Zero World (52 page)

Nigel coughed politely. The woman turned her head slightly, waiting. “What’s going on, Rebecca?”

“They’re securing transport. Once—”

“No,” he said. “I mean out there, in the world. The HocNets…that cricket match in Pakistan.”

“Haven’t you been watching the news?”

“I had work to do.”

She flinched, amused. The half grin returned.

Nigel squirmed under it. “I’m concerned.”

“Why?”

“At best this job will end with me unemployed and on the run. My boss would know this, yet he sent me anyway, which puts him in a sticky situation. Something I know he would avoid unless…”

“Unless it was the end of the world,” she said, voice flat and suddenly very cold.

Their eyes met and she held the gaze like a mirror.

Nigel faltered first. He glanced down at his hands, at the seatback, at anything other than the truth on her face. “God,” he whispered. “What is it? No, don’t tell me.”

What could be in Neil Platz’s safe that was so important it was worth stealing as the world ended?

Rebecca’s comm chirped, shattering the moment. She focused on it, muttering commands and acknowledgments in rapid succession. Then she stood. “Come on. Showtime.”

She led him down to a maintenance room in the basement. Through a double door, along an unpainted hall laced with exposed pipes, out into a fenced loading area. A large silver van waited, caps whispering readiness.
SELBY SYSTEMS
was stenciled on the side in large red letters. Nigel had no idea what the outfit did. Infotech, maybe. Rebecca ushered him into the back, where the men from the aircraft waited, dressed now in blue overalls with the same company logo. Before the door swung shut Nigel glimpsed dark, low buildings and an empty skyline. A warehouse district on Darwin’s outskirts, facing away from Nightcliff and the gleaming office towers that surrounded it.

He sat cross-legged on the floor. In the windowless space he felt the vehicle lurch, turn, turn again, then settle into traffic. Even at this hour the city bustled, judging from the sounds. Horns bleated. Foam tires whispered against wet asphalt as cars passed or were passed. Rain drummed on the roof like a thousand nervous fingers.

The van gained speed. The sound outside changed, somehow closer. An alley, perhaps, taken fast. Nigel sensed a sudden tension. He glanced about, found Rebecca staring intently forward. A sharp turn pressed Nigel into the wall. The woman had to thrust her hand to the ceiling to brace against the sudden, clumsy move.

“What’s going on up there?” someone shouted.

Ultracapacitors below the van’s floor sang to life as power surged into the motors. The van hummed along. Every little bump and pothole sent a jarring thud through the cabin.

“Something’s wrong,” one of the men said to Rebecca.

“I know.”

Another sharp turn, one that dragged on and on, marked by squeals of complaint from the tires. Sudden deceleration threw everyone forward. An elbow dug into Nigel’s rib cage.

Somewhere ahead the driver’s door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps, someone running. A muffled gunshot, then silence.

Nigel held his breath. Three seconds passed without a noise. “ ‘Fish in a barrel’ mean anything to you blokes?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door.

They glanced at each other, logic beating out surprise. Someone pulled the side door open and the occupants spilled out into some sort of vacant warehouse. People were shouting. There was no coordination to it, no grace. Just panic and adrenaline. Sensing what would happen next Nigel threw himself to the floor.

Gunfire filled the vast room outside.

He pressed his arms over his ears as concussion waves of sound assaulted them. Hundreds of shots in the span of ten seconds. So many they almost drowned the shouts of rage and extinguished cries
of pain. Bullets thudded against the vehicle and clattered around on the floor by his head.

When the shooting stopped he looked up.

Bodies littered the concrete floor outside. Bruce lay among them, faceup, vacant blue eyes staring at the ceiling above. A smoky haze clung to the scene and filled the van with the smell of burned gunpowder. A bit of glass fell and shattered.

Someone in the distance moaned softly like a homesick dog. A single gunshot ended the sound.

“Check the van!” someone shouted. Footsteps followed.

Movement in the van yanked Nigel from his shocked numbness. Rebecca unfolded herself from the far corner of the dark space. She met his gaze and raised a finger to her lips as she moved, quiet as a whisper, to the open door.

Two men in street clothes appeared at the opening, guns trained on Nigel.

Rebecca swung herself out, landing in front of one. Her knee met his groin as a swipe from her arm knocked the barrel of his gun aside. The man fired, bullets spraying high.

Nigel pushed himself to one knee. The second thug had forgotten him, surprised by Rebecca’s appearance. Nigel pushed off the back wall of the cabin and launched himself into the man, roaring like a bear. The thug tried to dodge, shifting back on his feet as Nigel’s massive frame collided with him. They toppled over, Nigel groping for the gun even as they fell, but the man’s grip held. They hit the ground and the man rolled away, coming to a knee in the same motion, raising the gun.

Nigel had no time to dodge or flee. He raised his hands like an idiot and clenched his eyes closed.

The gun clicked. Empty.

“Fuck,” the thug said.

Nigel rose, advanced. The thug had time to flip the gun around and swing it like a club. Nigel danced to the side as best he could, taking the blow on his thigh with a meaty smack; so solid was the impact that the gun wrenched free from the bastard’s hands.

On equal footing now, Nigel had the advantage. Fists raised, he stepped in, blocked a poorly aimed punch, threw one of his own. It took the man on the chin, not solid but enough to tip the scales. Nigel followed up with two more strikes on the same spot, each more powerful than the last. The third blow put the man down. Nigel kicked him in the side of the head for good measure, then wheeled about.

Rebecca stood over the other man’s body. She was breathing hard and shaking her hands. Nigel glanced at her opponent and saw red marks around his neck where her fingers had dug in. She held a pistol in her hands.

“Job’s off?” Nigel asked.

She shook her head and leveled her pistol at him. “Let’s get going.”

“You can’t be serious.”

She tilted her head to one side, one eyebrow arched. “Move, now.”

“Listen, dear, we only do this sort of work when the money is right and the risk is minimal.”

“The money is more than you can imagine. The risk? I’ll find somewhere for you to hole up until I can identify another way in.”

He grunted. “One that doesn’t involve a car wash in bullets?”

“Ideally. Now move, before the backup arrives.”

He hobbled along behind her, one hand absently rubbing at the growing bruise on his thigh. Near the exit he detoured to a coatrack. A cane leaned against the side. It had a dark wooden shaft, a brass plug on the bottom, and a fake ivory dragon’s head for a top.

Nigel tested it, his fingers wrapping around the serpentine sculpture. He headed for the exit.

Rebecca met him outside the door. Her gaze traveled down to the ornate cane, then back to his face. “You look like a pimp.”

He jerked his head toward the murky, warm underbelly of Darwin. “I’ll fit right in.”

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA

16.APR.2278

The decorated officer across the desk threw his slate down in frustration. He ran a hand from brow to chin, normally implacable features contorted in a mixture of fatigue and anger.

An old analog clock on the wall ticked the seconds away. Russell Blackfield kept his hands below the desk, his face carefully controlled. He knew enough to be silent here. No need to remind the lieutenant of the transgressions detailed on the slate’s screen.

Disturbing the peace.

Disorderly conduct.

Indecent exposure.

Activity unbecoming an officer.

Best damned round of golf ever,
Russell thought. He reined in the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Lieutenant Rockne ground his teeth. A vein at his temple pulsed. The man was career military and looked it: buzzed head, gray at the temples and flat on top. Uniform trim and fit on a thin, muscled body. “I really don’t need this right now, Sergeant. I really fucking don’t.”

“Yes, sir,” Russell said.

Rockne leaned in, frowned. “You have no idea. There are things…there is something happening in the world, Blackfield, something major, and we’re going to get caught up in it soon enough. A week, maybe sooner. I could have orders any minute.”

Blackfield said nothing. He’d heard the rumors. A disease or something. Flu. There might be panic in the streets when news leaks out, and the need for some restoration of calm.

The lieutenant went on. “And, honestly, you do this on the eve of the moon festival? What the fuck were you thinking?”

I was thinking a drunken round of golf cart jousting sounded like a lot more fun than slapping that damn white ball around and pretending to be civilized.
Russell shifted in his chair. “I just wanted to entertain our guests. Um, sir.”

“It’s a miracle none of you ended up in jail. Thankfully I have some pull there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shut up. I don’t know why I bothered to intervene. Get out of my sight.”

“Yes, sir.” Russell stood. The chair scraped on worn hardwood. He made it as far as the door before his superior spoke again.

“If you want any hope of R-and-R for the festival,” Rockne began, “then at dawn you’re going to take that group of fuckups you call a platoon back to the course, clean it up as best you can, and then march around it until noon. If any of you so much as make a goddamn sound, if I get a single complaint from anyone about noise or exposed genitalia or whatever else, I’ll hold you
and only you
responsible. Don’t think for a second you’ll get leniency twice from me. Is that clear?”

“What about the staff meeting, sir?”

“Oh, right! Your presence will be sorely fucking missed, believe me. I’ll send you minutes. Now, are we clear?”

“Very much so.”

“I could strip you of your rank for this shit, Blackfield,” he said, tapping the discarded slate on the desk. “If that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, as your behavior lately suggests to me, just say it and it’s done. Otherwise, clean up your bloody act. I liked you a lot more when I’d never had reason to see or hear from you.”

To this Russell only nodded. He slipped into the hallway and
pulled the door closed behind him. He let his feet drag in the hallway and on out into the yard beyond. A cool evening breeze chased the day’s heat away. A light rain had left a shine on the ground, a little polish before tomorrow’s big party. By the time Russell reached his own barracks he had a spring in his step.
Tomorrow.
A bit of marching in the sun, a chance to discipline his own troops, then, later, the festivities. Weather reports called for clear skies. The girls would be out in tank tops and shorts, dancing under a full moon hanging directly above the Darwin Elevator. It hardly seemed like punishment at all.

Perhaps best of all, he’d done it. He’d lowered the bar. “A low bar is easily leapt,” an old con man had once told him.
For a professional liar that old bastard sure was a fountain of truth.
He’d show Rockne, show them all, that he was a man who could take responsibility for his mistakes. And then, more important, transcend them. His turnaround would be the talk of the officer lounge for a year, and grumpy old Rockne would bask in the praise. “I stuck with him early on. I saw the potential within him, sure I did,” he’d say. Asshole.

Russell’s soldiers tensed when he walked in. Their eyes searched for signs of the verdict on his face and Russell took care to look coddled, even afraid, as he broke the news.

At dawn Blackfield roused his troops and led them back to the scene of yesterday’s debauchery. They marched in full combat gear, faces painted camouflage and everything, and they had an audience.

Blackfield expected this. Soldiers from all the other platoons of First Brigade lined the sidewalks around the property. They’d been given leave to taunt, albeit silently, to their heart’s content. This was not an opportunity soldiers passed up, and they’d turned out in force despite the hour and the festivities scheduled for the evening to come.

They pointed, laughed, and snickered behind hands held up to shield the sound of taking glee at someone else’s punishment. They made rude gestures, pretended to copulate with each other and the
trees—really anything, though they were careful not to show any skin. Orders were orders.

Blackfield moved up and down the line as his twenty-four grunts made their first circuit around the perimeter of the course at a brisk, curt march. He called a halt at the seventh green and set them about fixing divots and patching up churned ground where golf carts had made turns entirely too fast the day before. The watchers lining the street threw bits of trash onto the course. Russell would have, too, had he been among them. He wasn’t, though, and so he kept his instinctual anger in check. When one of his own shouted an insult at the tormenters, Russell grabbed him by the earlobe and, with nothing more than a glare, set him to the task of fifty push-ups and instructions to catch up once finished.

By the time the sun rose there were citizens along the sidewalks, too. Most were watching; bemused, intrigued. Kids joined in the taunts and shook the perimeter chain-link fence with white-knuckled fists. There were so many now that they formed a human wall around the small course.

For the second circuit Russell drove his soldiers into a jog. Marching chants were only mouthed, as silent as the mocking versions coming from the line of observers. By the third circuit the novelty had worn off, though. The shenanigans of the day before were the stuff of legend by now and all of these bastards had missed it. They wanted a response to their jeers. They wanted a train wreck.

It finally happened when they reached the seventh green again. A group of privates at the rear of Blackfield’s line stopped in unison and unleashed a barrage of thrown objects—rocks, clods of dirt, whatever they’d managed to pick up. It might have gone unnoticed, too. Russell had been focused trancelike on the backside of the female soldier he’d put on point. One of the rock throwers slipped, though. Wheeled his arms and flopped backward into the wet grass. A roar of laughter went up from the watchers and the watched alike.

Russell stormed to the back of the line. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

The soldier slipped again before coming to his feet, eliciting another round of muffled laughs from the onlookers along the sidewalk, ten meters away.

“Couldn’t take it anymore,” the kid said. Briar, by the name on his uniform. Russell barely recognized the spotty turd under the grass and mud splayed across his face.

“You’ll take a lot more than that if you don’t get your shit together.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That goes for the lot of you,” Russell said. They’d huddled around to hear him. “Push-ups and sit-ups until we’re back around.”

They mumbled agreement.

“Now!”
Blackfield roared. Action, then. They formed a line out of habit and dropped into a series of push-ups. He watched for a few seconds. Kicked a few boot bottoms to correct form.

Satisfied, Russell Blackfield turned away. The others had continued the circuit and were almost to the north side of the property now. It was a shitty course as golf courses went. Nine holes, all short and flat. Easy for the retirees. The course’s proximity to the army base made it a likely spot for all sorts of shenanigans when the young recruits mustered up the courage to sneak onto it in the dead of night. Russell strolled across the gently undulating fairways, angling to meet his soldiers directly across from those being punished.

Mushy grass slurped at his boots. Each step left more blades of cut grass on the leather. Flecks of green on polished black. Behind him the crowd noise grew, as if following him, taking on a more and more riotous tone. The sound made his gut feel hollow, despite himself. He tried and failed to laugh the edge of danger away. Something felt wrong.

He glanced back. His troops were still at their push-ups, save one who just lay in the grass.

The crowd behind the fence had swelled, and now churned. Most, he realized with instinctual dread, were not looking at his punished soldiers anymore.

They were turned south, toward the base. He saw fists raised, though in triumph or anger he had no idea. He saw something else then, too. People running, soldiers from the base among them. Lots of soldiers.

“What the hell?”

Kids leapt onto the flimsy fence and climbed desperately for the top. A pair of legs cartwheeled above the heads of those near the back of the crowd.

Whole bodies, then, thrown into the air.

And then he saw the van.

The vehicle cut a path through the crowd at high speed. Even from here Russell could hear the high whine of the strained caps. The van forced its way forward, shoving bodies aside, bouncing as it undoubtedly rolled over others. Some of the onlookers had managed to hold on to the sides. One was even on the roof. A woman in business dress, screaming and clinging to a luggage rack for dear life.

The van slammed into the perimeter fence of the golf course at high speed, bodies sandwiched between. Russell’s mouth went dry, positive the damn thing would smash straight through and run right over his exercising soldiers.

Amazingly the fence held. It flexed and then rebounded like a bowstring, throwing the wayward van back a few meters. Lifeless bodies between remained plastered to the fence. Bloody ribbons in diamonds of wire. People were screaming now. Everyone was fucking screaming.

A riot—that was the only word for it—rippled through the onlookers like a shock wave with the van as the epicenter. Some focused on pulling the driver out of the vehicle, presumably to beat the idiot senseless. At least half of them—and there were hundreds now, thousands perhaps—were doubled over in obvious pain, hands clasped around their skulls as if under a barrage of earsplitting sound. Some sort of anti-riot weapon? That was fast.

A gate flung open to Russell’s left and people poured through like
water through a burst dam. Soldiers from the base made up almost half of the throng.

Blackfield shifted on his feet. He’d been too stunned to move before. Now he just felt trapped. A hundred meters away, his exercising warriors had finally stopped their push-ups. Now most were kneeling in the wet grass, arms clasped about their skulls, anguish visible on their faces even from here. Many of those rushing in through the gate had stopped and taken up the same pose. They were trampled by those crowding in behind. A soldier’s boot crushed the head of an old man who writhed in the churned earth.

Russell glanced over his shoulder and felt a chill course down his back and arms.

The chaos along the southern fence of the golf course was contrasted inexplicably by the shocked, frozen reaction of those on the north side. The onlookers there just stared in naked horror. His own troops had stopped, too. Watching. Baffled.

“To me!” Russell shouted at them.

A few raced forward, the fear and confusion on their faces held in check by a more powerful sense of duty. Or, perhaps a sense that some shit was about to go down and they were going to be a part of it. The others hesitated. Most would join when the shock wore off, Russell thought.
They’d better.