Richard Kadrey: Metrophage

Jonny laughed. "Sometimes it's a bit much for me, too," he said.

The little man smiled; for real, this time. "Then you'll come with me?" he asked.

Jonny shrugged. "That stuff about looking for Easy, you weren't just being cute again, were you?"

"No, all that was true", he said.

"Good."

"Then you'll come?"

"I'm not sure. I hate to beat a point to death, but how do I know you work for Mister Conover?"

"Oh yeah", said the little man brightening. He reached into his jacket pocket. "Mister Conover said to give you this."

He handed Jonny a plastic bag containing two gelatinous blue capsules. The manufacturer's markings were Swiss, the capsules NATO issue, banded with an orange warning stripe indicating myotoxins. Jonny had seen the stuff on the Committee. Frosty the Snowman. It was a necrotic, a synthetic variation on pit viper venom that killed by breaking down collagen fibers, effectively dissolving skin and muscle tissue. The NATO variation, he had heard, was constructed with "certain open" segments along its DNA chain, allowing the toxin to bind with polypeptides in the victim's collagen and replicate itself there. Rumor had it that Frosty could break down the skin and muscle tissue of a seventy kilo man in just under fourteen hours. It was not the kind of drug that many people would have access to. Jonny stuffed the bag into his pouch.

"So, I'm convinced," he said.

"Then you'll come?"

"Why not," he said. I'm not getting anywhere here."

The little man beamed at him. Jonny thought it might be love.

"By the way, have you got a name?" Jonny asked.

"Cyrano. Bender Cyrano, like the guy in the old book, you know? Only I haven't got the nose." Cyrano laughed at his own joke.

Jonny did not know what the hell Cyrano was talking about, but he smiled so as not to hurt the little man's feelings. When Cyrano extended his hand, Jonny shook it.

"Nice to meet you, Cyrano. Let's get out of here," said Jonny.

When they reached the dirty curtain, Jonny turned and took a last look at the band. They were burning through one of Saint Peter's best tunes, Street Prince. The crowd ignored them, utterly.

Random was right, Jonny decided. A bunch of assholes.

Outside, the hot night had cooled somewhat. That usually meant that the street people would haunt Sunset Boulevard until dawn, but an uneasy silence had settled upon the street. A scrap of paper, plucked up by the wind, did a careless pirouette before being carried away. A quiet crowd had gathered across the street, watching the club. Jonny took a step back. Cyrano walked on a few steps before he noticed that Jonny was no longer there.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Jonny was barely six when the first of the Protein Rebellions took place. That was when the citizens of Los Angeles, inspired by uprisings in other cities, rose up and wrecked the Griffith Park Zoo in search of fresh meat. The riots were finally put down, but not until ten days of fighting left the city little more than an open wound. The official body count was something like 10,000 civilian and military dead.

The authorities, however, had not been caught entirely unprepared. Many in power had seen what was coming. Plans were pushed forward, timetables scrapped, and those select few, wealthy enough to buy entrance or powerful enough to demand it, began their silent pilgrimages deep into the desert, to government-sponsored havens like New Hope.

The rest of the city remained behind with the rest of the solution. The rest of the solution, in this case, was a paramilitary organization known, without apparent irony, as the Committee for Public Health. And several armed members of that organization were waiting for Jonny when he left Carnaby's Pit.

Spotlights hit Jonny and Cyrano from across the street.

A adolescent, bullhorned voice called, "Do not move. You are both under arrest."

Jonny dropped to the ground, pulling his gun. Cyrano awkwardly wrestled a Mexican Barretta from his belt and got off one shot before a Futukoro blast ripped into his chest. The little man fell on Jonny, bleeding everywhere, looking horrified. He clutched at the wound, as if by holding it closed, he could keep his life from slipping out. Jonny looked up in time to see the leper in the Spacer uniform peering at him from around the side of the bar.

Automatic weapons fire bit into the front of the Pit as the Committee opened up. Shattered glass and concrete showered down on Jonny as he flattened himself on the ground. From behind, the door of the bar burst open and a phalanx of the Pit's Meat Boys emerged, armed to the teeth. Jonny wanted very muchto disappear.

Across Sunset, the evening crowds were pinned down in windows and doorways, watching the fire fight. Occasionally, one or two kids wearing gang colors would make a break into the open and run across Sunset, waving and shouting as they reached the other side alive. A young, fat Gypsy Titan started across behind his faster friend. It looked as if the fat boy would make it, when a shot spun him around. He tore at the long scarf knotted about his throat before collapsing between two parked cars.

Jonny heard orders barked from somewhere in the dark and the sound of scrambling feet. The Meat Boys were fanning out, covering the entrance of the Pit. No escape that way. Why the hell were the Meat Boys fighting the Committee, Jonny wondered. Must think it's some rogue gang trying to shake them down.

Jonny pressed close to the building for cover. Sounds like thunder, breaking glass and splintering wood enclosed him. He tried to crawl behind the Meat Boys, but they were moving all over the street.

At the side of the bar, Jonny saw the leper again, giving him the finger with one diseased hand. At that instant, Jonny recognized him. Even with the bandages and the uniform, he knew the leper was Easy Money. Jonny took a shot at him, but Easy ducked behind the building.

Again, the door to Carnaby's Pit burst open and Smokefinger came running out. He was screaming what sounded like "Motherfuckers" at the top of his lungs. His right arm was a mass of wet red flesh. Running into the street, he was cut to pieces by Committee cross-fire.

Jonny made a break for the alley behind the Pit. Moving quickly to a low crouch, he crawled around the perimeter of the building. He almost made it when he felt a terrible kick in his shoulder. Jonny's muscles turned to water.

Sometime later, he was not sure how long, Jonny awoke in the alley. He had no idea how he had gotten there. He could still hear occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire. When he tried to stand, Jonny discovered that his whole right side was numb.

With his left arm, Jonny grabbed the rim of an overflowing dumpster and pulled himself to his feet. It took him a few seconds to find his balance, but when he did, he started running to exit at the far end of the alley.

He almost made it, but somewhere along the way, a boot whipped out of the darkness and sent him sprawling.

Oh fuck, Jonny thought.

This time he did not get up.

The Greater Southern California Detention Facility: an ant hill; a graveyard; a factory where souls were processed, packaged, and delivered to what some laughingly called justice. At least, many on the inside (guards and prisoners, alike) had heard rumors to that effect. Rumors of the search for justice. Memos were circulated about it. Petitions were signed for it. Statues of Greek goddesses brandishing scales were erected to it. Still, few had seen any sign of it.

The prison squatted, blank and huge, by the port in what was left of the old warehouse district. Built on the bones of an old liquid natural gas plant, it had originally been envisioned as the location for the flagship lab of the Pentagon's notorious genetic warfare programs in the late nineteen-nineties. The building had sat unused when the government's war plans ran out of steam and money at the same time. It was not until eighteen months later, with a few billion yen to back it up, that the order came down to pull out the half-finished labs and begin slicing up the old storage tanks, refitting them to form the cell walls within the new facility.