Outrun Stories #53

“We need to know everything, Cutty,” the interviewer leans in over the table, the sweat dripping from his immense forehead; big hairy forearms with rolled up sleeves. Something in the air is getting to him, I can feel it.

“I thought you said you already knew everything?” I say, gritting my teeth.

“Don’t be factious, Cutty.”

“Well, look, if you need it spelled out for you that clearly. Let’s start right at the fucking beginning, shall we? Sixteen years ago, the US nuclear power cyber infrastructure gets hacked. First Fort Calhoun, Nebraska melts down, then it’s like a god damn domino effect. Official state of emergency across the country is declared, across the god damn world. We see seven meltdowns before we manage to contain this shit, and good old San Rio is number four. Incident number four they call us. After the shit settles down, and they begin to see the fallout of what’s happened, they don’t try and move the affected out, they just pass the new legislation. The incident zones, they’re given their own independent rights, and everyone that can afford to gets the hell out. Only not everyone could afford to, right? So, you end up with assholes like me, stuck here with risk of mutation, only whatever came out of those plants seems to affect about 50 percent of people, and out of those people, about ten percent seemed to get some sort of power, for good or bad.”

I growl at the past, the mania of it all, none of it made sense. “Why not just move everyone out? Why not help everyone? Not enough money, not enough budget. Give the states that had incidents their own independence, the break-up of the good old US of A, let them fend for themselves, trade not aid, all that bullshit. Well, plenty of us got stuck, revoked passports due to mutations, lack of money, whatever. We had no choice but to knuckle down with what we had.”

“We get it, Cutty. No one’s proud of what happened.”

“And what the fuck would you know!” I snap at him. “Sixteen fucking years have passed, sixteen years we’ve been living in this hell. You know what’s left now? Shit, just pure shit. Everything is falling apart, everyone’s dying or sick. We’ve been left here to rot and no one’s doing shit. The mutants, the gangs, whatever you want to fucking call them, they took a girl, one that I’d tried to help, one that had said I had a kind smile, a fucking friend. Well, once they got their claws into her, I knew I had to go deep, I had to worm my way into their organisation, I had to find her and I had to know what the hell they were doing to them, what the hell they think they’re going to do to all of us. And you’re here because you want to know what I know about what they’re doing. What they’re cooking up. Sixteen years and you’ve done shit, and now you’ve got one good guy that’s managed to crack their network, and you need to know what I know, right?”

“It’s a matter of national security, Cutty,” the interviewer says.

“Yeah, no shit. Well, for me it was a matter of trying to save a life. One life, and I still couldn’t even do that.” I close my eyes and see her face, that poor fucking kid. What did I do?