Avery Cates 2 - The Digital Plague

by Jeff Somers

  The noise became a wall of sound, impossible to discern individual parts, like god tearing the universe apart. My stomach started doing flips and I realized we were in a spin, gravity jumping from top to bottom over and over again. Something heavy and solid thunked into my head and I barely noticed, the new pain swept away on the river of my other discomforts.

  Then everything went quiet and still. The cabin stopped shivering and resolved into a solid room again, Hense and I dropped snugly back into the seats, and aside from a tinny screeching noise, it was peaceful. I blinked, staring at Hense, who stared back at me with something close to amazement on her face.

  I realized the screeching noise was Happling screaming in the cockpit a second or two before we smacked down into the earth.

  It was common knowledge that the SSF had only one factory still building hovers. It was automated and dated to sometime just after Unification, located somewhere in fucking Indiana or some shit like that, the middle of nowhere, not a city left for hundreds of miles in any direction. Droids churned out hovers from raw materials, and the hovers were perfect—not a single seam, not a single loose bolt, 100 percent operational upon delivery and built to fucking last. Which was good, because the SSF had been hot-fixing that single plant for twenty fucking years, making repairs as needed but unable, or for some reason unwilling, to build a new goddamn plant. You had to admit, Droids took away every damn job there was, but they built some high-quality hovers.

  We must have hit the ground going about three or four hundred miles an hour, the shock of it swirling up through me, shoving my organs into new configurations and smoothing my hair briskly, and then we bounced, everything going still and silent again for about five seconds, when we hit again. The shuddering resumed, along with a completely new noise that sounded like we were stuck in some giant’s throat and he was trying to clear us, an almost wet-sounding roar in time with the brain-swelling shaking. But the goddamn hover held together. It went on and on, longer than I thought possible, longer than I could stand, until I realized I was screaming, too, just pushing my voice out so it could be swept away in that maelstrom as if I hadn’t made any noise at all.

  Slowly, things scaled back. The noise became merely unbearably loud, the shaking became just turbulence, my own scream became audible and I let it die, my throat burning. I could feel the momentum of the brick, a coherent force again. We were spinning lazily, grinding against the earth but slowing down steadily. My hand was still clinging to Hense’s coat so tightly my knuckles hurt, and I looked at her. To my amazement she smiled, her teeth white and perfect, the product of decent medical care.

  “Mr. Cates,” she said, her voice for the first time a little unsteady, “you were fucking useless during that.”

  There was a crash and then Marko rolled into the cabin covered in dust and sporting a deep gash on his forehead that spat blood at an alarming rate. He stumbled to his knees and managed to stop himself more or less upright.

  “Anyone alive back here? That man,” he continued without waiting for an answer, “is a fucking maniac. He laughed the whole way down, like this was fun.”

  “Fucking pussy,” Happling’s tinny voice chortled from Hense’s coat. “Fucking pussy was praying in here. To god or something.”

  With a loud groan and final shudder, the hover ground to a stop.

  “Thank fucking god,” Marko muttered.

  Hense was up in a flash, striding forward. “Happ? You all right?”

  “Fine,” Happling shouted back. “I think the pilot’s the only one supposed to survive a crash in this tub.”

  Paris. Like Newark a ghost town, except bigger, I thought. “I’m fine, too,” I said, forcing myself to unstrap and stand up, my legs shaking and my head swimming. “Thanks for fucking asking.”

  “Mr. Marko,” Hense said, “good work. Get a fix on our position, if you please, and scan outside and let me know what’s waiting for us.”

  Happling appeared in the hatchway, arms hanging on the lintel. He looked fresh and unharmed, the bastard. “We’re within half a mile of Paris, I’ll tell you that,” he said, satisfied. “I caught a visual before we ditched.”

  Marko remained kneeling on the floor. “Sure, sure. Give me a minute. I’m trying to swallow my lungs back into my chest.” He took a deep, quivering breath and reached for his bag. I was happy to see his arms shaking as he moved. At least the goddamn Techie was as exhausted as I was.

  I was content to watch the kid pull some of his equipment together and start waving weakly at it, his face once again bathed in the sick green light of his tiny screen. “I don’t see any signs of life out there,” he said. “Looks like we’re within a mile of the city, like the captain said. I can get a fix on the beacon signal that ought to lead us straight to its source, which I presume will be Mr. Kieth.” He let his arm drop limply to his side. He looked around. “I’m guessing we’re walking there.”

  Happling leaned forward and clapped him on the back. “You can ride on my shoulder, like a fucking parrot.”

  Hense was all business, checking her weapon with a few quick, efficient moves and looking around. “We’re all alive and uninjured. Let’s move. We don’t exactly have time.”

  Happling straightened up. “Right. Gather your gear, Marko.” The big man looked at me but said nothing, storming into the cabin to retrieve his bag of guns, ripping it open and pulling one of the shredders out. He tore the huge clip from it, inspected it jauntily, and slammed it back into place. There was the almost inaudible whine of the rounds being counted, and then the readout on top of the rifle flashed green, and Happling grinned.

  “Here come the boom stick,” he said, slinging the rifle and bag over his shoulder and marching to the hatch. He looked back at Hense and waited for her nod before smashing the release with his hand. The hatch popped open with a hiss, and weak light filtered in. Happling crouched down with the rifle against his shoulder and did a fast turn, eyes wide and alert. Without putting the gun down or taking his eyes off the scene, he said “Clear” over his shoulder and then jumped out and down.

  From outside I heard him shout back, “But very fucking weird.”

  Hense was out the hatch after him. I glanced at Marko, who was still slumped on the floor, and then I brushed past him, trying to force my body to move steadily. I still almost fell out of the goddamn hover, recovering sloppily in the damp grass. Hense and Happling hadn’t gone more than a few feet away before freezing. I stopped immediately.

  We were surrounded by Monks.

  I hadn’t seen so many of the Tin Men in years. Now and then a beggar or a crazy one wandered around bothering people, but after the Monk Riots most had been destroyed by the System Pigs in one of their rare useful moments, and aside from the small bands of them in the wilderness they weren’t common, or much of a problem. Now there were at least fifty in the clearing, and they all appeared to be dead and posed in a variety of positions.

  The hover had flattened some trees and emerged from a small wooded area bordered by a broad band of grassy land that maybe had once been a road. A circular clearing spread out around us, enclosed by a concentric ring of trees. The Monks were all mutilated—missing limbs, wires and boards spilling out of holes torn in their chassis, some burned or melted or plagued by rust, some bodies without heads and other heads without bodies. They littered the space around us like sullen monuments grouped in little tableaux, bent and fixed into position. Some had obviously fallen over, and a few appeared to have bird nests in their abdomens.

  The three of us looked around. It was warm, the sun rising on the horizon, the air heavy with humidity. There was a lot of animal noise in the distance—birds calling, something crashing through the trees—but we remained silent, just staring, until Marko tumbled out of the hover, falling to the ground with a grunt.

  “Well,” Happling said, lowering his rifle, “welcome to Paris, shithole of the fucking universe.”

  XIX

  Day Eight:

  Meanwhile I�
��m Keeping

  Civilization Going

  “Hell, they’re all nonfunctional,” Marko said, spinning around slowly with one of his handhelds. “Been here for a long time.”

  “You’re brilliant,” Happling said from his perch on top of his bag of guns. “You needed a fucking mini-mainframe to tell you that?” He’d rolled up the starched white sleeves of his shirt, his muscles bulging as he gripped the shredder. He looked like a goddamn recruitment poster.

  I was concentrating on not falling over as I strolled around the bizarre group of dead Monks. Hense was on her long-range scanner trying to raise SSF HQ for some obscure reason—personally, I thought the last thing we wanted was more cops, but I had to admit I was prejudiced, since most cops immediately started kicking and punching me when I met them. It was possible, being a cop herself, that she found them fun and interesting. I imagined she was trying to make contact to explain herself, or maybe trying to touch base with an informer who could tell her if any SSF were in pursuit: she’d stolen a hover, allowed two other cops to be killed, and made off with a prisoner who hadn’t been entered into the database, after all.

  The newly risen sun tinged everything gold, a soft halo of light clinging to everything. Despite the rust, the torn plastic skin, the torn-out wires and staring, dead camera eyes, even the Monks looked almost beautiful. I stared at one that had been posed with both arms in the air as if in a moment of triumph, and struggled down into a sitting position on the damp ground, pulling out my gun and popping out the clip. Counting the shell in the chamber, I had fourteen shots. I’d done plenty with less, but never in the middle of fucking nowhere, a Ghost City the only thing in walking distance.

  I snapped the clip back into place and pocketed the gun. Squinting over at Hense, I watched her for a moment.

  “Waste of time,” I said.

  She didn’t look up. “Taken under advisement.”

  “It’s a waste of time, Colonel,” I said. “New York was on the edge of a fucking breakdown when we left. You think it got better? You think anyone’s looking for you right now?” I shook my head. “We should be moving. We don’t even know if the neat little suppression effect my pet nanobots have on us all is going to last.”

  “You’re not in charge of this expedition, Cates,” she said without looking at me.

  I stood up, grimacing inwardly as I forced my way through the million or so separate aches that had coalesced into a single gauzy misery inside me. “When you all start coughing up blood,” I said breathlessly, holstering my gun, “you can catch up.”

  I took two steps, forcing myself to move smoothly and confidently, and then Happling was in front of me, my nose pointed right at his chest. He had the shredder leaning against his shoulder, pointed at the sky. His face had gone dark red again as he pushed a fat finger into my chest.

  “The colonel said sit the fuck down, Cates.”

  I looked from Hense to the behemoth. “Point of order, boss. She said I wasn’t in charge. Fine by me, Big Red,” I pushed my own finger into his chest, which was disturbingly hard and broad, the goddamn alpha male right there in front of me. “I’m not in charge. I’m not even part of it.”

  His finger became a fist, pushing me backward. “Sit the fuck down, you piece of shit.”

  I forced my stiff face into a smile. The cops were no different from anyone else in the System: you backed down, you gave an inch, they swarmed on you like fire ants and picked you clean. “What, you’re gonna beat the tar out of me every five minutes forever, Happling? That’s all you fucking pigs know how to do, huh?”

  Happling’s face seemed to fold in on itself, his fair eyebrows coming down toward his scruffy ginger beard. “You better watch your tongue. You pieces of shit piss on everything and we have to clean your shit up, and then you piss and moan about the manner in which we do so. Fuck you. I know you, Cates. You’re a fucking parasite. You kill people for money, and meanwhile I’m keeping civilization going. If I’d killed you last week, the world would be a better place today.”

  He was breathing heavily through his nose, his whole body expanding and contracting with each breath. “I kill people for money,” I said. I leaned forward, rocking off my heels. “I kill cops, too, but not for money, friend. Since you’re so busy keeping civilization going, I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’ve never killed any people, right?”

  His mouth kinked into an ugly smile. “I don’t kill people,” he said. “I kill shitheads. And I assure you, Mr. Cates, there is a goddamn difference.”

  For a moment, we stared at each other. I had to crane my head painfully to maintain eye contact. “Do you think—”

  “Enough,” Hense said without raising her voice. She hadn’t even looked up from her comm unit. “Let’s get moving.”

  I looked back at Happling. He winked. I stepped around him. “Let’s go save goddamn civilization.”

  We were farther than a mile out, but Hense set a bone-crushing pace, marching off in a swirl of black leather overcoat, broiling just to look at. We weren’t far from major roads, either, encountering a weed-cracked highway in just a few minutes of panting march. Hense led the way with Happling taking up the rear, his massive gun balanced across his arms, his skin already peeling in the sun. Marko and I were herded between them, neither of us happy.

  The silence was excruciating. I’d never been without the noise of a city around me—screams, threats, hover displacement, gunshots. All we had was the creak of our shoes on the ancient road and the wind pushing the weeds around, as close to total fucking silence as I’d ever experienced. The silence remained with us even as the city started to form up, shattered buildings and crashed hovers, occasional desiccated corpses and more rusting, dead Monks. Paris hadn’t been much even before the Monk Riots, a shitheel city that had taken a beating during Unification, when half the populace had risen up and declared independence, repudiating the Unification Treaties. Six years Paris had burned, holding out. And then the System Security Force had been formed, and that was the fucking end of that. One thing the SSF always knew how to do was put down riots.

  “Squalor’s not dead, you know,” Marko said suddenly.

  Hense glanced back at us but didn’t say anything. “Sure he is,” I said. “I fucking killed him.”

  Marko shook his head. “Squalor’s brilliant, man. Squalor could hack anything. You killed a Dennis Squalor. You killed a version of him. He’s around.”

  I looked around. “Is he here with us, right now? Can only you see him?”

  Marko looked at me as if he wanted to say fuck you, but thought better of it. I went back to sweating and aching and taking in the breathtaking scenery of broken buildings and melted asphalt. The city was firming up as we got closer to its core, old even before Unification came along to ruin everything. It had been the outer areas and suburbs that had flared up; the city core had seen little trouble, at least until all the Monks fleeing London had arrived and made Paris theirs.

  We’d fought our way through new undergrowth to a roadway running roughly northwest by southeast, broad and broken up. Most of the old signs had crashed to the pavement, the red squares with A4 printed on them hanging limply from rusted bolts or pounded into the deteriorating asphalt like tiles. The sun was blazing down on us, and the muddy, shit-colored river was on our left, placid and low between its banks. It wasn’t much warmer than New York, but the clear sky was what made it feel strange—to go from snowy, greasy New York to this sort of dry heat. These days you never knew what you were going to get.

  The silence continued to make me queasy, and the air didn’t smell like anything, a sterile kind of wind. There was no distant scent of smoke, or the close-up smell of terror, or even the acidic urine aroma of irritated people. It felt like we were walking through a void.

  Hense marched without a moment’s hesitation, directed from time to time by a word from Marko, who was tracing the nanobot signals beaming out from all of us every second, assuring themselves. She didn’t look back at us, d
idn’t nervously touch her gun or even seem to be sweating.

  As the river curved slightly to the west, I could see a large building looming up in front of us. The road started to rise and curve into a rat’s nest of half-collapsed thoroughfares, and we had to climb up then drop down a few levels to get back onto the riverbank, which Marko insisted was our best bet. Hense just kept going, confident, I supposed, that Happling—grinning, with his monster gun capable of cutting someone in half with a single second-long burst—would keep me and the Techie in line. Which was absolutely correct, since I had no intention of testing Happling’s temper. I just took the dusty, rusted railings in my hands and swung myself over, biting my tongue against any urge to cry out or even grunt, dropping down onto broken pavement as lightly as I could. When Happling followed us down, I could imagine the fucking ground shaking.

  The building in the distance resolved itself into a jumble of stone with spidery arms sprouting out of the sides as if holding up the walls. A tall, thin spire jutted out from the middle, and two squarish towers rose up on either side. As we got closer it became clear that it occupied an island separate from the east bank that had once been reachable by bridges now just stubs of stone and twisted metal. Around it, Paris consisted of short, square buildings, many blasted away yet some remarkably preserved. Still, nothing on the horizon was as tall or imposing as this thing.

  I knew the answer before asking. “Hey, Marko,” I said. “Where we headed?”

  He pushed his chin at the island. “The church. There’s a fucking storm of traffic coming from that church.”

  We made our way down to the river and stopped amid the ruins of one of the bridges, the old pylons jutting out of the water like teeth. A crumbling wall ringed the island, and we all stared at it for a moment, contemplating how hard it was going to be to swim across and clamber up, all without knowing what we were going to find there.

  “Mr. Marko?” Hense said, squatting down and sounding just slightly out of breath. “See anything?”