Five Days Dead (9 page)

His room was expansive and tastefully decorated and he felt out of place as he tossed his backpack, hat and eyeset on the chair by the window and sprawled spread eagle across the king size bed. He nodded off for a moment and when he woke he was hungry. He ordered lunch while he kicked out of his clothes and climbed into the shower to scrub away the dirt and grime. 

After he had eaten he dumped the contents of his pack on the bed and found nothing clean enough to wear, so he slipped back on his eyeset and went shopping. Harley Nearwater did not enjoy shopping in any form, except for weapons. He visited every storefront he could think of, his head beginning to throb from the images dancing through it. The fashions of the day were not in keeping with Harley’s admittedly simple style. Everyone was wearing chameleons it seemed. The cut of the clothing might be different, but the color changed depending on your whims. Harley didn’t have whims. He liked his clothing to pick a color and stick with it and his color of preference was typically black or brown. He wasn’t a peacock and didn’t like looking like one.

Before he finished shopping he grew frustrated and ordered a case of beer and bottle of whiskey and after indulging in a little of both felt up to finding some new clothes to wear. He eventually went to a flashback shop, where he could find good old fashion dungarees, western shirts and a pair of boots you could actually wear. He bought four pairs of jeans and shirts, new socks, boots and underwear. He looked at his tan Stetson and decided against replacing his hat.

“It’s not even Christmas.” Harley said when the clothing package arrived at his door. It was a rare indulgence but if he was going to get an audience with the Marshal he had better not look like a derelict.

Since he had been drinking, he couldn’t pay a visit to the Marshal, but he sure as hell didn’t want to sit in his room on the Link the whole damned day. He gulped two more beers, slipped the whiskey in his back pocket and left the hotel. 

The Link told him there was a park three blocks west and he walked down the sidewalk between sparkling and mostly deserted looking buildings, nodding at the few passersby and being ignored by every one.  It was disconcerting not having his sidearm strapped to his waist and more than once he felt his hand reaching to rest on the butt of a blaster that was not there. He was weaponless and probably safer than he had been in some time. But he didn’t feel safer.

The park was a long expanse of grass and walkways and trails, with trees gently swaying in the soft breeze. There was a playground and volleyball net and park benches with chess sets. The only thing missing was people.  

Harley sat on a concrete bench in an empty park and sipped his whiskey. He took his hat off and sat it beside him and enjoyed the sun on his face. There was no birdsong, but, of course, if there had been birdsong there would have been panicked screaming to accompany it. There was classical music playing softly from speakers tastefully hidden in the trees and Harley enjoyed the sound. He folded his eyeset and put it in his shirt pocket.

A young couple with two small children and a dog chased each other on the grass a short distance away and Harley watched them for some time, amazed at the joy they seemed to be taking from such a simple thing. The dog was a small breed, a poodle or a terrier; he wasn’t sure which because he didn’t really know dogs. He had a dog when he was a boy, but it hadn’t ended well. The dog in the park was a barker and as the children played it yapped and danced around them. Harley found that he liked the sound of the dog barking. Eventually, the family noticed him staring and when he raised an arm in greeting, they walked the other way.

His face felt tight and he realized he had been smiling, grinning like a lunatic. He wiped the smile away and finished his whiskey. A city teeming with people and he was still all alone.

He stayed for a little while longer in an empty park designed with people in mind and then he stood, slipped the whiskey in his back pocket, dropped his hat back on his head and went for a walk.

He eventually found his boots clicking on the cobblestones of Provo Center Street and for the first time since arriving in the Hub he was among humanity. Although the streets were not busy, there were a few pods, green, blue and white ones, zipping up and down the road but no heavy traffic. The sidewalks, however, were teeming with people shuffling back and forth, laughing, talking, some of them holding hands as they visited the old shops and restaurants.  

He found a park bench on a corner and sat down and watched humanity walk by in their brightly colored clothes and their loud laughter and senseless chatter and it comforted him and made him sullen at the same time. What might it be like to be like them, to belong to something the way they seemed to belong to each other? He didn’t have a clue. He was a spectator in their world.

On the next corner was a magnificent old building raising a steeple to the heavens and as night slowly descended on the Hub the temple glowed. Couples came and went through the high walls surrounding the building and Harley found himself marveling at the faithful. There were still believers in the world. He didn’t have a clue what Mormons believed, but found it unusual that any religion could survive in the New Age of Discovery. The world ground faith into dust but somehow the faithful held on. Freedom of religion was a right to life in the Federation, but it was a right people just didn’t seem to get all that worked up about anymore. Some of the world’s religions had chosen to go neand and were dwindling down to nothing while others tried to build a presence in the digiverse. After the Energy Wars and the Muslim / Christian massacres that came with it, the Federation classified all religions as cults and paid them little mind in the affairs of man. For Harley, it felt right that there were people out there who still believed in something bigger than the Federation.

When night settled in he went in search of food and followed a group of young people chatting enthusiastically about some nonsense they were living on the Link as they crowded into an old Mexican restaurant. They were all thin and wispy with very little in the way of muscle definition in their arms or legs, shoulders or abdomens. They looked like clay people and he wondered if they didn’t go for fat removal for a year would they be able to walk at all? He didn’t think so.

As he waited for the crowd in front of him to be seated he smiled softly at the noise level in the restaurant. There was music playing and people were laughing and talking and the aroma of grilling meat floated in the breeze created by large overhead fans. A sign at the entrance proclaimed in brightly lit letters “Welcome to Su Casa Realtime Mexican Grill.”

A pale young man in the group ahead finally took notice of him and nudged his friends. They all burst into a fit of laughter as they adjusted their chameleon clothes to try and match his jeans and western shirt.

“What do you think; do we have your look down Mr. Wild West?” The pale boy asked.

“Not quite.” Harley took his whiskey bottle out of his back pocket and took a sip.

“What are we missing? Oh, the hat. We haven’t got a hat.”

“The hat.”  Harley took one small step toward the group. “And a few scars.”

The group turned around and didn’t look back until seated. When it was his turn the host, a true, blue, living, breathing person in a chameleon dialed to look bright and festive and vaguely Mexican smiled at him with only his lips.

“What kind of meat do you serve here?” Harley asked.

“Beef, Chicken, Pork.”

“Figured as much. But how is it raised. Is it real?”

“All of our meat is the highest quality.”

Harley sighed. “Not what I asked. Has any of the meat you serve here ever had legs? Or a hide? Or a head?”

The host just stared.

Harley tried again. “Is the meat butchered, or was it printed somewhere?”

“Herriman Brothers Meats provides all of our meat from only the highest quality genetic material.”

“Meat grown in a cup. What I figured. I’d like to sit at the bar.”

Harley sat at the bar in the corner of the restaurant. He ate beef enchiladas and chips and salsa and watched the rest of the diners eat and laugh and enjoy a meaningless meal of food printed in a laboratory. He left the restaurant in a sour mood and walked back to his hotel.

He stripped out of his new clothes and finished his whiskey and chased it with beer. He couldn’t tell you why it bothered him to eat meat that had been grown and printed in an imaging lab instead of having the chance to live before it died. It had tasted the same, perhaps even better and it had been just as filling.  But it left him filling unsatisfied. Is that what Quinlan had meant, about humanity rotting at the core? We aren’t living anymore, only synthesizing life.  Maybe he was putting too much significance on a meal, he didn’t know for sure. But in the Hubs it sure seemed like you spent a lot of time pretending.

He fell asleep on top of the covers. He did not dream.

Bargains

Marshal Jodi Tempest was not a woman you had to be introduced to twice. While short of stature and slim of build, she cast a shadow over everyone she met.

Her hair was long and blonde and tied in a tight ponytail and her eyes were so brightly blue they whispered of the clearest of skies, the deepest of waters. Her body was lean and muscular and she carried herself with such calm confidence that few ever dared stand in her way. Those who did usually came to regret their decision. She looked like she was in her thirties but with medprint it was hard to gauge a person’s age anymore. Like all Federation Marshals, she wore a simple earth-toned shirt and pants that followed every curve of her body and a sidearm was strapped to her slim waist and slung low.  Pinned above the soft curve of her left breast was the star of the Federation Marshals. Behind her right ear, a scye softly hummed and unlike most scyes, which glowed yellow, blue or green, hers glowed an angry red like some great malevolent eye. Harley thought she programmed it that color for effect and he was right. It was a sign of a Marshal.

They had met a number of times in the Wilderness and had developed an appreciation for each other’s talents. Harley had never visited her in the Hub and hadn’t been sure she would see him. He was pleased that she had so quickly granted him an audience.

Her door opened to him just after 7 a.m. She left him standing in the middle of the room for a time as she paced with her hands on her hips, her eyes distant as she took care of some such matter on the Link. Harley waited and enjoyed the view.

Her office was at the top floor of the Justice Tower, which held not only the offices of the Marshal’s Service, but also the Hub Legion Commander. It was perhaps a little flagrant display of power that the Marshal’s star was above the Legion crest on the side of the building. Marshal Tempest’s office was also two stories above the offices of the legion. Marshals knew how to make a statement.

When she finished on the Link, she turned around and smiled at him softly, folding her arms across her chest. “Harley Nearwater. It’s been some time.” She quickly let her eyes roam over his wiry frame. “You clean up nice. I like that silly hat of yours. You’re still ugly as hell though.”

Harley nodded. “I would say the same.”

Jodi grinned. “But you would be lying.”

“Yes.”

“How are things in the Wilderness?”

“More difficult than they need to be.”

“Why is that?”

"Technology is a pain in my ass.”

“It's hard to be a thief if your Link is always telling everyone what you've stolen, isn't it?"

"Even without it you can't just sneak away with someone's jewelry because it will send out an alert if stolen. Technology has made it difficult for a dishonest man to make a living."

"Easier to be a law abiding citizen, isn't it?"

Harley smiled. "Not sure I’d go that far."

"The Federation is considering making it mandatory for everyone to have a linktag to receive their RTI funds each week."

"That would severely impact my consumption of alcohol."

"And what a shame that would be."

"Keep going like this and there won't be a place in this world for a criminal and if there're no criminals, why would we need Marshals?"

"Don't despair. There's always rape and murder. What brings you out of the Wilderness?"

“Questions.”

“Questions? You know Harley,” she slinked toward him and he remembered the cats stalking him. “We have this marvelous thing called the Link. You could have asked your questions with a simple thought.”

Harley nodded. “Could have. Chose not to.”

“You are a relic aren’t you Harley?” He shrugged, and when she motioned for him to sit on a leather couch in the corner, he did so. She sat in a chair across from him. “Ask your questions. I may have some of my own.”

Harley leaned forward, clasped his weathered hands together. He would have to tread carefully. Or not. “Is the Legion by chance missing one of its legionnaires?”

Jodi smiled, and her smile revealed nothing. “I am the Utah Hub Marshal. If you have a question about the Legion, you should ask the Legion.”

“I’d rather ask you.”

Jodi leaned back in her chair. “They are missing a legionnaire as a matter of fact. Quite peculiar actually. They can’t locate her or find any hint of her linktag. Do you know something about that?”

Harley scratched his chin. “I know where you can find her.”

“And where might that be?”

“Room 300 of the Castle Valley Inn in Price.” 

“She is dead then?”

“Definitely.”

“And you know this because?”

“I killed her.”

This time Jodi leaned forward and her seamless face showed the first hint of real interest. “Why would you do that?”

“She pointed a pulse rifle my way. I don’t take kindly to that.”

“Understandable, but if the Legion were to know they would skin you alive.”

“Maybe. But she told me some things that I thought might interest you.  Intrestin things.”

“Such as?”

“She said she had a visitor in her apartment. A man with gray eyes. She thought he was a dream but apparently he was not.”

“What did this gray walker want?”

Harley cocked and eyebrow. “I didn’t call him the Gray Walker.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“He said he wanted to give her the freedom to make her own choice.”

“About what?”

“About where she stood and what she believed. He removed her linktag and when she woke she was in the hotel in Price.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Didn’t think so either. She had a scar on her temple, but I think it was there so I would notice it, me or whoever else found her. I don’t think he needed to scar her to remove the linktag. He just wanted to send a message.”

“The linktag can’t be removed.”

“Could you find her? Could you find her still if I hadn’t told you where her body was? He removed it.”

“What message was he trying to send?”

Harley pursed his lips. “That he’s out there.”

Jodi leaned back in her chair and absently twirled her ponytail between her fingers. Harley didn’t think she was aware she was doing it. “Have you seen this man with the gray eyes?”

Harley shook his head. “No. But there’s whisperings of him. A gray man. The Gray Walker. You’ve heard the legends. He lives among us but is not of us. He is something more.”

Jodi was quiet for some time and her eyes were far away. She was on the Link and Harley wasn’t sure who she might be consulting. When she came back, she smiled coolly, calmly.

“Thank you for the information. I will keep the events leading to the legionnaire’s death between us, as a professional courtesy.”

“There’s more.” 

Jodi furrowed her brow, her blue eyes sharp and piercing. “Yes?”

“Deputy Marshal Shelley is dead.”

Jodi paused for a moment and Harley detected the slightest blink of her eyelids as she consulted the Link. “I’m picking up his linktag in Spanish Fork Canyon.”

Harley nodded. “That’s where you’ll find him. Most of him is on the highway, the rest of him is in the belly of a stunning but quite dead Wrynd.” 

“How did this happen?”

“He was playing guide for a husband looking for his wife who had been taken by Wrynd. They found her. She didn’t want to come back.”

Jodi gritted her teeth. “Damn zombies.”

Harley smiled softly. “Damn zombies. I wanted to ask you how the Wrynd are on the Link, how they have linktags and how their ink is being delivered by stork?”

“What makes you think that Harley?”

“Let’s just say it’s more than a hunch.”

Jodi stood and sashayed back to the window, where she looked out at the late morning skyline. The first hint of a storm was on the horizon, but it didn’t look like the Rages, just a summer thunderstorm.

“Just another arrow in the quiver Harley.”

“Arrow?”

“Long thing, pointed end, feathers, you shoot it with a bow. How could you not know about an arrow?”

Harley just stared.

“Oh, all right. Just a little joke Harley. In every society you have your bottom feeders; it’s just the way things are. It doesn’t matter how much you do for them, how many opportunities you provide them, there is a certain percentage of the population that will always choose the wrong course. Call it a genetic defect. Those are the Wrynd. On the Link they could be anything, experience anything and cause absolutely no harm to themselves or anyone else, but they would rather take a dangerous narcotic that twists their minds, warps their bodies and ruins them forever. The trick is what do you do with them? Well, they aren’t the only problem we face. The neands and the pilgrims are a problem as well. Not as big a problem as the zombies, but still a problem.”

“Why are they a problem?”

“Because they won’t be happy!” Jodi displayed the first hint of real emotion he had seen. It was irritation. “What more could the Federation possibly provide than the safety and security of the Hubs, where you want for nothing? Yet neands and pilgrims choose to live in the Wilderness, to face the Rages every day rather than live safe and happy lives here.”

“So many rights, so little freedom.”

“What could be freer than what we offer?”

“The freedom to think on your own, make your own mistakes and suffer the consequences.”

“That’s insane Harley. Most people are totally unprepared to think on their own. And mistakes? People don’t want consequences.”

“Well, maybe we’re just crazy then.”

“That’s far easier to accept. We have tried for more than 20 years to bring people in out of the cold, to give them safe harbor in the Hubs. Free housing, medical, income, the Link with all its opportunities, yet more than five percent of the population refuses to leave the Wilderness.”

“Cut off their RTI funds. They’ll come in out of the cold.”

Jodi chortled. “The Senate wouldn’t hear of it. Income is a right to life and the Link and medical and housing and every other thing we freely give to the ungrateful. Just establishing the civilian no-fly zone over the Wilderness for Federation security was a monumental task to get through the Senate. Now they want to make air travel a right of life.”

“That would be welcome news.”

“It’ll never happen.”

Harley shrugged. “And what part do the Wrynd play?”

“Incentive.” Jodi smiled and sat back down. “If they won’t be motivated by what Mother Nature is throwing their way, then perhaps they’ll come to the Hub to escape the zombies.”

“And if they still won’t come?”

“Then the Wrynd will eat them.”

“I guess that would be another way of solving the problem.”

“Yes it would.”

“And the Navajo Nation?”

“Why do you care?”

“They’re my people.”

“Your reputation precedes you. You are considered one who rapes and pillages his people.”

“And by doing so I unify them,” Harley smiled, as much as he ever did. It wasn’t particularly pretty. “We all have our purpose and I would hate to think I was subverted by someone else who wishes to rape and pillage my people in my stead.”

“No need. We have no interest in the reservations.”

“What a relief. I thought we might be chased off our land yet again.”  Harley stood and walked to the window. It was starting to rain. “Why does it matter to the Federation that a fringe of the world’s population doesn’t want what the Federation has to offer?”

“Chaos. If we are not united as a people, we are susceptible to chaos. We are irrational beings, humanity; we need order to protect ourselves from ourselves.  And…”

“And?”

“And this gray man of yours, this Gray Walker. He is not the only oddity whispered of in the Wilderness. Then we have the Rages. The world seems determined to destroy us. There are those who say the earth itself is sentient…and angry at the harm we have done. Science can’t explain the Rages, but reason suggests we should huddle up and let the earth have back what we have taken.”

Harley
chuckled. “My people have been telling you that for hundreds of years. You just don’t listen.”

“We’re listening now.”

“It’s probably too late for that.”

Jodi nodded, licking her lips. “Any other questions Harley Nearwater?”

Harley shook his head. “Your turn.”

“Oh, I think you’ve answered the questions I meant to ask and maybe a few I hadn’t.  But I have a request.”

“Yes?”

“Find this man with the gray eyes for me. Find out who he is, what he is and what he wants.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, if you have the opportunity, you could kill him for me as well, that would be nice.”