Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds (2 page)

Or, more precisely, we grow new synapses that allow us to use this new, wonderful limb we’re all of a sudden attached to. It takes time, and practice. And now Jefferies is gone and the rest of us need to grow into his space.

We can’t leave blank areas. The zombies fester if we don’t throw light on them. We made that mistake with Siberia. And now Jefferies is gone.

If there’s a space, a patch of the world in the middle of our collective back we can’t contort to scratch, I might miss the one I need. The zombie with the right ghost.

I noticed something about the zombies right at the end of the world—I could network into a few of them. Not many, but a few. The other implanted thought this was just a glitch and a worthless one at that. What were we supposed to do with one or two influenced zombies? It’s not like we had the time or resources to figure out how to control one.

Stevens, one of the three hundred or so implanted in California who’d been at the forefront of the initial attempts to stop the end, had sent out a burst of info about artificial limb control, cyber-telepathy, mind snapshots—projects ranging over multiple work groups imbedded in a wide and diverse set of corporations and cultures.

The invisible technology was using the project data to connect the dots of control. He said we needed to figure out how to block the invasive programs, or turn them back onto the tech.

Stevens vanished within hours of the end, as did the majority of the Silicon Valley implanted, and took his ideas with him. I think they fought—and lost—the first real battle in this war. We will never know what really happened.

His burst stuck with me, and now I wonder—can I see the last moment before the zombie became non-human? Is there a mind snapshot in there? Most importantly, can I use it?

Amanda touches my arm, her face reflecting what must be on mine. I’ve noticed that, too, with her. Her expressions tend to mirror what she sees on the faces of others, but with a clarity of emotion the mirrored person doesn’t have. Amanda feeds you back a cleaned-up file.

She’s looking at me wearing a grave mask of determination. “Eat your broth. I’ll come back in an hour or two with your meds. Okay?”

I nod. She gave one of the hunters a detailed list of pharmaceuticals to cull from local hospitals. He came back with a truck full of stuff to keep us all alive, but mostly to keep me functioning.

“Tell Jackson I’ll have a report for him then.” Jefferies may be gone, and I may be running out of time, but Jackson needs info to keep the enclave alive. Info only I can provide.

Amanda stands and dusts off her knees, more to unkink her back from sitting on the metal floor than to get off the dirt. “Do you want me to shut the door?”

I look out. The light pours into my metal box from a sun low on the horizon, throwing real shadows. Intense, delineated slices of light that spread deep enough into my room they almost touch me. It’s evening outside.

“Yes,” I say. Yes, I did. The kids move around on the gravel, playing their silent games. They’ve learned how to be quiet and how to dress so they blend into whatever they stand on—they all wear dirt and bleakness and look like the ground.

They’ve learned how to hide when out in the open.

Kids shouldn’t have to live like that. They should all feel cozy and protected. This time of night, they should be finishing their chores and settling down for an evening’s reading of a favorite bedtime story. Maybe one about talking animals who live someplace beautiful and idyllic, a place safe for kids and adults alike.

A place like the world should be.

***

I don’t sleep. Not really. I dream and, perhaps, take on the senses of a zombie. I sort of feel them, sort of understand what they are doing, but the connection isn’t complete and my brain doesn’t recognize their spaces as legitimate. Everything is too tall, or too wide. Angles are too steep and I get vertigo looking up a hill or down at the zombie’s feet.

Also like a dream, I see what they see as they lumber through the city. Or I smell something that catches their attention—a cat, maybe. Or the smell of rotting fish. It’s always something strong, and something capable of taking all their focus. But I never taste, though I know the zombie’s tasting, or remembering the taste of something, like their final meal as a human.

That last impression, that final frame of processing in each of their brains of their final moment is the key to my plan. It’s as if the invisible tech has put their minds on permanent standby and is slave-running their bodies. That frozen final moment flashes as the acute awareness of the zombie’s surroundings, and of being taken over.

It’s similar to the moment Amanda said I was right about the cancer—the implants were causing what all my expensive bio-support of my old life had been keeping at bay. The other implanted might go soon, as well. Or they might get a couple of decades. Me, I have a month or two left.

I remember the moment I became intensely aware of my own impending death. I remember it with the same level of detail I remember the time I saw a grizzly in Yellowstone: I knew where every joint in my body was. I knew how far away the bear was from me, and if it had noticed me. I smelled nothing at all, as if my brain had shunted all that processing to my visual cortices. But I tasted bitter on my tongue and felt bile crunch my gut into a hard knot.

When Amanda said “I wish I could run blood tests,” I knew at that moment she was right. I knew where in my body the cancer metastasized, and I knew how far away death was. I smelled nothing, though the camp dogs always sniffed me. I felt everything, like my brain had decided touch was the sense I needed to pay attention to. I ached differently than I ever had before. Not a post-workout ache, or even a hangover ache, but a new, itchy kind of pain deep in my bones. Something unnecessary grew inside me.

Every single zombie flashes me something just like that grizzly bear, and just like my cancer.

All the implanted, including me, have a theory: The invisible tech is alive, like a dog or an ape is alive. It’s smart, but not people-smart, and I think that final terrifying moment is why the zombies attack us. We’re walking reminders—ghosts—of the hell of their transformation into a world-monster.

So, right now, the Earth is one big, frightened, silverback gorilla and we’re the fleas that make it itch.

What that makes the zombies, I don’t know. Amoebas? Hair follicles? It’s not a perfect—or even a good—analogy.

What happens when you unleash terror on an animal? It bares its teeth. It snarls. It attacks, ripping your skin from your body in big bleeding chunks and makes sure you never terrorize it again.

I’ve seen the world attack already. It attacked Jefferies and his enclave. It attacks every roaming group of free humans it finds. Efficient or not, the world is vicious.

But no righteous flea wants to die.

So I watch the movements of zombie minds looking for a way not to be smashed, hoping for some sort of symbiotic relationship.

If I can find the right zombie, with the right final moment, maybe I can affect the entire body. We camouflage now, fuzzing out the movements of the free humans in the systems, but it’s always temporary. I’m hoping to find that one zombie with the right last moment that I can mimic and use to mark the free humans as sweet and friendly. As “non-pest.”

This righteous flea isn’t going to shrivel up in the hail of pesticide. I’m clever and I’m dying, so I have nothing to lose.

I need a good final moment. One that won’t release terror in the zombie horde. The last thing we need is for the animal that the invisible tech has become to feel as if it’s cornered.

So I search and I search, looking for unfamiliar frozen moments.

***

Jackson helps me out the door of my metal room. He stands in front of me, big and imposing, clad in his camo jacket. He’s sporting his normal three-day shadow and his omnipresent camo stocking cap.

The hunters first set up camp in a strip mall with a sporting goods place on one end and a grocery store on the other. It lasted a good three weeks before the zombies chased them out.

That’s when they found me. The others wanted to kill me, blaming the implanted for what happened, but Jackson stopped them. He gave me a chance.

He’d be handsome if he wasn’t dirty and smelly. But we are all dirty and smelly, so I shouldn’t complain. He takes my hands and helps me down the step. “Did you eat okay?” he asks, grinning.

He must be responsible for the added spicing in the broth Amanda gave me. I still taste the tiny little chili fires burning at the back of my throat and I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. At least it reminds me I’m human.

He doesn’t need to know I was spitting up blood.

“Yes. Thank you.” I smile back at him.

Jackson nods and helps me over to a couple of boxes set up as seats under some beige camo netting—our current command central. We moved into this rail yard about two weeks ago and set up right in the middle of the lines. Trains confound the zombies. I think it’s residual fear of being run over by an unstoppable force.

Amanda’s waiting with my meds. Next to her sits Tony, who’s come in from the railway control center to update us on his group’s machine hacking efforts.

Jackson doesn’t like splitting the group up this way. Everyone knows we need to stay hidden, and electricity sings bright and clear to the zombies, so I learned the rail system and put in a buffer to protect the hacker group. The end of the world didn’t shut down modern conveniences. The planet hums along, internet and cell service up and running. Refrigerators working. Cars moving. So I made the electricity in the rail yard control center look as if the lights had just been left on.

Four billion zombies use the comforts of life, but not us.

The worst part is that the zombies aren’t mindless—they just don’t have minds. After the end, entire nations disappeared. Half the human population vanished within three weeks. The few implanted left learned they’d been processed, like cattle. It wasn’t indiscriminate, either. The end of the world turned out to be the quick, efficient, and ecofriendly culling of unsustainable biological capital.

The beast that is the invisible technology had taken on the personality of a vengeful Earth goddess. We now live in the aftermath of her fury.

Every so often there’d be arguments about the nature of the zombies, usually after we lost someone either to an attack or to a turning. All the old zombie clichés would come up: slow vs. fast, disease vs. magic, hive-mind vs. mindless. Vodka would find its way into the conversation, then sooner or later someone would end up in my box’s doorway demanding an explanation.

I always say the same thing: I’m trying to get into the zombie system. I don’t sleep. I only eat when Amanda gives me food. They better leave me the hell alone because every second they bother me is another second of my finite life I can’t use to find answers.

Now, next to Jackson under the camo netting of our command tent, I sit down on a wooden crate. It shifts under me, creaking and groaning. It smells like overripe bananas, which isn’t a good combination with the chili pepper still in my throat, or with the nausea welling up because I walked the twenty feet from my room to the tent. Amanda’s right there next to me, her hand on my forearm and her other offering water and a cocktail of pills.

I don’t argue. Trusting her with my life isn’t a hard thing for me to do. Whatever she’s feeding me helps and I don’t think using what little brain power I have left to research the drugs is worth my time.

“We could meet in your… room,” Tony says, pointing over my shoulder. He offers every time, calling it “my room” even though he wants to say “your box.” He’s a good kid, way too young to be running the tech group, but he’s a good leader. Better than Jackson, to be honest. I know the older man’s been training Tony, making sure he’s involved in all the decisions, so if anything happens, he’ll know how to take charge.

But he’s still a kid and the smell of sick people makes him fidget, so I come out into the evening air. It’s the least I can do. “Amanda wants me to breathe fresh air, right?”

She looks at me as if to say “No, I want you to rest,” but she and I have had this conversation. “Right,” she says, and nods toward Tony.

She’s got a good fifteen years on him but I know they have a thing. A little bit of happiness is good for both of them.

“What do you have?” Jackson asks. He’s been antsy, wondering when this rail depot will come alive, the trains moving out to sustainably ship zombie cargo to zombie cities, despite all of Tony’s work to camouflage the yard’s programming.

“Everything’s holding,” I say. We’re safe here, at least for a little longer. But Jefferies had thought the same thing about St. Petersburg.

Jackson fiddles with a loose nail in the side of his crate. His fingernail flicks over it in a steady clicking cadence. “Sanderson and her group came back about an hour ago with canned food.” Jackson shrugs. “What the hell are the zombs eating?”

They weren’t
eating
so much anymore as
consuming
. We’d seen them take in a slurry no one wants to talk about. No one wants to know what it’s made of.

I shake my head as I look down at the rail yard gravel under our feet, feeling sick to my stomach again. Usually the meds Amanda gave me kick in by now. They mess with my thinking, but the pain and itching messes with it more. I wonder if the meds will ever work again, now that I’ve started coughing blood.