The Digital Plague Read online

  Outside, there was a tangible tremor as the arriving hover settled onto the damp ground of the riverbank, and then silence. Immediately, I heard a cabin door sighing open, and two pairs of heavy feet hitting the ground.

  “Control, this is Vaideeki Six-RR-Eight calling in a crashed hover. It’s got a civvy tag, SFN-NY-Eighty-nine-a. Someone get on the wire and tell the DPH we’ve found one of their bricks.”

  The voice was smooth and unaccented, almost completely neutral, as if he’d learned English from aliens. I heard the heavy feet walking around.

  “Copy that, control,” the voice continued. “Tell the Spooks we’ll secure their property until they find the fucking time to get here, and we’ll breathe real shallow.”

  “What’s up?” said a second voice, just as neutral but lower and rougher, a smoker.

  “We have been officially advised that this is a quarantine site, Sanjay. The Department of Public Health thinks we might be in trouble.”

  “Fucking Spooks. Always doom and gloom from those freaks.”

  I could feel the girl’s dissipating body heat on me and smelled her hair with each breath, my throat trying to close up and gag me to death. One of them stuck his head into the cockpit; I could see it as a tan blob out of the corner of my eye. The smell of pipe tobacco filled the air. I hadn’t seen loose tobacco in years. My eyes were watering. I didn’t dare blink, but watery eyes wasn’t good either—they’d notice, the fucking System Pigs knew death almost as well as I did. The hover began to shake and groan as he pulled himself up into the cockpit.

  “Shit, look at this asshole,” the first voice—Vaideeki—said from above me. “Should have been strapped in, buddy.”

  “You hear the Spooks are supposed to be reforming the army?” the second one shouted from outside. “Can you believe that? What the fuck do the Undersecretaries know about security, about breaking heads?”

  “Forget it,” Vaideeki said. “Tricky Dick won’t allow that shit. Watch and see. That shit is going to blow up in their faces.” The hover vibrated again as a second set of steel-tipped boots climbed into the cockpit from the other side.

  “I got four more in the back,” the second voice said. “A lot of blood. Looks like five for five, to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vaideeki said. I wanted to get a good look at these two, at least keep them in sight, but I couldn’t take the risk. My eyes burned, dust falling on them like invisible snow and drying them up, turning them yellow and brittle. “Something’s off here, Sanjay. Look at the pilot. Why wasn’t he strapped in?”

  “Had generator trouble and got up to try something,” Sanjay offered. I pictured him shrugging.

  “Nah—think about it. You’re sticking a brick through the air and you lose power, you lose steering, whatever. Do you leap out of your seat and go apeshit? All the controls are designed to be within reach from the chair—that’s the point. You stay in the safety straps.”

  “All right, genius, you stay in the straps. This is some DPH idiot we’re talking about. One of Ruberto’s assholes. You’re asking me if I think one of those shitheads might panic and fuck up? Hell yeah.”

  “Them, too? All of them, just deciding to have a fucking dance party while the hover’s going down, hard? Get DPH on the wire. Find out what this hover was up to.”

  I heard the second cop talking into the air, implanted sensors transmitting his voice back to SSF HQ at The Rock. I swallowed slowly, almost choking and having to suppress an explosion of coughs that shook me silently, making my torso twitch. The girl wobbled slightly on top of me as I tried to get my body back under control.

  I heard the first one, Vaideeki, pulling himself into the cabin, grunting with the effort. My eyes were tearing fiercely and it was getting hard to stop them from fluttering. I gripped the blade tightly as one of his boots came into my peripheral vision, just a huge blurry object that shoved at the girl’s body on top of me, pushing her this way and that. I saw how it would unspool: he’d notice something—sweat seeping from my pores, the tears pooling in my eyes, the soft, barely-there rise and fall of my chest as I let air painfully slip slowly in and out of my burning, screaming lungs. Something; the System Pigs were too well trained to miss it all. He’d see something and pretend he hadn’t, a tiny hesitation, maybe, the only sign that something had registered. He’d even turn away from me and take an easy step, saying something to his partner, and then he’d whirl, tearing his gun from its holster hanging low near his hip.

  Maybe I’d even beat him. Maybe I’d flash the blade and sink it into his throat before he could get the shot off, or the shot would go wide as he staggered back in shock. And then what? And then I go for his gun, fast, pushing off the hundred pounds of dead fucking psionic and trying to snatch the auto from his slackening grip and come up ready to shoot before his partner—who I could only hope had been standing there with his mouth open and his dick in his hand while all this went on.

  More probably, I thought with a rising edge of near panic, the second cop would blow my head off about five seconds before I could even locate him. Most probably, I wouldn’t beat the first cop, and I’d just end up dead with nothing to show for it.

  The second cop’s voice burst into the cabin, so loud and sudden I almost jumped. “DPH isn’t giving us shit. Says it’s official business under Ruberto’s paper, we need a fucking writ to get into it. You wanna call the Colonel?”

  “Shit,” Vaideeki muttered. “Fuck that. We’ll put those pieces of shit down as uncooperative in the report and let it simmer. There’s a reckoning coming for all of them, brother, mark my words.”

  His lower body came into view: purple pants, the crease razor sharp, a long leather coat that swirled around his ankles, the boots shiny but serious, the sort of boots you cracked ribs with. Purple fucking pants. I could see him slowly turning around, feet planted on the back of the last row of seats, like he was studying the cabin carefully, looking for hints.

  “No shots,” he said to himself.

  The second cop grunted his way into the cabin, the hover shaking fiercely. “Whole thing’s gonna fall over we keep pushing our way through it,” he complained, letting loose a wet smoker’s cough that started my own convulsions anew, my whole body quivering with the effort to keep from sputtering. I narrowed myself down, concentrating on the blade in my hand, gripping as tightly as I could, keeping my arm loose and ready to move. I pushed everything else out of my mind and got ready, forcing my stiff muscles to relax, to go slack, tracking the two cops as they moved awkwardly through the cabin. When the moment came, I wasn’t going to waste any more time. I plotted how to throw the girl’s corpse off me, where I could plant my foot to get good leverage, what I could hang on to for stability.

  Suddenly, Vaideeki turned sharply, one arm shooting up. “Go ahead, Control,” he said in his smooth, advertisement voice.

  His partner continued to kick around the cabin, but you could tell from his movements that it was just for show, just to look busy. I wanted to stretch so badly I thought a bullet in the head might be worth it. This was how people ended up dying, I thought. It was a choice. You were lying there, suffering, fighting something, some black cancer in your gut or a bullet in your chest or a tumor like a rock in your brain, and you fought and fought until you couldn’t fucking stand it any longer, and you just gave up and let go, for that one small moment of happiness, worth it, worth everything.

  “Copy that, Control, on our way.” Vaideeki half turned, legs spread awkwardly to keep his balance. “We got an all-hands situation midtown. Old Pennsylvania Hotel.”

  “What about this mess?”

  Vaideeki started climbing down toward the cockpit. “Fuck, it’s the DPH’s brick. Let them come up here and clean it up. We’ve been ordered back into the city. You want to wire the King Worm and tell him no, you got higher priorities?”

  “Shit, no,” Sanjay muttered, following his partner.

  “Fucking animals downtown,” Vaideeki said as he planted one foot square on my upt
urned wrist, crushing it under his weight as he pulled himself over me. I almost stabbed him in the calf out of sudden reaction, pain shooting through me and lighting up all the other broken parts of me like a pinball hitting every damn bumper in sight. “What we need is a fucking natural disaster, clear everything out below Twenty-third. Don’t know why we don’t just go down there and clean that shit up.”

  “You said it,” Sanjay agreed, and then Vaideeki’s foot was off my arm, the pain burning down into the muscle, into the bone. Their voices faded as they went chatting through the cockpit and back out into the snow. I started to shake but kept my eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, tears leaking down into my hair. I kept as still as I could until I heard the displacers kick in, roaring into life, splitting my ears, the whole hover rocking gently in the field as they lifted off. I sat up and whimpered, moving every muscle spastically, dragging my sleeve across my watering eyes. I sat for a moment or two, stretching out, and then slowly climbed weakly to my feet and went back into the cockpit. I scanned the transmitter again, seeking out our frequencies, but on each and every one all I got was the hollow, empty sound.

  I jumped down into the snow and turned to face south. Well, I thought, this isn’t the worst day I’ve ever had. Hell, I’d been dead once, not so long ago, in a box pulled by a Monk. The city, distant, gleamed dully in the snowy light. I replaced the blade in my boot, pulled my coat around me, and started walking.

  VII

  Day Four:

  It Sure Gave me

  the Warm Fuzzies

  Energized somehow, I headed for the river’s edge and hired one of an endless supply of skiffs, one hundred yen to get downtown without having to deal with SSF checkpoints or any of the upright citizens who lived above Twenty-third. We were barely afloat, me and two scrawny black girls who pulled on their oars like champions, water slopping over the edge and soaking into my pants. It smelled overpoweringly like fish, probably because only the crazies ate anything out of the toxic river, and even then only once. Neither one said a fucking word, just staring back at me while they worked. The entire boat felt slimy to the touch, like it was dry-rotting beneath us.

  I stared back at the girls and thought about Glee. I should have done something. I should have done whatever it took, killed every last motherfucker in the place, torn the fucking building down around me—gotten her the fuck out of there. Every time I thought of her my whole body ached, but I kept coming back to her, to the sound of glass shattering.

  I was near the old stadium in twenty minutes, wet and shivering and in an evil mood. The old stadium was started before Unification, back when the world had been divided into different nations, and had never been completed. It remained untouched on the river’s edge, a bowl of concrete with a single huge letter Y attached to the facade, dangling by a rusty bolt. It was a huge squatter’s paradise, always filled with the near permanent camps of pickpockets, snuff gangs, and other assorted nuisances, all banded together for protection. These were not the hardasses of the System; these were people who nibbled on the edges, who prospered by staying out of sight and avoiding direct light.

  As we floated to the riverbank, no noise but the faint lapping of water and the soft grunts of the skinny girls, I could see the dim form of a tall, well-built man in a long coat, standing there burning a cigarette. I didn’t have a gun on me, but I still had my blade, and I gripped it low in my palm and out of sight. So far today just about everything had gone wrong, and one more surprise would not, in fact, surprise me.

  When the skiff was still a foot or two away from the bank, the figure spread his hands for me, his coat hanging open, in the international symbol for not going to kill you. I realized I knew him.

  “Mistah Cates,” he said, cocking his head at me, his huge and improbable hair swaying gently in the wind. “I’m here to be your fucking valet or some shit.” Around us the soft sound of the water kept its own time. He was a tall black guy with the biggest goddamn Afro I’d ever seen. It towered up from his triangular face and swayed in the wind, a reddish brown color.

  “I remember you,” I said, pointing at him. “Jabali, or some shit like that. A Taker, out of Baltimore, right?”

  He grinned and gave me a graceful little bow. “Charm City, all right,” he said. “Last few months I been hanging about Pick’s, and you gave me a couple odd jobs to do.” He squinted and scratched his head as I pulled myself gracelessly from the damp skiff onto the deep mud of the bank. “Your whatya-callit, the chip, in your hand, whatever, they saw you on the grid and shit, and I was the only one still standing, so I was sent to escort you.”

  I panted my way up next to him and gestured for a cigarette. Behind me, the girls paddled away wordlessly, heading back up the river in search of another desperate soul looking to get around Manhattan. As he fished for his smokes I took the opportunity to look Jabali over. I’d hired him a few times to track down a few people and he’d done fair work. I’d used a lot of Takers in my time to track people down; Gunners needed to know where their contracts were, after all, before we could kill them.

  I smiled at him as he flicked a lighter open for me, keeping my eyes on him while I lit up. I could tell he was terrified, and good thing; the System was all about your image. All Jabali knew was that I’d killed a lot of people, a lot of System Cops, and I’d never been touched. And I was rich, and I worked with Canny Orel—or so rumor had it. And here I was covered in dirt and blood after word had gone out that I’d been snatched by the fucking Department of Public Health of all things, and grinning at him just like I would if I was in the mood to murder someone in order to let off some steam.

  Then Jabali offered me a wide, sloppy grin. “Well, Mistah Cates,” he said, stressing the last syllable of mister to make it a little less a sign of respect, “what’s your pleasure? Seeing as I’m your entire entourage this evening.”

  I grimaced. I couldn’t fuck with someone this cheerful. I looked out into the night. The boat was already invisible, the two miserable girls gone. “Take me to Gleason,” I said, swallowing. “I want to see her.”

  He looked away, embarrassed. “Shit, boss,” he said, “I don’t know. Better take you back to the bar, let brighter folks help you out.”

  I nodded, and we started walking east, skirting the stadium. There weren’t a lot of people in the area, normally, aside from the squatters, but it felt unusually quiet. Even in this godforsaken area there were usually a few bums, a few pocket slicers looking to roll you, a couple of menacing Augment junkies trying to intimidate you long-range. As we ate up blocks we saw almost no one, little rainbow puddles of slick, oily melted snow everywhere.

  I waited a few minutes, feeling like a coward. “How’d she die?” I finally managed, my heart pounding, my throat swollen.

  He shrugged. “Something goin’ around. A lot of people down at Pick’s are coming down with it. It’s fucking nasty.” I kept my eyes grimly ahead, but saw him glance nervously at me as we walked. “Uh, she went fast, boss. When she came in, lookin’ like a drowned rat and telling us how you got scooped uptown, she was pretty bad. Was like that for an hour or two, and then just got . . . worse.” He shook his head. “Nasty.” I saw him look back at me. “You know, boss, you maybe don’t want to see her. You maybe shouldn’t even come by Pick’s, seeing as there’s this shit going around. A bunch of people around the place come down sick. I started to think I was startin’ to feel shitty, but I feel okay now.” He grinned. “Take more than a little bug to take down Jabali. Jabali’s got the strength.”

  I pictured Glee back at the restaurant. She’d looked a little sick, a little feverish. What the fuck killed you in a damn day? I tried to remember when I’d noticed her coughing, had it been the day before? Right after we’d gotten back from Newark. I reached up and touched the swollen spot on my neck, still refusing to heal up.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. By the time we were near Pickering’s the streets felt almost normal again, with the usual crush of people moving disco
ntentedly up and down the street, the smell of sweat pushing into everything. The Vids we passed on their high poles were silently beaming the news to us: a spontaneous peace demonstration had broken out in Tokyo celebrating the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of Unification. This complete with video footage of smiling Japanese holding signs and chanting. It sure gave me the warm fuzzies. Then a good-looking brunette was smiling far too widely as she silently informed us that fifty-five thousand people were assumed dead after a landslide in the slums of New Delhi. A square of video in the corner showed people screaming, intercut with some jackass Undersecretary making a speech that involved waving his arms quite a bit.

  For a few steps I just contemplated the crowd, the spoiling blood of the System. There was a small commotion up the block, a sudden swirling of people that drew my eye. I opened my stance a little, getting my coat out of the way, and watched as a small hollow appeared in the stream of traffic, giving someone a lot of room. I just stared as he got nearer. Even without the blue-black bruises up and down his arms and on his face, one look told you this bastard was dead—he just hadn’t realized it yet. He had that wasted-thin look, his skin yellowish and papery, stretched tight over his bones. He was tall, but walked with such a loopy, bent-over gait he looked shrunken. Blood, deep, deep red, was leaking from his nose and one corner of his mouth, meeting up as it trickled down his neck, forming one thick rope of death. The good news was, he didn’t smell like sweat. The bad news was, he smelled like he’d been dead for a week, the reek crawling up your nostrils and clawing at you, making your eyes water.

  “Help me,” he breathed, barely audible. “Help me.”

  I watched him, unable to look away, something like slow-motion panic welling up inside me. Fifteen or twenty feet past me, he suddenly paused and collapsed, just going down on the spot as if someone had knocked his stick legs out from under him. He lay in a heap, convulsing for a few seconds as I stared, the System moving past him at a safe distance. He struggled up onto his elbows, panting and staring as if his goal was in sight, and choked up an incredible mass of red phlegm, thick and stringy. He seemed to steady after that, and for a moment I thought he might gather himself and climb back to his feet. Instead, he collapsed again and lay perfectly still. The crowd kept bubbling around him, some people turning to look, others just keeping their eyes straight ahead.