Avery Cates 2 - The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers

Author:Jeff Somers [Somers, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime, Science Fiction, General, Murder for Hire, Fiction
ISBN: 9781841498973
Google: oA8nQAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0316053945
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2008-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

XXII

Day Eight:

A Few More Inches

to the Wilderness

Dull rust spots were visible on the Monks’ faces, they were so close. The sound of a few dozen Monks being perfectly still in the midst of a dead city was complete silence. I remained hidden behind the doorway, peering carefully around its edge. I was shocked; I hadn’t seen this many Monks—this many fully operational Monks—in years. The ones you saw begging and stumping around Manhattan were sad, pathetic jalopies you didn’t think twice about shoving out of your way. These looked to be all original equipment, which maybe meant guns, but it also meant they were all a little rusted, a little banged up. I ran my eyes over them, counting the dents and tears in their white skin, the rips in their clothes. They all held themselves with that perfect, still confidence that hinted at hardwired reflexes and nuclear cores ticking away their half-lives, and they’d survived, but it obviously hadn’t been easy.

I hated them on sight.

Belling stood in front of them looking freshly pressed and relaxed, among friends, his arms at his side with gleaming Roons for hands.

“I’d like you to meet my benefactors, Mr. Cates,” he said. He wasn’t smiling.

A Monk stepped forward. This one looked so new I thought I could smell the fabric of its coat. In the darkness its face appeared to float above a faint outline of a body. For one horrible moment it smiled at me, a snapshot grin.

“Avery,” it said. “You are as fucking slippery as ever. I never would have imagined I’d run into you here, although He told me it would happen. Come on out. We can see you perfectly well. Perhaps,” it continued in a louder voice, “the System Security Force officers and their pet Techie would like to come out as well?”

I folded myself back against the wall, heart pounding. Fifty, sixty Monks. None of whom looked crazy. Digital sighting, laser guidance, reflexes by the fucking CPU clockspeed—and I had two unhappy System Pigs up my ass. And the one motherfucker I wanted to kill was locked inside a bulletproof cube. I thought I’d just stay pasted against the wall for a while, see what shook out. Let a few thousand more people die.

And then a slow lassitude stole over me, creeping down from my head through my whole body, a peaceful, easy feeling. What the fuck, I thought. I wasn’t about to fight off sixty goddamn Monks—and Wa Belling, and what was the point, anyway?

Feeling strangely happy—just letting everything slip away, as if I’d been hanging from a rope for days and finally just let go—I rolled right and stood in the doorway. The Monk gave me that bastard grin again.

“Thank you, Avery. Ah, the police. Thank you, officers.”

I was walking toward them, taking my time, all my worries distant memories. Turning my head, I was mildly surprised to see Happling and Hense emerging from the big middle doorway of the church. Hense was as tidy and tight-lipped as ever, guns held loosely by her side.

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