Taking the Highway

by M. H. Mead

  He clicked into his phone implant and gave his new location, telling dispatch that he was approaching the scene. A kilometer ahead, he could see a whole lot of cars going nowhere. At least there were none behind him, although that wouldn’t last long. Within minutes, cars from further back, beyond the shutdown, would catch up. The system would reroute as much traffic as it could, but they couldn’t close the entire length of highway. He caught a glimpse of a helicopter above, but couldn’t tell if it was police or news.

  “This is bad,” Oliver said. Andre wondered if he’d determined that by looking at the road or looking at his datapad.

  “How many dead? Do they know?”

  Oliver poked his pad. “None confirmed. The warning lights came on and most of the people took control. But at those speeds? All they could do was hit the brakes. Lots of injuries, older cars without airweb.” He read some more from his screen. “This knot of cars is like five klicks long and half of these cars plowed into the ones in front of them.”

  [ATTENTION! ATTENTION! SERGEANT LACROIX, PLEASE CONFIRM VISUAL.]

  Andre touched the spot behind his ear and clicked a single pulse of acknowledgment.

  He reconfigured the Raven’s comscreen to record forward video.

  “Oh, crap. I was afraid of that.” A human voice had taken over for the AI but did not identify herself. “We have some kids in that mess. Too small for airweb and bounced around pretty hard. How am I going to get an ambulance in there?”

  “What about coming from the other side?”

  “What?” Oliver said.

  Andre shut him up by shaking his head and pointing to his implant with raised eyebrows.

  “Worse over there,” the dispatcher said. “They’re between exits and right in the middle of things. I need you to clear a path.”

  Andre looked at six lanes of cars, bumpers touching, horns honking. A few passengers were already abandoning their vehicles and walking up the slippery embankment to the service drive. Others were gesturing to those behind them to move out of the way, but everyone was jammed in too tightly to solve the problem without coordinated effort. Kids. Shit. Injured kids . . . “Do I get any help here?”

  “I’ll hold traffic from coming at you as long as I can. I’ve closed every Detroit on-ramp. The only thing coming at you is coming from the outburbs.”

  Andre tried for some measure of calm. He had a momentary fantasy of cautious suburban drivers noticing the empty highway, seeing the Overdrive warnings, and either slowing down or getting off. But that wasn’t how people drove.

  He moved the Raven to the shoulder and got out. The rain came straight down from a windless sky, each drop nailing his head as if drilling itself into his skull.

  Oliver slammed his door and stood beside him. “This is the back of the line. What did they send you here for?”

  Andre pointed to the middle of the traffic. “We need to get in there. Ambulance. Kids. We need to clear these cars.”

  “Right. How?”

  “One at a time. We have to turn them around and get them to exit by going up the on-ramp.”

  “And risk a head-on crash?” Oliver wiped rain out of his eyes and looked at the highway behind them. “Nobody’s going to do that.”

  “Overdrive shut the ramps.” He tapped the trunk of the nearest car. “Talk them into it. Open up space. Don’t let anyone crowd in.”

  Andre remembered his first day on the force, the terror of working patrol. It felt like every car was a loaded gun, ready to blow him away. He’d quickly learned what he could change and what he couldn’t and how fast to step aside. Oliver would have to do the same.

  He surveyed the backs of cars for a likely opening. The truck lane was going nowhere. No semi had the turning radius to move where they needed to go. At least they were in the far left lane, away from the cars. Things looked bad in the center, but a purple Octave on the far right seemed undamaged, or at least drivable. He pulled Oliver’s arm and steered him toward it while he took the car directly in front of it.

  He rapped on the window until the driver cracked it . The heater was on in the car and the driver’s bangs curled up off her forehead. “What?”

  He held up his shield. “DPD. Everyone all right in here? Is your car drivable?”

  “We’re fine. Can you tell us what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know the cause. Right now I need you to back up your vehicle.”

  “I can’t!”

  Andre took a breath. “When the car behind you moves, I need you to back up, turn your car one hundred eighty degrees, and follow the car behind you. Use the Livernois on-ramp to exit the highway.”

  “But that doesn’t—”

  “Please, Ma’am, we’re in a hurry.”

  She consulted her rearview. “That car isn’t moving.”

  Andre popped his head above the car. Oliver was nowhere near the purple Octave. He’d moved two lanes over and was in consultation with the driver of a gray Ford.

  Andre ran to Oliver and grabbed his arm. “I told you to start over there.”

  Oliver shook him off. “The Octave is full of panicked grandmothers. There’s no way they’re leading this train. Whoever goes first has to go fast and everyone has to follow or it stays chaos.” He pointed to the Ford, which was crammed with high-schoolers, the smallest one behind the wheel. This was his leader? “Stuart here loves to drive and knows what to do.”

  “This isn’t fucking driver’s ed!”

  “I know.” Oliver tapped the Ford’s roof. “Go, Stuart.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Ford peeled backward and turned sharply on its radius to head the wrong way on the highway. Oliver signaled with both hands to the minivan in front of it, as if he were parking a jet. The minivan began to move and was soon following Stuart’s Ford. The next car was undrivable, with a smashed front end, so they left it and helped the cars on either side. People were paying attention now, glad that someone had a plan, and needed few instructions to get into position. Even the granny Octave was able to drive through the rain once it had a clear path to follow. But moving one car at a time was painfully slow.

  The dispatcher clicked into his implant. “I’ve got an ambulance five minutes out.”

  “What about oncoming traffic?”

  “About five minutes after that. If we’re lucky.”

  “I need more time. You’ve got to stop traffic completely before Livernois so I can get these people safely off the highway.”

  “We’re trying.”

  “Any update on those kids?”

  “Negative. Nothing new.”

  Andre hopped out of the way of an Octave Quartet just in time to avoid getting his toes run over. “What about a copter to pull them?”

  “Have you seen where you are? No helicopter can get into a narrow canyon like that. Look, just move cars, okay? Move them.”

  “Working on it.” Andre clicked out. He signaled the next car in line and looked for Oliver. He seemed to be shifting twice as many cars as Andre was, with fewer words and less expansive gestures. Oliver didn’t have the charm of a fourth or the authority of a cop. So how was he doing it? Of course, that was the secret of leadership. Oliver had always had the aura of someone with his shit together, and that’s all it took for people to listen to him. Andre wondered if Oliver could move cars alone while he took the Raven back to Livernois. He’d like to keep them from getting slammed with traffic approaching the accident site from the outburbs. But it was useless for one man to try to stop six lanes of oncoming cars. All they could do was move as many cars as they could, and hope that dispatch gave him a head’s up before the onslaught.

  Oliver had reached a critical mass of undrivable cars, so he backtracked his steps and worked one lane over, stopping some cars from moving too soon, gesturing others to go ahead.

  Andre picked his way further up the line, hoping to find a clear path of unwrecked cars. Over the sound of the pounding rain, he heard the wail of sirens. About time. He took a deeper breath, hoping
that the worst was over.

  Ahead of him, he saw a young man and woman waving arms above their heads like drowning people. The man frantically signaled Andre while the woman pointed one hand at the car. This must be the family. He was close. So was the ambulance. Three, maybe four cars and they’d have it. He nodded his rain-soaked head emphatically and gestured toward the approaching emergency vehicles, receiving a grateful thumbs-up from a terrified father.

  More sirens cut through the storm. Andre knew that sound. Black and whites. At last.

  [ATTENTION! ATTENTION!]

  Andre clicked in. “Thanks.”

  “Ambulances?”

  He squinted through the rain to see Oliver directing the first one through. “Almost.”

  “I’ve got traffic completely shut down behind you. Move what you can and we’ll send highway patrol for the rest.”

  Andre tilted his face to the sky, letting the rain wash over his cheeks. He checked in with the patrolmen and got them started on traffic control. Then he found Oliver, opened his wallet, and removed the keycard to the Raven. “Thanks for everything. You can drive my car off the highway with everybody else. Nobody will notice you’re not me.”

  Oliver reached a wet hand to take the key card. “I’ll leave it at Bella Trattoria.”

  “Yeah, fine.” Andre took a step toward the next vehicle.

  Oliver caught his shoulder. “You owe me.”

  Andre flung out his arm to the tangled mess of cars. “Jesus, Oliver, there are kids dying in there.”

  “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you. Owing me.”

  “Could you be any more selfish?”

  “Me? Selfish? I just moved all these cars, in the pouring rain, talking to who knows how many pains-in-the-ass, for no reason other than I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “What would be the right place, Oliver? Huh? Would it be the right place if you had a minicam and campaign literature with you?”

  “Greenfield Village. Friday night.” Oliver sauntered off with a self-satisfied air that was as galling as it was unsurprising. He turned back and held up the key. “No later than six.”

  ANDRE WALKED INTO HIS cubicle and snapped off the companel. It was a favorite prank among the custodians. Leave the companels in each office tuned to the same spinner. Today, it was Naked Jay. The last thing he needed was to see a grossly obese man in a skin suit pontificating about how foreign cars were to blame for yesterday’s pile-up. It was bad enough this morning, when Andre had taken one look at the huge knot of fourths at his stop, then turned around and fetched his car. Almost everyone was staying off 96 and the side roads were jammed. Just as he’d feared, in the wake of an Overdrive malfunction, everyone assumed the surface streets were safer. The mayor’s office was working double time on the positive PR, trotting out experts to explain every detail of the new, failsafe system, but it would be days, maybe weeks, before people fully trusted the highways.

  Seeing Naked Jay reminded Andre that it had been awhile since he’d last scanned for smart tags. Not that he expected to find one. The spinners had all but given up trying to sneak recording equipment onto police officers. Any information they found wasn’t worth the inevitable lawsuits. But getting caught with a tag on you was worse for the police officer than for the spinner it led back to, so scanning was a must. Andre pulled a full-sized scanner out of his desk drawer. He’d never sprung for a newer, mini model, content with one the size and shape of a soup ladle. He held the handle and did a cursory wave over his body, letting it scan the most obvious parts.

  He’d started scanning his shoes when he heard voices outside his cubicle. Voices he recognized. He looked left, right, but there was nowhere to hide and it was too late to run. He sighed and dropped the scanner into his drawer, then swung into his chair as Danny Cariatti escorted in a smartly-dressed, beautifully made-up, and very smug Sofia Gao.

  “Here you go, Sergeant,” Danny said, sweeping one arm into the small cube. “Andre, you know you’re supposed to meet your appointments downstairs. Someone could wander around up here for hours.”

  “We didn’t have an appointment.”

  “I saw her looking for you. Nice lady like this, I had to help.”

  “Thanks, Danny.” Andre smiled with his mouth while he killed Danny with his eyes. I will get you for this.

  “Don’t mention it,” Danny said. “City and suburb, we have to cooperate with each other.”

  “So true.” I will hunt you down and murder you in your sleep.

  Danny leaned a shoulder on the door jam. “City cops have a reputation for being arrogant. Can you believe it?”

  “We should do something about that,” Andre agreed. I will scatter your cremated remains to the four winds.

  Sofia looked between them with a small twitch of the lips. “Thank you for the escort, Lieutenant. Your homicide department is bigger than I thought it would be.”

  Andre rolled his eyes. Just what an outburb cop would think. Detroit either had the lowest murder rate in the country or one of the highest, depending on how you ran the numbers—with or without the zone.

  “I appreciate it,” Sofia told Danny.

  “No mention. If you need help finding your way out again—”

  “I’ll find my way,” Sofia said.

  Danny finally levered himself off the wall. “Then it’s back to work.”

  Andre waited until Danny left, then waved a hand to show off his miniscule cubicle. “I’d offer you a chair, but this one is mine.”

  “No problem. Since I’m taking everything else from you, the least I can do is let you keep your chair.”

  Again? What was wrong with this woman? He admired her tenacity, but enough was enough. “You can’t take anything I don’t give.”

  Sofia consulted her datapad. “I sent you a file. My dead guys? Homer Carcassi and Douglas Ming? Both newly arrived from Chicago. Both here for just a few weeks before they were killed.”

  Andre deliberately kept his pad shut. “Half the fourths I know are from Chicago. The other half are from Toledo. So unless you’ve got something better—”

  “They knew each other.”

  Andre’s eyebrows shot up. “Here, or in Chicago?”

  “Both.”

  “Do you have anything to connect them with my two guys?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  Andre was beginning to regret not giving Sofia the chair. Standing, he’d have a height advantage. Now, she loomed over him, making her arguments seem better, even when they weren’t. “You mean I will,” he said. “These are still my cases.”

  Sofia pointed at his datapad. “Are you going to read that or not?”

  “Not.”

  “I found another one.”

  “What?”

  “I ran the recent homicides again, revising my search with your parameters. Russell van Slater turned up floating in a Sycamore Hills pond six weeks ago.”

  “Six weeks?” Andre flipped open his pad and stabbed at it until he found her file. “Don’t tell me. The VanGlitch.”

  “We always call it the McError.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They should have caught it.” I should have caught it. It had happened to him more than once, in reverse, as people insisted on adding a space between the two syllables of his surname. With Russell van Slater, the cops on the case had mashed the prefix and the surname together, and it had taken the AI this long to figure out van Slater was a fourth.

  He paged through the details. The body had been floating less than a hundred meters from a country club bar wearing only garish boxers. Tagged a John Doe, van Slater was thought to have drowned, with alcohol a contributing factor. But the coroner’s report said that Mr. Doe hadn’t gone swimming voluntarily and he sure as hell hadn’t forgotten to come up for air on his own. Finger and retinal prints had given van Slater back his identity, however misspelled, but the investigators had pretty much dismissed it as an off-kilter mugging.

  “Lazy,”
Andre muttered.

  “Tell me about it,” Sofia answered. “The detective who caught the case is ten years past caring and ten years early for retirement. When I told him I wanted this, he offered to kiss me.”

  “Declined?”

  “Declined with ewww. Once I sorted out that van Slater was a fourth, I realized he was probably the first of the set.”

  “Highly collectible,” Andre agreed. He rubbed a hand across his chin. “For once, I wish conspiracy theories weren’t total bullshit.”

  “Come again?”

  “You know the stories; that cops are spying on fourths by tracking our badges.”

  Sofia scoffed. “Wouldn’t that be nice. All of my cases—”

  “All of your cases?” Andre interrupted. “Why should you get them? Van Slater was found in Bloomfield.” As far as he was concerned, they each still had two cases. Anything in the northern suburbs was up for grabs.

  “Russell van Slater was the first.”

  “And if we were on the playground, you would have dibs on the soccer ball. If I hadn’t figured out they were fourths, you wouldn’t have anything to connect them but simple mortality.”

  She glared. “I know what you are. I know what you do. All fourthing does for you is makes you biased. Give this to more experienced detectives so we can—”

  “More experienced, my taut buttocks! I’ve been sergeant grade years longer than you have.”

  “I heard how you got pushed . . . your taut what?”

  He leaned sideways. “Right there, detective. Right there.”

  “Put your ass back where you can think with it.”

  Andre didn’t move. Sofia glared. Andre matched her, enjoying a long look into those intense dark eyes. Was she blushing a little? He hoped so.

  She slapped her datapad shut. “I’m going upstairs with this.”

  “Late breaking spin. I already did.”

  “I’ve gone higher.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head. “It’s already done. If you’d bother to read a single thing I sent you, you’d know that you’re due in the mayor’s office at four this afternoon. I just came here as a courtesy, to give you a head’s up.”