ZerOes (14 page)

Every time he dies and the game ends, though, it starts back up after a few seconds.
Ready Player One
again and again. Eventually, he starts getting a little further. Killing one more wave of buzzard riders, then another, and then another—

It's on his sixth or seven try that the screen flashes. Big fat pixels move out of place. First just a few—makes the screen look like holes in a punch card. Then more. Some pixels blink, reappear elsewhere. Some drift, blipping left or right, one pixel space at a time.

Chance taps the joystick left and his rider gets caught in midair, flapping against some invisible wall. “Oh, c'mon, c'mon,” he complains, jiggling the joystick. A buzzard rider clocks into him. Kills him. Last life, game over.

Except, it never makes it to the game-over screen. Everything glitches out good and proper. The image distorts—a spray of broken Minecraft pixels. The screen goes black.

“I killed it,” Chance says. “I killed the Joust machine.” That'll earn him plenty of new friends here, he thinks.

Then the screen flashes again. Text begins to scroll, bottom to top. Big blocky arcade font.
When the gods had overcome the giants, the marriage between man and beast was brought forth. In size and strength and knowledge did she surpass all the offspring of Earth. She had legs of man and was as tall and as heavy as the mountains. Her head did brush the stars. One of her hands reached to the west, the other reached to the east, and from them grew a hundred dragon heads, screaming. Wings sprouted and unkempt hair streamed. Fire flashed in her eyes. She made for the heavens, breathing fire
.

“What the . . .” Chance says.

Then the screen flashes again.
Hello, Chance Dalton
.

Suddenly, someone shoulders in next to him. Aleena. “Hey,” she says.

“Uhh,” Chance says, startled. “Hey. You gotta see this—”

“I know. Of course Shane Graves has his fingerprints all over this, too.”

When Chance looks at the screen again, it's showing high scores. Seven of the ten high scores displayed are marked with the three-letter code
IVO
.

“No, wait,” Chance says. “It was saying this . . . crazy stuff, and then I think it—”

“I get it,” she says. “It's hard here. I'm going to help you.”

“Help me . . . do what?”

She frowns. “I'm going to help you with your work here. So you don't wash out.”

“Uh-huh.” Chance hesitates. “Reagan said she was gonna help me, and that didn't turn out so hot.”

“I'm not Reagan Stolper, am I? In fact, I look at this as a perfect opportunity to teach her a lesson.”

“Why?”

“I don't like her kind. She misuses the power we have. She punches down when she should be punching up.”

“I don't know what that means.” He furrows his brow. “So, lemme get this straight: I'm like a . . . battleground.”

“Maybe. Is that a problem?”

“Hell, if it keeps me out of prison
and
sticks a big old middle finger in Reagan's smug troll mug, I'm in.” He's about to say something else when a third person suddenly elbows his way next to them. It's the kid with the shop-teacher glasses, Dipesh. He looks left, looks right, then thrusts up a napkin, inside of which are swaddled two big cookies, like those from lunch. “Here. C'mon, c'mon, quick. Quick! Take them.”

Chance takes one and so does Aleena. She looks relieved and confused at the same time. Chance says thanks, but Aleena asks: “What are we supposed to do with these? Put them down our pants?”

Dipesh shrugs. “Just eat them! Miranda and I saved them for you from lunch.”

And then, as if summoned, the dandelion wisp of a woman appears with another cookie, out of which she takes a bite. “I'm Miranda,” she says, speaking around the crumbs, and catching a few falling from her lips with an open palm. “Sorry.”

Dipesh laughs. “You, Chance Dalton, are a first-day badass, my friend.”

“It was a little crass,” Miranda says, her voice as light and airy as her fairy's frame. Her chin lifts and she stares down at Chance. Her eyes suddenly light up. “But still, we were all very impressed.”

“I don't understand,” Chance says.

“Some folks freak out eventually, you know?” Dipesh says. “But nobody does it on the first day. Everybody's always running around like scared little mice afraid somebody's going to steal their cheese. But not you! And we know who you are. You have ties to Faceless. That's why Graves doesn't like you. You're stealing his
thunder
.”

Chance thinks,
Oh shit
.

But he doesn't have time to worry about it, because next thing he knows, he's got a whole line of folks looking to talk to him. It's like a bubble pops. Three from one pod—a pod calling themselves the Leftovers—show up to introduce themselves, offer high fives. A scraggly-bearded dude calling himself Birdman Kim says what Chance did was “epic and elite.” His buddy, a gawky, big-spectacled kid with all the muscle tone of a pool noodle, laughs like a nerdy donkey and keeps wanting to shake Chance's hand. A girl with a big bright purple Mohawk—Jessamyn, she says, or just Jess—introduces the pool noodle and says, “Don't mind Marcus—he's a little Aspergery. You can mind me, though. Because
fuck
these government assholes. Right?” Then she leans forward and kisses him hard enough that their teeth clack together and Chance thinks the friction from their lips might start some kind of fire. When she pulls away, her dark lipstick is smeared. “More of that later,” she says. Then winks, and is gone.

Dipesh claps him on the shoulder. “Fuck Shane Graves. He's a festering asshole.”

“A canker sore,” Miranda says.

“Keep up the good fight,” Dipesh says. He and Miranda hurry off, and everyone follows their lead. Once again leaving Chance alone with Aleena. He feels shell-shocked.

She stares him up and down. “You're good with people.”

“Am I?” He shrugs.

“Wanna play a quick game?” Aleena asks, gesturing toward the Joust machine.

One of her hands reached to the west, the other reached to the east, and from them grew a hundred dragon heads, screaming . . .

Chance represses a shudder. “Nah, let's take these cookies back.”

“Do we have to share them?” She pouts. “I don't like our pod very much.”

“Well. For the next year, I think they're the closest thing to family we have.”

Aleena stiffens. “I have a real family, and they're not it.” But then her gaze softens and she sighs. “Let's go share our glorious bounty. Cookies for all.” On the way over, she grabs a napkin off the condiment station. She tosses it to him. “Wipe your mouth. You've got”—she makes a disgusted face—“lipstick everywhere.”

Wade's on the way out, eyeing up the guards and watching all these young dipshits and anarchists flit about like hornets around a rock-struck hive, and he's thinking,
I was young once, but damn it if I can remember it
. Maybe that's the problem with generations. You start to forget what it was like when you were like them, so they become your enemy and you become theirs and nobody understands each other. Then you die and they become you and finally, finally they understand, but by then it's too late.

Wade sighs, opens the door—and Reagan catches his elbow. “Hey, old man,” she says. No cheeky faux-happy snark in her tone now; her voice is shot through with the hot iron of ill-concealed anger.

“Howdy, quisling.”

“Quisling. Big word.”

“Big word for a big girl.”

“This again. I get it. You think I'm fat.”

He shrugs. “It ain't healthy.”

“It is perfectly healthy because I'm perfectly healthy. I exercise. Got great blood pressure. Not a
sniff
of diabetes. Plus, men think I'm hot. Black dudes in par-tic-u-lar. Right, homie?” She says this to DeAndre as he passes by. DeAndre throws up a middle finger. “He knows what I mean. Besides”—she taps Wade's middle with the back of her hand—“you've got a spare tire under there too, so fuck off.”

“I'm old. Listen, you got something you wanna say or you just planning on standing here jawing my ear off? Because I'm gonna go read a book or take a dump or something. Maybe both at the same time, because I can multitask.”

“I wanna know which one of you did it.”

“Did what, exactly?”

“Hacked me.”

“Hacked
you
? And here I thought you were the malefactor.”

“You do love your big words.”

“Just like you love hot dogs.”

“No,
asshole
, I mean one of you hacked me while I was hacking Dalton.”

“Wasn't me. Like you said: I'm old. I can barely figure out a calculator. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go do exactly as you suggested: fuck off.”

Reagan rolls in just before the doors lock. Shane's pissed enough that his plan has earned Chance additional celebrity; she doesn't need to go asking him for any favors. She likes rocking the boat but also wants to stay in the boat. At least until it gets her to shore.

She makes it into the cabin with about thirty seconds to spare. Soon as she steps in, the door hisses like a gassy snake, then vacuum-seals as the dead bolts engage.

They're all there staring at her. They have hate in their eyes. It's
bona fide
. Authentic, real-deal hate. There's a moment where—inside, not outside—she flinches. A tiny moment of reflexive, defensive fear, like a little bird spooked by a shake of a branch or a shadow passing overhead. And then she thinks:
Fuck 'em
. They don't understand her. Then again, who really does?

As if on cue, the lights go out. It's not totally dark; the outer lights ringing the Hunting Lodge property are bright, and cast some light in through the cabin windows. As Reagan's eyes adjust, she stumbles her way through the cabin. When she gets to the wooden ladder leading up to the loft, she makes out the shadow of someone standing there. It's Chance, she's pretty sure, and he confirms it when he says:

“I don't appreciate what you did to me today.”

“Such strong words.” She mimics him, but adds a little bit of a lisp to her mocking tone:
“I really don't appreciate what you did; it makes me sad and hurts my feelings very much and now I have all this gritty sand in the waistband of my panties
.
”

“The guards—the hacks—beat the snot out of me. I'd show you the bruises up my side, but it's dark and you wouldn't give a shit anyway.”

“Whatever,” Reagan says, though she actually does feel bad. Not that she can tell him that.

He leans in. “And don't think I don't know you were messing with that Joust machine, too. All that . . . religious dragon monster nonsense.”

“Joust?” she says, and she's about to tell him she doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, but real fast she clamps that down because she remembers her favorite lesson from one of her favorite movies,
Glengarry Glen Ross:
you don't open your mouth until you know what the shot is. “You know what? Just move.”

But he doesn't move. Fine. Time to twist the knife a little. “Starting to look a little rapey, dog,” she says.

She can see his shape visibly recoil and he steps aside. Says nothing. Nobody else says shit, either.

Reagan gets up to her bed, finds that the mattress has been removed. So too have all the bedsheets and pillows. In the dark, she has no idea who has them. “Really?” she asks aloud, incredulous.

“Oops,” Aleena says.

Reagan sighs, lies down on the wooden frame. No springs because, she guesses, someone might pry one out and slit her wrists. “Good night,” she says in a singsongy voice.

BEALLSVILLE, MARYLAND

I
t's 3
A
.
M
. Officer Ray Davis sits in the police cruiser, seat reclined. He's flipping around the Internet on his iPad Mini—he's well past the porn stage of the night, and he's on to recipes. Which is, in its own way, a whole other kind of porn. Ray Davis loves to cook for his wife and two kids. Right now he's looking at fancy pictures of pork belly carnitas, and his stomach is growling and twitching like an old dog dreaming.

Outside, fireflies flit about. Night bugs sing together in their chorus: crickets, katydids, whatever. This is Big Woods Road. Not much here between Dickerson and Beallsville except some fields, some trees, a handful of farms and farmhouses. That's just how Ray likes it. If the department is gonna stick him on overnights like this, then hell with it, he's gonna go tuck himself away in the dark of the night where the only things around are possums and owls and the endless insects.

Then he hears it: A car. Distant. Coming closer.

Way down the road, Ray spots the glow of headlights. It's probably nothing to worry about. Cars pass through here late, sometimes. Maybe one or two an hour. Ray wonders if there's anywhere you can go to get away anymore—like,
really
escape people. Alaska, maybe.
Or parts of the desert: Arizona, New Mexico. Maryland, not so much.

The car that comes turns out to be not a car but a van. White Nissan cargo van, maybe late '90s, early 2000s. A bit mud streaked. When it passes by his hiding spot it isn't going fast—just a slow coast down a back road. Leisurely, almost.

But as it passes, Ray sees: No taillights. The back end of the vehicle is all dark. And he thinks,
So what, just let it go
, but Ray, he's a man driven by guilt. Not big guilt, not the guilt of someone who killed a family in a drunk-driving accident, or hits his wife and kids, none of that. Just little guilts. His therapist says that comes from his mother: a mother who reminded him at every turn that he should be ashamed of himself for tracking mud in the house or not washing the dishes.

Ray sighs. The department has a quota for tickets, and worse, he's suddenly imagining some half-baked scenario where the van drives off and somewhere around morning it brakes but a car behind it doesn't see, and—
wham
. Maybe the van driver doesn't even know both his taillights are dark. Maybe some kid gets hurt. And that'd be on Ray for letting this go.

Well, hell. Ray looks one last time at the picture of the pork belly carnitas—can almost smell them braising in the oven—then tosses the iPad onto the seat next to him. He starts the engine and turns on the red-and-blues. No siren. No need. He eases the car out, gives it a little gas, and it's not long before he catches up with the van as it goes over the little Crow Creek bridge, the one by the Gorhams' old pole barn.

At first Ray thinks the driver isn't slowing down, but of course he can't tell because, ta-da, no taillights. Then, though, the van eases off to the side of the road under a canopy of trees, just where the gravel shoulder widens around the curving road.

Ray does his due diligence. He pulls the computer off the dash and taps in the license number. New York plates. Car registered to one Martin L. Biedermann, Queens, New York. No priors. No outstandings. Car isn't reported stolen.
Whew
. Once in a while, they get guys on these back roads moving some kinda drug product up the coast, or worse, they get gangbangers bringing bodies from D.C. or Baltimore out here to hide in the woods. Rare these days, but still happens. This isn't that, and that makes Ray happy.

On a lark, he pulls up Biedermann's license. Little guy, five five, thirty-four years old.

He grabs his light. Checks his gun. Whistles as he walks up to the car. He'll give Biedermann a warning, send li'l Marty on his way. And then he'll be back looking up recipes. He's got a hankering to make blueberry cobbler. The kids love blueberry cobbler. (Well, Meghan loves it. Little Danny's only three and his taste in food changes like the wind. One month all he eats is chicken fingers, next month you can't get him to eat a chicken finger if you bribe him with a case of new Matchbox cars.)

But when he gets up to the car and shines the light in, he's pretty sure that's not Marty Biedermann. Not unless Biedermann put on some years and was in some kinda accident. And grew a foot or more.

The window rolls down. The man inside has a misshapen head and a scar that connects his eye with his curled-up lip. When the man speaks, it's like his voice is dead—a flatline of inflection. Emotionless. “Officer, what may I do for you.”

“You, ahh—” Ray suddenly finds that his voice is harder to come by then he'd like. Even though the summer night is cooler than usual, he starts to sweat. A feeling scratches at the back of his neck like a rat behind drywall:
Something isn't right
. “You know why I stopped you?”

“No, I do not.”

Ray shines the light in the passenger seat. A McDonald's bag sits crumpled up. A laptop sits next to it—the case scratched up like a mountain lion had a go at it. He tells himself everything's fine. Bag of fast food? Normal. The laptop? For Chrissakes, he was just looking at his own iPad. “Your taillights are out,” he says with an awkward laugh.

“Are they? I did not know that.”

“I'm gonna write you a warning—but you'll need to get that taken care of.”

“Of course, Officer.” The man licks his lips.

“I just need to see your license, registration, proof of insurance.”

“Of course, Officer.” The man's thin lips struggle to make a human-looking smile, and Ray's sympathy for the guy almost evaporates, because
Jesus
, this fellow is creepy. The man reaches over and pops the latch on the glove compartment.

A syringe rolls out.

Time seems to slow.

Ray takes a step back. Reaches for his gun. Draws it. Starts to yell to the man to step out of the vehicle.

The driver's eyes roll back in his head. His mouth hangs open. Ray hesitates. Is he having a seizure?

Then the eyes snap back and the man moves fast. His prodigious hands leave the wheel and grab Ray's wrist, wrenching it aside as Ray fires, the bullet punching through the passenger side window.

Ray's ears ring. He can smell the eggy stink of expended powder.

The door pops open. The top of it clips Ray across the forehead. He staggers. Two hard fists piston into his side. A leg hooks around the back of his knee, pulls like a hook—the world flips around, and his tailbone hits asphalt. He falls back, head snapping against road. Teeth clacking, biting his tongue hard. He can taste blood.

He lifts the pistol. Fires. He hasn't trained at the range in forever. The gun kicks. The man runs. Ray moves his arm, fires more shots—a tire on the van blows, a back window, a bullet going off the bumper.

The man is gone, back around the other side of the van.

Ray turns over, gets on his hands and knees, starts to crawl—

Hands reach out from under the van. Grab his ankles. He's dragged under. Like a child dragged under his bed by the monster hiding there. Gravel biting into his hand. Then he's out the other side, thrown into a sharp thatch of silvergrass, and he brings the pistol up—

His hand feels suddenly, starkly empty. The gun isn't there.

Ray wants to speak—he wants to hit the brakes on all this. He waves his arms, tries to say,
I'll let this go, you just drive away, I don't care, I got a wife, I got two kids, I wanna go home and cook dinner
, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is mush, garble, bubbles of spit and blood.

The driver says in that monotone voice: “I did not calculate for this error.” He reaches down, grabs Ray's throat. Ray expects the whole hand to close over his neck, but the man only grabs the middle of his throat—the trachea—the way you might honk a clown's nose or a bicycle's horn. Then there's pain, and a wet sound, and Ray can't breathe.

The man's hand returns, slick with red. He smells the hand. Tastes it.

That's the last thing Ray sees before he dies.