State of Decay (33 page)

There were several iterations preceding that one. There were a lot of names in there. At least twenty had already been removed, and there were hundreds more.

Rather than try to mirror the entire database, I decided it would be safer to go through and just scan the names one at a time and copy them manually. As I got closer to the most recent version, I noticed one of the iterations actually increased the overall size by a small fraction instead of decreasing it.

Shuffling ahead to that entry, I brought it up to view it.

I jerked my hands back, but those cold fingers locked around my wrists.

Twisting my wrists, I knocked her hands away. I put a call in to Sean.

That was around the time Ohtomo dispatched the National Guard. There was a string of removals prior to that, in between.

It looked like in addition to that, the suicide bombing was referenced as well:

The equipment, bodies, and weapons Tai was bringing in, the victims of Faye’s killer, the recent bomb attacks; all of it was planned in advance.

Faye twitched in front of me, her eyes widening. All at once her body tensed up, cords standing out in her neck.

I backed off, recalling the miner and retreating from the memory I had accessed. Her fingers curled and I could see warnings spilling past. Was I too late? Had I already triggered it?

“Faye?” I asked out loud. She didn’t respond. Her eyes didn’t turn toward me.

I turned my attention back to the connection between us. The message hadn’t originated from her. It came over another connection to her that had just been opened.

Samuel never left.

An override code was running; he’d taken remote control of Faye’s systems. Her command center switched over. If he wanted to, he could shut her down completely.

The warnings stopped streaming by. Faye’s body relaxed.

“Nico?”

It was Faye. She looked up at me with eyes that were wide and innocent in their lack of understanding. I remembered back to the female revivor at Tai’s place, the way when she spoke it had seemed like some alien intelligence had spoken through her, referencing memories it had never experienced. It didn’t feel that way when Faye said my name. She said it the way she used to say it. She remembered me. Maybe her memories were corrupted during the transition, and maybe some were even false, but she remembered me.

“Nico, help me—”

By the time I heard the sound, it was too late. The sound of sliding metal ended with an abrupt crunch as something pounded into my chest, sending burning pain up my neck and down both arms, all the way to my palms. My reaction was too late, and by then I couldn’t move, not even to take a breath.

She was still staring up at me, those electric eyes looking faintly distressed. Her fingers touched my chest gently as beneath them a blade extended from the base of her palm to the center of my rib cage, the point buried somewhere inside. Neither of us could speak as the hydraulics hissed, unable to push any farther. With a snap the blade retracted, tugging free from me and disappearing back into her arm. She reeled above me as I fell back, my vision swimming with black blotches that turned everything dark.

“Nico?”

I couldn’t move. Even with my systems firing off, trying to right me, I couldn’t move a muscle. I sensed her there, still looking down on me as warm blood seeped through my shirt. Had she finally remembered me? Would she help me, or leave me?

I wondered that as the stream of warnings ceased and went out.

At my front door, I fumbled for the key. My hands were shaking badly, and all I wanted to do was to find it and get inside before the jerk next door came out, because I really didn’t think I could handle him right then. Whatever had made me get involved in this whole mess in the first place was a drunken mistake in judgment. I wasn’t cut out for any of it. I just wasn’t the kind of person who got involved in whatever it was I had gotten involved in.

I found the key and started to put it in the lock, but I couldn’t keep it steady. The tip of the key scratched around the keyhole as I moved closer to the knob. I wanted to forget any of it ever happened. I didn’t want to see Nico or the woman or any of them ever again. All I wanted was to get warm and watch TV, and drink until I stopped feeling like I did.

The tip of the key found the slot and I jammed it in, turned it, then pushed the door open and went inside, letting it swing shut and slam behind me. I turned the bolt, wishing there were three more of them.

After having not been in my apartment for a little while, I couldn’t help but notice it had an off smell. I needed to clean the place up. I threw my keys on the coffee table and shrugged out of my coat, hanging it on the rack. I felt dizzy. Why did he show that revivor to me? Why was he with that woman? Why was she chained, and what was he doing with her down there?

Shivering, I went into the kitchen and poured a drink, drained it, then poured another one. The heat moved down my throat into my belly, but when I wiped my face, my hand was still shaking and the sweat there was cold. That had been the woman from my dream. It was definitely her. Three more drinks, and the shaking still wouldn’t stop.

I hated the thing that Karen called my gift. From the bottom of my soul, I hated it all the way back to when I dreamed of my father’s mangled body, and every second since. I hated everything about it, but I learned something back in that storage room, and that was that hate it or no, I relied on it. I never realized until that moment how much I relied on it.

When I pushed on that revivor, I felt something I’d never felt before in my life. When I focused on her and nothing happened, it felt like I had gone blind. None of the colors appeared and I couldn’t sense any of her thoughts or her feelings or even her mood. Until she stepped out where I could see her, I hadn’t even known she was standing a few feet away from me. It was terrifying.

There was no way to make her go away, or make her go to sleep, or decide to leave me alone, or tell me who she was, how she got there, how she knew him . . . nothing. She could do whatever she wanted, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I couldn’t stop replaying that moment. There was just a gap, like a dark pit. Looking into it was like stepping through a door and finding no floor. It felt like if I pushed into that void, I would fall inside with no way of knowing what was down there or if it even had an end.

I drained the glass and poured out another one, and that’s when the ripples appeared in the air in front of me, right between where I was standing and the fridge. The distortion took the shape of a man, and then just like that there was someone standing there, as if he’d appeared from out of nowhere. The glass slipped out of my hand and smashed on the floor between us.

“Damn it!” I hissed.

He was a big man dressed in a jacket and coat, with some kind of cloak or poncho draped over that. The coat’s hood was up over his head. It struck me that it might have been the first time I actually saw a vision appear while I was watching.

“You guys need to start wearing bells,” I said. “Look at this.”

He stood there, not moving, as I grabbed a paper towel and sopped up the booze, pushing the broken glass away against the bottom of the counter. I grabbed a new glass and filled it.

“Look,” I said, feeling tears forming, “I don’t think I have anything left today, okay? How about you all leave me alone and let me just pass out tonight?”

He didn’t say anything; he just kept watching me.

“Please—”

He reached out and grabbed my shoulder. His hand was real. He wasn’t a dream or a hallucination; he was real.

He squeezed, and it hurt. I panicked, hitting at his arm, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

“Help!” I screamed.

I tried to focus on him and nothing happened. Just like earlier, I couldn’t see him or feel him. It was just like it had been with the dead woman in the storage unit: nothing but an empty, dark hole.

“You’re—”

He shook me hard and bashed me into the counter. Everything went white for a second when my head bounced off the wall; then he pulled me back toward him. No one had ever moved me like that; it was like I weighed nothing to him at all. Before I could do anything, I was dragged backward, out of the kitchen, and thrown down onto the sofa.

He was dead, just like the woman. It was a revivor, and I had no way to control it.

When I looked up, he was coming right toward me. I glanced to the front door and saw my next-door neighbor standing there. He was looking in, his eyes wide, but he wasn’t doing anything.

“Help!”

The dead man turned and saw him. For just a second, the old ginger man looked calm, almost confident, but as the revivor closed the distance, his eyes went wide and he just stared, like he was frozen.

With a loud snap, the revivor’s palm split apart and a big, sharp blade shot out of it. It arced over his head with a whistling sound, and the next thing I knew Red was gasping as blood began to gush out of his neck. The blade whipped around again and he grabbed his belly as a squiggly red mess spilled out into his bloody hands.

The big guy pulled me away, and I heard my neighbor’s body fall wetly onto the floor. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled something out, yanking the cap off of it with his mouth and spitting it onto the floor. It was a needle.

I struggled, but he was too strong. I felt a prick as the needle stuck into the side of my neck.

...but this isn’t how it happens
, I thought.
I’m supposed to meet her three times. . . .

He pulled the syringe away, and all of a sudden he convulsed. His eyes bugged out and his whole body started to shake as the fistful of my shirt slipped from his hand and I fell back onto the floor. When I looked up, Karen was there, standing behind him. She had something black in her hand with two prongs sticking out of it. She had stuck them right in the guy’s side, and I heard an electric popping sound.

She pulled the prongs away and the popping stopped. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t move and I fell over onto my side.

The guy turned around toward Karen. She tried to stick him again with the stun gun and he hit her hard, causing her to stumble, waving the stunner blindly. He batted her arm away and shoved her down onto the floor.

“Karen?” I mumbled, trying to focus. Blood was coming out of her nostrils and she was trying to get up as his foot stomped down and kicked the stunner away. I looked up in time to see the blade pulling back.

“Wait!” I screamed, holding up my hands. I tried to scramble back, putting myself between them as he got ready to cut her. “Wait! Don’t!”

He paused for just a second and looked from me to her, then back to me. I saw an orange light flicker behind his pale yellow eyes, and for a second it looked like he was reading something only he could see.

“I can fix it!” I said. Karen was shaking her head, and her eyes were starting to clear.

“Zoe, don’t. . . .”

With some effort, I managed to get back up on my feet. He watched me as I staggered a few steps closer to him.

“I can fix it,” I told him. The orange light continued to flicker in his eyes, and the blade was still poised like it was ready to strike.