Calliope Flax—Pyt-Yahk District, Bullrich Heights
The words flickered in the dark when I came to. The ground was hard and cold under me, and I smelled blood. My dead hand tingled. It wasn’t supposed to do that anymore.
I opened my eyes. I was facing a concrete wall with a bloodstain on it. There was a big splatter on the floor under that, with a broken tooth in it. Yavlinski was gone.
I pulled up the message. It was from Singh.
My hand still had pins and needles. I flexed the gray fingers and they worked, but they were stiff and slow. The static in my head had turned to a steady whine.
If my clock was right, I’d been down over an hour. I checked my pockets, and the bag of Zombie was still there. The brass knuckles, the gun …it was all still there. The room was empty.
I got up and limped through the door, back the way I’d come in. My bike was still there, the alarm panel red. Someone tried to heist it but couldn’t get it started. They must have left in a hurry.
I walked it back toward the metal door that led outside. When I pushed it open I saw light but no people. The lot was empty. Wind blew snow across the blacktop, and a cardboard cup with blood spatter on it rolled past.
I ran diags and they came up clean, mostly. My body checked out okay, but my head hurt like a bitch. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t let up.
I looked around. Cinders glowed in the metal drums, but the people were all gone. I made my way over to one of the tarps they’d set up and pulled open the flap. Someone’s shit was in there, but he was long gone. I let the tarp go and the wind blew it shut. I listened, but didn’t hear any voices—just wind and the flap of plastic.
I straddled the bike and kick-started it. The engine turned over, and I headed back the way I’d come in. I didn’t pass anyone in the alleys. When I got to the main road, it was full of cars, but they all just sat there. None of them moved.
Up ahead, a store window had been smashed, and the sidewalk was covered in broken glass. In the street to my left, a car’s doors hung open and the windshield was caved in. Shell casings lay on the sidewalk next to it, and the snowbank was stained red.
I looked down the street. A long strip of bloody cloth blew in the wind, snagged on a car antenna. A lot of car doors were open. I saw broken glass and trash where people had dropped their shit and run. There were footprints in the snow, between cars and up and down the sidewalks. A few car lengths down, a black armored truck had jumped the curb and crashed into the side of a building. Way down the street, a trail of smoke rose from somewhere I couldn’t see. In the street, between the cars, a few guys stood with their backs to me. They didn’t move as the wind whipped through their coats.
“Hey!” I called. They didn’t answer. Down the street I saw a few more. None of them moved.
The streets were blocked. Back the other way, I could barely make out the flash of blues and reds on the other side of an old, rusted bridge.
“Hey, you!” I called to the guys in the street. They still didn’t move.
I took the bike closer, in between the abandoned cars. I pulled up next to the three men.
“Hey, what are you, fucking deaf?” I asked, but by then I could see.
The three guys had blood down the front of their shirts and pants. It was smeared around their mouths and beaded up on the ends of their fingers. Black spots bled through the whites of their eyes. They were Huma carriers, revivors, but the signal I usually picked up from them wasn’t there.
I looked down the street and saw more of them. Some leaned into cars; others were down on the ground. None of them moved.
I scanned the closest of the three and picked up a lot of wireless traffic. It was the same for the rest.
That steady screech in the back of my head was because code was coming in. The blood in my hand was picking up the change too; that’s why it was tingling again. I looked up and down the street at the frozen bodies. They were all stuck in standby; Heinlein was upgrading them.
