by D. J. Molles
Back in those woods, in some far-off field that was just barely visible to him, he saw a searchlight pan through the darkness, turning the black fields to neon green verdancy, and then flashing away just as quickly, like it’d been a hallucination.
“Aigh’,” Virgil said, breathlessly.
In the stillness, Walter felt the sweat beginning to accumulate on his arms, cold and greasy. When he looked around to Virgil, he could see beads of it glistening down the sides of his face, and down his nose. They were all tired. All sweating. They had to have run at least three miles, Walter thought. Which was the farthest he’d run in a long, long time.
“Aigh’,” Virgil repeated. “We need to figure out where we are. Try to get into contact with someone. Try to figure out what’s happening. Does anyone have a clean PD?”
Everyone looked amongst themselves, waiting for someone to volunteer.
No one did.
Whether or not their PDs were listed to their real names or some fake accounts that they’d jacked into, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that those PDs were strings, and those strings currently tied them back to the house they’d just run from.
Everyone had deactivated their PDs when they’d known the drones were coming. But if they turned them on again right now, they might as well set up a neon sign.
“Your buddy,” Hank said, still doubled over, still trying to recover from his run. The words came out as a cough.
Walter glanced at the computer guy and realized that Hank was looking at him. Then Hank raised a hand and wagged a finger in Walter’s direction.
“I wiped his PD when we were at the house. It shouldn’t have any location history at all. It’ll be blank.”
“Will it still get service?” Virgil asked.
“I can put a clone chip in,” Hank said, and dropped his go-bag full of computer equipment to the forest floor. He was eager to have it off his shoulders.
“Wait,” Tria said, holding up a hand. “Who are you planning on calling?”
Virgil wiped sweat from his eyebrows. “My team. They’ll know what’s going on. They’ll be able to lead us back in. And I just want to know where the hell we are.”
“Thought you growers knew these woods by heart,” Tria commented.
Virgil sniffed. “Been fifteen years since I been in the woods.”
Hank was still squatting over his bag. He looked back and forth between Tria and Virgil. “You want the PD or not?”
Tria said nothing.
Virgil nodded and made a “gimme” gesture with his hands.
“Hold on.” Hank dove into his bag and rummaged around in the darkness. He came out with the little square that had so recently been attached to Walter’s wrist. He worked a panel open on the back and delicately drew out a small piece of something that glinted metallic in the moonlight. He stowed this item in his bag and produced another one that looked identical. He replaced it. Replaced the panel. Checked his work. Then held out the PD—not to Virgil, but to Walt.
Virgil made to grab the PD, then looked at Hank questioningly.
Hank pushed it towards Walt. “It’s still bio-linked to him.”
Virgil and Walt looked at each other for a moment. Then Virgil nodded.
Walter took the offered PD. He looked at it. Wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting. He supposed there wouldn’t be anything different about it. But it felt different. Heavier, somehow. He turned the inside of his wrist upwards to the moonlight, saw the pale square of skin where the thing had sat undisturbed for a dozen years. Walter oriented the PD to the patch of whiter-than-white skin and pressed it down.
At first, nothing, and he wondered if it would fall off.
And then a strange sensation, almost a sucking as it adhered to him again.
Like a leach, Walter thought to himself. Like some sort of life-sucking parasite.
“You sure it’s safe?” Virgil asked of Hank.
Hank snorted. “Nothing’s safe.”
Virgil eyed the man, working his jaw. Then back up to Walter. “We’ll do this quick. I have the contact memorized. You’ll activate it, then we’ll make the call, then we’ll deactivate and move to another location. Clear?”
Walter nodded.
Getty intoned: “Clear.”
“Hey,” Tria said. “How do we know it wasn’t one of them that dimed us out?”
Virgil turned his head to her, but without the irritation that had marked their interactions all night long. Walter was surprised to see that this was a legitimate question, and Virgil was treating it that way.
“None of them knew where we were going.”
Then Virgil nodded to Walter. “Activate it.”
Walter put his thumb against the underside of the little black panel that now clung to his skin. A bead of sweat trickled out from underneath it, cold and slick. He had the very clear feeling in that moment that he was just floating along. He was just floating along, letting everyone else make all these decisions for him. Letting them tell him where he was going to go and what he was going to do. The bewildered grower boy. The young tagalong.
The knocker they all thought he was.
I don’t have to do what he says, Walter thought, still staring at the PD. He wants my PD now. I could use that. I could use that to…to…
What?
To force Virgil to give him a gun? That wouldn’t change anything. Virgil was right—Walt knew his way around the old-fashioned firearms that the law allowed them to have, but not a battlerifle. Nothing that they could actually use to defend themselves.
Could he use it to force Virgil to make him false promises about getting Carolyn back?
Wake up! Something screamed at him from the back of his head. Wake up and smell the coffee, smell the nightmare, smell reality. Get a great big wiff of it, Walt. Taste it. Accept it.
He watched his thumb, still poised there over the PD, and it had begun to tremble.
“Walter.” Virgil’s voice.
Walt glanced up.
He felt sick again.
He swallowed, his mouth sweating. “Ayuh. Okay.”
He flipped the PD and the monitor sprang into the air, casting them all in a blue glow.
The second it came into being, Walter saw them all flinch.
In the darkness of the woods, this muted light seemed strong enough to summon gunships from twenty miles away. He could almost feel the target locks, zeroing in on him, scanning him, prioritizing him.
A shudder worked up Walter’s back.
The unexplainable feeling that the gazelle gets when it knows it’s being watched by something in the tall grass.
Virgil leaned in quickly and swiped and tapped his way through the monitor, pulling up a call screen and entering a contact number that he appeared to know from memory. “Turn it more towards me,” he said. “If they see your face, they’re not going to answer.”
“Hurry up with that thing,” Tria whispered, looking skyward. She motioned to the old man of her group. “Merko, scan those skies for me. Let’s make sure we’re not being watched.”
Merko pulled an optic from a pouch on his softarmor, grumbling, “Probably shoulda done that ‘fore we activated the PD.”
Walter guessed that Merko was probably right.
On the line, there was the muted, intermittent buzz of the waiting tone.
Waiting.
Waiting for a connection.
Virgil scrunched in closer to Walter, trying to make sure that his face was visible to the people on the other end of that line. Maybe they were there, looking at their own monitor, looking at an image of who was calling them and deciding whether or not to answer.
And then, abruptly, the waiting tone vanished.
But it wasn’t replaced by anyone that Virgil knew. No sound of connection.
Instead, the call screen went blank, and made a little funny tone, one that Walter knew meant something’s wrong, and then a passably sympathetic female voice stated into the dark quiet of the woods, “We’re sorry, but a networ
k was not detected at this time.”
Hank was on his feet in a flash, drawing his fingers rapidly and repeatedly across his neck in a kill it motion. “Shut it off! Shut that shit off!”
Walter jerked like he’d been cattle prodded and snapped the PD closed.
The blue light disappeared.
The after-image of the screen danced in darkness.
“What?” Walter breathed. “What happened?”
Hank was already bent back over his bag, swearing to himself as he stuffed things back in place and zipped it up. “Not good. This is not good.”
Standing beside him, Virgil somehow looked paler than he already had. Walter saw the deep exhaustion suddenly become apparent in his face, and Walter then felt it, like a germ that had somehow passed between them, he felt it seep into his joints, his legs, his feet, his head.
What had the clock on his PD said when he’d opened it?
Sometime after eleven, Walter was sure. Sometime just before midnight.
“They shut the network down,” Virgil said, and his voice was toneless, emotionless. And the lack of feeling seemed to make it that much worse to Walter, though he barely knew what Virgil meant by it.
He could tell by the words, and by his expression that the situation had very suddenly changed.
“Is that for real?” Tria questioned. “Does that actually happen?”
“Oh, it happened,” Hank said quickly, swinging his pack onto his shoulders again. “And now it’s happening here.”
Virgil nodded, dazedly. “They’re doing it. They’re doing it here.”
“I don’t…” Walter was shaking his head, bewildered. “Someone help me out here.”
Virgil looked skyward, with a spark of suspicion in his eyes. “They shut the network down,” he repeated. “Which means they don’t want anybody in this District calling out, or messaging, or taking pictures or videos. It means they have Eighty-Eighty-Nine on lockdown and they don’t want anyone to know what’s happening inside.” When his eyes came back to Walt’s they looked glassy and crazy. “They’re purging the District.”
“I thought you said that shit wasn’t real!” Walter exclaimed.
A flash of annoyance across Virgil’s face. “I told you what you wanted to hear.”
Merko and his younger counterpart—Walter still hadn’t caught his name—exchanged a glance and shifted uncomfortably in their armor. Then Merko stepped forward and touched Tria’s arm. “We’re not getting out of here tonight. We need to get indoors.” He looked at Virgil. “Anyplace you know of that we can get to—”
Merko’s outstretched arm, his fingers still lightly touching Tria’s, simply separated at the elbow with a sound like someone taking a swipe at dense jungle foliage with a machete.
Walter stared, the image and the sound not yet processed in his brain.
Merko’s separated hand hung there against Tria’s arm for a millisecond, and then began to fall to the ground. At the same moment, the sound of a heavy, solid impact, like a strong right hook into a heavy bag, and Merko grunted and stumbled sideways.
Behind Merko, the young man with the long hair who Walter still had yet to get a name from, was watching Merko fall with wide eyes and a word half-formed on his lips, maybe a swear, maybe a shout of warning.
And then his face was simply wiped from his head.
And then the woods came alive.
Chapter 13
Several things in the same instant.
A blur. Each a microcosm. Each separated. And yet all one hurricane of movement.
Merko, hitting the ground, his face changing from shock to pain and then to fear.
Tria dropping to her knees, so fast that her white-gray hair billowed up like it was in water, spread out around her head like a halo. Her hand hooked under the chest piece of Merko’s softarmor, and she strained to pull him back upright, and Walter wondered how in the hell she was going to haul a man nearly twice her size.
Help her
Hank was already running. His eyes wide, his mouth a gaping “O” in the center of his face, his arms pumping, his head ducking as a tree flew into splinters just next to him.
All around them, the thud-d-d-d-d-d of suppressed battlerifles.
To Walter’s right, Getty was swearing and diving for the ground.
And directly beside him, Virgil was reaching down to his dropleg, ripping the pistol out, his eyes narrowed, his teeth bared like he was moving a great weight.
All in an instant.
“Merko!” Tria yelled.
The instant fractured and everything collided into the mish-mash of reality.
Virgil’s pistol was up, and he was stepping through Walter, shoving him out of the way, shoving him backward, his pistol firing rapidly, POP-POP-POP-POP, back into the woods. Walter tried to backpedal.
He felt himself hit Hank as the man scooted by, yelping like a dog.
Walt tried to correct.
Felt his feet slip out from under him.
Fire blooming from the muzzle of Virgil’s pistol, strobing his grim face.
Walter hit the ground on his back.
Do something!
“MOVE!” Virgil bellowed out.
A rapid, clacking sound pounded Walter’s eardrums. He rolled, kicked up leaves, scrambling for his feet. He could see Tria still trying to haul Merko from the ground while the older man gasped and gaped like a fish with no water.
Beyond them, Getty had one leg sprawled out over the corpse of the no-named-man with the long hair, and the other knee was on the ground, and he had already snatched up the dead man’s rifle and was firing it back into the woods.
“Peel!” Getty was shouting as he fired. “Peel! Peel!”
Walter clawed across the forest floor.
“Somebody help me!” Tria screamed.
Walter watched Merko’s body jerk. He couldn’t tell where the round had gone in, but he watched it pop out of Merko’s throat. Tria didn’t notice. Was still yelling for help.
Merko’s eyes rolled up and fluttered closed.
Do something do something do something!
Virgil appeared and swooped down and grabbed Tria by the collar of her softarmor. He yanked her roughly to her feet like she weighed absolutely nothing and propelled her in the opposite direction.
“Leave him! Move!”
Getty was still firing into the darkness of the woods, the red-orange muzzle flares lighting his face with a mad strobing effect.
Walter flopped onto his belly, right there beside Merko’s dead and bleeding form.
Something smacked the dirt with a hard, angry sound just in front of him, spraying debris into his face. He scrabbled desperately behind Merko’s body, using it as a sandbag.
“Walter!” Virgil’s voice yelled at him. “Walter, get out of there!”
But Walter’s brain was stuck.
Do something do something do something
And
I DO NOT HAVE TO FOLLOW YOU!
He didn’t recall the moment with any particular clarity when Virgil had told him to not get in the way, but all the same, the way that it had made him feel was suddenly there, and it made him hot and angry in that place, wherever it was, somewhere in his chest, in his gut, in the part of him that you might call his “heart.”
I’m not obeying.
I’m going to DO SOMETHING!
Because he hadn’t done anything. He had never done anything.
He had sat in that pot of boiling water and he had let it cook him into paralysis.
He reached forward across Merko’s dead body.
He was face to face with the man, but he didn’t see him.
He listened to the bees buzzing over his head.
Bullets.
They were very close.
He kept reaching across the dead man’s chest, waiting for that moment when one of those bees would hit his hand, magically separate it from his arm just like it had done to Merko, and he prayed that he would feel what he was reaching fo
r, please, let me have it…
“Hey!” it was Getty this time. He had stopped firing, was lurching to his feet, his wide eyes fixated on Walter. “The fuck’re you—?”
Walter saw one of his pants legs twitch like an invisible finger had just reached out of nowhere and plucked it like a harpist’s chord.
Just pluck, and then a little cloud of blood, and the leg went wonky underneath Getty and he staggered.
A battlerifle fired close behind them.
Tria was yelling this time: “Set! Getty! Peel!”
Getty caught himself on a tree.
Something else whumped into him.
He arched his back and cried out, then squirmed his way behind the tree.
Somehow, on some instinctive level that Walter was not so very proud of, he knew that Getty was the target, and not him. He knew that the next bullets would be directed there, and not be whistling by so close to the top of his head. So he lurched forward. Onto Merko’s body. All sense of propriety gone, there was no purpose for it here, no time to think like that, his crotch was in Merko’s dead face, he was crawling over him like he was nothing more than fallen branches and dirt.
Walter seized the dead man’s rifle. Ripped it up.
It caught.
The strap the strap the strap
His adrenaline-stupid fingers fumbled about the rifle.
He found the detent. Pressed it. Felt the rifle sway out of the grip of the strap.
Getty yelled: “Hit! I’m hit!”
Walter pushed himself up off of Merko’s body. He brought the rifle up, firing blindly. He thought, You’re open now, you’re exposed now, they’re going to shoot you.
Then the rifle was bucking violently in his hands and he remembered that he should shoulder it, he should put it against his shoulder, brace it there, just like he would with that old hunting shotgun—the physics weren’t any different.
He was up. Up on his feet. Firing. Backpedaling.
The tree with Getty slouched down behind it. One leg bracing him, the other hanging awkwardly out in the open, asking for another bullet, but obviously Getty was having trouble controlling the damaged muscles.
Something split the air very close to Walter’s head.
He stopped firing. Turned on his heel. Almost felt his legs go out from under him.
