Futureland. Part 42

"That general has dissolved MacroCode Russia and they're gonna drop on New York."

The lower half of the screen became an image of carnage in St. Petersburg. Armed soldiers could be seen running down civilians and shooting them with rifles and ember guns.

"This came over the ghostnet. I got the cube from a gypsy hacker in Soho." The panic in Jamey's voice brought Harold to full awareness. "The feds gonna shut New York down at six A.M."

"Who says?"

"Com'on, Harold. We gotta get off the Island tonight."

The scene on the lower half of the curve turned to ma.s.sacre. People were being cut down while trying to storm a fortress.

A face appeared above the carnage. It was an older man wearing a fancy military hat. He was speaking in Russian but the simultaneous ITV translator muted his voice and spoke over it.

". . . the Americans have created this plague. They have killed our people with their bio-warfare . . ." The ma.s.sacre transformed into bodies being stacked onto a pyre smoldering slowly into ash.

". . . we shall be avenged."

"Okay," Harold agreed. "I'll meet you at the Port Authority. We can take a bus."

"Why not the mono?"

"Mono stops in Jersey but the bus goes on forever."

They met at the West Side entrance of the Port Authority Transporation Center at 00:36. Harold had his tricycle, which broke down into a case half the size of one wheel, and a bag that held an extra andro-suit and his Flapjack, the personalized computer-book that had everything a cycler needed.

Jamey jumped out of a yellow cab and needed help pulling a trunk from the back.

"Why you got that big thing, man?" Harold asked.

"This is it, Hair. This is the end. We gotta get gone. This is everything I own."

The bus station was in tumult. Thousands of people stood in line in front of ticket machines. People were screaming to be heard above the din of panic. Young men and women shepherded crying children. The loudspeaker was droning on and on asking for calm and order.

"Guess we ain't the only ones been to the gypsy," Harold yelled into his friend's ear.

"They're closing down the Authority at six A.M., that's why.

"And I bet the magistrates are all already gone."

"Believe that," Jamey said. "We better get on line."

"No, uh-uh," Harold said, putting out an arresting hand. "I got first-cla.s.s seats reserved on my chip after you called. We got pa.s.sage to Burlington, Vermont."

"First cla.s.s? How much that cost?"

"Five thousand dollars."

"Where'd you get that? I thought you spent all your credit on Yas."

"I took a FedCred card from her wallet before I left her place."

Jamey looked at Harold in amazement.

"She was dead, man. She didn't need it and her family's rich. You know the parmeds woulda taken that s.h.i.t in a minute."

Three hastily erected clear plexiplas People Stoppers had been placed along the hall leading to the gates. At each stop Harold and Jamey had to present their ID-chips to get through. At the last stop Harold had to have an eye-scan to check his PBC against the reservation.

They had to wait three hours before boarding the bus.

"They say the plague is a full-blown epidemic in Russia," a man in an old-fashioned two-piece business suit was saying to a woman in front of him. "It starts out with pains and then it causes those stripes that that flu last fall had. Then bleeding, internal and external, then death. Three or four days and you're dead."

"Please stop it!" the woman cried. "Please stop talking to me."

The man then turned to Harold and hunched his shoulders as if to ask, Is she crazy?

The first-cla.s.s upper deck of the ElectroHound had been fitted with fourteen extra seats. Jamey's trunk was taken from him and thrown into the storage hatch on the roof. Below, in the main cabin, pa.s.sengers were packed in, standing room only. All of the lower seats had been removed.

"World's comin' to an end," Jamey said to his friend. "And ElectroDog wants to get the last dollar."

Harold would have nodded his agreement but he was too busy taking in his environment to waste even a motion.

The bus lurched its way down the road to the bridge. The traffic of busses and official cars was moving at under ten kays.

"Probably government workers stealing the carpool vehicles," Jamey said, referring to the inordinate number of city cars on the road.

Harold thought that he was right.

The road carried an exodus but the city was more or less unaware. The DanceDome, an elevated dance field at the Sixtieth Street pier, was in full swing. Ten thousand or more were dancing to the wild music transmitted to tiny ear implants that kept noise pollution down. Big animated signs advertised L&L products, new movies, life-extending operations. In small windows along the highway he saw lighted rooms with people in them. Some were homeworkers and others simply living: watching ITV, listening to their implants, talking on the vid.

"Oh s.h.i.t!" Jamey spat. He doubled over in the seat next to Harold.

"What's wrong, Jamey?"

"Pain."

"Sit up, man. Sit up." Harold put a hand against his friend's chest and jerked him up.

"Something wrong up there?" a man from behind asked.

"Just dropped his chip," Harold said, glancing back. He saw the worried elderly man who sat behind them.

"Is he sick?" the old man asked.

"No. Dropped his chip. We got it. It's okay."

The man looked unconvinced but he still leaned back.

"You can't let 'em know you're hurting, Jamey. If you do they might kick us off."

Jamey nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain.

The bus rolled out of the northern borders of New York onto the Canadian Highway. Harold watched closely over his friend, who tried his best to stay still under the waves of deep pain that wracked him at irregular intervals.

"The Russians are right," someone behind said. "It's probably one of those bio-tech companies made the plague. Break the corporations and burn the dead. If we want to survive that's what we have to do too."

"Yeah," a woman agreed.

"It's terrible," someone else exclaimed.

Outside the window there was nothing but the dark outline of trees and pools of gray gra.s.ses under a quarter moon. Harold wondered how much Jamey weighed.

"Oh s.h.i.t!" Jamey screamed.

He had been able to sleep for a couple of hours while the bus cruised down the unusually crowded highway, but now the pain brought him up to his feet.

"He's got it!" the elderly man said to the young woman sitting next to him. "I told you, Gina. He's got it."

"Oh s.h.i.t it hurts!" Jamey yelled. "Help me."

"He ain't got nuthin'," Harold hissed at the couple. "He hurt himself in soccer is all. It's a muscle."

"You said he dropped his chip before."

"Mind your own business before you get dropped," Harold warned.

In his peripheral vision he saw a shadow slip down the stairs.

"Does he?" a woman asked. "Does he have it?"

"Have what? He don't have nuthin'. There isn't any plague," Harold said.

Three men had gotten to their feet.

Harold wished that he had elected judo on Sports-Wednesday at high school instead of volleyball.

"f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k," Jamey chanted. He fell back down into his seat and then collapsed onto the floor.

"You better get him the f.u.c.k off'a this bus, man," one of the standing men said. His tone was threatening but he didn't advance.

Harold realized that Jamey had the invisible force field of communicability around him.

Everyone standing had to grab something to stay on their feet because the bus swerved and came to an abrupt halt. Harold stole a glance at Jamey, who was sprawled in the aisle, and then at the stairwell leading down.

The bus driver, a big-boned woman with red hair and deeply tanned skin, ascended to the cabin in three steps.

"What's goin' on up here?" she asked.

Harold simply stared.

"That guy has the plague," someone said. The bus driver took a step backward.

"He does?" she asked Harold.

"He's sick," Harold said. "But there hasn't been any plague announced by the health board."

"Half of Russia's dead and he says there's no plague," one of the standing men said.

"They say the n.i.g.g.e.rs don't get it no way," another man, of questionable race, said.

"All right, enough of that now," the driver said. "It's a punishable offense to slander race."

"And look at what good it gets us," the elderly man spat.

The driver seemed to consider the senseless sentence.

"I'm going to have to put him off the bus."

"Who?" Harold asked.

"Your friend."

"What for?"

"I got a hundred and fifty pa.s.sengers on this bus, son. I've never carried even half that. They pulled out the lower seats, they broke the rules by making pa.s.sengers stand while the bus is in motion. Something's happening. I don't know what it is but I can't jeopardize this whole bus just 'cause the uppers aren't talking."

"I need my trunk," Jamey whined. "I need my trunk."

Getting off of the bus was fairly easy. The driver made Harold pull the trunk out of the top hatch. She told the pa.s.sengers she was taking the precaution against further infection.

No one tried to bar the friends' way. Scared faces of all races witnessed their departure. Harold saw that some of them had scars on their necks and faces, reminders of the striped flu.

"We got to take my trunk, Hair. Everything I got's in there."