The Living Dead 2

God damn it. Sherman pushed aside the pill bottles and Hot Wheels cars piled up around his keyboard. He forgot what he was looking for, then remembered he wasn’t alone.

“So who were those guys?” The pizza guy pointed at the screens.

“Those hobgoblins were a doomsday cult from Big Sur. Moved in after we cleansed the city, and started poaching our supply lines, snatching our immigrants. We warned them, but they fed our messenger to their dear leader. That’s him right there.”

With a loaded slice precariously balanced in one hand, Sherman zoomed in on a pasty mummy with a beard down to his knees, licking the windows of the Rolls with a black, cracking tongue. “Watch this, dude.”

Sherman made one of his Raiders punch in the window and feed the mummy a phosphorus grenade. Poom.

“Wow,” said Falcon, or whatever his name was. “I read that dude’s book. So you’re using dead guys against live guys now?”

Sherman killed his Coke and tossed the empty in the trash, found his vasopressin, and shot a blast of synapse-sharpening mist up his nose. Jesus, he was discussing strategy with the pizza boy. Only difference between this bottom-feeder and the meatbags he controlled was that zombies couldn’t ask irritating questions.

His headset bawled like a baby with a dirty diaper. “Hold on. Julio? Sharp air support, dude. Love the way you ghosted my whole op by winging that sentry.”

“Suck it, Halitosis. I didn’t hear you bitching when I saved your team on that ramp.” Julio noisily high-fived somebody, and Sherman almost hung up. God, he hated speakerphone. “Kid, you are making fucking up into an Olympic event.”

Sherman was a sponsored pro gamer on the Xbox Live circuit before he turned fourteen. The Pentagon’s strategic solutions teams all played Necropolis Online, and he pwned their asses daily. Air Force and Army were in a bidding war for his services before he finished high school. If the dead had come a year later, these Navy reserve dipshits would be calling him Sir. “Julio, anytime you want to get promoted out of air support, I always got openings on my team. You’d look good in a Raiders uniform, bro.”

Behind him, Pizza Boy cleared his throat. “Look, man, my other pies are getting cold…”

“Fuck. Hold on, losers.” With a wave of his laser pen over the subcutaneous chip in the hippie’s wrist, he paid for the food.

“Hey, Halitosis,” Julio shouted. “Are you go

The Dungeon Master slapped on his goggles. “Please get out of here now, Pizza Boy.” But he was already gone.

IV.

Jeez, thought Eagle. What a douche. Nice tip, though. Thirty-eight creds. That was the thing about rich motherfuckers. They thought they could pay off their contempt with pocket change. And they were right.

They also all liked pizza.

Eagle’s bike was parked outside the penthouse door. It was a chrome green Moots Gristle-a $6,000 mountain bike-the one he chose out of thousands when they gave him a hero’s parade, and his old job back. Talk about perks.

He took a moment to savor the view from the uppermost i

Hey, Ma! he thought and waved. But she was dead. And that wasn’t fu

Eagle rode to the elevator bank, hopped the glass diving bell down to the lobby. Sheets of illuminated crystal dangled overhead, an indoor aurora borealis that looked awesome when stoned, which he was, waving bye to his friends and neighbors as he hit the domed streets of New San Francisco.

Everybody knew Eagle. That was the great thing. Beneath the sheer poison-and-shatterproof plastic that encased the twenty-block bubble of the Green Zone, roughly 8,000 still moved and breathed, and he saw them all each and every night as he made his rounds through the former financial district, spreading joy with whole-wheat crust, fresh tomatoes and veggies, prewar sausage and pepperoni.

Half the open spaces in the Green Zone were vertical farms now, hydroponically providing for the needs of the city; and thank God they understood that quality weed was every bit as fundamental as rice and beans, in this new economy.

Eagle wheeled around the Embarcadero, past tribal art galleries and acid jazz bars where third-shifters decompressed, downed shots of sketchy bathtub liquor and hoped for the best.

Outside the bubble, the world was still dead. And you could still see it, if you wanted to look. The black ash fields that used to be parks. The ferry terminal mausoleum. The south side of Market Street, where the lights were still off. All just a window away.

But just a stone’s throw from the edge-one block from the Transamerica Pyramid, on the corner of Front and Clay-was Pizza Orgasmica: the only surviving 24-hour gourmet pizza emporium.

“Couple of outcalls, if you want ’em,” said Bud, as he entered for refills. “One code red, and one from somewhere out in the Black. I told him fuck no, but the guy said he knows you.”

“Really?” Eagle said, gri

Sometimes it was fun to go outside.

V.

Death Machine #24 stood at attention in the outer courtyard of the defeated enemy objective. He had orders not to move.

#24 followed orders.

Sweep and clear, hold and defend, seek and destroy. #24 had survived eighteen engagements because he hardly needed the voices in his ear to do what he had to do.

He could follow orders almost before they were given.

His armorers and handlers were sure he was a professional athlete or a vet, probably a Marine. Tully Forbes, the machinist who rigged the steel beartrap replacement for his missing mandible, swore that once, when he shouted, “Gimme ten!” #24 assumed the position and did pushups until Tully made him stop with a sleep spike.

But that wasn’t true. #24 could count to ten, and sometimes even higher, when his medpak was working overtime.

Over and over, he tried to count the bodies laid out in front of him. After ten, things got foggy, but he didn’t have to use his fingers. If he used his fingers, he’d only be able to count up to seven.

The bodies were covered in sheets. The cleanup crew dropped color-coded tags on them. Green, red, or black. Hardly any green ones; the sheets over them were only spotted with blood. Lots of red and black. The red ones were a mess, but the black ones were yard sales of loose and charred body parts.

A couple of men and a woman walked down the line. They wore white pressurized biohazard suits, but #24 smelled the bracing stink of their breath and sweat venting out of their gas masks. Even as his medpak kicked down a bolus of tryptophan to make him drowsy, he ached to have them.

The woman was different. She smelled dead, but she walked and talked and the others listened to her angry orders.

The dead-smelling lady came over to review the surviving Raiders offensive line. Her skin was a dull gray-green behind her mask, shot through with black capillaries. He could ignore the itching hunger aroused by her assistants, but her rank aroma screamed at #24 to shoot, burn and behead her, sweep and clear.

But the order never came.

As she inspected them, she snapped over her shoulder, “Who runs these fucking rodeo clowns?”

A flunky checked his PDA. “A civilian contractor, Sherman Laliotitis. He was a professional gamer prewar, the best in the world at squad-based combat simulations.”

“Reliable?”

“He’s a sociopathic little prick, ma’am, but he’d do the work for free. Loves his toys.”

“Get him on the phone. If he still can’t deliver viable candidates, then he’s either incompetent or he’s a saboteur.”