The Digital Plague

by Jeff Somers

  The moment she said it, I was. “Starving,” I said. I eyed the tiny box. “Ah, nutrition tabs. Breakfast of kings.”

  She didn’t smile, but there was perhaps a tiny softening around her eyes that might have indicated mirth. I held out one scabby hand, noting with surprise that my pinky was bent in the middle in what looked like a painful way, and she shook three white pills into my palm. I dry-swallowed them and cursed them, my still hungry stomach clawing at itself.

  As usual, the nutrition tabs made me nauseous almost instantly.

  “I was Pushed once,” she said suddenly, her voice low. “Years ago. We raided an apartment in the Bowery, little shits selling homemade guns to the brats, causing us more fucking trouble than you’d believe from goddamn seven-year-olds with plastic single-shot peashooters. I bust into the bathroom and there’s this kid trying to wriggle through the window, but it’s a little too small for him and his clothes are so goddamn big his pants are being left behind and it’s just his bare ass staring at me. I yank him back and decide to throw a scare into him. I flip him over and I have this little speech prepared, but he looks at me and next thing I knew, I was letting that little shit walk right past me and feeling pretty good about it for a minute.” She shook a pill into her hand and popped it into her mouth. “I never saw that punk again, and I’ll tell you this: I’m glad, because that shit scared the hell out of me.”

  I licked pill grit from my jagged teeth and thought, Hell, I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m being pitied by a System Pig.

  Marko saved me from having to reply, shambling into the cabin looking sweaty and greasy, wiping his hands on his shirt. “We’re ready to go,” he said, his voice low and stretched out. “If anyone has any ideas about where.” He remained standing, and after a moment I looked up. To my sudden horror, he was looking at me, chewing his lip. “Mr. Cates,” he said. “I heard what Mr. Kieth said. About them just turning you off. A kill switch.”

  I could smell more pity, pity from a man who would be dead just as quickly as me if things went in that downhill direction. To put a stop to it, I cleared my throat. “New York,” I said. “We have to go to New York.”

  “Are you fucking insane?”

  I turned sharply at the voice. Bendix had been tied securely to the safety netting in the rear of the hover, his arms and legs bent uncomfortably back, a thick blindfold wrapped around his eyes. If the hover crashed—which was entirely possible considering the damage the Monks had done to it—I put my money on Bendix being the only one of us who survived, he was so securely restrained.

  Hense gestured, and two Stormers took a bead on Bendix, ready for the order.

  “New York is a graveyard,” Bendix said forcefully. “I doubt anyone’s left alive there. There’s no government. We have no presence there. You might as well land in the fucking ocean and let us sink.”

  “Mr. Bendix,” Hense said, standing up. “I advise you that you are being covered by two randomly placed troopers who have orders to shoot you at first sign of any psionic activity. Am I understood?”

  He grinned, that puckered face twisting up, but he said nothing else. I looked at Marko.

  “New York,” I said. “That’s where he wants me to go anyway, and I can’t risk the kill switch. Besides, that’s where he’ll be.”

  “But why would he take Mr. Kieth to the same place we’re going?” Marko said, scrubbing his face with his filthy hands, leaving dark streaks on his cheeks.

  I glanced at Bendix. “Because the Spook’s right—New York’s a fucking Ghost City. There’s no safer place for Kev and his merry men to hole up.”

  From my right, Bendix’s congealed laughter filled the cabin. “Monks? Kev? Kev Gatz?”

  I stared at him, my right eye giving a twitch. “You know him?”

  He moved his head around as if sniffing the air. “Mr. Cates, the government naturally keeps track of all known terrorist organizations. Kev Gatz and his fellow cyborg refugees have been on our radar for some years now. His file is admittedly thin; we have almost no record of him prior to the Monk Riots.” His face twisted up again. “Our usual agents had tabs on his organization up until two days ago, when our usual agents . . . died.”

  For a few seconds we all sat there in silence. Finally I licked my cracked lips. “Mr. Bendix, do you have a point?”

  He nodded, opening his mouth as he did so and waggling his eyebrows under the blindfold. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cates. Three days ago our last official report on Gatz had his group seizing Bellevue Hospital Center with little resistance, the complex having been abandoned and occupied by itinerants of deteriorating health. You would have heard the report, officers, except you’d been burned off the force by then, of course.”

  “Well, hell,” I said. “We get a fix on Kieth’s signal like before, you can call in a fucking missile strike or whatever. Kieth’s dead, this whole mess goes away.” A thin kernel of hope bloomed inside me, and I almost welcomed the idea of having to worry about getting away from Hense and Happling or whichever System Pigs stepped in to take their place.

  I felt Marko looking at me, and I knew he’d heard me make my promise to Ty. I kept my eyes off him, but I still felt his scrutiny.

  Bendix nodded. “Certainly. But you would have to put me in touch with my office.”

  “Uh,” Marko said slowly, raising his hand, “there is one problem with that. When I got the hover going I tried a scan for Mr. Kieth. I can’t find him anymore.” He shrugged, an incredibly slow, lazy movement. “I think they’re shielding him.”

  I closed my eyes. The Kev Gatz I’d known had been a burnout, a man who could make you dance and sing if he bent his mind to it but who sometimes didn’t seem capable of forming sentences. Now he was a goddamn cyborg mastermind. “All right, but I think Mr. Bendix is saying we know where they’re headed—Bellevue. Just take the shot. We’ll know soon enough if we hit the mark.”

  We all looked at Bendix. His smile got even twistier, but he shook his head. “No.”

  I almost jumped to my feet. This was it, this was a solution. This was burning out an infection. This was easy, and I wanted to squeeze an answer out of the goddamn assistant to the Undersecretary. Before I could find my voice, Hense spoke up.

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Ms. Hense,” Bendix said, shaking his head. “The whole eastern seaboard is in turmoil as this spreads, and we’re starting to see flare-ups of the infection elsewhere in the System, probably spread by System Security Force personnel moving from place to place. We’ve lost huge numbers of assets and resources, and we’re struggling simply to maintain control in North America right now. Intact assets in the rest of the world must be preserved to guard against what is at the moment an inevitable spread of chaos and loss of life.” His smile faded a little. “We’re stretched thin as it is. You expect me to arrange for military assets to be transported to New York and expended for the chance?” He shook his head again. “No. Show me where Mr. Kieth is, and I will issue such an order. Not before.”

  “Motherfucker,” I hissed, looking up at Hense. “Call the cops. Call your people.” The cops didn’t hesitate. The cops killed everything first and asking fucking questions later.

  Hense didn’t look at me. “No, Mr. Cates,” she said quietly, looking at the Stormers around us. “We’re burned. No one will talk to us. We won’t get through to anyone.”

  I stared at her, then at Happling, who looked like he was chewing his own tongue. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. You’re not police.”

  I stood up, the action intended as dramatic but ending up slow and pathetic. “I’m not insane,” I said, turning to Marko. I hated him because he knew what I’d said to Kieth. “New York. We find Kieth and then Mr. Bendix will wave his hands in the air and rain death from the sky.” I looked around. Hense, Happling, Marko, and the Stormers were all focused on me. Except for Marko, they’d all wanted me dead not so long ago, but they were looking at me calmly, expe
ctantly, as if I knew what our best move was.

  “Fuck it,” I said, turning for the cockpit. “We do it the hard way. As fucking usual.”

  XXIX

  Day Ten:

  Send the Vip

  on Down

  Zooming toward the coast, the hover rattled and shook violently, but I barely noticed. It had been shuddering and lurching through the air, the displacers roaring with a sour, off-center noise that was painful to the ears, ever since we lifted off. Marko handled the brick like he was riding a dead elephant, and by the time we were halfway across the ocean he’d made four of the surviving fifteen Stormers puke into the safety netting.

  I was sitting in the copilot’s seat. Wires snaked from the maintenance duct on the floor between us directly into the dashboard, which made me nervous. Any sudden, unplanned move by Marko would more than likely result in some disconnections, and I had a vague but heavy certainty disconnections would result in us smashing into the Atlantic.

  “Things must be bad,” I said to Hense in a low, careful voice. She crouched on one side of me, awkwardly folded into the space between the copilot’s seat and the dashboard. Happling was behind us, grim and silent, all his crazy cheer gone for a change. I’d liked him better laughing. “You hear Bendix? Assets, resources: translation is, they’ve lost the fucking East Coast and have nothing to throw at it.”

  Hense nodded. We’d all been out of touch for too many days; we were working from hints. “That explains a fucking civilian Spook leading a team of cops,” she said. “A week ago that would never have happened.”

  I’d sketched out a primitive map of Bellevue Hospital Complex in a mixture of blood and grease on a piece of cloth torn from one of the Stormers’ underuniforms. It wasn’t pretty but it gave the general idea. I’d been there only once, eight or nine years before, on a job. Three doctors, all rich and under guard, all had to be dead on the same day. I remembered the job well: a challenge. I’d been forced to take some pains with the grounds; next to The Rock, the hospital was one of the most heavily guarded areas of the city. After all, they couldn’t let in the assholes without medical chips.

  Nine years was a long time. Buildings went up or down, security configurations changed, floors were abandoned or populated. Still, my hazy memory was all we had to go on until Marko dug up something more useful.

  “We’re on a schedule, too,” I said. “From what Kev said, they’re just waiting for enough people to die off, and then they won’t need Kieth or me anymore.”

  “And they shut you down,” she said, giving me that steady stare.

  “Shut us all down,” I reminded her. “I don’t know when that moment is going to be. But if the whole East Coast is gone in a week, it can’t be long. Give me a cigarette,” I said. She didn’t hesitate, snapping open her little case and offering it to me, then adroitly manipulating case and lighter with one hand, managing to snap the case closed and the lighter open without dropping either. Admiring her tidy movements and enjoying the feel of her leg against mine, I sucked the bitter smoke in and stared down at my crude little map. “The hospital complex is like a goddamn fortress to keep out folks like me who don’t have a med chip. But it’s nothing complicated—it’s walls and electronic gates and motion sensors and a lot of private guards. Okay, let’s assume the private guards are all dead. Let’s also assume they’ve been replaced by Monks. That’s an upgrade. Is the power grid still up?”

  Hense shook her head. “According to Bendix it went down two days ago. Apparently a large part of Long Island isn’t there anymore.”

  I nodded. “Okay. So the electronic perimeter can be discounted. So what we’ve got is a few dozen Monks guarding roughly a mile of concrete and barbed wire. But it’s a hospital, right? So it’s designed to let people in and out.”

  Happling’s huge arm moved past my face, a thick finger pointing at my diagram. “Your map’s a little out of date. I pulled bodyguard duty on some asshole doctor there three years ago. Fucking prick. Acted like I wasn’t even there, wouldn’t even say fucking hello in the morning. I must have walked all over that place. It’s a goddamn maze. Every corridor looks exactly the same. They’ve got these colored lines painted on the walls that are supposed to show you where everything is, but I’d swear they just loop around.”

  I sat and stared at Happling’s dirty finger for a moment. “Think you could draw a floor plan?”

  The finger was retracted. “Nah. I’ve got no head for that shit. But your best bet for getting in is the front door, plain and simple.”

  I twisted around to squint up at him. He was still caked in dried blood and dirt, his eyes bright white and green in the middle of it. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  He shrugged. “They wanted to keep the shitheads out, sure,” he said. “But there were always big shots coming by, for treatment or just to walk around and give each other handjobs about how great the hospital was, whatever. The front door had to be grand, you know? Impressive. Security’s boring, ugly.” He shrugged. “You try wriggling in through the ass of that complex and you’ll get squeezed—that’s how every chipless asshole in the city tries to get in. You want an easy in, go through the front like you’re selling cookies. No matter how many goddamn Tin Men they got, it’s still just unreinforced glass and non-load-bearing columns.”

  I turned to look at Hense, but she just stared back at me. If she was going to stand up for Happling, I was prepared to accept his assessment. “All right, through the front, then.” I looked at Marko. “How close to the hospital can you set this tub down?”

  “The way the nav systems are fried, combined with the shudder I’ve got from peeled back plates, I’d say I can get us into the goddamn city of New York,” Marko said, his eyes locked on the dashboard readouts. “I’m going to aim for the Madison Square Airpad. Plenty of room to crash there.”

  I considered saying something, but the Techie was sweaty and had the deep-focus stare of someone struggling to not scream, so I opted to look back at Hense. “All right, so we walk.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then shifted her gaze past me. “Mr. Marko,” she said, “how’s your stick? Think you can maintain a deployment position?”

  “Can I make this hover hover?” Marko asked, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Sure. It won’t be pretty. Your boys know how to drop with a little bit of yaw?”

  “I don’t know,” Hense said, turning to Happling, “I’ve never seen them drop before. Captain, get set for a drop and form a security ring. We can’t have Mr. Cates taking any more chances.”

  Happling nodded and spun out of the cockpit. “Mr. Marko,” Hense said, looking back at me. “When we arrive at Madison Square, give me fifty feet and let me know when you’re as steady as you can manage. Mr. Cates,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sending my men down to have a look before we risk our magic talisman. Any objections?”

  I shook my head. “As long as it’s understood that when we reach the hospital, I’m the one that kills Ty Kieth.”

  Silence greeted this. I looked at my cigarette coal, feeling dirty. They thought I was being bloodthirsty. And a traitorous bastard who killed friends after promising them he wouldn’t. But Kieth wasn’t Glee’s revenge—that was Gatz. Ty Kieth’s death was the cure. Someone would end up pulling the trigger on Ty; it was unavoidable. Might as well be someone friendly. Ty deserved to have someone look him in the eye and speak to him when his time came, and there was no one else. Once that was taken care of, there would be time for revenge.

  “Very well,” Hense said, standing up. “Mr. Marko, let us know when you’re ready.”

  She ducked out of the cockpit, leaving me alone with the Techie. I heard him open his mouth to suck in a deep breath.

  “If you say a fucking word to me,” I said to the cigarette, “I will tear your goddamn tongue out. It has to be done.”

  I heard his mouth click shut. I didn’t feel powerful, or smart. I felt like a piece of shit. I put the cigarette back into my mout
h and drew in smoke. It tasted terrible, stale and bitter. We sat there for a few minutes, the shouts and thumpings of the Stormers as they geared up for a drop coming to us through the bulkhead and filling up some of the space. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, the silence, Marko knowing this about me, so I stood up, dropped the red-hot butt onto the floor, and pushed into the cabin.

  I’d never seen a Stormer drop up close. From the ground, where I’d usually watched them while cowering in some hole, gun in sweaty hand, praying not to be noticed, they always looked like something from a nightmare: half invisible in their Obfuscation Kit, gliding to the ground on beautiful silver threads, raining down murder on us fearlessly, wordlessly.

  Up close, their ObFu was stained and torn, and some were having technical difficulties, flickering on and off. The Stormers didn’t have their cowls on yet, and their faces were sweaty and unshaven and blotched with dirt and blood. They stank—the whole cabin smelled like marinating humans, powerful enough even for me to notice, and I’d spent far too much time cowering in holes with other people to ever really notice body odors again. The silver drop cables were old and worn, some a little rusted at the connectors, and snaked from the drop poles to their belt clips in a jumbled mess on the floor. They shuffled and rearranged themselves as Happling barked orders, and chattered loudly, making jokes. They looked like a lot of unhappy, overstressed people instead of silent death machines sent to kick our asses. I leaned against the wall and watched, feeling my leg throb in time with my pulse.

  Hense glanced at me. “You gonna be able to keep up? You look pretty banged up.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been worse. I’ve been dead.” I never got tired of that line.

  She nodded and put a hand on my shoulder. “Fine. But you can’t be killed, understood? Don’t make me take extreme precautions.”

  “You’re two officers and fifteen exhausted Stormers with low ammunition and no chance of resupply,” I said, liking the weight of her hand on me. “You need my gun.” I studied her as she turned away, thinking this was someone I could work with. I liked her.