F Wilson - Sims

When she reached the bottom Romy angled the beam ahead, moving it across the concrete. At first she thought someone had started painting the floor black and run out of paint three-quarters of the way through; then she realized it was blood. Old, dried blood. The cellar must have been awash in it.

She flicked the beam left and right to get her bearings and stopped when it lit up what looked like a pile of dirty rope. She remembered what the cop had said—dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor—and knew she wasn’t looking at rope.

She swallowed back a surge of bile and forced herself forward, trying not to step in the dried blood—might be evidence there—as she moved. She stopped again when her beam reflected off staring eyes and bared teeth. She’d found the dead sims. Clad only in caked blood, their bodies ripped from stem to stern, they’d been stacked like cordwood against one of the walls. Their dead eyes and slack mouths seemed to be asking,Why? Why? And she wanted to scream that she didn’t know.

Behind her she heard Patrick retch. She turned and saw him leaning against one of the support columns.

“You okay?” she said through her tissue.

“No.” His voice was hoarse. He held up a thumb and forefinger; they appeared to be touching. “I’m just this far away from losing my lunch.”

“I skipped lunch, thank God.” She paused, then, “Look, I need to get closer.”

“I don’t. I’ll stay back here and guard the steps, if you don’t mind.”

“I appreciate it,” she told him. He’d already proved himself as far as she was concerned.

Turning, she spotted fresh, dusty prints ahead in the dried blood, leading to the cadavers; one of the cops, no doubt. To avoid further contamination of the scene she used them as stepping stones to move forward, knowing all along that it was wasted effort—no one was going to spend much time sifting this abattoir for clues. But there was a right way to do something, and then there was every other way.

Closer now she flashed her beam into the gaping incision running the length of the nearest cadaver’s naked torso. A female. Her ribs had been ripped back, revealing lungs but no heart. Romy leaned forward and checked the abdominal cavity. Liver and kidneys gone. She craned her neck to see into the pelvis—uterus and ovaries missing too.

She moved onto another, a male this time, and the results were similar except that his testicles had been removed.

Romy straightened. They’d been gutted, all of them, and the males castrated. She took a quick turn around the rest of the basement but found no sign of the excised organs. The intestines had been removed and discarded in a pile because they were valueless and only got in the way. But all the rest were missing.

“Let’s go,” Romy said, taking Patrick’s arm and pointing up the steps toward daylight and fresher air. “I’ve seen enough.”

More than enough.

They hurried to the first floor and back out to the front yard. Romy didn’t understand the missing ovaries and testicles—she knew of no use for them—but she understood the rest all too well.

Furious, she went straight to the cop and slapped the flashlight back into his palm.

“Didn’t you notice anything missing down there?” she said.

He looked uncomfortable. “Like what?”

“Like their organs! They weren’t just killed, they were harvested! Andthat ”—she jabbed a finger at his chest—“is a felony!”

17

HARLEM

DECEMBER 14

Beece work ver hard today. Many cloth to cut. Boss say, Faster, faster! Beece cut fast as can. Still boss yell.

Beece ver hot. Thirsty. Go sink for drink. Drink quick ’cause sink next boss office. Too long drink boss yell.

Boss door open. New man walk through. Red-hair man. Show boss papers. Beece hear talk.

“I’m from the city Animal Control Center, Mr. Lachter.”

“Hey, I treat my sims good.”

“No, Mr. Lachter, that would fall under the auspices of the ASPCA. We have a different mandate, and at the moment we’re looking for a lost sim.”

Beece almost leave sink, now stay. Lost sim? Could be Meerm? Listen more.

“I got all mine. I count ’em every morning. None missing, no extras.”

“Good. But from past experience we know that lost sims tend to seek out other sims, so we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d keep your eye out for any sim that might wander in.”

Boss laugh. “He does, I’ll put him to work!”

“It’s a female and if she shows up you should isolate her immediately.”

“Why’s that?”

“She may be sick. Nothing contagious to humans, but she might infect other sims.”

Infect? Beece think. What mean infect?

“I don’t need none of that. I can barely make production quotas now.”

“If she shows she may look a little different than the average sim and—”

“Different? What is she, a new breed?”

“No. Same as the rest, but she might look a little heavier…perhaps ‘bloated’ is a better term. She’s sick and we can take care of her, but we have to find her first.”

Meerm! Man talk about Meerm! Meerm sick but fraid doctor. Beece feel sorry Meerm. City Man want help Meerm. No hurt Meerm.

Beece fraid talk Boss. Boss yell all time. But Meerm Beece friend. Must help Meerm.

Beece step in office. “’Scuse, please, boss.”

Boss face go mad. “What the hell you doing here! Get back to work, you lazy—”

“No, wait,” red-hair city man say. He look Beece. “Do you know something?”

“Sick sim come home.”

“Home? Where’s home?”

“I crib them in Newark overnight,” Boss say.

“Newark? Why so far?”

“Because it’s tons cheaper to bus them back and forth than rent space for them around here. Sorry if that’s out of your jurisdiction, pal, but—”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. Just give me the address of this place. I’ll take it from there.”

Beece happy. Red-hair city man nice. Help Meerm. Make Meerm better.

18

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

“This is good,” Mercer Sinclair said as he skimmed the reports. “This is very good.”

Just SimGen’s security chief in the office with him today. Portero had personally delivered the police reports on the sim massacre in Brooklyn, an unusual courtesy. Perhaps the man was coming around, learning to be a team player.

Who am I kidding? Someone like Harry Carstairs is a team player, but not Portero. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “team.” Mercer smiled to himself. Come to think of it, neither do I.

This visit meant one thing: Portero wanted something.

He’d never come right out and ask, Mercer knew. He’d use an oblique approach, try to sneak it in when no one was looking. Mercer was sure he’d find out what it was before the meeting ended.

“I thought you’d be upset,” Portero said.

Is that why he came? To watch me blow my top? Sorry, Little Luca. Not today.

“I am. I hate the idea of losing a dozen of our sims. That’s something people seem to forget—they’reour sims. No matter what country they’re shipped to, even if it’s the other side of the world, they still belong to SimGen. We can barely keep up with demand as it is, so of course I hate to lose even one.”

“But you seem almost…happy.”

“I’m happy that these SLA creeps have been exposed for what they are. Yesterday’s discovery shows they’re not pro-sim activists, they’re murderous organleggers.” He glanced at the police report again. “They’re sure these are the same sims that were hijacked from the globulin farm?”

Portero nodded. “Absolutely. Lucky thing NYPD was able to resuscitate that memory chip from the Bronx. And lucky too these globulin farmers were excellent record keepers: They scanned the neck bar codes of all their ‘cows’ into their computers.”