software. The machines froze, chronically, and then they’d have to be rebooted and it took forever for the equipment to reinitialize. It was highly unlikely that the defense contractor awarded the bid would be prosecuted in the future, but this was the case even if the plague hadn’t cleared the halls of justice of everyone save the odd robed straggler gripping a gavel in the empty chamber.
The comm failures were annoying, but fortunately the sweepers didn’t need any orders apart from what grid was up next, and they got that every week when they returned to Wonton. “Let’s get going,” Kaitlyn said. “We’ll check in when we go back on Sunday.”
As they packed their gear they saw that the bodies were gone. Disposal had picked them up without the sweepers observing, with the eerie efficiency that was their trademark. Outside Wonton, the most you ever saw of Disposal was their cart disappearing around a corner a block or two blocks ahead, as they slumped in their bright white hazmat suits. The carriage and the horse had been players in the Central Park tourist-ride industry, the former enduring the elements as it waited for reassignment—obviously, sightseeing had taken a hit the last few years—and the latter presumably living off weeds in the Great Lawn until they established Fort Wonton. The horse had been choppered to the Zone after it was spotted during an early uptown reconnaissance mission. “It seems like the right thing to do,” General Tavin said, and indeed the rescue operation’s planning and execution had fostered a great deal of morale, even more than news of the beer distributor’s sponsorship.
The chopper pilot who brought Mark Spitz from the Northeast Corridor sustained a tour-guide spiel the whole trip down, narrating the eastern seaboard’s points of interest with an oddly perky flair. Mark Spitz suspected he was on drugs. When they reached Manhattan, he took them for a quick circuit over Central Park, “laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted in one of the greatest landscaping undertakings Jesus has ever seen.” Mark Spitz had seen the park unscroll from the windows of the big skyscrapers crowding the perimeter, but never from this vantage. No picnickers idled on their blankets, no one goldbricked on the benches, and nary a Frisbee arced through the sky, but the park was at first-spring-day capacity. They didn’t stop to appreciate the scenery, these dead visitors; they ranged on the grass and walkways without purpose or sense, moving first this way and then strolling in another direction until, distracted by nothing in particular, they readjusted their idiot course. It was Mark Spitz’s first glimpse of Manhattan since the coming of the plague, and he thought to himself, My God, it’s been taken over by tourists.
Diesel supply being what it was, the horse made sense, and the nag was game enough to lug the big metal cart attached to the carriage as Disposal made their circuit downtown, cleaning up after the sweeper units. Bring out your dead. The guys and gals in Disposal never removed their hazmat suits, in public at least, even when off the clock and prowling around Wonton with everyone else. Maybe they know something we don’t, Mark Spitz thought, as he saw them take their rations and scurry back to whatever building they’d staked out. They had duct-taped a shower-curtain rod to the carriage’s dashboard and tied a brass bell to it, which somehow ended up sounding more cheerful than macabre, sounding off in the distance.
Gary snatched the stack of replacement body bags left by Disposal—they kept track, meticulously, dropping off new ones when a unit was running low—and the three of them headed up the stairwell to finish the building.
It was always disquieting to see empty pavement where you’d dumped some terminated skels. It was as if they’d just walked away.
• • •
They stoppered the tunnels and blocked the bridges. They plugged the subways at the
The comm failures were annoying, but fortunately the sweepers didn’t need any orders apart from what grid was up next, and they got that every week when they returned to Wonton. “Let’s get going,” Kaitlyn said. “We’ll check in when we go back on Sunday.”
As they packed their gear they saw that the bodies were gone. Disposal had picked them up without the sweepers observing, with the eerie efficiency that was their trademark. Outside Wonton, the most you ever saw of Disposal was their cart disappearing around a corner a block or two blocks ahead, as they slumped in their bright white hazmat suits. The carriage and the horse had been players in the Central Park tourist-ride industry, the former enduring the elements as it waited for reassignment—obviously, sightseeing had taken a hit the last few years—and the latter presumably living off weeds in the Great Lawn until they established Fort Wonton. The horse had been choppered to the Zone after it was spotted during an early uptown reconnaissance mission. “It seems like the right thing to do,” General Tavin said, and indeed the rescue operation’s planning and execution had fostered a great deal of morale, even more than news of the beer distributor’s sponsorship.
The chopper pilot who brought Mark Spitz from the Northeast Corridor sustained a tour-guide spiel the whole trip down, narrating the eastern seaboard’s points of interest with an oddly perky flair. Mark Spitz suspected he was on drugs. When they reached Manhattan, he took them for a quick circuit over Central Park, “laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted in one of the greatest landscaping undertakings Jesus has ever seen.” Mark Spitz had seen the park unscroll from the windows of the big skyscrapers crowding the perimeter, but never from this vantage. No picnickers idled on their blankets, no one goldbricked on the benches, and nary a Frisbee arced through the sky, but the park was at first-spring-day capacity. They didn’t stop to appreciate the scenery, these dead visitors; they ranged on the grass and walkways without purpose or sense, moving first this way and then strolling in another direction until, distracted by nothing in particular, they readjusted their idiot course. It was Mark Spitz’s first glimpse of Manhattan since the coming of the plague, and he thought to himself, My God, it’s been taken over by tourists.
Diesel supply being what it was, the horse made sense, and the nag was game enough to lug the big metal cart attached to the carriage as Disposal made their circuit downtown, cleaning up after the sweeper units. Bring out your dead. The guys and gals in Disposal never removed their hazmat suits, in public at least, even when off the clock and prowling around Wonton with everyone else. Maybe they know something we don’t, Mark Spitz thought, as he saw them take their rations and scurry back to whatever building they’d staked out. They had duct-taped a shower-curtain rod to the carriage’s dashboard and tied a brass bell to it, which somehow ended up sounding more cheerful than macabre, sounding off in the distance.
Gary snatched the stack of replacement body bags left by Disposal—they kept track, meticulously, dropping off new ones when a unit was running low—and the three of them headed up the stairwell to finish the building.
It was always disquieting to see empty pavement where you’d dumped some terminated skels. It was as if they’d just walked away.
• • •
They stoppered the tunnels and blocked the bridges. They plugged the subways at the
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