Under a Graveyard Sky

“And tomorrow we’ll…find something else for you to do.”

“Filing. It’s going to be filing, isn’t it?”

* * *

“Miss, I’m really sorry about having to disarm you when you came in…”

It was the same security guard and he really did look sorry. The story was already all over the building.

“You were just doing your job,” Faith said, thumbing at Durante. “He’s supposed to tote all my stuff for me. Is there anything in there I can carry in New York?”

She’d had to turn over the baton to NYPD “for examination.” But Tom had helpfully issued her a new one.

The guard leaned over and slid a taser across the table under the cover of his body.

“Drop this in one of your cargo pockets,” he whispered. “And if you do get in trouble, give me a call on the cell and I’ll call a few buddies…”

“Thanks,” she whispered back.

“Sorry, miss, but as I said, all this stuff is illegal for carry in New York without a permit,” he said, loudly. He handed the tote with her weapons to Durante. “Mr. Durante will hold onto it for you.”

“I understand,” she said, loudly. “Let’s go, Gravy.”

“Oh, my God,” Sophia said. She was in jeans and a t-shirt after working in the lab. She was starting to wonder if body armor wouldn’t have been the best call.

As they walked out of the building to the waiting car a photographer ran up and started taking pictures. Of Sophia.

“Ow!” Sophia said, turning away. He was using a heavy-duty flash and between her eyes not yet being adjusted and the descending sun it was like looking into a nuke.

“Hey,” Durante said, stepping between them. “Back off!”

“Miss, can we get your name?” a guy with a hand-recorder asked. “Are you the thirteen-year-old who fought off a zombie with a pair of nunchuks?”

“What?” Faith said.

“Out of the way,” Durante said, pushing the guy back. But there were a dozen or more coming around the corner from the main entrance. He keyed his microphone. “Unit fourteen. I’ve got a security issue at Entrance Six. Request support. Just keep moving, girls. To the car!”

“Move you idiot!” Faith said, body checking one of the mike wielding reporters out of the way. “Follow me, Soph!”

“Watch out, rentacop!” the reporter said, pushing back. “I can get you charged with assault!”

“You want assault!” Faith said, pulling out her baton. “Move or I’ll show you assault!”

“Just keep moving, Faith,” Durante said, giving her a shove.

“Can you tell us what you were doing in the building…?”

“No,” Sophia said, holding her hand up to shield her face from the flashes.

“What is your relationship to BoA…?”

“Say no comment,” Durante said.

“No comment…”

“Can we get your name…?

“No.”

“Was the afflicted hostile…?”

“You’ve got the wrong person…”

“Damned straight,” Faith muttered.

More security poured out of the building and with their assistance Durante managed to get them to the car without actually injuring anyone in the crowd. Which had grown to include the usual gawkers. New Yorkers would ignore anything except paparazzi, which generally meant celebrities.

“Is that Lindsay Lohan…? Did she get arrested again?”

“No!” Sophia screamed as the door closed.

“Oh, crap,” Durante said. “Move it. To the condo. If we’ve got trailers see if you can lose them but don’t do a Princess Di.”

“Rentacop?” Faith said, buckling her seatbelt. “Rentacop?”

“They thought you were part of her security detail,” Durante said, chuckling.

“Son of a bitch!” Faith snarled. “I make the tabloids but I don’t?”

“You might want to remember what we’re actually doing here,” Sophia said, her face tight.

Durante waved his hand to indicate it was not a subject for discussion.

“New York,” Faith said, looking around at the unusually light afternoon traffic. “I don’t get the attraction. It stinks. It’s crowded. The people are rude. And there’s barely a scrap of green in the whole place.”

“You wanted to come,” Sophia said.

“Because it was better than being stuck on a sailboat,” Faith said. “But not much.”

“The food’s good,” Durante said. He really didn’t like New York much, either, but he felt he had to come up with some virtues. “And the girls are… There’s a lot of…art and culture…”

“The girls are hot?” Faith finished. “Or easy?”

“I’m not going to have this conversation with my boss’s teenage nieces,” Durante said. “It’s got its attractions. Of course… A lot of them are closed right now.”

“Hang on,” the driver said, swerving. A naked woman was running through traffic, hitting the cars as she ran as if trying to push the traffic onto the sidewalk.

“Zombie?” Sophia asked.

“Could be,” Durante said. “Probably. But this is New York. She could just be high. You don’t know until you run a blood test.”

“So, about the food thing,” Faith said, her stomach rumbling.

“We’ll get you delivery,” Durante said. “One other benefit to New York. You can get any kind of food in the world delivered.”

“I’m not really hungry,” Sophia said.

“I am,” Faith replied. “I need food. And after an almost continuous diet of Mountain House, I need good food. Is there Italian?”

“Best Italian in the world,” Durante said. “Better than Italy. Although mostly it’s mom and pop places. But we can get some delivered.”

“I just want a shower,” Sophia said, looking out at the city. “Nother zombie.”

“That’s a zombie,” Durante agreed. Two NYPD officers had the zombie restrained but it was clear that he’d bitten a passerby. The passerby was a punk with a gigantic pink mohawk who was crying and holding his arm and appeared to be begging the officers about something. The officers didn’t seem to be listening.

“And another one on the way,” Faith said.

“Indications are that if you clean the affected bite quickly the chances are reduced,” Durante said. “And they’re saying now that if you get the flu, the secondary virus is reduced if you take potassium supplements.”

“Yeah, the separation at the b phase telemerase site is inhibited by potassium,” Sophia said. “But it’s not an either or thing. If you take enough potassium to totally inhibit expression, it’s a lethal dose. But if you have a strong immune system, then having any inhibition of the expression gives your immune system a chance to beat the beta expressor. If you have a strong immune system. And bites are tough. The beta expressor is aggressive and resistant. It’s a matter of how much viral load you get through any source…”

“I take it you were listening at work,” Durante said.

“Dr. Curry has every channel that’s working on this running continuously in both the hot and the cold zones,” Sophia said, shrugging. “So, yeah, picked up a little. More than I can talk about in the car. He’s got the updated spread graph for one thing. The one that’s way ahead of the news.”

“Can I ask…” the driver said, then paused.

“It’s getting worse,” Sophia said after a glance at Durante. “Lots worse. The thing is… This virus is, molecularly, spit and baling wire is the way that Dr. Curry described it. After a while it’s just going to burn itself