Recoil (3 page)

“It’s all mathematical,” he kept saying. “It’s a science.”

He had just said it again when we stopped at a traffic light and
Leya
pointed out of the window and said, “Look.”

We all turned to follow her gaze. At once, the driver checked the
doors were locked, then reached for his phone to call in the sighting, relaying
our exact GPS coordinates to the operator while we stared at the man clinging
to the pole of a street light a few feet away from us. On the left side of his
body, he was wearing exactly half of a stained, white PPE suit, which looked
like it had been torn vertically down the middle seam. His right side was
completely naked.

“Ugh,
gagnasty
,” said Graham,
swallowing hard. “Imagine what he smells like.”

The man’s lips were moving furiously. Was he literally talking to
a lamp post? Then he banged his head against the pole. And again. Over and over
he banged it, perhaps in time to the inner rhythm of some hallucinated music
that only he could hear. The skin of his forehead split open, and blood ran
down into his eyes and mouth and beard and dripped onto the remnants of the PPE
suit and the skin of his chest.

Without warning, he turned and hurled himself at the van, banged
on its sides and windows, and screamed loudly enough for us to hear it through
the sealed windows and reinforced panels. His bulging eyes were wild, unseeing,
and washed red with blood. His skin was stippled with the purple-red rash and
blotched bruises of the disease. His swollen lips twisted and split open as he
howled. Then he slammed his head against my window, and the driver cursed and
pulled off at top speed. Immediately he called ahead for a decontamination and
disinfectant squad to meet us at our destination.

“Effing rabid!” said Bruce, his face twisted with disgust.

I stared at the smear of blood on the window. It looked black
against the tinted glass. My heart was thudding somewhere in the region of my
throat, and I fought the urge to throw up.

“I’ve never seen a rabid before,” said Graham who looked, if
possible, even paler than before.

“Don’t call him that. He’s a human being,” I said.

“Not anymore he isn’t,” said Bruce. “They should take them all
out.” He mimed aiming a rifle out the window and taking a shot, his lips
popping a sound.

“How can you
say
that?”

“What?” Bruce held up his hands. “It’s not like there’s a cure
for rat fever. Might as well put them down and save them the suffering. We do
it for rabid animals, why not people?”

“
Put them down
, dude? Really?” said
Leya
.
She turned to face Bruce, or maybe she was turning her back on the window so
she didn’t have to see the blood. “Talk about a mouth-fart.”

“They’re people. They have a right to compassion and proper
treatment,” I said.

Bruce made a dismissive noise. “What treatment?”

“President Hawke said they’re making progress with developing a
vaccine.”

“As fast as they isolate and study the virus, it mutates. My aunt
is an epidemiologist at the CDC, and she told me it evolves in two ways:
gradually through random mutation, and very rapidly as different strains of the
virus. It can even swap genes inside a single animal or person. Nature is
always one step ahead,” said Graham. He sounded almost smug.

“One day there’ll be a cure,” I said.

“One day in the next week?” Bruce mocked. “By then, that one will
be dead.”

“He might live,” I said. It was extremely rare, but some survived
the initial illness.

“You can’t call that living. Going blind and lying like a dead
vegetable with your skin peeling off. Just existing for a few more months until
pneumonia or rotting bedsores take you out. There’ll never be a cure for that
kind of brain damage. Once they’ve gone rabid, there’s no coming back. They’re
not human anymore, they’re oxygen thieves.”

“You’re wrong. That man is someone’s son, maybe someone’s father
or husband or brother.”

“Not for long he isn’t,” said Bruce.

“For an average of thirteen days and two hours,” said Graham. He
was picking bits of lint off his PPE suit.

“You don’t agree with him, do you?” I asked
Leya
.

“Mostly I just feel really sorry for them. And their families,”
she said.

“Me too, it’s freaking tragic.”

“Well, of course I feel
sorry
for them. Everyone does,”
said Bruce. “But I think we should rather use all the money we put into trying
to treat them and keeping the survivors alive into research. You know, trying
to find a cure, or come up with a vaccine or treatment that actually works. Or
into fighting the
terrs
.”

I was only half-listening. I’d heard all the arguments before —
or, at least, read them on online forums and discussion boards aflame with the
debate. We never spoke about the plague at home. Whenever conversation
approached the topic, even tangentially, Mom would change the subject or leave
the room, clearly upset, so Robin and I had learned not to mention it in front
of her.

“Hey Jinx,”
Leya
said to me, “you’re
really upset. Big hug.” People didn’t give hugs anymore, they only said them.

“It’s just … It could be any one of us.”

“Huh, not if I can help it,” said Bruce.

“We’re here,” said Graham, and I turned to look out a window. One
without a smear of deadly blood.

Chapter 4

The Weapons

PlayState’s
headquarters were located
on a large, wooded area of land a couple of miles down a private road. As the
Hummer paused for the security check at the gate, we all craned our necks to
get a better view. Bruce gave a low whistle, and Graham said what I was
thinking.

“It looks more like a military base than a gaming company.”

The perimeter fence was at least four meters high, topped with a
double layer of razor wire, and then a six-strand crown of electrical fencing
above that. I could see ground-level and elevated guard huts at regular
intervals, pole-mounted LED floodlights and surveillance cameras everywhere —
fixed on the poles beneath the lights, attached under roof eaves and on the
corners of buildings. I smiled, pleased that my trained sniper’s eye apparently
observed details in real life too.

“Can’t be too careful these days, what with industrial espionage
and piracy. The Game is big business. We’ve even had gamers trying to break in
to get their hands on new versions not yet released,” the driver said over his
shoulder.

We were directed to an external decontamination bay, where
cleaners in full suits with integrated hoods and full-face respirators hosed
down the van with kill-juice — a mixture of chemical foam and decontaminant
spray. The blood was soon washed away, but the image of the man at the window
remained, seared onto my mind.

Then we passed through a car wash. I enjoyed the sense of being
in a watertight capsule as the van passed under the high-pressure water sprays
and was slapped by the multi-colored ribbons of the gyrating cloth wraparounds.
It reminded me of Sunday afternoons with Dad. He used to take Robin and me out
on drives around the city, perhaps stopping at a park or a museum, and we
always finished up by getting the car cleaned at the automatic carwash around the
corner from our house. Every time he would buy us an ice cream. I liked one
scoop each of vanilla and bubblegum, while Robin’s favorites were caramel and
choc-mint, and Dad preferred plain chocolate. We’d lick them down to the sugar
cones while sitting inside the car as the conveyer belt pulled us through the
bubbles, past the blue bristles and under the drying cloths, all the while
discussing mean teachers and new friends, and why leaves turned red in autumn.
Dad never gave a simple explanation when he could invent an outrageous story,
and wouldn’t stop his exaggerations until we were wriggling and giggling. Then
we would drive home in the gleaming car, him singing his favorite show tunes,
Robin nibbling his cone and reading, and me licking around my lips for any
remaining traces of sweetness. Damn, I missed Dad. I missed those times.

Graham, I noticed now, did not seem to be enjoying the carwash.
He had stopped fidgeting and was gripping his knees, staring fixedly at the
floor. Claustrophobic? The boy was tightly wound, no doubt about it.

We emerged from the decontamination bay and took the road leading
around the right of the main building, following colorful signs reading “To the
Gaming Zone”, and finally pulled to a halt outside what looked like a supersized
warehouse.

We climbed out of the van, Graham jiggling, Bruce cricking his
neck, and
Leya
and I stretching the kinks out of our
muscles. A middle-aged man was waiting for us at the entrance, standing very
straight and tall, with his feet apart and his hands clasped behind his back.
Beside him stood a younger man and woman. All three wore black jump-suits, with
the small red-and-yellow
PlayState
logo high on their
right sleeves, as well as protective gloves and black respirator masks. The
older man was completely bald, or perhaps he shaved his head. It shone as
brightly as his polished boots in the sunshine. His eyes were a very dark
brown, maybe even black, and they studied each of us in turn. Then he pulled
his respirator to rest below his chin, and a wide smile, startling in its
suddenness, cracked his mouth below a neatly-trimmed, dark mustache.

“Welcome, gamers,” he said. “Welcome to
PlayState
and to your sniper simulation exercise — the prize for your exceptional
abilities and achievements. This here is Juan and Fiona. I’m Wayne Adler, but
you can call me
Sarge
. We’ll be your guides,
instructors and opponents today.” His smile vanished as rapidly as it had
appeared.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Bruce, stepping forward to bump
elbows.

Leya
followed suit, but I settled for a
nod — I hadn’t been within sneezing distance of an unmasked person, other than
my brother and my mother, in years — and Graham stared at the ground, where his
foot rubbed at some gravel.

“Come on inside,” said
Sarge
. “Y’all can
grab a cup of coffee and a bagel, and get geared up before we start killing
each other.” He barked a laugh and pulled his mask back over his nose and
mouth.

Once we’d each passed through the
decon
unit at the entrance,
Sarge
took us to a changing
room of sorts and told us to help ourselves to coffee and snacks from a
refreshment table in the corner. I grabbed a bagel with cream cheese filling
and popped another, unsliced and unfilled, into a side pocket of my suit along
with a bottle of water.

While we ate, pulling our masks down to take bites and sips,
Sarge
tossed us each a package with a luminous green
STERILIZED
sticker
on the outside. Inside was a pair of protective goggles, a helmet and a
disposable jumpsuit to pull on over our clothes. My jumpsuit was blue,
Leya’s
was green, Graham got yellow, and Bruce was given a
red one. The bright colors would stand out in any game that involved finding
and taking out targets.
Sarge
and the two other
instructors kept their black suits on, which would give them a real advantage
in the exercise, because
Sarge
had explained that we
four would be playing in a team against the three of them.

“You look hot in blue, Jinx. It makes your eyes, like, really
blue,” said Bruce.

I had no idea how to respond, so I said nothing. I pulled on my
goggles, readjusted my mask, and fastened the strap on my helmet.

The female instructor, Fiona, gave us protective vests to fasten
on the outside of our suits. These, at least, were black.

“They’re not proper body armor or anything,” she said, “but
they’ll give you some protection — those peas sting! The rifles and the game
arena are as sterile as we can reasonably get them, but you are advised to keep
your goggles, masks and gloves on at all times during the exercise.”

Finally,
Sarge
handed us our weapons.

“Here, Blondie,” he said as he passed me mine, “or maybe I should
call you Blue?” he said, pointing at my streaked hair and suit. And eyes, I
suppose.

I held the rifle between my knees while I quickly braided my hair
and doubled up the loop to tie it up against my neck, so as to make it less
conspicuous and keep it out of my way. Then I picked up the rifle and weighed
it in my hands, testing the heft and size. Although it was about the same size
as the simulation rifle of The Game, it was definitely heavier, and the metal
grips were cool under fingers used to the plastic gaming weapon. I lifted it to
my shoulder and looked through the scope, though it was meant for distances
exponentially greater than the length of a locker room.

All four of us were doing the same. I wasn’t sure if any of the
others had ever held a real rifle before, but for me this was the first time. I
was a real-rifle virgin about to fire my first real shot. Only, of course, I
wasn’t.

“What you got there,” said
Sarge
, “is
what we call a pea-shooter. It’s a decommissioned M24 sniper rifle modified to
fire paintball ammunition.”

Beside me, Bruce groaned in disappointment. What had he expected
— that we would be turned loose to fire live rounds at each other?

“All the rifle scopes have been zeroed to fifty meters for you.
Go collect your ammo from Juan. Three magazines of twenty rounds each, two for
practice and one for the game, and in the same color as your suits. That way we
know who took which shot.”

“This is beyond radical. This is wicked!” said
Leya
.

I fell in line behind the others and collected my perfectly
round, pea-sized ammunition balls, then watched carefully as
Sarge
showed us how to click the magazines of ammunition
into the base of the rifle. Bruce’s practiced movements told me he already knew
how rifle parts fitted together, but I didn’t. In The Game, the magazines and
the rounds had been virtual. You reloaded by clicking on an icon on the screen.
I imitated
Sarge’s
actions, then tucked the spare
magazines into the breast pocket of my suit.

“You’ve got all the ammo you’re going to get, so don’t go wasting
it.”
Sarge
fixed his eyes on Bruce as he said this.
“As we used to say in Afghanistan: each shot a kill shot.”

“You were in the war over there? As a sniper?” Bruce asked,
keenly interested.

“I was.”

“Respect,” Bruce said.

What a suck-up.

Adjacent to the locker-room was a long shooting alley with black
human-silhouette paper targets at the far end, about fifty meters away. For the
first time in my life, I was about to aim a weapon at something that wasn’t
merely a figure on a screen, and I couldn’t wait to try and see how I did.

All four of us loaded our weapons and started shooting. I was
startled by the kick of the rifle’s recoil into my shoulder and the half-deafening
sound of its report, and surprised that the trigger yielded to less pressure
than The Game console weapon. The scope was hardly necessary at this distance,
but amazing. Looking through it, it was as if the targets were a mere arm’s
length away, and it made shooting accurately as easy as the newbie setting on
The Game.

My rifle was fantastic, well balanced and accurate, and after a
quarter of an hour of practice, I was hitting the dead centers of the targets,
as were Graham and Bruce.
Leya’s
green splashes were
a few inches outside the tightly clustered red, yellow and blue splats, but
otherwise there wasn’t much to choose between us.

“Right, looks like you’ve got your eye in. Follow me now, and
listen while I explain the rules of the exercise,” said
Sarge
.

Graham fell into step beside me, muttering about how basic the
rifles were and how he’d hoped to be using more advanced equipment, and
computerized scope-dopers to fine-tune our aim. I nodded, but my mind was on
the game ahead. Would I be any good? Would any of us? If the practice rounds
were anything to go by, then all the “shooting” of my last three years as a
game sniper had trained my eye, but it was time to test myself in “real-life”
shooting.

“Here we are — the urban arena,” said
Sarge
,
as we emerged from a short corridor.

I gasped. I mean, I knew we were actually on a constructed set
like a movie back lot, located entirely inside a massive warehouse, but you
could have fooled me. We were standing in a long, narrow alley which ran
between the
rear
of two tall buildings. Above us was a
blue “sky” brushed with clouds turned pink as if by a setting sun. The alley
was dark with shadows in the dim, late-afternoon lighting. Old posters of rock
concerts clung to the walls of the building on the left, and the steel ladder
of a fire escape hung unevenly off the red-brick wall of the building on our
right. My eye was caught by a scurrying movement between the overflowing trash
cans and dumpsters which lined the alley. Were there
repbots
in this game? The alley ran straight down for a few blocks and then ended in a
T-junction. Through my scope, I could see the distant shop-fronts and parked
cars in the section of road visible from where we stood. The noise of distant
traffic competed with shouting voices, dull thumping music and even, from
somewhere close by, a chirping cricket.

“This is awesome!” I said. It was like I’d run away from home and
been turned loose — with a rifle — in the back streets of a faraway city.

“It is, Blue,” said
Sarge
. “It could be
downtown anywhere USA.”

He gripped my shoulder with one of his hands and gave it a firm
squeeze. A very firm, almost painful, squeeze. I suspected he might be flashing
me another fast smile, but the corners of his eyes above the respirator didn’t
crinkle.

“Right, listen up,
y’all
,” said
Sarge
. “This is how it goes down. Juan, Fiona and I are
your enemy. We are going to get a five minute head start on you four, but you
may enter the field of action and begin your mission when you hear this sound.”
He pulled a small air horn from his pocket and pressed the button on top of the
canister. The loud siren blast made three of us jump. “Your goal is to drop us
before we drop you. A kill shot is a head shot, or one that hits within the
golden triangle — nipple to nipple to throat and back again.” With the hand not
holding his own rifle, he sketched a triangular target over his chest and neck.
“You get hit with a kill-shot, you’re out of the game, even if you’re only two
minutes into it. This experience is meant to be as real as we can make it for
you. If you get hit anywhere else, you can keep playing. At the end, I’ll sound
the siren again. We’ll tally up the shots and the top scorer among you wins
bragging rights. And fifteen thousand dollars.”

We all looked excitedly at each other. I’d thought the prize was
the opportunity to play in such a fantastic game, but 15K was a real sweet
cherry on the top.

“Any questions?”