“Aw, hell,” Marko muttered.
“Baby,” I heard Lukens mutter.
“Patience,” Belling whispered, waving a negligent hand in our direction.
I thought, If this is a trap, if this is Belling fucking me in the ass again, then this is when it comes. I resisted the urge to check my gun’s action, to check the chamber and feel it move in my hands, and settled for tightening my grip on it. I was hot and my head swam, and the constant, maddening itching in my chest had taken on a burning edge I didn’t care for. I pictured the tiny little bastards inside me, tearing, ripping, filling me with my own blood. I straightened up, reached out my arm, and put the barrel of my gun against the back of his head. “Wa, I’m having a crisis of faith back here. And I swear, if you’ve-”
With another lurch the cab squealed into motion again and shuddered upward for several seconds. I left my gun where it was, and Belling ticked his head toward me slightly. “Patience, Mr. Cates.”
“Fuck you, patience. We are being eaten alive.”
“Mr. Cates, I was in Kampala thirty-three years ago with Mr. Orel. A young man. We’d been hired by the Americans to assassinate three Germans, because the Americans-well, those Americans-were trying to derail the Unification process. On entering the country our documents were questioned, we had some trouble escaping, and I was shot in the back. Bullet lodged in the muscle. Pain like you’ve never imagined. Every movement felt like someone was cutting me open with a dull blade, and there was a chance of paralysis. I did not complain. I did not recuse myself from the operation. The bullet was there when we were finished, and I had it taken care of then. I was patient.”
I tapped the back of his head sharply. “I am very impressed, Mr. Belling.”
There was a soft ding and the elevator stuttered to a halt. Belling grinned in the dim light, picked up his pry bar, and snapped the doors open with one grunting heave.
Horrible yellow electric light flooded our little space, making me wince. Belling turned back to us and drew one of his guns. Behind him was a blank white wall pockmarked with large jagged holes and an unbelievably wide blood streak that disappeared behind Belling’s smiling face, continued past him and off into infinity, clotty red turning a dull, crusty brown. The smell was sudden and monolithic, something so terrible and rotten that it defeated any attempt to break it down into its component horrors. I gagged and immediately convulsed, unable to breathe as my lungs heaved. I went down to my knees and puked stringy blood from my own lungs, my vision going black, little red dots dancing in front of my eyes.
I started to stagger out of the cab but Belling placed a hand on my chest.
“Avery,” he said, standing there backlit and terrible. “This is going to be hard. On you.”
I breathed shallowly and the red dots in my vision pulsed with my ragged heartbeat. “Why?”
For the first time I could remember, Belling looked unhappy. “Because some old friends are waiting for you.”
XXXV
Day Ten: Like Breathing Death Itself
“Explain it to me,” I snapped as I followed Belling into the hall. I was getting sick and tired of mysteries.
“It takes a bit of time,” he said conversationally, as if discussing the action on his gun or the juice rates on illegal loans off the Bowery. “First they have to die-that varies, as you’ve no doubt noticed. Some go right away, some linger for days while their chests collapse and they cough blood. Once they’re dead, there’s that marinating. They look dead. They are dead. But those tiny little buggers inside them are doing something.”
“Repairing damage,” Marko said without looking up from his handheld. “Bringing the physical shell of the body back into basic operating shape. Sealing off and rebuilding broken vessels. Taking cellular material from the portion of the body they won’t need anymore-the brain-and modifying it to create stem cells, which are used to repair arteries and destroyed organs.”
“Thank you, Zeke,” Belling rumbled, stopping outside a pair of swinging doors and turning back to us. The square panes of glass set into the doors showed a darkened room beyond lit only by a scattering of signs suspended from the ceiling, a rainbow of cheery colors in the gloom. “Whatever it is, people pop up after a period of time-hours sometimes, days mostly. They come back, Avery. They’re not who they were. They’re not even human anymore. They’ve got blood pumping through their veins, they’re breathing, but the nanobots are directing things. They’re like biological robots.” He looked at me. “Your people, Avery, were the first ones to go down with this. They’re the first ones to come back.” He jerked his head over his shoulder. “Kev’s got himself a couple of bodyguards. And more on the vine.”
I stared over his shoulder at the doors, feeling a slow anger filling me like syrup, steady and thick. I’d spent my whole life trying to walk the line-for this bullshit? This was my reward? I didn’t have people anymore; they’d been stolen from me. My city was gone, a shell filled with corpses, corpses that would, it seemed, soon be up and dancing to Dennis Squalor’s tune. I’d played by the rules for years, and I’d been beaten and shot at and thrown around like a fucking rag doll. I was sick and fucking tired of waiting for my reward.
“More on the vine,” I said dully.
Belling raised his eyebrow again, and I thought that one of these days I would hold the old man down and shave that fucking eyebrow off. “A few days ago, Mr. Cates, New York reached a tipping point. Most of the population was sick or dead, our friends the System Pigs, like the useless tubs of shit they are, were getting scarce-no offense, my dear-and things were going haywire everywhere. People had even stopped looting, Mr. Cates, if you can imagine it, because there was no longer any point. Thousands, packed into the hospital like logs. Five days ago they started accepting patients without Health Department Underskin Chips, and about three days ago there wasn’t any staff left to stop people. People just kept coming. Didn’t know what else to do, I suppose. Most are dead now, of course… for the moment.”
“For the moment,” I repeated. I felt like my latent psionic powers were bubbling up. If I just waited a moment or two, I’d be able to set people on fire with my fucking thoughts. This shit was unfair, and I wasn’t going to play along anymore.
“Last I checked, there were three operational in there,” Belling said. “I’m not sure if any others have come online. Avery,” he looked down and made a show of checking his gun as he spoke, “they’re not who they were, anymore. They’re robots, really. Just biological robots. Don’t forget that.”
I looked at him, suddenly feeling burned out, emotionless. I was just feet from putting an end to this, and I was ready to get it done, one way or another. “Monks?” I asked. “Old-school Monks?”
“On the roof, guarding the perimeter,” Belling said immediately. “Kev knows the cops are still out there.”
“Spooks, too,” Lukens drawled.
I looked at her, feeling cold, calm. “What?”
She tapped her ear. “Command’s shifted to Mr. Bendix again,” she said flatly, with her long vowels. “A government hover found our team. Colonel Hense is still field commander, though.” She looked at me for a moment, her round face pink and damp. “No one’s bothered to issue me any new orders, though, so I’m here, ain’t I?”
I nodded, looking back at the doors. “Let’s go.”
As he snapped his gun closed again Belling studied me for a moment before nodding and looking at Marko and Lukens.
“Zeke, keep that hand cannon pointed away from me. Dear, how many rounds do you have for that shredder?”
“Thousand, Grandpa,” Lukens said in her lazy tone, blinking her eyes like a cow, “plus fifty in the deck.”