Fragments (13 page)

“The other humans?” He shrugged, his head bouncing on his shoulders. “It’s quieter
now. I like the quiet.”

Kira sat back, frowning. Everything he said confused her more, and she felt as if
she was even further now than before from understanding his situation. Most confusing
of all was the name on the door at ParaGen—Afa Demoux had had an office, an office
with his name on it, and ParaGen didn’t strike her as the kind of place that let a
mentally handicapped man have an office just to keep him entertained. He had to have
worked there; he had to have done something, or been something, important.

What had it said on his door? She struggled to remember, then nodded as the word came
back: IT.
Was it just a cruel joke? Call the weirdo “it”? That could explain why he didn’t want
to talk about ParaGen.
But no; it didn’t make sense. Nothing she knew about the old world suggested that
kind of behavior, at least not so officially in a major corporation. The letters on
the door had to mean something else. She watched his face as he finished the can of
fruit, trying to guess his emotional state. Could she bring up ParaGen again, or would
he just go silent like before? Maybe if she didn’t mention ParaGen, and just asked
about the letters.

“You seem to know a lot about . . . I-T.” She winced, hoping that wasn’t a stupid
question—or worse, an insulting one. Afa’s eyes lit up, and Kira felt a thrill of
success.

“I was an IT director,” he said. “I used to do everything—they couldn’t do anything
without me.” He smiled broadly, gesturing at the computers arrayed around the room.
“See? I know everything about computers. I know everything.”

“That’s amazing,” said Kira, barely containing her grin. Finally she was getting somewhere.
She scooted forward. “Tell me about it—about I-T.”

“You have to know how everything works,” he said. “You have to know where everything
is; some’s in the cloud, and some’s in the drives, but if it’s the wrong kind of drive,
then it won’t work without power. That’s why I have the Zobles on the roof.”

“The solar panels,” said Kira, and Afa nodded.

“Zobles and Hufongs, though those are a lot harder to find, and they break a lot.
I turned the generators in room C into capacitors to hold extra electricity from the
Hufongs, and they can hold on to it for a while, but you have to keep them cycling
or they run down. Now,” he said, leaning forward and gesturing with his hands, “with
the right kind of electricity you can access any drive you need. Most of what I have
here is solid state, but the big ones, the ones in that corner, are disc-based servers—they
use a lot more electricity, but you can store a lot more data, and that’s where most
of the sequences are.”

He kept going, more rapidly and with more animation than anything he’d done or said
before. Kira reeled at the sudden burst of information, understanding most of the
words but only about half the concepts; he was obviously talking about the digital
records, and the different ways they were stored and powered and accessed, but he
spoke so quickly, and Kira had such a poor background in the subject, that most of
his meaning flew right over her head.

What stood out to her more than anything was the sudden, almost shocking proficiency
he had with the topic. She’d assumed he was slow, too childlike to do more than fetch
water on somebody else’s instructions, but she saw now that her first impression had
been wildly wrong. Afa had his quirks, certainly, and she didn’t doubt that there
was something off about him, but on at least one subject the man was brilliant.

“Stop,” she said, holding up her hands, “wait, you’re going too fast. Start at the
beginning: What does I-T mean?”

“Information technology,” said Afa. “I was an IT director. I kept everyone’s computers
running, and I set up the servers, and I maintained cloud security, and I saw everything
on the network.” He leaned forward, staring at her intently, stabbing the floor with
his finger. “I saw
everything
. I watched it all happen.” He leaned back and spread his arms, as if to encompass
the entire room, maybe the entire building, in his gesture. “I have it all here, almost
all of it, and I’m going to show everyone, and they’re going to know the whole story.
They’re going to know exactly how it happened.”

“How what happened?”

“The end of the world,” said Afa. He swallowed, his face turning red as he raced to
speak without pausing for breath. “The Partials, the war, the rebellion, the virus.
Everything.”

Kira nodded, so excited her fingers started to tingle. “And who are you going to tell?”

Afa’s face fell, and his arms dropped to his sides. “No one,” he said. “I’m the last
human being left alive.”

“No, you’re not,” said Kira firmly. “There’s an entire community on Long Island—there
are nearly thirty-six thousand humans left there, and goodness knows how many more
on other continents. There
have
to be more. What about me?”

“You’re a Partial.”

The accusation, again, made her uncomfortable, especially since she couldn’t counter
it with a flat refusal. She tried a misdirection instead. “How do you know I’m a Partial?”

“Humans don’t come to Manhattan.”

“You’re here.”

“I was here before; that’s different.”

Kira ground her teeth, caught again in Afa’s circular, self-referential arguments.
“Then why did you let me into you house?” she asked. “If the Partials are so bad,
why trust me?”

“Partials aren’t bad.”

“But—” Kira frowned, exasperated by his simple, matter-of-fact answers, which seemed
to make no sense. “You’re out here alone,” she said. “You hide, you protect yourself
like crazy, you blow up your radio stations anytime anyone gets too close to them.
You’ve got a huge community to the east, and a huge community on the north, and you
don’t join either of them. If the Partials aren’t bad, why keep yourself separate?”
It occurred to her, as she said it, that the question applied equally well to her.
She’d been out here alone for months, avoiding Partials and humans alike.

Not avoiding them,
she told herself,
saving them. Saving both of them.
But the thought still bothered her.

Afa scraped the last bits of fruit from his can. “I stay here because I like the quiet.”

“You like the quiet.” Kira laughed, more helpless than amused, and stood up from the
floor, stretching and rubbing her eyes. “I don’t understand you, Afa. You collect
information that you do and don’t want to show anyone; you live in a giant radio tower
and yet you don’t like talking to people. Why do you have the radios, by the way?
Is it just part of the information gathering? Are you just trying to know everything?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think that maybe somebody else could benefit from all this information
you’re putting together?”

Afa stood up. “I have to go to sleep now.”

“Wait,” said Kira, abashed by his discomfort. She’d been arguing with the brilliant
IT director, almost yelling at him in her frustration, but here she was confronted
with the child again, awkward and slow, a tiny mind in a giant body. She sighed, and
realized how tired she was, as well. “I’m sorry, Afa. I’m sorry I got upset.” She
reached toward his hand, hesitating as she watched his eyes. They had never touched,
Afa always keeping his shy distance, and she realized with a rush of emotion that
she hadn’t touched anyone—not a single human contact—in weeks. Afa, if she understood
his situation correctly, hadn’t touched anyone in years. Her hand hovered over his,
and she saw in his eyes the same mixture of fear and longing that she felt in herself.
She lowered her palm, resting it on his knuckles, and he flinched but didn’t move
away. She felt the pressure of his bones, the softness of his flesh, the leathery
texture of his skin, the warm beat of his pulse.

She felt a tear in the corner of her eye and blinked it away. Afa began to cry, more
like a lost child than anyone she’d met in ten years, and Kira drew him into an embrace.
He hugged her back tightly, sobbing like a baby, nearly crushing her with his massive
arms, and Kira let her own tears run freely. She patted him softly on the back, soothing
him gently, luxuriating in the sheer presence of another person, real and warm and
alive.

M
arcus ran as fast as he could through the forest, trying to keep his feet under him
and his head from cracking into low-hanging branches and vine-crusted poles. The soldier
beside him fell abruptly, red blood blossoming on his back as a bullet brought him
down. Marcus faltered, instinctively turning to help the fallen soldier, but Haru
grabbed him and dragged him forward, crashing headlong through the trees.

“He’s gone,” Haru shouted. “Keep running!”

More shots flew past them, whistling through the leaves and exploding against trunks
and old boards. This part of Long Island had been heavily wooded even before the Break,
and in the twelve years since then, nature had reclaimed the neighborhood, tearing
down rotten fences and collapsing old roofs and walls, filling the lawns and gardens
with new growth. Even the sidewalks and streets were cracked and split by a dozen
years of freezes and thaws, and trees had sprung up in every gap and rift and crevice.
Marcus leapt over a crumbling brick retaining wall and followed Haru through a living
room so filled with vines and brush it was almost indistinguishable from the world
outside. He dodged a sapling sprouting up through the floorboards, and cringed as
another Partial bullet whooshed past his ear and shattered the glass in a picture
frame not ten feet in front of him. Haru turned down a sagging hallway, dropping a
live grenade just around the corner, and Marcus’s eyes went wide in terror as he leapt
over it, putting on an extra burst of speed he didn’t know he had. He tumbled out
the far side of the house just as it exploded. Haru hauled him to his feet again with
an urgent grunt.

“If they’re as close behind as I think they are, that got at least one of them,” said
Haru, puffing as he ran. “Either way it’s going to slow down anyone who followed us
into the house, and it’s going to make them think twice about following us into the
next one.”

“Sato, you all right?” A woman’s voice cut sharply through the trees, and Marcus recognized
it as Grant, the sergeant of this squad of Grid soldiers. Haru ran a little faster
to catch up, and Marcus snarled with exhaustion as he struggled to keep up.

“Just dropped a frag in that last house,” said Haru. “Medic and I are fine.”

“Grenades are fun, but you’re gonna miss ’em when they’re gone,” said Grant.

“It didn’t go to waste,” Haru insisted. Another soldier beside them twisted and fell
in midstride, claimed by another bullet, and Marcus ducked involuntarily before sprinting
forward again. They’d been running like this for nearly an hour, and the forest had
become a nightmare of death unmoored from the familiar rules of cause and effect.
Bullets came from nowhere, people lived one second and died the next, and all they
could do was run.

“We need to make a stand,” said Haru. He was in better shape than Marcus, but fatigue
was more than evident in his voice.

Grant shook her head almost imperceptibly, conserving her energy as they ran. “We
tried that, remember? We lost half the squad.”

“We didn’t have a good ambush point,” said Haru. “If we can find a good spot, or if
we can regroup with more soldiers, we might have a chance. The one thing we did accomplish
was to get a good look at their forces, and they’re not very big. We outnumber them,
and we know the terrain better—there’s got to be a way to make this work.”

Another bullet flew past, and Marcus stifled a scream. “You have an absolutely heartwarming
level of optimism.”

“There’s a work farm near here,” said Grant, “on the grounds of an old golf course.
We can make a stand there.”

They redoubled their efforts, discarding grenades here and there as they ran, hoping
the erratic explosions would deter their pursuers enough to buy a few precious extra
seconds. Marcus saw a sign for a golf course and marveled at Grant’s presence of mind—he
was too scared and frantic even to notice their environment, let alone recognize it.
A voice from the trees called out for them to halt, but they barreled forward as Grant
shouted back, “Partials behind us! Hold your positions and fire!” Marcus followed
the soldiers past the line of cars that marked the edge of the parking lot, and dove
to the ground behind the largest truck he could find.

A man in rough farming clothes crouched next to them, clutching a shotgun. “We heard
the reports on the radio. Is it true?” His eyes were wild with fear. “Are they invading?”

Grant readied her assault rifle as she answered, checking the clip for ammo and then
slapping it back into place. “Full-scale. The Grid base in Queens is gone, and the
watch posts on the North Shore are reporting Partial landing craft from there all
the way out to Wildwood.”

“Mother of mercy,” the farmer muttered.

“Incoming!” shouted another soldier, and Grant and Haru and the rest reared up, bracing
themselves behind the line of cars and firing furiously into the trees. Ten or so
farmers, already gathered by the radio reports, joined them with grim looks. Marcus
threw his hands over his head and ducked lower, knowing he should help but too terrified
to move. The Partials returned fire, and the cars shook with the staccato rhythm of
bullet impacts. Grant shouted more directions, but she stopped mid-word with a sickening
gurgle, falling to the ground in a red mist of blood. Marcus moved to help her, but
she was dead before she even landed.

“Fall back,” Haru hissed.

“She’s dead,” said Marcus.

“I know she’s dead, fall back!” Haru emptied his ammo clip into the forest, then dropped
behind cover to reload. He glared at Marcus fiercely. “The farm’s back there somewhere,
and anyone left in it is not a fighter—if they were, they’d be out here. Find them
and get them out of here.”