We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) by Jeff Somers

Author:Jeff Somers [Somers, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

II.

NEGOTIATOR

30. WHEN THE SUICIDE STEPPED ONTO the train, I thought, Shit, things are about to get interesting.

It had been a long six months.

The subway had stopped four times already today between stations, just grinding to a shuddering halt, lights flickering, air-conditioning clicking on, off, on, off. The walls and seats and floors and ceiling of the car were covered in bright red graffiti that made no immediate sense. All of the metal handholds and trim felt greasy, damp.

“Fuck,” Mags whispered, shifting his weight in the seat and crossing his arms. I could hear the seams of his jacket straining.

“We’ll make it,” I said.

“The fuck we will.”

I shrugged. “We couldn’t take the streets. What else were we going to do?”

He snorted. The snort translated to a stream of vulgarity and Mags’s usual declaration that a man in my position should get a few dozen Bleeders together and fly wherever he wanted. Mags was a proud mama when it came to me. For myself, I’d gotten comfortable with bleeding others when it felt necessary. Flying around the city didn’t exactly feel necessary.

We were drifting along the track, not going any faster than a healthy man could stroll, hands laced behind his back, thoughts on his mind; still, we were moving. The way the trains were—the way everything was now—this was better than nothing. We’d speed up a bit after Ninety-Sixth street, I thought. We were in the first car, where the conductor sat in his tiny booth, and could watch the dark tunnel scrolling towards us a frame at a time.

I ran my gaze over the other passengers. An unshaved old pensioner across the aisle from me was reading a print newspaper. The headline read FORTY DEAD IN FERRY MASSACRE.

I’d heard that one. Two uniformed police officers had boarded the ferry to New Jersey, waited until the boat was in the middle of the river, and started shooting. First the captain and crew, then the passengers. One of them had put the throttle all the way up, and the boat had eventually crashed into the Hoboken piers and caught fire.

Good times. They were all good times, these days.

At that same moment, four hundred and thirteen residents of Gdańsk poisoned themselves, leaving behind a single note that read, in full, Reka reke myje, with no other comment. In Ulan Bator, two dozen pregnant women leaped into the Tuul and drowned themselves. In Kira Town, a renegade army unit cut off the heads of two thousand men and women, then motored off, having taken nothing, left no message, and gained no military advantage.

In London the day before, sixty-four percent of the police force called in sick. There were no demands, no labor negotiation. People took the opportunity to riot and set fire to all those cars they’d been meaning to see burn. The next day, all those cops showed up for work like nothing had happened.

In Florence, two hundred homicides in the past two weeks.

In DC, thirteen suspicious fires. Yesterday. In New York, in spite of, or because of, the chaos, people kept coming.

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