by Jeff Somers
By the time I reoriented on the door two more were through. I managed to knock down the first one with a shot into its nose, but the second swerved around it and was on me from the side. I swung my arm around just as it landed next to me and fired three times into its abdomen, knocking it back, but before I could make a kill shot two more were diving for me. I rolled, screaming in tearing pain, and slammed myself into the corner, bringing my arm up as a Monk with horrible, cancerous rust welts eating through its latex face landed with a earthquake-like jolt nearly on top of me. As I pulled the trigger it batted my arm aside and the shot took off its molded ear and part of its face, the ruined fake skin torn away to reveal the corroded alloy beneath. It grinned as it lashed out a hand and clasped my wrist painfully.
“Too slow, Meat,” it hissed, the words melted and ruined in its rusted, damaged mouth.
It squeezed my hand open and my gun dropped to the floor with a dead-sounding thud, and then another Monk was at my opposite side and a third was between them. The blank, identical faces peered at me, one pair of scratched sunglasses and two pairs of whirring, delicate camera eyes. Up close, I could see how time had treated them—their fake skin scratched and pocked with collision damage, the little servos of their eyes sounding labored and sluggish, their clothes filthy and tattered without any attempt at repair. So much, I thought, for immortality.
Two more leaped in behind them, and I knew I was dead. There were too many, and they were too fast. A lot of noise suddenly welled up outside the door, hard to identify. An off-rhythm pounding vibrated through the floor, as if someone were lazily hurling cannonballs at the building.
The Monk’s hands were on me, tightening.
“All this time I was killing cops,” I said, panting, “I should have been killing Monks.”
Rusty smiled down at me. “Your turn, Meat. Your fucking—”
The Monk jerked upward as if an invisible thread had been drawn taut. Everything paused for a second, and then Rusty leaped up and backward, sailing away from me and smashing into the far wall hard enough to shake the room and bring chunks of drywall down onto the Monk as it slid to the floor. The Monks around me whirled as one and then all four rose into the air stiffly, arms dropping to their sides, and smashed into the concrete ceiling, dropping back to the floor in front of me in a broken heap.
I didn’t try to move, certain I wouldn’t be able to anyway. Standing there, pale and haggard but calm, was Bendix, his terrible scar torn open and bleeding, one arm hanging loose at his side. He looked back into the corridor and then at me.
“Mr. Cates, you are one lucky bastard.”
He crossed over to where Ty Kieth’s body lay and stood there a moment, staring down at the Techie. Four more people entered the room behind him, young, round-faced kids in spiffy suits and long coats, three men and a woman. They were all binary, like the triplets I’d killed a week before—pale white skin and black hair. They hung back and watched Bendix like he was the Big Dog in the room. “Well, that’s done, at least,” he said. “It’s a waste, of course. Kieth should have been working for us. With us. A brain like that could have been accomplishing amazing things, properly funded. Properly channeled.”
I snorted and was amazed I had the energy to be amused. Properly fucking channeled. That was hilarious.
He glanced at me, and at once I found myself paralyzed by an invisible fist, almost unable to breathe. Just do it, I thought savagely. Just get it over with and fuck all this bullshit.
“You are a lucky man, Mr. Cates,” he said, turning and walking toward me. “You have a guardian angel. When I was dispatched on this mission I was given very specific orders, and I was given discretion to kill you if it seemed necessary for the survival of the human race—that’s a technical term, you know, SHR. In any scenario wherein I deemed your death not to be necessary for the survival of the human race, I was directed to leave you alive. You’re a Person of Interest, Mr. Cates, at least to Director Marin, and for the time being we are still taking Director Marin’s requests seriously. Though the time for that is fading, I think.”
He leaned in close, his open wound wet and puckered near my nose. I imagined I could smell him, but the fact was I couldn’t push enough air through my ruined nose to smell anything. His eyes were a little yellowed, dry and used up.
“You do not,” he said as I dropped back to the floor in a heap, “seem all that interesting.”
Turning, he waved his good hand in the air as he walked away. “The human race will, apparently, survive,” he said. “And the King Worm can fucking collect his own trash.” He spun out the door and his fellow psionics turned without looking at me, without saying anything, and followed. I lay where I was and watched him go, and then it was just me and my old friends. Nothing’s changed, I thought. It’s still assholes in nice suits running the world.
XL
Epilogue:
The Moment When I
Almost Shot You in the Head
as a High Point
Enduring the ache in my leg that never left me these days, I sat at the bar in silence. I pushed some of the trash onto the floor with one hand; the place had been ransacked at some point, like every other place in Manhattan. The doors had been torn from their hinges, the windows smashed, and just about everything carted off. I imagined the thieves enjoying their booty for all of three days, days in which they coughed blood and spat out their own lungs, days in which the city fell apart around them. I sat on the last stool left intact in Pickering’s and felt the heavy dust I’d disturbed settling on me, seeking to reclaim the surfaces it had come to think of as its own.
Outside, the constant blaring of SSF loudspeakers was distant and tinny, official voices stepping over each other. New York was sick with cops and government—there were more Pigs and kids in suits crawling around the wreckage than citizens. People had survived, and more were arriving every day to pick over the carcass of the city. The city was dead. I’d lived in it my whole life, and I could smell it decomposing around me. The new people were maggots who’d infest it, tunnel into it, make it into something new. It would still be here, but it wouldn’t be my city anymore.
I was thirty-six. I had nothing.
Scratching at my beard, which I’d let grow into an unruly, tangled mess of gray and black, I stood up and stumped down the familiar length of the bar, my bad leg stiff and painful. It might still heal some and get some movement back, but I’d never dance again. It didn’t matter.
I paused by the door where, years before, I’d sat with Kev Gatz and Nad Muller, drinking Pick’s gin and plotting grand things. All of them worm food, the schemes only the dust they were buried in.
Somewhere outside there was an explosion and a jumble of shouts.
The SSF and the government were at each other’s throats, Undersecretaries claiming authority over the cops, Dick Marin telling them to shove their authority up their pencil-thin assholes. Word was the government was pouring yen and matériel into the new Army, and that the System Pigs would have bigger worries very soon. I believed it. The Pigs were, in the meantime, chasing down every last motherfucker they saw as a possible threat or a possible resource. I’d heard rumors from all over the world—Mexico City, Vancouver, Kinshasa—that people were being rounded up and shot in the head in record numbers, the fucking cops just hammering and hammering without any of the old rules or traditions. Rumor was you couldn’t even bribe them anymore, not that yen was worth shit anymore anyway. They came with high-end brass running the show, fucking colonels and up, kicking their own troops in the balls, fucking famous criminals, good people lined up in alleys and shot in broad daylight, and screw the citizen who saw something and complained. The cops weren’t even hiding you in the shadows when they executed you these days.
I’d seen it in Manhattan, too. I’d heard Marcel had been taken away from his little throne room and left alive—rumor was the fat fuck had walked on his own dwindling legs for the first time in five years, weeping. I’d been by his lit
tle hotel the other week, just out of curiosity, and it had been a morgue, the rotting bodies of Marcel’s little court all dead with their SSF straps still around their wrists, the Stormer cables still coiled up where the troops had hit the ground. There was no sign of Marcel, and he would rot for goddamn weeks before he disappeared, so it might even be true.
My days were numbered, and I didn’t care. If Marcel was on their list, so was I, and I had a feeling that even if I’d somehow been left off—maybe a remnant of my old deal with Marin, which had cleared my old record—there were a few cops who’d be happy to put my name back on it. A couple of weeks ago I’d seen Hense busting out an old apartment building on Jane Street, standing there impassive and shiny, her dark hair tied back in a tight bun, her skin perfect, eyes hidden behind pitch-black glasses. The lower floor had blown up, fire and brick blasting out into the street, and she’d just stood there, unconcerned. I’d ducked into a doorway and limped through the building, keeping my head down, and never looked back.
I didn’t hide, though. My leg had healed crooked over the weeks and I had headaches all the time, but I hadn’t died, and I could breathe normally again. I’d been forced to kill four people over the past few weeks, all punks. Two who’d recognized me and wanted to be the ones who took out Avery Cates, two fucking infants who didn’t know me from any other old man tottering around with worthless yen in his pocket. I’d taught them a lesson, but it had been rote, mechanical. Put a gun on me and I’ll put a gun on you, but I didn’t take any joy in it. If I’d had his address I would have gladly pointed them at Wa Belling if they were looking for reputations, but Belling had faded away. The Old Man wasn’t going to live forever, maybe, but he’d been breathing last time I saw him and was one person I’d gladly kill with my bare hands, on sight.
I stared at my hands. Two fingers were bent in unexpected ways and ached on cold nights.
Swinging around, I limped behind the bar, kicking chunks of the wall out of the way. I crouched down and searched the floor, smiling faintly when I found the hidden trigger, a secret panel popping up smooth as silk. Stupid fucks hadn’t done a very thorough job of searching the place, but then it was probably hard to concentrate when you were coughing blood and fighting off a million other looters.
Two dusty bottles of cloudy liquor greeted me, along with two gleaming handguns—cheap pieces of shit, meant for emergencies—and a scattering of credit dongles and health chips. Looking at the chips, I reached up and fingered the deep, pus-filled scab on my hand where I’d gouged out my tracking chip. Why I’d done that if I didn’t care if I lived or not, I wasn’t sure.
I picked up one of the bottles and slumped down onto the junk-strewn floor. I held it up to the weak daylight streaming in and squinted at it. It looked deadly, but I was going to drink it anyway. I twisted off the cap and smelled the old, familiar reek of homemade gin.
Outside, I heard hover displacement approaching. I paused with the bottle halfway to my mouth and then put it down. I shifted my weight and reached into my coat, pulling my gun and tossing it onto the floor with a thunderous crash. I was ready. If they were finally coming for me, I decided I would be drunk. Thirty-six was old enough. Too old. I tipped the bottle and took a long swig of the burning liquid, feeling it edge its way down, turning from knife blade to warm ball in my stomach. For a few moments I sat in relative silence and peace, sipping from the bottle and not thinking about anything. It was just me and the booze and my aching bones.
When they came, it was almost funny, Stormers crashing in, shouts and smoke, a fucking army invading the empty shell of Pick’s until it was crowded with cops. They found me immediately, of course, kicking my gun away, slapping the bottle onto the floor where it shattered in a spray of booze, and jerking me to my feet.
“Sulle vostre ginocchia!” one of them shouted. I laughed. They were pulling cops from all over the System, trying to man up New York again.
“Fuck,” he muttered in a heavy accent. Hands took hold of me and I was flipped around and shoved to my knees, my bad leg barking with a shaft of white-hot pain. A silicone strap was looped around my wrists and pulled achingly tight. As my hands went numb I was thoroughly frisked, but I had nothing else, and they came up empty. My head was pushed down until I was staring down at the dirty floor, and a gun barrel was positioned against the back of my head. It was a familiar feeling.
“Belay that!” someone shouted, and the whole room went still. The gun was immediately gone.
“Flip him around. We need an OFR scan.”
I was pulled up roughly and spun around, two Stormers holding me in place. Two officers had entered the bar. One was a tall, skinny man in a ridiculously pristine black leather overcoat that gleamed in the dim light. He was tanned and shaved close, his dark hair combed back and perfectly barbered. The other was short and my age, maybe even a little older. He looked out of shape, with a belly not quite hidden by his long overcoat and his hair a thin ring around the edge of his skull. He had a long, ugly nose that had frequently been broken, and carried a digital clipboard that reflected a ghoulish green glow onto his chubby face.
The tall one stepped close to me with sinuous grace, giving the impression of having choreographed the movement the night before, and thrust a small black box into my face. I was partially blinded by a bright red flash, and he snatched the box back, peering down at a tiny Vid screen.
“Cates, Avery,” he announced. Looking up at me, he grinned. “Well, shit, Mr. Cates, it’s a fucking honor to execute you!”
I grinned back. “You’re not executing me. I’m committing suicide by cop.”
He winked, drawing an impressive-looking chrome-plated automatic and cocking the hammer back jauntily. “Happy to be—”
“Wait,” the bald guy said quietly, and the Grinner stopped, glancing over at him. Baldy looked up at me, face blank and his eyes empty pools. This was the guy to worry about in the room, I realized. The Grinner was more concerned with the cut of his coat than anything else. Baldy would cut your balls off. Baldy didn’t look at the Grinner, just tilted the clipboard at him. “He’s on the list.”
“Ah, fuck,” the Grinner moaned, glancing down at the clipboard. “So you are, Mr. Cates. Fuck, that’s Marin’s fucking sig block.” He looked at Baldy, face flushing red. “Do you know how many cops this piece of shit has killed?”
Baldy looked back down at his clipboard. “Doesn’t matter. He’s POI, and if you kill him I will make you a personal project, understood?”
The Grinner’s face drained of color as quickly as it had reddened. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I didn’t mean—”
“Fuck what you meant, Colonel,” Baldy said, turning away and gesturing delicately at his clipboard. “Get him loaded up and let’s clear this building for demo.”
Baldy stalked out of Pick’s, and we both watched him go. Then the Grinner turned back and looked around, flushing again as he stuffed his piece back into its holster. He stepped up to me and ran his blue eyes up and down my body.
“All right, shithead,” he said, finding his grin again. “Chengara it is for you, you lucky, lucky bastard. Give it a few weeks. You’ll think back on the moment when I almost shot you in the head as a high point in your life.” He paused to study me again, his mouth smirking. “Shit, you don’t look like much, Cates,” he said.
Avery Cates, the gweat and tewwible, I thought. Avery Cates, Destroyer of Worlds. And I started to laugh.
Appendix
Excerpts from Audio Diary
of Tricia Amber Pollock
Joint Council File #668RF9
Reviewed by: C. Ruberto
Joint Council Undersecretary
Background: This is a transcript of audio files found on a handheld device recovered from a stairwell at 435 East Fifty-second Street in Manhattan during postepidemic sweep and demolition operations. The later entries were very muddy and required a great deal of lab cleanup in order to transcribe, and accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Most background noise and bo
dily functions are not recorded here, but in later entries notation of pauses, coughing fits, or other unintelligible sounds have been included in order to show that nothing has been censored by this department, due to direct request of Director Marin’s office regarding transcribed artifacts shared between our divisions.
It should be noted that no body was found near the handheld that contained the audio entries. Ms. Pollock did maintain an apartment in that location, but to date she has not been located.
Never going drinking below Twenty-third Street again. I don’t know why Gerry likes slumming it down in those places, playing tough and drinking that paint. None of the animals around us is fooled, I am sure—I can see their looks as Gerry plays his little game. I am so tired of Gerry. I may have to give him the slip, try on someone new for a while. I felt frail and dried up when I finally got home and had to take four e-tabs to get to sleep, and this morning I feel even more dried up and need four a-tabs to even get out of bed. Thank goodness for tabs.
Wednesday, 3:33 a.m.: Only because the universe hates me, my shell is acting strangely. Quoting fucking poetry at random moments. Like ten minutes after I go to bed. I’ve reset and restored the damn thing a hundred times, and it behaves for a few days and then starts quoting again. Today I got a gem about an endless trail of sunsets. I put it into shutdown mode for my sanity—I can make my own Vid calls and order my own meals for a while, I suppose. Like Daddy used to say, I’m full of pluck.
Wednesday, 1:33 p.m.: Really, Gerry is simply disgusting. I think I might hate him.
