Zero World (48 page)

“It’s leaving me!” the old man cried.

“What is?” Skyler asked.

“Everything…”

He toppled forward into the lazy current, emerging a heartbeat later in a dog-paddle swim, steel gaze utterly locked on Skyler. The man’s lips curled back in a snarl, revealing crooked yellow teeth.

Skyler raised his rifle, then stopped. Despite the malice in the old man’s eyes, he swam slowly. He might not even make it across. “Forgive me,” Skyler said, and ran north along the bank.

He kept to the canal, relying on his mental map of the city to guide him. The sloped embankments became concrete walls, with a
narrow walkway just above the waterline and the occasional stairwell leading up to the streets above.

A riverboat floated by, its lone occupant sprawled facedown on the foredeck. Closer to the city he began to see corpses drifting along in the current, too. At one bridge he saw a city bus, nose in the canal and tail end resting against the concrete span above, clasped by the twisted wreckage of the railing.

Skyler couldn’t bring himself to look inside the vehicle. Doing so might force him to acknowledge what his heart already knew: The scope of this, the scale of death and destruction, was absolute. He focused on the narrow passage between the bus and the canal wall, turning sideways to squeeze through.

As he passed the bus a mewing sound came from inside, barely audible, like a wounded animal. Skyler sidled past. Shards of broken glass crunched under his feet. In the shadow of the bridge, darkness enveloped him. He kept going until the sound of glass beneath his boots ended, and then rushed to the far end of the underpass.

The mewing turned into a feral cry. Skyler surged forward, turning back only at the edge of the bridge’s shadow. Behind him, a body slid out one of the shattered windows and fell to the concrete with a grunt. He could see only a silhouette. It looked—

Another body slid from the bus, then a third. The trio stood in unison. They all faced him, waiting as if sizing up their prey. There was something primal in the way these diseased behaved. The old man’s words came to him then.
It’s leaving me! Everything
…Everything that made him human?

The trio rushed Skyler together. One ran low, using its hands like two extra legs, an odd way for a person to move, yet somehow it looked natural.

Skyler raised his gun, but thought better of it once again. He’d never shot anyone before. So he turned and fled, racing along the walkway, the sound of baying savages closing behind him. A stairwell ahead. He sidestepped into it and bolted up the steps three at a
time. At the top he turned, intending to shoot the lead pursuer and hopefully trip up the other two. A better use of ammo. But his foot caught on a crack in the pavement as he spun, sending his right leg slapping against his left, his body twisting as he fell to the ground in an awkward roll. The gun clattered away, sliding beneath a van.

Skyler crawled to the vehicle. Lying on the asphalt, he reached into the darkness underneath, toward the rifle. The people chasing him were close. He glanced toward the stairs in time to see the leader’s head appear above street level. Panic gripped him. His fingers probed for the weapon, his mind caught between the ancient instincts of fight or flight.

His fingers brushed the gun, and in his haste he only pushed it farther away. There were footsteps on the street now, and new grunting sounds coming from somewhere else. Abandoning the rifle, he stood and ran. Across the bridge, dodging slumped bodies, toppled bicycles, abandoned cars. At the end of the bridge he turned and bolted down a narrow walkway that lined the apartments along the canal. Footsteps followed him like unwanted applause. He slipped into an alley, glancing back as he ran. Six followed him. Seven.

At the end of the alley he leapt over a bike that lay on its side, limp rider still on it, hands clasped over the sides of a white helmet. A policewoman, Skyler realized. He skidded to a stop, rushed back, and looked for her holster. Her dead body covered it. Skyler heaved with one arm, grunting with the strain as he fumbled along her belt for the holster. The diseased were silhouettes in the dark alley, racing forward.

His fingers found the gun. Skyler stumbled backward as he hefted it, thumbing the safety as he did so, silently thanking his firearms training. He could barely see the approaching people in the alley, but the space was narrow. Whip-cracks echoed along the passage as he unloaded the clip. The lead pursuer tumbled and rolled, limp. The one behind it went down. The third leapt over the first two, landed in a crouch. It made no effort to dodge the gunfire, as if it had no understanding
of the weapon. Skyler shot it in the throat, saw the life vanish from its eyes even before it hit the pavement just a meter away. The realization that he’d killed would only hit him later.

The gun clicked empty on his next trigger pull. In the alley the infected still barreled toward him. And there were more now. Skyler had emerged on a wide avenue, lined with restaurants and boutique shops. Dead bodies were everywhere, part of the landscape. Here and there, though, some moved. They emerged from below shady awnings or from the doors of smashed storefronts, glass crunching beneath their feet.

They’re not attacking their own kind,
he realized suddenly.
They know I’m different.

He heard the electric motorcycle before he saw it. The sleek bike burst into view on the sidewalk between Skyler and his pursuers just as the next one emerged from the alley. The rider leaned at the last second, rear tire skidding along the concrete until it slammed into the shin of the diseased person, who lurched backward from the impact, arms flailing, crashing into those behind.

“Get on!” the rider shouted as the skid ended, the bike facing back in the direction it had come from.

Skyler leapt on. He slipped one arm around the rider, his empty pistol pressed awkwardly between them.

The man twisted the accelerator, producing a shrill whine as electricity flowed from the caps to the motor. Skyler almost lost his grip as the motorcycle surged into motion. Immediately the rider swerved left, then hard right, dodging obstacles in the road. The motorcycle barreled through a thick plume of smoke that spilled from a burning shop. Beyond a baby stroller lay on its side, mother and father sprawled behind it. The sight hit Skyler like an enormous weight. Everything he’d seen up until now suddenly became very real. The scope of it all, crashing in.
World’s end. Has to be. This is it, and I’m…I’m…

He focused on gripping the man’s torso as the nightmare blurred by.

The man wore no helmet. His hair, a mess of long dreadlocks, whipped in Skyler’s face and smelled of incense and pot. “Name’s Skadz!” the man shouted over the roar of wind. He spoke in English, London-accented.

“Skyler!”

“You a cop?”

“Air force. Pilot.”

“Good.” Skadz made a sharp left, tilting the bike low and accelerating out of the turn into a narrow alley. A stray dog snapped at Skyler’s knee as they roared past. The animal had blood on its jaw. Somewhere an alarm wailed.

The bike lurched, flew up a ramp. Darkness engulfed them. Skyler glanced back in time to see a metal gate rolling closed across the entrance to a parking garage before Skadz turned again. He slowed their pace now, rolling between rows of identical sedans parked over wireless charging units. The vehicles were all white, with blue and orange stripes on the side panels. Police cars.

Skadz rolled into an open elevator door, bringing the bike fully inside. He swiped a card through a reader on the wall, then tapped the button for the eighteenth floor. The compartment lurched to life. “I was here when all these blokes started acting strange,” he said. “Some were laughing or crying; most were screaming about the headache.”

“You’re a cop?” Skyler asked.

The man turned to him, an eyebrow raised. Then he chuckled and shook his head. “Never mind what I am. What madness made you enter the city?”

Skyler swung his leg over the seat and stood back as Skadz dismounted. “My parents live here. I thought they might be…”

“Like you?”

“I hoped maybe it was genetic. What about you? No symptoms?”

“Zilch. I feel fine. Well, as good as I can with all this shit going on.”

Skyler studied the man. “How’d you know I came from outside the city?”

A chime sounded their arrival. Instead of answering, Skadz rolled
the bike out and left it leaning beside the elevator door. He led Skyler down a long hall between cubicles and offices. There were no bodies here, Skyler noted, but things were in disarray. Blood stained the carpet in many places.

At the end of a hall was a door propped open by a roll of toilet paper. A large biometric reader on the wall beside it had been smashed to pieces.

“Holed up here since the madness started,” Skadz said, leading the way inside. “Figured it’d be good to get a proper picture of what’s going on.”

The massive room contained row upon row of dual-screen monitors, laid out auditorium-style with desks in front of each. Again there were no bodies.

On the far wall, which rose ten meters from the floor of the room, was a series of huge sensory-quality displays, already adjusting to provide depth based on Skyler’s position in the room.

All of the screens displayed images from around the city. Security and traffic cameras, Skyler realized. “That was smart, coming here,” he said, genuinely impressed.

“I’d about given up hope until I saw you walking along that canal. I don’t know the city that well so it was something of a bitch to track your path.”

Skyler sat, leaned back. “You saved my life out there. Thanks.”

The man shrugged. “Had to. You’re the first sane person I’ve seen, Skyler, and I’ve been watching the city all bloody night.”

To that the pilot had no response. If true, and if the disease kept spreading at the rate Skyler had witnessed so far, then he may well be witnessing the world’s end. He told the man his story, from the encounter near Alexandria to the doctor who protected him from the initial wave of infection.

“You’re a lucky bastard,” Skadz said, “and that doctor was wise. The first few hours…” He fell silent, shuddered. “Almost everyone just died. Hands clasped around their heads, screaming like you can’t imagine. A right fucking mess. The rest, the survivors, are like animals.
They flee or fight. Alone or in packs. I watched from here while I could stomach it.”

“One spoke to me.”

“Yeah,” Skadz said. He nodded sadly. “Some can still string a few words together, though that particular skill seems to fade pretty fast. Care for a pint?”

The question caught Skyler off guard. He mumbled agreement and studied the room’s monitors as the other man busied himself with a camping cooler stuffed below one of the desks. Every screen seemed to offer a window on death and chaos. Bodies were everywhere, so many the ground itself could barely be seen. The diseased moved among them. A pack perhaps fifty strong roamed the left side of one screen, picking their way through the dead. One pulled a half-eaten pastry from the hand of a woman, sniffing at it as if it had never seen such a thing before, then tentatively took a bite.

Without warning all of the diseased froze, dropping slightly. They glanced off to the right in eerie unison, toward a light-rail station. Then they started to move back.

An automated streetcar rolled into view, pushing aside bodies like a boat through water. The train powered through the corpses with relentless, mechanical drive.

He couldn’t look at it, this ocean of death, any longer. He let his eyes drift to the background, to the beloved skyline of the city. A skyline ablaze. He imagined the disease sweeping through, catching millions unaware, and millions more who tried desperately to flee. They’d left food cooking, fireplaces lit. Knocked candles from restaurant tables as they fell. Lost control of cars, spilled down stairwells or from balconies. Airplanes must have fallen like rocks.

Skadz walked over with two bottles of golden liquid, handed one to Skyler, then sat again. “What part of town are they in? Your parents.”

“Off Herenstraat.”

The man tapped some controls on one of the screens. A map appeared. “I don’t know the city well. Point it out?”

Skyler did. His new friend—possibly his only friend in the world—traced a circle around the area, and the screen zoomed inward. Little camera icons popped up all around the neighborhood. Skyler pointed at one.

While a connection was established, Skyler tried to picture his elderly parents sitting on their balcony or strolling in the garden square behind their simple apartment, oblivious to all this chaos and death. Then he tried to imagine them, immune, fleeing the city. Skyler’s gaze flicked to the horrors displayed on every other monitor in the room. He knew in his gut they would not have stood a chance.

An instant later the camera view from a traffic signal on Herenstraat appeared on the screen. Skyler leaned across Skadz, panned, and zoomed along the quaint block of retirement flats until he found the building his parents lived in. The door stood open. Bodies lay on the steps leading to it and on the sidewalk below. He scanned each but none looked like his parents.

After a few minutes of searching the street he found them. They were side by side in the end, in their car a hundred meters down the road, boxed in on all sides by others trying to flee. Skyler zoomed in, and the enlarged picture, though grainy, left no doubt. His father had pulled his mother’s face to his chest so she wouldn’t have to see. They’d died there, in a traffic jam.

Skyler slumped into a chair and stared at the high-resolution image for a long time. He waited for the grief to come. Craved it. Needed it after everything else. It never came. There was only emptiness. Eventually he reached up and flicked off the display.

“Sorry, man,” Skadz said. “Honestly.”

“At least they didn’t turn into those…animals.”

Skadz said nothing. The room became very quiet.

“What’s your plan?” Skyler asked.

The other man drained his bottle. “Survive,” he finally said. “Haven’t thought about it much beyond that. Why? Got a plan?”