It’s been a few days since I made my last recording, and as you might have guessed, that means it’s been an interesting time. The little nook of safety I found turned out to be right in the path of a group looking to make a run at the border. I watched it go down, and I’m still not exactly sure what happened. The whole group—I counted twenty-seven of ’em—managed to creep up to I-93, right to the edge of the fog, without setting off an alarm. They’d woken me up by moving through the house I was hiding in and talking briefly. After they left I followed, slipped into a nice four-story condoplex, and got a good view. I could see them creep up, most of them belly-crawling like professional soldiers, and line up along the edge. There was a series of explo- sions near the border, maybe a kilometer south. When I looked back from the distraction, the whole group was disappearing into the fog on the highway, moving in a crouched trot. I switched to thermal optics to watch the rest and, well, it wasn’t pretty.
I saw two shapes coalesce from nothing behind the group. The forms were bulky and humanoid but way off temperature, and right away I knew the group was doomed. Four of the slowest members were dead without making a sound, but someone turned to look back and saw the two spirits—that’s what they had to be—and opened fire. Whatever he was shooting was si- lenced, but it was loud enough to alert the rest of the group. Most of them picked up their pace and left the rear guard to do their job. It didn’t matter. Another few seconds left more dead. Then the drones opened fire. They must have had thermal dampening, because they were practically invisible except for the heat of the muz- zle flashes and trail of the tracer rounds they spat out to tear up the group of would-be escapees. It was ugly, brutal, and over in seconds. The drones, barrels hot from firing, faded back into the fog like it was nothing.
I took up a new spot in the building and in the morn- ing as I left I only briefly glanced out the way I had watched. I was only planning to make a cursory glance at the carnage, but I noticed that something was off. I stopped to take another look—there was nothing. No bodies, no blood. I even zoomed in and didn’t see a single shell casing. Nothing to show that twenty-seven people, sick of being trapped inside and taking a chance at freedom, died there the night before.
I’d gotten a few messages mentioning how the Rox was spreading, so I headed south to see for myself. I wasn’t surprised to see that it hadn’t managed to pene- trate the walls of NeoNET’s Blue Hills Complex between West Quincy and Scott’s Woods. I was expecting the place to look better, though. It looks like it’s been at- tacked repeatedly. The grounds outside the fences have rotting bodies everywhere. I kept my distance, since I got the feeling they weren’t very friendly (openly displayed corpses have that effect). The compound runs right down to I-93, the edge of the QZ, but from a distance it looked like NeoNET’s people were keeping clear of that southern section of the facility. Just like D.C. found up north.
I swung a little wide north, but once I got past NeoN- ET’s compound I cut south again and followed the high- ways. Out around I-90 I almost thought I had walked out of the QZ. It seemed like people in the Newton neigh- borhoods are banding together in the quarantine. The sick were all handled at the hospital and, according to the locals, released once the symptoms subsided. Now from what else I’ve gathered I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but this whole area is relatively intact and seems to be surviving this thing. KE patrols roll through the neighborhoods regularly and have established their own quarantine security by keeping large groups from other areas out and thoroughly scrutinizing lone wanderers despite their friendly smile.
I wasn’t welcome to stick around, but they were nice enough to drive me to the edge of their territory. I skirt- ed I-90 until it ran into the towers near the Charles River by Cambridge and then climbed up and actually walked on the highway toward the Hub. Seemed safer than the shadowy streets below.
Past the towers, 90 was the border for both the Hub and Fenway cordons, and the road itself was used by KE for awhile until they pulled back to let the cordons com- bine. I had some ins with KE due to work I had done inside the cordon area, and they let me head in.
From up on the highway I could see small fires burn- ing all over town, but there was a large plume of black smoke in the distance. With my minimal knowledge of Boston geography and the buildings blocking my line of sight, I couldn’t pinpoint the smoke. But I guessed it was near Fenway.
I remembered reading what the kid wrote earlier, and I wasn’t too keen on going near what sounded like a biohazard quarantine. The highway had enough height and distance that I could get a look without getting too close. The smoke was coming out of the top of the plas- tic bubble over the field at Fenway, and as I got closer it took on an unpleasantly familiar scent. Burning meat. I didn’t see what kind of meat, but I have my guesses.
Past that, the BU campus didn’t look like it had much activity, though I did spot the occasional denizen scur- rying between buildings and shadowed alleys like rats. It was the lack of activity that lulled me. I walked right up to where the highway tucked underground at the edge
of the Hub and missed the figures standing back in the shadowed underground.
It was a quartet of Mama’s Boyz who faux-politely invited me in. I considered resisting the invite. There were only four of them. I was tired, but my reflex sys- tems don’t care about that. I had a few good spots of cover, but a moment before I went for my gun I saw movement on the street over the tunnel and six of those twitchy, psychotic looking “encephalitis” victims were glaring down at me. I put my hands over my head and went quietly with Mama’s Boyz while the group of psychos ran toward a way down.
They led me into the tunnel and then through a door into the service tunnels. I managed to track a few turns, but before long I was completely lost. All I could think as I got dragged deeper into the Catacombs was that I should have just learned from the kid and stayed away from the Hub.
The trip wasn’t a total waste. I made a new contact in the Catacombs. His name’s Tark. He got pinched by Mama’s Boyz, too, but they were planning to gut him for leaving one of theirs to die on the streets. That was Wednesday. Today’s Friday, so obviously we got clear.
Tark offered a tour of some of the highlights down here since I saved his life, and though I insisted we’re even, he still wanted to play tour guide. Before I get too much into that, let me give the brief on the Catacombs for those not familiar with Boston.
The Catacombs are a massive subterranean net- work beneath the Boston Metroplex. They aren’t just under the Hub. Before the quarantine they consisted of old subway tunnels, sewers, maintenance tunnels, basements, and even natural and dug-out caverns in the bedrock below the city. Now they’ve added in all the functioning subway and highway tunnels as well as some of the private corporate passages that have been exposed since the lockdown.
Before the quarantine there were some nice spots and good hideouts down here, but anyone going down still knew they were trading the dangers of corporate or private security for the risk of encountering devil rats, ghouls, or worse. Since the quarantine, and the wave of crazy that hit the Hub between the 15th and the 18th, a big chunk of the surviving, non-corporate population has gone subterranean.
The Catacombs are full of refugees from the city above. It started with trolls and dwarfs, who have a natural affinity for the dark places below the ground thanks to the way they see. With the trolls came orks who lived in the same neighborhoods, and with the dwarfs came humans looking to their stout kin for guid- ance in the dark. Elves came down as well, but most of them stay near the entrances and away from the deep places. Honestly, the place is like a strange sci-fi/fan- tasy/post-apocalypse crossover novel where metahu- mankind has been forced to live below the ground to survive the devastation of the surface.
I’d wondered where all the people had gone while I worked in the cordons and saw all the towers and neighborhoods empty or down to only a few holdouts boarded into their homes. I found them here. Thou- sands—possibly tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands— of people have moved underground to avoid the insan- ity that took hold of the surface.
Along with the locals, the Catacombs have a large non-local population. A lot of commuters from New York, Providence, Hartford, Portland, and other cities all over the NEMA were in the city when the lockdown went into effect and halted trains, planes, boats, and ground traffic leaving the city. A lot of these people were displaced, left to stay in hotels, motels, or shelters at first. When the violence started, the corps locked down their facilities. Some people have told me that even the corps weren’t quick enough, and they’ve been fighting to take back the lower floors of their towers since this started. Whether that’s true or not, the corps weren’t welcoming of non-corporate citizens, leaving the UCASians and anyone else in town without the right corporate SIN to fend for themselves. They fol- lowed any local that would have them down into the Catacombs.
Don’t get the wrong picture in your head of wall- to-wall people crammed into subway stations and tunnels under the city. That’s far from the case. There are some places that are busy like that, such as the Black Bazaar, Uptown, and the Nub, but there are plenty of places down in the Catacombs that are sparse or even empty. Tark told me about the Deep and the Labyrinth. Though most of the empty places aren’t really empty.
The mass of people pouring down here has dis- placed some of the long-time tenants who are not of- ten social creatures. Along with the “encephalitis” epi- demic, the population of the Catacombs is facing a rise in the number of HMHVV Infected. Some newly Infect- ed have done it voluntarily, feeling the pinch of food, suffering the depression of being trapped, and seeing it as a way to survive. (No, I don’t understand it either, but it worked in their brains.)
They’ve been well-fed so far, as the number of dead on the surface is plenty to feed the Kriegers, but the vampires are a different story. Their numbers have grown slightly. A few seem to have been accidents, but most have been intentional in order to bolster their numbers in defense of the incursion. They’ve been fre- quent targets down in the Catacombs by those who fear them. I’m on that list, but I’m okay generally with co-existing with them—as long as no one is trying to bite my neck.
The subway system and Catacombs extend outside the QZ, but the passages that lead out are well-guarded. It was a slight relief to see that they hadn’t simply col- lapsed the tunnels, which made me feel like this quaran- tine might end someday. Even though it doesn’t feel that
way on the surface. I’ve seen the cold stone of the walls through the fog. They’re being built up and buildings be- ing knocked down along the QZ border, and that seems awfully permanent.
Downtown was hell from early on, and most say it’s still the same, but the surviving infection victims have gotten good at hiding and stalking. Tonight I should have a decent report on my first expedition into the heart of the Hub.
Just so everyone understands, I’ve been inside the cordon before. I did recovery ops for KE early on, trying to help people out, but it was all aboveground work. I knew about the Catacombs, but early on the entrances were locked up tight. Now that I have a guide, I might find some more survivors.
I did get some more interviews. A little humor never hurt anyone. [link]
Sorry, I was dropping names of places back there and not giving the rundown on the locales. D.C. would be disappointed. I don’t have tons of time, but here goes.