James Knapp - State of Decay

“What the hell do you want?”

I focused, staring at him until the room seemed to get brighter and the color kind of washed out of everything except the light that came into focus around his head. It glowed, like soft electric light …red, kind of like fire, and flaring up in little points and spikes. He was angry, as usual.

“What the fu—” he said, then fizzled in midsentence as I focused on that light.

“Calm down,” I said, and the spikes began to settle. The red shifted to violet, then blue. His stupid eyes changed, some of the meanness going out of them. He stood there like an ape until the light settled into a cool blue, like the sky on a sunny day.

His girlfriend or whoever she was peeked out from behind him, watching me from a few feet inside. She’d been crying, her shirt torn and her hair messed up.

“You should get some sleep,” I told him.

He nodded, his eyes dull. I pulled my attention away from him. The light shifted back to normal, and the sharpness surged back into my surroundings. He rubbed at his face, then turned and waddled back inside. The woman met my eye for a second and gave me that look she sometimes did. That relieved, embarrassed, guilty look that was the closest she ever came to thanking me.

A chill ran up my legs and I realized for the first time that I was standing there in nothing but a nightshirt and underpants. I turned without saying anything, and went back upstairs.

When I got back inside, I closed the door behind me and locked it. I stood there for a second, leaning my back against it, and hoped she wouldn’t follow me. She wouldn’t, though; she never did. I hated going down there. Why did she stay with him?

The image of the FBI agent Wachalowski was still on the TV screen, like he was staring me down from across the room. There was something about his eyes, like he could see right through the screen and into my apartment and was wondering what he had just watched.

He wouldn’t believe it if he knew. The woman downstairs had watched it enough times with her own two eyes and she didn’t even believe it.

Sitting back down with the bottle, I tried to push the whole thing out of my head. I switched the channel before I had my next drink, because I didn’t want him to watch me do it. Later, when I got closer to the bottom, I wouldn’t care, but right then I didn’t want anyone to see. Tomorrow I’d stay sober. Maybe I’d take it easy for a few nights, to detox myself and kind of clear my head.

I was too far gone tonight, but tomorrow definitely.

Using the tuner, I strayed out of the news bands and into the movie area, where the search ’bot scanned hundreds of channels for things that interested me. It stayed quiet downstairs for a while; then they had sex for a few minutes; then it got quiet again. I wondered why the FBI agent Wachalowski ended up in the green room, but not for long before the booze started doing its job.

All I wanted was to be numb when the needle-head finally did show up again. The rest would work itself out.

As I cruised down the interstate, I could still feel the blood pulsing in my neck. Before I left, I’d signed out a weapon. Having a gun strapped next to my ribs made me breathe a little easier, but I could still feel the cold meat of that dead arm around my neck.

Where had someone like Tai gotten a piece of meat like that? Revivors like the females he kept were the only kind most people outside of the military wanted to deal in. They were weak and docile. They were predictable. The one that attacked me in the hallway was old-school, third-world military. I didn’t think anyone made them like that anymore. It drooled, so it was hungry. Revivors couldn’t process food; the newer ones had a shunt in the brain that told them they were full. The old ones were always hungry, with no way to make it stop. Back in the grinder, sometimes they wired their jaws shut. Sometimes they just let them eat. No one stateside wanted units like that.

The kinds of people who might be interested in a revivor like that would also be interested in Tai’s little arsenal. Someone on this side of the border wanted both those things and was willing to pay for them. Tai had at least one customer I hadn’t known anything about. Whoever that was, he was into something worse than body-bag sex and slavery.

A horn blared, snapping my attention back to the road. A semi with a freezer car sporting a biohazard warning, probably filled with bodies and headed for the Heinlein labs, drifted into my lane.

A message came in from the Federal Building. I picked up.

Go ahead, Sean.

That kid from the lobby already has bites airing.

Great. How’d he edit?

Well. You two look like best friends. They want a statement tomorrow to defuse this.

I’ll try to find something newsworthy.

Streetlights streaked by as I veered off the express lane and down toward the shipyard. A tight loop took me under a rusted bridge that was covered in graffiti and sent me toward a series of shadowed behemoths moored along the docks.

As I got closer, my long- range scanner picked up a revivor heart signature, although it was too far away to read. I brought up a map of the dock and laid the location of the signature over it, a soft orange flickering behind my eyes in the rearview mirror.

It’s a revivor—I’ve got a signature. Where’s the backup team?

On their way.

I homed in on the dock where the signature was emanating from and pulled over, stepping out of the car. It was windy, and the cold, damp breeze coming in off the water smelled like ocean and garbage. The dock planks and chain posts were covered in a thick layer of frost, jagged little icicles leaning into the wind. Beyond that, through fog and snow, the skyline rose up in a sea of neon and electric light.

I switched off the GPS and focused on the signal. It was coming from a stack of huge metal shipping containers that had been offloaded and were sitting in the fog. Were we going to get that lucky?

It looks like it’s still with the offloaded cargo. I’m going to check it out.

The containers were stacked two stories high; mass vehicle transports, each capable of holding maybe twenty-four cars. I moved into the shadows between two rows of them, toward the signal.

How many?

Just one.

I found the container the signature was coming from and approached it. The front end of it had a huge set of doors to allow vehicles in and out, and it was barred and locked. To the side of the large doors was a small one to allow inspectors in and out. I scanned the scene and packaged the footage along with the rest of the case information, then sent out a warrant request.

Granted.

I approached the small door and put my thumb to the lock, issuing an override code. A few seconds later, the bolt opened with a loud snap. I pushed it open with a crunch that brought flakes of ice down over my head, and went inside.

Adjusting the night vision filter, I looked around. The crate was filled with tightly packed rows of electric cars sitting on metal skids, parked bumper to bumper and three rows high.

I scanned the inside of the container; the signal was coming from above me. After climbing up the scaffolding, I managed to follow it to a single car in the middle row. I peered in through the side window, trying not to fog it up.

There was a female revivor inside, lying on the backseat and wrapped in plastic. I opened the back door and leaned in for a closer look. The wrap was sealed, and the body wasn’t moving.

Using my field knife, I slit the plastic down the middle and pulled it apart. I could tell right away it was a combat model; plain-looking with short hair, a scar on the forehead, and little in the way of curves. No fancy skin work or cosmetic augmentation had been done.