Operation Honshu Wolf Read Online Free
the door a crack, leaned out, and threw up.
2
“ A ND WHERE ARE the government in this? Where are the police?”
The image on the screen bobbed unevenly, bad camera-work or shaking hands. Hsiung, unusually silent, picked up the remote control. No matter which channel she tried, it either displayed the same live scene from another angle, a flat blue screen, or a broken connection icon. The last surviving television station in New York, and it showed nothing but James Swift’s perspiring face. His nose, his cheek, his eye, painful close-ups as his rage simmered over.
“ No one knows how many citizens of this city are dead, no one knows because it is impossible to count,” Swift growled, throwing back his head. “ Those who seek our eradication, those who have murdered us, have been left untouched by the sacred justice the freedoms our glorious country was founded upon, oh, yes. ” He nodded, and the camera bobbed in reflexive mimicry. No doubt, Miller thought, it was an effort of willpower for the cameramen to avoid joining in with Swift’s screed.
“ Their subsidiaries, WellBeechBeck and BioGen, toil to develop poisons for the terrible right hand of the corporate beast, seeking to destroy us, seeking to destroy the Archaean Gift, even while their left hand, the very military industrial complex itself, slaughters us outright.” He leered at the camera, all teeth and tongue. “ All in the name of corporate interests. Is this right? Is this American?!” Swift demanded, gnashing at the lens, spittle at the corners of his mouth. “ Who does Schaeffer-Yeager’s genocide profit? No one! ”
“Turn it off,” Miller said, pinching at the bridge of his nose. This was the last fucking thing he needed in Cobalt’s break room.
Hsiung glanced up, brief rebellion in her eyes, just on principle. If Miller didn’t want to see it, she did. She clasped the remote tighter.
Doyle groaned, hands over his face. “At least turn it down.”
Begrudgingly Hsiung complied.
“Thank you.” Miller looked at the coffee machine for the dozenth time, but it was still heating up.
Hsiung stared at the screen, struggling to make sense of the unnatural camera angles and close-ups of Swift’s sweating skin. “When did the Infected get Swift, anyway?”
“Oh, back when they were selling the parasite in bottled water. He fell in with the celebrity crowd,” Mannon said, from the other end of the couch.
“That long ago?”
“He went quiet after falling in with the communes.”
That would’ve been two, maybe three years ago? Miller’s ex-girlfriend, Samantha, had wanted him to try ‘Archaean Water’ with her, back then. She’d bought into the celebrity fad endorsing it as a wonder-cure for troubled relationships.
It sounded great, didn’t it? Water pulled out of a subglacial Antarctic lake, ultra-pure and natural, hidden beneath the ice for tens of thousands of years before global warming brought it near the surface. The early rumours about microscopic parasites in the stuff had dissuaded Miller from trying it just to patch things back up with Samantha, thank God. Maybe she’d ended up joining a commune?
It had seemed like a political thing, at first—living cooperatively, outside of the general economy. There were slums in the Bronx that had become the human equivalent of hives, the Infected living heel-to-toe, dozens of people to a room. The Infected hadn’t wanted a cure, and by the time anyone had attempted to pass laws enforcing anti-parasitic drug treatments—years late, long after Schaeffer-Yeager had started providing the drugs free of charge wherever possible—too much of the population had been ‘gifted’ with the Archaean Parasite to do anything to stop it.
Communes had seemed like a good idea when the famines really started to get bad. Jimmy ‘Eat The Poor’ Swift had once been another Wall Street shark, one of L. Gray Matheson’s—Schaeffer-Yeager’s CEO’s—peers. He’d owned half
2
“ A ND WHERE ARE the government in this? Where are the police?”
The image on the screen bobbed unevenly, bad camera-work or shaking hands. Hsiung, unusually silent, picked up the remote control. No matter which channel she tried, it either displayed the same live scene from another angle, a flat blue screen, or a broken connection icon. The last surviving television station in New York, and it showed nothing but James Swift’s perspiring face. His nose, his cheek, his eye, painful close-ups as his rage simmered over.
“ No one knows how many citizens of this city are dead, no one knows because it is impossible to count,” Swift growled, throwing back his head. “ Those who seek our eradication, those who have murdered us, have been left untouched by the sacred justice the freedoms our glorious country was founded upon, oh, yes. ” He nodded, and the camera bobbed in reflexive mimicry. No doubt, Miller thought, it was an effort of willpower for the cameramen to avoid joining in with Swift’s screed.
“ Their subsidiaries, WellBeechBeck and BioGen, toil to develop poisons for the terrible right hand of the corporate beast, seeking to destroy us, seeking to destroy the Archaean Gift, even while their left hand, the very military industrial complex itself, slaughters us outright.” He leered at the camera, all teeth and tongue. “ All in the name of corporate interests. Is this right? Is this American?!” Swift demanded, gnashing at the lens, spittle at the corners of his mouth. “ Who does Schaeffer-Yeager’s genocide profit? No one! ”
“Turn it off,” Miller said, pinching at the bridge of his nose. This was the last fucking thing he needed in Cobalt’s break room.
Hsiung glanced up, brief rebellion in her eyes, just on principle. If Miller didn’t want to see it, she did. She clasped the remote tighter.
Doyle groaned, hands over his face. “At least turn it down.”
Begrudgingly Hsiung complied.
“Thank you.” Miller looked at the coffee machine for the dozenth time, but it was still heating up.
Hsiung stared at the screen, struggling to make sense of the unnatural camera angles and close-ups of Swift’s sweating skin. “When did the Infected get Swift, anyway?”
“Oh, back when they were selling the parasite in bottled water. He fell in with the celebrity crowd,” Mannon said, from the other end of the couch.
“That long ago?”
“He went quiet after falling in with the communes.”
That would’ve been two, maybe three years ago? Miller’s ex-girlfriend, Samantha, had wanted him to try ‘Archaean Water’ with her, back then. She’d bought into the celebrity fad endorsing it as a wonder-cure for troubled relationships.
It sounded great, didn’t it? Water pulled out of a subglacial Antarctic lake, ultra-pure and natural, hidden beneath the ice for tens of thousands of years before global warming brought it near the surface. The early rumours about microscopic parasites in the stuff had dissuaded Miller from trying it just to patch things back up with Samantha, thank God. Maybe she’d ended up joining a commune?
It had seemed like a political thing, at first—living cooperatively, outside of the general economy. There were slums in the Bronx that had become the human equivalent of hives, the Infected living heel-to-toe, dozens of people to a room. The Infected hadn’t wanted a cure, and by the time anyone had attempted to pass laws enforcing anti-parasitic drug treatments—years late, long after Schaeffer-Yeager had started providing the drugs free of charge wherever possible—too much of the population had been ‘gifted’ with the Archaean Parasite to do anything to stop it.
Communes had seemed like a good idea when the famines really started to get bad. Jimmy ‘Eat The Poor’ Swift had once been another Wall Street shark, one of L. Gray Matheson’s—Schaeffer-Yeager’s CEO’s—peers. He’d owned half
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