Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones

by Saul Tanpepper

  I ping Micah as soon as I’m sure Stephen’s dead. I leave him tied up, just in case he reanimates. He won’t.

  “Yeah, well, good riddance to him,” Micah says. “He was a pain in the ass. He deserved to die.”

  “Nobody deserves to die,” I mutter.

  As bad as he was, I still feel sorry for him. And Tanya. Especially Tanya. There’s been too much killing: Mabel; the man from Arc, who Mabel killed, though only because I killed her; and now these two.

  Has it really only been four people? It seems like so many more.

  You had to kill Mabel and Tanya twice. And all those IUs…

  It has to stop.

  “Have you found a crane?” I ask.

  “Not yet. I’m starting to head back, though,” he tells me. Through the Link’s viewfinder I can see several loops of rope over his shoulders and the darkening sky beyond.

  “Any IUs?”

  “One. Too far away to worry about.”

  “Better hurry then. It’s getting dark.”

  He looks away for a moment. “Oh, I also found another tablet computer.”

  “So? We found a laptop in the first house we came to here. It won’t work. The battery’ll be dead.”

  Batteries are another piece of old tech we don’t use anymore. Pretty much anything we use now is all powered by remote charging.

  “It works.”

  “Really? How is that even possible?”

  “Found it plugged into the wall at a house with solar panels.”

  “Honestly? I thought Chinese products were banned during The Embargo.”

  “Well, look who’s been paying attention in History Class.” His Link jiggles as he walks, making my already-queasy stomach even more unsettled. “Must’ve been American-made. Anyway, this house still has the panels and they still work. A few houses do, it seems. And what’s more, Jess, there’s other stuff inside that still works.”

  “What else could we possibly need? A coffeemaker?”

  “That would be nice. But no. I’m thinking more like lights. It’s going to be a long, dark night without them.”

  He tells me where the house is and I tell him I’ll meet him there in a few minutes.

  I gather my pack and stop one last time to check on Stephen. He’s still lying on the floor where I left him.

  Before I leave, I grab a couple blankets from the beds and use them to cover the bodies. I don’t know what’ll happen to them, and I wish there was something more I could do or say, but I’m not a religious person and cremating them like we do in the real world is out of the question.

  I find the other house less than five minutes later. A lamp shines dully above the door, covered in cobwebs and filled with the carcasses of thousands of flies. Dusk is quickly rolling in, turning the sky orange. I hurry over and try the knob and find it open, but I don’t go inside. Instead, I sit in the far corner of the porch and watch through the openings in the railing for movement. Even with artificial lighting inside, there’s no way I’m going into the house alone. I’ll wait for Micah first.

  He arrives just as the last bit of orange fades from the sky and dark blue turns to purple. He slips like a ghost across the yard and is at the door before I even realize it.

  “Psst!”

  He doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. “Knew you were there the whole time, Jess. Come inside. It’s safe.”

  “You checked?”

  “Earlier. There’s nothing here,” he insists. He points at the Gameland wall a few hundred feet away. “I doubt there’s even an Undead within a quarter mile of here.”

  “You said you saw one.”

  “Yeah, but it was far away.”

  “Besides, it only works on implants,” I add. “IUs don’t have implants.”

  He gives me a look. “I know you can feel it, too, Jess. Just not as much as the rest of us. Besides, it looks like Arc and their Players have decimated the IU population.”

  “Why?”

  “So, Arc can reclaim the entire island. They tried hunting. Remember? Now they use Players to do it and call it a game. Same outcome, less protest. They’re clearing the island so they can rebuild and repopulate it with the living.”

  I remember the plaque at the Citizen Registration office in the Carcher Building the day I went to get my replacement Link in Hartford. Edwin Carcher had made his fortune buying land devastated by flooding and then reselling it at a premium when the waters receded. It’s the same principle. Arc would stand to make an ungodly amount of money selling the property here. After all, it’s already built up. All the infrastructure is still intact.

  “Do you think we’ll get any coming by because of the light?”

  “Like moths, you mean?” He laughs and shakes his head. “They won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  He points. “The grass in the yard isn’t trampled down. Now, are you coming?”

  He opens the door and waits for me.

  “Oh, by the way, I found a crane. It’s behind some fencing and there’s a gate—chained up, of course and topped by barbed wire—but we should be able to get in pretty easily.”

  “Have you heard anything from the others?” I ask.

  He nods, dropping the rope onto an overstuffed chair, raising a cloud of dust. “Just got a ping from Jake a few minutes ago. They’re there. Now they’re trying to figure out a way in.”

  “What’s their plan?”

  “Digging underneath the fence.”

  “That’ll take hours. And there’s bound to be IUs.”

  “They’re fine, Jess. Stop worrying. Jake’s keeping watch.”

  “Figures. That lazy son-of-a—”

  “Now now. You’re taking this too personally.”

  “Of course I’m taking this personally,” I grumble.

  He laughs easily. Typical Micah—typical old Micah.

  “Did something happen to you out there?” I ask him.

  He turns, perplexed.

  “It’s just that you’ve been so somber and jumpy lately, ever since your…”

  Breakdown?

  “I mean, you haven’t been acting very much like yourself.”

  He ignores me and instead unshoulders his backpack and opens it, drawing out a large, thin, white rectangular device. “This is a much nicer tablet than the other one. And it was made by the same company that as the music player in my car. See?”

  “Wonder what happened to them.”

  “Swallowed up by Arc during National Restructuring. Either that or they folded when the Cloud collapsed.”

  “So you’ve remembered how to code?”

  He takes some wires and connects his Link to the tablet, then boots it up. “I haven’t forgotten everything. I’m uploading Ashley’s hacking algorithm onto the tablet. And the failsafe outputs.” He quickly navigates his way through the device, looking as if he’s used one just like it all his life. It looks a lot more advanced than the interface on his old tablet, but for me it’s still frustratingly two-dimensional.

  “Muscle memory,” he says, distractedly. “I find that if I just shut my brain off and let my fingers do the thinking, I can do things I can’t remember knowing how to do.” He stops and a look of frustration comes over him. “But then I suddenly hit a brick wall and…nothing.”

  I walk over to the window. It’s completely dark outside now. “We should probably turn the lights off and go deeper into the house. I feel like we’re being watched.”

  He nods, but doesn’t look up, even as he follows me through the rooms. We find a small laundry alcove with enough space for us to sit on the floor inside and close the accordion doors. Micah leans against a washer and keeps trying to reteach himself how to code. As I settle to the floor, finally letting my exhaustion sweep over me, my Link pings.

  “It’s Ash,” I say. Micah nods and grunts.

  “We’re through the fence,” she says.

  “That was fast.”

  “Yeah, well, Jake found a tree hanging over it.
An easy climb. Good thing too, since the digging was starting to draw IUs out.”

  I nudge Micah to let him know I told him so.

  “There doesn’t seem to be very many. This place is out in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, this way there’s no hole for the zombies to crawl through.” She looks away from her Link for a second. I can barely see her face in the gloom.

  “Hold on a sec, Ash,” I say. “I want to ask Micah something. He’s on another tablet he found and is trying to teach himself how to code again.”

  I turn to Micah and ask him if he’s getting anything.

  His face is red and he looks like he’s about to burst. “Not really. I thought I had something, but then—”

  Then his fingers start flying again. I don’t interrupt him. I just watch, fascinated, as he bites his tongue between his teeth and concentrates on the screen with a manic intensity I haven’t seen since he and Ash broke the code for Zpocalypto several weeks ago.

  “I really don’t like this place,” Ashley whispers. “It gives me the creeps.”

  Micah stops and groans. “It’s gone again,” he says. He bangs his head on the surface of the washer.

  “Stop it,” I tell him. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Just take a break.”

  I turn back to the Link. Ash is still looking away. I ask her what’s happening.

  “There’s a bunch of buildings, three or four. They’re not very big, but they each have at least a couple doors to get in and out. They’re all locked, of course.”

  I hear a faint banging noise in the background and ask what that is.

  “The boys are using the shovels to try and break in.”

  “Isn’t that going to bring more IUs?”

  Ash rolls her eyes. “Tell me about it. I keep telling…” Her face pivots completely out of the screen, leaving me staring at blackness.

  “Ash?”

  “Can you hear them?” she asks, returning.

  Then I do, the unholy moans of the Undead, a chorus of dozens at least, their voices conjoined in a ululation of such utter desolation that it hollows me out inside.

  “I thought you said there weren’t many.”

  “There are now. Can you see them?”

  “No. Everything’s black. It’s too dark.”

  She turns the Link back to her face. “Looks like we’re stuck here for the night. I just hope they don’t break down the fence.”

  “I thought it was electrified.”

  “It is. A couple of them got zapped. They really stink, worse than burning meat.”

  “It’s the plastination,” I tell her. “There’s a protein that causes the tissue to turn into something like rubber. You’ll learn about it this year in your Physiology and Behavior of Reanimates class.”

  “School,” she mutters. “I’d almost forgotten.”

  “Six days left of summer vacay,” I tell her.

  She laughs a bitter laugh. “Not much of a vacation. I guess we got more than we bargained for, didn’t we, Jess?”

  “Yeah, and the worst part is we’ll never even be able to tell anyone about most of it.”

  “Screw that. I’m telling everyone how you kicked that IU’s ass in the Midtown tunnel that first day.”

  “Kel was there, too. It wasn’t just me.”

  Mentioning Kelly makes me choke up. I don’t know how I’m going to fix him. I don’t even know if we can. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Besides, Ash, if you mention the tunnel, then everyone’ll know we’re responsible for bringing the IUs into south Manhattan. That wouldn’t be such a good thing.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She sighs and looks away and I can almost read in her face that she’s thinking we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’ll be able to go right back to our old lives again. There’ll be an investigation, especially since we lied to the police about not knowing where Kelly went. And even if we could somehow convince the authorities that we just happened to drop completely off the Stream for a week, they’re bound to connect us to Tanya. She’ll never be coming back.

  “I miss home,” Ashley says.

  “Me too.” I smile. “I even miss Eric.”

  “Gross! What about the Colonel?”

  “Well…”

  “Hold on, Jess. Looks like they’re coming back. They found the right building. I got to go. Jake and Reggie are high-fiving.”

  I shake my head. Two weeks ago, would we have thought we’d be high-fiving each other after witnessing one of us murder another person? With dozens of zombies standing just a few feet away? It’s all too surreal to believe.

  “Hey, Ashley?”

  Her face comes back on-screen. “Yeah?”

  “Be careful, okay? And good luck with the hack.”

  She nods. “Kelly’s smart. We’ll figure it out. He’s going to relay what he can download to me through the tablet. I’ll work the hack and send it back. And Jessie, I’m sorry about… Well, you know.”

  “Hey, it’s cool. Looks like Jake got you there safe and sound after all. He found the tree and got you inside.”

  She hesitates, then nods.

  “Now go get that thing out of your head.”

  Chapter 8

  I click Ashley off my Link and turn back to Micah, who’s just standing there with his head in his hands. He looks like he’s getting ready to pull out his hair.

  “Why can’t I remember?” he asks, his voice thick with despair.

  “It’ll come. You just need to relax.”

  I edge away from him and stand up and ask him if he wants anything to drink. He shakes his head, then taps the tablet screen half-heartedly, as if simply connecting with the thing might jog his memory or magically transfer something to him.

  “You used to love staring at game architecture,” I say. “Why don’t you start there?”

  He laughs bitterly. “What do you think I’ve been sitting here staring at? I can feel it coming, and then everything shifts and none of it makes any sense to me.”

  I sigh. “Tell you what. I’m going to go to the little girl’s room and, when I get back, I’ll run through a few things with you. Give you a refresher. I’m no hacker, but I do know a few things about coding. Maybe it’ll help.”

  As I make my way down the hallway, my eyes wander over the framed photographs hanging on the wall. It looks like a young couple used to live here, mid-twenties, their daughter of about five years old. She’s blond, pretty, wearing a white dress with a crimson sash around her waist and a crimson bow in her hair. She’s standing beside a metal swing set, her arms wrapped around an undeniably overfed white rabbit, which seems not to mind that its bottom half is dangling completely unsupported. It’s even got that same happy smile the girl is wearing.

  The pictures sadden me. Here is a family ripped from their home by the outbreak. I wonder where they ended up. I guess the girl would be about my age now, seventeen or eighteen.

  Out of curiosity, I wander around the corner and toward the unlit back of the house and strain my eyes to see if the swing set in the picture is out there. The faintest glow leaks from the hallway and out through the sliding glass door and onto the grass. And there it is, the ghostly metal skeleton, a pair of swings, a slide, all stained brown by rust and covered in vines. In the darkness with the breeze blowing the grass, the image wavers and for a brief moment the little girl is out there, sitting on one of the swings, the rabbit on her lap, and suddenly I’m so very homesick.

  I allow myself to sink into the image. The faint strands of an old forgotten lullaby come to me, a song sung by a mother, and I find myself humming along and feeling her fingers on my cheek, pulling my hair back and holding me close.

  But I can’t even be sure if these are memories or wishes. I blink them bitterly away, and the scene outside shifts again. There is no girl out in that ruination of a yard, no child sitting upon that swing and humming along with her mother. Both of them are gone to who knows where.

  There is only darkness and unkempt grass and imaginary ghosts. />
  I turn away from the window and make my way through the room into a second hallway. The doors for the bedrooms are all open. Only one stands closed, the bathroom. There won’t be any water in the toilet, but if I’m lucky there’ll be paper, a luxury.

  I grasp the knob and turn it and push open the door. A vanity twinkles in the gloom. Everything else is swathed in darkness as deep and mournful as a broken promise. I take a step in, feeling for the light switch, find it, flick it. The room remains dark.

  “Figures,” I say under my breath, as I step further into the gloom.

  Should I close the door? Micah might decide he needs to pee, too. He and Reggie—and sometimes Ash—find it amusing that I’m such a prude about such things. At Micah’s they almost never close the bathroom door all the way. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked in on one of them peeing, embarrassing myself more than them.

  I turn and push the door halfway closed—a compromise—leaving it open just enough to let in some of the light from the hallway, then I reach out to feel along the wall.

  And that’s when the fingers touch my arm.

  Chapter 9

  Micah collides into me in the hallway as I go running through the house, knocking several photographs off the wall. He grabs my arms and holds me.

  “Stop yelling!” he says, shaking me. “Jessie!”

  “I— It— There’s—”

  His eyes pong between me and the back of the house. “Jessie! What’s the matter?”

  “It was in the bathroom!” I scream, pulling on him, collapsing beneath his arms. “It’s coming! It grabbed me.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t see it!”

  He turns, straining his neck to see into the shadows. “There’s nothing there, Jessie. Calm down!”

  “No, it was in the bathroom! It touched me.” I shudder at the memory of its tiny, bone-dry fingers on my arm, the whisper of that plastic flesh.

  He steps back, but doesn’t let go of me. He’s still looking down the hall. I tilt my head to see, too. But there’s nothing there. He pulls me up and back into the laundry room and tells me to stay.

  “No! No, don’t leave me, Micah.”