The Silent Army (20 page)

“Third floor. East wing.”

I walked away and took the elevator up to the third floor, where I followed signs to the east wing. It was crowded up there too. In the hallway there were gurneys parked in rows along the wall. There were people lying on them, but none of them was Karen.

I started trying the rooms along the hall one at a time. The first room had an old man in it, lying on a gurney and not moving. He looked dead. The next room had a fat, middle-aged woman with an afro.

“Are you a doctor?” she whispered. I shut the door.

One door down, a man in a dark blue jumpsuit was standing outside. He had a black case in one hand and was leaning against the wall, watching a little screen he had in his other hand. When he saw me heading toward the door next to him, he started to say something, but I cut him off.

“Are you a doctor or a nurse?”

“I’m a technician.”

“Then leave me alone.”

He went back to looking at his little screen. I opened the door and went in.

The room was dark. There was a gurney in there surrounded by a bunch of machines. One of the machines was beeping slowly.

“Karen?”

She didn’t move, but one of her eyes opened a little and looked over at me. It was her.

“Karen, shit . . . shit . . .”

I turned the light on so I could see her. Her face was all purple, red, and black. Bandages covered one eye, and under a big piece of bloody gauze, her nose looked flat. The one eye that could still open had tears in it. The white part had turned red.

“Zoe,” she said, her mouth barely moving. Her jaw was broken and some of her teeth were gone. I thought I was going to be sick.

“Don’t cry,” she said, but I couldn’t get control of myself. My hands were shaking.

“Karen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, wiping snot away.

“It’s not your fault.”

It was my fault, though. I knew it would happen. From the first time I saw her, watching me from behind him while I made him go to sleep, I knew. I saw the bloody eye. I knew this was coming.

“Come here,” she whispered. I went up to the bed and stood next to her.

“Someone beat him . . .”

“What?”

“. . . someone . . . beat him . . . up . . . he . . .”

I shook my head no. She groped with one hand, and I took it.

“Karen, you’ll be okay. You’ll be—”

“I’ll never forget . . . the first time . . . you came down . . .”

“Me neither,” I said, but I already had, a long time ago.

“I knew . . . you were special . . .”

Her one open eye fluttered and then looked around, confused. She looked like she didn’t know where she was.

“I’m going to get somebody to help you,” I said.

“This . . . is not because . . . of you. . . . It was my . . .”

She drifted off and a tear, pink with blood, rolled down over her swollen cheek. She coughed and something came up. She winced and swallowed.

“I’m sorry I kicked you out. . . .”

She coughed again and made a face. She was in pain. I stared at her until the room got brighter. Her colors were very dim. Little bright spots swirled here and there, like they didn’t know where to go. Tiny orange spikes flaring up, like glowing coals. There was pain—physical pain, but more than that. I’d never realized how much there was, how much of it she kept covered up.

I smoothed the lights back, calming them. I focused on the hot-looking spikes and cracks until they dimmed, turning cooler. Karen’s face relaxed and got a little dreamy. She managed a smile.

“. . . you . . . do that ... ?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks . . .”

There were a million things I wanted to tell her right then. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me and how much she helped me. All the shit I put her through, I wanted to tell her I didn’t mean it. There were so many things I thought I should say, but I didn’t. I just stood there.

The floor felt like it moved for a second, and I grabbed the bed to get my balance. The room got darker.

Shit. Not now . . .

Everything slowed down, and I felt cold. The tips of my fingers and toes started tingling. My head got heavy.

No . . . not now . . . I need to be here now . . .

“Zoe?” I heard Karen say.

“Karen, I—”

The darkness moved in like black smoke. For a second, all that was left was Karen; then it covered her too. The floor moved again.

. . . how much longer?

Almost there . . .

The words flashed in the dark. No sound, just words. The smoke cleared just a little, and I felt myself moving through the fog. I heard footsteps on metal, but it was muted and faint. I was running. The walls were sprayed red, and down on the floor I saw empty clothes, wet with blood.

Not now . . . I have to go back. . . .

I moved through a big, metal door and out onto a walkway. There was a railing to my right, and I could see a huge open space down below. There were coffins down there. They were stacked up high, arranged in rows. I slipped and saw a man’s hand grab the rail. People were starting to move down below. They started yelling, but I could barely hear them, like I was underwater.

“Stop!”

I heard gunshots. I was moving again. There was another heavy metal door up ahead, with a wheel mounted on it. As I got closer, I glanced down to where the coffins were stacked and saw the dead woman, the one from the green room. She looked up at me. There were tears in her silvery eyes.

The doorway opened into a dark room. There was a single light overhead. It shone down on a bed where someone was lying. I ran up to the bed and saw that it was the mean-looking woman, the one with the black lipstick that cornered me in the elevator at the FBI. She was covered in sweat, big muscles standing out. She had on a hospital johnny. Her legs were spread apart and her ankles were locked in stirrups.

“You’re too late!”
she screamed.

Something black and wet, something living, something dangerous, shot out from between her legs. Cords and veins popped out of her neck. I lurched forward as the man’s hand came hammering down on her heart, a blade held tightly in his fist.

“You’re too l—”

Everything went black. The screaming stopped. All I could hear was a steady tone.

I opened my eyes. I was back in the hospital.

“Karen?”

She was still there, lying in the bed in front of me. I’d grabbed fistfuls of the sheets and was leaning over her.

I tried to focus again. While I looked at her, the room got bright again, but I couldn’t see her colors.

“Karen?”

I realized then that the steady tone was coming from the heart monitor. I looked harder, until the room got so bright the color leached out of everything, but I could see her colors. I didn’t know what to do.

The door opened behind me and someone came in. I thought it was the doctor, but when he came around to the other side of the bed, I saw it was the man in the blue jumpsuit from out in the hallway. He reached over and shut off the heart monitor. The beep stopped and the room got quiet.

He took something out of his pocket and shined it in her one open eye. Then he lifted one of her shoulders, until she was on her side. He put his black case on the bed and snapped it open. He reached in, and I saw him take out a black syringe.

He stuck the needle in the back of her neck and I got a clear look at the logo on his chest for the first time. He worked for Heinlein Industries.

I left. I went back the way I came, back down to the lobby, and back through the crowd in the waiting room. I walked back out into the rain and into the street. A car screeched to a stop, the bumper an inch from my leg. Horns blared while I crossed, rain blowing across headlight beams in front of me.

I walked past the subway stop, following the sidewalk and the water rushing beside the curb. It wasn’t until I saw the neon sign to my right that I looked up.

When I first tried to quit, I’d break into a sweat every time I walked by that place. I started taking a different route so I didn’t have to see it. I never took that route again, but that night, it appeared out of nowhere. Right when I needed it most.

I pushed open the door and went inside. Without thinking, I grabbed a bottle of ouzo, the biggest one they had. I walked up to the counter and put it down.

“Long time no see,” the clerk said. After I stopped drinking, I realized the guy must have always known what a complete drunk I was. He might know what it meant, then, that I was back in his store. As stupid as it was, I think on some level, I was hoping he’d say something that would stop me, but he didn’t. He took my money, and I left with the bottle.

The only time I hesitated was back in my apartment. I stopped for a second with the glass to my lips and breathed in through my nose, feeling the licorice burn of the fumes. It was a mistake. It was a bad mistake, but it was going to happen. Deep inside me, the pain was gathering. The only reason it hadn’t hit me yet was because I was in shock, but it was coming, I could feel it. At any minute, I was going to realize what just happened. When I did, the reality of it was going to stick its hooks in me. It would be there for the rest of my life. In the end, I couldn’t face it.

When I took the first swallow, it burned going down. Heat flooded all the way back up my neck to my face, until air from the fan chilled beads of sweat on my forehead. The feeling that went through me was mellow and giddy. For a second, I forgot everything else. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt happy and I even giggled as I sat on the floor and let it flow out through all my veins, all the way down to my fingers and toes. For the first time in a long time, I felt right. It was like waking up after a long sleep.

I’m sorry, Karen. I’m sorry, Nico. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I just can’t.

I lifted the glass again, and that time I didn’t stop until my stomach turned over and threatened to puke it all back up. I sat down in the middle of the floor and broke out in a cold sweat as the numbness made its way through my body. I was crying, but some part of me felt such relief I didn’t care about anything else.

I love this so much. Why did I ever stop?

Her being gone did come, just like I knew it would. Before the night was over, Karen being gone hit me for real, but by then I was numb and beyond feeling anything.

6

Huma

Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment #713

I woke to the smell of smoke. Wind was flapping at my clothes, and I could feel grit peppering my face. I was lying on the pavement, but the rain had stopped. It was hot and dry. I didn’t hear any cars or any people. All I could hear was the wind.

I opened my eyes and saw the burned-out shell of a car lying on its side a little ways away, and scattered near that were big chunks of concrete with rebar sticking out. The road I was lying on was broken into big pieces, the cracks filled in with dust.

I got up on my hands and knees, my hair trailing down in the grime. There was rubble scattered all around me, crumbled concrete and sand along with something shiny, like powdered glass. Here and there I could pick out little pieces of metal peeking out of the dust. They looked like electronic components. Some were connected with little wires, and some had what looked like hairs or legs sticking out.

A few feet to my left, a long blade with no handle was stuck right through the blacktop. A tiny pink T-shirt, scorched and smudged with soot, had snagged on the top of it and waved there like a little flag.

I sat back on my heels and let the wind blow my hair out of my face. When I looked down at my hands, I saw there was a piece of broken glass stuck in one of them. I picked it out and dropped it on the ground in front of me. The sharp corner had blood on it. I closed my eyes, listening to the little girl’s shirt snap in the wind.

A shadow fell over me as I heard footsteps crunch on the pavement. I opened my eyes again, and a woman was standing in front of me. She was burned, and smoke trailed from her hair and clothes. Behind her, there was nothing but open space. The buildings were gone. Nothing was left but jagged pieces sticking up. I held one hand up to shade my face so I could see. The woman’s face was covered in soot, and cracked so that raw red showed through.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The wind blew again, fanning the embers that were buried in the ashes of her clothes. Black bits crumbled from her and were blown away.

“Why . . . ?” she asked.

“Why what? Who are you?”

She held out her hands, and I saw that her fingertips were burned down to the bones. The wind ruffled her coat, spraying cinders. Tears ran down her black face.

“You did this.”

“What?”

“You did this . . .”

I gasped and opened my eyes. The wind stopped, and the woman was gone. I was staring at the ceiling of my apartment. Off to the side, I saw a cartoon playing on the TV.

My head hurt and my mouth was dry. My stomach was burning, and I felt like I was going to puke. I knew that feeling. It was how I was used to waking up, at least until . . .

A lot of times when I’d wake up from a binge, there would be this time where I blissfully forgot everything I did the night before. A lot of times it never came back, but sometimes it did, like a slap in the face. That morning, lying on my couch, I got two, one right after the other.

The first slap was that I fell off the wagon. After not having a single drink for so long, I’d blown it. It wasn’t a small slip, either. I went all the way.

“Shit ...”

If I’d had the strength, I think I would have cried. I’d been working so hard. I’d really tried. I’d woken up from dreams where I drank and felt guilty about it, then felt relieved when I realized it hadn’t really happened. But that time it wasn’t a dream. I’d really done it. My whole body ached.

He’s going to be so disappointed. . . .

I wondered if I should even tell him. He didn’t need to know. It was just one time. I could just get back on the program and forget the whole thing ever happened, right? It was just one slipup. What the hell was I think—

The second slap came then. My stomach rolled and I scrambled to my feet. I stumbled into the bathroom, just managing to get through the door before I fell down on my knees in front of the bowl. Everything came up; then I dry heaved on top of it to the sounds of cartoon music from the next room. I flushed and spit, leaning over the toilet while sweat rolled down over my stomach.

“Karen . . .”

I cried. I couldn’t do anything else, so I just sat there, staring into the toilet, and cried until I couldn’t anymore.

When I managed to get up, I walked on pins and needles, trying not to fall. Stumbling back to the living room, I accidentally kicked an empty bottle across the floor. It whacked against the coffee table. That’s when I saw Penny.

She was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching the TV. She had a bowl in one hand and a big spoon in the other, and was laughing with a mouthful of cereal when I came back in. How long had she been there?

She turned and looked over at me and she stopped laughing. For a second, she looked sad. She put the bowl down on the end table and dropped the spoon into it.

“Sorry, I ate some of your cereal,” she said. “Feel any better?”

“No.”

She nodded.

“I heard what happened.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. My head was spinning and I couldn’t think of where I would start. I didn’t want her there. I wanted to be alone.

“Lie down,” she said, pointing at the couch. “Come on, before you fall.”

The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it, but I really did need to lie down. I limped over to the couch and flopped on my back while she looked down on me from her perch on the armrest.

“Drink this,” she said, tossing me a bottle of vitamin water. She pulled a pair of pill tabs out of her pocket and tossed them to me too.

“Those will stop the nausea.”

I pushed the pills through the foil and swallowed them, washing them down with a gulp of water from the bottle. My stomach turned, but they stayed down.

“Look, I know you don’t want to talk right now, so I’ll keep it short,” she said. “Ai doesn’t want to see you like this anymore, and, honestly, neither do I. This, what happened here with your friend, it wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening to you, so it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Some tough love, I guess. We look out for our own, Zoe. I know Heinlein took her, but if you want to have a service, then Ai will take care of it. You don’t have to worry about a thing. None of it will cost you a dime. Anyone who wants to be there can be there, and we’ll stay out of it. How does that sound?”

I couldn’t think about Karen’s funeral. I didn’t want to think about Penny either, but Karen didn’t have anyone else to deal with that stuff. If someone else didn’t take care of it, I would have to do it, and I didn’t think I could.

“Okay,” I said.

“We’re getting you out of here,” she said, waving one hand at my living room.

“Out of here?”

“This place,” she said. “Is there anything left here for you?”

“No.”

“We’re putting you up in a new place, a better one, away from all this.”

“I—”

My phone rang in my pocket. When I fished it out, I saw the call was from Nico.

“That him?” she asked.

“I don’t want to talk to him right now.”

“I know, but you should answer it. Things are moving fast.”

“What do you—”

“He’s going to ask you to help him question a man named Leon Buckster. You should do it.”

“How do you know what he’s going to ask?”

“Just trust me. Quick, answer the phone.”

The phone was on its fourth ring. I picked up.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Zoe. This is Nico.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. Look, I’m wondering if you would be available to do me a favor today.”

It was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want him to see me like I was. He was smart; he’d pick up on it right away. No matter what I did, he’d figure it out. It made me mad that he’d call wanting a favor after what happened. It wasn’t fair because he didn’t know, and he wouldn’t have any way to know, but I didn’t care.

I opened my mouth to say no. I was tired and dizzy. I didn’t care what Penny said; I couldn’t do it.

“Sure,” I told him.

“Thanks,” he said. “I know this is an imposition, especially after what happened at the restaurant, but things are heating up. Did you have a good time, at least, before the shooting started?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded very small.

“Good.”

Penny had gotten up and stepped back from the couch. She took a little blank business card out of her pocket and handed it to me.

“Hang on,” I said, muting the phone. I took the card.

“Help him. Do whatever he wants,” Penny said, “but make sure you ask Buckster that.”

I turned the card over. On the back she’d written:

Where is Samuel Fawkes?

She smiled, and gave me a little wave as she headed back toward the door and opened it. I’d never seen the name before.

“Why?” I called.

“Because we’re pretty sure he knows,” she said over her shoulder. “Later.”

She shut the door behind her. I turned my attention back to Nico, unmuting the phone.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’m bringing someone in,” he said. “He has information vital to—”

“I understand.”

“Can you be here in an hour?”

“Sure.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“You’re nice to me, Nico,” I said. I don’t know why I said it.

“I’m your friend, Zoe,” he said, but he wasn’t, not really.

“I know.”

“Is an hour enough time?”

“One hour.” I hung up. Afterward, I sat there, staring at the phone in my hand and not moving. Those were the only times he called anymore: when he wanted me to come and do my tricks for him.

“Zoe, these people, I don’t think they are your friends.”

He’d said that. He kept saying that, but he wasn’t the one that showed up to see how I was after the night before. He wasn’t the one who offered to help when I really needed it.

He just called up and wanted me to help him. He didn’t care about me, not really. If I couldn’t do what I did, he’d never call at all. But it didn’t matter.

I wasn’t doing this for him. I was doing it for them.

Nico Wachalowski—FBI Home Office

Through the glass door, I watched the streams of people pass by on the sidewalk. None of them was Zoe. A dark window hung against the gray, rainy background, displaying the strange examination chair and the equipment surrounding it. Sean must have been wired right there, in that chair. The site wasn’t set up for full transfusion, which meant the revivors would have a very short shelf life. It also wasn’t equipped to do any kind of major surgical procedures or cosmetic procedures. That meant no physical augmentations and no weapon upgrades.

The JZI recording Calliope had sent over from the night before wouldn’t be admissible in any court, but it proved Leon Buckster knew more than he was saying. His statement about revivors remembering things they’d been made to forget implied he was familiar with Zhang’s Syndrome, the condition that Fawkes himself had discovered. If he knew that, he might be sympathetic to Fawkes’s cause. He might even have learned it through Fawkes.

A widespread, legitimate organization was possibly assisting terrorists. Revivors were being created with no shelf life, no weapons, and no cosmetics. Several had been rigged with bombs to strike soft targets and destroy evidence, and all indications were that Fawkes intended to detonate multiple nuclear weapons inside the city. It all spelled big trouble.

Hell of a night, Wachalowski.
It was Alice Hsieh. She was sliding into Sean’s role almost too easily.

Yeah.

Three clinics bombed on the same night. The streets had already been crawling with police, and now the National Guard was moving in, this time padding their ranks with Stillwell Corps soldiers rather than revivor units. So far nothing concrete had leaked, but the media was beginning to speculate and the tension level was rising out there. Fear and a lot of anger had begun to brew.

Any evidence of revivors at the second site?
I asked.

They didn’t find any, but they’re still looking.

Footage piped over appeared in a new window. All three places had burned to the ground. At the remains of the Healing Hands clinic, a camera focused on the remains of a large dentist’s chair with a twisted mechanical arm attached. It was the same as at Rescue Mission.

We got word back on that maritime ID you sent over. It was the KM
Senopati Nusantara
, an Indonesian tanker.

Was?

It disappeared close to a year ago on the open sea. The official report indicates it was likely pirated.

They never recovered it?

Never. The transponder went silent, and it was never picked up, even on a satellite sweep. It was presumed sunken. The shipyard put in an insurance claim, and six months ago they collected.

If Sean’s last message had any truth to it, though, then the ship was still intact and somewhere in UAC waters. Somewhere close.

How long you going to let Buckster stew?

I’m waiting for my operative.

You hit your head pretty hard last night. You sure you’re up to this?

I’m sure.

Outside the glass wall where I stood, people moved quickly past, heads ducked down against the rain. They moved behind the small window containing the JZI image, disappearing, then reemerging on the other side as they trudged by. I spotted Zoe in the crowd as she stepped out of the flow and started toward the front entrance.

She’s here. We’re on our way up.

I cut the connection. Zoe shuffled toward the entrance, looking half asleep.

Damn it, Zoe . . .

Even from a distance I could tell she’d been drinking. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. The dark circles were back. She trudged forward, staring out from under the rim of her umbrella like she was marching to the slaughter. When she saw me, she wouldn’t look me in the eye.