by Max Barry
“No thanks,” Billy said. He got to his feet. “See you later, man.”
Three dark blue cars crested the hill. They were fast and low and had some kind of rotary cannon set into their hoods: he vaguely recollected seeing them in the Police TV advertisements. The NRA soldiers opened fire. Then the Police car cannons clamored and suddenly there were bullets everywhere, bouncing off the cars, chewing up the road, and passing much too close to Billy’s body.
“Fuck, fuck!” one of the jaws-of-life guys yelled. He was running to the second Ryder, which struck Billy as a good idea, too. He jumped into the back of it with the jaws guy and two other sweaty NRA soldiers. Inside, bullets like a hailstorm beat against the truck’s side, creating alarming indentations. Someone up front revved the engine and the vehicle lunged forward.
“Team A, come back, come back,” the jaws guy said into his radio.
“Team A’s gone, man,” a soldier said. “Those cop cars! They annihilated us!”
“They can’t get past the blockade,” the jaws guy said. “They’ll have to go around, do a full block. We’ve got maybe ninety seconds to lose them.”
Billy decided he was going to stick close to the jaws guy. This dude knew what he was doing. The truck bounced and lurched. Billy clutched at the strap. Then he felt them slowing.
The jaws guy said, “What’s going on?”
“Don’t ask me,” Billy said, but the man was talking to his radio. The radio said something like: Crrsshuvfss ssahvunt.
“Right,” the jaws guy said. He looked at the rest of them. “Okay. Now we have a problem.”
25 Jennifer
“It’s a good deal,” Calvin said, overtaking a Chrysler. “It’s not like I actually spend more. I buy what I would have anyway, but from US Alliance companies.”
“Mmm,” Jennifer said.
“You buy your computer from IBM, your gas from Shell, use AT&T for calls… soon you’re getting gift vouchers, for like, fifty bucks. And if you buy a car—”
“I don’t like loyalty programs.”
“Well, you could go with Team Advantage,” Calvin said. “But US Alliance has twice as many companies that are number one in their industry.”
“What is that, from their brochure?”
The car radio said: “Field Agents Jennifer and Calvin, please identify your position.”
She picked up. “Downtown, King and Flinders.”
“Proceed to corner Chapel and Inkerman streets, St. Kilda. Crime in progress, extreme caution advised.”
“That’s where we’re going. What’s the situation?”
“Distress call from the Police. One Senior Sergeant Pearson Police is under attack. Instigators may be NRA.”
“Fuck!” She dropped the radio. “Go!”
Calvin gunned the engine, weaving through traffic. She flicked on the siren and they roared down St. Kilda Road. “We shouldn’t have stopped to talk to that stockbroker.”
“Inkerman Street is, what, the—”
“Two more blocks,” she said. “See where that Ryder truck came from?”
“Yep.” He slowed and killed the siren.
The truck passed them, heading in the opposite direction. Its front had sustained some damage, she saw: the grille was smashed in. She frowned. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“Let’s pull over that truck.”
“For what, being in an accident?”
“Just do it.” He swung the wheel. She chewed her lip. The truck had been through more than a traffic accident: its side looked speckled and pocked. “Are our lights working?”
“Yep.”
“So why aren’t they stopping?”
“Don’t know. I’ll go around front, cut them off.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, and the truck’s rear door opened.
“Oh, shit,” Calvin said.
She saw men in camouflage pants and black T-shirts. Calvin dragged the wheel left. Bullets thudded into the car. She heard a tire blow. The steering wheel jumped through Calvin’s hands. White palings from a picket fence bounced off the windshield and then she caught a glimpse of a thick tree.
After a while, she realized that Calvin was talking on the radio. She fumbled at her belt.
“Jen. You okay?”
She found the latch and tumbled out of the car. Her head felt thick and heavy. She looked around and saw a tree in the middle of their car’s hood. She walked unsteadily toward the road.
“Backup’s on the way, Jen! We wait here!”
She stopped in the middle of the road.
Calvin came after her. “Jen, come sit down. You’re bleeding.”
She touched her forehead. Her fingers came away red and sticky. That meant clotting. “You think they got Pearson?”
“I guess so.”
A white Taurus crested the rise. Jennifer held out her ID until it stopped. The driver was a young man, unshaven. His eyes flicked nervously. “Yeah?”
“I want to commandeer your vehicle for Government business. We pay three hundred dollars per hour of use, plus any necessary repairs. Also, you have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped prevent crime in your community.”
“Three hundred up front?”
“No,” Jennifer said. “Sorry, I don’t carry large amounts of cash with me on the off chance I’ll need to commandeer somebody’s car.”
“Jen,” Calvin said. “Please, let’s not blow our budget on this.”
“No, wait,” the kid said, getting out. “Okay, sure. Three hundred an hour?”
“Right,” she said. “Calvin, will you take this person’s details?”
“Jen! You can’t even drive!”
He was almost right: she could hardly drive. But the car was an automatic, and she could use her bad arm to hold the wheel, if not turn it. Jennifer stomped on the accelerator.
She figured the NRA would be putting as much distance between themselves and the scene as possible, but they’d avoid the freeways, which had choke points. That pretty much left Dandenong Road, and she felt confident guessing they’d head out of the city, not into it. She accelerated through the traffic.
Within a minute, she spotted the truck. She moved up behind it and waited until they got onto a straight stretch of road. Then she wound down the window, held the steering wheel with her knees, and leaned out with her .45.
The driver must have seen her: he swerved before she’d squeezed off a shot. If he’d braked, she would have been screwed, would have slammed right into him. But he tried to zigzag, and since Ryder rental trucks weren’t the most maneuverable vehicles in the world, she was able to take out three tires, one after the other. The truck ran up the sidewalk and burst through a storefront.
Jennifer sailed past and started a U-turn. Her bad shoulder made it harder than she’d anticipated, and by the time she’d swung around, NRA guys were spilling out of the truck.
She hit the brakes and ducked, and the windshield imploded. Bullets chewed through the driver’s seat, filling the car with a snowstorm of yellow foam. She squeezed down among the pedals, then poked her pistol over the dash and fired randomly. The gunfire stopped. She grabbed at the rearview mirror, popping it free, and clutched it to her chest, breathing hard.
It was still quiet. She raised the mirror and swung it around. There were three NRA guys by the truck… and one running low, toward the car. She dropped the mirror, picked up the pistol, and fired three shots. A man yelled out. She raised her eyebrows. Back to mirror: one NRA guy, crawling away and clutching his leg. “Hot damn,” she said.
The gunfire started again, peppering her car. Jennifer found the radio and got Government agents en route, then settled into a regular exchange of fire that she hoped would keep everybody entertained. The important thing was to fire often enough so they could all feel comfortable that they were engaged in a pitched gun battle and not feel the need to do anything overly tactical, like advance on her.
When she heard cars, she raised the mirror again. A
line of black Cadillac SUVs was stopping by the wrecked Ryder truck. Doors opened and closed. “Where’s my backup?” she yelled at the radio. “They’re getting away!”
“ETA four minutes, Field Agent.” Jennifer dropped it in disgust. When she heard the cars start to move away, she yanked open the door and fell out onto the road.
It was already too late. She lined up the wheels of the last car and fired again and again. She hit the road twice, blew in its rear windshield, and popped open its trunk, which would have been an amazing shot if that’s what she was trying to accomplish. But it wasn’t. “Shit!”
Something moved to her right. She turned. A man was sprinting down an alley: she saw camouflage pants and a heavy rifle.
“Freeze! This is the Government!”
He kept running. She aimed above his head and fired.
He dove into the asphalt so hard that she thought she’d accidentally clocked him. But she jogged over and he was alive. He was covering his head with his hands.
“Please, don’t shoot!”
She executed an academy-approved arm twist that finished up with her knees in his back and her gun against his head. “You kill any girls last Friday? Visit any Nike Town stores? You good friends with John Nike?”
“I’m not with them! I swear, I’m not with them!”
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
26 Egress
Hack took deep breaths, gulping air. It felt so good to be out! What that Jennifer Government had said was true: you didn’t appreciate freedom until it was too late. It really put things in perspective, an experience like this. It made you realize what was important.
He couldn’t feel depressed, even though he knew there was a good chance he’d lose his job, and that debt to the Police wasn’t going anywhere. Hack was happy to be alive.
He caught a cab to take him to Violet’s sister’s house, then changed his mind halfway and got out at Sears in Fitzroy. He wanted to buy Violet a present: something to show her how he felt. This experience had brought them closer together, he thought.
He stopped. Sears had a jewelry section. Rows of glass-encased stones and rings gleamed at him. He hesitated, then entered.
“Help you?” a salesgirl said. She had curly red hair. “Um…”Hack said. “Do you have any…”
“Lemme guess,” she said. “Engagement rings?”
“How did you know?”
“You look nervous,” the girl said, and smiled.
He clutched the package, lining up at the register behind a large woman who was buying a tricycle. “Surely you can wrap it,” the woman said to the checkout boy. “You have a wrapping service; I want this wrapped.”
“I can only wrap smaller items here,” the boy said patiently. “Something this size you have to take to the wrappers on level three.”
“It didn’t say that on the advertisement.”
“I’m really sorry,” the boy said.
The woman pushed past Hack, poking him in the arm with one of the tricycle’s handlebars. Hack protected his package. He had been to the wrapping desk first, even though his item was small.
The boy scanned Hack’s box. The price materialized on the orange readout: $649.95. “You got a US Alliance card?”
“Yes.” He handed it over.
“Do you have a Team Advantage card, too?”
“What?”
The boy pointed to a bright blue badge on his chest. It said: THROW AWAY YOUR T.A. CARD AND SAVE! ASK ME HOW. “If you quit the Team Advantage program, you get fifteen percent off from all US Alliance—affiliated stores for the next two months. Got a T.A. card?”
“No. I work for Nike.”
“That’s okay. If you stick with US Alliance and don’t get a T.A. card, you can accrue points too.”
Hack blinked. That sounded all right. “How do I register?”
“Like this,” the boy said, and pushed a button. The register chatted out a couple of extra lines onto Hack’s receipt. “Thanks for shopping at Sears. Have a nice day.”
“Thanks,” Hack said. He took his package and walked out of the store. On impulse, he turned to look back at the registers. There were thirty or forty stations, lined up like battlements. Each was staffed by a clean-cut girl or boy in Sears uniform. Their blue badges winked at him.
Violet’s sister, Claire, was watching TV when he arrived home. Hack had actually known Claire first: he had met Violet through her. Claire was tall and had long hair and brown eyes and a nice smile. She was shier than Violet; more like him. For a while Hack had thought he was in love with her. But then Violet came along. Violet was pretty determined.
“Hi.”
“Oh! Hi, Hack. Where have you been?”
“I had to see the Government.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “Are you in trouble?”
“No. Not really. Is Violet home?”
She shook her head. “I thought she was with you.”
“She had a business meeting today. If she’s not back… maybe it went well.” He looked at his watch. It was pretty late.
“Have you eaten? I can cook something, if you want.”
“Oh—no, thanks.” He felt embarrassed. Claire was always offering to do stuff for him. “Can I call my apartment? Maybe she’s there.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” He went into the kitchen and dialed. The phone rang and rang.
27 Dislocation
Violet had never flown before, and Rendell, the fat ExxonMobil manager, thought that was hilarious. “Not even interstate?” he asked, and shook his head, amazed. Rendell had two million frequent flier miles.
She wished she could fly without Rendell, who took up the full girth of his extra-wide business-class seat and leaned into her when he wanted to talk, which was all the time. She had a paperback novel, selected from a range the flight attendant had brought around, but Rendell wouldn’t leave her alone with it. After fourteen hours, all she wanted was for Rendell to choke to death on an airline-issue peanut.
He leaned across. “You can plug into the web from here, you know. There’s a jack in the armrest.”
Violet looked. There was, too.
“Although, with your virus—I mean, you’ve got that thing under lock and key, right? Maybe you shouldn’t plug in.”
“I really doubt the customer network is connected to the flight controls,” Violet said.
“Even so.” Rendell smiled nervously.
“Fine.” She didn’t want to e-mail with him looking over her shoulder anyway. She raised her novel.
His arm pressed against hers. “There are phones, though. If you want.”
She looked at him.
“If there’s anyone you need to tell you’re en route to Texas. Don’t worry about the cost, it’s taken care of.”
“There’s no one I need to call,” Violet said. She didn’t want to call home with him there, either.
She was surprised by Dallas’s ugliness. Even with the sun rising behind it, the city looked as if it had been built to withstand bombardment. She’d never seen so much concrete in one place.
“What do you think?” Rendell said in the cab. “Nice, huh?”
“Where are the trees?”
“There are some parks.” He craned his neck. “I think you can see one…” A heavy truck roared alongside them. The cab darkened like it was descending into the earth. Violet put her fingers in her ears. “Past that traffic accident.”
She looked. There was a snarl of turnpike ahead, and tow trucks were extracting cars and pickups from one another. The cab driver slowed to avoid a shredded tire that had rolled onto the road. Violet didn’t see any park.
“See it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Which is the ExxonMobil building?”
“ExMo’s out of town, in Irving. It’s about a thirty-minute drive.”
“Oh.”
“You’re going to be sick of me by the end of all this,” he said, smiling. She tried to smile back. “I thought yo
u’d want to see Dallas. This is where the President was assassinated, you know.”
She looked at him in surprise. “The President of ExxonMobil?”
“No. The Government President. Kennedy.”
“Oh,” she said, turning back to the window.
“You’re probably too young to have heard of him,” Rendell said, and Violet bit her lip until it hurt.
The ExxonMobil man was tall, with bright blue eyes. He stood, smiling, and extended his hand. His mouth showed teeth, but his eyes never changed. “Violet. Please, sit.”
She took an ornate chair across the table from him. Rendell took a seat beside her. She couldn’t escape him anywhere.
“I’m Nathaniel ExxonMobil, CEO.” Behind him was a door with a snarling tiger, the ExMo logo, engraved in frosted glass. “I appreciate you coming on such short notice.”
“No problem.” She felt thirsty.
“We’re going to have a conversation now. But first, I want you to understand some ground rules.”
“I’m happy to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”
“I don’t want you to sign an NDA.” He smiled. “I prefer to do this by word of agreement.”
“Oh.” Violet felt her heart sink. This was already deviating from the little she knew about how business worked.
“Contracts force people to do things, Violet, and nothing good comes from force. People achieve great things by voluntarily working together for mutual gain. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Sure,” she said, but she could feel the bridge creaking beneath her feet, the boards splintering. An NDA was standard; everybody used them. She didn’t think Nathaniel would talk to her without one unless he had a better way of ensuring her silence.
He folded his hands on the table. “I understand you have some software that can take down a company-wide computer network. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Any company’s network?”
“Pretty much.”
“If you wanted to attack my network at a particular time, on a particular day, could you do that?”
“Um, no. The software can only spread when the clients request an update from the server. That could be immediately; it could be next week.”