State of Decay

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Book: Read State of Decay for Free Online
Authors: James Knapp
Tai gotten a piece of meat like that? Revivors like the females he kept were the only kind most people outside of the military wanted to deal in. They were weak and docile. They were predictable. The one that attacked me in the hallway was old-school, third-world military. I didn’t think anyone made them like that anymore. It drooled, so it was hungry. Revivors couldn’t process food; the newer ones had a shunt in the brain that told them they were full. The old ones were always hungry, with no way to make it stop. Back in the grinder, sometimes they wired their jaws shut. Sometimes they just let them eat. No one stateside wanted units like that.
    The kinds of people who might be interested in a revivor like that would also be interested in Tai’s little arsenal. Someone on this side of the border wanted both those things and was willing to pay for them. Tai had at least one customer I hadn’t known anything about. Whoever that was, he was into something worse than body-bag sex and slavery.
    A horn blared, snapping my attention back to the road. A semi with a freezer car sporting a biohazard warning, probably filled with bodies and headed for the Heinlein labs, drifted into my lane.
    A message came in from the Federal Building. I picked up.
    Go ahead, Sean.
    That kid from the lobby already has bites airing.
    Great. How’d he edit?
    Well. You two look like best friends. They want a statement tomorrow to defuse this.
    I’ll try to find something newsworthy.
    Streetlights streaked by as I veered off the express lane and down toward the shipyard. A tight loop took me under a rusted bridge that was covered in graffiti and sent me toward a series of shadowed behemoths moored along the docks.
    As I got closer, my long- range scanner picked up a revivor heart signature, although it was too far away to read. I brought up a map of the dock and laid the location of the signature over it, a soft orange flickering behind my eyes in the rearview mirror.
    It’s a revivor—I’ve got a signature. Where’s the backup team?
    On their way.
    I homed in on the dock where the signature was emanating from and pulled over, stepping out of the car. It was windy, and the cold, damp breeze coming in off the water smelled like ocean and garbage. The dock planks and chain posts were covered in a thick layer of frost, jagged little icicles leaning into the wind. Beyond that, through fog and snow, the skyline rose up in a sea of neon and electric light.
    I switched off the GPS and focused on the signal. It was coming from a stack of huge metal shipping containers that had been offloaded and were sitting in the fog. Were we going to get that lucky?
    It looks like it’s still with the offloaded cargo. I’m going to check it out.
    The containers were stacked two stories high; mass vehicle transports, each capable of holding maybe twenty-four cars. I moved into the shadows between two rows of them, toward the signal.
    How many?
    Just one.
    I found the container the signature was coming from and approached it. The front end of it had a huge set of doors to allow vehicles in and out, and it was barred and locked. To the side of the large doors was a small one to allow inspectors in and out. I scanned the scene and packaged the footage along with the rest of the case information, then sent out a warrant request.
    Granted.
    I approached the small door and put my thumb to the lock, issuing an override code. A few seconds later, the bolt opened with a loud snap. I pushed it open with a crunch that brought flakes of ice down over my head, and went inside.
    Adjusting the night vision filter, I looked around. The crate was filled with tightly packed rows of electric cars sitting on metal skids, parked bumper to bumper and three rows high.
    I scanned the inside of the container; the signal was coming from above me. After climbing up the scaffolding, I managed to follow it to a single car in the middle row. I peered in through the side window, trying not to

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