Candy Kitchen.