The Digital Plague (7 page)

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.

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 discontentedly 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.

“That’s how this shit works it,” Jabali said quietly, tugging at my arm. “C’mon, boss. Bad luck to watch that shit.”

Feeling sluggish, I let him pull me back into motion. I’d been out of circulation for a day—a fucking
day.
I’d left with Glee and things had been as they always had. I came back and people were fucking
dead.
I felt like something was out of socket in my head and couldn’t find its way back into place.

When we got to Pick’s, the place went silent as we entered, the air warm and thick but smelling familiar, smoke and sawdust. It was only half full, and as we walked in the sound level wasn’t the usual raucous blast but a lower hum, people talking quietly. The whole place seemed to turn as one and twist around to look at me for a moment and then look away, the low hum becoming whispers. Melody was behind the bar and stopped what she’d been doing to walk back toward us, a bottle of cloudy liquor in one fist, her face grim.

“Avery,” she started to say, and then started coughing, a wet hack like she’d been smoking cartons of cigarettes steadily for days. With some effort she choked them down, red-faced. I waited patiently; I’d known Melody forever.

“In the back,” she finally breathed. I nodded and started to turn for Pick’s office but stopped when Melody reached out for me. “Avery!” she said, her face contorting. She wasn’t a pretty girl. She was getting fatter, and somewhere in the last few years she’d lost a second tooth. This wasn’t much of a burden to her, however, as she’d never been attractive to begin with and so didn’t feel the loss. Seeing her eyes water was bizarre. I’d never seen Melody cry, not once. “Avery, Glendon’s dead.”

I froze. For a second Melody and I just looked at each other, probably the only people in the world who actually cared, beyond business, that Pickering was gone. That man had been so old he’d seemed immortal and unchanging, as ancient yesterday as he’d been the first time I’d seen him. I felt dizzy.

Without saying anything else I turned back toward the office, my hands balled into fists. I pushed through the sparse crowd roughly, and they all let me shove them, scrambling out of my way as I moved. If any one of them had been too slow, I would have broken a few arms. By the time I was within feet of the door the whole room seemed to have stood up and moved toward the walls, giving me a clear route. I gestured violently and the door sighed open. Slamming it into the wall, I stepped into the familiar gloom of Pick’s office and stopped.

She was in the little bunk she’d used, too small for her once she’d started to grow. At least, I assumed it was her. Her face was mottled with dark, almost black bruises, and a small, wet-looking sore had erupted on her nose. Her chest looked like someone had cut a wedge out of it, a crater of scabby gore that seemed nearly to have consumed her shirt and thick hooded coat.

“Fucking hell,” I whispered as I heard steps behind me and turned my head to find Jabali there, shutting the door carefully behind him.

“Keeps gettin’ worse,” he said. “She didn’t look this bad a few hours ago. Keeps on keeping on, whatever this shit is, even after you’re dead—no pity. Mel had us burn poor old Pick, you know? Said she didn’t want him eaten up.”

I looked back at Glee and forced myself to approach her. Her eyes were open and looked so normal, so clean and untouched, I didn’t want to look at them. Standing over her, I reached down and pushed her eyes shut, flinching a little as I touched her cold flesh. I’d killed a lot of people. I’d killed a lot of people and not lost much sleep over it, but as I stared down at the kid I realized I was trembling. I touched her red hair, which seemed darker than I remembered against her suddenly pale skin. She was starting to smell, and I looked up at the ceiling, blinking and trying to control myself.

“Fucking
hell,
” I muttered. I looked down at her again and startled—had her chest just … twitched? I stared down at her. I was losing my mind. I’d been hunted, crashed a hover, played dead, and now found out the only three people I could possibly have called friends were all dead, and not peacefully. I was losing my fucking mind.