Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #212

by TTA Press Authors

  The words were like spikes. Ange had never considered the political side of things.

  "So what's it like? The virus.” She wanted off of this topic.

  "It's nice."

  "Nice? So, you're happy all the time, and you don't want to hurt anyone? You'll even have a friendly chat with a terrorist? Sounds like a lobotomy."

  "Oh, no. It's the exact opposite of a lobotomy. You glimpse the infinite. Just a glimpse, but that's enough. I think if I was cracked open any wider it would be intolerable. We're not built to experience all that emptiness."

  "Oh, now I get it. You're basically on a permanent acid trip.” She gave him the peace sign. “Peace, love, all-is-oneness."

  An ultralight copter buzzed low over the square. Sebastian waited till it passed before answering. “That's about right, I guess."

  "How did you get infected?” Ange asked.

  "I volunteered."

  "You're fucking shitting me. You volunteered to be infected with an incurable virus. Why would you do that?"

  "My wife and daughter were raped and killed in front of me during the Atlanta water riots,” he said with a wan smile on his face, like he was talking about an old friend he missed. “I was going to hang myself; what did I have to lose?"

  * * * *

  The night of the bamboo party, they dressed as homeless, which basically meant getting a little dirtier than usual, looking a little more hopeless and depressed than usual, and hauling a couple of trash bags of belongings with them. Only mostly they were hauling bamboo roots and containers of water, wrapped inside belongings.

  The crickets were in full stereo as she and Rami crossed MLK and headed up the on-ramp to i-16. Vehicles rumbled past occasionally, the drivers taking no notice of them. It was nice to be invisible; Ange thought maybe she should haul a bag of shit around with her all the time.

  "Do you ever find yourself envying Sebastian?” Rami asked.

  "Shit, no,” Ange said. “I crave a good buzz as much as anyone, but I want to come down after.” There was a nice breeze; it was almost bearable tonight.

  "But he says that's not what it's like. He says he sees things clearer now than he did pre-infection."

  "But it's virus-induced. Those little fuckers are doing things to his mind.” They reached the interstate, walked alongside, staying in the weeds, well away from the road.

  "I don't know,” Rami said as he looked up and down the interstate, then stopped. They dropped their trash bags and squatted. He pulled a garden trowel from his pack and dug a hole in a bald spot in the weeds. Ange dropped a bamboo root in the hole, pushed dirt around it. She had decided to participate fully in this operation; it didn't feel as much like rape as spreading Doctor Happy had. Rami poured water over it from an old soda bottle. They headed back toward the on-ramp. It had taken all of thirty seconds.

  "How are you doing with that asshole Albert?” Rami asked as they walked.

  Ange filled him in on the latest; he huffed and sighed his sympathy.

  "You want me to take care of him?” he asked when she'd finished. “I have friends who could soften his dick in a hurry."

  Ange was tempted. He deserved to have thugs hurt him. But as she really thought about it, imagined guys breaking Albert's teeth or cutting his face with razors on her say so, it felt awful. “Thanks, but no, I have to do this myself."

  "Let me know if you change your mind,” Rami said.

  Even before they reached downtown, they could hear it. The air was filled with cracking, splitting, popping sounds, as if the entire city was built on ice that was giving way. The other teams had been hard at work. They headed up Abercorn, under a canopy of oaks that cloaked the sky, as sirens began to compete with the hungry sound of awakening bamboo.

  * * * *

  The effect was breathtaking. Broughton Street, the main retail strip, was completely impassable, choked with black bamboo stalks. Just as Sebastian had said, they pushed through the asphalt and concrete like it was cardboard. Ange felt like whooping, but didn't want to draw attention to her and Sebastian.

  The air smelled of blooming azaleas and piss. A group of young Dada wannabes in mock police, cowboy, and Fedex outfits strutted toward them, each sporting their own signature cool-walk. Sebastian put his arm across Ange's shoulder protectively. Ange smiled; she had a seventy pound dog with her, and Uzi had no qualms about putting a hurting on someone, whereas Sebastian cried when someone accidentally stepped on a bug, and apologized to his fucking dinner before eating it. But it was a sweet gesture.

  On Drayton Street two young white kids, a boy and a girl, were dragging clumps of cut bamboo along the brick sidewalk. They turned into an empty lot between dilapidated buildings.

  "Good job Emma, good job Cyril!” an old man said. He stood next to a half-finished bamboo hut, canted but looking impressively sturdy. That was probably grandpa; mom and dad and grandma were likely dead. Ange imagined this was not how grandpa had planned to spend his retirement.

  In Jackson Square, more bamboo huts and curtains. On Bull, a group of homeless, mixed with cleaner people who were probably Doctor Happy victims, cheered on the bamboo as it chewed up the street and surrounded police headquarters on East Broad. Machete-wielding cops and soldiers chopped in the blazing May heat; someone ran a ditch-digger around the perimeter of the outbreak. They looked hot, and pissed off.

  "Very nice, very nice,” Sebastian said. He was texting a report to the mother ship in Atlanta while they walked. “And listen to this: a priest in Southside is being charged with spiking the sacramental wine with his Doctor Happy-infected blood. Wonderful."

  Some of those infected seemed to feel it was their duty to give it to others—biological evangelists, spreading the word of peace and joy and all-night street parties. Mothers poked their children with bloodstained pins while they slept.

  It crawled up Ange's spine.

  On Whitaker, a tank was tearing through the outbreak easily, blazing a trail for troops and shoppers. But there weren't many tanks in Savannah, and tonight Ange and the others would plant more bamboo.

  There was a party raging in Pulaski Square. Twenty or thirty revelers were pounding on drums and trash cans while others circled them, doing some sort of square dance, hooking arms with each other. Ange also saw at least two couples fucking right in the open. Opposite the square three cops stood on the sidewalk in front of a drug store, automatic weapons dangling from their fingers.

  Ange caught a glimpse of movement on the roof above where the cops were lounging: hands, dropping something. A white oval plummeted, hit the sidewalk with a splat right at the cops’ feet. Blood spattered everywhere. A blood-bomb—that was a new twist.

  It drenched the cops, the sidewalk, the side of the building. The cops lifted their weapons, pointed them all over, looking for an assailant. Then they seemed to notice that they were covered in blood. They wiped frantically at their eyes and lips, cursing, looking scared as shit.

  Shouts and laughter erupted from the crowd of partiers. The square dance dissolved; some of the revelers trotted toward the cops.

  "Welcome to reality!” someone shouted.

  A lanky guy wearing nothing but a loincloth that looked like a diaper ran up to one of the cops and patted him on the shoulder as others crowded around, cheering.

  The cop pressed his automatic weapon into the lanky guy's gut, and fired. The guy staggered backward. Before he even hit the pavement, the other cops were spraying gunfire into the looming crowd. Screams lit the air; people crumpled, slammed into each other in the frenzy to escape.

  "No!” Ange and Sebastian shouted simultaneously. Sebastian moved toward the melee; Ange grabbed his elbow and yanked him in the other direction, toward cover.

  One cop's head suddenly snapped back; chips of scalp and brain sprayed on the drug store window. The cop went down as the window shattered. Ange looked all around, trying to figure out who was firing on the cops. She spotted the flash of a muzzle from inside a copse of bamboo half a block behind the
m.

  Two men stepped out of the bamboo—Jumpy-Jumps, with rifles raised, peering through scopes. The other two cops convulsed, their already blood-soaked bodies blossoming fresh as they fell to the pavement.

  Sebastian was on his knees. Ange thought he'd been hit in the crossfire, but he was only crying, his face buried in his palms.

  * * * *

  Back home, Ange showered before joining the others in the living room to watch the news. They watched footage of hundreds of Jumpy-Jump gunmen swarming the bamboo-choked streets of Chicago, then of a tank firing on insurgents in San Antonio. The Dadas were taking advantage of the chaos, spreading even more chaos.

  What terrified Ange most were not the images, but the reporters’ voices. The usual calm, even cadence was gone, replaced by shrill, breathless, unpolished descriptions that gave Ange the feeling that they might drop their microphones and run at any second.

  "Did your Nobel laureate leaders tell you to expect this?” Ange asked Sebastian as they watched.

  "It was one possible scenario that was discussed, yes. It draws energy away from the large-scale conflicts that are bubbling, and weakens the central government. In the long run those are good things."

  Ange got up and went to bed.

  She drifted off to sleep with her window open, serenaded by the ubiquitous crackle and pop of the bamboo, which drowned out much of the gunfire, and the screams of the night victims.

  By morning, things had quieted down considerably. Ange watched the news reports with the others. The Jumpy-Jumps had melted back into the general population, though the bamboo was still spreading.

  "Hey gang,” Chair said, muting the TV. “I've got something I want to say. I've given this a lot of thought. I've decided to join Sebastian and the Doctor Happy contingent.” He pulled a pin and a vial of blood out of his fatigue jacket, lay them on his lap. “I wanted my friends to be here when I did it."

  Ange couldn't believe what she was hearing. Not Chair. Chair was stronger than any of them. “You're kidding, right?” she said. “You're going to give yourself a permanent Valium drip, join the drunks in the square? You're better than that, Chair."

  Chair flicked a lighter, held the pin over the flame. “I think I've earned a little respite. I watched my legs get blown out from underneath me. Got a shiny new pair from the government, who didn't mention that they wouldn't pay to keep them working, that the parts would become obsolete. Watched my brother die from the flesh-eating virus."

  He glared up at Ange. “Look at you! None of this has touched you.” He flung the lighter across the coffee table; it bounced, hit her in the knee. “Young, beautiful Ange, worried about getting letters after her name. Believer in the cause, but afraid to make too much of a commitment lest it tarnish her career. Don't you dare judge me!"

  He dipped the pin into the vial, held it up, its tip bright red, then jabbed it into his shoulder, deeper than necessary.

  * * * *

  Despite the bamboo and the recent unrest, the grocery store miraculously had both coffee and chocolate to salve the burns Chair had inflicted the night before, so Ange felt pretty good as she hit the street.

  An old man was shuffling past the electric doors of the grocery store with a shit-eating grin on his face. He saw Ange looking at him, approached her and put a palsied hand on her shoulder.

  "I'm 82 years old, and I just realized that everything I've believed all my life is wrong!” He said it hard-of-hearing loud, then burst out laughing and continued on his way. Likely off to join his comrades in the square. Ange turned to untie Uzi from the bike rack.

  Uzi was gone.

  "Uzi?” she called, looking up and down the street. She shouted his name in rising volume. No way, he wouldn't run away even if he got loose. Not Uzi. But he must have—who would steal her big old mutt? She ran to the corner, a plastic bag of groceries bouncing off her thigh, and looked up and down the cross street. Nothing. Bamboo choked Whitaker two blocks north, but Uzi certainly wouldn't go into that tangle.

  She called Chair, who promised to call Rami and Sebastian and fan out to look for Uzi. Then she started searching, street by street.

  * * * *

  "Shhh, shhh, we'll find him,” Rami said, his arms wrapped around Ange as they sat on the steps of their house. The sun would be down in a few hours. Uzi would be alone, in the dark.

  An electric wheeming announced that Chair was coming around the corner. Ange stood, staring at the corner, willing that Uzi be the first thing she saw, straining impatiently on his leash because Chair was moving too slow for him.

  Chair was alone. He looked at Ange hopefully as he rounded the corner; she shook her head no, and he pounded the arm of his wheelchair. Sebastian and a few of the others were still out. There was hope.

  "He's okay,” Rami said. “There are a thousand strays wandering the streets. No one would take him, he just got loose. We'll find him."

  Ange spotted Sebastian, alone, heading toward them.

  Then she heard a whine coming from the other direction, and snapped her head around, seeking the source. It had come from the square, but there was nothing there. Just as she began to suspect it had been her imagination, she heard it again. Then she spotted him, in the street, across the square. He was moving slowly, slowly, his head hanging almost to the pavement.

  "Uzi!” she screamed. Uzi howled miserably; she launched herself toward him. Uzi stopped at the edge of the square. There was something terribly wrong with him—he looked twisted, misshapen. As Ange closed the gap she saw something dangling from his stomach.

  It was a wire.

  Sebastian reached Uzi first. He squatted, examining the wire. “Oh, Christ."

  "What's wrong with him? What's wrong with him?” Ange shouted as she wrapped her arms around Uzi's big head. He licked her face; his tongue was dry and coarse.

  "Get back! Get away!” Sebastian screamed at her.

  "What's wrong?” Ange asked.

  "Get her out of here!” Sebastian said. She felt Rami's arms around her waist. He pulled her backward; her feet bounced over the curb and across the grass as she struggled to get free of Rami's grasp.

  Sebastian pushed Uzi, and Uzi fell onto his side in a heap, howling in pain. Ange screamed his name. His underside had been shaved, and there was a long, ragged incision on one side of his belly. Ange opened her eyes wide, confused about what was happening. It looked as if Sebastian had torn open the incision and was pushing his hand inside Uzi.

  A moment later he was up and running, clutching a clump of something. Of what? Of Uzi? Ange's exhausted mind thought maybe it was a puppy. Sebastian hurled whatever it was down the street. A trailing wire spun in the air. The thing hit the pavement, bounced twice, then lay still.

  An explosion ripped the air, throwing up fire and dust and chips of asphalt. Pebbles rained down through a cloud of smoke.

  Ange ran for Uzi. She reached him in time to feel his breath on her skin, to see one final, misguided attempt at a lick that missed badly, then he twitched and lay still. She held his head and rocked him, looked over to where Rami was helping Sebastian stand. There were a dozen small spots of blood on Sebastian's face, but he didn't look badly hurt.

  Ange felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Chair.

  "You all right?” he asked.

  Ange put her hand over his, clutched it hard. She felt as if someone had thrown her into a deep black hole. She could form no thoughts; there was no room for thoughts alongside the pain.

  After a long moment, she kissed Uzi's nose, gently lowered his lifeless head to the ground, and stood. A crowd had formed in the square. She scanned them, standing at a distance in their white masks. Who? Who?

  And then she saw him, her Jumpy-Jump neighbor wearing his fucking mailman outfit and sporting a fucking maskless grin like his horse had just finished first by a fucking nose. A wave of black rage burst through her.

  She stormed into the square, pushed through the crowd until she was right in Rumor's face. “Did you do this?
” she screamed. “Did you?"

  He shrugged. “Who put these sharks in the water? Hard to say."

  "We're not your enemy! We're on your side!"

  Ange lunged at him, tearing at his eyes with a clawed hand.

  The world spun, a blur of muted evening color. She hit the ground hard, his rough hand pinning her throat. She felt the urge to cough, to gag, but there was no air.

  "Unclench those little fists,” Rumor said, his voice ice. “Everyone is my enemy! There are no sides."

  After a terrible long moment, he let go of her throat; air squealed into her lungs as Rumor turned his back to her.

  "You're not going to live long in this world, little peanut,” he said.

  Ange struggled to a sitting position as Rami hurried to her. She screamed in rage and lunged to her feet to go after Rumor again, but Rami held her firm. She looked at Uzi, sprawled on the sidewalk, his lips pulled tight in a rictus snarl. Uzi. Who was more innocent in all this than Uzi?

  Beyond Uzi, a young boy was laying down colored dots, smiling under his mask, water gun clutched in one hand. The game went on, whatever the tragedy of the moment. He raised his gun, test-squirted a girl standing forty feet away from him. Ange watched the water spurt in a tight, perfect arc...

  Ange smiled. “I'm okay, let me go,” she said, her voice calm. Rami let her go. She dug in her pocket and pulled out a twenty as she approached the boy. “I'll give you twenty bucks for your gun?” she said, holding the bill out between two fingers.

  His eyes lit up. “Okay.” He grabbed his gun by the muzzle and held it out to her. Ange gave him the bill, said thanks, and headed inside with the gun.

  There was a half bag of blood in the fridge. She emptied most of the water from the gun and poured in the blood. Some of it missed, spilling across her knuckles, and over the plastic base and trigger of the gun. She rinsed her hand and the gun in the sink.