Up Against It - M. J. Locke [9]
He saw then he needn’t have bothered with the powered orbit. The man was blue, ballooned up to twice the size of a normal human, and stiff: a giant corpsicle. And he did not have to see the face. That was his shirt, whose collar showed above the work overalls; Carl had borrowed it that morning. Those were Carl’s shoes.
Geoff knelt next to Carl and rolled him over. His brother’s eyes were whitish due to frost, run through with dark, swollen veins. His tongue had swollen up, too, and was jutting out of his mouth. His black hair was stiff as straw.
By this time Amaya, Kamal, and Ian had reached them. They recognized Carl, too.
“Hidoi…” Amaya gasped. Horrible … She was originally from Japan, and used Japanese slang.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Kam asked.
“Shit, man, look at him! What do you think?” Ian.
“Shut up,” Kam said. “Just shut up. All right?”
Geoff stood up again, and looked down at his brother. He did not notice his friends’ stares or their words. He felt nothing. But his mind was racing. He was thinking, Carl can’t be dead. This is a dream. He was thinking, What if I had paused to let that other biker use the ramp? I’d have been closer to touchdown. Or if I had talked Carl into ditching work and coming out with us. Fat chance. Geoff would not have even asked; Carl would never shirk his duties.
He was trying to remember the last thing he had said to Carl. He couldn’t. He was imagining what the muscles in his parents’ faces would do when they heard the news.
* * *
In the few dozen seconds it took Stores Chief Sean Moriarty and his crew to suit up and force the locks open, the college intern—what was his name? Sean struggled to remember. Carl. Carl Agre; that was it—lay dead amid the ruins of the fallen warehouse. Sean indulged himself with a string of obscenities. Not that he was surprised. But he had hoped.
A small group of rocketbikers stood over the body. Sean shuffled over—damned low gee; it was supposed to make locomotion easier—and bent to examine Carl Agre’s remains. Sean sighed. He was so goddamn sick and tired of burying the dead. He had fought in three wars, Downside; he had seen a lot of young dead. Hell, he thought, I’m a fucking death midwife.
Commissioner Navio had recommended the kid for the job. Sean was not looking forward to that call.
Then he got a look at the young man crouched beside the body. He adjusted his radio settings till he got a ping. “You related? A friend?”
The young man said nothing. One of his companions said, “He’s his brother.”
It just kept getting better. Sean waved the responders forward. “Get him inside.” He moved in front of the young man, Carl’s brother, and laid hands on the shoulders of his pressure suit. The youth would not have felt the touch through the suit. Sean jostled him gently, to get his attention. It was hard to see the boy’s eyes clearly, through the visor’s shielding, but his gaze looked glassy.
“We’re taking your brother inside. We need to notify your parents. Come with us.”
“What…?” The kid seemed to come out of his daze. “Oh.”
As they turned, Sean caught a glimpse of Warehouse 1-H, which stood behind the ruins of this one. It had been hit by disassembler backsplash. Chunks were falling off, and Sean could see movement inside through the gaps. People? Yes. Some survivors were trapped in Warehouse 1-H.
“Get a command center set up right away,” Sean told Shelley Marcellina, his chief engineer. “We’ve got people trapped in the rubble