by SL Huang
I paused, out of breath.
“Do you have a plan?” said Rio, his baritone quiet in the shadowy darkness.
One was forming in my head even as we spoke. It was dangerous. Scratch that, it was insane. And it very well might not work. But I already knew I was going to go for it anyway.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. And I think—I think we’ve got a chance to take down Dawna Polk at the same time.” I took a deep breath. “But I’m warning you. You’re not going to like it.”
I told them.
They didn’t like it.
Chapter 33
My plan depended on us being able to find a working car. If we couldn’t do that, we were stuck.
Fortunately, both the van and my clunky sedan turned over on the first try. They were both old cars, so maybe they didn’t have enough electronics to matter. I decided I didn’t care why they still worked, only that they did.
Rio and Checker loaded into the van. “Get him out safe,” I said to Rio, leaning on the open passenger window. He nodded. “How long do you think you’ll need?” I asked Checker.
He was gripping his arms across his chest very tightly. “I don’t know. Traffic might be backed up getting out, but once I can get my hands on a working laptop—two hours. I can finish in two.”
“I can give you that,” I said. “Good luck. It’s all down to you now.”
He shivered. “Cas.”
“Yeah?”
He couldn’t seem to form words.
“Spit it out,” I said. “We’ve got to get going.”
“Tell me you think you can make it,” he said in a low voice, not looking at me. “Tell me you and Arthur aren’t going to die for this.”
That was what was bothering him? Oh. “I’m really good at staying not-dead,” I tried to assure him. “It’s a special talent of mine.”
“Seriously,” said Checker. “Please.”
Maybe he was right to be concerned. After all, I reflected, I was going after an organization that had just taken down an entire metropolitan area to get to me, and I was going to put myself willingly in their crosshairs. Along with a good friend of Checker’s. When I looked at it that way, my plan felt a trifle more daunting.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly. I wasn’t good at being comforting. “I’m really good at what I do. Ask Rio.”
“He doesn’t like your plan, either.”
“Very true,” put in Rio.
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to having people worried about my welfare. “Okay, you’re on,” I said.
Checker finally looked up at me, forehead wrinkling in confusion. “On for what?”
“That drinking contest. Once this is over. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, I promise you.”
That got a smile out of him. “Promise me you’ll watch Arthur’s back?”
“I promise. Now get going.” I thumped the hood of the van and headed back over to my clunker as Rio made a precarious three-point turn at the top of the drive and then eased down the slope.
I put my car in gear and crawled down the gravel after them. The indicator lights flickered at me nonsensically, winking on and off. I tried smacking the dashboard, but it didn’t help. Well, I’d be fine as long as the engine stayed working—I had enough gasoline in the back to get me to LA five times over.
As I drew closer to the city, however, the freeway became increasingly clogged until traffic stalled to a standstill. Full dark had fallen, and not everyone’s headlights were working, leaving the lanes a weird play of shadows and vehicle silhouettes. I waited in the car for ten minutes, engine idling, the lines of cars not moving an inch, and then I got out and went to the trunk, where I pulled out a few weapons to sling over my shoulder. The driver in the minivan next to me stared in frozen horror, her face a pale circle in her window, before ducking down over her daughter in the front seat, who kept trying to fight back up so she could see what was making her mother so afraid. I ignored them.
I threaded the strap from a bag of ammo through a couple of gas cans and slung that on my back as well, and checked on the two handguns in the back of my belt. Then I hopped up on the roof of my car and looked out over the parking lot of vehicles. Within minutes I heard a faint rumble and saw the headlamp of a motorcycle threading through the stopped traffic on the other side of the median, headed out of LA. I ran, leaping from car to car, ignoring the squeals and screams of the drivers beneath me as my boots dented their roofs, and hit the pavement just in time for the biker to slam on his brakes. Or rather, her brakes. She squealed to a stop on the fringes of another car’s headlights to reveal a woman in full gear that was head to toe pink, on a pink bike, with a helmet that was black with pink flames.
I swung the Mossberg on my shoulder around and pointed it right at her.
“I need your bike!” I shouted over the roar of the motorcycle’s engine.
She hit the cutoff and raised her gloved hands. I gestured with the shotgun; she kicked frantically at the stand to put it down and dismounted to stumble to the side against a Jeep.
I yanked her pink-trimmed saddlebags off the back and threw them at her; she didn’t bring her hands down quite fast enough to catch them. I swung onto the bike, restarted it, and cut between two tractor-trailers to turn the bike and start back toward LA, going the wrong way on the stopped freeway. I didn’t bother stealing her helmet; the police had more important things to worry about right now.
In the side mirror, I could see the pink biker staring after me, a gawky, bright statue in the Jeep’s headlights, exhaust fumes fogging her image.
I faced a long haul back to the Westside. The 10 was stopped all the way in, and when I headed down the shoulder of an on ramp, I hit gridlocked streets of half-deserted vehicles. With no helmet on, I could hear shouts and crashes over the motorcycle’s engine, and sirens sounded from at least three directions. Los Angeles was not famous for the cooperation of its residents in times of trouble. The looting had already started.
The city was black. It was eerie: all the streetlights loomed dead and silent, every building a blank, dark silhouette in the night. Many of the gridlocked cars had been deserted, and the residents who had taken to the streets had become the monsters who came out at such times. One hoodlum ran down the pavement shouting, smashing a crowbar through car windows. He ran straight at my bike, swinging as I barreled between the stopped vehicles, hollering a wordless berserker cry. I took my left hand off the clutch, rolled the throttle all the way open with my right, drew one of the handguns, and shot him in the head. He crumpled in the tight space between the cars, and I swerved around his falling body, the math giving me just enough room.
I was two streets away from the apartment where we’d left Arthur. The final block was bathed in the pulsing red of police lights, their deadly brightness reflecting off pavement still wet from the recent rain. I could see officers with nightsticks out, shouting and trying to corral belligerent rioters. None of them paid the least bit of attention to me. I pulled the bike over, raced up the stairs to the flat, and burst through the door to find it dark and empty. Arthur wasn’t there.
With no working cell phone, I had no way of contacting him. But despite my lack of observational prowess when it came to the human condition, in the short time I’d known Arthur I had figured out a few things about him, and I had a sneaking suspicion that in a time of crisis he’d try to find somewhere to be of help.
After that, it didn’t take long to find him. I just went to the nearest ER.
The place was chaos. The whole ER was a mess of screaming, jostling, crying people who had swarmed the hospital entirely until they swelled out onto the sidewalk in a pawing, pleading mass. The hospital was as dark as everywhere else—apparently their generators had been fried—but people had dug up working flashlights and some battery-operated lanterns, and I saw some of the nurses battling the commotion with glowsticks around their necks.
Tresting’s composite might still be on police m
ost-wanted boards, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. He had thrown himself into the crisis with authority, and was currently rescuing the ER staff from drowning by being a booming voice of order—keeping people neatly triaged, calming screaming voices, soothing hysterical parents. The staff was going to hate me for pulling him out.
I pushed through the mob of bleeding and coughing people. “Tresting!”
He turned, and his eyes went wide. “Russell! Get those out of here!”
I had forgotten I still had several large firearms slung on my back. I glanced to either side to find a circle of space had formed around me, people shrinking back and staring. The dancing flashlight beams threw the pushing crowd into a seething knot of flesh and shadows, its humanity hidden in the darkness. I grabbed Arthur’s arm and hauled. “Come on, then.”
Fortunately, Los Angeles had other things on its mind than a private citizen who wasn’t currently using the firearms she was carrying, and nobody tried to stop us from heading anonymously back out into the night.
“Russell, what the hell is going on?” demanded Tresting as I hurried him along the sidewalk. “Didn’t work, did it? That thing you were trying to swing with the damn flash drive?”
“We started,” I said. “Long story short, Pithica caught wind of it and decided the quick way to stop us was to knock out every computer in LA.”
“They did this…?” Arthur’s mouth dropped open. He shook himself. “Thought you left LA. Didn’t think I’d see you back here.”
“Well, we didn’t want you to know—Pithica brainwashing and all that—but LA’s a big enough city to disappear into.”
He nodded, not questioning it. “Checker okay?”
“Rio’s looking after him.”
Tresting’s expression soured.
“Hey, he’s safer than anyone I know that way,” I said severely. “Look, I’ve got to finish getting our program out. I need your help.”
“Thought I was a liability,” he said.
“Desperate times, desperate measures. I need backup.”
It was fortunate he didn’t know me better. He didn’t question that either. Instead he just took a breath and nodded, back in crisis mode. “Where to?”
“Los Angeles Air Force Base,” I said, leading him around the corner at a quick trot. “They’re the people most likely to have a working computer still. Hop on.” We had reached the pink bike.
Arthur looked from me to the bike. “Your color.”
“We have working transportation; don’t knock it.” I unslung the Mossberg and handed it to him along with a pistol. “Warn me before letting loose with the shotgun.”
“Will do,” he said, accepting the weapons and climbing up behind me on the bike.
“And hang on,” I instructed. “I’m planning to take the corners a little tight.”
We weren’t far from LAX and the Air Force base. At least not the way I rode. As soon as the green airport signage began popping up and wallpapering the streets, I pulled over to ditch the bike.
“What’s the plan?” asked Arthur, shaking his legs out. He didn’t otherwise comment on my driving.
“Break in,” I said. “Find working equipment. Finish the job. Elegant in its simplicity, isn’t it?”
“What about all this?” Arthur swept a hand toward the darkened, violent streets. “Can we fix it? Restore the power?”
“Power’s not the problem,” I said. “It’s an EMP. They fried every circuit board from here to Phoenix. Anything run by a chip will have to be replaced before it’ll work again, even after the power comes back on line.”
He seemed to get it. “That’s why the cell phones are out, too.”
“Yeah. I’m guessing landlines might still work as long as they weren’t fancy cordless phones with a power connection—well, assuming something somewhere along the way in the telephone network hasn’t started being run by a computer. And shortwave radio would still work.” That was the sum total of Checker’s and my combined knowledge and guesses about post-apocalyptic emergency communication. I hoped the base would have one or the other. And I hoped Arthur was listening to me.
“I can’t believe Dawna—” His mouth twisted, and he ran a hand over his face.
It was exactly the opening I needed. “Well, she’ll have more than enough to occupy her soon. Rio managed to poison her, you know. Back when we were all captured. A bad poison, too. She’ll be starting to feel the effects any time now and be dead in two days. Christ, what a relief.” I bit my lip. I was talking too much, but then, I’m a very bad liar.
Arthur didn’t seem to notice. He went still. “What?”
“Yeah. There’s an antidote, but once she starts showing symptoms, it’ll be too late. Come on, let’s head.” I kept him in the corner of my eye, wondering if he would turn the shotgun on me, demand the antidote to take back to Dawna. But he didn’t seem to be that far gone.
Hopefully he’d be just far gone enough to warn her.
Chapter 34
We left the motorcycle in a park a few blocks out and I led the way at a jog, hoping I remembered the layout of streets correctly in this part of Los Angeles. I didn’t have the city memorized by a long shot, but I’d had enough close escapes that I had made a point of swallowing large portions of the road map, and hard experience had taught me to take special care to know the areas near the airports.
Of course, the moment we skidded around the corner onto El Segundo, we ran straight into a gang of looters shouting raucously and hurling Molotov cocktails through the windows of a large sporting goods store.
They saw us. One of them catcalled. Another drew a knife. I shot him before he finished the motion.
The shouting stopped as if the looters’ voices had been snuffed out. I saw another guy start to reach into his pants and shot him, too. One of his mates started screaming profanity at me, and my handgun barked one more time—I had far more bullets than I had patience.
The looters all froze. The sporting goods store started to catch fire, the flames roaring upward and backlighting them into aggressive silhouettes.
By that time Arthur had the shotgun up on my left. “Get out of here!” he shouted.
The gang scattered.
I started to move forward, but Arthur grabbed my arm, hard. “The Air Force base,” he said. “We ain’t killing anyone. Looters who try and attack us, that’s one thing, but we ain’t killing men and women just doing their jobs.”
His grip was powerful enough to leave a bruise, and his stance said he would stand his ground unless I shot him, too. Part of my brain noted this as impressive, considering that at this point, he had to know how pitifully his skills stacked up against mine—not to mention I was still holding a pistol with which I’d just shot three people, and also had a G36 assault rifle slung over my shoulder.
I searched his face. He’d go down fighting for this. “Okay,” I said.
His fingers tightened, the muscles around his eyes pinching. “Promise me.”
“I said okay!” Behind me, flames rose in the store in a whoosh, punching up through the second floor, the heat scorching my exposed skin. “I promise, all right? Come on!”
He let go of me, and we dashed.
As we slipped onto the edges of the base property, I caught sight of flashlight beams dancing through one of the far buildings in a beehive of activity. That building must be the nerve center of whatever disaster response they had going, I thought—farming out personnel to help local authorities quell the rioting, coordinating logistics during the crisis. While, I hoped, maintaining some sort of emergency communication with the outside world.
We hurried into the complex. With the personnel all concentrated elsewhere, this end of the base was mostly deserted. Only one young man in fatigues tried to challenge us, running forward through the dark and shouting; I pulled my otherwise useless phone out of my pocket and threw it. He collapsed to the pavement as if his strings had been cut.
Arthur’s expression tightened.
/> “What? He’s not dead,” I snapped.
We hurried toward one of the central buildings, a looming white-and-glass edifice that probably housed offices. I took a moment to get my bearings, turning toward the southeast. Yes, this was the one. Perfect.
“Let’s split up,” I said to Arthur. I gestured toward the far-off flashes of light and movement. “Whatever communications equipment they’ve got is probably that way somewhere, where all the people are. Go do your PI thing, figure out if they’ve got a line to the outside world and how we can get access.”
He hesitated, and I literally held my breath.
“Where are you going to be?”
“I need to jury rig some working hardware. I’m going to look for a server room in a Faraday cage, maybe try to cobble together some unfried equipment.” I was improvising the technobabble, but it sounded good. “Meet me back here on the top floor.”
Before he could respond, I drove the butt of my rifle through the glass of the door next to me, the pane showering down with a crash. Arthur winced and glanced around, but no alarm sounded. As I’d suspected, security was at least partially down. “Top floor,” I reminded Arthur, and ducked through the broken door.
The halls inside were dark and cavernously empty. I didn’t waste any time: I broke into the first office I came to, unscrewed the back of a dead computer, and yanked out all the circuit boards. When I’d asked Checker how much Arthur knew about computers, his answer had been, “Well, he knows how to use a search engine, which is sadly more than I can say for a lot of people.” I didn’t know too much more than that myself when it came to hardware, but Arthur didn’t know how much I didn’t know.
I collected an armful of as many sufficiently electronic-looking doodads as I could and headed for the stairs. The ground floor had been deserted, but in the stairwell I ran into one surprised-looking woman in a civilian suit who ended up sleeping off her concussion hidden in a dark bathroom stall. See, Arthur? I’m keeping my word.