Evan raised his voice. “When he killed and assassinated four thousand people he was just misunderstood. No one could reach him.” His voice went back to normal. “You’re a revolt against her parents, that’s all. Against the daddy who left. She sees you as her protector without realizing that all the violence coming her way is because of you, not despite you.
“But she will figure out what you are. What, not who. With you, there is no who. And when that happens, let’s see how long it takes for you to call me. Keep the sat phone, just dial zero, because she’s going to run from you like you’re on fire. And you’re going to realize that you can’t relate to anyone, that that’s your condition, and she was just a butterfly that landed on your hand and caught your gaze, and for a moment—maybe—you thought you could change.
“I’m going to win, Mike. With or without her, I am at the city’s door. I can last a few more days. And I don’t need more. And you, my friend. My closest friend, more than you know—as much as you or I can have ‘friends,’ given what we are—you will kneel before me. And unlike before, when I protected you—those days are gone—I will render you a weapon, and nothing more.”
“Try,” Glass said simply.
“You have no idea what I am now, even in this weakened state,” Evan replied. “But soon you will.”
And then the Twins called out from below.
Chapter 10
It was an eight-hour train ride to Chicago. Raimey was too large to fit in the cabin, so he watched the miles roll by from an open well car. On the way out of New York he saw buildings on fire or pockmarked from shelling. Masses of civilians walked out of the city on foot and yelled for help or scurried away as the train chugged by.
The city turned to suburbs that had been reclaimed by nature. Packs of feral dogs lay on front lawns, and crows called the rooftops home. The white tails of deer bounded into the brush. Vines and weeds had encroached on everything, gently pulling the old houses down. It had been a little over twenty-five years since the Great Migration, and already there was no restoring the old way of life. Even if they found a reservoir of oil tomorrow, one that could last a thousand years, all of this—the houses, the main streets, the malls, the car lots—it would still be an anthropological study. There was no going back.
Maybe it was all for the best. Humans had overstepped their bounds.
Worry plagued John. He could picture Vanessa dead. He could see her limp body in his metal hands. He tried to visualize a better reunion. Her dusty but unharmed. Him a hero—killing whoever was chasing her down. But his mind rejected optimism. Every scenario ended the same: with wide, lifeless eyes, and her hair matted with blood. He didn’t believe in fate or prescience, but his mind continued to play Judas.
“She’s alive,” Tiffany said. Raimey turned from the rolling fields and trees. He sat at the front of the car toward the engine, and she sat at the rear, dangling her feet over the edge. The tracks unfurled behind her, creating distance, each crosstie a metronome of time gone by, time that would never be felt or seen again.
“I won’t fall,” she said with a laugh. Of course she could read his thoughts.
“Where have you been?” It had been weeks since he’d last seen her.
“You haven’t needed me.”
“I do now?”
She shrugged. She was there.
“What if I’m too late?” Raimey asked.
“Earl swore to protect her.”
“And he’s dead,” Raimey said.
“Evan swore too.”
“Hmm.” That didn’t improve John’s mood.
“And so did Cynthia.”
It was true. Those three had been in the room when John agreed to give up his life in exchange for protecting the only two reasons he valued it in the first place. But how many ironclad promises had been compromised by the withering of memory and time? Countless as the grains of sand along an ocean shore.
“She works at the Derik Building. Do you know where that is?” Tiffany asked.
Of course, he thought. She made a face.
“I know you’ve been there—that’s how this whole mess started—but do you know its location? You were driven there last time.”
“I remember.”
“What about her apartment?”
John drew a blank. He had no idea.
“John,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t know where she lives?”
“How would I know?”
Suddenly Tiffany was in his face, and it wasn’t Tiffany when she was healthy. It was Tiffany when she was sick: bald, grey, dying.
“WHAT IF SHE’S THERE, JOHN? WHAT IF SHE DIES JUST BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO ABSENTEE TO EVEN KNOW WHERE SHE LIVES?”
Raimey cowered. “Why are you being so cruel?”
She was back at the edge of the car, her black hair spiraling in the wind. “I’m being cruel because that’s what you want me to be. Forgive yourself, John. Let me go. You’ve punished yourself long enough. Cancer took me. If Vanessa dies, it was war. Why should our lives be less tragic than others? It happens all the time.”
“I can’t accept that.”
They sat in silence for some time. When at last he looked up, she was gone.
John felt the train slow, and without the normal mass, it came to a stop quickly. John hopped off the side and walked up to the engine. He was nearly eye level.
Up ahead was an accordioned mess. A military train had derailed. The overturned engine still smoldered, and the pile of cars stood out from the starry horizon. Bodies of softy soldiers were strewn about, mutilated.
“Accident?” Raimey asked.
The conductor shook his head. “Not likely. We’re a few miles from Union. Listen, I got to get out of here. I got a wife and I ain’t no soldier.”
The blackness surrounding the derailed train turned into shapes. The Revos were approaching.
“Good call,” Raimey said. He slapped the side of the train like it was a horse. “Thank you. You get home safe.”
“Will do.” The train groaned and accelerated in reverse. The beam from the retracting spotlight lit up a section of the Revos now moving forward. About two hundred of them, Raimey guessed, give or take. They were expanding outward around him, a Pac-Man ready to gobble him up.
They were dead now, of course. They looked the same—their mechanized eyes still feeding the Mindlinks embedded in their ceramic skulls—but their organs and brain were nothing but a putrid soup locked in a sweatbox. Flies buzzed around them, trying to find a way in.
Raimey didn’t wait. The Chicago skyline was a few miles away, and so large it looked like an island. A grey mushroom cloud hung over a part of it. His drive chains whirled up and he hauled toward the city. A few of the Revos got in his way and he blew through them. The others stopped and watched as he left the vicinity, three hundred and ninety eyes focused into one. The MIME CPU controlling them was tasked with the train tracks, and keeping its Revos functional was a higher priority than attacking one giant. Cynthia would have done the same, so the report to her was pithy.
—(MIME 332) Location: Southeast Chicago rails (GPS coordinates). Comment: Westbound military train halted, retreated. One Tank Major escaped into the city. Objective enforced.—
As Raimey approached the outskirts of the city, he heard artillery and the thoomp of mortar fire. The streets ahead were dark, and in the foreground he could clearly see where the artillery batteries were stationed. Streaks of orange snapped in the black, giving away their location. They surrounded the city, or at least this side of it. John didn’t know how they could contain the whole thing. He walked toward one.
A few hundred yards before reaching it, he tripped a claymore and a dozen guns were on him.
“TM! TM!” someone yelled. “Halt.”
The artillery stopped and one of the cannons rotated toward Raimey.
“Guys, I’m John Raimey. I just got here from New York.”
The guns wavered.
“I’m not under mind contr
ol.”
“How do we know?” someone squeaked.
“You’d be dog food already. Who’s your CO?”
Within minutes, the commanding officer filled Raimey in on what was going on.
“They’re everywhere now. It’s goddamn guerilla warfare.”
“We have no presence in the city?”
“North of the city is an encampment for civilians and injured, but I haven’t heard of anything else. Cynthia is taking back any advancement we had.” The CO held up a radio. “Nothing works. We’re running men to each battery to try and keep some semblance of order.”
“What about the Derik Building?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it.”
Raimey left them behind and headed into the city. The streets were empty. The mushroom cloud rose from the center of the city. MindCorp.
Raimey couldn’t wrap his head around it. How could this happen? Civilian bodies were scattered in clumps, turned over, huddled in rigor mortis. The roads were hopscotched with holes from mortar fire. High up, some buildings spilled contents from their opened mouths like tickertape. Underwear, socks, papers, and photographs corkscrewed around the streets on whirling winds.
Raimey tried to orient himself to the Derik Building. It was northwest of where he was. He passed blown-out armored vehicles and dead, fly-speckled, softy soldiers overrun by the Revos.
Raimey kept to the outskirts, avoiding downtown. After about thirty minutes, he heard the diesel turbine of a tank idling ahead. He peered out carefully from an alley. A hover-rover floated over it. The tank faced away, inching forward. It fired.
In the distance, he heard the crackling intercom of a Tank Major. “Cover!” it yelled. A team of Tank Majors were using an armored carrier as cover. They pushed it toward the tank.
BOOM! The 120mm cannon rocked the tank on its treads. The armored carrier buckled and broke apart from the explosive round.
“Move! Move!” the hidden Tank Majors screamed as they continued to push the battered shield.
Blind to the Tank Majors, Raimey saw forty Revos circling a building, the hover-rovers flying over them like halos. Ambush.
Raimey immediately reacted; he charged the tank. WHA-WHAM! His fist eviscerated the back end, causing the tank to spin on its tracks and tumble. The Tank Majors on the other side of the barricade screamed in triumph.
“AMBUSH!” Raimey yelled as the Revos poured out of the alley. Forty grew into a hundred as more rushed out of nearby buildings. Raimey ran toward the mass with his arms wide.
The three Tank Majors broke cover and consolidated with John. They were like a combine chopping down a field of corn. Revos were crushed underneath, breaking like chicken bones. Five-hundred-pound fists grabbed and clobbered. The Revos tried to flow over them like water, but the tight formation only made it easier to pull them down and chew them against the drive chains.
Fifty Minors died in minutes, and the rest fled in scrum-like clusters. Raimey and the three Tank Majors spread away from each other out of habit, to avoid shelling. Right on cue, five mortars crashed down at their last known point.
A heavy with a missing right hand and a blown-out shoulder walked up to John.
“Raimey, right?”
John nodded.
“Perez. The one smoking is Cheese.” Cheese waved. From his back a brown smoke wafted out like burnt toast. “And the one that’s completely unscathed by all this mess is Cutler.”
“God loves me,” Cutler said. He looked brand new.
They were out in the open. “Let’s get to some cover,” John said. They did.
“Didn’t see you earlier,” Perez said to John.
“I got here about two hours ago from New York,” Raimey replied.
“Do we got it under control there?” Cutler asked.
Raimey shook his head. “I need to get to the Derik Building. My daughter works there,” Raimey said. The three giants looked at one another. It looked like each was waiting for the others to speak up.
“What?” Raimey said.
“The Derik Building’s gone,” Perez finally said. “MindCorp took control of all the Minors onsite and blew it up.”
“No. It’s the hub—it’d be the most protected,” Raimey said.
No one said anything.
“Did they evacuate? They would evacuate the scientists and doctors. It’s the heart of the bionics program!” Raimey continued.
“We were at ground zero, so I don’t know. But the building’s gone,” Perez said. “We met up with a squad that was heading north to a stronghold. They had the same idea—they thought it would be safe. The bomb blew out the whole block.”
Raimey’s face looked despondent, so Perez quickly continued.
“Most of the soldiers are gathering north—that’s where we’re headed. The scientists will be there if they’re anywhere.” Perez shrugged. “I mean, if I was small, I’d just hide. The Revos are only attacking military.”
And that was the real problem. She could be anywhere. Or buried.
Raimey cleared his throat. “If there’s a stronghold, they’ll need us,” he said absently. He was thinking about Vanessa. “You’re a hundred percent sure?”
“It’s what I heard,” Perez said. “But your daughter could be north. Or maybe there’s someone there who knows more.”
“Then let’s go.”
= = =
The “northern stronghold” turned out to be Wrigley Field. The surrounding block was barricaded and engorged with civilians and soldiers. Grenade launchers and machine guns nested on top of buildings. Artillery batteries were grouped nearby in an open lot. Helicopters brought in supplies. The stadium itself had become a giant medic tent.
Raimey and the Tank Majors were halted on the periphery by softy soldiers on recon. While they were called in, they stood and stared.
Sections were blocked off for military operations, but it appeared that the majority of the effort was to treat and feed civilians displaced from their homes. The problem was, there just wasn’t enough room. Raimey couldn’t begin to guess the number of civilians here. If he was told a quarter million, he wouldn’t have been surprised. They poured in and out of Wrigley Field. People sat everywhere, shaking their heads and crying. Children and the elderly had priority for water and food. As broken as everyone looked, they kept order.
An officer approached the giants. “Perez, good seeing you,” he said in a southern drawl. Perez gave a quick salute. “It’s still fucked out there, I assume?”
“Is anyone from the Derik Building here?” Raimey interrupted.
The officer turned to him, cocking a suspicious eyebrow. He didn’t recognize John. “There are quite a few. They’ve been here a week or more,” he said.
“Not since the bombing?”
The captain put his hand on his hip and thought for a second. “I think a woman came in, really beat up. They found her in the rubble.”
Raimey’s heart lifted. “Where?”
“His daughter worked there,” Perez put in.
The officer’s attitude and urgency immediately changed. “Come with me.”
They followed the officer through the crowd onto the field. At the far end, tents with red crosses were set up in a small, cordoned-off camp. The captain went in, leaving Raimey and the others. A moment later he came back.
“Come with me,” he said to John. Raimey followed, watching his step as he entered the small encampment. Raimey’s heart sank. It was a woman, but it wasn’t Vanessa.
That the woman was alive at all was a miracle. Her legs looked like wild dogs had gotten to them, and the wraps were soaked in blood. Her blood-red eyes found John, but her face was covered in gauze. A breathing tube was inserted in her neck.
“Her throat got crushed,” a nearby nurse said. “She can’t speak.”
“Can she write?” the officer asked. The woman nodded, and the nurse handed her a tablet computer.
“My daughter, Vanessa Raimey, worked at the
Derik Building. Do you know her?” Raimey asked.
The woman didn’t type, but quickly nodded.
“Was she there when the building got bombed?” Raimey asked.
The woman nodded again.
“Is she dead?” Raimey sputtered. Tears welled up and rolled down his cheeks. With great effort, the woman typed on the tablet and held it up.
Don’t know.
“You were the only survivor of the explosion,” the officer said.
The woman typed. The soldiers came alive. There was a fight. Then the bomb.
“Alive?” Raimey asked.
Our patients. They lost control, she wrote.
“Revos,” the officer said. “Just like everywhere else. Cynthia took over the bionics in the building, even the unfinished ones.”
“What battle, though?” Raimey said.
The woman pressed her fingers to the screen. Our soldiers—she pointed to a uniformed softy—were there. She said they were taking her away. She was scared.
“Before the bomb?” Raimey asked. His tone had darkened.
Right before, she typed.
“Where did they say they were taking her?”
Didn’t say.
“Who else was there?”
Her boyfriend. Mike Glass. The patients came alive and tried to kill her. The other soldiers came in and took her.
“Is there anything else?”
No. The bomb.
The woman paused, then typed something else.
If you find her, tell her I’m alive. I’m Bethany. She’s a friend.
“I will. Thank you, Bethany.” Raimey turned to the officer. “If soldiers took her, why isn’t she here?”
“There are a hundreds of thousands of people here, sir. You saw it out there. She could be.”
If she was here, she was safe. Here didn’t matter.
Raimey turned back to Bethany. “Do you know where her apartment is?”
The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 59
