James Knapp - State of Decay

Stupid …

I grabbed the phone as air hissed out of the hole, struts groaning as the vehicle leaned onto the rim. The display on the phone flashed the name ZOEOTTas I shut it off.

The shots stopped for a minute, and I could hear him reloading. Staying low, I changed positions, moving several cars down before scanning in the direction the shots had come from. No thermal signature that I could see was there, but when I flipped through the other filters, I finally got an outline. He was hiding under another LW suit about three cars away, but based on the body structure, it didn’t look like the same guy I’d shot at outside the FBI building.

I’ve got him.

I raised my weapon and turned up the intensity on the filter until his outline stood out sharply and I could target the shoulder joint of his gun arm.

A three-round burst caught him and he pitched back. His gun fell out from under the LW drape and clattered to the ground.

“Freeze!”

He moved like he was going to go for the gun, but his arm wouldn’t cooperate. He stood up.

“Kick it over!”

He did, and the weapon skittered to a stop in front of me. I picked it up and slipped it under my belt, keeping my gun trained on him. He kept the LW suit active, still appearing as nothing but a silhouette in front of me.

“Ma’am,” I said, “come on out. Stay on the other side of the car.”

I heard her come out from under the car, and moved to join her. She was kneeling on the ground, and I reached out to help her to her feet, but she batted my hand away. She stood up, glaring at me.

“Nice ringtone.”

“Go back to the barricade and stay with the cops,” I told her.

“Who the hell are you looking at? There’s no one over there.”

“Just do it.”

The shooter moved, his outline shimmering as he started closing the distance between us.

“Stop right there,” I yelled, even though I knew it wouldn’t work.

He kept coming and I fired three bursts, nine shots in all. On the third burst, the air in front of us rippled as the LW suit shorted out and the guy came into view.

“Holy shit!” Calliope yelled.

“Go back to the others!”

As the LW field flickered away, he opened the defunct suit to reveal a device strapped around his middle. He raised a detonator in his good hand.

I fired one last burst, tearing through his throat. I didn’t look to see what happened; I grabbed the girl and carried us both behind a concrete divider.

“What the he—”

The bomb went off, and for a second the inside of the garage lit up. I clamped my hands over her ears as the explosion pounded through the air. Everything went white as glass, metal and concrete sprayed across the divider, scattering tiles. It was over in a second, a cloud of flame huffing back up the ramp as the twisted remains of a vehicle rolled off another one, crunching onto the blacktop. I grabbed her hand, and this time she held on. I pulled her to her feet and half dragged her back up toward the barricade.

Through the muted ringing, I could already hear footsteps approaching as the cops came storming down. I stopped, holding her back by her wrist, and pushed her to the wall.

She was maybe five-eight, with short hair that was cropped on the sides and back. She was all muscle, solid and scrappy. One of her front teeth had been knocked out very recently, and her lips were painted with black lipstick. She glared up at me, a pixie-haired prizefighter.

“Did he give you anything?” I asked into her ear.

“What?”

“Luis! Did he give you anything? Anything to hold on to? Anything like that?”

“No!”

“Hold still!”

Taking a step back, I peered through the fabric of her clothes, starting at the top and working my way down. The pocket over her left breast was shielded with something and I couldn’t see in, but in her right-side pocket I could see a set of keys, a tampon, and what looked like a tube of lipstick. I focused on it, turning up the intensity of the scan, and she frowned.

“What are you looking at?”

There was something inside of the tube. Something besides the lipstick itself.

“Give me the lipstick,” I said.

“What?”

“Now! Just give it to me!”

She continued to glare at me as she reached in and pulled out the tube.

“I don’t think it’s your color,” she said, tossing it over.

I uncapped it and turned the stick out all the way, pulling it free. When I shook the tube, a data spike fell from the hollow base into my palm.

“What the hell is that?” she asked. I held it up so she could see.

“That,” I said, “is the thing five people have already died for today. You were almost number six.”

She looked at it, and her thin lips, lacquered with that same black lipstick, curled into a sneer.

“He put that in there.”

“I know.”

She didn’t look scared anymore; she looked angry. She never even looked back at the carnage behind her.

“You owe me a lipstick,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

“And a reward.”

The police were heading down the ramp, and in the distance I could hear sirens approaching. Somehow I knew better than to touch the girl in front of me again, so instead I gestured toward the uniformed officers.

“You’ll get both,” I told her.

“Your goddamn phone almost got us killed,” she muttered.

“Quiet.”

I fished it back out and turned it on. Zoe had called twice; the first was a hang-up, and in the second she left a four-second message with a picture attachment.

When I opened it, the picture expanded to show a photograph of Faye kneeling in front of the burning prison transport, the revivor in her lap.

I listened to the message. Her voice was heavily slurred.

“She’s in trouble,” she said. “She’s going to die.”

By the time the blood sample had been dropped at the lab, it was dark, and I was grateful when Shanks offered to swing me by my place and deal with signing the car back in himself. As he cut the engine on the dark street in front of my apartment, wind buffeted the vehicle, peppering the windows with snow and grit.

“You going to be all right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you up.”

Shanks had never seen the inside of my apartment before, but he had seen the street I lived on, and it looked a lot worse from the outside than it did from the inside. For a moment, the whole thing felt a little awkward, and all of a sudden the dream came back to me. When he looked across at me, I remembered the feel of his hands on my hips, how rough he was.

It was just a dream; don’t be ridiculous. He’s a good man and he’s doing you a favor; be nice to him.

The irony was that Shanks was far too polite to ever even suggest something like that. He was the kind of guy who would wait forever to be asked. He’d wait until the moment had long passed. As he looked at me, what I saw was the look he seemed to always have these days when he saw me, and that was concern. It was unnecessary, but I found myself being grateful for it. Even though we’d never have a romantic relationship, he was one person who would care if one day I ended up in that cold box or in the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t need me to—”

“No, come on up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, have a cup of coffee before you drive all the way back.”

“Thanks.”

Outside on the steps I flashed my ID at the security camera, and it made Shanks show his too before it would open the door. We didn’t speak as the elevator made its way up, and he didn’t say anything until we actually got inside.