Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “I think you can do it,” I say.

  Clyde leans in conspiratorially. “Considering how things have gone for me recently,” he says, “I would understand if you don’t completely respect work advice from me. However, just as an observation—constructive criticism perhaps—there’s a chance you might want to consider working on becoming a better liar if you want to get ahead in the whole bureaucracy thing.”

  He moves his head oddly, half shrugs, and then says, “Bugger. There is no way to wink in this thing.”

  And then, before I can respond, he’s off. Just a blur of silver steel.

  It’s not Kayla fast. I think I’ve seen her approach the sound barrier. But Clyde is still fast enough that it would make a crossing guard wet herself.

  He rounds the corner. The machine gun roars. It sounds like an auto wreck. Like Formula One cars armed with Uzis racing after each other around the track.

  And then a great juddering scream of metal. An ugly sound, but profound somehow. Something giving way that was never meant to do so.

  And then the gun is silent.

  For a moment we all stand very still.

  “Clyde?” I call. “Clyde?”

  Nothing. Silence.

  A grinding sound breaks it. Sparks crackle. At first I think it must be Clyde dragging what’s left of his body back to us but there is too much bass to the sound. Something heavy is on the move.

  Oh God. What fresh hell is this?

  I don’t really want to, but I ease up to the edge of the corridor, and peek.

  For a moment, the scene makes no sense. The world is inverted: Clyde hangs from the ceiling; the machine gun lies on the floor. I think 2.0 must have done something to gravity.

  Then I see the wires spilling from the gun turret’s base. I see the ragged edges of the hole in the ceiling through which Clyde is dangling.

  Then Clyde drops to the ground. Behind him, the doors to Area 51 begin to grind open.

  “There you go,” he says. “Lot of fuss over nothing.” He shrugs.

  And, God, it is good to have him back.

  40

  A HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP

  As the car we’ve liberated from the Area 51 parking lot crests the lip of the exit ramp, white light floods the vehicle. The winter sun—bright, sharp, and sheer—slices through our eyeballs like a Friday night psychopath high on the happy juice.

  There’s a chance that witnessing a government facility become a mass grave has affected my metaphors.

  “Oh shit, man!” Gran yells from the driver’s seat and mashes the brake so hard he almost punctures the car’s floor. Sitting in the passenger seat, my head bounces off the dashboard and then the door window as the car slews round.

  “No. No. No,” Gran repeats, his words slowly accelerating, becoming one giant slew of syllables. “Nonononononono.” He slams his fists on the horn and the sound blares.

  I blink, scrape at my eyes, try to free them of the momentary blinding.

  And then I succeed. I try to put the blindness back.

  Manhattan. New York City. The jostling thriving urban jungle. Concrete and steel cast in a twisting testament to man’s ambition, avarice, and ability. New York City. The capital of the world. The bustle and animosity of eighteen million people crammed into a tiny island and forced to choke on taxi fumes and outrageous prices.

  It’s gone.

  The buildings are there. After the initial shock I see them now. The bones of this place are still intact. But they are… hidden. They lurk beneath a deep layer of green. Plants tower everywhere. Trees have smashed through windows. Ivy has grown in great sweeps across brownstones. Kudzu envelops doorways. Lilies cover rooftops. Vines trail from street lamps. Trunks rupture the asphalt. Cars are barely recognizable beneath moss and lichen.

  It’s as if the urban jungle just forgot the whole urban part. And damnit, I really liked that part.

  Bits of building lie in ruin. Trees have punched the corners off buildings. Vines have tightened like Amazonian constrictors around façades and lamp posts. Roots have ripped up through the street, churning the tarmac into a ruin. Our car bounces up and down as it grinds to a halt over the uneven surface.

  Gran has graduated from “No,” to “Shit.” Still the same blur of words though. “Shitshitshitshitshit.”

  It’s Version 2.0. He has made his move already. We’re too late. Again.

  I suddenly remember the list of web sites he pillaged. Infrastructure. Emergency responses. Homeland Security. And it hits me. This is more than just senseless aggression. This is a tactic. I’m sure of it. This has intended consequences. This has fail safes. As epic as this is, it’s only the beginning.

  The beginning of humanity’s ending.

  We’ve come close to the end of the world before, but we’ve never crossed over the line. Never got into full post-apocalyptic mode. Because that’s what this feels like. The apocalypse.

  Version 2.0 has caused the apocalypse. And I’ve had a beer with him.

  Shit. I’m sitting in the same car as a version of him.

  I look over my shoulder at robot Clyde, at 2.1 sitting in the back seat. He looks back at me.

  “I did this?” he asks.

  I nod, mutely.

  “God,” he says. “When you mentioned the whole going evil thing, you really didn’t give me quite the sense of the scale of it all.”

  My tongue is dry in my mouth. “Really evil,” I manage.

  “It’s a little passé now,” he says, “but one is even tempted to use the prefix über.”

  “One is.”

  We’re in shock, I think. We’re trying to process something too big. Fortunately, though, that describes about fifty percent of what I do at my job. I have become relatively adept at operating with a blown mind.

  “Let’s assume all of New York looks this way,” I say, even while my mind balks at the mental image. “He’ll have gone for power centers. What’s left standing? We need to work out what we have left. What we can fight with.”

  Fight. What the hell are we even fighting? We still don’t have a clue where Version 2.0 is even located. We’ve got nothing except motive and so far all that’s contributed to are my sleepless nights.

  “Where is everybody?” Felicity is staring out of the car windows. The street is empty. No people. No animals.

  I start thinking ugly thoughts about fertilizer. About what’s fueling all this growth. Jesus.

  “Inside,” Tabitha says, her voice a little too loud, a little too harsh. “In familiar places. Under desks. Somewhere they think is safe. Near the TV. The radio. Waiting for word.”

  Waiting for word. That’s us. We’re the word. Except what the hell do we say? Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride?

  “Gran,” I snap. He’s still deep in his litany of obscenity, sliding down the scale of curses. “Where do we go?”

  He looks at me, and his eyes are full—just sorrow and loss. And I think about his family, his friends. How many people did he know in Manhattan? In the whole city. In the state? The country? I don’t know where the outer limits of this thing lie.

  “I…” he says. “I…” But he doesn’t have an answer. I can see that, plain as I can see the ficus sprouting out of the middle of Broadway.

  Felicity grabs his arm. Not to shake but to hold him tightly. He looks at her, still reeling.

  “Basic training,” she snaps. “Orientation.” Her eyes are locked like laser-guided missiles onto his. “They told you about exit routes. About what to do in a National Emergency. They talked about 9/11 and the Taliban, hell they may even have mentioned an alien invasion. I don’t know. I don’t care. But how the hell do we get out of this fucking bear trap of a city?”

  “I…” Gran says, and Felicity just goes right ahead and slaps him. The blow echoes around the car.

  “Oooh,” I hear Clyde breathe. Well… not breathe… but, whatever he does.

  Gran squeezes his eyes shut, breathes through his mouth. “Bridges are t
oo exposed,” he says. He’s barely audible. I lean in to listen. “Too easy to hit. Stay off the bridges.” He takes a deep breath. “Assess the tunnels. Lincoln then Holland. If secure proceed. If not find a boat. South Street ferry.” He opens his eyes. And suddenly we have a CIA agent again. He looks back at Felicity, focuses. “Lincoln Tunnel,” he says. “On the city’s west side. We have to go there.”

  “Then put this thing in gear and go,” Felicity says.

  He puts the car in gear and we go.

  41

  It’s only four blocks before we realize that Tabitha is full of shit.

  The people of New York are not cowering beneath their desks. They are not in hiding. And they are certainly not waiting for us, their shining-white knights, to bring them word.

  Instead, they look intent on doing us harm.

  A great herd of them blocks Broadway. What must be several hundred people milling around. And I’ve heard New Yorkers accused of being unfriendly, but this is something else…

  They are purple tongued. Black eyed. Something that isn’t quite fur leaking out their nostrils, their mouths, climbing up their fingers from beneath their nails.

  Clyde zombies.

  Some stumble, bumping off each other, off trees, off the ruins of the street. Others, perhaps further gone into the vegetative state, stand stock still, staring blankly up. I see one whose face has given way to flowers in full bloom. Another—wearing the remains of a T-shirt proclaiming that he was once “Punk as fuck”—has a string of mushrooms sprouting up his arm.

  I know I’m still having trouble processing all this because part of me is seriously trying to work out what the guy was doing wearing a T-shirt in November. That’s just madness.

  Madness. Jesus. We are in the middle of detouring around a giant pine tree blocking Broadway, one of the most iconic pieces of tarmac in the world. It is time to recognize madness just got a much broader definition than some idiot’s fashion decisions.

  “We’ll have to go around them.” Gran nods at the zombies.

  The George A. Romero fan in me is a little disappointed we’re not going to pile through the crowd with chainsaws sticking out the windows, but Gran’s suggestion is probably the sensible one.

  “Which way?” Felicity scans the windows.

  Gran flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. “Tunnels we want are on the west side, so…”

  “Shit,” Tabitha says, peering between the two of them and out the windshield.

  Our eyes follow hers. Shit indeed. Staggering and stumbling the Clyde zombies may be, but they are not as stupid as you would hope someone who seems to be at least fifty percent vegetable matter might be. We’ve been spotted.

  “Reverse?” Clyde suggests.

  “Forward!” shouts Tabitha, who is apparently as gung ho about the zombpocalypse as I am. Gran, probably sensibly, ignores them both and cranks the steering wheel to the right.

  The tires bounce over roots and the tail-end of the car slews drunkenly. We careen forward, the engine’s horses finding their power and flinging distance between us and the horde staggering toward us. We’re half a block away before the first one rounds the corner.

  Then Tabitha says, “Double shit!”

  “Oh my,” Clyde adds for a bit of variety.

  The horde was, apparently, not entirely limited to Broadway. They have leaked onto the next avenue over and are blocking our exit.

  “OK dude, this might—” Gran starts, then cuts himself off using the handbrake and a large number of g-forces. I would ask him to finish his thought, but I’m busy having my face mashed against shatter-proof glass.

  Our one-eighty complete, Gran guns the engine, and heads forward. But our path backwards is now clogged with the staggering, stumbling remnants of humanity. We are boxed in. Gran lifts his foot, glances in the rearview. “Triple shit,” he says.

  My mind accelerates as the car slows. Stopping is not an option. It can’t be. Nothing good happens if this car stops. This is about speed and escape.

  Man, I’d gotten away with not considering this for a fair while. I’d thought maybe I was a professional now, that I didn’t have to fall back on movie clichés and Hollywood stupidity for survival, but seriously, what would Kurt Russell do?

  Heart hammering in my throat, I reach my foot over the gear shift and stamp Gran’s down on the accelerator.

  The car bucks as if stung then races forward. Walk, to trot, to canter, to gallop, to a hundred-goddamn-miles per hour. Say what you like about the CIA, those boys and girls sure know how to turbo charge their engines.

  “What the hell, dude?” Gran yells as his head snaps back.

  “Oh crap sticks.” I hear Felicity in the back seat, fumbling for her seatbelt.

  “I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomas,” Clyde starts, his voice lilting as the car smashes up and down over the uneven surface, “or any kind of Thomas really, lovely people I’m sure, but just not my name. A doubting Clyde, I suppose, but—”

  And then the first of the zombies impacts against the windshield.

  Its head smashes against the glass and detonates. A massive purple smear streaks across our field of vision. Cracks radiate out.

  “Quadruple shit!” Gran yells.

  It’s as if someone threw a can of paint over the windshield. We can see nothing. A second body smashes against the car. I hear its skull rebound against the bonnet. The dull thunk of something bouncing off a side panel. I try to convince myself that the bumps in the road are still just roots.

  Gran hits the windshield wipers. Sprays cleaner fluid. Narrow streaks of visibility appear. There is something on the hood of the car. Its legs hang at ugly angles.

  Gran tries to brake but my foot is still slammed down on his. The car slews left, right. The Clyde zombie flies off, over the roof and into the unknown. We smash through one body then another.

  Jesus. How many of them have we taken down in the past five seconds? Clyde 2.0 doesn’t need to eliminate what’s left of the human race, he can just let us do it.

  Gran straightens the car. We hit something else and my wing mirror flies away.

  “The hell are we?” Tabitha asks.

  “If I had wireless I might be able to get us a GPS signal,” Clyde says as we plow through more bodies. Gran hunches over the steering wheel, peers desperately through the mess on the windshield. Smoke is coming from somewhere.

  I crank down my window, stick my head out. Not my best idea.

  The first thing I get is a mouthful of the smoke pouring out of the car’s hood. Then I replace that with a mouthful of rotting fist.

  The zombie clotheslines me. I’m not sure if it’s a planned move or simply fortuitous. The car smashes into the creature and he flies into the air. His arm flails, claws over my mouth, and slams into my neck.

  My head snaps back, smashes into the doorframe. The zombie, with either tenacity or really fortuitous physics, remains in place as its feet are shredded against the asphalt.

  It turns, looks at me. Dead black eyes. It opens its mouth as if to speak. A tangle of white filaments, like tiny fibrous worms, spill out over its chin.

  Despite the pressure on my throat, despite the wind smashing into my face, despite all I’ve seen in my career at MI37, I am still able to vomit.

  That throws the bastard free at least. He disappears under our back tire.

  I pull my head back in just in time to take another zombie in the face.

  It bounces up over the hood, and smashes full-bodied into the windshield. The cracks in the glass have been growing, and apparently enough is enough. The windshield gives way with an ugly snap and the entire sheet of fracturing glass lands in my lap.

  Gran takes the weight too and his hands fly off the wheel. The zombie, somehow still alive, snaps, snarls, and claws on the far side of the devastated glass. I watch its head lunge at me, bounce off the remaining framework of glass, and come back again.

  Whatever solidity the windshield had, it is slowly being reduced
to pebbles. The zombie keeps on coming. Keeps mashing hands and head at the glass. Fracture lines spread. The car keeps grinding and bouncing forward. I heave at the glass panel, trying to mash it and its cargo back through the open front of the car. Wind whips and slaps at me.

  “Get out of here you bloody great heavy bastard,” I yell. Bloody Americans and their bloody obesity epidemic.

  I get a knee up under the glass.

  The zombie gets a hand through it.

  I heave.

  The zombie grabs. Its hand clamps around my shirt lapels.

  I kick the glass out, away. Everything but the zombie’s hand flies away. He sprawls on the hood of the car, fist stuck through the remains of the windshield, clinging tenaciously to my throat. His body snaps up and down, like a flag in a high wind. I see the bones in his legs break as he is smashed up and down. Purple spit flecks his cheeks. I claw at his grasping hand.

  “The wheel, dude!” Gran screams. “I can’t get the fucking wheel!” His half of the windshield is still inside the car, still crushing him. His hands scrabble at the underside of the glass. The car careens left, right.

  The zombie punches another fist at me. More glass spills down my lap, collects in the footwell.

  And I swear, that will be the last sodding time I invoke Kurt Russell’s name. If only for the reason this is the time it’s finally going to kill me.

  “Somebody bloody help!” I yell, which is not exactly the most politic way to put it, but when you’re in a car barreling down a bumpy post-apocalyptic road, with no one at the wheel, and a zombie clawing at your throat… well, maybe Emily Post can shove the finer points of etiquette right up her arse.

  Clyde pivots in the back seat, bunches his legs, and slams them forward against the collapsed windshield. For a moment I think it will help—mechanically powered thighs jettisoning so much unwanted cargo. Then his feet pile drive through the windshield. The whole thing fractures, dissolves. Glass pebbles fill the air. And suddenly there is no barrier between me and the zombie.