Toys
James Patterson
Neil Mcmahon
James Patterson, Neil McMahon
Toys
EXTINCTION
Many species have become extinct because of human destruction of their natural environments. Indeed, current rates of human-induced extinctions are estimated to be about 1,000 times greater than past natural rates of extinction, leading some scientists to call modern times the sixth mass extinction.
— Encyclopedia Britannica
TOY
A material object for children or others to play with (often an imitation of some familiar object); a plaything; also, something contrived for amusement rather than for practical use.
— The Oxford English Dictionary
Prologue
7-4 DAY
I will not forget this moment for as long as I live, which, in truth, might not be that long anyway. I pop the ominous disc labeled “7–4 Day” into the player and sit back on the dusty, threadbare couch in my parents’ cluttered fallout shelter at our beloved lake house in the north country.
I figure that something titled “7–4 Day” can’t be good news.
And it isn’t.
Wham! — no slow reveal, no fade-in. There are just bodies everywhere. Human beings are slumped in car seats, collapsed on sidewalks, lying on the floor in front of the counter at a once popular fast-food restaurant called McDonald’s.
Next comes a classroom in which high school students and their teacher are just lying, pale and bloated, at their desks.
A construction worker is dead in a cherry-picker, and it is possible that his eyes have actually popped from his face.
A postman is sprawled on a porch, the mail still held dutifully in his hands.
A towheaded girl is dead on her bicycle at the bottom of a roadside culvert-and this finally brings tears to my eyes.
It’s as if some master switch has been thrown, turning off their hearts and brains just as they went about their daily lives.
Not everyone’s dead though.
In one indelible scene, elevator doors are pried open and a screaming, traumatized businesswoman emerges-at least seven corpses of business types are visible behind her.
There is some hope at least.
A few hundred survivors are gathered at midfield in a baseball stadium, possibly in New Chicago. The camera pans around. Horrible! The pitcher is dead on the mound, his face buried in dust. There are uniformed bodies at the bases, in the outfield, in the dugouts. The stands are filled with fifty thousand forever-silent fans.
I’m light-headed and ill as I sit on my parents’ couch and watch all this. I’ve been forgetting to breathe, actually; my skin is clammy and cold.
Now I view a snapped-off flagpole displayed against an urban skyline-a skyline of blackened, broken, and smoking buildings. They’re like teeth in a jawbone that somebody has pulled from a funeral pyre.
I’m beginning to suspect that this footage must have been staged-but who could have made such a clever and horrifying film? How had they been able to pull off this hoax with such authenticity? And for what possible reason?
Now there’s street-level, hand-shot footage showing thousands of people coursing over bridges and along highways. They’re carrying coolers, water bottles, blankets, small children, the infirm. There are furtive close-ups of military patrol vehicles at intervals along the way. Checkpoints. Tall, broad-shouldered government soldiers with mirror-faced helmets and automatic weapons attempt to bring order to this incomprehensible chaos.
The film’s final scenes are of earthmoving machines and the enormous trenches they’ve made. These trenches are as wide and deep as strip mines. Bulldozers are standing by to help refill them, their scoops loaded with the uncountable dead.
The video ends and I sit in the dark, lost in shock, horror, and total confusion.
Is it some sick joke? A staged holocaust? Am I supposed to believe that some hideous plague has been hidden from history? When did it happen? Why have I never seen anything like it before? Why has no one ever seen or heard about this?
There are no answers to my questions. How could there be? What I have just witnessed simply isn’t possible.
Suddenly there are hands on my shoulder, and I leap up from the couch, fists clenched, crashing into an end table and knocking a coffee cup to the concrete floor. There is the sound of breaking glass, and my heart nearly explodes.
“Hays! It’s just me. Dad. Hays, it’s me! Down, boy.”
Of course, it was just my father putting his hands on my shoulders, meaning to comfort me. Still, I can’t quite give him a pass for this. It is his shelter, and his damned film, and his hands.
“What- what was that?” I demand to know. “Tell me. Please? Explain it.”
“That film?” he says. “That, Hays, is the truth. That’s what really happened on 7–4 Day. They almost killed off the entire human race. What you learned in grade school, everything you read at university, is just a cruel hoax.”
Book One
FALL FROM GRACE
Chapter 1
Forty — eight hours earlier-a mere two days before I watched the 7–4 Day film at my parents’ house.
When I arrived at President Hughes Jacklin’s inauguration party that night in the year 2061, I was flying high, happier and more self-satisfied than I had ever been. I couldn’t have dreamed I would end up losing everything I cared about-my home, my job, my two darling daughters, Chloe and April, and my beautiful wife, Lizbeth, who was there by my side.
In the catastrophic whirlwind of those next horrible days, it would seem as if my world had been turned upside down and any part of my personality that wasn’t securely bolted in place had fallen into the void. And what was left was what I guess you’d call the essential Hays Baker-well, if you brought the old me and the new me to a party, I guarantee nobody would accuse us of a family resemblance.
Lizbeth and I arrived at the presidential estate at around eight thirty, delivered in high style by our artificially intelligent Daimler SX-5500 limo. This wasn’t our usual car, of course.
A cheery, top-of-the-line iJeeves butler helped us out onto the resplendent, putting-green-short grass of the front lawn. We promptly began to gawk at our surroundings-like a couple of tourists, I suppose. Hell, like lowly humans given an unlikely glimpse of the good life.
Even now, I remember that the warm night air was sweet with the fragrance of thousands of roses, gardenias, and other genetically enhanced flowering plants in the president’s gardens, all programmed to bloom tonight. What a botanical miracle it was, though a bit show-offy, I’d say.
“This is absolutely incredible, Hays. Dazzling, inspiring,” Lizbeth gushed, her gorgeous eyes shining with excitement. “We really do run the world, don’t we?”
By “we,” Lizbeth wasn’t talking about just herself and me. She was speaking of our broader identity as ruling Elites, the upper echelon of civilized society for the past two decades.
Most Elites were attractive, of course, but Lizbeth, with her violet hair set off by ivory skin and an almost decadent silver silk gown, well, she sparkled like a diamond dropped into a pile of wood chips.
“You’re going to knock them dead, Jinxie,” I said, winking. “As always.”
“Flattery,” she said, winking back, “will get you everywhere.”
Jinxie was my favorite nickname for her. It stemmed from the fact that she’d come into this world on a Friday the thirteenth, but there wasn’t a single thing unlucky about her-or our life together, for that matter.
I took her tastefully bejeweled hand in mine, inwardly thrilled that she was my wife. God, how I loved this woman. How lucky I was to be with her, as husband, as father to our two daughters.
Every
head turned as we walked into the huge, high-ceilinged ballroom, and you’d have thought we were music or film stars from the bygone human era.
But not everybody in the high-society Elite crowd was pleased to see Lizbeth and me.
Well, hey, you can’t make everyone happy. Isn’t that the sanest way to view the world? Of course it is.
Chapter 2
AS LIZBETH AND I entered the glittering ballroom, Westmont DeLong, the world’s most popular and most celebrated comedian, was at center stage, entertaining with his droll patter of antihuman jokes. When he noticed that the audience was momentarily paying more attention to Lizbeth and me than to him, he raised his voice to win them back.
“Listen to this one, folks. Eyes on me, gents-ladies too! Right here, you and me…. The star is up on the stage.
“So an Elite’s out for a night on the town. He has a few too many, and he wanders into a tavern in a borderline human zone,” DeLong announced with his trademark sly grin.
“He buys a drink-then says to the people around him, ‘I’ve got to tell you the best human joke I’ve heard in years.’ The tough-looking woman bartender gets in his face. She says, ‘Listen, buddy, I’m a martial arts expert, my boyfriend next to you is a professional no-gravity wrestler, and the bouncer is ex-Special Forces. All three of us are humans and-guess what? — there are fifty others like us in here. You really want to tell that joke?’ ‘No, forget it,’ the Elite says. ‘It would take me all night to explain it fifty-three times.’ ”
The crowd laughed loudly. Clearly, they were fans of Westmont DeLong-as was I-and a barrage of antihuman quips sprang up:
“One human asks another which is closer, the moon or Mexico,” someone called out. “The second one points at the moon and says, ‘Duh-you can’t see Mexico from here.’ ”
“Scientists have started using humans instead of rats for laboratory experiments. They breed faster, and you don’t get so attached to them.”
DeLong chuckled and contributed, “Know what happens when humans don’t pay their garbage bill? The company stops delivery.”
“Come on, Hays, your turn,” said a voice behind me. “Let’s see that quick wit of yours in action. Dazzle us.”
The tall, athletic, and handsome man who’d spoken was none other than Jax Moore, the head of the Agency of Change, where Lizbeth and I both worked. Moore was enjoying one of his trademark cigars-smokeless, odorless.
Everyone around us went quiet and watched expectantly. Since the challenge came from our boss, I couldn’t duck it, could I? So I smoothed the lapels of my tux, smiled, and told the best human joke that I could remember.
“Well, there’s an office full of human workers. One human woman notices that her boss, who’s also a woman, is leaving early just about every day,” I said. “So the worker decides she can get away with it too. That afternoon, she waits until the boss leaves, waits another ten minutes, and then sneaks out herself. But when she gets home, she hears an awful commotion coming from her bedroom. She peeks in-and there’s her boss in bed with her husband!”
I paused, just a beat-pretty good timing, I was sure.
“She hurries back to work. ‘Well, I’m not going to try that again,’ she tells her coworkers. ‘I almost got caught!’ ”
The room echoed with genuine laughter, and Westmont DeLong’s face reddened. His double chin sagged as well. Lizbeth managed to look appropriately blase, like she’d heard it all before, but she shot me a surreptitious wink that said, Way to go, Hays.
“Not bad, Hays,” Moore said. “OK, if you can spare a minute or two away from the limelight, the president wants to see you both.”
The president! Lizbeth didn’t look blase at that news. Neither of us had ever met President Jacklin before. This was a huge honor, of course.
“We don’t usually give interviews without an appointment… but we’ll make an exception in this case,” I said.
“I’m sure the president will be flattered,” Jax Moore said wryly. “And Hays-no more jokes. Not even human ones.”
Chapter 3
“My, my. The President wants to meet us,” Lizbeth whispered in my ear as we followed Jax Moore farther into the mansion.
“Of course he does,” I said with a grin.
Actually, Lizbeth and I were considered stars at that particular moment in time. We’d just returned from New Vegas, where we had saved countless lives while arresting a gang of moderately clever human bank robbers who had been terrorizing the West.
Anyway, Jax Moore whisked us through eight-foot-tall carved oak doors that led to the mansion’s private living area. Well-concealed scanners examined every pore of our bodies as we walked to the entrance of the president’s oval office, which was modeled after the famous original in the now-sunken city of Washington, DC.
I was immediately reminded that humans had created some good things in the past, such as this fine neoclassic style of architecture. But they’d also severely ravaged the planet, hadn’t they? A couple decades ago the first generation of Elites had barely managed to save it from total destruction. Washington, DC, was one of many cities on the casualty list, along with most of the low-lying eastern seaboard, including New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, all of which had been swallowed up long ago by the rising oceans.
When we stepped into the Oval Office, President Hughes Jacklin was standing in front of a full-length mirror, fumbling with his cravat. At his side was his faithful bodyguard and supposed lover, a behemoth named Devlin.
Seeing us, the president let the tie go and strode across the room to greet Lizbeth and me as if we were old friends. He was a hugely impressive man, classically educated, firm-jawed and broad-shouldered, and his thick dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples.
“My dear, the sun is down and it’s still as bright as day around you,” he said to Lizbeth, kissing her perfect cheeks, one, then the other.
“Mr.-Mr. President,” Lizbeth stammered ever so slightly, “I’m speechless… almost, anyway.”
“What you are is incredibly charming,” countered the president.
He turned to me and gave a firm handshake. “Hays Baker, this is a great pleasure. You’re beautiful too. Look, I’m late for my own party-we’ll have time to get better acquainted later. But I want you to know I’ve followed your careers at the Agency closely. And I’m a big fan. That operation in Vegas was pure genius. Efficient and effective. Just what I like.”
“We’re proud to help, Mr. President,” Lizbeth said, actually blushing a little now.
“Then would you help me out with this thing?” He flapped the loose ends of his cravat with good-humored exasperation. “I never could get the hang of it. Or the significance of ties, damn them.”
“I could do that,” said Devlin, but the president waved the bodybuilding bodyguard away.
“Lizbeth?” he said, exposing his throat to her. “Let’s see how you would garrote a world leader.”
Chapter 4
“It would be my pleasure, sir!”
Lizbeth laughed like an impressionable schoolgirl and took over. As her nimble fingers arranged the president’s tie into an expert knot, he gave us a conspiratorial nod. Off to the side, Devlin was grimacing and fidgeting, and I hoped we hadn’t made an enemy of the giant bodyguard.
“I will tell you this much about my future plans,” the president said. “My best people have developed a program to-let’s just say, complete the work of making our world a safer, cleaner place with respect to the human strain. We’ll be launching it soon. In days, actually.”
Lizbeth and I had heard rumors that a sweeping human-containment initiative had been taking shape. It was hard not to be relieved. The foolhardy and dangerous humans had only themselves to blame. They had blown their chance to make the world a better place. It was undeniable that they had accomplished quite the opposite.
“I’m counting on you both for important help with the launch of the human cleanup. Meantime, you’re the best we have at holding the
gross and undesirable elements in check. Please keep up the good work. Bigger, better things are coming for you two. For all Elites, actually.” He checked himself in the mirror. “Come to think of it-humans are responsible for ties!”
President Jacklin smiled, then he said good-bye with effusive warmth-he was obviously an expert at it, perhaps aided by the prototype Cyrano 3000 implant he was rumored to have. I’d only read about the device, but what I knew was that it was surgically attached to a person’s inner ear and could offer guidance through any social interaction. The amazing appliance had wireless access to a database of pretested social cues, pertinent information about whatever person you were talking to, and other useful facts, names, quotes, and quips that might fit a given situation. The irony: a human had also invented it.
Jax Moore took my elbow, then Lizbeth’s, and walked us back to the oak doors. He lit up another of his cigars and puffed contentedly.
“Not a word about this. There can be no security leaks. Check with me first thing tomorrow,” he said. “I have classified information we need to discuss. The president specifically asked for you two on the ‘human problem.’ You’re both… beautiful,” Moore closed, giving us an icy grin that could have frozen vegetables. I doubted he’d undergone a Cyrano 3000 implant, or even heard of it.
After the doors closed, Lizbeth took my arm and said, “One of the best nights of our lives, don’t you think?” She’d handled the president with perfect poise-and charm-but she was also clearly starstruck after meeting the great man in person. To be honest, so was I. I just didn’t let on.
“Definitely in the top hundred or so,” I teased her.
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