The End Is Nigh

The Living Blood

won a 2002 American Book Award. Her novella “Ghost Summer,” published in the 2008 anthology

The Ancestors

, received the 2008 Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society, and her short fiction has appeared in best-of-the-year anthologies of science fiction and fantasy. Due is a leading voice in black speculative fiction.

Tobias S. Buckell — SYSTEM RESET

Toto’s waiting for me in the old rust-red Corolla with tinted windows and the oh-so-not street legal nitrous system I know is hidden away under the hood. The only external hint that the car’s a getaway-special comes from the thick tires.

He rolls a window down as I walk out under the shadow of the imposing concrete and glass corporate facade I’ve just been politely rebuffed from. “Charlie?”

I keep walking along the sidewalk, so he starts the car up with that belch/rumble that lets the car’s secret out. Like Toto, the car isn’t nearly as camouflaged as he thinks; a nearby cop on foot eyes us as Toto creeps the car along to pace me.

“You look fu

He knows my moods well enough. I’m angry, hurt, frustrated. Walking fast, leaning forward, my hands pushed deep into the pockets. I’m sweating in the black suit, and the tie is choking me, but I’m thinking maybe I can get used to it. Maybe I can ignore the seams riding up hard against my crotch and the ill-fitted, scratchy fabric.

“You look hot in that shit, man. Come on, hop in the AC. Let me give you a ride back to the apartment.”

We both stop at the intersection. The car’s brakes squeal slightly. I stand still, my toes pinched in the dress shoes. The light turns green. A split second passes, and someone behind us lays into their horn. Toto leans out the window and flips them off.

“Damn it, Toto.” I move to the other side of the car, open the door and slide onto the cold leather passenger’s seat. Because I know Toto’s not going anywhere, I want to save the guy behind us the trouble.

Toto hits the gas, and we growl across the intersection with a bounce of stiff suspension. “They didn’t give you the job, did they?”

I shake my head, looking in the mirror at the corporate monolith behind us with a forced wistfulness.

“Fuck ’em,” Toto says, hitting the wheel. “

Fuck

.

Them

. You would have kicked ass at handling their corporate firewall. You’d have kept their secrets lock-tight.”

“I know,” I say, squinting through the scattered sunlight bounced off the sea of buildings around us.

“They don’t know what they’re missing,” Toto says. “But you know what, I got something for you.”

“No,” I tell him. “I just want to go back to my apartment.” Get back to my job searches, hang the suit up in the bag and seal it up until I could try again.

“Look, what happened in Florida: That shit wasn’t your fault. That was on me. That was on

him

. You can’t let it get to you.”

I don’t reply, just lean tiredly back into the seat.

“I got a good one, Charlie. It’s

right

by you.”

• • • •

Toto’s from Kansas. And he’s loyal. Knew him from a message board where he sold stolen credit card numbers online. That was back in high school, when I first dipped my toe into the other side of the internet. He takes to wearing cut-off shirts and ironic trucker hats, which is doubly ironic given that he calls himself trailer-trash-reared and city-ambitious. He likes layered jokes like that.

Back then we’d both been illegitimate. I used the cards to get some equipment shipped to a dead drop in a nearby county, then had a fifth grader bicycle to the mailbox center to pick the stuff up. He would hand it off to another kid, and once I was sure

that

kid hadn’t been followed, I was rocking some serious gigaflops for my part-time, personal server farm.

Every kid needs a hobby, right?

Most others liked creating botnets, but I had a soft spot for my own gear. It made me feel in control.

Toto moved out to the city when I told him where I lived. “You need muscle,” he had said.

And he was that. Spent most of his spare time in the gym, though I didn’t think he stuck himself with any needles to get that kind of beef.

He odd-jobbed. Wheelman, dealer, enforcer, but for the last couple years we’d been working together. Skiptracing. Like he’d always wanted. Toto couldn’t get a license as a bounty hunter—his record was shit—but I’d always kept my fingers clean. Toto knew the shit-side of the city; he grabbed the runaways, the strays, while I sat in the Corolla. I was the one that hunted them down. Sniffing through their digital scat, spotting the broken twig here and there, or the absence of a bark, and then putting the clues together.

Felt good.

Until Florida.

The kid we hunted down in Florida was a straight-up runaway. Toto said finding him was a paid favor for an old friend. Child services was worried about the kid.

We drove all the way to Florida—that retired syphilitic wang of the country—trading places every couple hours at the wheel, then found him in a shelter in Boca Raton. We were tired. Which is why neither of us noticed that we’d been followed.

Kid’s name was Ryan. His biological father, Emry, came after us in a damn parking lot with a giant fucking pistol and a ski mask. Cameras didn’t have anything on him, and the car he used was stolen. But Toto recognized the voice and stature. Emry had dragged the kid away from us. Shot him four times and left him for dead in a ditch in Georgia.

Kid was ten.

Ten years old.

Can you imagine?

• • • •

“Look,” Toto’s saying. “I fucked us both up on that. I feel your pain. It’s been keeping me up all night, trying to think about how I can make it right.”

“You can’t,” I tell him. He grimaces, holds the wheel tight. Corded arms flex as he bites his lip to stop the snarl.

“I got a job for you.” He’s excited, because he thinks he’s got everything fixed. And that it’s going to go back to the way it was between us. “A job that’s

right

. No, it’s better than right. It’s

righteous

.”

“I’m done,” I tell him for the hundredth time this week. Toto comes to a stop in front of my building, puts the car into park.

He sighs. “You sure?”

“I can’t fucking sleep without pills,” I tell him as I open the door, kicking it out with my gleaming dress shoes. “I’m out.”

“Hundred grand,” Toto says.

I’m unbuckled and half out of the car. But I stop. “What…”

He pulls a folded up printed sheet of paper from his back pocket. “I was at the post office, right? And I’m looking at these ‘most wanted’ posters. So I get online, and I find out they’re hot for some guy they think is the new Unabomber. Only he’s a hacker type. And the reward is—well, it’s not just the reward.”

Toto shoves the paper at me. I unfold it, sitting in the barrier between the cold air of the Corolla and the muggy, garbage-reeking heat of the sidewalk

“You want to get right with the universe after Florida, this is how you do it.”

• • • •

Toto’s at the wheel, his natural element, pointing us out West toward the last place I sniffed out a trace of our quarry. There’s something Zen in the long drive for him. His hands rest at a perfect ten and two on the wheel; he almost never lets go. He refuses to eat while driving, and has a camelback filled with purified water and the straw dangling over his left shoulder.