Table of Contents
THE TERMINAL STATE
The grunt put his face in mine, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing with excruciating, surprising force, making my ribs bark and trapping the shredder between us. Blood had spilled out over his mouth and chin, making him look suddenly older, more dangerous.
Still got the thumbs, old man, he panted at me. You gonna break em with your mind?
I liked this guy. I liked the troops better than the copsthe cops were all fucking attitude, dandies in their rich suits, even before theyd all been forcibly turned into avatars, Droids with digital brains. They had more metal in their brains than I liked, sure, but we all had faults. I tended to kill everyone I met, more or less by accident.
Before I could tell him about my growing affection toward him, Remy rose up in the air and attached himself to the back of the soldier, his skinny arms locking around the grunts neck. Before I could even blink, hed leaned in close like a fucking lover and bit the grunts ear, a savage, tearing bite.
The guard screamed. It was a high-pitched, boyish scream. He staggered off me, his arms slapping up at Remy, and I smiled, thinking, Thats my boy.
BY JEFF SOMERS
The Electric Church
The Digital Plague
The Eternal Prison
The Terminal State
The Terminal State
JEFF SOMERS
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
To my darling wife, whose surplus of good
judgment makes up for my near-complete lack of it,
for ass-kickings richly deserved, and for love
Im not nearly worthy of.
PROLOGUE
IT ONLY GOT DEADLY WHEN YOU STOPPED
Evryting fallen apart, Dingane groused, rubbing his dry, cracked hands against his unshaven chin. Twhole fuckin world, yeah?
I raised the wooden cup from the wobbly table and held it in the air between us, steeling myself. Id tasted some terrible things in my life, but the moonshine Bixon made out back routinely tasted like it had been filtered through corpses and it felt like it was taking a layer of your throat off as it went down to boot. I was a murderer, Plague survivor, and wanted man, and I still had to steady myself before each shot.
Quit your fucking bellyaching, I advised Dingane, and tell me if you got my stuff.
He was rightthe System was cracking openbut that was no reason to encourage him. After years of plotting against each other, the System Police and the civilian government had been in open civil war for a year, piling up bodies and destroyed cities, burning through yen and bodies, building up these sudden fleets of military-grade hovers and weapons, things that hadnt existed for decades, since unification had ended war for fucking ever, didnt you know. The whole world, bound together for a while, one government, one police force, no armies in sight. And now we didnt have police anymore, just armies, and it didnt matter who won. You just wanted them to get it over with fast, before they killed everyone.
Dingane paused, nasty, and then thought better of it and smiled. I immediately wished he hadnt, green teeth and black gums, and I tipped the shot into my mouth to distract myself from his grin. My throat tried to close up in instinctual defense, but I was ready for that and just worked it on down. I breathed through my mouth.
Ohkay, ohkay, Dingane said, affecting a jolly expression. Avry is impatient today, uh? Avrys in the revenge bidness, huh? You lisn to Dingane, mfriend, an be happy. Foget these two men made you so fuckin angry.
I gave him a frown, a steady unhappy expression. Theres a reason youre crawling the fucking earth trading in junk and reclaimed ammunition, and Im sitting here hiring you. When someone sells me outWa Belling, handing me over to Kev Gatz and the Plaguelies to me and leaves me for deadMichaleen, staring down at me from the hover as it drifted away, leaving me to be bricked in ChengaraI dont fucking forget.
Youre small, a voice whispered in my head. I blinked, ignoring it.
Suddenly he was grinning, happy to oblige. Just like everyone else, if you were polite you got static. If you showed them your fist, they got polite. You payn the bills heeyah, so ohkay, he said hurriedly. I got mos de stuff you ask. Not easy ttransport heavy shit, tbig shit. He spread his chalky hands. No overs any mo, Avry. From here tFlorida you cant get no overs. An if you could, the fucking armay be shootn your ass down, trust. So I cant get the big items. And bullets is hard. Ammo. Hard. No one makin anyting anymore. Nowhere. Mexico, sheeit, usesta be, Mexico you get anyting, now, no. Nothin in Mexico cept armay and cops, armay and cops, shootins at everyting, bombing tcities back to fuck.
It was my fate to listen to Dingane bitch and moan every now and then. Id pulled his ear a few times to discourage him, but Dingane was one of those leathery fellows who looked a fucking century old and acted like pain didnt mean shit to him anymore, which maybe it didnt. Easier to let him talk. I wasnt going anywhere anyway.
That didnt mean I couldnt move things along. Hell, Dingy, cant you shut up for one fucking minute?
He gave me the grin again. Sho can, Avry, but I thought ywanted news of your order, huh? You wanted clips, magzines, for whatver caliber I could get. I got some, I got some, but it aint cheap or easy. None down south makin em up anmore. I gots to go far afield, you dig? And the Geeksoh, fuck, the fuckin Geeks, Avry. Dey band tgether, you know that? SPS? All these fuckin Techies, throwin shit down.
I let Dingane talk. It was good cover. I closed my eyes and pictured the place, Bixons uninsulated shack with the long bar made up of crates in the back, the wobbly tables lashed together, the big ugly metal stove in the middle of the room glowing red, pulsing with heat, making the whole place smell like my own armpit, and stinging the eyes with soot and smoke. Better than outside, where snow was howlingthe weather was fucked up. You never knew what you were gonna get these days. Rumor was it was all fallout from the war screwing up the climate, but who the fuck knew. Id never been in this part of the world before. Neither had most of us.
I thought of Old Pick, long dead now. I thought about everything that fat old bastard had known, the data of lifetimes, the oral history of every criminal worth remembering in New York since Unification. And who knew what water hed carried across the line from pre-Uni times. All of it gone now, like theyd never happened. And thered never be another Pick, ever. Not these days.
The tables, six of them, arranged randomly in the tight space beyond the bar, more or less around the stove that stood in the middle. Me and Dingane, the Mayor and her cronies playing dominoes, Tiny Timlin and some of the other kids looking puffy and sick on their fourth or fifth dose of Bixons poison. Bixon himself, behind the bar, a man who had never washed once since Id known him, more beard than human at this point. All of them just flotsam, people fleeing the war and dead cities abandoned by one side or another, showing up here. For the most part, if you could lend a hand, you were pretty much welcome.
If you couldnt lend a hand, or didnt want to, and stuck around anyway, thats where I came in.
And this utter ting you ask me to look into, I tink I got you something.
I popped open one eye and put it on him. The black bastard was grinning again, pleased with himself. I shut my eyes again. Yeah?
