headed back out and used the whiskey bottle to fill the bottom of the glass I’d dripped the Zombie Maker into. I gave it to the old man and he took a swig.
“Place looks nice,” Buckster said.
“Thanks.”
“Got everything you need?”
“Everything except a damn job.”
“Anything pan out with your friend?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, don’t worry. We’ll find something before the month’s end. There’s plenty of things you could do.”
“I was thinking maybe Stillwell Corps.”
“Not a bad option,” he said, “but not if you want things to quiet down.”
“You got any better ideas?”
“Maybe Heinlein. We’ve got contacts there too. They might be able to use someone like you.”
“What is that, a fucking joke?”
“I don’t mean in development,” he said. “They use a lot of ex-military in the testing facilities for the next-gen stuff. Just think about it.”
It was as good an in as any, I figured. Buckster was halfway though his drink and the Zombie had to be starting to kick in.
“What is it with you and revivors?” I asked, and for just a second, his eyes flashed. He got twitchy.
“What’s that mean?”
“You send third tiers over to get wired up. You send first-tier vets to Heinlein …What, do they give you a kickback or something?”
He grinned at that, relaxing a little.
“I don’t work for Heinlein, believe me. Second Chance is about just that: a second chance.”
“So the bums you recruit end up second tier?”
“Homeless,” he said, “and some of them do, yes. I get them as far as I can—clean them up, get them blood tested, and get them basic inoculations.”
“You pay for that?”
“We run a series of free clinics throughout the city. It’s paid for by donations and fund-raisers.”
“How many clinics?”
“Three, on record.”
“On record?”
He seemed to think maybe he said something he shouldn’t have. “The point is, we don’t make anyone get wired. That’s a decision they have to make on their own.”
“What about scar-face, the guy I saw you with at the train station when I came in?”
“He …” The old guy drifted off. His eyes had started to look a little dopey.
“He what?”
Buckster shook his head. “He didn’t sign up.”
“No second chance for him, then, huh?”
“He’ll have his day,” Buckster said. There was something weird about the way he said it.
“What?”
He drained his glass, and gave a big shrug. “Every dog has his day, right, Corporal?”
“Sure.”
He got quiet for a minute. I grabbed the bottle from the table and filled his glass again.
“You worked with a lot of revivors over there, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You wired?”
“Fuck, no,” I said. “Why, are you?”
He nodded.
“You did your time,” I said. “You made first tier. Why the fuck would you go and do that?”
Buckster was looking at the flag hanging on the wall. He had a far-off look in his eye.
“Is that blood?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Yours?”
“No,” I said. “One of the girls from the Juba ghetto got grabbed as a hostage. Me and my team went in to take them out.”
“Your team of revivors?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
“She live?”
“Yeah. After we took care of them, I found her in the cellar, naked and half starved. They’d …used her pretty rough, but she was in one piece.”
“And her captors?”
That mission was the first time, and last time, I’d let them eat. I was mad enough to do it, and I wanted to send a message. I wanted the other fuckers who used that camp to burn it down, and cross themselves when they drove by the ashes after what they saw there.
“We took care of them.”
He nodded, understanding. It actually felt good in a way to talk to the old man. He’d been there, so he knew.
He took another drink, and leaned back. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out, still looking at the flag.
“You don’t like revivors much, do you?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“But they were human once.”
“Were.”
“But they’re conscious. They have memories.”
“My TV has memory too.”
“Your TV was never alive,” he said.
“Look, Chief, lesson number one when dealing with those things is, don’t get confused about what they are. Trust me. Whatever they used to be isn’t what they are now. They’re weapons, and that’s all they are.”
“If you really believe what you say, then why not get wired for PS?”
“Because if someone gets their face chewed off, my dead ass ain’t gonna be the last thing they see.”
He drifted off for a minute. I hoped I didn’t give him one drop too many. I didn’t want him falling asleep on me.
“Revivors save lives sometimes,” he said.
“When they slagged the Congo, they said that saved lives too.”
He shrugged.
“They’re weapons, Chief. That’s what they are. They’re not soldiers. They’re weapons. Get it? They’re good at killing, eating, and soaking up bullets.”
“Say what you want about them. They can’t be corrupted.”
“Corrupted by who?”
“Anyone.”
His eyelids got heavy again. His eyes went back to stupid.
“They can’t be corrupted,” he said. “Just remember that.”
“I’ll do that.”
“They remember things.”
That got my attention a little. Revivors did remember things, sometimes a lot of things. If it got quiet enough and you talked to them long enough, they’d tell you the story of their lives. Alone in the field with them for months on end, they were like TVs or radios.
