Z 2135

by Wright, David W.

  Adam was shocked how far he was getting without even trying.

  The Chief would be proud … if Adam could still bring himself to turn Michael in.

  CHAPTER 32 — ANA LOVECRAFT

  Ana’s skin was on fire, her body one big ball of flame. The world had dug a deep hole in the hottest desert, then planted her inside, buried her to her neck, leaving her to an angry sun with no sense of humor.

  Earlier in the day, she’d seen that the blisters and peeling had spread past her bitten wrist and up to her elbow. Now, though it was the middle of the night and it was too dark to see herself, it felt like it was spreading even farther, onto her shoulders and chest.

  She’d seen this happen on The Games many times. The infection slowly working its way from one limb and then through the body. The thing about infections, at least the ones she’d seen on TV, was that they started slow, a hand bite infection that went to the wrist, and then to the arm. But, all of a sudden, the infection spread to the entire body in as little as an hour.

  She was living on borrowed time.

  Viewers loved it when someone got bitten in the beginning and tried to outrun becoming a zombie. It wouldn’t matter, because even if the infected player won, there was no way he or she could be allowed into City 7—not that there was one.

  She didn’t want to outrun it. She wanted to die. Not like when she was little and said she wanted to die while stomping her foot and throwing a fit. No, Ana wanted to close her eyes and never open them again, even if that meant never seeing her father or knowing how Adam was doing. Before she was bitten, Ana wasn’t sure what her future held. She could picture living out her days in The Barrens with Liam. There were worse ways to live. In the past few months, she had come to like Liam, a lot more than she would’ve ever thought she could. He was kind to her, funny, and could even be sweet on occasion. Plus he was, beneath the gruff exterior, a good man. Like her father, in some of his idealistic ways. Yes, Liam had betrayed her father, but hell, so had she. If things had been different, perhaps they could’ve fallen in love—not that Ana had ever been prone to such impractical thoughts.

  But now everything was different. Life as she knew it, and life as she might have dreamed it, was over. She would be dead soon. Better to go out now. At least she wouldn’t be walking rot, or a danger to Liam.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  Ana’s body was itching because she was changing. The something she couldn’t quite explain was under her scalp, deep in her armpits, between her legs, and all over her arms. She felt an army of ants, but bigger, with claws that burrowed under her skin. She wanted to scratch and scratch and keep on scratching until her skin was in ribbons, but she knew if she started, she wouldn’t stop, and that would be the end of her.

  She would be a zombie by the end of the night, in minutes if not hours.

  It’s happening.

  Ana looked over at Liam, who was sleeping deeply. He must have felt safe, which shouldn’t have been possible. For some reason Ana still couldn’t figure, Liam wasn’t afraid of her. He was snoring, somehow able to ignore the monsters in the forest, and the one waiting to be born beside him.

  Ana slowly stood, her head swimming, wanting to vomit so badly that to avoid doing so, she took a full minute to go from flat on the floor to kneeling, then twice that to standing. Once vertical, Ana wandered to the edge of their impromptu camp and stared out of the cave and into the pitch black forest. The pain was so bad that she wanted to scream, just to let some of it out. But her volume would attract the countless monsters in the night and endanger Liam.

  If Ana could gather the strength to die, everything would be better. She could say good-bye without turning, before staining The Barrens with her undead body, wandering with no purpose, meaning, or reason for breathing other than to feed.

  The woods were silent, but Ana didn’t trust them. Too many times she’d been a fool to believe they were empty, when really the forest was waiting, preparing to spit its undead at her. She knew the woods would start crawling soon. The zombies could smell Liam and her.

  My sisters and brothers.

  Ana had to leave. If she didn’t now, she couldn’t trust that she’d be able to later. She was almost too woozy to make smart decisions. Her head swam as acid sloshed in her stomach and the itching worsened. She wanted to rake her skin with anything sharp.

  Broken glass would be nice.

  She pulled at her shirt to see that while the infection hadn’t spread to her shoulders as she’d thought while lying down, it was getting closer.

  It won’t be long now.

  Liam snored loudly. Ana crept closer to his body, inching toward the bag of supplies and weapons they retrieved from the bandits. She needed only one pull of the trigger—Liam’s lead spitter or one of the clumsy energy guns they looted from the bandits—to fry her face and brains.

  She unzipped the bag, slipped her hand inside, and slowly fished, timing her movements with Liam’s loud snores. He held all the weapons—they both thought it best considering her condition, so she didn’t want him seeing her with her hand in the bag. He’d immediately know what she was up to. Her fingers found the polished wood handle and drew it from the bag. She tightened her grip and stood, then crept away from Liam and back to her spot.

  Ana opened her mouth and shoved the barrel inside, eager to end it, hungry to stop the itching and silence the change she couldn’t keep from coming otherwise. The cold metal tasted clean in her mouth—a cool punishment for being stupid enough to get bitten. She should’ve seen it coming. Life in The Barrens was “Be Ready or Be Dead.” She had failed, so death found her.

  Pull the trigger; then it’s done.

  Ana closed her eyes to make things easier, but that didn’t work. She kept her finger tense over the trigger.

  She looked over at Liam, suddenly imagining the life they could’ve had together. But hope was the enemy of bold decisions. She couldn’t go down that road. She had to act. Now.

  Her heart pounded, slamming hard and begging to die.

  I can’t leave him to thunder and blood.

  Ana thought of her friend, Stacy, who had found her brother hanging dead in his bedroom. She had knocked on his door for 10 minutes before finally going in, hoping he wasn’t doing something that involved pictures bought in the upstairs arcade bathroom. The lights were off in her brother’s room. She told Ana that she had known “something was off.” Stacy saw a lump under her brother’s blanket and felt relief when she got closer and saw it was pillows. Then she saw her brother, dangling so low she couldn’t believe she’d missed his feet. A sheet was coiled tight around his neck, and small blotches of reddish-purple depressions and lesions on his skin. His eyes were open in a forever death stare. Stacy told Ana she screamed for minutes.

  Ana couldn’t do to Liam what Stacy’s brother had done to her. She would still end it; she had to, but not within earshot. Ana didn’t want Liam to wake to her murdering herself.

  Ana stood, shaky, then moved the gun to her left hand as she crept through camp, past Liam, and away from their shared ground.

  She entered the forest wondering how far she should go. Ana wasn’t sure how loud the gun would be or how far the sound would carry, and didn’t know how deeply Liam was sleeping or how much distance it would take to muffle the sounds enough that he’d snore through the gunshot.

  Crap.

  Ana realized that it wasn’t enough just to get out of earshot. Once she was dead, the zombies would come. They would feast on her, and if she were anywhere near Liam, they might feast on him too. She might also turn immediately, then make her way back to camp. If he was still nearby, she was a threat. So Ana trudged deeper into the darkness, figuring if she wandered far enough, Liam might be safe after she turned.

  Every step better prepared Ana to die. She was no longer scared. She knew her life was over from the moment Duncan’s teeth had ripped into her wrist. She saw it in Oli’s eyes, just like she later saw it in Liam’s. Every minute since the
n had been prolonging the inevitable. Now that she was moving away from camp, she felt better, calmer, more capable of a hard pull of the trigger.

  She saw a clearing ahead and walked faster. It was ironic: now that Ana was only a minute from ending it all, the pain had stopped bothering her, fading to barely an ache. But the reprieve was temporary, Ana was sure, subsiding only so the undead could slip comfortably into her cells, changing her into the wandering terror that haunted The Barrens and scared the citizens who lived blindly behind The Walls.

  A horrible thought brought Ana up short: she should have found a way to leave a message for Liam—a way to let him know what she was doing, and not waste time looking for her. She thought of him desperately searching, never knowing what happened. It was crueler than killing herself in front of him.

  No, you’re just stalling. Do it. Do it now.

  Ana made it to the clearing, and put the gun in her mouth again.

  Suddenly, she heard Liam calling out for her.

  She was filled with panic. Liam couldn’t find her, not now. Not when she was so close to ending everything, so close to sparing him from the pain of seeing her turn, and the constant risk to his life.

  I’m too close. If I turn, I’ll kill him.

  Ana took the gun from her mouth and ran into the woods on the other side of the clearing, farther from Liam, thankful the throbbing had dimmed. Branches snapped in her wake. She ran faster. Liam screamed louder.

  “Ana, please! Stop! You don’t have to do this.”

  He was on to her. He must’ve seen the open bag and missing gun. He thought he could stop her, which meant she had to be strong, had to do what was necessary.

  “Ana, please!” Liam sounded urgent, desperation wavered his plea. “I can protect you. We can get help at Hydrangea. Without you, I won’t want to keep going, Ana. You have to stop. You have to trust me. You have to know you’re supposed to live, supposed to make it to Hydrangea, supposed to see your father, and supposed to stay with me. You can’t leave me alone. I need you.”

  It was then, in the sound of his voice, Ana realized how strongly he felt for her. It was almost too much. She wanted to turn back and run to Liam. But she would be doing that for her, not him. To him she was a danger.

  Ana fought the urge to run to him, murdered the desire to fall into his arms. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, rooted her heel in the dirt, then opened her eyes, launched herself forward, and tore deeper into the forest.

  Ana had to be strong enough to do the hard thing and leave Liam behind.

  CHAPTER 33 — JONAH LOVECRAFT

  Jonah tried to keep his knee from bouncing as he sat in the small, windowless, gray-walled cell.

  Nervousness was the last thing he wanted them to see, knowing his every movement was captured by the tiny camera in the corner. He didn’t know why they made the cameras so small—it wasn’t as if they were actually hidden or like every person who had ever come into the checkpoint Detainment rooms didn’t know he or she was being recorded. It was like The State believed that by shrinking intrusions, or making them less conspicuous, people wouldn’t mind as much.

  The orbs had picked up on Jonah’s odd pattern of walking, and sent a rookie Watcher to bring him in for questioning. The first round went nowhere. His ID checked out for now, and they had nothing on him but a peculiar gait. Jonah knew the drill. They’d send a career Watcher in next, to see what he could draw to the surface.

  Jonah was agitated, not that he had been caught per se, but that his being sloppy and getting nabbed could possibly prevent him from seeing his son in The City, or keep him from getting back to Ana. They were all that mattered, the only reason he had gone to Hydrangea—then back behind The Walls—in the first place.

  The only reason Jonah hadn’t already found a high place from which to jump.

  He wondered which Watcher would come into the room for further questioning. He hoped it would be someone he was friendly with from back before his world went to hell, ideally one of his old men. Yes, there was a higher chance of them seeing through his disguise, but at the same time, he felt that loyalty, even among Watchers, had to count for something, and there were a few who would still help him. Maybe. If the risk weren’t too high. But the way The State liked to shuffle things, moving people from sector to sector seemingly at whim, there was no telling who would show.

  Jonah got a chill, thinking of Keller, imagining him entering the holding cell with his serpent’s smile, sauntering over and sitting across from Jonah—too close the way he liked to get, face bloated from gloating. He’d already been thrown to The Games as an example to The City. The State couldn’t admit there was no City 7, so Jonah could imagine what sort of torture and torment he’d suffer if found out.

  He reasoned that Keller wouldn’t be coming, though. If Keller knew Jonah was in The City—if the guard had seen through Jonah’s disguise—then he wouldn’t be alone in Detainment, sitting in one of the small cells just miles from the Precinct. Jonah would be surrounded by half The City’s orbs and locked up in the City Watch’s tower prisons.

  The holding cell opened and sure enough (because sometimes the world was still good) one of his old men stepped through the door. Sam Fogerty, a good guy. He was an old-school Watcher. Jonah once thought the man saw the world through too harsh a lens; now he wondered how Fogerty would see things if he knew the truth.

  The old Watcher didn’t even look at Jonah when entering. Jonah’s heart pounded, and he wondered if his disguise was too thin to keep him covered. Fogerty finally looked up at Jonah, then into him, recognition barely perceptible, but there.

  Fogerty didn’t so much as do a double take.

  Good man.

  For the first time since being led to the holding cell, Jonah felt an honest ray of hope. There was a chance that he would be leaving the cell soon, finding his way to Adam, Katrina, then Ana. In the last six months, he had been wrong more than right, but Jonah felt certain that Fogerty wouldn’t throw him to the wolves.

  The old Watcher rolled his eyes up and right, indicating the camera.

  “ID,” Fogerty said.

  Jonah held up his wrist, and Fogerty scanned it. He said, “State your business in Municipal.”

  “I’m a doctor,” Jonah said. “I was checking in with Clinic 14 because one of the physicians, Dr. Blair, was ill. When I got there she was fine, so they sent me home.”

  Fogerty’s face was stern, eyes smiling.

  “You were a ways from Clinic 14 when you were picked up. Why?”

  “Just wanted to walk. I live in the mids, and don’t get down to the street much. I’m on sub call, so if no one’s sick, I’m home all day. I was happy getting out of the apartment, so once I got sent home it was the last place I wanted to go. Figured I’d walk awhile instead.”

  Jonah spoke in a tired rasp, worthy of a man who felt crushed by his day to day.

  Fogerty turned his body so he was half facing the camera. Eyebrows high he blurted, “Hey, I remember you! Were you the doctor called in on sub for Clinic 11 back in March, when that toddler took a nasty spill at Grassland?”

  “That was me,” Jonah nodded, cocking his head and feigning embarrassment.

  Fogerty nodded. “Got it, right. Sorry we pulled you in; plenty of heat on the streets right now. It’s time for vigilance. Know your neighbor and all that.”

  Fogerty tapped the wall pad for less than a minute, scribbled a few lines on his clipboard, hung it on the wall, unlocked Jonah’s cuffs, then opened the holding-cell door and waited for him to step through. The Watcher then led him outside the room, down a short hallway, and out to the front desk.

  “You’re free to go,” he said, then turned and started to walk off without ceremony. Six steps away he turned back.

  “Wait,” Fogerty said. “Do you have a way to get home?”

  Jonah shrugged. “No, but I can walk, that’s OK.”

  “No,” Fogerty shook his head. “Jensen, the good doctor here was detained by mista
ke. Do we have anyone who can escort him home?”

  “Never mind,” Fogerty said before Jensen could answer, glancing at the clock. “I’ll take him.” He turned to Jonah. “I’m done here. Give me five and I’ll take you. Not far, right?”

  “Right,” Jonah agreed. “Long walk, short drive.”

  Jonah waited an excruciating 10 minutes (each felt like a hundred) for Fogerty, who then returned to the lobby seeming agitated—his usual look, though it felt to Jonah like it was for show.

  “Follow me,” Fogerty said, walking by Jonah.

  Outside, the old Watcher seemed adolescently happy. “Good to see you,” he said, under his breath just seconds outside the doors. He walked for another half minute, back turned to Jonah, then pointed to an older cruiser and said, “We’re in that one. Camera inside’s been broken for three weeks,” then opened the driver’s side door. Jonah climbed in the passenger’s side and closed the door behind him.

  Fogerty said, “Where to?”

  “You’re smiling?”

  Fogerty laughed. “I’ve never seen a ghost. Feels damn good to know they exist.”

  “It feels good to be a ghost,” Jonah laughed. “So, can you take me to The Quarters?”

  “Sure thing.” Fogerty sparked the engine and pulled out of the lot.

  City 6 had no better hiding spot than The Dark Quarters, since far fewer orbs, which were expensive to maintain, patrolled the area.

  “Where we going in The Quarters?”

  “To Marquis Odenkirk.”

  “No shit,” Fogerty slapped the steering wheel. “Just saw Marquis and, no shit you’re not gonna believe who I was with. It’s what I’ve been dying to tell ya. You’re never gonna guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  Jonah had never seen Fogerty so giddy. “You’re never gonna guess,” he repeated.

  “Captain Republic.”

  “Would you believe me if I said little Adam Lovecraft?”

  “No shit,” Jonah growled. “That was you? Marquis told me he saw him on a ride-along. Didn’t know it was you. Never thought to ask who the Watchers were, I was so pissed that Adam was cozy with Keller.”