Jeff Somers - Digital Plague

Without hesitation I kept moving, slowly, edging my way toward the side of the street.

“Far enough, Chief,” a voice called from somewhere within the building. “Now turn and go around.”

I scanned the facade as I moved. The sun hit it on an angle, giving each worn, dusty brick a deep shadow. The windows had been boarded up sloppily with gray, rotten wood that looked ready to disintegrate and stared blindly back at us. There were a million gaps and cracks where a sniper could be holed up. I saw the Stormers drop their cowls back into place, instantly becoming one faceless blob of cop, scanning the place, switching between heat and infrared scanners, trying to isolate the voice.

Hense stepped forward, and a second report tore through the air. The Stormer Bendix was tethered to suddenly did a whole-body shake and crumpled to the street in silence. I blinked in shock as Bendix reached down and smoothly unclipped himself, taking off in a blindfolded, handcuffed run down the street. Hense looked back at Bendix as if committing him to memory while I wondered why they’d chosen that trooper, of all the targets on the street. Before I could linger on the subject or even examine the body, another shot cracked out, echoing off the steel valleys of Manhattan, making us all hunch down in instinctive, useless ducking motions.

“I said, go around,” the voice called out. It was a pleasant male voice, deep and gravelly. He managed to make it sound polite. I was about ten feet from the wall, moving carefully. The front door was shut tight and probably barred on the inside, but I knew another way in. Midtown wasn’t like downtown Manhattan; there weren’t countless Safe Rooms and hidden tunnels-but there were a few secrets.

Hense peered up at the building. “Did you just fire on System Security Force officers?” she asked in disbelief. “ Twice? ”

“We’re not sick in here,” the voice responded, sounding not at all impressed. “It’s proximity that does it. We’re not taking any chances. Now, all I’m saying is, go around. Go one block west, cut down south, and then turn back east. You do that, we don’t need to have any goddamn trouble.”

I forgot about Bendix; this was my chance. As I slowly sidestepped my way to the wall, keeping my eyes on cops, my chest flexing with another spasm, I saw one Stormer suddenly straighten up and put a hand to his ear. My eyes flicked to Happling, who cocked his head a fraction and then nodded. They’d gotten a fix on the sniper, and I figured he was about to find out how well the SSF-even defrocked SSF like Happling and Hense-liked being shot at.

Hense looked at her captain for a moment and then nodded, turning back to the building. “I don’t know who you are-”

“Who I am? ” the voice interrupted. “Shit, five days ago I was a stockbroker who hovered upstate once a week to hunt,” he said.

“-but we are police, and we don’t fucking go around. ”

Without a command, five Stormers swung their shredders around in unison and opened up on the windows, the roar pushing all other sound out of the way, forming a wall of earsplitting noise. This was my cue, and I took off, pulling my gun from my pocket and throwing myself against the building, flattening my body as much as I could. I took a moment to let my coughs rack me, an explosion that sent more bloody phlegm jetting onto the pavement, and then I pushed off and sprinted for the corner. At the base of the building, the snipers above couldn’t even see me, and the Stormers’ attention was directed upward. I was at the corner, skidding into a sharp turn to my left, when some bright thing noticed me and belatedly tried to cut me down, shredder shells slicing into the facade next to me as I disappeared behind it.

I didn’t stop. At ground level sat a long, narrow window that five or so years ago I’d been just able to shimmy through. It had been boarded up from the inside with the same gray wood. Running, I leveled my gun and shattered the window with two careful shots and then dived for it, wincing in anticipation of a dozen deep gashes from the jagged glass. I wasn’t disappointed. The wood gave like cardboard, tearing from the inner wall with a high-pitched squeak, and I managed to get my head and neck through without tearing open something vital, wriggling through more easily than I remembered, cutting myself deeply on my arms and thighs. It seemed to take forever to pull myself through as I envisioned being shot in the ass-a perfect way for me to go, I thought: Avery Cates, world’s greatest Gunner, shot in the ass while running away from his enemies.

Dropping farther than I remembered to the cold concrete floor, I lay there panting, a gurgling chuckle that mutated into more coughing. Something damp slowly soaked into my pants.

Shit, I thought, I’m fucking dying.

It didn’t matter-the real question wasn’t how long I had to live, but how long I had before I was too sick to do anything. I rolled over and pushed myself up onto my feet. It was dark, and I felt gritty as concrete dust stuck to my bloody wounds. Outside I could hear a firefight-shredders mixed with the sound of high-powered hunting rifles owned by rich boys. Rich boys who’d actually survived and gotten ruthless. And here I was inside their perimeter, about to shove these nanobots right up their collective asses.

There wasn’t time to look the place over, to recollect floor plans and memorize exits. I saw stairs in the gloom and I ran for them, every breath painful, like razors inside my lungs. Moving as quietly as I could, I took the steps two at a time, the old wood groaning under my weight. At the top I didn’t even have time to ponder the soft-looking wooden door before it was torn open and I brought up my gun in an automatic response. A fat, puffing bald man appeared in the door frame, dressed in some ridiculous outfit that approximated combat armor: a dark, heavy vest; tough, thick pants tucked into heavy-duty boots; an ammo belt slung jauntily across his shoulders. He stared at me in red-faced shock for a second, his rifle-a nice, expensive item, but semiauto and too slow on the refire for practical use in my world-pointed lazily at his feet.

I gave him a second to make a choice. It had been a long time since I’d been a free agent, and to celebrate not having any dead friends to Push me or angry cops to compel me, I waited until his hand twitched the gun up at me. Then I squeezed the trigger and shot him in the face, knocking him backward into the opposite wall.

I ducked my head into the hall for a quick look, but there was no one else. Stepping over his legs, I moved quickly, gun held low and away from me. It was a long hall, stretching from the back to the front of the building. A frozen escalator led upward to my left as I coasted forward in the gloom-all the windows had been diligently boarded up-the dust drifting around me making everything hazy and making my chest heave with the urge to tear itself up again. I sorted my dim memories of the place and knew I needed back access, second or third floor, although I had to assume all windows had been blocked.

I heard feet on the upper floors, pounding down toward me. Amateurs, I thought as I glided around to the base of the escalator, crouching and peering upward. I didn’t take any joy in it. Killing assholes who thought picking up a gun made them tough guys was an occupational hazard and always had been, and besides, I was killing them just by being there, and in my opinion a bullet to the head was a lot more humane.

Waiting patiently, gun poised but held down a little to make me take a second before unloading, I contemplated the dusty gloom above and wondered what their plan had been. Just survive for as long as possible, see if their luck changed? Maybe the plague would burn itself out, maybe the government would find a cure, come flying in on rainbow-colored hovers, calling its children home. Rich folks usually thought the System would take care of them, but a funny thing happened when all that yen became worth approximately zero: you became dead weight.