Chapter 69: Weight Of A Vote
I sent the Spear to Inventory before I put a hand on the ladder, because walking up onto a man’s roof with a rifle over your shoulder says something, and I wasn’t ready to say anything yet.
The roof opened up into that particular kind of October afternoon this city had been handing out all week, cool enough that the breeze went through my jacket and found skin, with the sun already sliding west, spilling and gold across the world as far as the eye could see.
Higher than the whole thing, the water tower stood on its steel legs with the rope still running off it, one long taut line dropping away across the road to the tank on the eight-floor building opposite, the only road into this place for anybody who wasn’t me.
Three birds went over in a slow circle, high up and unbothered, and one of them dropped and settled on the water tank and sat there looking at the two of us like we were the ones who didn’t belong up there.
And along the eastern edge, in twenty neat rectangular beds, ten of carrots and ten of cabbage, the seedlings had gotten bigger.
Not by much.
But the shoots stood up out of that dark soil an honest inch taller than the last time I’d looked at them, which made them the only thing in this entire city that had improved in a week right beside my TK.
Leo stood in front of the third bed with his hands in his pockets, all six foot six of him folded down into a farmer’s slouch, looking at the carrots.
He didn’t turn when I came up beside him, hands in my own pockets, and looked at the same soil.
And for a long while, neither of us said one single thing.
The breeze kept moving across the roof, and on the water tower, my awareness caught the bird shifting its weight, while somewhere far off to the south the city let out a sound the wind carried up to us and thinned out into nothing before it arrived properly.
Then, from ten floors straight down, an Infected screamed.
The bird didn’t move.
Neither did Leo.
[He’s looking at things that grow and blossom... I see things that grow to serve a purpose and die for that purpose...]
[...Nah, that came out way edgier than I thought it would.]
"What made you this way?" Leo said, still looking at the carrots, voice as flat as though he was asking what time it was. "The Nikki... the big bro, I knew, volunteered at old age homes and homeless shelters with Big Sis Kara."
I kept my eyes on the beds.
"The big bro I knew once took a little squirrel that fell out of its nest... thing had a busted leg and couldn’t even hold its head up... and he nursed it back to health... bawled his eyes out when his neighbor’s dog killed it a week later."
My chest did a thing I didn’t authorize while Leo went on.
"The paycheck you got from your first Cybersecurity gig... You donated it to a struggling animal shelter... So, what did you go through that..."
He let it run out on its own.
I stood there breathing the cold air for a while, watching a cabbage shoot move in the wind, and eventually I took one deep breath and let it out.
"Let me give you an example... Imagine there is a family trapped by the Infected..." I kept my voice flat and my eyes down. "Imagine you’re going to save them... Imagine Nora following right behind, cuz of course she would... Imagine her getting eaten alive."
Beside me, enhanced by upgraded cognition, Awareness caught his breathing change, going shorter and faster, right along with his shoulders as they came up under his shirt, even if barely.
"Now imagine that happening because you wanted to be a good man. I mean, she’s not some hulking six-foot-six farm boy... not that being that would’ve made a difference... And now you’re just standing there frozen like a fucking idiot, surrounded by infected, while her dying screams echo in your mind, followed right behind by the screams of the family you were trying to save..."
I gave him a lazy sideways look and found him completely silent.
"Now imagine... imagine this happening over and over and over... and fucking over until there’s not a single person left to lose and you’re alive simply for the sheer spite of it all..."
"But they’re just people trying to survive..." His voice came out rough around the edges. "Maybe in the future they’d become some dangerous survivors... but right now they’re just people. W-we have you... they don’t. Think about-"
The scoff came out of me before I could stop it.
"There they are... the golden fuckin words. Alright, kid, story time~" I laughed, and it didn’t come out sounding like anything good.
"Back in the old timeline, my old crew and me... we were staying in a safe house owned by a family of three in exchange for rice." I said, keeping that side eye and a sneer I didn’t realize when it came up, "There was a husband, a wife, and a kid... fifteen or sixteen years old, maybe. It was this kid’s dead dog’s birthday... so he sneaked out to visit the dog’s grave at his old house... and on his way back, an Alpha Variant caught his whiff and came at him. But he managed to get back."
Leo caught my gaze, and darted his own right back down onto the plant beds, while I continued-
"I’m sure the Alpha let him... they’re fuking smart like that. When the kid got back, he told us everything. We were ready to bounce the very second... but his mom and dad begged us to stay, or take them with us..."
Down below, another one screamed, and the sound came up the face of the building and went out over the roof.
"But we couldn’t... Alphas have an insane sense of smell. So Angelica called Democracy, gave us two choices, and left the decision to us. Either we abandon them and leave... or we stay and fight the fucking Alpha."
"Lexie wanted to fight, of course." I continued, feeling my mouth pull from a sneer to a soft grin, "Alexander was his real name... Built like a bank vault, war vet, decorated, sixty-some years old and meaner than the entire shit-show. Everybody called him Lexie, and he hated it the way people hate cancer. He’d have fought that Alpha with a shovel if we’d let him... he hated Alpha Variants worse than he hated anything in this world, and that man hated a lot of things... Nia wanted to bounce, of course. And that left me with the deciding vote... Wanna know what I did with it?"
Leo turned his head and looked at me properly for the first time since I’d come up that ladder.
"I said... they’re just people trying to survive." I could feel my own face doing nothing at all, but my head went through about a hundred rooms it had no business being in. "And I voted we stay and fight."
Then I turned and looked him straight in the eyes.
"And we died because of it..."
And the laugh that came with it was aimed entirely at me.
"Got hunted across three hundred kilometers because of it. Angelica went first... Then Lexie. Then Nia. I watched everyone I came to care about for the final time die because of it... Because of those golden fucking words... The words I said for one fucking time out of a hundred, and..."
I let that one die where it stood and just simply pulled the Spear out of Inventory without a word and held it out to him.
Leo’s hand came up slow, stopped just short of the handguard, and hung there for a second, before he finally closed around it.
He tried pulling, but I didn’t let go.
He looked up, eyes across the rifle while the wind came across the roof between us.
"The heart that must feel for others... must also feel nothing when putting a bullet into others’ faces... no matter who or what the others may be," I said, staring dead into his eyes, and watched his jaw work.
Then I felt his grip start to loosen, felt the strength behind that pull draining.
But slowly, it stopped loosening, and his fingers closed down hard, and the very next second, with teeth that gritted, his whole arm went into the pull with everything the farm boy’s shoulders had in them, wrenching the rifle out of my hands.
"I’m too far gone to justify shit like that, Leo," I said, not able to suppress that little chuckle that followed. "But I don’t want you to ever reach that point... I want you to skip the bullshit and think with the wisdom that comes with going through the said bullshit. Because most of the people you care about are down below... And they’re the same people I too care about... and I can’t lose any of them."
"It may be the law of the jungle now... dog eat dog and all that..." Leo said slowly, holding the rifle against his chest and holding it there with both hands as he looked back down at the carrots. "But I will live by my own ideals... I won’t lose a single thing either."
What replied to him was a half chuckle and half scoff as I pulled two loaded mags and a set of ear pro out of Inventory and held them out for him.
"See the Infected below, by that red car?" I jerked my chin at it as he silently took them, a lone one wandering the far sidewalk with that new loose-jointed jog they’d all picked up this week, sixty-odd meters out and forty down.
"Yeah."
"Load up and take aim."
He brought the magazine up into the well and pushed.
"Harder. Straight up, then tug it to make sure it’s seated in..."
He shoved it home properly this time and pulled down on it, and it stayed.
"Charging handle... All the way back, then let it go... don’t ride it forward, the spring knows what it’s doing better than you do."
-Chk-Klak-!
"Muzzle stays pointed at the street, finger stays off the trigger until the second you’re about to shoot..."
He got the stock into the pocket of his shoulder, and I put a hand on the back of it and pushed it in another inch.
"In. Not on. Support hand further out, elbow under the rifle, not beside it... You’re building a bone tripod, not hugging your girlfriend."
Leo adjusted, dropped his cheek onto the stock, and I watched his eye come up naturally behind the holo.
"Better. Now that little latch on the magnifier... push it out."
He found it, and the magnifier swung around behind the optic.
"If something gets close, slap it back to the side. Reticle stays the same either way, everything just gets three times bigger."
"...I-"
"Safety."
-Klk-!
"We’re shooting downhill, so the bullet’s gonna print high on you. Not by much at this range. Just know it’s happening."
He settled in.
"Now exhale... hold and aim... center mass."
His breath went out, and his chest stopped moving, and the rifle went still.
"Send it."
-Tissh-!
The round went past the thing’s shoulder, and a chip of the road behind it kicked up and skipped.
While down below, the Infected turned around slowly, snarling at the pavement.
"Adjust a little right... and a little low."
Leo shifted, exhaled, held it.
"Send it."
-Tissh-!
Missed again.
"Again."
-Tissh-!
"Again."
-Tissh-!
"Hit."
The grin that broke across his face was the first one I’d seen on him all day.
"The fuck you giggling at?" I said, deadpan. "It’s still alive."
Leo looked back down, and there it lay on the sidewalk, already rolling over and getting its legs under itself.
"The non-Newtonian armor, remember?" I said, hands still in pocket, eyes I think looked calm. "Up close, that gun’s gonna need seven or eight body shots to put one down. Out at real distance, eight to fifteen... We’re somewhere in the middle here."
"Damn... But isn’t this -"
"Again."
Leo, breathed out, and-
-Tissh-!