Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Clyde shakes his head, as if trying to clear it of these thoughts that cloy and clog and drag and suffocate. “Do you understand, Arthur?”

  Understand? Understand that I tried to save Felicity at the expense of a city? Understand that I failed? That my friend died because of my decisions. Do I understand that?

  I think I’m going to be sick. My head is between my knees. I stare at the filthy tunnel floor.

  But I nod. I say, “Yes.” It’s lies and bullshit, but it’s the only answer that will get me up, out of here, get me away from the horror and the sorrow of this moment.

  After a while, I let Clyde help me up. The others gather in silence. We walk.

  When we emerge into the thin light of New Jersey, I am clutching Felicity’s hand tight. She stares at it from time to time, as if trying to remember what it is. Dredge up some ancient memory that fails her.

  Soldiers and helicopters wait for us. Quickly, efficiently they get us on board, into the sky, and away.

  64

  MOUNT RUSHMORE

  “Feck,” says Kayla. “We’ve officially been in America too feckin’ long.” She shakes her head. “We’ve clambered so far up George Washington’s arse, we can see out his eyes.”

  We stand in the Area 51 emergency control room—a concrete palace secreted inside the head of the George Washington memorial on Mount Rushmore. Analysts and researchers tap feverishly on keyboards and talk into headsets in hushed tones, saying terrifying things like, “We’re down to fourteen percent control on the eastern seaboard.” One wall is covered with monitors that display a variety of views from cameras located in what very well might be George Washington’s stony eyes.

  Mostly they show how fucked we are.

  “Like, technically,” Gran says, “we’re located around the big government honcho’s hairline.”

  Banter is lost on me at the moment. I focus on a handful of monitors that show ruined cityscapes. One is labeled “Los Angeles,” another “Austin,” and another “Chicago.” City after city. Each screen shows the same vast forest stretching off forever. In one or two places, trees shake as massive animals move between them. My hope Version 2.0’s attack was limited to the New York metropolitan area is exposed as the pathetic lie it always was.

  For a moment, I just try to take it in. Those scenes of endless greenery. That world of forests. But I can’t think that big. I can’t think that wide.

  Rather, my thoughts are locked on one city—

  New York City is dead.—on one life in that city.

  Winston is dead.

  Even those two facts are too big. The consequences of decisions I’ve made.

  A man in military fatigues stands at the front of the room, being briefed by someone from the hushed-voices crowd. We’re meant to give him a situation report. Except what the hell can we tell him? We failed? We’re not the heroes? Thanks to me, we’re the bad guys who killed a city?

  Winston is dead.

  The man in fatigues dismisses his aide and nods curtly at us.

  “General dude wants a natter,” Gran tells us.

  The man in fatigues, the General, is in his fifties, and looks a lot like he was chiseled from the same stone as George and his three presidential chums. He also gives the impression that the closest he’s ever come to having a natter was yelling at his mother to starch sharper creases into his school shorts.

  “New York. Sit rep,” he snaps at us.

  There is a group hesitation. This should be Felicity’s job, but she still doesn’t seem to have recovered from the fall. She just blinks twice at him.

  I step forward. After all we’ve been through, I’m not going to abandon her now.

  “So,” I say. I try to put some authority into my voice, but I mostly just sound tired and defeated. “Everything is pretty fucked up, right now. The whole place is over-run with zombies. Well, it was before your planes came in. God knows what it’s like now. But—”

  “Son—” The General cuts me off with a look of irritation. “—I want bullshit, I’ll buy me a damn cow. Now somebody give me a goddamn sit rep on New York.”

  It’s my turn to blink at him. Buy a cow? Did that just happen?

  “General, sir.” Gran still sounds like he spent his infant years using a bong instead of a pacifier, but there’s a snap to his slouch that I haven’t seen before. “Attack commenced at approximately eleven hundred hours at the Area 51 New York facility. Outcome was near complete fatalities. We are the only known survivors of the facility. Manhattan Island was over-run. Primarily by the fungally compromised. Indoctrination was ongoing via an electrobiothaumaturgical dispersion network. We hacked it and located a central terminal inside the Empire State Building coordinating attacks on the city. We attempted an assault on that central terminal but were overcome by defensive forces and retreated to our evac point in New Jersey.”

  I stare at Gran. I’m not the only one. Where the hell did our hippy friend go?

  The General considers this with a mild grimace. “Shit show, huh?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.” Again. Gran. This comes out of Gran’s mouth. Not a, “Dude, yes, dude.” Something feels off. Gran has read some new contour of power that is still far beyond me.

  The General looks at one of the women perched in front of a computer. “Aerial reconnaissance on New York subsequent to air strike.”

  The woman doesn’t look up. “Our last pass indicated a forty percent reduction in foliation. Heat map shows significantly less activity. We are trying to confirm if this indicates a decrease in population or a transition to underground habitats.”

  The grimace becomes something closer to a savage grin. “Not terrible either way.”

  And there is something in that savagery, in that grim satisfaction, that breaks a barrier inside me. Tired grief is smothered by a choking fist of rage.

  I step forward. Hell, I almost lunge at the man. Political contours be damned. “A success?” I yell. “You killed my friend.” My spit laces the air as I hurl the accusation.

  And, yes, I admit, mea bloody culpa. I made mistakes. I failed New York. I failed Winston. But it was this man who called in the planes. It was this man who gave the order to drop the Agent Orange.

  The General turns and looks at me. His mouth twisting from grin to sneer. He steps toward me, directly into the face of my rage. As if it’s nothing. “Son,” he stabs me with a finger, “New York had a population of eighteen goddamn million. All I got to show for it is five fucking tourists. So forgive me if I don’t shed a goddamn tear.”

  It is like running into a brick wall. My anger sits down hard and rubs its nose. He’s right. Eighteen million. God, the totality of it washes over me. All those people. And I went after just one. After Felicity. I chose to try to save her at their expense.

  Sacrifice. Jesus.

  Goddamn. Winston is dead.

  And Tess is dead. And Paul is dead. And Joel and Gina, the mecha pilots, are dead. Even the pretentious, uptight Kensington is dead.

  It goes on. And on. The litany of the dead.

  Jesus.

  What would Kurt Russell do? That old standby. It seems so small in the face of all this. And what would he do? He’d not get into this fucking mess in the first place.

  I want to bite back at the General. To show my own fangs. But what would I be arguing for? Can I really condone my own course of action? If I went back would I do what I did again?

  I look over at Felicity.

  My Felicity.

  Oh God, I would. I’d do everything the same.

  Shit. Maybe Version 2.0’s right. Maybe we aren’t the good guys. Phrases like “acceptable losses” and “forty percent defoliation” bubble up from the crowd of murmuring analysts around me. Maybe we are the monsters.

  But what then? What does that realization buy me? Do I strive futilely to be better? Or do I just accept what I am?

  “We needed more time,” I say. “We needed to take the long shot. We needed to not be cowards.” I’m not eve
n speaking to the General anymore. It’s just for me. Or maybe for humanity in general. A eulogy of sorts for the people of New York.

  It’s also a hideous mistake. Because the General sure as hell thinks I’m talking to him. And you don’t look into a raging bull’s eyes and tell it that getting angry at red blankets is a mook’s game.

  He cocks a fist that looks like a sledgehammer. I prepare for the taste of my own teeth.

  “There’s more.”

  Clyde steps abruptly up to us. Not quite into the line of the punch but close enough to be impossible to ignore.

  For a moment I don’t think the interjection is going to be enough to save my jaw, but then the General narrows his eyes, and lowers his fist. He doesn’t unball it, though. “More what?” He doesn’t take his eyes off me.

  “More intelligence. I mean. Data. Not IQ points. Don’t mean to presume about that while…” Then Clyde seems to realize that the General is not someone who’s into the whole tangential thing. He pauses, shrugs metal shoulders. “The network,” he says. “Tabitha couldn’t…” He gestures, then shrugs several times in apparent defeat.

  He turns to Tabitha. “You say it, please, Tabby. You’re terse and efficient and much better at this sort of thing than I am. I think he’ll punch me if I keep going, and I realize I’m made of steel and lack pain sensors, but I’ve taken a fairly comprehensive beating recently, and considering my propensity for mortality and the absence of wireless for uploading a back-up, I am a hair concerned.”

  “Shut the goddamn fuck up,” the General tells Clyde. Then he turns to glare at Tabitha.

  Tabitha matches the General sour look for sour look. Actually, with their close-shaved heads, there is a certain similarity to their appearance. And though the General hasn’t gone so far as to trim a skull into the back of his head, I can kind of picture him with the affectation.

  “Strike on the Empire State Building,” Tabitha says. “Overall shit show, yes. But some useful intelligence was retrieved.” She pulls her laptop out of its shoulder bag and flips it open. “Did get into Version 2.0’s system.” Her look goes from sour to savage. “Did get to map it out at a national level.”

  And with that, the whole room goes quiet. Every hushed mutter dies away. Every eye in the room turns to Tabitha.

  The General’s gaze bores into her. He doesn’t go so far as to look actually eager, but there’s a hunger to his look that indicates we finally have his attention.

  “A map?” he says. “A national map? So you know where he is?”

  Tabitha permits herself a knife’s edge of smile. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  65

  “Where is he? Where is that bastard hiding?”

  I’m leaning just as far forward as the General is. Our heads are inches apart. All animosity momentarily forgotten. This is the sort of buoy-you-up-after-your-friend-died information I can really use.

  Tabitha shakes her head. “Should have figured it out. Feel stupid.”

  She’s dragging it out. We have been too eager, and Tabitha’s punishing us for it.

  The General doesn’t take to it particularly well. He almost snarls. “If you want to play games, little girl,” he says, “I’ll have someone fetch you a fucking checker board, but in the goddamn mean time, you tell where the ass-fuck that little shit AI is goddamn hiding.”

  The General obviously hasn’t had much experience working with Tabitha. You do not, under any circumstance, call her “little girl.” Not if you want to keep your balls.

  That said, we are in a secure military installation, and we are surrounded by a large number of heavily armed men who report to this man. Tabitha satisfies herself with simply prolonging the reveal even further.

  “The heat,” she says. “Should have realized. AI that powerful. Would put out heat like the server farm from hell. Heat builds up too much—everything falls down. Version 2.0 needs a lot of cooling.”

  “This is goddamn America,” barks the General. “I’ll black ops this bullshit out of you if I have to.”

  But I get to the answer before the General’s rage buries us in Tabitha’s bile.

  “The Arctic,” I say, realization snapping through me. “It’s the Arctic Circle. Isn’t it?”

  Apparently the General and I have some trust issues to work through because he looks to Tabitha for confirmation. She rolls her eyes. “Duh-huh.”

  Immediately the room comes alive. Murmurs elevate to shouts. The monitors flicker and whir. Forests vanish, snowy wastelands appear.

  “Next fly-over?” someone shouts.

  “I need thermal!”

  “Who’s on the ground in Alaska?”

  “Canadian special forces. They exist, right?”

  “Pull teams out from Mexico asap!”

  The General straightens, points at Tabitha. “I need coordinates. I need goddamn specifics, and I—”

  She already has the flash drive held out toward him. The General squints at it, but an aide grabs it from her before he has time to work out what it is. Moments later, the monitors show a map of the world, and begin to zoom in.

  White. Endless expanses of it. Featureless.

  And then, as the camera zooms closer, as grid lines expand—a small gray blip disrupts the uniformity. The camera pulls in. Three rough gray triangles grow to fill the screen.

  “Resolution’s for shit,” the General comments.

  “Working on it,” says one of the aides.

  I stand with Clyde, Tabitha, Felicity, Kayla, and Gran in the middle of the whirlwind, and feel a bit outnumbered.

  “I need an initial assessment of the defenses. Satellite sweeps.” The General points into the crowd. Whether it’s at random or he actually knows what each person here does, I have no idea. “And then,” he says, “I want to know how long it is until I can have a nuke up in the air and on its way.”

  Hold up a moment.

  “A nuke?” I say.

  The General turns and looks at me. “Son, the US of A had a population of three hundred and thirteen million people yesterday. Today it’s got maybe three hundred thousand. I want to make sure not a fucking molecule of that asshole remains. A nuke is only the first stop on the roadtrip of annihilation I have planned for this s.o.b.”

  A white-coated man at a computer raises his hand. “Sir, latest population estimates have us at around a hundred million survivors—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” snaps the General. “I’m trying to make a goddamn point.”

  And it is made. Three hundred thousand. A hundred million. Either way that’s more than two hundred million people that Version 2.0 has taken from this country alone. This one country. How many people will he take in England? In Europe. In Asia? This was just the first act for him. I have no doubt there’s more to come.

  Except… “We can’t nuke him,” I say. “You can’t.”

  “Boy—” I have been downgraded from son, apparently, “if you think you can order me around, I’ve got another think you can jam right up your—”

  “Listen,” I snap, because I don’t have time for this guy to screw two hundred million people out of the best chance they have. “Version 2.0 is running an electrobiothaumaturgical dispersal network.” I decide to not comment on how big of a deal it is that I just pronounced that correctly. “Thaumaturgy. That means the system requires the guy who created it to be alive, or it will collapse.”

  “And on what goddamn planet is there a person who wants to keep that thing up and running?” He raises a hand and whether it’s to dismiss or backhand me, I’m not sure.

  Still, I try to grab the time to spell it out for him. “We need it in place so we can hack it, control it, and reverse it.” Now I’ve said that, it sounds like an awkward rap lyric from my equally awkward teenage years, but pointing that out won’t really help me either. I plow on. “We can take it over, disperse a code that removes Clyde from people’s brains. We can save everyone.”

  The General’s brow creases.

  “Actually, he
is right,” Clyde points out. I just wish he didn’t sound surprised.

  “Shut up, tin man.” The General points to each of us in turn. “Now let me get this straight. I did not invite you here. You are not my guests. The only one among you with any sort of authority is Agent Monk.” It takes me a moment to realize that he’s referencing Gran’s real name. “And let me assure you, that ain’t much authority. Way I see it is you are the guys who were meant to stop this, and it sure as shit ain’t stopped. So now it’s my turn. And I am nuking this bastard. And that is the last goddamn time I am explaining myself to any of you. You have problems, you can deal with them outside of this base, in between the zombie attacks. Otherwise, find a way to be goddamn helpful, or get the fuck out of my face.”

  “Erm, sir.” It is the lab-coated hand-raiser again. “About those nukes…”

  “Your next words better be about how far we’re going to shove them up this AI’s goddamn asshole.” The General seems to be a man very much in touch with his own feelings.

  The lab-coated man looks around in the same way a rat does when it realizes it’s cornered. “Erm…”

  “Spit it goddamn out.”

  “I’m getting information that nuclear is not going to be an option for at least a week. There was massive damage to the, erm…” he flicks an eye at the MI37 crowd, “facility where we’re keeping them.” The air quotes he’s using are almost audible. “The computer network is considerably compromised. We’re not getting anything off the ground.”

  The General’s eyes narrow. “You shitting me, son?”

  Lab-coat gulps. “Sir, no, sir.”

  The General whips around, his fury carrying his body with it. “Goddamn it!” The hushed murmurs go quiet again.

  I look to Felicity but she’s still looking pained and slightly confused.

  Shit. I really wish I didn’t seem to always end up being the person who said these kinds of things… “If we send in a strike team,” I say, “get into those buildings—” I point at the gray blobs on the screens, “—get some serious computer—”