Recoil (2 page)

Chapter 3

Rabid

I was already waiting at the front window, Robin at my side and
Mom checking the fit of my respirator, when at precisely 09:15, the transport
pulled up in our driveway. It was a huge black Hummer with tinted windows and
PlayState’s
distinctive yellow-and-red logo emblazoned on
the side.

“Cool,” said Robin, nodding his approval.

“Very,” I said, still amazed that this was actually happening to
me.

“Are you sure you won’t wear your full-face respirator?” my
mother asked for the umpteenth time. There were shadows under her eyes — she’d
probably kept herself awake half the night worrying about all the things that
could go wrong on my adventure today.

 
“Mo-om, we’ve talked about
this. I’m going to play a game at
PlayState’s
headquarters, I’m not going to a hospital or Q-bay. Besides, this thing is bad
enough,” I said, adjusting my half face-piece respirator over my nose and
mouth. My series 7000E was ugly, even though I’d tried jazzing it up with
stickers on the sides. I hated wearing the thing — it was stuffy and it
muffled
my voice. I made some Darth Vader breathing noises, trying to get a smile out
of my mom, whose anxiety level today was hovering somewhere between
extreme
nervous
agitation
and
completely
frantic
.

“May the force be with you, my child,” Robin said.

“I still think you should consider safety glasses and booties,”
my mother said.

“Not going to happen.” I pulled on my latex gloves and waved my
protected hands at her. “See? Double thick. I’ll be safe.”

“She’ll be fine,” said Robin, slinging an arm around Mom’s
shoulders, perhaps to hold her back from tackling me by the ankles and trapping
me inside the house.

I grabbed my backpack and the liability waiver forms my mother
had reluctantly signed, and headed for the door, eager to be gone. Eager to be
somewhere other than inside these four walls.

“Be careful!” Mom said as I turned the anti-microbial copper
handle of the door to the decontamination unit and stepped inside.

“Be awesome!” Robin called.

I waved, closed the seal behind me, and waited until the airlock
on the front door of the
decon
unit released. After
suiting up in Personal Protection Equipment (mask, gloves, and one of the
disposable PPE suits Mom insisted on), going out of the house was easy. Once
you stepped outside the
decon
unit, its door sealed
again and it automatically went hot-box, flooding the cubicle with sterilizing
ozone and ultra-violet light. Coming back inside was always more of a mission.
When I returned to the house this evening, I’d have to do a mini-strip inside
the cramped cubicle. I’d shove my PPE suit and gloves into the disposal bin for
later destruction in the household incinerator in the basement, place my shoes
and respirator on the high mesh shelf directly below the lights, and I’d have
to hold my breath and stand still, protective goggles over my eyes, for sixty
seconds while I was sprayed with
decon
mist and then
given a low intensity UV bath for fifteen seconds. When the door popped open,
Mom would be waiting inside the house with hand sanitizer and disinfectant
throat spray, while behind me the
decon
unit would
seal and go hot again to sterilize my shoes and respirator.

Now, outside the house, I stood for a few moments allowing my
eyes to adjust to the dazzling light, loving the feel of the early spring
sunshine warming me through my PPE suit and the unfamiliar feel of the breeze
on the skin of my forehead. Somewhere nearby, birds were singing. It was always
a shock to the senses to be outside. On any other day, I would have slowed my
walk and enjoyed the rare experience, but that day I was too excited. I hurried
over to the Hummer. The side door of the vehicle slid open as I approached, and
closed behind me as soon as I had swung myself inside.

There were already two people inside. The boy had dark-blond hair
cut very short, and he was big, with broad shoulders, a wide chest and large
hands. He looked maybe two years older than my sixteen, and the girl looked
like she might be nineteen or even twenty. She was slim with short, spiky black
hair and warm, deep-brown eyes. They were emphasized with purple eyeliner, and
she had a tattoo that looked like a Chinese character at the outer corner of
her left eye. Her latex gloves were in a trendy zebra-striped pattern; the
double-thick gloves Mom insisted that we wore because they were more resistant
to tearing and perforation didn’t come in anything but sickly beige or surgical
green.

Both of them were wearing only E97 respirators — the basic,
form-fitted, particle-excluding gauze mask. I knew this would happen. My
respirator was complete overkill, but Mom was so paranoid, she’d never have
allowed me out wearing anything less.

“Hi,” the girl said, “I’m
Leya
.”

“Bruce,” said the boy.

“Hi. I’m Jinx,” I said, and bumped elbows with each of them in
greeting.

“Welcome on board, Jinx,” said the driver, who was also wearing
an E97. “You excited?”

“Crazy excited!” I said. Then I felt a blush rising — maybe it
wasn’t cool to be so enthusiastic. “Are we going to be playing together?” I
asked, waving a finger between the three of us in the back.

“That’s right, today is just for snipers,” the driver said, as he
backed down our driveway.

There were different roles you could play in The Game. Most kids
played as soldiers in the war against the Alien Axis Army. I’d only ever been
interested in playing as a specialist soldier, a sniper, but you could also
play as a spy — intercepting the calls, texts and mails of
Jakhil’s
invaders; as a code-breaker; or as an intel agent — analyzing the data at a
high level, looking for patterns and predicting skirmishes, attacks and the
enemy’s next move. You could even play Ops Management — planning and
distributing troops, equipment, and food; building army bases; and overseeing
all the operations that kept the war game going. It was rumored that if you
were good at code-breaking or programming, you could apply for training at The
Advanced Specialized Training Academy, and get a great job working for the
government afterwards. We snipers just played for fun though. And bragging
rights.

The Game had existed before the plague began, in a really simple
version. But after kids stopped going out to clubs and movies and malls, home
entertainment took off in a big way. Soon, an updated virtual reality version
of The Game was released with awesome graphics, multiple roles to play and a
new Big Bad —
Jakhil
and his invading Alien Axis
Army. And within a year of the plague breaking out, it seemed like every kid in
the US was playing.

It was a fantastic game — all the parts and roles intersected
with each other and you could track how the overall war was going, and there
was something for everyone. Recently, they had even brought out fun cartoon
versions for really young players.

Robin had tried sniping and code-breaking before he’d settled
into playing as a programmer, though I reckon he would have played as a poet if
that was possible. He was excellent at writing code, but not as obsessed with
playing as most kids were. I was pretty much addicted to The Game — I played it
every spare moment I had, especially since Dad died. When I played, I didn’t
have to remember, or think, or even feel very much. Not about losing Dad, or
worrying about Mom, or wondering whether I’d be stuck at home for the rest of
my life.

“We’ve got one more stop to make across town,” the driver said,
“and then we’ll head back to headquarters and it’ll be game-time for all four
of you. Strap yourself in.”

I clicked my seatbelt closed. Not wanting to appear unfriendly by
taking a seat further back, I had taken one of the front seats which faced
backwards, directly opposite
Leya
and Bruce, but I
regretted it now. Bruce was staring at me intently, scrutinizing the
cobalt-blue streaks which striped my long blond hair, looking into my eyes, and
assessing my height —about three inches shorter than his own — as if trying to
place me.

“I’ve never met you,” he said.

I shrugged. That didn’t surprise me, I didn’t meet many people.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I live only a few blocks away from you,
but I’ve never met you at one of the socials.”

“Yeah, well, my mom’s not too keen on us leaving the house unless
we absolutely have to.”

We were obliged by Health and Wellbeing Regulation 223 to attend
a mandated minimum number of socials — six per year — but Mom made sure that we
didn’t go to a dance or a game more. She was convinced that Robin and I would
contract rat fever if we were out of her sight for more than a few minutes at a
time. Today I’d be gone for hours, and that would be hard for her. Robin didn’t
much mind being stuck at home. He was too introverted to find the socials
anything but an ordeal, and usually took a book along with him so he could find
a quiet corner and read while the rest of us used the opportunity to “practice
our interpersonal social skills” and tried to “meet others with a view to
pursuing relationships with them”, or whatever it was the regulation advocated.

“Anyway,” I added, “you may well have met me. With these things,”
I tapped my respirator, “it’s hard to tell.”

“I’d have remembered,” said Bruce with a smile that was almost a
leer. He looked me up and down as if to emphasize his point.

His unwavering attention made me uncomfortable. I exchanged a
glance with
Leya
, who raised her eyebrows and tilted
her head at Bruce as if to say,
“Get him.”

“Are you going to the social next Saturday?” Bruce asked me.
“It’s a picnic in the city park. I’ll be there.”

“I don’t know. Yeah, maybe,” I said.

I stared out the window, hoping he would stop looking at me and
drop the subject. Our westbound highway was largely empty. Six-lane traffic
jams were a thing of the past — the upside of a pandemic which kept people
inside. It wasn’t a scenic drive, but still it was good to see something more
than the unchanging sameness of home. As we drove under an overpass, I read
graffiti sprayed in black paint on the passing pillars:
World-War-Rat-
atat
,
and directly beneath a security camera on
the wall to our right as we emerged, someone had painted the message:
One Nation
under Observation.

“We could hang out together,” Bruce persisted.

I looked an appeal at
Leya
. In the
unwritten code of friendly behavior, girls were supposed to have each other’s
back at moments like this, weren’t they?

“We —” Bruce began, but
Leya
interrupted.

“So, when did you qualify?”

“Day before yesterday. I must have been the last of the four,” I
said, relieved at the change of subject.

“You’re not … You’re not the one who killed
Jakhil
,
are you?” she asked, sounding incredulous.

I nodded and shrugged. I was trying to act casual but beneath the
respirator, I was grinning.

“Dude!” she said, leaning over to bump elbows with me again.
“Props!”

“Thanks.”

“You won? You?” said Bruce.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to take offense at the note of
disbelief in his voice. “I got lucky, I guess.”

“No way was that just good luck. You must be hot, girl!” said
Leya
.

I tried to look modest. “You guys must be really good too, to
qualify.”

“I took out my fair share of the invaders and
repbots
,”
said
Leya
.

“Oh, I’m good alright,” said Bruce, nodding and smiling. “And I’m
looking forward to getting my game on with you.”

Was I imagining the double meaning? I could be. Being cooped up
inside and kept away from others for the last four years hadn’t given me much
experience dealing with people face-to-face. I frowned at him.

“I like a challenge,” he said to me. It sounded a bit like a threat.

I asked
Leya
about her Game history,
and for a while we three chatted about our favorite hobby, trading war stories
and comparing scores. I heard enough to know that while
Leya
was no slouch in the sniping department, Bruce, unless he was exaggerating, was
an exceptional player. On another day he might well have been the one to take
down
Jakhil
.

We were still talking about The Game and whether
Jakhil’s
second-in-command would automatically become
commander of the Alien Axis Army now that he was dead, or whether there might
be a leadership challenge, when we pulled up in front of a huge two-story brick
house in a subdivision of similar McMansions.

“Check it out,” said Bruce, peering out the window, “it’s a
starter-castle.”

The boy who came out the front door
decon
unit was tall with orange hair. When he got closer, I saw that his eyebrows and
lashes were pale, and his skin was the color of milk — I reckoned this boy saw
the sun even less than I did. He, too, looked to be a couple of years older
than me, and he also wore only an E97 mask. I was beginning to feel like an
idiot, like an overprotected little girl.

The new guy’s name was Graham. He seemed friendly enough, but I
soon grew irritated by his constant fidgeting. He tapped his feet, fiddled with
the cuff of his gloves and worried at a loose thread in the seat upholstery.
Bruce studied him for a few minutes, asked about his game scores, and then
apparently lost interest and returned to looking at me. Graham told us in detail
all about the formulas and calculations he used when playing.