This is the End 2: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (9 Book Collection) Read online

  I ignored him, heading to my desk. I had a terminal link there, which would allow me hook into the Internet.

  “Well, don’t we look determined today?” Teague swiveled his chair in my direction. “What’s on your mind, bro? Marital problems?”

  I shouldn’t have let him bait me, but I still said, “You wish.”

  “How is your dee-liscious whore of a wife? She miss me? Or does she have more than enough cock to satisfy her?”

  “She sends her love.”

  “And she charges out the ass for it. Maybe I’ll stop by, give her a tap for old times’ sake.”

  “That won’t work. She’s got a new policy. No clients with a penis under three inches.” I stared at him, hard. “But I heard your mother doesn’t have standards. Maybe you should give her a call.”

  His eyebrows creased in anger, and I wondered if he was actually going to get up and make a try for me. Teague was taller, but we weighed about the same. The one time we did scuffle, years ago, it had been a draw.

  But the moment passed, and he snorted and flashed his teeth. “F U, Talon. F you and your whore.”

  He popped a nicotine pill, and went back to his pr0n. I checked the program compiling my enemies list—82.656 percent complete and already up over two thousand names. Then I punched in some passwords and wirelessly connected my DT to the Internet.

  I hadn’t been online in a while, and in my absence the World Wide Web gotten worse. Even though the CPD had the latest blockers and antimalware programs, I was immediately assaulted with pop-ups. For shits and grins, I kept a window open of the programs and sites my blocker assassinated while I surfed. In the eighteen seconds it took for me to get to WikiWorld, I’d been attacked three hundred and seventeen times. That didn’t include the forty-two hijack attempts and eight attempted trojan-bot hacks.

  The Internet sucked.

  WikiWorld, which had a decent reputation back when I was a kid, was now a cesspool of unsupported and imaginary garbage that any n00b and b00b could edit at will. Most of the time it was useless. But there was a chance Aunt Zelda could be in there somewhere.

  I projected a keyboard onto my desktop, preferring typing to voice commands Teague could hear, and punched in Zelda’s name. WikiWorld gave me a hit and a brief definition, but some prankster had replaced every noun in the entry with “hairy weasel dick,” making it pretty much unreadable. I tried to access the edit history, but his hack had encompassed that as well.

  I heard bleating, and looked around. Teague had turned up the volume on his pr0n, just to annoy me.

  “Check out that flexibility, bro. Vicki ever get freaky with dumb animals? Other than you?”

  I pressed the remote on my belt, switching the projector to the Homeschooling Network and putting a jam on the button. Now no matter what Teague tried to watch, it would be stuck on six-year-olds perfecting their recyclable macaroni art.

  “WTF?”

  As he tried in vain to change the channel, I went from WikiWorld to an old search engine I used to use. All it came up with were ads, pr0n, and ads for pr0n. I tried a pirated version of uffsee, but UFSE didn’t work well on the Internet, and it crashed before the Boolean results could be compiled.

  Then my browser did get hijacked, by a 3D ad program that flashed some very fake holographic breasts in my face. I had to kill my connection and start over.

  This time, I injected my search parameters into a CPD metaspider and crawled WikiWorld, trying to find an untampered entry in the script. The spider got caught in an adware loop, pop-ups coming faster than my antivirus program could kill them.

  I disconnected again, and used a brunt force attack with a hundred metaspiders.

  “The projector is fuct. Did you do something to it, ass-munch?”

  The pop-ups came again, and I set my DT to open each one in its own browser, trying to slow them down.

  Incredibly, it worked, and I got the unaltered Zelda page. I captured the screen before some malware could eat it up, and went from elation to confusion to outright shock when I learned who Aunt Zelda used to be before her gender transformation.

  Zelda Peterson was born Franklin Debont, the multi-billionaire who invented UFSE.

  “Live! Murder in Chicago!”

  I looked up at the projector. The macaroni art had been replaced with an emergency news bulletin. Some serious-looking anchor said, “We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for this late-breaking report. Warning. What you are about to see is shocking.”

  It shocked me more than anyone. There, on Teague’s projector screen, was Zelda Peterson in her kitchen, next to the sink, as a man snuck up behind her.

  TWELVE

  I knew what happened next and fumbled for the remote, changing the channel.

  It didn’t matter. Each channel I flipped to was showing the same thing. Poor Aunt Zelda getting her head bashed in, and her neck broken. The image was circular, with telltale red edges. A TEV transmission.

  Sata? Had he gone to the authorities?

  No. This wasn’t the transmission I’d recorded. This one had a different perspective, different angles, and a tighter zoom. Zelda was dead, and it still hadn’t shown the killer’s face.

  But if this wasn’t my recording, whose recording was it?

  I stared at Teague. The only other timecaster in Chicago.

  Then my DT beeped. It had finished compiling my list of 3,342 known enemies. And the name at the very top was Joshua Teague VanCamp.

  “Talon? Shit!”

  I looked up. Alter-Talon was on the projector screen, carving up Aunt Zelda’s arm.

  Teague stood up and spun around, reaching for his Taser holster.

  “Hold it!” I yelled. My hand hovered over my holster as well. But I still had limited sensation in my right hand. I doubted I’d be able to draw, let alone fire.

  Teague stared at me, hard. Hate smoldered in his eyes.

  “You fucking psycho. You really popped a gasket, didn’t you, bro?”

  “Put your hands behind your head, Teague.” I kept my voice steady, hoping it didn’t betray my fear. My heart was beating so fast I could hear it. “You know I can outdraw you.”

  “The victim is still as yet unidentified,” the projector droned on, “but the murderer has been positively IDed as Talon Ace Avalon.”

  “I knew you were unstable, Talon. But an old bitch? Aren’t you getting enough at home?”

  “Hands behind your head!” I yelled.

  Time seemed to stand still. If Teague drew, he’d Tase me first. Then it would be a speedy trial and a conviction by dinnertime. I’d spend the rest of my life in a maximum-security prison with three thousand guys I helped put there.

  Teague seemed to read my mind. “You won’t last ten minutes in jail, Talon. They’ll eat you alive. But don’t worry…I’ll comfort Vicki for you while you’re gone.”

  “Why the games, Teague? Why didn’t you arrest me when I walked in?”

  “You know me, bro. I love games.”

  His hand moved an inch closer to the butt of his Taser.

  “Don’t,” I warned. “We’ve gone shooting together. I’ll put a Taser needle right up your nose.”

  “And then what? Snap my neck? What the hell happened to you?”

  “Hands behind your fucking head.”

  For a bad moment I thought he was going to make a try for his weapon. I could see in his eyes he was considering it. But it passed, and he complied, lacing his fingers behind his neck.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “You’re in A4 headquarters, for fuck’s sake. How far you think you’re gonna get?”

  I used my left hand to shove my DT into my pocket, staring hard at my former friend. He must have been the one to give the footage to the news. But could he have actually set this whole thing up? Framed me somehow?

  He had the opportunity. He also had the motive. But did he have the smarts to pull it off?

  This wasn’t the time or place for an interrogation. Hundreds of cops, in
this very building, had to have seen the broadcast. Because I was a peace officer, required to be located if needed, my chip ID was fully trackable by GPS. They were probably on their way up right now.

  “Your hand is shaking, Talon. I bet you’re too scared to draw.”

  “Don’t try me.”

  Teague made his move, his hand coming down off his neck, reaching for his weapon. I reached across my body, left-handed, and dug out my piece, pulling it from the holster and aiming it upside down, my pinkie finding the trigger, squeezing off a shot just as Teague cleared faux leather.

  Not my fastest draw, and my aim was way off, but unfortunately for Teague the bullet still hit him. In the groin.

  A Tesla bolt of lightning materialized and zapped him right in the junk. He dropped, shrieking, and I ran past, out of the office and into the hallway.

  “There he is!”

  Twenty cops in the hall raised their weapons.

  I darted left, keeping low as wax bullets pummeled the walls on either side of me, exploding in jagged bolts of electricity. I managed to get to the stairwell without getting hit, and took the stairs three at a time. When I reached the fiftieth floor I paused, listening.

  A person was running up the stairs, toward me.

  Make that a lot of people were running up the stairs. I exited the stairwell, running like crazy, realizing it was futile, that I’d never make it out of this building.

  I ducked into an office, ignoring the worker bees, wondering where I could go. Hiding wouldn’t work; they’d track my chip. The windows on this floor wouldn’t open, and they were undoubtedly safety glass. Desperation even made me briefly consider attempting a hostage situation. But I didn’t have a lethal weapon, or adequate protection from their Tasers.

  Maybe I should just play it cool. Try to hide my face and walk calmly out of there.

  “It’s him!”

  So much for that.

  The cop who spotted me was young, eager, pointing his finger when he should have been pointing his weapon. I was on him in three steps, snapping my hips around, kissing his cheek with a spin-kick. Another cop, a woman, had her Taser already out. I ducked under her first shot, diving at the floor and rolling, coming up next to the biorecycle chute.

  It had a push door, no wider than twenty inches. I stuck my hand inside and gave it a swift yank. The aluminum cover popped off, revealing a wide metal duct. But wide enough for me to fit inside? And did I really want to go in there? The smell was rank; rotten food and decay. I had no idea where it ended. Might be a six-hundred-foot drop into a mulcher.

  The air around me exploded in electricity, the sharp scent of ozone overtaking the garbage stench. Without thinking it through I shoved my legs into the chute just as a Taser bullet drilled me in the breastbone.

  Though it reeked of cliché, the pain was indeed electrifying. At the area of impact, it felt like someone pressing a hot coal against my chest. The million volts locked my muscles rigid, my jaw slamming shut, my arms and legs stiffening like iron bars. I heard crackling and sizzling, my eyes open and paralyzed as the Tesla energy struck the needle in my chest like a lightning rod.

  Then gravity took over and I fell down the chute.

  THIRTEEN

  The drop was vertical, the metal duct wide enough so my shoulders barely grazed the sides as I picked up speed. Held rigid by the Taser and wracked with pain, I did a quick calculation in my brain.

  Vicki conned me into going skydiving once. Not too many things scare me, but I’m not a huge fan of heights, and the control freak in me dislikes heliplane rides because I’m not the one driving. Jumping out of a heliplane seemed like a really bad idea, but being a big macho peace officer and a new groom who wanted to impress his bride, I did it. Vicki jumped first, which was perfect, because she didn’t see any of the three times I vomited.

  Prior to jumping, I did a fair amount of research on skydiving and the speed human beings fall. In open air, terminal velocity—when the force of gravity on a person is equal to wind resistance—takes about fifteen seconds to top out, at around 125 mph.

  There was no air resistance in the chute. And the vertical position I was in meant I’d be accelerating faster, and hit a higher speed.

  On the fiftieth floor, roughly six hundred and twenty-five feet high, I’d probably have a terminal velocity of thirty feet per second.

  Which meant I had twenty seconds, maybe less, before hitting ground zero. And even if I fell onto a stack of air mattresses, at my speed it would be the same as hitting concrete.

  The chute was dark, except for the zigzag of light that continued to drill into my chest as I plummeted. Just as I wondered what the transmission range of Taser bullets was, the electricity shut off, plunging me into complete darkness but allowing my muscles to move again.

  My arms and legs felt heavy—the jolt had filled my bloodstream with lactic acid. I spread out my feet, trying to get a grip on the sides of the chute. No good. The metal had been treated with polymer-slick, so recyclables wouldn’t stick. Polymer-slick was a carbon-based surfacer made with buckyballs. I might as well be trying to grip crude oil.

  With ten seconds wasted and ten left to live, I slapped at my utility belt, seeking my nanotube reel—

  Nine seconds…

  My right hand fumbled for my gun, so I had to release the reel catch with my left—

  Eight seconds…

  I hit the catch and pulled the blank, my plummeting body brushing against the side of the chute, burning all the skin off my knuckles—

  Seven seconds…

  The pain in my hand brought instant tears, but I managed to hold on to the blank, while I willed my right hand to somehow pull the Glock from my holster—

  Six seconds…

  I brought the Glock around, manually inserting the blank into the chamber backward, through the barrel—

  Five seconds…

  I fired at waist level, straight into the side of the chute, the blank embedding itself in the metal and forming a molecular bond—

  Four seconds…

  The nanotube line whirred out of the reel, only a few millimeters thick but stronger than steel, and I kept my hands away so it didn’t slice them off—

  Three seconds…

  The autosensor in the reel adjusted tension, my belt digging into my gut like I’d been hit by a bus, slowing me down, but not fast enough—

  Two seconds…

  The chute ended, and I fell into open air, the line on my belt tugging me so I went from vertical to horizontal—

  One second…

  Light blurred by, and I gasped and choked on the strong reek of rotting garbage just as my back slapped into the ground with a wet splat.

  Was the splatting sound my skin splitting open and spraying out blood? Was it my head exploding like a pumpkin?

  I stared up at the chute, twenty feet above my head, and watched an orange peel flutter out and hit me in the chest while I waited for pain and death to overtake me.

  But neither did.

  I did a body inventory. Left leg worked. Right leg worked. Left arm worked, but hurt. Ditto the right arm. Head and neck okay. Shoulders and back seemed fine.

  I snorted, amazed I had not only survived, but did so intact.

  So what made that splatting…?

  Then the ground seemed to melt beneath me, and I realized I wasn’t on the ground at all. I was on a huge vat of decaying plant matter. The putrescent sludge swallowed me up like a flesh-eating blob, and I took one more gulp of air before sinking into the muck.

  FOURTEEN

  The Mastermind muses on the absoluteness of uncertainty.

  He wishes he knew more about what was happening. But his reach is limited. His ears are silent. His eyes restricted to newscasts.

  What’s going on? Where is the mouse?

  Better not to know, he muses. The mouse is both on course and off course. Dead and alive. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Once you measure it, wavefunction collapses.
>
  Perhaps instead of referring to Talon as a mouse, he should think of him as Schrödinger’s cat. For the Mastermind, Talon is everything and nothing at the same time. Best of all, the math backed it up.

  There’s much left to do. Calls. Travel. Meetings.

  The search has run its course, but there are other searches to perform.

  He reaches up, feels his own heart. It pounds with excitement, and some trepidation.

  Killing the woman was necessary. The cheese to lure the mouse.

  But it was more than that. She gave him a precious and unique gift. Her life, for his amusement. He respected her for that. Even honored her.

  However, she was only a footnote in the eventual history of his endeavors. An insignificant warm-up act for the magnificence to come.

  It isn’t like comparing walking to crawling.

  It’s more like comparing walking to breaking the light-speed barrier.

  There will be more deaths.

  Many more deaths.

  His heart beats faster at the thought, and he smiles.

  FIFTEEN

  The effect was like quicksand. The viscous pool was somewhere between a liquid and a solid. Buoyancy wasn’t working, and every tiny struggle created a minivacuum that sucked me down farther. While I was grateful I couldn’t smell anything while holding my breath, I knew I’d have to breathe eventually, and the idea of taking this crap into my mouth, my lungs, was almost worse than the thought of dying. To make things even more disgusting, the goop was warm—probably due to bacteria activity, which generated heat.

  Garbage was gross. Warm garbage was unbearable.

  I dared not open my eyes, concerned what diseases would permanently blind me. But after more than a minute without air, blindness became the least of my concerns. When I kept absolutely still, I sank. When I moved, I sank even faster. There was no way to get on top of the stuff, to pull myself—

  The nanotube line.

  I moved my left hand toward the reel. Even using all of my strength, it was like pushing through mud, and I could manage only an inch or so a second. The energy expended by my effort depleted the remaining oxygen in my blood, and my head began to spin. Even through closed eyelids, I saw flashes of red and yellow.