by John Ringo
As far as she knew, none of the contractors had been allowed to carry firearms or tasers into the room with the mayor’s staff and the police chief present. Everyone had accepted the pre-gathering blood test screening as the primary protection mechanism. So much for that.
She cast about for some way to keep the zombie at a distance, or chivvy it away from the anteroom doors. The chairs looked likely…
The infected was starting to snarl and tearing off the remainder of its clothes. Colleen noted the La Bruna bra. “Nice taste, bit overpriced. Who has six hundred dollars for lingerie?”
“Solly, do you have a hold out?”
He pulled out a large folding knife. “Just this.” He seemed as relaxed as ever.
“Well, fuck me.”
Colleen made a double plus promise to never, never ever not carry again, and damn the rules. If that zombie starting getting bitey, it was going to be a combination PD shooting gallery and aerosolized blood spatter zone. Not good. She also didn’t particularly trust that the only armed people were nervous cops who (a) weren’t known for their shooting accuracy and (b) already didn’t like that the bank security contractors and “entrepreneurs” were doing their job for them.
A loud crash across the table got her attention. Ramon had just smashed a priceless antique chair across the table, producing some serviceable lengths of wood. The cops had formed a cordon across the back of the room and screened most of the attendees, but otherwise were holding in place.
“Ok Solly. Smash me this chair and then we can go help Ramon move this zombie along, while the boys in blue admire our style, okay?”
“Sure thing, boss,” he replied, hoisting the chair overhead.
“Hey Ramon!” she called across the table, where Big Mac’s crew was cautiously spreading out between the infected and their principal. Ramon glanced over.
Colleen added, over the sound of another antique being literally smashed to kindling, “Wait a sec, and we will come give you a hand.”
She added with a smile and reached back for a sturdy if gilded chunk of chair leg, “Again.”
* * *
Colleen walked west to Rector Street and hopped the 1 subway line to Christopher. Even on her salary, she couldn’t afford the rent in the Village. Sarah could. She ran the agriculture commodity desk at JP Morgan. They had met earlier in the year while Colleen had been on a detail covering a meeting at the midtown offices of JPM. As a rule, she never rubbernecked the attractive people at the meetings. A short, pert blonde had caught her eye and discreetly slipped her a business card. A month later, Colleen moved in, and a year later they were still together. Amazing.
She had tried to convince Sarah to leave the city, without success. Her parents had a place in the Finger Lakes—not too many people, good defensible terrain. Sooner or later, it was going to be time to boogie, and Colleen was terrified that she would have to choose between her duty and trying to find Sarah if panic really took hold in the city. There really wasn’t a choice, Colleen knew. She wasn’t going to protect the suits if it meant leaving Sarah alone.
However, Sarah had just as much steel in her as Colleen, damn it. And she was still working.
The apartment was a fourth floor walk up and needed a remodel. The street noise was clearly audible inside, but it wasn’t a party street and usually wasn’t too bad. There was also an amazing bakery not even two doors down. Everything is better when you can enjoy a fresh palmiere over your paper. Sarah liked coffee.
And cooking. The smell of the pasta sauce bloomed across Colleen’s face as she swung the door open, reminding Colleen that her last meal had been a late breakfast. The adrenaline from the way the meeting dissolved had masked lesser things, like fatigue and hunger.
Sarah looked up from the large pot that she was stirring. She wore a bright neon green strapless sundress. The thing practically glowed, but set off her tan.
“My favorite eighties dress!”
“Hope that you are hungry! I made the traditional amount!” Sarah replied.
Immediately Colleen’s edgy feeling came back.
“What are we going to do with two gallons of pasta sauce? It takes us weeks to eat that!”
Sarah’s face fell. “Are we going to fight about this straight away? Can’t we eat first?”
Colleen closed the door and struggled to stay calm, the frustration of the day just below the surface. “Look, I love you, I worry about you, and I don’t understand why you don’t just go now. If things get bad, I can get out alone and come up to your folk’s place. If it gets bad there won’t be time to find each other and then…”
“I know you care. I know that you worry about me. But one, I am not leaving here without you and two, my job is actually more important than you think.”
Colleen tried to hold her. Sarah moved a little, her face set.
“I am not a doll. I am not leaving alone. Are you ready to leave now, right now? I’ll leave if you go, if you think that this is the right time. Right now.” She looked steadily at Colleen.
“What? No. No, I need to stay longer in order to get the vaccine for us. Things are still pretty steady, we are staying ahead of the number of infected. I mean, there is more than there used to be, but nothing we can’t handle, so far.”
“Where are the clothes you left with this morning?”
“Um, in decontam. I got a little splatter at the meeting.”
“Splatter? What the actual fuck, Colleen! You didn’t say anything about zombies at Goldbloom!”
Colleen tried again to hold Sarah, who was even more upset. “I’m ok, it worked out. The entire crew is fine, none of our people were hurt. There was a leaker at the meeting. Somehow she bypassed the patch test and then turned during the actual meeting. Some of the suits panicked, and it was exciting for a moment, but nothing happened. I’m fine.”
Sarah let herself be held, and put her face against Colleen’s breast.
“You know my job is actually more important than you think, right?”
Colleen was a little whiplashed.
“Huh? I mean, what?”
“Do you know why there is no panic in the streets right now?”
“Well sure. We are a visible presence. The civilians see us catching the infecteds. The National Guard has flooded the subways with troops to catch any infected down…
“Gas,” said Sarah.
“Huh? I mean, what, again?”
“Gas. And taxicabs. Fresh food and flowers. Using your credit card and the ATM. Hitting the invite only sample sale at Chanel. Keeping your plans to hit the Met. Climbing the Cat’s Eye in Central Park.” Sarah liked to boulder on the weekends.
“No idea what you are on about.”
Sarah, pulled back a little in Colleen’s arms and looked up. “I’m serious. The reason that there is no panic is because except for the stupid zombies, everything is mostly normal.”
“Well, sure, but…”
“No. The reason things are normal is money. Lots and lots of money, flowing through all the usual places, in the usual ways, to the usual people, in all of the expected amounts. That liquid money, literally spending cash, it what keeps everything mostly normal.”
“Ok.”
“No money, means no normal life. That leads to fear. That leads to panic in less than a week. Are your scientists going to have enough vaccine for the bank in a week?”
Colleen thought for a moment. “No. Depending how many we decide we want to vaccinate, we still have only the first three thousand units of the vaccine ready. Also, it is a multi part course of injections. Our spoilage is off the charts. You have to get the radiation just so in order to damage the virus enough to make it harmless and yet keep it sufficiently intact to instigate the immune response.”
She added, “I get it, I do. We need the banks to keep running in order to keep all the businesses open long enough to let us finish the vaccine.”
Sarah waited.
“Dear heart, it is more than that. The banks don’t
just have to keep running, everything has to look so normal that it stifles any panic. The biggest enemy we have now isn’t the disease per se. The biggest danger is that some event, some unexpected unknown which we could otherwise adjust to creates an irreversible erosion in the huge distributed consensual and shared hallucination that ‘This Is All Going To Be Alright.’ Do you see?”
Colleen replied, “I think that we are saying the same thing, actually.”
“Not entirely…” Sarah tried again.
“When things are going well, there is a sort of shared inertia—we all participate and keep working and playing as though things are normal. This is a strong societal defense against shocks. The more normal things are, the harder it is to ‘break’ a society. You know, the whole ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ thing.”
Colleen nodded, so Sarah continued.
“Our country, and this city in particular, have endured a serious shock. We are starting to consider that maybe, just maybe, this time is different, that things aren’t going to snap back to normal. We are trying like hell, but collective determination is wavering. The government, the CDC, all the usual actors are working to reinforce our determination, but I can see that the money patterns are shifting. The biggest players that buy and sell government paper are shifting their spend. This is spooking the rest of the market because it is unexpected. We are getting really large, ahistorical intraday swings and rumors—each sparks a short run, and then get reversed. Today was fucking crazy like that. The Fed had to suspend the rules about slowing trading when volatility is too high. Hell, some bond desks are doing it on purpose to make the market move up and down like a seismograph. They trade what are normally outrageous puts and calls on every jiggle. It isn’t new, but the levels we see now are self destructive—and everyone can see it building. They are doing it because if there is no long run to worry about, being destructive doesn’t matter.”
She was getting visibly agitated. Colleen tried to hold her closer, but Sarah moved back to the stove, reached for a spoon.
“So that is why my job is actually important. There is no more room for shocks. If the system breaks, even a little bit, the underlying infrastructure that we need to sustain the tech and talent to fight the disease will fall apart, and fast. Have you noticed that the internet is a little slower than usual? That cell calls are dropping a little more often?”
“Not really, no,” Colleen replied.
“Well they are—we see all the data on major infrastructure providers because we need that to keep trading—it is a big circular cycle and it is coming apart. If people like me leave, even a little, it will come apart faster, maybe forever.”
Sarah was crying quietly now.
“Baby, I am sorry for…”
Sarah interrupted Colleen.
“No. I am not fragile. I am scared and that is ok. But I need you. I need to be with you. If I leave, you are coming with me. So no, I am not going to my parent’s house up north, not unless you come with me. So, do we jump together, now, tonight?”
Colleen looked at her.
“Or do we make a shit ton of delicious pasta that we can’t possibly finish in just one sitting and keep pressing on?”
Colleen wanted to reassure her, wanted things to be “normal” too. “You know, when we eat pasta we drink wine, right?”
Sarah smiled a little.
Colleen walked over to the wine rack and selected an Argentine red. “And you know how you get after we split a bottle of wine…”
“Why Colleen Chang, are you hitting on me?”
Sarah was starting to smile even wider when there was scream from outside the window.
Colleen lunged for the kitchen light switch and looked outside.
There was a BERT she didn’t recognize, bagging a man who was lunging about and snapping. Another man was continuing to scream hysterically and was edging closer to the two BERT tech who were starting to muscle the potential infected into the truck.
“No, he’s is fine, you don’t have to do this. It’s fine, don’t take him, no!”
One of the tech hit him with a taser, and while Colleen watched from the window, bagged the second man’s head as well.
Sarah started to open the window. “What the hell, that is Joey from the bakery, what are those men doing! Call the cops, Colleen.”
Colleen snatched Sarah back from the window. “Don’t open that, just leave it alone, we can’t do anything.” She saw that one of the techs was sporting the dreds that were popular in Big Mac’s outfit.
“But Joey isn’t a zombie, he was just trying to help…”
“Doesn’t matter, babe. We don’t know what the call is, and the first guy was definitely showing symptoms. If we go down there, we become part of the problem. We could even become part of the ‘solution.’”
They watched quietly as the second man was loaded, twitching, into the back of truck. No cops, no one else came out on the street to intervene or ask questions.
Sarah was staring. “But they loaded Joey in the truck. Where are they taking him?”
Colleen hugged her.
“Better not to overthink it. Let me hold you.”
“But…”
Colleen stroked Sarah’s hair. “It’s okay. Things are pretty normal.”
* * *
A few weeks after the bakery on her street closed, Colleen was leading her snatch team on a routine patrol on the Upper East side. MetBank’s regional board had elected to add a third BERT. Each of the existing teams had to give up one person in order to ensure some continuity of experience for the new group. Colleen had not been sorry to second Larry to the new team—he had a shot at the lead role there, and wouldn’t be aggravating her. She had been been training up Erich, the newbie, a transfer from the executive protection detail. Many of the executives had decided that working remotely from their estates on Long Island a few days a week beat driving in, freeing up trained drivers. Erich was competent behind the wheel, though the inertia of the big truck still tended to surprise the driver who had spent the last year in a S600.
Around the City, conditions had become even more tense, though Colleen couldn’t put her finger on it. Sarah kept her up to date on the financial markets situation. After some spectacular gyrations, the markets had steadied a bit. Money continued to flow into, around and out of the city. If Colleen squinted her eyes some, and kidded herself just a little bit, she could pretend that the City was reaching an equilibrium. The subway was running without drivers now, and although there were fewer trains on the tracks in order provide a safety margin for the automated systems, there were fewer riders too.
All that aside, the city felt somehow different to Colleen.
The number of infected that they found hadn’t gone up materially. Overture’s crew continued to spread across the city. They were policing nearly all of the Bronx and Queen’s now. They had also ruthlessly absorbed all of the Triad’s area. There were whispers that many of the Triad’s gunmen simply went missing. Matricardi’s crew owned everything south and west of the City, which they had effectively ceded to Overture. The PD continued to roll units, but the conditions in the “Afflicted Temporary Holding Facilities” were so bad that the cops were ceding nearly all the infected detentions to the nearest BERT. Since numbers weren’t up, there was increasing competition for the raw vaccine “ingredients.”
Colleen yanked herself back to alertness when Solly called out a possible infected.
“Heads up, left side, looks like a runner.”
Sure enough, there was a single person running from a possible zombie, right down the west side of Second Avenue. Joggers had become increasingly scarce as the summer wore on, but this person wasn’t jogging, he was sprinting ahead of another man. This one was naked, visibly bloody and slowly closing.
“Erich, get turned around and get us in front of those guys, Solly, get ready to unass the truck as soon as we stop.”
“Got it, boss.”
Colleen released her seat belt and
checked her rig. Sidearm, capture stick, taser, bite bag—all good. Her new tactical jacket and gloves were bite resistant and she had gotten N95 respirators and face shields for her teams. After the close call in the boardroom where the infected secretary sprayed her with blood, she decided that more protection was in order.
Erich reefed the big truck around at the next intersection, foiled by the large concrete planter than ran the length of the median on every block. Colleen saw the infected sprint around the corner on East 96th. Despite being in a vehicle, they were actually well behind in the chase now.
“They’re heading towards the park. Hook right and gun it.”
Colleen didn’t think that you could drift a ride as large as their BERT truck. Erich proved her wrong, buffering their turned by using a parked limo to stop their lateral movement. Knuckles white on the dash chicken bar, she looked in the mirror to see Solly grinning, imperturbable as ever.
“Are we making this too boring, Solly?”
“Hell Colleen, this ain’t nothing. I’ll let you know when it gets exciting.”
On the straight away, the BERT closed the gap to the runners rapidly and Erich braked to stop on Lexington, just ahead of the pair.
Out of the car, Colleen already had her taser in hand when the runner blew past her and she shot the infected. He stumbled, clipping Colleen and driving her to the ground. She kept the power on and was levering herself to her feet when Solly yelled.
“Boss, another one!”
She locked the taser on and dropped it, hoping that would keep the first infected down.
The second was a truly large man. Wearing the ragged remains of a Yankees sweatershirt, he was lunging at Solly who was trying to get the capture stick cinched down on his neck and arm.
“Erich, a little help,” she yelled, as she drew the second taser from her belt.
“Erich…” Her second shout was drowned out by a very loud siren as two Suburbans squealed to a halt. Members of Big Mac’s crew starting piling out.
