I
HOW LONG AGO WAS it that a man in clothes like mine opened a briefcase like this and destroyed a chunk of this city? I don’t know exactly. Weeks, not months, but Axiom has already erased all memory of it. The buildings they destroyed are raised and repaired, cinched back into the grid with new support cables. There was no tragic disaster. No peaceful former leadership. No thrilling glimpse of a world without the plague. No past, no future—just the way things are.
I feel someone watching me, which is a strange thing to feel while ploughing through dense crowds, but after a quick scan, I find it: the beady black eye of a security camera, staring down at me from a rooftop. Another one across the street. Will they recognize me? Will they care if they do? My grandfather is long gone, swallowed by the angry earth, and my face will mean little to whoever’s running this mess now. I am just a man whose effect on the Dead was briefly intriguing, but now they’ve reproduced that effect—or a perverse imitation of it—and moved on. I am the past, and they live in the present.
Good.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The Orientation building. Once it was a place where the Living studied the Dead, looking for new ways to kill them. Then it inverted into a place of healing—of resurrection. And now? I can only guess. The windows are boarded over. Only the occasional muffled scream tells me we’ve come to the right place.
“Sir? Can you identify yourself please?”
Julie nudges me. With reluctance, I return to the present, and with even greater reluctance, I summon the wretch.
“What the hell is happening in this branch?” I snap back at the guard. “Is the founder’s grandson really getting ID’d? I’m here to inspect Orientation procedures. Open the door.”
“I’m sorry sir, this is a secure building and we need—”
“What you need is to know your fucking place, you beta piece of shit.” I step in close. “Does the name Atvist mean anything to you?”
He looks me up and down. He’s older than the one at the gate, his face leathery, his mustache flecked with gray, and my bully act is having less of an effect.
“Haven’t heard that name in a long time,” he says, meeting gaze just long enough for it to register as a challenge, then he looks down at his clipboard, snapping back to professionalism. “But Red Ties do have full access, so if I can just verify your SSN with the officer manifest…”
I like him, the wretch says. Management potential.
You’re done here, I reply, and shove him down the stairs.
“Okay,” I sigh. “How about this?”
I pop open the briefcase, lift the flap of black felt, and rest my finger on the red switch. Finally, I get a reaction.
“What’s that?” the guard says, but his cool sounds forced now.
“I think you know what it is.”
The other guards raise their rifles but the officer holds out his hand. He gives me a smirk that’s not very convincing. “Is this some kind of undead rights thing? Free the zombies?”
Without missing a beat, Julie jumps in. “Yeah, that’s right, that’s exactly right!” Her voice is shrill and twitchy and I almost laugh when I see her face: she’s a wild-eyed fanatic, twisting her hair and fidgeting from foot to foot. “Zombies are people, sick people, they’re us, they deserve to be free, they deserve to run…” Her scratches and bruises give the performance a druggy authenticity. The guard cringes away from her and she dials up the spittle flying off her syllables. “It’s time for you fascist fuckers to face the fact that people are people, plague or no plague, and we won’t put up with imprisonment!” She pauses for a breath while he wipes his face. “So there’s two ways we can set them free. By that”—she points to the door—“or by this.” She points to the briefcase. “Your choice.”
The guard looks uneasy but still unconvinced. He sizes me up and makes an exaggerated grimace of disdain, his mustache bristling like a dog’s hackles. “Bullshit. You’re no suicide bomber.”
“Julie,” I say calmly, “get clear. This is my sacrifice, not yours.”
“Bullshit!” he repeats as Julie backs away, but there’s some urgency in it now. “That bitch might be crazy enough but I know a pussy when I smell one. You’re not gonna blow yourself up for a few dozen corpses.”
Still gripping the briefcase’s handle, I hook my thumb into my collar and tug it aside, revealing the bite on my neck: raw purple flesh with deep teeth marks.
“I’m about to die anyway,” I say with a grin. “Might as well die for a reason.”
The guard’s face pales. “Shit,” he whispers.
He and his men scatter into the streets.
I feel the black worms shudder in outrage. How dare I put them to good use?
When the guards are out of sight, Julie comes back. She gives me an approving nod. “Strong performance.”
“You too.”
“Although this changes the plan a little.” She looks up at the security camera watching us and casually flips it off. “How long do you think we have?”
I feel the urge to laugh again. The “plan.” It was a ramshackle construction to begin with, built from gambles stacked on assumptions and duct-taped together with hope. Now it’s falling on our heads, and all we can do is run.
I answer Julie’s question with a firm shove to the door. I barge into the building like I own the place.
What I find inside might shock me more if I hadn’t seen each stage of its development, from a few bloody instruments in a log cabin to a university laboratory full of grotesque experiments to the entire population of Pittsburgh replaced by twisted corpses. What I find in this building is just one more rung down the ladder.
It’s a warehouse full of chairs. Office chairs, table chairs, folding chairs, recliners, a hellish discount furniture store. Each chair has a person strapped into it, connected to an array of wires and an IV line dangling from a hub on the ceiling. They all wear headphones, and some have screens in front of them, flashing incomprehensible text and imagery like an art installation that’s the opposite of thought-provoking. The flickering screens are the only illumination in the cavernous space. The only sound is the tinny noise shrieking from the headphones, along with the occasional scream or groan.
“Everybody out!” Julie bellows, startling a handful of men in white coats—doctors? Scientists? What do I call the practitioners of such strange arts? Do they even know what they’re creating here, or are they just following one order at a time, assembly line workers who never see the final product? They’re all listening to their walkies, no doubt receiving warnings of our little attack, so Julie doesn’t have to push her point. They flee the building without a word, and we’re left alone with the human resources.
“Julie!”
Sprout’s high voice carries from the far end of the warehouse, and we run toward it. They’re all there, a line of familiar faces inserted between rows of strangers, sweaty, feverish, but alive.
“Help,” Addis says, piercing me with those gleaming eyes. “Help Nora.”
Nora’s head hangs forward. Drool drips from her mouth.
“She’s bad,” M wheezes. “Get her first.”
Julie rushes to free her friend and I attend to my kids. They look like they have a bad flu, damp and paler than usual, but they’re lucid. “Hi,” Joan says as I disconnect tubes and wires.
“Hi, Joan,” I reply, going to work on their restraints. “Are you okay?”
“We’re okay,” Alex says. He looks down at the pink syrup oozing onto the floor. “Plague juice…supposed to make us Dead again.”