The zpocalypto book bund.., p.45
The ZPOCALYPTO Book Bundle (#1 of 4), page 45
“What’s this all about?” I ask, when the others are out of earshot. “Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden, Jess.”
I roll my eyes. I don’t know what else to say that won’t make things worse, so we walk together without speaking. Then he nudges me and gives me a wry smile. “I can’t believe you forgot your inhaler. Shame on you. What’s the Colonel going to say?”
“Grandpa doesn’t know.” I shove him playfully back. “And he doesn’t need to find out, either.”
I’ve used the inhaler my entire life. I’m supposed to carry it around with me all the time and puff on it three times a day, so it’s become almost habit. But I do miss doses on occasion, and whenever my grandfather finds out, he gets all OCD and interrogates me for like the next week. How am I feeling? Have I taken all three doses? Do I feel sick?
Most of the time I can honestly answer that I’m following my regimen, but sometimes I forget. Like today. I’d had it in my gear bag this morning and then neglected to retrieve it after I got home.
I shrug and remind Kelly that we’ll be back soon, and I’ll just take a double dose then. “It’s not like I’m going to drop dead if I don’t. It’s just an immunity booster.”
The truth of the matter is, I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to do. I’ve always been told by the doctors that it’s to help stave off infections, but they’ve never really clearly explained what’s wrong with me that I should need to take it.
Sometimes I hate having the inhaler. It makes me feel weak and vulnerable. Other times, though, I’m glad for it. Like, for example, whenever I want to get out of having to do PE class, I just hold it up and complain that I feel like I’m coming down with something. It’s a lot easier, and it’s certainly less embarrassing than announcing I’m having really bad menstrual cramps. Or that I think yoga is lame.
We reach the end of the walkway. Ash and Micah have stopped and are leaning out across the railing. “The opening’s right here,” Ash says, even though there’s no way she can possibly see it. “Does it look to you like it’s blocked?”
I stare down into the darkness, but the sunlight rippling on the water keeps blinding me. I try to lean further over. I can feel my balance shifting dangerously on the rail. Before I realize what’s happening, there’s a flash of color off to one side, a sensation of movement, and a splash. Water sprays up at us. I stumble back gasping and wiping my face.
“What the hell was that? What happened?”
“Brah’s crazy!” Reggie exclaims. He’s got that grin on his face again. “Kelly is what happened, that’s what. Crazy mother. What’d you say to him to make him jump, Jessie?”
“What? I didn’t! Kelly!” I run back over to the railing and look down. But there’s nothing to see. Kelly’s disappeared. “I didn’t tell him to jump, you idiot!”
This shuts Reggie up.
“Don’t just stand there!” I scream. “Do something!”
Nobody moves. Nobody wants to jump into that murky water. We all wait as the seconds tick by. I’m nearly out of my mind with panic. Ashley has to pull me back so I don’t jump in after him.
Thirty heartbeats pass. Then forty... Fifty...
Sixty.
“Kelly? Kelly!” I scream.
A minute and half is gone just like that and now I’m really starting to lose it. Ashley turns me around and her eyes are wide and filled with fright, too. She starts biting her lip to keep from crying. Even Reggie and Micah look like they’re about ready to jump in.
“He— he’s fine,” Micah says. “I can hold my breath for two minutes. Hell. I could hold it for three, if I needed to. He’s just—”
“No!” I snap. My voice echoes off the buildings. “He’s not fine! He’s not you! It’s Kelly!”
“Jessie, calm down,” Reggie hisses, warningly. But I’m beyond caring by now.
“How long?” I demand. Nobody answers. “How long has it been!”
“Three minutes.”
“Kelly!”
Reggie starts peeling off his shirt. He grabs the railing and begins climbing over. Micah kicks off his shoes. But everyone freezes at the sound of a shrill whistle. A man in a dark green uniform is running toward us from the far end of the walkway.
“You there! You kids! Stop right there! There’s no swimming here.”
Reggie’s poised to jump in. He looks like he’s going to do it, but the cop blows his whistle even harder and waves his EM pistol at us. He’s still a hundred feet away, sprinting. He’ll reach us in seconds.
“Our friend fell in!” Micah shouts. He climbs back over and moves to intercept the cop. “He fell in! It was an accident. We need help!”
The cop skids to a stop. He’s overweight and panting, and I’m sobbing. Through my tears, he looks like a big, fat, melting blob. Ashley’s crying, too.
“Our friend fell in!” Reggie yells. “We have to save him!”
“You can’t go down there,” the cop insists. I see now that he’s an older man, graying a bit at the temples. His face is rough and scarred, the flesh on his cheeks beginning to sag. He shoves his pistol back in its holster but keeps his hand on it. “It’s dangerous. Bad currents. Can’t you see the signs?” He points.
“But our friend—”
Just then, there’s a watery gasp from below us and Kelly’s head pops up. His face is blue and his eyes are bulging out of their sockets. He splashes around, searching for something to grab, but the edge of the walkway is too far out of reach. The cop bends down under the railing. He leans over and extends his baton. “Grab it, young man!”
Kelly gets a hold of the baton, but he’s too weak to pull himself up, and the cop isn’t strong enough. Reggie steps to the other side of the railing. He reaches down and manages to grab one of Kelly’s hands. With a grunt, he lifts him out of the water like he’s nothing but a sack of potatoes. Kelly rockets up and somehow gets hold of the rail. His feet scramble to find traction on the rim of the walkway.
“Hold on!” Reggie snaps. With one more tug, Kelly flips over and tumbles onto the overpass, where he lays quivering and gawping air like a fish.
I rush over and wrap my arms around him, pulling his face into the crook of my neck. His skin is cold and there’s a scratch on his cheek that’s just starting to pink up with fresh blood. I suddenly realize he’s making a point of angling it away from the cop’s view.
“There’s no swimming here,” the officer repeats. “I could have you all arrested.” He gives us a stern look and keeps it on us a few seconds longer than necessary. We all know what that means. An arrest in a restricted zone like this would go on our permanent record and almost certainly add time to our LSC.
He sighs and shakes his head. “What are you kids doing down here anyway? Restricted Zones are no place for young folks like yourselves to be. You should be at home enjoying the summer break.”
We all look around at each other. Finally, Ashley manages to offer up the same old lie: “School project?”
The cop snorts. “Right, like I’m supposed to believe that.”
“We were just looking for some privacy,” Reggie says. He sidles up to Ash and wraps his arms around her.
The cop sizes them up for a moment — giant Reggie and diminutive Ash — then he looks at me and Kelly. Finally his gaze settles on Micah and we can all see that he’s struggling to figure out the math. His eyes flit between us and the surrounding buildings, as if he expects to see one more person appear.
Finally, he shakes his head again and warns us that the next time he comes by we had better be gone. “This is a class B zone,” he tells us. “Only authorized individuals are allowed here. It’s not a... It’s not a damn playground. Or a motel room.”
To our surprise, he spins on his heels and marches away. He doesn’t even bother to scan our implants.
“Class B?” Reggie whispers in disbelief. “Man, we are so lucky he didn’t bust us.”
Class A would be the East River, of course. The penalty for trespassing there wouldn’t be arrest or more LSC years, it would be vaporization by one of the mines. If we were lucky.
When the crisp sound of the cop’s footsteps fades from earshot, I turn back to Kelly and shake him. “What the hell were you thinking jumping in there? You almost drowned!”
He slowly raises his eyes, but he doesn’t direct them toward me. It’s Reggie he stares at, the look dark and accusing. “Well, Reg,” he says at last. He takes in a shuddering breath. “I got your answer.”
“What answer? What are you talking about?”
Kelly doesn’t respond immediately. The air between the two boys almost freezes from the chill. “You wanted to know if the tunnel’s open.”
Reggie straightens up, studies Kelly’s face. Without a word being spoken, he deflates. “Blocked. Well, it was good while it lasted.”
Kelly shivers again and tries to stand up. “It’s open,” he says. “All the way through.”
Chapter 6
“How do you know?” Ashley asks. “How could you possibly know it’s open all the way through?”
“Currents,” Kelly answers, and it takes a moment for us to understand.
I realize he’s right when I recall the cop mentioning the currents being bad. In order for there to be one, the tunnel would have to be open on both ends.
“They’re actually pretty strong down there,” he says, and pushes me away from him. “It was almost like getting sucked into a drain. I was dragged into the tunnel. I don’t know how far. Lucky for me, there was a surge that pushed me back out. Otherwise...” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
He coughs, spits. “I ended up grabbing onto some old wiring or something and holding on.”
“That was some crazy-ass shit, man,” Reggie says.
The two boys lock eyes again, and it feels like something unspoken passes between them. After a few seconds, Kelly brushes the hair from his face. “My shirt got caught.” He lifts his arm to show us the tear under his left sleeve. “I was losing air, choking.”
I don’t know why the next thought pops into my head, but suddenly I wonder if the cop happened to notice the rip. Why that would matter I don’t know, but the whole encounter strikes me as odd. Why would he just take off like that without scanning us? And as for Kelly, why would he hide the scratch on his face? What was he afraid the cop might think it was?
Kelly laughs weakly and without humor. He shakes his head. “I sort of panicked, thinking it was one of those sewer gators you always hear about.”
“Urban myth,” Micah offers, as Reggie snorts and suggests it wasn’t an alligator Kelly was thinking about. Ashley hits his arm and tells him to shut up. Somewhere in our minds, whether consciously or not, we’re all sharing the same dark thought.
“I guess I freaked out. I lost the last of my air. I tried to kick away. Whatever had a hold of me finally let go. I could feel myself getting sucked in deeper. The next thing I knew, I was shooting back out. Another second or two...” He shook his head again. “I feel like I swallowed a gallon of water.”
“What do you think it was?” Ashley asks. “That grabbed you, I mean.”
Kelly shrugs. “Loose panel or something. Maybe a jammed log or a pipe. I don’t know. It was too dark to see. After all these years, there’s bound to be a ton of crap washed down into the tunnel.”
“Just not enough to block the flow entirely,” Micah says. “And if the current’s that strong, there’s got to be spaces wide enough for a person to swim through.”
I lean back and study Kelly’s face. Now, after what he just experienced, it’s the perfect time for him to put an end to this whole stupid idea. But he remains strangely silent.
“Could’ve been a zombie then,” Reggie teases.
“Damn it, Reg.”
“Joking. And just because we’re all thinking it, doesn’t make it any less of one.” He slaps Kelly on the back. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
Everyone nods, but now that the scary part is past, I’m furious again.
“Why?” I demand. “You’re the last person I’d expect to do something stupid like jump into the river!”
“Well, first off, this isn’t the riv—”
“I don’t care what it is! You could’ve drowned.”
He shrugs and sighs. “Yeah, maybe.” He studies my face, trying to read it. But I’m too angry to play that game right now.
“You know, you could’ve lied,” Micah quietly says. “You could’ve told us it was gated or something. You didn’t have to mention the current. We wouldn’t have known any better.”
“Except the cop did,” I point out. I turn to Kel. “But you didn’t know that, so why? You could’ve ended it.”
“Believe me, I thought about it,” he replies. “But while I was struggling to untangle myself, I don’t know, I guess I just thought, No one’s going to believe me anyway. You guys don’t listen. You just do what you want, and screw it.”
“That’s not true.”
“I just kept thinking that if the currents are that strong, if there were grates anywhere along the length, they’d quickly get clogged with debris. And I couldn’t help wondering why they would just keep it open like that. Why wouldn’t they block it off?”
“You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to know just as badly as we do.”
He glances over at Reggie. “I still think it’s a terrible idea. Nothing’s changed my mind about that.”
Reggie raises an eyebrow suggestively. “But...?”
“But nothing. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been the end of this. I know how you guys think. Even if I were to convince you this one was blocked, we’d just end up going over to the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel to check that one out. Am I right?”
No one denies it.
“Um, guys?” Ashley says, glancing at her Link. “I hate to break this up, but we’d better clear out of here. I don’t know if that cop was serious about coming back, but I don’t want to find out.”
Reggie and Micah help pull me and Kelly to our feet. Despite the warmth of the day, Kelly’s still shivering. The scratch on his cheek has stopped bleeding, but now it’s puckered out white and angry-looking on his pale face. He lifts his shoulder to rub it and winces. A fresh thin line of blood appears. Then a second.
I take a closer look, and suddenly feel woozy. There are three parallel scrapes, each separated from the other by about a half inch. They look like claw marks. Only the top two are deep enough to break the skin.
“Just make sure you put some antibiotic on that when we get back,” I say. “Last thing you need is for it to get infected.”
“Yes, Mom,” he mutters.
Chapter 7
Ash’s grandmother, Junie, used to joke about how, when she was my age, having unprotected sex could kill you. She passed away last year quite unexpectedly. She could remember a time before the implants, before Resurrection technology, back when diseases like AIDS and diabetes, Covid and cancer worried people. She’d laugh her bitter laugh because she knew things were a lot worse now, when diseases don’t just kill you, they raise you back up again.
Shortly before she died, she started saying crazy things, like, “I hope they put me into The Game.”
“Don’t joke about that,” Ashley would tell her.
“Who says I’m joking? I’m serious, girl.”
Of course, we all knew it was highly unlikely she’d get her wish, even if that’s what she truly wanted. Only the freshest and fittest of the recently deceased get sold to Arc for Player assignments.
“Why would you want to end up like that?” Ash would say.
“Think of all the money it would bring the family.”
“We don’t need money, G-ma.”
But that was a bald-faced lie. We could all use more money.
“I’m joking, dearie. It’s not about the money. That’s not why I want this.”
“Can we not talk about it, G-ma?”
“If not now, when? Soon it will be too late.”
“You know the lifespan of a game zombie is only a few weeks. Months at best, depending on how good your gamer is.” Ashley shuddered, and I knew she was recalling some of the brutal highlights we’d watched on Survivalist. Some of the Operators could make their Players do things people couldn’t do when they were alive. Or wouldn’t. Most were downright physically mindboggling; some were disgusting. But the worst were the sadistic acts that were only featured on the pay-to-watch Streams.
It was addicting... until you realized it could be someone you knew.
“What they’re made to do in The Game can be pretty awful,” I’d offered, hoping my opinion might further discourage her from this kind of thinking.
“I’ve seen that program, dear. I know what it’s about. That’s why I think it would be better to spend my Life Service Commitment doing that.” G-ma Junie closed her eyes then and sighed, nodding. “A few weeks of abuse, then it’s over. A few days is all I’d last.”
“There are better ways to go.”
“If I’m dead, I want to be dead dead, not standing in some remote border outpost for months on end as a deterrent to trespassers, or on a street corner in Mexico, my insides emptied out to hold a bomb just waiting for a certain politician or drug lord to drive by. Or in one of those seditionist states like Texas. I just want to be laid to rest. My soul is tired of this life. And the next.”
Of course, nobody gets ‘laid to rest’ anymore. They don’t do burials. Everyone gets incinerated. After their LSC time is completed.
Since her G-ma’s death, Ashley’s been talking more and more like that, too. “I’d rather just go quickly in The Game, even if it’s to act out some sick fantasy of some sick rich fuck. Better that than be put to work cleaning sewers for three years, or pulling guard duty at the Canadian border. Although... getting blown up would be a quick way to go, don’t you think? Maybe I could be an Omegaman, one of those remote drone things, like your brother used to drive.”
I remember once how Eric told me we probably wouldn’t have to worry about reaching our LSC enrollment age. “You’re young. Your LSC’s still forty-five years away, roughly. A lot could happen between now and then.”
