The no survivors rule, p.1
The No Survivors Rule, page 1
The No Survivors Rule
Ethan Lake
Copyright © 2024 by Ethan Lake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Part I
1. AVP
2. Gia Ganz
3. Marina Tower
4. Taylor
5. Dah-duh
6. Summoned
7. Stonecrop
8. Margot Bliss
9. The Serpent in the Garden
Part II
10. Abducted
11. Dirty Ingmar
12. West Con
13. No Survivors
14. Leo
15. Déjà Vu
Part III
16. A Bid
17. Epidemicare
18. The Depot
19. The Flats
20. The Horse
21. The Tack Room
22. Drinks
Part IV
23. Bush Neuro
24. A Considine-Issue
25. The Dune
26. The Big Merc
27. Icyn
28. Swag Bag
29. Bishop Lang
Part V
30. Hadi Keish
31. Human Capital Management
About the Author
Part I
1
AVP
The phone in south tower rang and rang. “Harley’s still not answering,” I said.
A hot dusty wind hissed against the guardtower.
“That’s it,” Leo said. “I gotta see what’s up.” He handed me the binoculars and ducked behind the tinted glass. “Sign me out?”
I typed Leo’s name in the shift log where it said trainee. Below that, where it said superior, I put my own, Frankie Devlin.
Doing that always made me cringe. By now I had nearly five years in pri-sec. But I still thought of myself as a fighter first. And as a fighter I’d never been Leo’s superior. Here he was, the ex-heavyweight champ of Hinterlands Championship Fighting, recently retired at the tender age of thirty-three. And me, six years into a stint in pri-sec, an occupation not-so-affectionately dubbed the junkyard of the HCF. Superior? On my best day, I hadn’t been Leo Rivas’s equal.
I clicked the time, and the monitor reflected back my scruffy face, my flat nose, my dwindling shock of haystack hair. And that droopy left eye. My permanent reminder of Tico Salazar and the night he knocked me into retirement. Six years back. A lifetime ago. Back when I was Leo’s age and a middleweight journeyman still trying to hustle a living in the HCF.
Behind me Leo’s boots went ringing down the guardtower stairs. Through the west window, Sissy Connors and Ben Krycek headed this way across the lot—our second shift relief.
Then a roar of gunfire jolted me out of my seat.
Leo shouted from below and bounded back up the steps.
I clocked muzzle flashes in south tower. “What the hell?” I swung the scope. Tracer rounds streaked westward. And there it was: a quarter-mile past the perimeter, an old dust buggy zigzagging across the flats. Bullets biting at its tailpipes, sending up clouds of yellow dust.
The plant had been on high alert for almost a year now, ever since the attack last winter at Little Great Lakes. But that jalopy looked like no assault vehicle I’d ever seen. Starting with the game cooler roped to the rollbars.
“It’s just Ridgers!” Leo worked the binoculars. “Going after antelope.”
I spotted the pronghorn beating it through the scrub. To the east, the rest of the herd bounded up the ridge. Those were hunters, all right. But south tower kept right on firing. And Leo and I both knew who was on the trigger.
I got on the radio. “Harley, cease fire!”
A round struck in front of the 4x4, cratering the yellow earth. A second shot fell wide. But the third found its mark. A front tire burst into shreds, and the buggy slid sideways. Its canvas doors flopped open, and three camo clad Ridgers tumbled across the hardpan, their wild hair swirling like war bonnets.
Leo was down the stairs before I was out of my chair.
I radioed External Affairs as I ran. They had damage control to do. Ridgers didn’t take kindly to getting a hunt scrapped. Let alone getting lit up. Tonight we’d probably find stripped pumpjacks in the oil fields or smashed windshields in the tanker fleet.
But right now Ridgers weren’t my problem. Harley Rickenbacker was.
I reached south tower, and Leo was bringing him down the stairs in a fireman’s carry.
“Door!” Leo shouted.
I got under Harley’s shoulder, and we lowered him into a chair. The way Harley looked, I barely recognized him.
At sixty-plus years old, Harley Rickenbacker still had a mane of blond hair that he combed like a rock-n-roller. During his own stint on the circuit—in the years back before the epidemic—Harley had been a fan favorite.
Back then his movie-star looks had earned him the nickname Hollywood Harley Rickenbacker. Back when I was still a kid watching the action on Friday Night Fights.
But that wasn’t the man in front of me right now.
White froth dotted Harley’s blue lips. His body rigid and trembling. And those ice-blue eyes, usually so cheerful, burned too brightly. Like vents in a furnace of blue flame. Like madness.
“Harley,” I said. “What the deuce happened?”
Harley looked right at me—but right through me was more like it. The way he squirmed and twitched, it was like watching a tweaker coming down. But the Harley I knew was no speedfreak.
Leo put two fingers to Harley’s neck. “Pulse is crazy.”
Behind us the door swung open. Maya from Medical slung the pack off her shoulder. I hadn’t even radioed Medical.
Maya took one look at Harley and said, “He’s a Neuro user?”
Leo and I looked at Maya. The question was crazy. Of course Harley took Neuro. Sazi scars covered his body.
But Maya looked like she’d hoped we’d say, Harley? Neuro? Never! She tapped her headset and rattled off Harley’s name, age, and pri-sec license. She scanned the Sazi ID on his wrist and snapped his picture.
Then she said, “Subject presenting AVP.”
Leo’s eyes met mine. He mouthed, “AVP?”
But I’d heard the same thing. And the way my body reacted—the sudden inward cringe, the dryness in my mouth, a nervous glance at the exit—it was as if someone had tripped a quiet alarm.
AVP. That had been the media’s name for it. A lethal syndrome of side effects caused by the same antiviral that a quarter-century ago had saved millions. I couldn’t recall the medical term for it, because it’d been the media’s take that stuck. AVP: antiviral psychosis.
I remembered when AVP first hit the survivors. Just as the antiviral had finally brought hope. Just when it looked like the worst of it was over, like the whole thing had turned a corner. Then the shit really hit the fan.
Decades later, those images, sounds, and smells still troubled my sleep. The way it struck the ones who’d been the sickest. The ones who were end-stage when they took the antiviral. Suddenly people who’d just beaten the deadliest virus in a century were throwing themselves off rooftops and diving in front of freight trains. I remembered the AVPer who flipped over a lawnmower and drove his head into the blades. And the neighbor who shot the footage.
“But he just needs his meds, right?” Leo was holding Harley in the chair.
“Yeah,” I said. “Neuro.”
“He needs Neuro all right,” Maya said. “But we don’t have any. Nobody’s got Neuro anywhere.”
Outside the window, rubber shrieked on asphalt, and the armored grille of a Tavvy tactical-assault vehicle jerked to a stop. Behind the ballistic windshield, I recognized Torin Grull’s thick black beard and shaved head. His massive form sprang from the cab. At six foot eight and probably three hundred pounds, Grull moved with what you’d call a surprising quickness. But it was no surprise to me.
I glanced at Leo as Grull shoved through the door.
Leo made a point of ignoring him.
Another ex-fighter turned pri-sec, Torin Grull had been Leo’s greatest rival for more than a decade. The two of them had battled at the highest peak of the HCF, warring for its ultimate prize, the heavyweight title. But it had been a bitter rivalry, and it had ended badly. Sparks still flew between them.
“How does this place not have Neuro?” Leo looked at me but his peripheral tracked Grull. “Survivors work here.” Both fighters looked as dangerous as ever. Two giants chiseled from stone. Except while Leo’s fine features miraculously—after years in the octagon—still looked like the sculptor’s masterpiece, Grull looked like the chisel snapped on his anvil chin.
He barreled past us and squatted in front of Harley. Half Harley Rickenbacker’s age, Torin Grull had been shadowing our senior pri-sec since starting at the plant last year. They were both former heavyweights, both with careers cut short. Otherwise, they couldn’t have been more different.
Silent and looming, Grull was an intimidating, almost wordless presence. Harley, on the other hand, radiated charm and goodwill. Everybody liked Harley. Maybe it was all that charisma that had let Harley get through to Grull. Because I didn’t think I’d ever seen Grull talk to anybody else at the plant. And Grull had been no different on the fi
“We ran out,” Maya said. “There’s a run on Neuro. Story’s all over the news.”
Grull’s huge hand took Harley by the chin. He pushed back an eyelid and studied his pupil.
Leo scoffed. “What are you, a doctor, now?”
Grull’s gray eyes glared up from beneath a brow thick with scar tissue—much of it courtesy Leo Rivas.
Tension climbed the back of my neck. If the two of them went at it in here, would I be stupid enough to step between them?
Maya leaned in with the syringe. “I need to sedate him.”
Grull shouldered her out of the way.
“He could hurt himself.”
Grull ignored her.
“Hey,” Leo said. “Didn’t you hear her?”
But something changed in Harley’s face. Suddenly there was a spark in his eyes, almost a clarity.
Harley hadn’t known me or Leo from Adam. But you could see it now: he recognized Grull.
It looked like Harley was trying to say something. “Hake ih!” But only pieces of words made it past his twisted lips. “Hake ih!” Spasms wracked his face, and Harley said it again, “Hake ih!”
Leo and I looked at each other. “Is he saying, Take it?” Leo said.
Grull pushed up the sleeve on Harley’s bomber. He unclasped the steel band of Harley’s Sazi ID.
“Probably a good call,” I said. “You can get Neuro with that.”
Maya looked at me doubtfully. But those Sazi IDs were from the old quarantine colonies. All the survivors wore them. Internal data drives held patient medical histories. But more vitally, a Sazi ID could get you Neuro. At least that’d been the goal of the old Risk Board settlement with Kepler Pharmaceutical back in the wake of the first AVP nightmare.
Grull stuck Harley’s ID into the pocket of his tac pants.
Maya seized the opportunity to swoop in and jab the needle into Harley’s shoulder. Grull Glared at her. Maya, who’d spent two years on the circuit as a fearless bantamweight, glared back. “He could die.”
Then Maya’s phone buzzed, and she turned away from Grull.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, a hand to her earpiece. “Harley Rickenbacker, ma’am.” Grull’s eyes followed Maya as she stepped away.
All that ma’aming could mean only one thing: Maya was talking to the plant’s Chief Security Officer, Gia Ganz.
On the job less than six months, Gia Ganz had come to the Hinterlands last spring from the other side of the world—some palace in the Middle East where her old man, George Ganz, ran security for one of the richest oil sheikhs on the planet. What someone like her was doing at an energy co-op in the Hinterlands was anybody’s guess. But last spring when the co-op went looking for security brass, they chose her—or her renowned last name. And they chose her over the plant’s seniormost pri-sec—and a staff favorite—Harley Rickenbacker.
“Understood, ma’am. Right away.”
Across the breakroom, the door clicked shut.
I turned, and outside the window the door to Grull’s Tavvy slammed. Its tall tires shrieked, and the big truck spun away from the guardtower, leaving behind a trail of smoking rubber.
“Well, I hope Harley doesn’t need that ID.” Leo watched Grull speed across the plant. “Because there it goes.”
After the injection, Harley appeared to be sleeping sitting up. Maya got a blood-pressure cuff around his arm.
Leo grabbed the remote and switched the breakroom monitor from the Ridgers, now shouting at the external-affairs camera drone hovering over their wreck, to the news.
Already accounts of what the media was calling the emerging AVP crisis were taking over the news cycle. And the same villain’s name was on everyone’s lips. Kepler Pharmaceutical. Longtime manufacturer of the only drug that stopped AVP, Neuronin.
“Industry giant Kepler Pharmaceutical announced today that it has ceased all manufacture of the vital neurotherapy agent, Neuronin.”
Leo turned up the volume. “What? You gotta be kidding me.”
“For weeks, clinics had complained of dwindling Neuro supplies when, days ago, Kepler’s distributor in the Hinterlands, Colonial Security, began a massive confiscation of Neuro stock from dispensary shelves. Part of a controversial strategy, analysts say, to spike demand for the lifesaving drug.
“Sources today say Kepler Pharmaceutical will auction the drug’s proprietary formula to the highest bidder. A strategy that public health experts say puts millions of lives at risk. A spokesperson for nonprofit disease-management firm Epidemicare said Kepler’s move amounts to treating the population of Sazi survivors as hostages held for ransom—”
“Can you believe this?” Leo said. “And their insurer isn’t stopping it?”
I stared in disbelief, hands on my hips. “Or the Board.”
Then something moved in the corner of my eye, and Maya shouted.
Behind us, Harley was awake and had his pistol out of his holster. His open mouth strained for the muzzle.
Leo dove at him. “Harley!”
I grabbed for the gun, and the three of us went to the floor.
Leo swiftly pinned Harely’s arms back. I fought to pry open his hand. But Harley’s powerful grip stayed locked on the gun. I flipped onto my back and braced my feet against the table. It took everything I had just to peel his fingers back. I jerked the gun free and flung it across the room.
Leo got his weight across Harley and said, “What the hell?”
I cursed. “I should’ve taken it off him. I didn’t think of it. That’s on me.”
“That’s on Kepler,” Leo said.
But I should have thought of it. Leo was six years younger than me, Maya probably double that. I doubted either one of them remembered the first go-around with AVP. But I did. Vividly. I should have thought of it.
Maya fired another injection into Harley’s shoulder. Slowly his contorted face relaxed again, the trembling eased in his limbs, and his big body grew slack.
That’s when I smelled it. The odor coming off Harley.
A pungent, burnt scent. Like electrical wires smoldering.
And that was something else I’d forgotten.
As a kid I’d learned to smell it from a distance. Because it meant danger. That scorched smell. The way it seared into your nostrils. It meant an AVPer was near.
Decades later, here I was smelling it again. My nervous system hadn’t forgotten. And it reacted the exact same way it had a quarter century ago—a surge of adrenaline urging me to fight or flight.
I should’ve taken that gun.
“Jeez, you can really smell it now, huh?” Leo said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Hasn’t changed.”
But Harley was out cold again.
Maya pushed the sweaty hair out of his eyes. Then she prepared another injection.
“I’m done taking chances,” she said.
Leo squeezed Harley’s shoulder and said, “Hang in there, brother.”
2
Gia Ganz
The door to south tower breakroom swung open, casting a pane of hard light across the floor. I knew the squeak of those knee-high leather uppers, the thump of those motorcycle heels. The shiny black Gestapo boots stopped beside us. And the rimless glasses of Gia Ganz stared down at Leo and me. Still sprawled across Harley like a pair of alligator wrestlers.
As Ganz probably intended it to, her slicked back plantium hair, along with her nanite body armor, gave her the look of a superhero. A look that would’ve been perfect, had we all been headed to a costume party.
Her eyes stayed on her tablet. “Looks like Dain’s sending med-transport.”
