Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

“Thought they used napalm for that.” Winston describes an expanding circle with his hands and makes kaboom noises.

  “Plantkiller,” Tabitha says. “Takes out grass, flowers, fungus,” she pauses, “trees.”

  Winston heaves himself to his feet and plants great branch-like arms at his waist. “Well,” he says, “that’s not exactly scones and crumpets for fucking tea is it? Very fucking nice.”

  “It’s not something I’d put in the great-for-people category either,” Clyde points out. “Were I to be categorizing things that way. Which given Evil-Me’s proclivities, I feel I should specify I am not. But Gran is right. None of you want to be around when that drops.”

  None of us. Because Clyde… Jesus. Every time I start to find the humanity in him I come up against this hard metal shell.

  And as much as I feel for Winston’s predicament… “They’ll kill everyone in the city,” I say.

  Gran nods. “Sacrifice the infected limb. Try to spare the whole.”

  Jesus. Jesus that’s a cold logic. Not so different from Version 2.0’s thought processes.

  Save the world. Kill humanity or kill the plants. Jesus. What a fucking war.

  But then another thought, hot on the heels of that one, even if it’s panting a little to keep up. If they kill the plants, they kill the fungus. They kill our way in to Version 2.0’s system. They kill our ability to spread a cure.

  “You’ve got to stall them,” I say. “New York City is eighteen million people. We have a chance to save—”

  Gran doesn’t look happy. Not with me. Not with his superiors. “No,” he says. “We’re not trying that. Even if there’s time to write it. It’s untested code.”

  “Still haven’t fixed it,” Tabitha points out.

  “You will,” Clyde calls. “I know it.”

  Tabitha grinds her teeth until the frustration spills out. “Just… Shut the fuck up. OK?”

  “OK.” Clyde nods quick assent, stands motionless.

  “Eighteen million people,” I insist. I saw the pain on Gran’s face when I quoted that number. “We can’t write them off.”

  “You can’t save them,” he counters.

  “Maybe,” I insist. “Maybe I can.”

  Gran looks to the skies, as if the planes might already be upon us, as if he’s looking for an out. He looks back to me.

  “They won’t hold for a maybe, man.” He still looks unhappy. “Planes are inbound. And, yeah, it’s shitty to do this, but this isn’t our choice, man. 2.0 forced this on us, right? He killed these people, not us. You say he’s so fucking smart, he saw this coming. Like prophecy and shit. This was his call.”

  And, I realize, Gran’s one hundred percent behind the idea of planes coming in. He may be sad that it’s necessary, but there isn’t any doubt in him that his superiors have made the right call. His sadness isn’t enough to create doubt. And in that moment I see the CIA agent in Gran. As loyal to Area 51 as I am to MI37.

  “Look.” Somewhat to my surprise, it’s Felicity who steps forward. “There has to be something we can give them. Some reason to buy us a little time. Just to check everything out. How long do we have?”

  Gran checks his watch. “We’ve got less than twenty minutes. We need to move.”

  And no. No, that can’t be it.

  I need a reason to stay. And not just the people of New York. Saving people is not enough. God, it should be, but it’s not. Not for Gran’s superiors. Not for Gran.

  I see him shooting the girl in the Mexican trash dump. This is the CIA. The movie bad guys. And they’re not bad guys. They’re just not heroes.

  I need to give them something tactical. Something brutal and straightforward. Something like them, perhaps.

  What do we have? A mushroom. A dispersal system. A network. A map of that network. A central… wait.

  “The map,” I say to Tabitha. “We still need the map of the bigger network, right?”

  Tabitha seems reluctant to be pulled into this. “Yeah,” she says, grudgingly. And I think she might just be Gran’s weak spot.

  “We can hack into another mushroom.” Gran sees my argument coming and tries to head it off. “We can find another hub. Go in there.”

  “Really?” I wish I could pull Felicity’s trick of the lone eyebrow ranger, perched efficiently near my hairline, but I have to heft both of the things aloft. “Can you guarantee that? Do we know that every one of Version 2.0’s mushrooms is hooked into the system? Can you guarantee planes loaded with Agent Orange aren’t wiping out the other mushrooms? Are you sure Version 2.0 won’t realize his system has been compromised? This might be a one-time only deal.”

  For a moment Gran wavers. I turn back to Tabitha. “You could get that map, right? You could rip down his firewalls and lay everything he has bare. You could tell them where to drop the goddamn nuke, couldn’t you?”

  And slowly but surely a wicked grin carves its way across Tabitha’s face. She stands up, holds her laptop out to Gran.

  “Stop the planes,” she says. She circles her head to include our whole merry little band. “Tell them we need more time. Tell them we need to go to war.”

  54

  DOWN THE ROAD

  “Approaching target location,” Gran breathes into his brand new walkie-talkie.

  We’ve had to abandon Google chat. Tabitha needed the laptop to work on her debugging code. Fortunately, before she logged off, the kindly Area 51 folk on the other end of the chat window were able to point us toward a stash of supplies the CIA had hidden in a secret compartment beneath the security desk of a nearby office building.

  The fact that Gran seemed unaware of these stashes makes me think that he should read his interdepartmental memos more thoroughly. Assuming that the world returns to a state where interdepartmental memos are sent to Gran once more.

  The really good news, though, was that along with walkie-talkies we got to restock our armamentarium. I am now the proud owner of some sleek black pistol that looks almost exactly the same as the one MI37 gave me except it has a different manufacturer’s logo on it. Felicity, on the other hand, seemed particularly excited by the stash. Her handbag bulges with Pandorian horrors.

  Now we huddle at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. The Empire State Building looms massively over us. Crouching here seems a little ridiculous when someone can just peer out of a fiftieth floor window and see us. Still, there’s a chance the tree cover will help.

  Then our tree sits down and says, “Bugger me, but I am knackered. Actually, don’t bugger me, I’m not up for it.”

  “I couldn’t anyway,” Clyde seems to feel the need to tell him. “Lack of all the fun anatomy pieces on this model, I’m afraid.”

  “I feel you, mate.” Winston nods and his broken branches rattle. “Made of wood, never able to get it. Fucking irony.”

  “Maybe,” Felicity suggests, “we could concentrate on formulating a plan.”

  “Sure,” Winston agrees. “You tell me and Clyde when you got one. We’ll be here.”

  Felicity rolls her eyes, though the idea of Winston being uninvolved in the planning process does have considerable appeal.

  “Look, dudes.” Gran points across a street clogged with bushes and tangled weeds, to a doorway encircled by great swathes of kudzu. “The lobby lights are on. Place has got power.”

  And he’s right. Halfway down Thirty-fourth Street, yellow electric light glows beyond the glass doors. “They must have generators,” I say. “Or Version 2.0 spared the power source.”

  Felicity nods. “That makes sense. If he’s running computers in there, he’ll need power.”

  Tabitha is grim-faced. “Need to find them. The servers. Won’t take long then.”

  “Dudette.” Gran claps Tabitha on the back. “Never let it be said that confidence ain’t sexy. Because—” He shakes his head. “—mmm.”

  “Oh, feck off.” Kayla grimaces at that.

  While I am probably the last person who should complain about displays o
f affection toward workmates, even I throw up a little in my mouth. I’m glad Clyde is engaged in his conversation with Winston.

  “Well, yes.” Felicity tries to move on. “But from what we know of Version 2.0 he’s unlikely to have left the front door open for us. I’m guessing we’ll have some serious defenses to get through.”

  “Feckin’ great.” Kayla lets go of her sword/cane for a moment to clap her hands together.

  Felicity stares at her. “What are you talking about? You can barely stand up. You are not the tip of the spear today.”

  “Feck you.”

  Felicity casually reaches over and pushes Kayla. Kayla rocks back and bounces against the corner of a building, she staggers slightly.

  It is not exactly a top-notch display of super-soldiering.

  “Feckin’ fine,” Kayla sulks.

  “Back to the original point about security and stuff,” I say. “That does indeed sound likely. And I’ve already been punched a lot today. Is there any way we could climb through the air conditioning or something?” That system is a lot less likely to be booby trapped than Area 51’s was. I think it’s viable this time.

  “Air conditioning?” Tabitha says. “Over a hundred floors. Need to sweep them all.”

  And that does make it feel less viable.

  Gran’s radio squawks, and a static-laden voice says something unintelligible. “Planes starting to run low on fuel, dudes,” he says.

  The CIA, in their infinite wisdom, have refused to ground their planes, and instead have them circling the city. Because what field operation doesn’t go better when there’s a ticking clock on it?

  The walkie-talkie lets forth another burst of garbled static.

  “Giving us a window of about an hour, then we need to be underground and running like hell,” Gran says. “You know, paraphrasing and stuff.”

  “Groovy,” I reply, but I think the irony is lost on him.

  “Do we really need to sweep every floor?” Felicity stares at the upper stories. Vines have reached even there. “He can’t have filled the building with his people. I don’t believe that. He’ll have the entrance guarded and the spot where the servers actually are. We get past the entrance, find the floor crawling with whatever he’s using, and we’ve found where we want to be.”

  “That’s still less than a minute a floor,” I say. I’m being a bit negative, I know, but I’m still chafing at this “operational window” bullshit.

  “What if we just punch every feckin’ button on the elevator and see if anything tries to eat our faces when the doors open?” Kayla asks.

  I shrug. It’s not a perfect plan but it will at least bring the frisson of danger that most of my previous elevator rides have missed.

  “Wait,” Felicity says. “Will 2.0 really let us just ride up the elevators?”

  Tabitha taps her laptop. “Know what controls elevators?”

  From her grin the answer is clear. “You can hack the building?” I say.

  She doesn’t even bother with the disparaging glance. “Simple.”

  Gran fist pumps.

  Then a thought occurs to me. I need Tabitha up where Clyde’s servers are so she can deploy her code. She can’t be downstairs buggering about with elevator settings.

  “Wait,” I say, then remember I can’t talk about the code and keep face. I quickly course-correct. “What about getting the map out of Clyde’s servers?”

  Tabitha’s face goes sour. “Shit bricks.” She glances over at the building. “Need those elevators.”

  Gran nods. “I don’t think I can climb a hundred stories in an hour. I start to get slow after like fifty of them or so.”

  Damnit. Now we need a hacker on the ground floor and the top one. And we don’t have two.

  Except…

  “Clyde,” I say, “could you come over here?”

  Clyde looks up from what is apparently a quite intense conversation with Winston. “Of course.” He points to Winston. “You hold that thought. I mean, if you don’t mind. Back in a jiffy.”

  “No,” Tabitha says before he even starts moving. “No. Not him. Not ever. Can’t trust him. Cannot. No way.”

  “You want to nuke Version 2.0?” I say. “You have to trust him.”

  This isn’t a definitive argument-winner but it does at least buy us enough time for Clyde to ask, “You can’t trust me to do what?”

  “I’m sorry to ask this,” I say, “I should probably remember this, but I’m not sure if you’re a version of Clyde who knows—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about the version control thing,” Clyde interrupts. “Totally understandable. Get confused myself. Well, not about what I know. But about what I know about other versions of me knowing. Except, well, I don’t because I didn’t meet them. But I imagine I would have done. Right now I just know me and Evil-Me. Well, I don’t know him directly, of course. By reputation. Some similarities obviously. Big differences too. Disagree on the whole exterminating humanity thing, to take a pertinent example. But, I do—”

  It’s my turn to interrupt. “I’m just going to jump right to the question.”

  “Makes total sense. Go for it. All ears. Not literally of course. Don’t have them. Just some rather well-constructed microphones placed in multiple locations—”

  “The question,” I say, feeling the CIA’s operational window sliding closed. “Can you hack things?”

  “Oh!” Clyde stands up a little straighter. “Some minor skill in that, yes. Tabby… I mean Tabitha gave me some pointers and…”

  “No.” Tabitha decides to lend her positive attitude to our conversation once more.

  “Look,” I say to her, “we need you upstairs. We need the elevators operable to do this in our time limit. We need a second hacker. We have one right here.”

  Tabitha doesn’t budge. “Last time he was on a network—tried to kill us. Again. No. No network. He stays offline.”

  I look to Felicity for support. “This isn’t even Clyde’s network. It’s the buildings…”

  “Willing to take that risk?” Tabitha’s dark cheeks have a red burn in them. “Willing to get a hundred stories up, have him drop us? I’m not. No.”

  “So you want to be the one hacking the elevator, and him to be the one plugging straight into Clyde’s servers?”

  Tabitha throws a hand up in frustration and looks to Gran. Her player for tie breaks.

  “He’s a liability.” Gran at least looks apologetic.

  “He’s our only option for this to work.” Felicity comes into play for me.

  “You are a bunch of pissing plonkers, you know that?”

  As a group we turn to stare at Winston.

  “Care to extrapolate?” Felicity asks the belligerent looking tree. I can’t tell if she’s genuinely interested or just needs time to power up the punch that she’s going to use to kill him.

  “Not trying to be offensive or anything,” Winston starts, “but I mean, you are genuinely fuckwitted.” So that’s one goal he’s failed already and we’re barely into this haranguing. “This is not the end of the world. It’s after that. Like you guys have fucking lost already. You were meant to stop this from ever happening, and you bloody didn’t. And now you finally have an arse crack thin chance of fixing all this shit, and rather than take it, you’re going to argue about how trustworthy one of the five allies you have in the entire world is? I mean, seriously, what the fuck are you all waiting for? A fucking handwritten invitation?”

  We all take a moment over that one. And I do believe Winston may have put us in our place.

  “All right al-feckin’-ready. I’ll watch him,” Kayla says.

  It’s now time, apparently, for us to all stare at her.

  “What?” she says. “I know I’m a feckin’ mess. You need to be feckin’ quick, and right now I’m about as fast to get off the ground as an old man’s erection. So I’ll feckin’ watch him while you feckers go have all the fun, and if he twitches wrong I’ll feckin’ stab him in his feckin’ eye.
All right?”

  Injured as she is, I would not fight Kayla over this one.

  “So,” I say, “I’ll put you and Clyde down for elevator duty, shall I?”

  “Marvelous,” Clyde says.

  “Whatever,” Tabitha says, which is almost the most positive I’ve ever heard her be about anything.

  “So,” Felicity says, “that just leaves getting past the folk in the lobby.”

  But I’ve just had an idea about that. “Oh, Winston,” I say, “as you seem so keen to get involved in this…”

  “Oh piss.” Winston grimaces. “Me and my big fucking mouth.”

  55

  ONCE THE ARGUMENT IS OVER

  Winston hits the door of the Empire State Building like a battering ram. Except more vertical. And with legs. And quite possibly some personality issues that need resolving.

  Still, the effect is the desired one. Doors fly. Glass smashes. The sound of tearing metal booms up and down the street. If anything is going to attract attention, that seems likely to be it.

  “Bring it, you little shits! Planet of the grapes is getting it in the fucking face!” Winston adds, in case smashing the doors off a globally recognized landmark wasn’t enough.

  For a moment there are only echoes.

  Then we hear them. The growls. The guttural, jerking nonspeech of the infected.

  “All right, you bastards!” Winston yells. “Let’s get squishy!”

  It is at this point that I am especially glad that the Empire State Building is big enough to have more than one entrance.

  While Winston is battering his way through the doors on Thirty-fourth Street, the rest of us lurk on Fifth Avenue by a pair of doors that are now much less well guarded.

  Felicity stares at the backs of zombies lumbering toward Winston’s massive distraction.

  “Give them a minute,” she says. “Then we move in.”

  I can feel the adrenaline tremor starting to build in my gut. Sweat dampens my palms. Counting to sixty seems to take way too long.

  “Let’s move,” I say.

  Weeds tangle the building door, but it’s unlocked. We slip in. The lobby is narrow and tall, walls reaching several stories up. A large relief sculpture of the building dominates the far wall, looming over the security desk. The whole place smells of mold. I’m suspecting that’s a recent change.