The Digital Plague (31 page)

“Who I
am?
” the voice interrupted. “Shit, five days ago I was a stockbroker who hovered upstate once a week to hunt,” he said.

“—but
we
are police, and we don’t fucking
go around.
”

Without a command, five Stormers swung their shredders around in unison and opened up on the windows, the roar pushing all other sound out of the way, forming a wall of earsplitting noise. This was my cue, and I took off, pulling my gun from my pocket and throwing myself against the building, flattening my body as much as I could. I took a moment to let my coughs rack me, an explosion that sent more bloody phlegm jetting onto the pavement, and then I pushed off and sprinted for the corner. At the base of the building, the snipers above couldn’t even see me, and the Stormers’ attention was directed upward. I was at the corner, skidding into a sharp turn to my left, when some bright thing noticed me and belatedly tried to cut me down, shredder shells slicing into the facade next to me as I disappeared behind it.

I didn’t stop. At ground level sat a long, narrow window that five or so years ago I’d been just able to shimmy through. It had been boarded up from the inside with the same gray wood. Running, I leveled my gun and shattered the window with two careful shots and then dived for it, wincing in anticipation of a dozen deep gashes from the jagged glass. I wasn’t disappointed. The wood gave like cardboard, tearing from the inner wall with a high-pitched squeak, and I managed to get my head and neck through without tearing open something vital, wriggling through more easily than I remembered, cutting myself deeply on my arms and thighs. It seemed to take forever to pull myself through as I envisioned being shot in the ass—a perfect way for me to go, I thought:
Avery Cates, world’s greatest Gunner, shot in the ass while running away from his enemies.

Dropping farther than I remembered to the cold concrete floor, I lay there panting, a gurgling chuckle that mutated into more coughing. Something damp slowly soaked into my pants.

Shit,
I thought,
I’m fucking dying.

It didn’t matter—the real question wasn’t how long I had to live, but how long I had before I was too sick to do anything. I rolled over and pushed myself up onto my feet. It was dark, and I felt gritty as concrete dust stuck to my bloody wounds. Outside I could hear a firefight—shredders mixed with the sound of high-powered hunting rifles owned by rich boys. Rich boys who’d actually survived and gotten ruthless. And here I was inside their perimeter, about to shove these nanobots right up their collective asses.

There wasn’t time to look the place over, to recollect floor plans and memorize exits. I saw stairs in the gloom and I ran for them, every breath painful, like razors inside my lungs. Moving as quietly as I could, I took the steps two at a time, the old wood groaning under my weight. At the top I didn’t even have time to ponder the soft-looking wooden door before it was torn open and I brought up my gun in an automatic response. A fat, puffing bald man appeared in the door frame, dressed in some ridiculous outfit that approximated combat armor: a dark, heavy vest; tough, thick pants tucked into heavy-duty boots; an ammo belt slung jauntily across his shoulders. He stared at me in red-faced shock for a second, his rifle—a nice, expensive item, but semiauto and too slow on the refire for practical use in my world—pointed lazily at his feet.

I gave him a second to make a choice. It had been a long time since I’d been a free agent, and to celebrate not having any dead friends to Push me or angry cops to compel me, I waited until his hand twitched the gun up at me. Then I squeezed the trigger and shot him in the face, knocking him backward into the opposite wall.

I ducked my head into the hall for a quick look, but there was no one else. Stepping over his legs, I moved quickly, gun held low and away from me. It was a long hall, stretching from the back to the front of the building. A frozen escalator led upward to my left as I coasted forward in the gloom—all the windows had been diligently boarded up—the dust drifting around me making everything hazy and making my chest heave with the urge to tear itself up again. I sorted my dim memories of the place and knew I needed back access, second or third floor, although I had to assume all windows had been blocked.

I heard feet on the upper floors, pounding down toward me.
Amateurs,
I thought as I glided around to the base of the escalator, crouching and peering upward. I didn’t take any joy in it. Killing assholes who thought picking up a gun made them tough guys was an occupational hazard and always had been, and besides, I was killing them just by being there, and in my opinion a bullet to the head was a lot more humane.

Waiting patiently, gun poised but held down a little to make me take a second before unloading, I contemplated the dusty gloom above and wondered what their plan had been. Just survive for as long as possible, see if their luck changed? Maybe the plague would burn itself out, maybe the government would find a cure, come flying in on rainbow-colored hovers, calling its children home. Rich folks usually thought the System would take care of them, but a funny thing happened when all that yen became worth approximately zero: you became dead weight.

Dust undisturbed since the start of time crowded the air around me, giving it texture and choking me. Two men, beefy and sweating in their cobbled-up combat uniforms, swung obliviously around the handrail onto the dead escalator. I shot the first in the chest, taking my time, and as he tumbled down toward me I sighted on the second guy, who’d stopped cold on the fourth step, looking almost comically shocked. He moved to turn back as I squeezed the trigger again, and my shot must have split some hairs on his neck as it missed, forcing me to come halfway out of my crouch and squint up at him, nailing him in the back as he reached the top of the escalator just as his buddy crashed into me, knocking me back, stumbling to keep my balance.

The second man thumped down the steps and onto his buddy with a soft moan. I put another shell into the top of his head, ending it. I thought about adding him to my list and then wondered how I’d account for the people who’d died from this so far. Did it matter anymore? I’d killed the world. Individuals didn’t make any difference.

Chest burning, sweat dripping down my back, I crouched between the bodies and peered up again, listening. I could hear a lot of noise above, but it was muffled by flooring and drywall. Trying to control my breathing, I took the escalator steps two at a time. Outside, the firefight was still going on, but in bursts as the Stormers patiently waited for the snipers to reveal their positions.

At the top of the escalator, I ducked down behind the low railing and chanced a quick look around. No one was on the other side, and I heard nothing on the next flight of steps. I allowed myself one mighty cough, a powerful spasm that brought another glob of rusty-tasting snot up through my throat with a searing jolt of pain, like I was dragging chunks of my lungs up into my mouth. I looked toward the back of the building, where two widely spaced windows had been boarded over pretty solidly, no light creeping in through gaps or cracks, the wood in pretty good condition. Three doors faced the escalator on the opposite wall, none particularly forbidding, all tightly shut.

I crept around the low divider and backed slowly down the hall until I had a good view of the next escalator, which had a rise about twice that of the first and disappeared into a worrying gloom. While I stood there contemplating my situation, the middle door to my left groaned open, comically loud, and I brought my piece to bear on it just as a short, bearded man poked his head out, looking away from me with such exaggerated care that some leftover sense of honor prevented me from nailing him in the back of his head. Seconds ticked by, the distant gunfire a comforting background noise while I stared at his bald spot, a wide circle of pale flesh in the midst of his thick black hair. I just wanted him to look at me. Shooting an idiot in the back when he didn’t even know you were there wasn’t right, even if you knew he’d happily kill you if given the chance.

The other two doors opened almost simultaneously. I blinked and made myself wait an extra two ragged heartbeats for both doors to be mostly open, and then I put a bullet into that bald spot, thinking I’d done what I could to satisfy useless honor. I spun into the nearest door and put another shell into some old man’s neck, forty if he was a day, who stumbled backward into shadows clutching at his bloodied throat, rifle clattering to the floor. I leaped across the hallway into the room behind him, following him as he spluttered backward, stumbling over his own feet and dropping to the floor.

Two more were kneeling by the front windows, pretty impressive sniper rifles mounted on the sills, the barrels moving through narrow slits they’d cut into the boards. The wood didn’t give them any armor protection, but by kneeling on the floor they had a decent field of vision, weren’t very exposed, and could rake the street below with their careful, sissy shots. Seeing me, they both flopped around squawking. With their rifles bolted to the fucking windows and without any backup weapons, they were a couple of chumps. I knew it was a sloppy move, but I dropped my arm and ignored them. They weren’t a threat. Throwing myself back against the wall just inside the door, with a tearing pain in my splinted leg, I waited a moment, forcing myself to listen, my breathing loud and raspy.

Three breaths, and I ducked out into the hall. A shot sizzled over my head and
thunked
into the wall above me. I put a quick shell into the kneecap directly across from me, dropping the figure into a ball that squirmed and screamed. The hall was clear, so I tossed my clip and fished out a fresh one just as a boot edged out of the far doorway. I pushed off and rolled back into the front room, slammed my clip home and racked a shell into the chamber, then rolled back out. This one was a big round guy, a fucking blueberry in a tight black bodysuit—the latest fashion, I supposed, for facing Armageddon with the
best people.
I was afraid a bullet in the gut would just be absorbed and processed, so I ticked upward. The blueberry had his rifle slung over his shoulder, and the pistol in his hand shook terribly. As I moved my arm up he fired, the gun jerking in his hand, sending another shell about a foot above me. I held my breath, chest heaving, and showed him the right way to do it.

I opened my mouth and sucked in air, my chest heaving, and as I struggled to my feet, face feeling tight with blood, I coughed uncontrollably, spittle drooling from my mouth as I stumbled forward, pushing myself into the middle room long enough to see five empty cots and a lot of trash. I whirled and stumbled back out, turning around to sweep the hallway as I stepped into the final room. The spasm passed, and I gulped in mouthfuls of hot, stuffy air.

The room was empty. In the back were two more windows covered by thick boards, one with a sniper rifle bolted into place, the other hinged, a large padlock holding it shut.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. I shot the lock off and staggered for it, pulling the boards up and staring out into the back garden, the huge storm drain exactly as I remembered it, open, yawning.

Pushing my gun into a pocket, I climbed out onto the rusted fire escape and slid down the steep ladder, dropping the last few feet and landing on my ass to spare my splinted leg, teeth rattling in my head. Behind me everything had gone ominously quiet, so I kept moving, pushing up onto my stiff leg and hobbling over to the drain. The silence behind me was worrying, and pushed me along like a sour wind, urging me along. At the edge of the drain I sat down and slid my legs over, easing myself down until I was hanging from the lip. Bracing myself, I dropped the last few feet into a familiar damp sludge, pain shooting up from my fractured leg.

Everything was starting to make sense again: I was back in the sewers.

Day Ten:
This is a Controlled
Burn

Unconcerned with Best Practices—coughing up sewage and my own blood, I was ready to take a head shot and be done with it—coming up was like being born again. Covered in blood and grime, I pushed my way through a narrow shaft, oozing out onto the damp floor of a subbasement far below street level. It was cold, and I lay there hacking up loose, rust-flavored phlegm and shivering, feeling sorry for myself. I should have been at the top of my game by now, rich and happy. Instead, here I was buried underground, dying and alone. I’d wasted the past five years on petty revenge, and for what? A few dead cops, the System still alive and well, Dick Marin still immortal and everywhere.

Me, dying alone and underground. The game had been stacked against me, and I didn’t like it. I intended to find some way to shake it up.

After a minute or two of gasping on the cold concrete like a fish out of water, I felt my chest ease up a little and the burning gashes on my arms and thighs subsided. I got to my feet and tried to get my bearings. I knew the sewers, and finding Bellevue through them hadn’t been so hard, but I’d never been on this level, and my memories weren’t very helpful. Bellevue was a huge complex, and wasn’t designed for internal defense—there was no easy way to close off sections of it. As I crept around the gloomy space, feet squishing inside my tattered boots, leg aching steadily, I imagined the Monks spread thin, concentrating on the perimeter in order to defend against an external assault, the interior of the complex empty and cavernous.

The floor sloped upward, the room growing brighter as I walked, until I was standing at the bottom of a softly humming escalator, the illuminated edges of the steps gliding upward in a steady, mesmerizing rhythm.
Hell,
I thought,
the Monks have power.
The rich assholes had been in one small building and they’d been sleeping on cots, eating nutrition tabs, and crapping in a fucking hole in the floor. Maybe the Monks were going to inherit the earth after all.