Dead City

by Sean Platt

  “I told you, we’re good. I still have his access codes. I can get past the new security. I could have got you more today, even. I just didn’t want to take the risk. But I would’ve if I’d known—”

  Finally, Jordache squeezed back. “No. I wouldn’t have wanted you to take any risks.”

  “It’s not just a risk to me. It’s a risk to you, too. If anyone figures out that I’m sneaking in there and taking stuff I shouldn’t even be allowed to sell … ”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just get edgy.”

  Danny nodded. He understood edgy. When he’d first peeked into the breadth of inventory available at Ian’s more exclusive access level, he’d practically lost his shit. He’d been so nervous that first time, and had still been nervous every time since. Technically (teeeechnically), he was doing something illegal. And yes, he could stop selling and stick only to giving Jordache what she needed for free, but the perks were too good. And again, who was being hurt?

  “Monday then?” she said, trying to smile.

  “Monday.”

  Danny pulled a printout from his pocket. It was squished from their long time delaying the inevitable, but now that the discomfort was over (and a solution was in the works), he could share.

  Danny slid from his side of the booth and over to Jordache’s. Their bodies touched. She smelled wonderful.

  He flattened the paper on the table.

  “I printed out the full roster. Do you want to try any of these? Beauty. Truth. Glamour. Why do they all have such pretentious names?”

  “Here’s one that’s less pretentious.” She put a finger at a line on the printout. “Genius.”

  “How is that not pretentious?”

  “At least it’s not superficial.”

  Watching her scan the list, Danny thought of saying something about how she didn’t need any help with the superficial because she had it all covered. But there was no way to say it without being cheesy, so he let it go, remaining firmly Danny the Rep, Danny the Salesman.

  “These are supposed to be good.” He pointed at a cluster designated as being part of a class called augmentation plus. “Did I tell you about Sully?”

  Jordache shook her head.

  “Another guy in my department. I know he reps those. Lots of celebrity clients.”

  “Ooh. Look at the prices.”

  “That’s retail. And besides, you wouldn’t have to pay anything.”

  Jordache looked up. She had pale-blue eyes to accent her naturally blonde hair. She made a little face, and Danny thought he knew what was coming. It was another of those split-morality things. On one hand, she seemed to know it was wrong to allow Danny to risk what he did — for her, for anyone — and that she should protest. But on the other hand, there was her need.

  He cut her off before she could speak, returning her attention to the paper.

  “Ian’s code gives me access to order any of this. He must be superauthorized to give out samples or something, or to shuttle product around, because it’s been six full months now, and I’ve yet to see any sign that he’s expected to balance his requisitions with credits back.” He turned to Jordache. “That means turning in the money he supposedly makes selling what he takes.”

  “I know what it means, Danny. I’m not an idiot.”

  Danny’s jaw slid sideways. He didn’t want to say what came to mind: that she most definitely was not an idiot, but that nonetheless, she seemed to be further from idiocy than ever before. It seemed like Jordache had been underestimated her entire life. Her parents tossed her out, and a long string of boyfriends used her like a sex doll before getting arrested or (in Weasel’s case) shipped off to Yosemite. Nobody ever took Jordache seriously, until Danny. But even he had to admit that something had changed, and that taking PhageX from Jordache now would represent a definite loss, no matter how adequate the base drug was supposed to be.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I can get you any of this.”

  She sat back and shrugged, the paper apparently dismissed.

  “I’ll stick with what works.”

  “Don’t you want to try anything new? They’re all superexpensive. Seems a shame not to try them, especially given their supposed benefits.”

  “I like the way PhageX makes my mind work. It’s … ” she sighed, “ … better.”

  “Better how?”

  “All I know is that something is different, Danny.”

  He held up the printout. “I don’t even know what it’s supposed to do. It’s not classed like the others. It’s not an Aesthetic. It’s not a Sensory Enhancer. It’s not Cognitive Preservation. Sully says some of the guys he sells designers to swear whatever they’re taking makes their dicks bigger.”

  “I don’t want that one,” Jordache said.

  “But PhageX isn’t even designated. And based on what I see, it only goes to a couple of clients. You know what Sully says?”

  “That it makes tits bigger too?”

  “He thinks PhageX is ultra-designer. Like, above price. The kind of special thing on the menu you have to know to ask for. You’ve heard of August Maughan?”

  “The healer. The Hollywood guru guy?”

  Danny nodded. “I guess the big thing he used to do when he worked for Hemisphere was messing with the formulas to make them … different somehow. Like moving them that last 1 percent, from great to amazing.”

  “And?”

  “Sully thinks PhageX might be the highest of high-class Necrophage. For August as the only recipient. Like he’s still working for the company, on the sly.”

  Jordache smiled. “Then I guess I have good taste.”

  “Champagne taste, I’ll bet. You know what it means when there’s no price on the menu for that special item, right?” Danny pointed, where PhageX, at the tip of the zenith had no listed retail. Either someone had made a mistake and left the price off … or, more likely, it simply wasn’t ever for sale.

  It took visible effort for Jordache to say the next thing.

  “Maybe I should switch to something else. Something as exclusive as you’re describing … Danny, you could really get in trouble.”

  Danny watched her eyes. Her barely affected, chronically underestimated, increasingly intelligent eyes.

  “I started this,” he said. “What the lady wants, the lady gets.”

  Jordache looked for a moment like she might protest then wrapped her arms around his slight bicep and leaned against his shoulder.

  “I don’t deserve you.”

  Danny didn’t agree. Jordache deserved plenty.

  But even though he suspected it made him a son of a bitch, he couldn’t help feeling that after all the time he’d put in, maybe he deserved her, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE GOOD LIFE

  AUGUST WASN’T SURE IF HE was being a good guru or a terrible recluse.

  Aberdeen Valley had once been a nothing of a North Carolina town centered (in concept, anyway) around a tiny river too pathetic to be much more than a creek. Back then (when August had been part of the fold, and he and Archibald had chosen the company’s location together), Aberdeen had been a quaint place. Hemisphere had quickly changed that, and even by the time of August’s much-publicized blowout with his partner, the place had been nearly big enough to hide inside.

  The pace of expansion had only accelerated, and the growth between then and now had been stratospheric. Soon after ending their partnership, August was already wondering if he should move somewhere where he could vanish — probably LA, where his richest clients lived, Holly Gaynor being the biggest. But then Holly had nabbed her Hemisphere endorsement deal and moved the other direction, to Aberdeen — and by then, August had to admit that, looking around, the place had grown large enough to disappear.

  Even so, sitting in the open made August nervous. He’d been watching Holly on the outdoor stage from across the huge, walk-through fountain and could clearly see the way she was being fawned over. She was a featured attraction at the Good Life Awa
rds ceremony, but the attention she was getting from onlookers was disproportionate to her actual role. The Good Life Awards were supposed to be about the recipients. But everyone kept approaching the spokesperson.

  It, like the Good Life Awards themselves, was backhandedly insulting.

  Holly had been popular before the outbreak and her infection, but even then she’d been a cult celebrity, renowned for her acting chops and range but unappreciated by the mainstream. Once she’d become the poster girl for Sherman Pope (first in films where she played infected characters then literally when Hemisphere had hitched its endorsement wagon to her rising star), she’d started hitting the covers of every magazine. She was the perfect spokesperson for the disease: affected enough to speak for the masses, but mostly unblemished on the surface, so that she was still nice to look at. She’d already been a half-black woman who was white enough for the Caucasian decision makers, and now she was a necrotic who wouldn’t offend the uninfected nation’s eyes with sagging skin, blackening and receding gums, sunken eyes, and a head that could barely cling to its hair.

  Now nobody could stay away from her. It would be insulting if the press avoided Holly, but the lengths to which they went the other direction was condescending.

  Like the Good Life Awards.

  Like this entire plaza. Like the businesses that didn’t exactly cater to the infected’s needs, but pandered to their most obvious, most photo-op-ready desires.

  August sat on his picnic table, far enough from the crowds to hide from curious eyes but close enough that Holly, onstage, would be able to see him for moral support. He didn’t need to be here. He’d been watching the proceedings to see Holly’s latest public showing, but he’d been doing so on his tablet. He could look up and see Holly tiny, or down to see her close up, same as he’d have been able to do at home, in his two-floor penthouse with his cat’s name on the tenant register instead of his own.

  He was doing this for Holly, but he didn’t like it.

  Holly, who was his responsibility now, one way or the other.

  They were in this together, and had been since she’d begun taking Prestige. Neither of them had needed test results to prove the myelin on neurons in Holly’s brain had started to regenerate. Neither of them needed scans to show the way her frontal lobe was lighting back up. She wasn’t being cured, precisely. It was more that her brain was finding new ways to do old functions — rerouting mental traffic around damaged areas to find new paths. Unsurprisingly, given what August suspected Hemisphere was keeping secret these days, the tweaked Necrophage had lit up Holly’s corpus callosum like a twelve-lane expressway. The band of nerves spanning the two halves of her gray matter seemed to be more active than any brain August had ever seen. It might not mean anything; August still didn’t believe the disease had an out-and-out cure.

  But it could also mean something. Or everything.

  August didn’t exactly work with FDA approval. He was reasonably sure he was actively disobeying half a dozen Panacea statutes, all of which were supposedly in place to ensure that Sherman Pope stayed stable and predictable rather than being shaken and allowed to mutate in the wild. Supposedly, that’s what Panacea was in place to do. But to August, who’d grown up skeptical of power, it smacked of fear-based systems designed for control.

  When you wanted a nation to obey, you told it a deadly enemy was knocking at the gates.

  When you wanted a nation to obey, you told it that without the government’s protection, something horrible might break out like wildfire.

  Bullshit.

  But it meant that both of them had a secret, too. August and Holly. She was an unlicensed, unapproved test group of one. And if anyone saw him here, in public, so near Holly, they might connect the dots. They might believe the rumors. Reporters would renew their search for the famous recluse who’d pulled off the wunderkind’s greatest trick: getting the world’s mainstream to mostly forget about him.

  He shouldn’t be here. He went out to get groceries, to attend events, to live his life. But to August, Aberdeen Valley was just a place to live. The rest of the world saw its very existence as meaningful, as if living in the halo city Hemisphere created had purpose in itself — the same way people used to think that all who lived in Las Vegas spent their days on the Strip and in casinos. But it wasn’t like that. August had stayed because he wanted to be close to the company he’d once been a part of, and because his wealthiest clients lived here or made pilgrimages here. And why not? It was Dead Fucking City, mecca of those that were still tastelessly called the walking undead.

  The entire country had non-discrimination statutes, but Aberdeen had entire industries populated by necrotics. Even run by necrotics, in a few cases. Playtime was run by Carol Gartner, who was SP-positive. She’d started the play park franchise with a single location meant to entertain her still delightful but relatively mindless necrotic grandchildren. Carol’s incubation was something like a day, whereas her entire brood of grandkids were damn near feral. All they wanted to do all day every day was to jump in bounce houses. But as things turned out, there was a demand for more play parks in Dead City and the rest of the country beyond, and Carol was still plenty adept to be an entrepreneur.

  It wasn’t just Hemisphere that made Aberdeen Valley home. It was the acres of secondary and tertiary industries Hemisphere’s employees and siren song had drawn here. There were independent labs who worked off of Hemisphere’s publicly released formulary information. There were pharmacy hubs, mostly overseen by Panacea, who acted like vast distribution centers for the rest of the country. There were the entertainment businesses, who’d come to Aberdeen because the best necrotic talent came to Aberdeen. Able, the computer peripheral company, had come to Aberdeen because demand for modified keyboards and other necrotic-friendly input devices was highest here. Same for Telcot, Moxie Systems, and Next Step Imagery.

  More restaurants to serve all of those businesses, all of which preferentially hired necrotics.

  More retail stores, dry cleaners, easy-on clothing outfits, coffee shops that never, ever sold coffee hot enough to burn because patrons always spilled, 100 percent of the time.

  August pushed his earbud farther into his ear and tilted the tablet for a better view. Holly had been nervous, though to August’s eye, she didn’t look it at all. But that was Holly for you — so used to pretending to be someone else that few saw who she actually was. And it’s not like Holly wasn’t used to pandering. She’d been mixed-race in white Hollywood before her infection. She was used to smiling, unsure whether those around her were being genuine or patronizing.

  Holly approached the mic. She looked out, away from the camera. August’s eyes flicked up, looking across the fountain at the small shape on the stage beyond the fountain’s leaping arcs of water. He knew she was looking at him. Trying to draw strength to playact — to play dumber than she was, to feign the uncertainty her handlers always seemed so sure she was.

  Holly began speaking, her voice projected by speakers in real time, then a half second later through the earbud in his ear.

  “Iffs goot to be here today,” she slurred.

  In his earbud, August heard the rustle of press. Someone had a camera with an ancient shutter, and he could hear it clapping.

  “Hemithpere hathz made a hyooth diffrenth immy life,” she went on.

  Huge, yes, but it was only part of the story. August watched the screen, watching Holly’s face, wondering if anyone was fooled. Holly wasn’t the face of Sherman Pope or Necrophage. The guy dragging one leg with his foot canted sideways, his face almost literally half-torn off, who was sweeping cigarette butts near the fountain right now? That was closer to the face of Sherman Pope. Some people got lucky, like Holly, and took their major damage below the skin where nobody could see. But most people with a one-week incubation or more were at least a little hard to look at. A lot could die off in a week of localized necrosis.

  Holly went on. August watched her onscreen, watched her in the distance,
let his eyes stray to the large, fine, new buildings around the clearing. The place hadn’t even had a skyline when Hemisphere had come here three years ago, and now its size rivaled that of a medium-sized city. Everything was white and gray and silver and black, its every inch pristine. In the center of the place like this, so near Hemisphere, you’d think the whole city was a marvel and that all this PR bullshit told the whole truth. Never mind the ghettos no one spoke of.

  “And to theeth winners of the Good Life A’ars, the ability to live normal lize makes all the difference in’a world.”

  Not for the first time, August found his mind wandering to those old days, when he and Archibald had been partners. They’d been an odd couple: Archibald the man with the plan, and August a protégé. August had a stake in the company, but Archibald’s was a majority, so he could never be outvoted even after Hemisphere went public. August’s buyout following their rather loud and public tiff had made him rich enough to never work again and still live as lavishly as he wished. At the time, it had felt more like a payoff than a buyout, like those billions were hush money, even though nobody had made it clear exactly what he wasn’t supposed to whisper about.

  But of course, Archibald had been right. No matter what else had happened, the plague had been stopped in its tracks. And maybe that made it as his former mentor had said: that the ends really did justify the means, when evolution itself — and the history of the species — was at stake.

  Holly, in August’s ear, went on.

  “I’m proud to share the stage with these amazing, brave people who’ve refused to be bound with the tethers of the illness that afflicts so much of us today,” she said.

  August looked down, feeling something amiss. The camera view on his tablet still showed Holly at the lectern, doing her spokeswoman thing, but her face had gone strange. There was movement to either side, subtle.

  August looked up. He was maybe two hundred feet from the crowd across the fountain, but it wasn’t far enough for their murmuring to be inaudible.