IN THE HEAT, FOREVER WAS A LOT SHORTER THAN YOU MIGHT IMAGINE.
Walking steadily toward the horizon, I wiped My Russians blood out of my eyes and heard him asking me,
How many men have you killed, for
yen? I shook a cigarette out and placed it between my lips. I didnt know. Id lost count. I was dead. Id died back in prison. As I leaned in to light up, there was a deafening boom behind me, and I was lifted up off my feet for a second by a warm gust. I staggered forward and steadied myself with the street, lying there for a moment, my cigarette crushed into my face. When I flipped over, the restaurant was on fire, pieces of its roof sailing down in fiery arcs from the night sky, all of it in strange, muffled silence as my ears rang.
Well, shit,
I thought, sitting up on my elbows.
Thats fucking strange.
By JEFF SOMERS
The Electric Church
The Digital Plague
The Eternal Prison
Copyright
Copyright Š 2009 by Jeff Somers
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S.
Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Orbit
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First eBook Edition: August 2009
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.
The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-31605292-4
Contents
COPYRIGHT
IN THE HEAT, FOREVER WAS A LOT SHORTER THAN YOU MIGHT IMAGINE.
BY JEFF SOMERS
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
I: AMERICAN MURDER
II: JUST STILL ALIVE
III: I WASNT SURE I WANTED TO RESIST
IV: EVERYONE ELSE WAS JUST CROWD
V: HARD PEOPLE DOING A HARD JOB
VI: A HEAVY BOLT OF FABRIC STRETCHED ALL AROUND US, SUFFOCATING
VII: YOUR ONLY CHANCE OF SURVIVING ME
VIII: THIS WAS ENTERTAINMENT
IX: IF YOU WANTED TO KILL ME
THERE ARE FASTER WAYS
X: THE LITTLE MAN AND HIS FREAKS
XI: ITS ALL RIGHT. YOU DID LOOK KIND OF SAD ABOUT IT
XII: SOME MIRACLE OF SHITHEAD PHYSICS
XIII: A LITTLE GOD
XIV: ROLLING ALONG TO SOME INEVITABLE DISASTER
XV: A MARKO ORIGINAL
XVI: WONDER WHAT HE USES NEEDLES FOR
XVII: FLAMES WHERE THEIR EYES SHOULD HAVE BEEN
XVIII: ID BEEN DIGESTED A LITTLE
XIX: I DONT HAVE A SCREEN TO REPRESENT PAINFUL DEATH
PART TWO
XX: CRAZY WAS GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT
XXI: DESPERATE FOLKS, I FIGURED
XXII: EVEN THE HUMAN ONES
XXIII: YOURE GONNA NEED THE HAND
XXIV: FLOAT BACK TO SAFETY ON MY BLOATED, BUOYANT CORPSE
PART THREE
XXV: SURVIVES THROUGH MYSTERIOUS MEANS
XXVI: A FUCKING PERSON OF IMMENSE INTEREST
XXVII: STILL STANDING IN DEFIANCE OF THE KNOWN LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE
XXVIII: I THINK OF HIM AS LITTLE DICK
XXIX: AN ESTIMATED LIFE SPAN OF UNTIL THE UNIVERSE CONTRACTED INTO A HEAVY DOT
XXX: I WAS FOURTEEN AGAIN
XXXI: THEY ALWAYS CAME BACK
PART FOUR
XXXII: STARTING TO BLACKEN ON THE EDGES
XXXIII: AND YOU DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT UNTIL A FEW MOMENTS AGO
XXXIV: THE BEST IDEA ID HAD IN YEARS
XXXV: NONE OF THAT PRETENDER BULLSHIT
XXXVI: I WANT TO BE ERASED
XXXVII: AND THOSE WERE MY ADVANTAGES
XXXVIII: TWO, ID BEEN FUCKING LUCKY
XXXIX: ALL ITS LIFE, ONLY WAITING FOR ME TO ARRIVE
XL: ILL PROBABLY HAVE YOU CRUSHED INTO A CUBE AND CARRY YOU AROUND AS A SOUVENIR
XLI: REACTING TO THE POWERFUL RADIATION OF THEIR THOUGHTS
XLII: BECAUSE YOURE A MISERABLE BASTARD
XLIII: IMAGINING THAT I ALWAYS GOT TO DECIDE WHO I KILLED WAS JUST ARROGANCE
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MEET THE AUTHOR
THE TERMINAL STATE
To my Danette, whose wrath I fear, whose support I require, and whose affection I treasure
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
SHORT WORK OF A FILTHY JOB
Stay down, the tall System Pig with the precise, fussy beard said in a reasonable tone of voice. Gentle pressure on my shoulders guided me to my knees, my wrists bound behind me. Or I will cut a few tendons and hobble you,
capisci?
His partner was shorter and older, standing in front of us, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. His face was red and blistery, like hed fallen asleep in an oven, and he hadnt said a fucking word since Id been dragged out here. After a moment he scanned us quickly, nodded once to himself, and stepped around to join his partner behind us.
I was soaked and shivering, the steady rain drumming down onto my shoulders and finding its secret ways inside. The street outside the remnants of Pickerings bar was half-flooded, inches of water in spreading pools. I was one of four assholes kneeling in the damp; I wouldnt have suspected four people remained anywhere below Twenty-third Street these days. Not alive, anyway.
The two System Pigs whod scooped me up with their list of Very Important People had moved on down the block, taking their team of Stormers into a sagging old tenement. Every few minutes there was a gunshot or a shout, but otherwise it was peaceful, kneeling in the water, feeling the cold rain make its way down my back, my hands bound and no more decisions to be made. Id been ready for my execution, but I was just as happy to kneel here and think about nothing.
I hadnt been myself for a long time. The Plague had sucked everything out of me.
The guy next to me started murmuring something; it took me a moment to recognize it as praying, old ritual language. I remembered my mom praying when Id been a kid, her singsong voice, her tightly shut eyes. I opened my eyes and looked at my fellow Very Important People: none of them looked so important to me. They were wet, thin, and all three sported the ugly scars on their necks left by the Plague; a few months before, theyd been coughing blood and croaking, inches from death. And Id saved them. These three assholes. Id scratched myself bloody crawling around the fucking world, and it was because of me they were still here, still breathing.
I looked around dreamily, this block I used to know so well. The System Security Force had already torn down half the buildings, flattening everything into rubble and then sending in Droids to crush everything into neat little cubes. I had no doubt more Droids would eventually roll in to collect the cubes, picking the whole place clean until youd never guess that any of this, any of us, had ever been here.
The thought slipped off the shiny, smooth surface of my brain and disappeared.
A block or two over, a huge Vid screen glowed silently, bright and frantic, beaming the mime-news to everyone within a few hundred yards. The clips were short and edited to convey most of the message without audio. Most of the stories were upbeat testimonials to how the System was recovering from the Plague, but Id been tuning into the underground Vid nets out of the Appalachians for the last few weeks, and I silently translated as the clips flashed by.
First, fifteen seconds on how casualty numbers from the disease were still going down as more and more surprisingly tough and scrappy citizens emerged from hiding places, shaken but alive. Translation: the entire East Coast of North America was a fucking graveyard, and places as distant as Brazil had seen upward of 10 percent of their population killed. Two more days and the whole fucking world would have been dead, jiving and singing, doing dance moves.
Then, a happy story about the citizens of the System of Federated Nations African Department discovering they had a food surplus and electing voluntarily to send huge shipments of organics and nutrition tabs to other areas of the System more affected by the Plague. This with lots of clips of smiling, celebrating people, people just fucking delighted to be living in the System. Translation: everyone, everywhere was starving
before
the fucking Plague, and the way things were going n-tabs were going to be the new goddamn currency any day now. And if you didnt have any n-tabs, you could cut off a finger and payfeedsomeone with that, and wed all be eating each other, over and over again, the System gnawing itself raw.
The rotten tenement down the street suddenly exploded, a plume of fire and masonry shooting out into the street below, the world shuddering and leaping. The skinny guy kneeling next to me cursed under his breath. I turned to watch the smoke and fluttering debris for a moment. It was beautiful.
Theyre okay, Silvie, Fussy Beard behind me said, getting his report in his earbud. The rats are holed up in a secret room, packed in like fucking roaches, and blew a charge when Solly came sniffing around, but they tripped it too soon and killed two of
themselves,
and we didnt even get a scratch. The two cops laughed. I smiled, too. This was fine. Everything was fine.
The Vid was now showing Dick Marin, the Emperor himself. Director of Internal Affairs of the System Security Force; no one was telling Dick what to do these days. Dick was discussing the need for a reorganization in the wake of the Plague, in order to make things more efficient. Translation: his nominal bosses the Joint Council Undersecretaries, who thought