Element zero, p.13
Element Zero, page 13
part #3 of Revivors Series
I leaned closer to get a better look. I couldn’t see inside her or anything, but somehow I knew. I was sure. How was it that no one had picked her up?
Nico.
I frowned. He knew; he had to. He knew, and he kept it quiet. He was immune to our influence, so he was one of the few people that could keep secrets from Ai. He’d done this.
The dog barked, making me jump.
“Good dog,” Calliope said. It bared its teeth and growled again. When it did, I saw its gums were bleeding. A string of rust-colored drool oozed between its fangs and blew in the wind.
My heart started to race, but instead of lunging, the dog turned and ran off. It kicked up sand as it headed toward the remains of the skyline. I let out a breath and looked back at the phone. It was still dark. I stowed it in my pocket. When I looked up, Calliope was gone too.
“Hello?” I called. No one answered.
Carefully, I stepped down the slope. Sand squished under my leather boots as I followed the dog tracks toward the broken wall of a building. The remains of a stairwell there led up to a chunk of what used to be the second floor. I climbed up and stood on the edge, then looked out over the wreckage for anything that seemed like it might be important.
If you stay calm, Ai had told me again and again, then you’ll know what you’re looking for when you see it. You’ll feel it.
Ai was, hands down, the strangest person I had ever met in my life. Never mind her stunted body with its baby hands and too-big head; half the time it was hard to understand what she was even talking about. Half the time she wouldn’t look at you when she talked to you, and she’d answer things you said like you’d just said something totally different. She spooked me at first, and sometimes, secretly, she frustrated me.
I realized, though, after a while that all of it was because she was like me, only worse. She had visions almost all the time, but she learned to stay at least semilucid during them. When you were with her, a lot of times there were others in the room that only she could see. Sometimes I think they were other versions of people who were already there. I don’t know how she kept it all straight. Honestly, I don’t know how she didn’t kill herself years ago. It was bad enough when it happened on and off. If I had to live in that nightmare full-time, I’d have gone off the deep end before I hit puberty.
She was strange, and she spent half her time floating in an isolation tank, and the other half running on custom-made psychoactive drugs. But she was, in a weird way, almost like a mother to me, which is something I hadn’t had in a long time. She taught me more in just a few years than I think I’d ever learned before in my whole life.
I looked out over the ruins and sighed, smelling gas fumes again. If Ai was right, then this place really did exist somewhere, just one version of the city in an endless string of them. The closer that one of them matched ours, the more it bled over for people like me to see. Visions like the wasteland bled over a lot. It meant that’s where we were headed.
“We made a mistake. You have to be the one to—”
Me. Element One. I was supposed to somehow help stop all this. But how?
In the distance, more bodies lay half-buried in the sand. The sun glinted off shiny, metallic bits that were scattered around. They were some kind of components that came from revivors. From the amount on the ground, there must have been thousands of them there at one point, but whatever happened, they were long gone, along with everyone else.
Up ahead, I could make out one building that was more intact than the rest. It must have been huge when it was still standing, because what was left looked like it could fill a city block. The wreckage drew my attention. It seemed to vibrate, almost like a tuning fork. I could actually sense a far-off, high-pitched wail. That spot was important.
That’s it. That’s where it starts, the thing that triggers all this destruction. When I looked at it, something almost pulled me forward. I brushed my hair out of my face and climbed back down the steps.
I hiked toward it while the sun beat down on my scalp and sand got in my boots. The air was so dry, it made my throat hurt. When I finally got close enough, I stepped into the shade of what was left of the building and rested. The base of the building was piled with rubble, and nearby a big metal trash bin lay on its side, scorched and warped. Crushed against the pitted concrete were the remains of a sign that might have been mounted on the side of the building at one point. Sockets for lights were arranged to form big letters, but it was too damaged to tell what it said. Giant metal brackets ran down one edge of the frame, twisted and snapped.
I stared at the sign and let it fill my line of sight like Ai had told me. I stared until it blurred in front of me and the light around me got brighter. Sometimes if you focused just right, you could see not just the possibility being presented in the vision, but all the ones before it too. The farther out you went, the farther ahead the timeline went so if you flipped through them going backwards . . .
The light got brighter and the air rippled in front of me. My vision collapsed to a tunnel, until all I could see was the shape of the ruined sign. The surface of it began to warp. The blackened metal on the sign inverted and the soot began to fall away. The bent brackets straightened and turned shiny again. Powder boiled around it like fog and then formed lights in each empty socket, while pain began to build in my head.
“Zoe,” a voice said. It was Ai’s voice. The scene in front of me wavered as my concentration threatened to break.
Come on . . .
The building began to reform. Dust and debris and a zillion glass shards rose and took shape. It was huge. Mirrored glass formed massive sheets that tumbled back up into the air, then back into place as the walls reformed. The structure grew until it would have towered above even the other skyscrapers that once surrounded it. A warm trickle began to creep from one of my nostrils as the pain in my head got worse.
“Zoe, listen to me.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her. She was standing a few feet away, staring up at me with her large, penetrating eyes.
“Wait,” I told her. “I can see it. . . . ”
“You’re in terrible danger,” she said. “You have to wake up now.”
The twisted sign broke free of the sand and rose into the air to remount on one side of the building. As it did, it turned slowly, and I saw the lights that spelled out its name flicker on.
ALTO DO MUNDO
I gasped, and the sign fell. A loud boom went off, so loud it made my teeth rattle. The building’s glass panels warped and all of them blew into dust. I clamped my hands over my ears as a sound like thunder cracked through the air and the ground shook under my feet. I stumbled and tried not to fall as the dust mushroomed up all around me.
“Zoe, wake up!”
The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the silhouette of the building’s peak as it sank down into the cloud. The whole building was imploding, crashing down toward the street as voices all around began to scream....
I snapped awake to the sound of a car horn and sirens. Nearby I heard people running, their footsteps crunching on broken glass. Over the racket, someone was screaming.
What the hell?
All the blood had rushed to my face and my head throbbed. I opened my eyes and saw blacktop through the windshield, which had been webbed with cracks. My hair hung down over the blood-spattered dome light, where the neck of a glass bottle lay among broken shards. I was upside-down, hanging from my seat belt. As I watched, more dots of blood appeared to join the others.
“Penny?”
Several pairs of feet ran by the window to my right, and I heard something smash in the distance. A voice was barking over a bullhorn, but I couldn’t make out what the man was saying. I could smell smoke and gasoline.
I pawed the deflated skin of the airbag away and looked to my left. Penny’s body hung limp from her seat belt, lines of blood painted down one side of her face. Behind her eyelids, I could see her eyes moving back and forth.
“Penny, wake up,” I said. “We’re in trouble.”
A gunshot went off somewhere close by, and people screamed. Penny sucked in a quick breath and her eyes snapped open as two more gunshots went off, their muzzle flashes reflecting off the ice through the window.
“Zoe?” she called.
“I’m right here.”
She looked over, and for a second I saw tears shine in her eyes. She reached out and touched my face, turning my head gently so she could see better.
“I’m okay,” I said.
She clenched her teeth and held on to the steering wheel with one hand while she reached down and released the latch on her belt. She lowered herself carefully, then crouched on the roof’s interior while she twisted around to face me.
The latch on my seat belt was stuck, so she took a thin knife from her boot and cut it. I slipped into her arms and she guided me down.
“Let me see,” she said, brushing my hair away from my face. I could feel it was wet with cold blood, and tried to twist away.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m . . . fine. What happened?”
“Fawkes did it,” she said. “He sent the trigger code. The Huma carriers, they’ve all turned.”
“I saw her,” I said. “That bitch Flax . . . she’s one of them.”
“The slum rat?” I nodded.
“I saw her. She’s a carrier—”
We both jumped as something hit the window next to me hard, and I turned to see a homeless man crouched there with a brick in one dirty hand. Black spots had bled through the whites of his bloodshot eyes, and through the gap in his disgusting beard I could see teeth that were yellow and brown. He stared at us through the glass as he reared back the brick again and smashed it against the glass. If it hadn’t been bulletproof, it would have broken for sure.
“Here,” Penny said, grabbing my elbow. She pulled me over next to her, away from the window, as a loud boom went off and something left a big divot in the glass right in the middle of a big splash of blood. The homeless man convulsed and went face-first onto the pavement, the brick tumbling out of his hand. A second shot went off and the body twitched. More blood splattered against the outside of the window and began to roll down it.
“Idiots,” Penny snapped. She slammed her fist against the car horn and it blared. Through the bloody glass I saw two uniformed soldiers with assault rifles peer toward us. One signaled for the other to hold his fire.
Penny checked the video phone on the dash, but the screen was cracked and it wouldn’t come on. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and made a call while the soldiers approached the car.
“It’s me,” she said after a second. “Yeah, we’re okay. We need a pickup.”
The two soldiers came up to the car door, and one of them shoved the homeless man’s body out of the way. The other one wiped blood from the window and looked in at us.
“Is there anyone else inside?” he shouted, trying to see into the back. I shook my head.
His partner fired a couple shots at something I couldn’t see down the street, as Penny snapped her phone shut. The soldier who had spoken to me tapped the other one on the shoulder and pointed at a woman, wearing a bloodstained nightshirt and nothing else, who was running barefoot down the rows of stopped traffic. One of them held up his hand as she closed the distance between them.
“They’re sending a helicopter to pick us up,” she said. “We just need to get to—”
A loud, low boom thumped through my chest as the woman in the nightshirt exploded just a few feet from the car. I caught a flash of pieces—an arm and a head—as they blew outward. Then the soldiers crashed back against the glass and everything was covered in blood. The car rocked as shrapnel slammed into it.
“Shit!”
Penny grabbed my arm and heaved the driver’s-side door open with a loud groan I could barely hear through the ringing in my ears. She dragged me out into the street and hauled me to my feet as a blast of cold wind blew black, stinking smoke over us.
The street was a mess. As far as I could see, traffic was stopped, and it looked like a lot of the cars had been abandoned. Lights from police cars and a fire truck flashed, and I could hear sirens wail in the distance. Groups of people ran every which way while others lay bleeding in the snow on the sidewalks. Gunshots echoed between the buildings, and I saw them going off down the street in the distance. A chopper banked overhead and shined a floodlight down over the mayhem.
I jumped as a shot went off behind me, and I spun around to see Penny fire a second shot into a shambling homeless man with black spots in his eyes. He staggered back, then turned and ducked behind a box truck that had one wheel up on the curb.
“Come on!” she yelled. She grabbed my hand in her free one and squeezed tight. “Stay close!”
She almost pulled my arm out of the socket as she ran for clear spot between the jammed vehicles and I stumbled after her, holding on. I reached inside my jacket and pulled out my own gun as we ducked down an alleyway and underneath a group of sharp, brown icicles that hung from the grate of a fire escape. We slipped past a row of rusted trash cans and out onto a side street where a stream of people ran down the sloping sidewalk.
We almost got knocked down as she shoved our way in. I hoped she knew where the hell she was going. We went with the flow, while the faster people pushed their way through on either side of us. When we got to a parking garage, she slammed a metal side door open with one shoulder.
“Up!”
She let go of my hand and fired a shot back behind us as I ran up the concrete stairs as fast as I could go. My heart was pounding and my throat was raw from the cold. I thought I might throw up, and I wasn’t sure how much farther I’d be able to run. I’d started to slow down when I felt her arm around my waist, pulling me up along with her.
“Faster. Move!”
I don’t know how many flights we took. By the time we reached the top and I staggered out onto the roof behind her, my legs were like jelly and I could barely breathe. Against the lights of the city, I saw bunches of figures standing near the rails at the roof’s edge. Some looked back at us, while others pointed at a helicopter as it approached and began to descend.
When they realized it was going to touch down on the roof, they began to crowd it, and a voice yelled over a bullhorn as a floodlight shone down on them. Penny grabbed my hand again and weaved through the ring of people as the wind from the rotors kicked up snow, salt, and sand.
“Back away from the landing area!” the voice from the helicopter boomed. The helicopter hovered fifteen feet above the crowd and a door on the side slid open. Two soldiers with assault rifles were crouched on either side of it.
We pushed out into the open area in the middle of the circle, and I shielded my eyes with my gun hand as my hair whipped around my face. I was going to pass out; I was sure of it. Other people saw us break the barrier and started to follow. The helicopter wouldn’t be able to land.
“Back away from the landing area or we will open fire!” the voice echoed over the thump of the rotors.
Penny spun around and fired two shots over the heads of the crowd. Those in the path ducked down in a group, and there was a collective gasp before some of the tougher-looking customers recovered and began to focus on us. I could feel the minds changing around us as they began to realize the helicopter was not there to rescue them. It was there to pick us up, but not them.
I wanted to tell them the helicopter wouldn’t take them, that it wouldn’t matter what they did. Even if they killed us, it wouldn’t take them. I tried to focus on them, to calm them down and ease them back before someone got hurt, but I couldn’t. My head was spinning and I couldn’t concentrate on even one of them.
The helicopter managed to touch down, and as the bodies surged around us, the two soldiers jumped out and aimed their rifles out over the crowd. One fired a long burst over their heads and didn’t let up until they were all crouching. Penny dragged me along with her, out into the clearing and toward a third soldier, who signaled us from inside the helicopter.
“Get down on the ground now!” a voice boomed. The soldier fired another burst, and they started to get down on their knees.
“You can’t leave us here!” a man screamed, his voice hoarse. He had gotten back up and started toward us. “Fuck you. You can’t just—”
A single shot cracked and the man staggered back before falling to the ground. I saw blood begin to burble out of a hole in his chest. Penny and I marched between the two soldiers as I looked back and saw faces that were full of fear, anger, and hatred.
The man on the ground stared up at me, his breath coming in puffs that were carried off by the freezing wind. The light that swirled around his head was confused and scared in those last moments before his eyes went out of focus and it evaporated into the night air alongside his last breath.
Calliope Flax—FBI Home Office
Cal, are you there? It was Nico.
Nico, I said. Shit, it’s about time. Are you in one piece?
The whine from the incoming signal had cut out about a mile back. The transfer was done, and the jacks were on the move again. Police and soldiers were trying to keep them in check but there were too many streets not enough bodies to cover them.
I’m okay. Where are you? he asked.
Heading back to base.
Down a slope on the other side of the guardrail, I saw a pair of cops put three jacks against the wall behind a drugstore and shoot them. I cruised behind a strip mall and saw blues flash between the buildings where a group of soldiers were moving in. More gunfire cracked behind us as I squeezed back out into the parking lot, then back onto the sidewalk. People hugged the storefronts as they saw me coming.
