XOM-B (33 page)

“Damned if we do,” Harry says.

“Damned if we don’t,” Luscious finishes, and then notices my confusion. “It was a saying of the Masters. It means you lose no matter what choice you make.”

“That can’t possibly be accurate,” I say. I place my weapon on the lowest stair and start after the zombie, who is now a block ahead and showing no sign of slowing for us to catch up.

Luckily, the man’s hobble limits his pace and I have no trouble catching him. I walk beside the shuffling man, keeping a safe ten-foot distance. “Where are we going?”

He points straight ahead. Four blocks down, the street opens up into what once was a park. I’ve seen one before, at the ruins Heap took me to, but the trees there were lush. The only evidence the land was once something more than wilderness is a collection of broken fountains, filled with dirt and saplings, and a gated brick wall that surrounded the area. Without sunlight or water, the grass here has browned and the trees have withered into fragile, bony things casting twisted shadows. But it’s not the park he’s pointing at, it’s the building beyond.

While the primary material used in its construction is red brick, just like the rest of this inner city area, the front of the building has a white overhang supported by eight grand columns that extend down to a granite platform surrounded by thirty stairs stretching out in all directions. A grand staircase. This place must have once been important.

I zoom in for a closer look and find faded letters, gilded, on the front of the building’s overhang. The first word is too faded to read, but the second elicits a gasp.

The zombie looks at me, curiosity in its dead eyes.

I point at the building. “It’s a library.”

“You … enjoy libraries?” it asks.

“I’ve only just discovered them, but yes.”

Another squint. Another open mouth and dangling lip. And then, nothing. The mouth closes, reserving opinions for another time or perhaps trying not to reveal anything too soon.

Luscious and Harry approach from behind, jogging to catch up. They are unarmed.

I point at the building ahead and say, “We’re going to the library.” As the words come out, even I hear the almost excited tone of my words.

The zombie stops in his tracks and looks back at Luscious and Harry. He stabs a finger in my direction. “Is he for real?” He turns to me. “Is there something wrong with you? Are you damaged?”

I shake my head slowly, partly surprised by his outrage, but also distracted by the dangling flesh on his face that wiggles when he shakes his head. I nearly explain to him about my age and inexperience with the world, but hold back, realizing that I shouldn’t be telling this walking corpse anything.

“Walk ahead of me,” the man says. “All three of you.”

When he speaks, I notice that the movement of his mouth doesn’t match the sound coming out of it. I want to ask him how he’s able to talk, but my questions would reveal my inexperience.

“Straight through the park,” he says. “Then the front door.”

I nod.

“Go,” he prods. “And no talking.”

We walk the rest of the distance in silence, crossing through the park, the surface of which crunches beneath our feet. As we reach the edge of the park, an aberration in the dead grass catches my eye. A footprint. A
large
footprint. Heap. He’s here for sure.

We start across the empty street and up the wide staircase.

Harry reaches the front door first and stops. He looks back at me, his eyes asking,
Are you sure?

I look to Luscious, hoping that we’re together on this.

“Are you sure he’s here?” she asks.

“He’s here,” I say.

“And how might you know that?” the man asks.

“If he hadn’t been captured, you would be dead,” I say.

The man grins sickly, causing the rest of his lower lip to slip free and fall to the granite floor.

Not wanting to look at the man for another moment, I move for the front door’s handle.

“No, no,” the man says. “Let the domestic servant open the door. After all, he needs to serve some purpose, right?” The words are tinged with hatred and spite.

“It’s okay,” Harry says, stepping up to the door. With a yank, the solid wood and very heavy door swings open. “After you,” Harry says with a smile, apparently attempting to assuage our captor’s belligerence. Or perhaps mock it. The subtleties of human interaction are still sometimes lost on me.

I enter first, stepping into a small foyer where a second set of doors awaits. The doors are thick, solid wood stained a rich brown. The carpet beneath our feet is red and thin, worn through to the wood beneath in spots. To my left is a brown board holding sheets of paper with images and words. Announcements. Book groups. Fund-raisers. Most of it is meaningless to me.

“What is a hootenanny?” I ask.

I realize no one heard my question, so I stand still and wait, suspecting the zombie will yet again request Harry handle the doors.

Luscious steps up behind me, whispering, “I don’t like this.”

Nor do I. My muscles are tense, ready to spring into action if the need arises. Harry enters next, but I’m not sure if he’s being rude to our guide or was prodded inward by him. When the door slams shut and locks behind Harry, I realize it was the latter.

“Have no fear.” It’s the undead man’s voice. It sounds like he’s in the room with us. A quick search reveals a speaker embedded in the ceiling. “You will not be harmed yet.”

Yet.

“I recommend lying down,” the voice says.

Lying down? But why would we—

A hum fills the inside of the small foyer. Luscious and Harry quickly lie down. I’m about to join them when a brightly colored sheet of paper clinging to the board catches my eye. The words
CHILDREN’S ROOM
arc across the top in rainbow colors. And below the words, an image of several small people who look a lot like Jimbo, sitting in a circle atop squares of rug, smiles on their faces.

“Are these—” I start, but never finish. The hum grows suddenly louder, blinding me, and then erasing the world, one sense at a time until nothing remains.

41.

“… come back to the reality,” says a voice in progress.

I blink my eyes, seeing a dirty green floor. I’m seated. My arms are strapped to the arms of a wooden chair. I could break free with little effort. In fact, the bindings are so flimsy, I don’t think they’re intended to hold me in place. I test the theory, giving a gentle tug. A strap with clinging plastic fibers tears noisily apart and my arms are free.

“You must feel rested now,” the voice says, mocking. “Did you dream while you slept?”

I ignore the line of questioning and stand. I’m in a metal box.

“Level B1.” I recognize the voice as the undead man’s, once again coming from a speaker in the ceiling. I turn around to find the doors and button array of an elevator. The buttons are labeled 1 through 5, G, and B1 through B4.

I reach out and push the button for B1. With a grinding jolt that puts me on edge, the elevator descends. A loud beep pierces the small cabin with each passed floor.

“Please note the device attached to your ankle,” the voice says. “Should you attempt anything unsavory, try to flee or anything that bothers me, you will be destroyed.”

I look down and find a small square object attached to my leg. I can feel sharp prongs digging into my skin.

“But you won’t give me any trouble, not while I have your friends.”

“No,” I say. “I won’t.”

The elevator chimes and the doors slide open.

“Down the hall,” the voice says. “Second door on the left.”

“Why did you leave me in the elevator?” I ask.

“I couldn’t predict your normal operating state.”

Normal operating state?

“But you seem to be the same harmless imbecile from the street.”

“I am,” I say, paying no heed to the insult.

“Smarter than you’d like me to think, though.”

The hallway is dimly lit by old fluorescent bulbs that flicker as though to the beat of a song only they can hear. A glowing yellow rectangle draws me forward. I pause before it, the second door on the left, feeling wholly unprepared for what might lie on the other side.

“Come in,” says the voice from within the room. But the pitch is different. I recognize the subtle inflections as the same voice, but it’s higher. Feminine.

Feeling very alone, I squeeze my lips together, close my eyes and remember that my friends are depending on me. Even worse, Mohr is depending on me. The whole world is depending on me, even if they don’t realize it. But how much of a world remains? Needing the answer to this question and desiring a solution, I step inside the room.

It’s a laboratory. I’ve seen enough of them to recognize this detail almost as an afterthought. The rows of equipment, the tables, the shelves covered with supplies, the glaring black and white of it all. It’s not exactly a sterile or even static-free lab like the ones Mohr maintains, but it is vast and sophisticated nonetheless.

As my eyes work through the large open space, the modern electronics become less noticeable as horrors leap out at me. Collections of body parts. Arms. Legs. Heads. Sheets of skin, folded up neatly. Operating tables with disassembled bodies. Skin peeled back. Minds exposed.

Sadly, these things have little impact on me. I have become accustomed to gore.

“Remember your leg,” says the voice, emerging from the far right side of the space, which is partially blocked by towering shelves of old wires, mechanical parts, sticks of memory and what I think are computers, but they’re so big, I’m not sure. “Remember your friends.”

I step farther inside, following a slender path through the madness and equipment. It leads me straight ahead, around an empty operating table and then to the right, where there is a gap between the shelves. I pass through the shelves and the rest of the large lab is revealed. It’s even worse than what lies behind me, not because of any carnage, but because what I find is far more personal. Harry is the closest to me, strapped down to an operating table. His eyes are open and moving, but his mouth has been taped shut. Luscious is next, and in a similar state, though she’s struggling against the metal wires holding her down.

And then there is Heap. He’s on a larger table, tilted at a 45-degree angle and raised by a hydraulic lift. His eyes are closed and his body shows no signs of life.

“What did you do to him?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” the voice says. “The old enforcers have a special place in my heart. He won’t be harmed. In fact, I’m happy to find one of them still mobile.”

I turn toward the voice and am once again thoroughly confused. I wonder if there will come a time when I won’t find every new thing I encounter bewildering. You’d think armies of undead and giant railgun-wielding robot soldiers would be enough, but for some reason, the five-foot-four woman with big eyes and a charming smile leaves me speechless.

She’s small, but different. Unlike anyone I’ve seen before. She looks … fun. Her shoulder-length, beige hair is tied back, but the strand hanging just to the side of her face is bold orange. Her clothing is equally colorful and quirky—a mixture of fabrics and designs that all somehow match.

“You’re like a painting,” I observe.

Her face flattens and her eyes widen. “How flattering. And what do you know of art?”

“Not very much,” I confess. “But Harry is a fantastic painter.”

“Harry?” she asks.

I look down at Harry, who’s staring back up at me now with imploring eyes. “Would it be alright if I took off the tape over their mouths?”

She waves her hands at me in a way that suggests approval. I peel the tape from Harry’s mouth. “Be careful, Freeman,” he whispers quickly. “She’s dangerous.”

I look up at our captor and a single word comes to mind. Not crazy. Or evil. Or genocidal. Or anything negative at all. Instead, I think: cute. She’s cute.

A flash of light behind her catches my eye. A large curved screen divided into six segments displays a quickly scrolling feed of images. It’s probably too fast to see anything useful, but my eyes are able to catch the details. Views of the capped city, the suburbs surrounding it, the forest, and swamp, and Liberty. Burning. Smoldering. Black. Other cities I don’t recognize, all in similar states of ruin.

The woman blocks my view. “It’s an intelligent AI security system, monitoring hundreds of thousands of video, audio and heat-sensitive feeds, some installed by my army of workers, some built into my virus-spreading shells and others hacked into by yours truly. Following a programmed set of criteria, it determines which feeds I will find most interesting, or which pose a threat to this location, with priority given to defense, of course. It almost missed all of you. You’re rather mundane. But I’ve enjoyed watching your progress since your rampage through the swamp. I thought I’d lost you for a bit, but your dramatic entry into my city was quite entertaining. And I have to admit, I was cheering for you, mostly because I wanted to have this conversation. So, I would appreciate it if you were forthcoming.”

I give a nod and move to Luscious, taking her hand in one of mine while I use the other to gently peel the tape away from her lips. I watch her skin stretch up with the tape before separating and anger begins to build within me.

“Why do you care what happens to this Luscious?” our captor asks. “There’s what, five hundred thousand more just like her? Besides, Cherry Bomb was a much more popular—”

“Don’t!” Luscious shouts, burning with even more anger than me.

The woman seems surprised. “What is happening here?” She squints at us both and then grins. “How adorable.” The woman laughs, leaning back in her chair and spinning around. When she stops again, the smile is gone.

I speak before she can taunt us. “Why are you doing this?”

She leans forward, elbows on the ripped knees of her pants. “Doing what?”

“Everything,” I say, feeling exasperated. “Trying to kill everyone.”

“You think
I’m
doing that?” she asks. “That I could—”

“Commit genocide,” I finish for her.

Her grin widens. “Yes. That.”