James Knapp - State of Decay

His eyes didn’t close but they looked unfocused, staring into nothing. The pain was gone from his face.

I glanced over at Nico, who looked surprised. He handed me a paper towel.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“Shh.”

I took the paper towel and wiped my face, then folded it in half, covering the smeared blood. I looked back to the man.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Nico had pulled a pad of paper out of his jacket and was scribbling on it. He put it down on the table between us, facing me.

His name.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Alek Katebi.”

Nico pushed the pad toward me and tapped it with his pen.

Who is he working for?

“Who are you working for?” I asked.

“I don’t know who he is.”

“You don’t even know who you are working for?”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Nico turned the pad to me again.

What was the revivor for?

“What was the revivor for?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All I did was pick them up when they came in, and drop them off. The buyer had a deal with some local trafficker to piggyback the units through his regular routes. I don’t know who the trafficker is. The trafficker doesn’t know who I am, or who I work for. I doubt he ever even saw the units himself.”

Where did you drop off the revivors?

“Where did you drop them off once you had them?” I asked. “The revivors, I mean.”

He paused, and the far-off look left his face. His sudden change worried me. Was he coming out of it? He turned and looked at Nico.

“He knows who you are,” he said.

Nico didn’t respond, and the man smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.

“He doesn’t care that you know. You can’t stop it now.”

“Can’t stop what?”

“Maybe before this is over,” the man said, “we’ll let them eat the rest of you.”

Another surge of emotion came from Nico, but he clamped down on it, leaning across the table to face the man.

“Were you there to pick up the revivor? Or were you there to destroy it?”

“If—” the man said, but that’s all that came out. He jerked in his wheelchair so violently that I jumped in surprise. His eyes bugged out, and I heard a muted popping sound as the mellow blue light around his head expanded into an orb and burst like a soap bubble. A spurt of blood shot out of one of his ears and spattered across the table, leaving red dots on Nico’s pad; then the man’s body went limp in the wheelchair.

“Shit!” I said.“Holy shit! What the hell was that?”

Nico didn’t answer; he was already up and checking the guy. He put his fingers to the man’s neck.

Shit. The light above him was gone. Blood was dripping steadily from his ear.

Nico took a step back; then, after a few seconds, he made a call on his cell phone.

“Get a medic up here,” he said. “Interrogation room 5-C. I’ve got a suspect down; he’s dead.”

“It …wasn’t my fault,” I said. Nico hung up his phone, still looking at the body.

“I didn’t do it,” I repeated, standing up. My legs buckled a bit, and I was having trouble catching my breath. Blood was spreading all down the guy’s neck, seeping into his shirt. Nico looked over at me.

“I need to get you out of here.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“I know, but you’re not supposed to be in here.”

“But I—”

“Now.”

He turned me around gently and put his palm on my back, guiding me out of the room. I caught one last look at the body in the wheelchair as he closed the door behind us.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He took me back to the conference room and handed my coat to me.

“Go back through the lobby,” he said. “You were never in that room, understand?”

“I blew it, didn’t I?” I asked.

“Just the opposite,” he said. “I’ll be contacting you again. Soon, I hope. For now, though, it will be better if no one here knows about your involvement, understand?”

I couldn’t believe it. I think maybe my mind was blown a little, and I couldn’t interpret it all. Was it me? Had I somehow killed that man?

“Understand?”

“Yes.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, and a shiver went up my spine.

“Go back out the way you came,” he said. “I’ll contact you again soon.”

Before I could say anything else, he left, heading back to the room with the dead man. I noticed there was some blood on my shirt, so I zipped up my parka to cover it up. As I headed back toward the elevators, I passed a group of people moving quickly in the other direction, but they didn’t pay me any attention. On the trip back down the elevator I kept waiting for an alarm to go off or something, but nothing happened.

I pushed open one of the front doors and went back out into the cold, leaving Nico and the dead man behind me.

As soon as I got close to his place, I knew I shouldn’t be there. It was way the hell on the other side of town—that was the first thing. The twerp was way off his turf, hitting that bar and ending up in the tank with the rest of us. No wonder his friends were crying their eyes out; the dumb shits were probably scared stiff.

Not this one, though; I’d give him that. He’d had it all worked out and cut himself loose, no sweat. If he was scared, he fooled me.

He tapped the top of my helmet and pointed left when we got to a set of lights. A ways back, the streets got cleaner; then they got dug out; then they got plowed. Now there were even little green trees in a row right down the goddamned sidewalk. The road was smooth, as though it had been paved not too far back, and all four lanes were packed full of sports and luxury jobs full of uptight snobs. All down the walk, it was long coats, shiny shoes, and leather gloves. Every guy looked like he ran a bank, and every woman looked like she was on TV. All of them looked at me like I was the worst piece of shit they’d ever seen.

When I looked back at Luis, he was smiling. He was getting a kick out of the whole thing, but I wasn’t. At the light I thought about gunning the engine and giving those assholes something to get tweaked about, but I was tired. I just wanted to dump him, pee, and get the hell out of there.

“How much farther?” I yelled back at him. The light turned red, and I rolled to a stop.

“We’re almost there!”

When I looked back at the walkway, a bunch of people looked away. Right then, I caught the blues in my rearview.

Great.

The light turned, but before I even got a chance to move, I got waved over by a cop on a bike as he cruised down the edge of the walk. When he was on top of us, he chirped the siren.

“It’s us!” Luis yelled.

“No shit, asshole.” I pulled off and he came up alongside me, while another one rode over to back him up. Just like that, there were two cops in my face.

“Sir, cut your engine!” the first one yelled. I cut it while the other one walked over, talking in his radio.

“Remove your helmet, please, sir,” he said.

I pulled it off, then planted it in Luis’s gut, and he grabbed it. The cop saw my face and frowned.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he corrected. His eyes did a sweep up and down me, looking for metal. They stopped on my left tit.

“What’s in your jacket?” he asked, still staring. He’d found the lined inside pocket, but he couldn’t see in.

“Nothing,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“What’s in your jacket?”

“My ID.”

“Your ID should be readable at all times,” he said. “Remove it, please.”