Dead City

by Sean Platt

  The ferals saw her coming. One leaped up and again ran — not away, precisely, but toward an old man with a walker. Slow, weak prey for a fast hunter. Natural selection on display.

  The second was still kneeling over the woman’s body, its face covered with gore, its banquet surrounded by what looked like a crimson tablecloth. It swiveled toward the clarifier’s approach, baring its teeth. There was a short, sharp whistle, and the thing’s head exploded, spattering the crowd as it pressed against the wall.

  Ian’s eyes were on Bridget. She still hadn’t run, probably knowing the stalemate was the only thing keeping her alive. Ferals had usually spent at least six weeks dead and were little more than rotted meat with teeth, barely kept alive by Sherman Pope’s restorative work. They couldn’t run. They could only drag. But these looked younger, healthy by comparison. There were people in Ian’s office that were more decayed than these three (well, two now).

  If Bridget ran, it would chase her. And with the other clarifier more concerned about Ian, it might just catch her.

  And yet the clarifiers were doing nothing, going so far as to wave the mall cops back. There were only two of them. One was on Ian, ignoring the real problem. And the other was trying not to shoot the old man as the feral stalked him. Bridget was on her own.

  In his head, Ian heard the voice on his phone from earlier.

  They don’t know you’re here. They’re after her.

  They knew now. They knew, and wouldn’t forget — even if it meant letting Bridget die to keep Ian safe and confined, down where he belonged.

  Bridget backed away, one hand on the railing. The feral followed. It bared its teeth. Its eyes, decayed around the edges but not at all in the whites, appeared wide and intent.

  Another shout. A chorus of screams. The clarifier hadn’t found an angle in time; Ian could now see the thrash of raking red hands from his low position, meaning the old man had seen his last birthday. At least he wouldn’t need to go on as a necrotic, propped up by Necrophage, same as that first couple. Judging by the amount of blood and ropy, flung gore, all were dead beyond Sherman Pope’s ability to resuscitate.

  Another whistle. Another dull thump, like a sledgehammer striking a melon. Where the old man had been, the mall’s outer wall was now stained in a crimson starburst.

  “HELP HER! Help her, damn you!” Ian shouted.

  The idea is to make a problem you can’t ignore, that you’ll take personally.

  Ian was yanked roughly upward. His eyes, jostled from Bridget and the finally approaching clarifier, saw Alice Frank and understood why she hadn’t run over herself. Sometime in the last few minutes, while lives had been at stake, the man holding Ian down had cuffed her to the railing.

  Bridget’s cool broke. She ran.

  The deadhead ran faster.

  There was a whistle. Then a thump.

  Blood and brain sprayed over the railing to fall onto those below like sticky red rain.

  Ian’s breath caught as Bridget stumbled and fell, unharmed, her eyes wide and vacant.

  It was over.

  The clarifier unfastened Alice from the railing and secured her hands behind her back. Ian’s remained uncuffed, but both, at least for now, were in custody.

  “Let’s go,” the clarifier said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  21:46

  JORDACHE PACED HER LIVING ROOM. When that didn’t help, she put on her shoes and went running, which was strange because she wasn’t a runner. The neighborhood wasn’t the best, but for some reason she felt safe running even while wearing a sleeveless tank up top (her sports bras were in the laundry and regular bras chafed when exercising), girls jiggling and giving a show. There were men who might have given her a problem, but Jordache knew how to avoid them. One was two blocks away, hassling a guy who owed him money. The other was a group of teens hanging out on Emma Pope Boulevard, near the theater. Her most logical running route took Jordache by both, but knowing what was out there made her change her route. Simple. Safe. She wondered why everyone didn’t do things this way, or why she hadn’t before today.

  The run didn’t help. She still felt restless. She still wanted to talk to Danny. In fact, now that that particular bubble had popped, she kind of wanted to drag Danny back here, strip him nude, and take another ride. But mostly she wanted to chat. To let him know what was going on. Because holy shit, PhageX had given her some great results so far, but this was another level.

  She saw the thing on the news about the mall downtown. And she’d really enjoyed meeting Holly Gaynor. She was pretty sure that hadn’t actually happened last night because she’d been with Danny (and she wasn’t crazy, ha-ha), but she also understood why Holly wouldn’t want all that public attention. Good thing too much attention wasn’t something Jordache needed to worry about.

  She was hungry.

  There wasn’t much in the pantry or fridge. She needed to go shopping. She could go to the market. It would be nice to cross it off the list, and she was already pretty sure she’d be calling in sick to work because if she did, Danny could come over again, and that would be good because holy shit, her mind was going a mile a minute, and she needed someone to talk to.

  Crackers. Peanuts. Spices she’d never really used in cooking, even though the idea of learning how to cook, right now, sounded really appealing. In the fridge, she had a few things of yogurt, Greek, vanilla, and some of those little cheese wheel things that came covered in red wax. And two steaks, which Danny had run out for, after they’d had sex the first time but before the second, when he’d been inspired and decided they should celebrate. But they’d never made it that far. They’d fucked with her sitting up on the sink.

  Jordache pulled her computer from its little alcove. Found a cooking website. Scanned it. Steak, sure, yeah, she could make steak. But then she got too goddamned hungry to wait and ate one of them raw.

  Maybe she should talk to Holly again.

  Or the other guy.

  Not Weasel. She didn’t think she could talk to Weasel, and didn’t want to. Fuck that guy. He was out there somewhere, maybe, still alive/dead, whatever it was, worse than she herself was alive/dead, but the right amount according to that clarifier who came by yesterday, ha-ha.

  Jordache went to YouTube. She didn’t remember which of the Bobby Baltimore videos she’d seen Weasel in, except that she did and it was the fourth from the second season, time index 21:46.

  She watched it. Maybe it was him. She could ask. Not Holly. But the other guy. The tall blond guy.

  She texted Danny: I went for a run.

  Danny didn’t respond.

  That’s when Jordache realized people might be coming for her and she might need to hide.

  She sat in the back of her little closet, letting the clothes conceal her.

  After a few seconds of hiding and becoming increasingly certain that she might need to fight her way out of here when push came to shove, Jordache got hungry again, grabbed the other steak from the fridge, and ate that one, too.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  VOICES

  “AUGUST.”

  “BOBBY.”

  “I GUESS YOU’RE not still at the mall,” Bobby said. “So you’re free to talk idly about anything. So. How’s the kids?”

  August didn’t have kids. Neither did Bobby. “Yes. Let’s talk about the weather.”

  “Jesus, August. I saw that shit on the news. Couldn’t have been a minute after I hung up with you. That’s the same mall you were going to, right? The downtown one, with the cube, right outside of Grover? Skin District.”

  August exhaled. Bobby sounded more nervous, on the phone, than August felt having seen so much of it in person. When the melee had begun, he’d edged close enough to catch some spray, and now he’d need to toss this shirt. Nothing got out blood, but nothing really got out deadhead blood. It was as if that shit set in advance, then clung to fabric for dear life because its old owner had no life left at all … unless you counted the puppetry granted by Sher
man Pope.

  August might be in shock. In concept, he’d seen something simple: Deadheads had somehow got loose in the mall before being taken down with the loss of only (according to reports) three lives. It was tragic, but small outbreaks were hardly unheard of.

  Except that August had never seen one so close up.

  Except that outbreaks were never, ever supposed to happen inside Aberdeen Valley. They weren’t possible with all the city’s protections, heavy Panacea presence, and necrotic-specific checkpoints.

  Except that (and this was something the news kept forgetting to mention, and so far no video had coincidentally been aired) these ferals moved too fast and seemed too fresh in body to be like anything but … well … intentionally made.

  “That’s the mall,” August said.

  “How many were there?”

  “Just three.”

  “Three? It said that three people were killed.”

  “That’s what I saw, yes.”

  “But … ” Bobby didn’t finish the sentence, but his implication was clear: How could three shambling, drooling, falling-apart ferals take down even one person in a wide-open space?

  “These were different, Bobby. They were fast.”

  “Fast?”

  “You’ve seen Night of the Living Dead?”

  “Of course. Every day of my working life in Yosemite.”

  “And you’ve seen the remake of Dawn of the Dead?”

  “I think I covered that joke when we spoke earlier.”

  “These ferals were like the latter. They could run.”

  “How is that … ” There was a pause on the line then: “How is that possible? They’re … corpses.”

  “Listen, Bobby. You’re in Aberdeen?”

  “I am.”

  “Maybe we should keep that appointment after all. Or move it up.”

  “To when?”

  “Immediately.”

  “What’s up, August? Something tells me you don’t want to work on treatments that’ll make me glow in my old age.”

  “Little known secret,” August said. “If you treat a necrotic with Necrophage after he’s already passed the inflection point, it creates a fast deadhead like these. Maybe it’s time we compare notes because something is definitely brewing.”

  “I’ve never seen any deadheads like that in Yosemite,” Bobby said. “I get that people wouldn’t believe clarifiers and would try to bring people back anyway despite them being selected against, so of course all sorts of folks would do it. I should see some, shouldn’t I?”

  “They don’t make it to Yosemite. Anyone who’s been treated after the IP is summarily disposed of. Quietly, once away from the families.”

  “They’d still have their minds,” Bobby said.

  “But they’re past the inflection point, so they’ll turn anyway. It’s not in anyone’s best interest to know that Necrophage will keep a body fresh even while the mind decays. And believe me, it’s not the only example of Archibald Burgess believing that the ends justify the means. That’s why we should talk. To see if there might be another out there that your buddy Alice almost seemed to be hinting at in her documentary, whether she meant to or not.”

  “Go on.”

  “In person. I need to make another call. To check on Holly.”

  August could imagine Bobby nodding, maybe trying to catch his breath. “Okay,” he said. “Where do you want to meet?”

  “My place.” And he gave Bobby the address.

  “Okay. Can I text you or just call through your paranoid redirect thingy?”

  “Texts will go.”

  “Then I’ll text you after I check some stuff. But tonight for sure.”

  August said goodbye and hung up. He looked around, still not entirely sure that he hadn’t been followed. Hiding after fleeing the mall felt wrong. Panacea had taken Alice and Ian away, and Alice had been in cuffs. The same might become of August if he stayed close, especially after the nothing he’d done in that public video at Holly’s event. So he’d settled on being as in-plain-sight as possible, figuring that way he could at least see his pursuers coming.

  But the wide-open parking lot around his car was deserted.

  When he felt as secure as he was going to get, August picked up his phone and dialed again. Holly answered immediately, sounding uneasy.

  “August. Thank God.”

  “What?”

  “I saw the news.”

  “Hell. I can’t surprise anyone today. First Bobby; now you.”

  “Bobby who?”

  “Bobby Baltimore.”

  “Why were you … ”

  “He’s a client. He’s also based in Aberdeen Valley. You’ll meet him tonight, in fact.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “You sound funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  As soon as he’d asked his last question, August had realized the answer. Now the question was almost embarrassing. Holly sounded funny because she didn’t sound funny at all. He’d taken her as a client at a time when she’d have said her last question as Fuddyow?, but now the words came out polished, her mouth remembering its old trick.

  That was Prestige at work, apparently. But what nibbled at August’s mind now was that Prestige might not be all that groundbreaking, in the bigger scheme of things. When he and Archibald had formed Hemisphere, Archibald’s goal to upgrade nature had been crystal clear. They’d both thought he’d failed. But maybe he’d succeeded after all, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

  “Just … nervous,” he said, sidestepping the topic of her previous mushmouth.

  “I was worried for you. Were they really ferals?”

  “Ferals, or starving people with terrible manners.”

  “But how? Ferals in Aberdeen Valley, August!”

  You don’t know the half of it, August thought. But Holly didn’t need to hear about the fast deadheads. The implications were troubling. He hadn’t told Bobby that you couldn’t just give someone Necrophage past the inflection point to create the creatures he’d seen; you had to keep giving it to them to keep their bodies from falling apart as they were meant to. But they’d turn anyway, and the process, once past the IP, took three weeks or so. That meant someone had kept the ferals he’d seen. Injected them. Fed them, to keep their bodies whole. Who would do that, and why? Only someone who knew August’s secret would be stupid enough to try.

  “It’s not important right now, Holly. It’s over. There were three, and I watched them all killed. Dramatically, in ways Bobby doesn’t even kill … ” He was rambling, possibly still in shock, unloading things Holly didn’t need to know just to get them out of his own head. He reset and tried again. “That’s all that’s bugging you? Just the news? Cyrus hasn’t found you or anything, right? Or the press? You didn’t go outside?”

  “You went outside.”

  “Calculated risk for a defined reason. And I’m not Holly Gaynor.”

  “I didn’t go outside. But … ” She trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just paranoia.”

  “Holly … ”

  “You’ll think I’m going crazy.”

  You’d be surprised, August thought. Based on the scans he’d taken of Holly, Prestige had done some interesting things to her neural firing patterns. Just as he’d hoped, and tweaked on a hunch, remembering his former company’s original roots.

  “Hallucinations?”

  Holly sounded reluctant. “Maybe. Maybe just a little.”

  “It’s okay, Holly. I thought that might happen. You had a reasonably long incubation time, so Sherman Pope made the nerves connecting your brain’s two hemispheres temperamental. As those nerves started lighting back up, I figured you were bound to get confused. In most people, the left side of the brain controls language. If the halves aren’t talking fluidly, it’s possible you’d hear something you yourself just said with the ear controlled by the right hemisphere, and your brain would interpret it as being said by someone else.
Or an auditory hallucination.”

  Even over the phone, August could hear Holly sigh. “Okay. That’s weird but good to know.” Good to know, said clear as day. No twitches in her speech at all anymore.

  “We can talk about it when I get back. I got myself clear across town somehow, but I’m going to make my way back as soon as I hang up with you.” If I can be sure I’m not followed, he mentally added.

  “Because wow, it sure didn’t sound like my voice,” Holly said, her mind clearly still on her hallucinations. “It sounded like two separate voices.”

  August had been entering his address into the car’s navigation system. He was too beat to drive back on manual, and given the light traffic, doing so was patently unnecessary. The car could drive. That’s what he’d bought it for.

  But what Holly just said made him perk up and look around, still feeling unseen eyes over his shoulder.

  “Two voices?”

  “A woman’s. And a man’s.”

  August looked out across the parking lot at the building beyond, feeling alone. Feeling the emptiness around the car as if it were a pressing thing.

  “Really.”

  “But that’s okay. I’m not crazy?”

  “You’re not crazy, Holly.” Then, slowly: “What did the voices say?”

  “The woman said she was waking up.”

  August breathed slowly, watching the distance, feeling as if insects were slowly climbing his spine.

  “And the man’s, when he heard her, said he was glad.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  SUDS

  AT THE DINNER TABLE, ANA asked Ian to please pass the salt, and Ian handed it to her. Sometime later, Ana asked her mother if she thought they could go this weekend to look at new bikes like she’d promised, and Bridget said, “Maybe” in a way that sounded like Ana shouldn’t keep bothering her about it, even though it was the first time, in Ian’s memory, that she’d asked. There were five solid minutes of silence after Bridget’s single word, and during that time Ian focused hard on his asparagus. It was perfectly cooked and seasoned. But saying so — saying anything at all — felt like an awful idea.