Ernie’s voice popped his headset. “What? Oh, holy shit… Ada!”
“MAKE IT STOP!” Eagle shrieked as #17 pawed his gas mask with one work-gloved hand.
Up close, the employed dead—the slave dead—glistened. Hi-tech Glad Wrap vacuum-sealed their skin, locked the sickness in and the freshness out. It was the only way to slow their inevitable decay, and make them humanly tolerable.
Under the industrial worklights, #17 glowed like a leftover angel. But underneath the shrink-wrap was the same old hunger. Its humanity was just a mask.
Up close, Eagle recognized that mask.
#17 had a Kirk Douglas chin. A Bruce Campbell chin. A chin among chins, with a nose to match.
That red-headed guy who used to barback at the Albion… Short-tempered, the regulars called him Fireplug…
I used to deliver pizzas to this guy, he thought.
Ernie and Ada were both hollering in his headset, but Eagle couldn’t hear it. He was lost in the moment. Pushing at #17, both hands on its chest, boxed in tight with no exit room. Watching it stagger back, lurch in, moaning.
“Ada, pop 17! Just do it! We got you, Eagle! Duck and cover, brother!”
Eagle dropped to his knees. The charges in the rogue worker’s head went off like firecrackers in a watermelon, wetware jumping out the top of its skull and spraying all over the fucking place.
“Eagle, you okay? Jesus, man, I’m so sorry!”
#17 wobbled and dropped. Eagle checked himself, wiped a few black specks off his parka. Willed his heart to slow down.
“Yeah, I’m good. Fucking freaked, but good.”
“Okay. We’re okay?”
“We’re okay.”
“Just…”
“Yeah. Just… yeah. Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure…?”
“Not gonna say a fucking thing, all right? We’re good.”
“Thank you, man.” Ernie exhaled, and chugged antacid. “Stay safe, buddy. We got your back.”
Eagle scooped up and stowed the pizza boxes, pocketed his gun and hopped on his bike as two more remote-controlled workers swept in to scrape up the mess.
Working together, making the world a better place.
VII.
The Dungeon Master had just burnt his tongue on the microwaved ricotta in his calzone––at least a three-hit-point wound––when the Love Line rang.
He washed the glutinous lava down with a splash of root beer, checked his hair, and let the phone ring.
For allegedly living humans, the science division sure seemed to enjoy chewing on human asses. When they couldn’t bitch about his kill ratio, they whined that his tactics were overkill; when his meat puppets weren’t lagging and bugging out like an NT server, they were dangerous rabid dogs.
The Love Line blinked faster. His pager trembled and jittered off the edge of the desk into an empty pizza box.
He wondered which of the Brain Trust would be dining on his haunches today. Of the three-headed nerd colossus that ran New San Francisco, he got the least friction from the Livermore geeks. Nasty little crypto-fascist elves, but they made the best toys, and bitched the least about his tactics.
His tongue throbbed and told him everything tasted like sandpaper. Perfect. He might as well throw the rest of the calzone back in the fridge.
Well, he thought, killing his root beer and reaching for another, somebody in the world probably has even worse problems.
He hit the Accept button.
Fuck my eyes, he thought.
Poison Lady.
Sherman sat up in his chair and brushed his oily hair back out of his eyes. “Dr. Childers, you’re looking lovely today.”
Meredith Childers’ gray-green face tightened on the monitor. She wasn’t just the chief researcher on the City’s medical research Brain Trust. She was also their star guinea pig. It was easy to see why the other scientists called her The Hippie. “Sherman… Laliotitis, is it?”
“Round these parts, they call me the Dun––”
“This is not a game, Sherman. You were briefed by your superior about today’s primary objective?”
“To secure the borders of Fortress Frisco against hostile invaders, ma’am. And phase one was a big win.”
“Don’t fuck around with me. You know what we’re doing here. What needs doing.”
Sherman looked around the control room. The Raiders’ POV monitors showed the cleanup crews carting off the last of the bodies. “I, uh… I am sorry if you’re unhappy with my performance, but… you know, capping enemies in the heat of battle isn’t like cutting the heads off guinea pigs in the lab––”
“When you’re fighting for your life, the person next to you who can’t stomach the fight is just another enemy. This war turned our dead against us, because it was the only way the Earth could purge itself of the living. They still rule the rest of the world, and we only have a home here so long as we have the manpower to reclaim this city.”