F Wilson - Fatal Error

He found a subway entrance and was halfway down the stairs when a haggard-looking suit coming up said, "Don't bother."

Jack stopped. He'd had a niggling worry about this.

"Not running?"

He shook his head. "Got a 1 just sitting in the station with its doors open. Conductor says he doesn't know what's up. They got the word to sit tight. Something about switching or signal problems, he thinks."

Yeah, that made sense. They were controlled by computers, right?

Jack slammed a fist against the railing.

"I know how you feel," the guy said. "Well, there's always a cab."

"Not always."

Jack turned and followed him back up to the surface.

"Christ!" the guy said, stopping short as he saw the traffic. "What the fuck?"

Jack slipped past him and headed for Julio's.

"Where's the remote?" Weezy said.

The Lady sat at the big table and pointed to the empty shelves built into the wall of the front room of her apartment. "Up there."

She didn't look so hot. Not as pale and frail as she'd been after the Fhinntmanchca assault, but not as good as she'd looked just yesterday. Weezy was worried about her.

But at least she was still here.

She found the remote where the Lady had indicated-and also found a thick coating of dust on it. She blew it off and coughed.

"I take it you don't watch much TV."

"I don't watch any."

"Not even news?"

"Of human events, the state of the world? I know whatever I wish to know."

Of course she did. Stupid questions. She was the product of the collective human consciousness.

"And the rest?"

She shrugged. "The fictions-the dramas, the comedies, the commentaries hold no interest for me."

"They do for me." Weezy pressed the ON button. "Especially now."

"-appears that preventive measures are failing," said the channel seven newsreader.

"Too little too late," Weezy muttered.

"Servers and routers all over the world are failing as they are inundated with a tsunami of video feeds that is overwhelming the bandwidth of the entire Internet. Here in the city…"

Weezy heard a groan behind her and turned to find the Lady slumped forward on the table. She dropped the remote and hurried over to her.

"Are you all right?"

Another stupid question-of course she wasn't all right. She looked anything but all right.

"So weak." Her voice was thin, husky, fragile, as if it might dissolve to dust if she spoke too loud.

Weezy's heart clenched. This was it. They were losing her.

"You need to lie down. Which way's your bedroom?"

"I don't have a bedroom."

"You don't-?"

"I don't sleep."

"Okay. Fair enough. We'll find you a bed."

Glaeken had given her a furnished apartment. One of the rooms down the hall had to have a bed.

She put one of the Lady's arms over her shoulder and one of her own around her back, then lifted. She'd expected near dead weight, but the Lady came right off the chair.

So light… too light… much too light.

Was this how she was going to go? Lose her substance bit by bit and fade away?

She walked her down the hall. The first room on the right had a queen-size bed. Weezy stretched her out on it.

"Should I get you a blanket?"

"I don't feel cold. Or warmth. Temperature doesn't affect me. But I do feel terribly weak." She raised an arm and let it fall. "Weaker and weaker by the moment… as if the life is draining out of me."

Weezy felt her throat constrict. "Don't leave us."

"I will not go willingly. I will fight this." She waved a hand. "Let me lie here alone. I need to conserve my strength."

Weezy left her and returned to the front room. She sat before the TV and stared at the screen. It was running feeds from street cams, showing massive traffic jams.

How was Jack ever going to reach LaGuardia?

"Don't know what's taking him so long," Julio said. "He's only coming from Harlem."

Jack glanced at the St. Pauli Girl clock over the bar. Almost ten after ten.

Damn. Forty minutes till they landed.

He'd remembered that Julio's younger brother Juan was into motorcycles. Julio had called him and prevailed upon him to drive down to the bar and lend one of his bikes to Jack.

"If he's dealing with this traffic, it's going to take him a while-even weaving through it."

With all the arteries out of the city clogged, the only solution was something with the ability to slip between the clots. A motorcycle seemed perfect.

One problem, though. Jack hadn't ridden one in a while. He'd used two wheels pedaling around Burlington County as a kid, so when he was old enough for motorvating, he'd seen no reason to move up to four. His folks had hated his Harley, and his sister Kate, the doctor, repeatedly warned him about the motorcycle drivers she'd seen wheeled into the ER, brain dead from a dust-up with a car or truck. She'd called his Harley a "donorcycle."

Jack wouldn't listen, and owned a succession of Harleys through college. He loved motorcycles-he'd used Arlo Guthrie's pronunciation, rhyming with pickle-reveling in the anarchic freedom they offered. Plus, the helmet conferred anonymity.

Of course, he'd felt immortal then.

He'd brought one with him when he'd disappeared into the city, and rode it until a potentially fatal crash drove home how vulnerable he was on two wheels-like a turtle living outside its shell, roadkill waiting to happen at the hands of anyone who was fiddling with the radio or cell phone when traffic was coming to a sudden stop. What might be a simple fender bender in a car-to-car scenario escalated to bug-against-the-windshield potential when a motorcycle was involved. And when being chased by a gang of psychos in cars…

That was when he'd bought Ralph. And when the Corvair became too conspicuous, he'd graduated to the Crown Vic.

If he was going to be involved in any vehicle-to-vehicle mishap, Jack wanted to be the one to walk away.

He looked around the unusually crowded bar.

"You running a two-for-one special or something?"

Julio made a face. "Yeah, right." He jerked a thumb toward the street. "They're from out there. Traffic ain't movin' so they come in to kill time."

"I see you opened up the back tables."

He looked sheepish. "They need a place to go. Gotta put 'em somewhere."

This was mucho unJulio. He didn't like random patrons. If he had his way, his bar would be a private club that required a membership card, with him as sole arbiter of the suitability of who could be served.

"How civicly responsible."

He grinned. "Community service-my middle name, meng."

"And that ringing cash register has nothing to do with it."

"Like Abe says: Ain't nothin' better'n doing well while doing good."

Then the door banged open and a young Latino who resembled Julio-minus ten years and a lot of muscle-pushed a stripped-down motocross bike into the bar.

"Ay, Juanito. You can't bring that in here."

"Ain't leavin' it outside. Be gone in a beat."

Julio stepped forward and shot his hand toward Juan's face. For a second Jack thought he was going to hit him, but instead he grabbed his chin and turned his head.

"What happen to you?"

Jack could see it now-a good-size bruise on his chin, bleeding a little.

"Guy tried to steal my bike. It's getting crazy out there."

So soon?

Jack had figured it would take longer for the idea to filter to the synapses of the wolves that the shepherds had lost some of their eyes and ears and the sheeple were largely unguarded.

"Hey, I'm sorry about that," Jack said. "I owe you."

Juan shrugged. "S'okay. You don't owe this family nothing."

Jack looked at Julio. "What's he talking about?"

"Rosa." Julio gave Jack a backhand slap across an arm. "What? You forget?"