James Knapp - State of Decay

“That was quick,” the man said, stepping toward me. He had a weird look on his face, like he was zoning in front of the TV. An orange light was lit up in his eyes.

“What was?”

“Your fight.”

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I said. I took a step back, but he pulled out a gun and pointed it in my chest.

“Quickly,” he said. “I monitored the call you made to the FBI. I know he was with you, and I know the FBI is on their way to pick him up.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“The data spike,” he said. “I know you have it.”

“I don’t have it,” I said. “He told me about it, but that’s it—”

“He told me you have it.”

He was stepping in on me. I tried to fade back again, but he stuck the gun right in my chest. The look on his face never changed. The barrel was aimed dead center, right at my heart.

“This is your last chance,” he said. I smashed the wrist of his gun hand. The gun went off, but the bullet slammed into the tile next to me and I punched him in the side of the head. I gave him everything I had, and I had plenty. Something crunched under my fist. Even without the brass knuckles, it should have dropped him, but it didn’t.

When he came back around, still holding the gun, I bashed him with the other fist too. He fell back and I grabbed his gun arm, then rolled him, slamming him face-first into the wall.

I broke his wrist on the urinal, but he wouldn’t drop the piece, so I smashed the side of his face with my elbow a few times, then blasted a knee into his ribs. He went down, cracking his head on one of the sinks and rolling onto his back.

Black shit was coming out of his mouth. With the light on his face, I saw it was white as a sheet. The veins underneath looked black.

He was getting back up. I stomped down right on his face and he fell back. More of that black stuff was coming out of a cut on his forehead and his nose. One of his eyes had turned light gray or silver.

He hooked the butt of the gun on the urinal pipe to pull himself back up, so I stomped his elbow on the side and broke his arm in half. His coat fell open, and I saw the bricks underneath, each one with a thick wire coming out of it. Some kind of timer display was counting down on his chest. The guy had a bomb strapped to his chest.

I don’t know how his hand still worked, but he still had the gun, even though it just hung there. Something made a loud snap, and just like that there was a big knife in his other hand. It came out of nowhere.

He was still coming, and I would have hit him again, except for the bomb. The bomb changed everything.

The tip of the knife scraped the tiles behind me as I turned and ran like hell.

Two blocks from the arena, the signal from Calliope’s cell started moving. Without the exact layout of the place, it was impossible to tell exactly where in the area she was, but from the basic blueprint, it looked like she was leaving the premises. She left the building, lingered near the outside, then went on the move again in the parking area.

Wachalowski, this is Sean. We just got wind of a disturbance down at the arena; we’ve got shots fired, one dead, and one missing.

Who was killed?

No name yet, but a young male. It could be our guy.

They beat us to him. They got to him and she got too close; that’s why her signal was moving. She was running.

Try to get the cops to hang back. I’m almost there.

By the time I got to the arena, blue and red lights flickered over the faces of patrons who had streamed out to see what the commotion was about, and the cops had their hands full keeping them back. Inside the lobby, faces were pressed against the glass, looking out. I pulled over near the blockade and got out of the car, holding up my badge. A handful of the arena-goers hooted when they saw me, but the officers looked less impressed.

“Who’s in charge?” I asked.

One of the men held up his hand, looking at me under the brim of his cap.

“You,” he said. “I got the call to hang back until you got here.”

“I appreciate it. Can we get these lights off?”

He nodded to one of the officers, who ducked away, and a few seconds later the flashing lights went dark one set at a time. I switched to a thermal filter, but there was still too much interference; too many people had been through to pick out any one signature.

“There’s a woman down there somewhere,” I said. “Has anyone seen her?”

“Not since the attack. Word is she took off down toward the lower levels, and the guy went after her.”

“Who was the victim?”

“Name was Luis Valle.”

“Where’d it start?”

“Men’s room,” he said, pointing. “One of the fighters came out and heard something, then went to check it out and got into it with the shooter. There was an altercation that spilled out into the garage; then Sawed-off Sam over there comes out and starts shooting.”

He gestured to a stocky, balding man with a thick neck who was standing cuffed next to a pair of officers. Following the path he traced, I saw one of the cars nearby had sustained several shotgun blasts at medium range. Glass and spent shells littered the pavement.

Wachalowski, this is Noakes. Secure that body immediately.

If he had what they were after, he doesn’t have it now.

I’m not asking you.

“I need the crime scene locked down,” I told the officer. “No one in or out.”

“Already done,” he said evenly.

The attacker might still be here, and I’ve got a civilian in trouble. I’m going to try to bring him in.

Without the kid, the information he was holding is the first priority.

I get it.

“The fighter was female?”

“Yeah.”

On my map, I was still reading the signal from her phone. The blip was stationary, so the phone was still in one piece, even if she wasn’t.

“Start getting these people out of here,” I said.

He shook his head, but he got moving. I dropped the thermal filter to 20 percent transparency and bumped the light up a little as I headed down the ramp through the rows of cars. At the same time, I started scanning the JZI communications bands, pulling out the police chatter until it got quiet. If the attacker tried to communicate with anyone else, I wanted to pick it up.

Crouching next to one of the vehicles, I scanned the area, but again, there were too many signatures. I listened, but I didn’t hear anyone nearby. The blip was brighter, though. It was close.

Staying low, I adjusted my visual filters until I found recent thermal prints that probably belonged to Flax. With the concrete to my back, I scanned the area in front of me, but the garage was quiet.

“Calliope Flax,” I said, “this is Agent Wachalowski with the FBI. If you can hear me, don’t speak out. Stay where you are.”

Her signal was maybe five spaces away to my left, keeping perfectly still. I put one hand on the cold pavement and leaned down to look under the vehicle I was using as cover. Beneath the undercarriages of the other cars, I saw a tiny light move somewhere in the distance near the ground.

I zoomed in toward the movement. It was the LED on her phone. She had spotted me and was waving it to get my attention. Her chin rested on the pavement as she lay flat under the axle of a truck, her face flecked with blood and her eyes wide.

I wasn’t sure how well she could see me, but I held out one palm to indicate she should stay put. That was when my phone rang.

It was a rookie mistake, and it was almost a fatal one. The shooter had a pretty good bead on me already, and that cinched it; the garage erupted with gunfire, and bullets punched into the vehicle I was crouched behind. The windows sprayed out, and several shots sparked off the ground less than a foot away from me, one of them puncturing the rear tire.