Dead City

by Sean Platt

  “Maybe I should scare you.”

  “Hey.” He raised his box and shook it. “I got double chocolate glazed.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m scared of you, too.”

  Again, Danny’s brow furrowed. “Are you feeling okay?”

  No, he told himself. Obviously not. Dumbshit.

  “I can smell you.”

  Danny made a comical show of sniffing his armpits. He watched her eyes to see them change, ideally with mirth. But they didn’t even blink.

  “I’m scared.”

  “You don’t need to be scared. Let me in.”

  “I’ve made a horrible mess in here.”

  A waft of breeze sent the smell back in Danny’s direction. Maybe she was the one who stank and she was deflecting. It was okay. He’d be happy to shower her from head to toe, spending extra time cleaning whatever she wished.

  “Let me in. I’ll clean it up for you.”

  Her eyes finally closed. Seeing them blink and shift made the eyes-only illusion far more disturbing. He’d almost convinced himself that the ghostly blue-white circles weren’t Jordache’s eyes at all but some trick of the light. Now they were real and impossible at once.

  Then he saw her wipe them. She sniffed, as if starting to cry.

  “I keep hearing him,” she said.

  “Hearing who?”

  “Him.”

  “Hmm. Okay. Well, tell him hi from me.”

  “And there are others. People different from me.”

  “From all of us,” Danny said, unsure where this was going.

  “From me.”

  “Okay, from you.”

  “I don’t know what they’re going to do, but I can hear him telling them what he wants. It’s horrible. I don’t want to listen, Danny.”

  Danny moved back to the door and yanked the knob. The door remained closed, but then he realized he could pry open a small screen. It was gloomy inside the trailer, so he put his face to the dark slit. The eyes appeared again, very close. When she spoke, that putrid scent came at him strong, as if it were on her breath.

  “Let me in, Jordache. Seriously.” He yanked again.

  “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  “I told you. I’m a big boy. I like you. And I don’t think you want to hurt me like other guys have hurt you.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said, her voice somehow wet with tears.

  The eyes moved away. In the shadows, Danny could almost make out her shape, crawling on all fours, burrowing into a pile of something like a dog into blankets.

  “Come on. These donuts are getting cold.”

  “Go away, Danny. Don’t come back.” Then weaker: “Please.”

  “This isn’t funny. You’re not well. I thought you were better, but you’re not. We need to go.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “I want to take you to an urgent ca — ”

  Jordache cut him off, providing her own answer: “Hell?”

  “Christ. Open up. Okay? I’m not kidding. If you don’t unlock this door, I’ll break it down.”

  “Break it. Bend it.”

  “I’ll count to three, Jordache. One … Two … ”

  There was an animal sound, as if a sick dog had run by unseen.

  “What the fuck was … ” Danny trailed off, stooping. There was a puddle of something on the stoop — red and tacky to the touch, like partially dried glue. “Did you spill something out here?” he asked, already feeling his heart speed its beating.

  “I got a special delivery today,” she said.

  There was another of those animal sounds, closer.

  Danny tried the door again, knowing it wouldn’t open, increasingly afraid he knew what was happening but unwilling to think of it.

  “Oh yeah?” Rubbing the red substance between his finger and thumb, watching it turn from brick red to crimson. “What did you get?”

  “A revelation.”

  She probably kept a key under the mat. Didn’t everyone do that? Danny, still crouching, searched.

  “You don’t see enough of those in the mail these days.”

  “Do you know what I realized?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been this way all along.”

  “What way?”

  “Like you made me.”

  “You’re welcome?” Danny said, unsure.

  Silence chased the words. Danny kept searching, came up empty. He had to get her out of there. There must have been something wrong with the Phage, though there hadn’t ever been a reported case of that happening, so far as Danny knew. He’d picked up a separate batch last night when she’d been so odd, from a separate place, and watched her infuse that one, too. She was fine. She had to be. This was something else.

  “Like a butterfly, changing on the inside while the outside stays the same.”

  “A little butterfly,” Danny said, playing along, now searching a potted plant, a light fixture, a ceramic statue of a cat. There was no spare key. He’d have to break the lock, or a window.

  “I know what they’ll do,” she said, “when the time comes for them to do it.”

  “Who?”

  “And I know what I’m supposed to do, too.”

  “Okaaay … ”

  “All that’s stopped it from happening before now is instinct. And choice.”

  “Jordache, do you have a … ” Danny stopped, realizing how stupid it was to ask for a key from someone trying to keep him out.

  The door clicked and sighed open before he could finish his sentence. The rancid odor hit him like a wave, but he couldn’t see its source. The trailer’s lights were all off. And except for the window he’d spoken through earlier, the blinds were all drawn.

  “Go away, Danny,” said her voice, clearly conflicted, clearly not wanting him to leave. “I’m afraid of what I’m being told. I don’t want to hurt you.” And there was a small sob.

  “You won’t hurt me,” Danny said, his heartbeat uneasy.

  He stepped inside, into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  HUMAN WEAPONS

  TWO MORE SUSPICIOUS ROADBLOCKS, ONE official and one where some asshole had overheated in the middle of the road and not bothered to move. Traffic had crawled around it, and when Alice reached the obstruction, she’d found it to be a woman in a suit who somehow looked plenty capable of cooling a vehicle, changing a tire, or replacing an engine. She watched Alice as she passed, not smiling behind dark sunglasses.

  By the time Alice reached the Hemisphere campus, she was uneasy, sweaty, and sure she’d arrive at a bloodbath. Only once parked did Alice stop to wonder if she was being played. Not by Hemisphere, but by Smyth.

  She was only here because he’d given her keys and let her go. She was only involved with Ian and August because Smyth had shoved them together. He’d warned Ian about the first attack, but he couldn’t have warned him if he hadn’t known … and lo and behold, despite the warning, the attack had happened anyway.

  But she tossed the idea away. Smyth’s info had all been public — and now that she thought about it, avoiding Alice’s skepticism about her source was probably the reason he’d snitched in the precise way he had. Everything he’d given her was true, all easy to verify. He’d told her there was a meaning in the message that Maughan, once located and brought into the mix, would be able to read. But beyond that, the raw materials Maughan needed in his investigations were things Hemisphere had told the world themselves … or done to it.

  Hemisphere caused the plague.

  Because Hemisphere had the cure.

  She’d had a gut feel about Burgess and his company for years but never thought she’d ever find the big, bad story she’d been slobbering for. Now she was a dog who’d finally caught a car after chasing it for blocks. What came next? She had no idea.

  She’d get the full story later from August or Ian, if they were still alive. One more incentive to do this thing
right.

  Which now seemed doubtful in a very specific way: She reached the parking lot at the lawn’s far edge while Burgess was finishing up, leaving the stage with a crowd-pleasing smile and inviting others to speak on the cause’s behalf. There were Panacea agents there, too, and those close by had turned to watch Alice approach.

  She felt a chill, watching those heads swivel toward her.

  They’re waiting for you.

  But that was ridiculous. Alice wasn’t in the spotlight here. Archibald Burgess and the other speakers were. And yet it was apparent that Burgess had been speaking for a few minutes, and still that outer ring of dark figures waited. For something.

  Keeping her eyes forward, Alice reached through the car’s open window into the backseat. Smyth had somehow arranged for her camera bag to be placed there; she’d seen it while facing one of her three obstructions on the way here. Or someone else had, so she’d be able to record all that happened from where she was standing.

  Before walking forward, Alice hung her 35MM around her neck. The telephoto lens was in place. She raised it and looked through the viewfinder at the closest suited figure.

  The three others around him were ferals, kept mostly inconspicuous from the crowd’s eye. Alice saw masks that covered the lower halves of their faces. She saw leashes. She saw heavy gloves on the handlers’ hands. And when the handler turned his head, Alice saw a wound on his neck — the handlers were probably necrotic themselves. It made sense because it made the ferals obey: infected didn’t attack the infected.

  Alice moved slowly forward, knowing she should shout but unable to do so.

  Burgess was standing at the lectern’s side, watching Ian behind the mic, his smile uneasy, his arm flicking toward unknown others to do … something. But Ian was still speaking, spewing disconcerting words, while the crowd grew restless.

  The handlers held their human weapons. And let it happen.

  Alice saw it all at once. She saw why she’d been obstructed but not blocked all the way. Why she’d been detained, then released exactly now — sent to the picnic, but not early enough to warn anyone.

  She knew why, when she’d been taken in, she’d been allowed to make those phone calls. Why those in charge were playing both sides.

  They weren’t waiting for Alice. Not just Alice, anyway.

  They were waiting for Ian.

  Alice ran, yelling at the top of her lungs.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  INTUITION

  BOBBY SHIFTED ON THE LAWN, unable to get comfortable. Part of it was the heavy gun on his hip. Part of it was the way he felt compelled to keep a hand on the blankets obscuring the shotguns they’d brought with the props. But most of it was an itch. A hunter’s intuition that something was going wrong, and that the prey had gained the upper hand.

  He’d felt it in Yosemite, when the army of undead had ambushed them. That had been Cam’s assessment: ambush. Bobby had played it off, saying things he himself had already stopped believing but still recited for the benefit of the others. Things like, They can’t ambush because they can’t think and They don’t even communicate with one another.

  This was different, of course. There hadn’t even been gate security. Part of Hemisphere’s open and honest image was an open-grounds policy. The extensive green area was used by walkers every morning, and nobody started checking IDs until you tried to enter one of the buildings. And while there might be trouble, it would be the administrative kind. The kind where Executive Whatever They Ares got fired for loose lips. The kind where everyone got mad at a company who’d made them sick so it could profit from the cure, but where the crowds weren’t quite big enough for a riot and were armed only with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  And yet Ian’s wife had plunked her blanket in the middle of a halo of others like a queen before her court. From where Bobby was sitting two rows back, she seemed positioned like an animal protecting its soft belly. She kept scanning the crowd, craning to look around. And although Bobby felt uncomfortable, Bridget looked ten times worse. Like she expected death rather than trouble.

  Intuition prickled his neck. The guns were insurance, just in case anyone tried to shut Ian up before he said what needed saying or tried to drag him away like he said they’d hauled off Alice Frank. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d need every one of them and that the hunt wasn’t over because he’d been lulled into believing it hadn’t yet started.

  “Bobby?” whispered a man to his side — a man named Jason, whom he’d hunted with before. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  But Jason’s hand was under the blanket, too. Gripping the butt of his shotgun.

  Ian, at the mic, was picking at his collar, the nervous sweat on his forehead practically visible from where they sat.

  “Just make him a hole when he’s finished,” Bobby told Jason and the others. “He runs to us, and we make sure he gets out. That’s all.”

  Ian spoke into the mic, his voice unsteady.

  The crowd murmured, looking around, shuffling, unnerved by his words.

  Burgess turned toward Ian, walking too fast, waving to the event’s few security guards stationed around the stage.

  Bridget stood, eyes turning toward the back, toward a commotion. Her face was paper white.

  Someone was shouting, running forward.

  And then it began.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  SCRIPT

  IAN FOCUSED ON THE SCRIPT.

  With his lips practically kissing the mic’s black windscreen, he fought the nerves threatening to buckle his knees and forced words to form. There was no need for eloquence. He wasn’t here to make an announcement, not a speech. To tie his own noose, bankrupt his family’s only source of income, and slay the golden goose he’d spent his career caring for.

  His eyes stayed on Bridget, who looked absolutely terrified. Why was he doing this to her? He needed to do what needed to be done, but why was he forcing her into a front-row seat? Was it really needed for appearances? Was it really necessary as an I’m-playing-ball gesture to get them into the building? Maybe he could have arrived as a dissident rather than a two-faced liar. Maybe he could have come to the Family Picnic without his brood and still achieved all that he needed to, taking the mic as a loner who didn’t play by the rules.

  He told himself there was no other way. It had to unfold on a public stage — and that by taking Alice out of circulation, Hemisphere had thrust that duty upon him. And on Bridget to be here and watch.

  He wasn’t harming his family. He was saving them.

  He wasn’t betraying a friend, in Hemisphere. He was exposing the devil.

  He tried not to look up, focusing on the script he’d written for himself, that August had approved.

  BioFuse was modified after it was approved by the FDA, and he gave a date.

  The new version was used in trials without approval, and he gave another date.

  Here’s what worked with the new drug, and he used some of August’s terms.

  But here’s what went wrong.

  Thirty seconds. He’d timed it. Enough time to rile everyone from Hemisphere behind him, including the man who’d quietly threatened Ian’s family. Enough time to make a case and tell the cameras where they could find the Internet dump August would make, which proved it all.

  “Hemisphere saved you from Sherman Pope,” he said, feeling the press of angry bodies from behind, the rising of angry bodies from the lawn, “but they gave it to you first.”

  Ian turned to find himself facing Archibald Burgess, who grabbed his arm. Ian tried to yank away, but the man’s grip was too strong. Only when someone began yelling from the lawn did Ian finally pull away. With shock, he realized the runner was Alice, waving and screaming, gesturing toward dark figures encroaching from the lawn’s edges.

  Ian headed for Bridget, who wasn’t running at all. She was waving Ian forward, into the circle on the lawn. Toward Bobby and the others, who still hadn’t
broken rank enough to raise their weapons.

  “They’re going to release ferals!” Alice shouted. “They’ve got ferals and they’re—”

  There was new movement as a man emerged from behind a tree and seemed to release something, same as yesterday in the mall.

  The deadhead came forward exactly one step, toward the crowd’s uninfected.

  Then it turned around and bit the man who’d let it go.

  Ian saw an arc of blood as the thing hit an artery.

  Then the handler turned and attacked someone new.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  WATCH HIM WITH THIS

  FOR THE SCANTEST OF MOMENTS, Bobby felt relief. His shotgun came up, and he waved it to clear a half circle, but nothing was coming for them. Not yet. Instead, the action was sticking close to its sources. Ferals turned on their handlers rather than the crowd then entered the masses, taking down the slow and weak, like cheetahs chasing the least-fit gazelle.

  Natural selection at its finest. And luckily, Bobby and the others had come prepared. Behind them, Ian, Bridget, and Ian’s knot of colleagues were quickly descending into hysterics. But they’d be fine. Bobby was a hunter, and his people were adept. They weren’t the least fit. They were the most fit.

  But the fallacy hit him almost immediately.

  A woman in a blue blouse came screaming toward him. She tackled Bobby hard, her neck spouting blood, her shoulder’s exposed tendons like wires inside a busted radio. Bobby firmed up, ready to pass her behind him to join the group he’d protect on the way out. But she didn’t go easily. She grabbed his arm with both hands like a hungry man grabs a chicken leg.

  Bobby pivoted and swung his elbow in a short, hard circle. The woman staggered back. When she came at him again, Bobby raised his shotgun and cut her almost in half. The top continued to snarl and crawl forward.

  “What the FUCK?” said Jason, backing up.

  “They’re biting the infected. It’s — ”

  “They don’t bite people who are already infected, man!” Jason shouted over the growing melee.