The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online

player’s screen.

    Catching my breath, I concentrated on the riff again, listening. She was right: They were way outside the System, this oddball pair of guitarists. They had pulled something out of me, slipped it right past the beast.

    “Where did you find them?”

    “Sixth Street. Totally random.”

    “Hmm. The one who can really play, he sounds . . .” I swallowed.

    “Yeah,” Pearl said. “He’s lateral and raw, like I always wanted Nervous System to be. No lessons, or at least not many, and no theory classes. He fills up whatever space you give him. Almost out of control, but like you said, controllable. He’s the Taj Mahal of random guitarists.”

    I smiled. All those things were true, but I hadn’t been thinking them.

    To me, he sounded more like . . . yummy.

PART II

    AUDITIONS

    The Plague of Justinian was the first time the Black Death appeared.

    Fifteen hundred years ago, the emperor Justinian had just embarked on his greatest work: the rebuilding of the Roman Empire. He wanted to reunite its two halves and place the known world under Roman rule once more.

    But as his vast war began, the Black Death came. It swept across the eastern Mediterranean, leaving millions dead in its wake. Thousands died daily in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, and Justinian was forced to watch his dreams crumble.

    Oddly, historians aren’t certain what the Black Death was. Bubonic plague? Typhus? Something else? A few historians suggest that it was a random assortment of diseases brought on by one overriding factor: an explosion of the rat population fostered by the Roman army’s vast stores of grain.

    That’s close, but not quite.

    Whatever caused it, the Black Death’s effects were clear. The Roman Empire slipped into history at last. Much of the mathematics, literature, and science of the ancients was lost. A dark age descended on Europe.

    Or, as we said back then, “Humanity lost that round.”

     
    NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:
142-146

7. STRAY CATS

    -ZAHLER-

    My dogs were acting paranormal that day, all edgy and anxious.

    The first bunch seemed fine when I picked them up. In the air-conditioned lobby of their fancy Hell’s Kitchen building, they were full of energy, eager to be walked. Ernesto, the doorman, handed over the four leashes and an envelope stuffed with cash, my pay for that week. And then—like every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—I headed one block uptown to pick up three more.

    I got the idea of being a dog walker from an old trick of mine. Whenever I was totally bummed, I’d go over to the Tompkins Square Park dog run—a big open space that’s just for dogs and owners—and watch them jumping on one another, sniffing butts and chasing balls. Huge dogs and tiny ones, graceful retrievers and spastic poodles were all jumbled together and all fawesomely ecstatic to get out of their tiny, lonely New York apartments and into a chase, a growling match, or a mad dash to nowhere in particular. No matter how depressed I was, the sight of scrappy puppies facing off with German shepherds always made me feel much better. So why not be paid to get cheered up?

    You don’t make much per dog per hour, but if you can handle six or seven at a time, it starts to add up. Most times it’s easy money.

    Sometimes it’s not.

    Straight out the door, the heat and stink seemed to get to them. The two Doberman brothers who usually kept order were nipping at each other, and the schnauzer and bull terrier were acting all paranoid, zigzagging every time a car door slammed, too jittery even to sniff at piles of garbage. As we battled down the street, their leashes kept tangling, like long hair on a breezy day.

    Things only got worse when I picked up the second pack. The doorman realized that the owner of the insanely huge mastiff had forgotten to leave money for me and buzzed up to ask her about it. While I waited, the two packs started tangling with each other, nipping and jumping, their barking echoing