Digital Plague

XXVIII Day Nine: Wave His Hands in the Air and Rain Death From the Sky

Afraid and too exhausted to do much of anything, Marko took longer to be coaxed out of hiding than to get the brick into the air. Sweating and jumping at every noise, he picked up the boards and cables Kieth had left behind and in a few moments a shudder passed through the hover, and we were in business. Talking in low voices among themselves, the Stormers finished pushing bodies out the drop-bay doors. Kiplinger had taken a bad shot to the chest, a sucking wound that wheezed with every shortening breath he took while his squad shouted around him, trying every useless trick in their field medical kit. He finally turned blue and died as they all shut the hell up, staring down at him and then looking at me. I just stared back, and they said nothing, dragging his body over to the doors and pushing him out with the rest.

I kept my eyes on the opposite wall, thinking back over the past week and farther back, to Westminster Abbey and Kev getting killed. He’d been dead, and an hour later so had Dennis Squalor. I’d ended up with Wa Belling as a partner. It should have been Kev. I realized that after all those years I didn’t really know what Belling’s motivations had been. With Kev I would have known, I would have had a friend at my side. And none of this shit would have happened.

I wondered how many people were dead now. How far it had spread. Kev-or the voice he kept talking about-had wanted me to be the source, and eventually to know it. To torture me with the idea that I’d killed everybody. The whole fucking world. I stared at the bare metal cabin wall, dented and perforated by bullet holes, my hands tight on my knees, scabs on my knuckles cracking and oozing blood. There wasn’t any point in keeping up my list anymore. I’d never even know most of the people I’d hustled off to death now.

Appearing quietly at my elbow, Hense sat down next to me and produced a small plastic canister. Making it rattle in my ear, she said, “Hungry?”

The moment she said it, I was. “Starving,” I said. I eyed the tiny box. “Ah, nutrition tabs. Breakfast of kings.”

She didn’t smile, but there was perhaps a tiny softening around her eyes that might have indicated mirth. I held out one scabby hand, noting with surprise that my pinky was bent in the middle in what looked like a painful way, and she shook three white pills into my palm. I dry-swallowed them and cursed them, my still hungry stomach clawing at itself.

As usual, the nutrition tabs made me nauseous almost instantly.

“I was Pushed once,” she said suddenly, her voice low. “Years ago. We raided an apartment in the Bowery, little shits selling homemade guns to the brats, causing us more fucking trouble than you’d believe from goddamn seven-year-olds with plastic single-shot peashooters. I bust into the bathroom and there’s this kid trying to wriggle through the window, but it’s a little too small for him and his clothes are so goddamn big his pants are being left behind and it’s just his bare ass staring at me. I yank him back and decide to throw a scare into him. I flip him over and I have this little speech prepared, but he looks at me and next thing I knew, I was letting that little shit walk right past me and feeling pretty good about it for a minute.” She shook a pill into her hand and popped it into her mouth. “I never saw that punk again, and I’ll tell you this: I’m glad, because that shit scared the hell out of me.”

I licked pill grit from my jagged teeth and thought, Hell, I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m being pitied by a System Pig.

Marko saved me from having to reply, shambling into the cabin looking sweaty and greasy, wiping his hands on his shirt. “We’re ready to go,” he said, his voice low and stretched out. “If anyone has any ideas about where.” He remained standing, and after a moment I looked up. To my sudden horror, he was looking at me, chewing his lip. “Mr. Cates,” he said. “I heard what Mr. Kieth said. About them just turning you off. A kill switch.”

I could smell more pity, pity from a man who would be dead just as quickly as me if things went in that downhill direction. To put a stop to it, I cleared my throat. “New York,” I said. “We have to go to New York.”

“Are you fucking insane?”

I turned sharply at the voice. Bendix had been tied securely to the safety netting in the rear of the hover, his arms and legs bent uncomfortably back, a thick blindfold wrapped around his eyes. If the hover crashed-which was entirely possible considering the damage the Monks had done to it-I put my money on Bendix being the only one of us who survived, he was so securely restrained.

Hense gestured, and two Stormers took a bead on Bendix, ready for the order.

“New York is a graveyard,” Bendix said forcefully. “I doubt anyone’s left alive there. There’s no government. We have no presence there. You might as well land in the fucking ocean and let us sink.”

“Mr. Bendix,” Hense said, standing up. “I advise you that you are being covered by two randomly placed troopers who have orders to shoot you at first sign of any psionic activity. Am I understood?”

He grinned, that puckered face twisting up, but he said nothing else. I looked at Marko.

“New York,” I said. “That’s where he wants me to go anyway, and I can’t risk the kill switch. Besides, that’s where he’ll be.”

“But why would he take Mr. Kieth to the same place we’re going?” Marko said, scrubbing his face with his filthy hands, leaving dark streaks on his cheeks.

I glanced at Bendix. “Because the Spook’s right-New York’s a fucking Ghost City. There’s no safer place for Kev and his merry men to hole up.”

From my right, Bendix’s congealed laughter filled the cabin. “Monks? Kev? Kev Gatz?”

I stared at him, my right eye giving a twitch. “You know him?”

He moved his head around as if sniffing the air. “Mr. Cates, the government naturally keeps track of all known terrorist organizations. Kev Gatz and his fellow cyborg refugees have been on our radar for some years now. His file is admittedly thin; we have almost no record of him prior to the Monk Riots.” His face twisted up again. “Our usual agents had tabs on his organization up until two days ago, when our usual agents… died.”

For a few seconds we all sat there in silence. Finally I licked my cracked lips. “Mr. Bendix, do you have a point?”

He nodded, opening his mouth as he did so and waggling his eyebrows under the blindfold. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cates. Three days ago our last official report on Gatz had his group seizing Bellevue Hospital Center with little resistance, the complex having been abandoned and occupied by itinerants of deteriorating health. You would have heard the report, officers, except you’d been burned off the force by then, of course.”

“Well, hell,” I said. “We get a fix on Kieth’s signal like before, you can call in a fucking missile strike or whatever. Kieth’s dead, this whole mess goes away.” A thin kernel of hope bloomed inside me, and I almost welcomed the idea of having to worry about getting away from Hense and Happling or whichever System Pigs stepped in to take their place.

I felt Marko looking at me, and I knew he’d heard me make my promise to Ty. I kept my eyes off him, but I still felt his scrutiny.

Bendix nodded. “Certainly. But you would have to put me in touch with my office.”

“Uh,” Marko said slowly, raising his hand, “there is one problem with that. When I got the hover going I tried a scan for Mr. Kieth. I can’t find him anymore.” He shrugged, an incredibly slow, lazy movement. “I think they’re shielding him.”

I closed my eyes. The Kev Gatz I’d known had been a burnout, a man who could make you dance and sing if he bent his mind to it but who sometimes didn’t seem capable of forming sentences. Now he was a goddamn cyborg mastermind. “All right, but I think Mr. Bendix is saying we know where they’re headed-Bellevue. Just take the shot. We’ll know soon enough if we hit the mark.”

We all looked at Bendix. His smile got even twistier, but he shook his head. “No.”

I almost jumped to my feet. This was it, this was a solution. This was burning out an infection. This was easy, and I wanted to squeeze an answer out of the goddamn assistant to the Undersecretary. Before I could find my voice, Hense spoke up.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Ms. Hense,” Bendix said, shaking his head. “The whole eastern seaboard is in turmoil as this spreads, and we’re starting to see flare-ups of the infection elsewhere in the System, probably spread by System Security Force personnel moving from place to place. We’ve lost huge numbers of assets and resources, and we’re struggling simply to maintain control in North America right now. Intact assets in the rest of the world must be preserved to guard against what is at the moment an inevitable spread of chaos and loss of life.” His smile faded a little. “We’re stretched thin as it is. You expect me to arrange for military assets to be transported to New York and expended for the chance?” He shook his head again. “No. Show me where Mr. Kieth is, and I will issue such an order. Not before.”

“Motherfucker,” I hissed, looking up at Hense. “Call the cops. Call your people.” The cops didn’t hesitate. The cops killed everything first and asking fucking questions later.

Hense didn’t look at me. “No, Mr. Cates,” she said quietly, looking at the Stormers around us. “We’re burned. No one will talk to us. We won’t get through to anyone.”

I stared at her, then at Happling, who looked like he was chewing his own tongue. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. You’re not police.”

I stood up, the action intended as dramatic but ending up slow and pathetic. “I’m not insane,” I said, turning to Marko. I hated him because he knew what I’d said to Kieth. “New York. We find Kieth and then Mr. Bendix will wave his hands in the air and rain death from the sky.” I looked around. Hense, Happling, Marko, and the Stormers were all focused on me. Except for Marko, they’d all wanted me dead not so long ago, but they were looking at me calmly, expectantly, as if I knew what our best move was.

“Fuck it,” I said, turning for the cockpit. “We do it the hard way. As fucking usual.”