State of Decay Read Free Page B

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    The doors opened, and I crossed into the lobby. Across the foyer, I could see someone standing in the shadows near the exit. He wasn’t in uniform. I pinged the squad leader upstairs.
    You guys have anyone in the lobby?
    Negative. Two outside; the rest are up here.
    The figure moved toward me, and when he stepped into the light I could see he was young, maybe college age. He had tangled brown hair and uneven stubble. He wore sneakers, running pants, and a gray hoodie. He wasn’t carrying a weapon.
    “What are you doing in here?” I asked him.
    “Agent Wachalowski?”
    “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
    I scanned into the soft tissue of his face and saw some bioelectronics fitted behind the eyes. He was here gathering footage. I was being recorded.
    “I hear you’ve got some revivors upstairs,” he said.
    “Be careful what you admit to,” I said, moving past him. “There’s only one way you could have heard that.”
    As I pushed past, he followed, keeping pace with me.
    “Come on, you can give me something, can’t you?”
    “Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “And listening in on even unsecured communications like that is a felony; you know that. The SWAT guys are on their way down, and if they find you here, you’re going to be arrested.”
    There’s a reporter down here looking for footage. Clear him out before you bring the revivors down.
    Roger that.
    “It’s already out,” he said. “You can’t keep it a secret. Just give me fifteen seconds’ worth.”
    “Technically, if you’re not outside, you’re supposed to inform anyone you talk to if you’re going to record them,” I said. “Like you’re doing right now. If you want, I can slap an injunction on you, and the techs can take a crawl through everything you’ve got sitting in your buffers. How does that sound?”
    That seemed to hit home, and he stayed behind as I headed across the parking lot toward my car. When I got in, I could see him still standing there like he wasn’t sure whether or not he should chance going back. In the rearview mirror I saw him watching me, probably still recording as I pulled out and drove away.
    With the scene behind me, I took a deep breath. I realized my heart was pounding and I tried to slow it down. I couldn’t get the image of that girl revivor’s face out of my head.
    The first time I ever saw a revivor’s face, it was dark out and hotter than hell. The revivor was a male, and when it came staggering up out of the wet grass, I knew for a fact that the man was dead because I was the one who had killed him.
    The last time I’d seen one out in the grinder, I was being airlifted away in a helicopter, with a tube down my throat. It came lurching out of the brush, wet eyes staring right at me as we began to rise. Its teeth, stained bright red, were showing, and there was a terrible want on that waxy face that remained even as the gunner turned on it and made it dance.

Faye Dasalia—Shine Tower Apartments, Unit 901
    “ Faye ,” he’d whispered. I could almost still hear him as I roused from the dream, stirring in my cold bed.
    “You’re a beautiful woman, Faye . . . . ” He’d breathed it into my ear, the stubble from his chin pricking the side of my neck. He had finally stopped, and was propped over me, smelling like sweat and that brand of deodorant he used. Even awake, I could almost still smell him. It was almost real.
    “ You deserve better than this ,” he’d said, as he said every time. “The world should be yours . ”
    Stretching under the covers, I tried to shake it off. I didn’t want the world; all I wanted was to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to the grinder. I didn’t want the things I dreamed, no matter how many times I dreamed them. Sometimes I thought they happened because he was the only man I knew, but I knew him only because I worked next to him every day. We never had so much as a drink together, and he had never even been inside my