Taking the Highway

by M. H. Mead

  Topher jumped up from the kitchen table, which stood on foldable legs and didn’t look big enough for two dinner plates, much less the papers and electronics that were strewn across it. The only other furniture was a futon, covered with clothing and hardcopy books. The narrow kitchen counter along the back wall held take-out containers and dirty dishes. The sink was half full of scummy water, as if the drain had clogged.

  “Good, you brought it.” Topher reached for the plastic bag and tore into it. He pulled out the new datapad and frowned at the protective packaging. “You didn’t open it?”

  Nikhil smiled proudly. “Brand new, like you said.”

  “Jesus, Nikhil, do I have to tell you everything?” Topher examined its tell-tales. “Not even a passive solar charge. Where have you been keeping it?”

  “In the trunk of my car. Look, Topher—”

  “It’s okay. I got it.” Wilma took the datapad and plugged it into the wall behind the futon. She immediately flicked it open and started poking its surface.

  “Wilma, how long?”

  “Eight hours,” she said. “Ten for a full charge.”

  “Too long.” Topher held out his hand and flicked his fingers toward himself. “Let me see yours a sec.”

  Nikhil took a step back. He didn’t care how good Topher’s cause was, or how many plans he had. No way was Topher taking his pad. “All my stuff is on it.”

  “I’m not going to zorch it. Just let me see it.”

  Nikhil folded his arms. “Pay me for the other one, first.”

  “Sure, sure. Wilma?”

  She stood and pulled a wad of cash out of the front pocket of her jeans. She counted bills into Nikhil’s hand. He put his backpack on the floor, stowed the cash, and sighed. There was no helping it. He handed over his datapad.

  Topher tossed it underhanded to Wilma, who scooted back to the futon. She married Nikhil’s datapad to the new one, gulping all of its information into the memory before he could stop her. She unplugged the new pad from the wall, and thrust it toward Nikhil.

  “Bullshit,” Nikhil said. “Give me mine.”

  Wilma hooked a thumb into the waistband of her jeans and slid Nikhil’s datapad down the front of them, where it bulged at her crotch. She pointed to the new pad. “You’re upgrading. All your stuff is on it, so what’s the zoo act? Charge it a few hours and you’ll be fine.”

  Topher clapped him on the back. “I need a working pad, buddy. I can give you a few more bucks for the inconvenience.”

  “This isn’t about the inconvenience!” He grabbed Wilma and tried to fit his hand down the front of her jeans. He didn’t care if it was in her underwear, he was getting his datapad back. Wilma bent forward at the waist, stopping his access. He held tighter as she struggled and squeaked and kicked his shins. He pressed downward on the pad, trying to force it through the leghole of her jeans.

  The blow came out of nowhere, Topher’s fist materializing at his face to connect with his cheek and knock him away from Wilma. “Keep your hands off her!” he yelled.

  Wilma skipped to the other side of the room, putting the table between herself and the men. The datapad still tented her jeans.

  Nikhil held one hand to his throbbing cheek and the other in the air, palm out, surrendering. He’d never be able to fight them both.

  Topher was breathing hard. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I enjoy hiding like a rat? I could have bought ten datapads better than yours. But thanks to you, I can’t leave the house, I can’t use my multicard, I can’t do anything!”

  Nikhil looked from Topher to Wilma and back again. A door slammed nearby. The neighbor’s toilet flushed. Wilma crossed her arms and glared. The datapad never moved. Shit, it really was stuck in her underwear.

  Nikhil bent to pick up the new datapad. “You seem to be doing fine.”

  “I’d be doing a lot better if you hadn’t involved your uncle.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me.” Topher moved to the kitchen wall and pulled ice out of the freezer. He wrapped it in a stained towel and handed it to Nikhil, gesturing toward his face. “I don’t want to fight about it. I just know that things would be a lot easier if the cops weren’t involved.”

  Nikhil held the cold towel to his face. It smelled like yogurt, and stung where it touched his cheek. “Can I talk to you privately?”

  Topher glanced at Wilma. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of her.”

  “No, it really can’t.”

  Topher shrugged and opened the front door, gesturing Nikhil to go first. Nikhil shouldered his backpack, catching Wilma out of the corner of his eye. She smirked and waved before handing his datapad to Topher. Topher put the pad in his pocket and the door closed behind them.

  Nikhil put his elbows on the balcony rail and pressed the ice to his cheek. He stared down at the weedy lot full of even weedier cars. “What are you doing, Topher?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long have you been tied to Wilma?”

  “Since . . . you know. For a little while.”

  “What about Sandor?”

  “What about him?” Topher faced the opposite direction, leaning ass and elbows on the metal railing. “Sandor is great at organizing and all, but Wilma’s the one who’s working on a new virus. It’s beautiful, man. So much more powerful than anything she’s made before.”

  “So if Sandor was the programmer, you’d sleep with him?”

  “Fuck you. It isn’t like that, okay? I care about her.”

  Sirens in the distance, coming closer. Topher stiffened and slunk into the shadow of the doorway. More than one siren, but fire trucks, not police cars. They waited, not speaking, as the sound grew louder, then softer as it passed, eventually blending into the other city noise.

  Topher took up a position at the rail and they gazed into the parking lot together. “This place sucks.”

  “Yep.”

  Topher jerked a thumb over his shoulder, at the oh-zone. “That one sucks worse.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s time, my friend. It’s time to do something so big that the mayor’s office can’t call it a malfunction, or try to play it like it never happened. Madison Z will finally listen to the CEJ and the city will bow to our demands.”

  “Then you can go home.”

  “Then I can go home.”

  “Except you can’t.” Nikhil removed the wet towel from his face and let the chunks of ice fall out of it. He didn’t watch to see where they landed. “You can’t set up an Overdrive failure just to save yourself.”

  “I’m not!” Topher grabbed the limp rag and shook it out. “Wait until you see it. Shutting down Overdrive is one thing, but what good does that do when everyone hits the brakes and the on-ramps redlight themselves? We don’t need to shut down Overdrive, we need to take it over. Proximity sensors be damned. We’re going to throw cars right into one another. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare when they find out that they can’t manually override.”

  “You mean . . .” Nikhil stared at Topher in horror. It was one thing to simply turn off Overdrive. It was quite another to deliberately cause crashes. “The ramps?” he squeaked.

  “Wide open,” Topher said “Everyone has to know what we can do. They have to see it with their own eyes. Once the mayor and the city council sees our power, they’ll have to make some changes, bring the oh-zone back into the city, start paying attention to what’s really going on around here.”

  “And it has nothing to do with saving your ass.”

  “It’s your ass too, Nikhil. I’m saving the entire organization.”

  Nikhil stood straight and adjusted his backpack strap. He wondered when things had changed, when it became more about saving the CEJ itself than fixing the city.

  Topher pulled Nikhil’s datapad out of his pocket and held it in front of Nikhil’s face. “If it means that much to you, take your datapad back. I’ll make do with the other.”

 
; Nikhil could almost smell Wilma’s scent on it. He pictured her dirty apartment, the sour rag, her none-too-clean clothes. He pictured her underwear. “It’s all right. I’ll take the upgrade. But you’ve got to erase that one, man.”

  Topher started scrolling through menus. “You got pictures on here?”

  “Names and numbers.” Nikhil caught Topher’s arm, make him look up. “Listen. You don’t need a virus. The highways have been shut since Monday. It’s been two days and they haven’t opened 94 yet. You’ve shown your strength, now it’s time to negotiate.”

  “They’re scheduled to reopen tomorrow.”

  “So?”

  “Unless I deploy the virus, I’m not in a position to—”

  “Yes, you are.” Nikhil patted his backpack. “I took some of my dad’s hardcopy files he kept at home. I’ve got names, dates, numbers.”

  “So?”

  “I’m sure they denied it. They had reasons and covers and explanations for everything. It’s not like anyone would complain, not if they were making the city safer. The city council didn’t even know what they were doing, and it happened right under their noses.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Madison Zuchek.”

  “What about her?”

  Nikhil pulled out the files and gave them to Topher. “Looked at one way, these files are completely innocent. Looked at another way, Madison Zuchek has her own personal hit squad. It’s been going on for years. It’s usually drug dealers, mafiosi, people like that. But now she has a new target.”

  “Us? Shit.” Topher riffled through pages, forward, back. It didn’t take him long to reach the same conclusion that Nikhil had. He bit his lip and exhaled one quick breath through his nose, then opened the apartment door. “Wilma!”

  Nikhil slammed the door and held the knob. “No.”

  “I’ll use every weapon I’ve got. I’ll take down the entire city.”

  “Don’t you see? We have the power.” He tapped the stack of papers. “Use these, Topher. These are so much better than crashing innocent people’s cars.”

  “Fine. I’ll do it your way.” Topher flicked on Nikhil’s old datapad and started scrolling through it.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Madison Zuchek. We’ve got to call her, make our demands.”

  “Not yet! I’ve got to . . . there are some things I have to do first.” Nikhil looked over the railing. Uncle Andre would kill him if he tried to call. He said not to contact him no matter what. But there had to be a way to tell him what was going on. “Don’t do anything until I say so.”

  “Sure, right.” Topher still had his head in Nikhil’s datapad.

  Nikhil snatched it out of his hands, wound up, and threw it as far as he could into the parking lot. It cracked in half the moment it landed on the cement. Nikhil sprinted down the stairs, ran to the biggest half, and jumped, coming down hard with his shoe. The pad splintered under his foot with a satisfying crunch.

  He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, brandished the new datapad, and looked up at the second-floor balcony. Topher still stood at the rail, his arms full of paper, watching him. “I mean it, Topher,” Nikhil called. “You want my help, you don’t make a single move until you hear from me.”

  “VISITOR.”

  Not again. “Audio.”

  “Andre.” Sofia’s customary coolness was gone, and the two syllables of his name sounded white hot. “Open the door. I mean it. Open this door right now or I will kick it in.”

  “You may have good legs, but you could not kick in the door.”

  “Try me and see. Three hundred fifty bucks and change to fix the lock and the frame. I’ve checked.”

  Andre opened the door.

  “I’m wearing my boots.” He looked. She was. Tall boots. Boots that were not so much made for walking as for kicking the shit out of things. With the dangerous boots, she was wore the same black pants and blazer she’d worn to Oliver’s party—an outfit for sipping cocktails or arresting bad guys with equal ease. He stepped aside and let her in.

  Sofia moved into the room. She clicked off the companel, and frowned at his datapad, which sat propped against the open comscreen.

  “I was listening to that.”

  “So?”

  “Did you know that The Chicago Development Commission dropped out of the economic summit? So did Quensis and Boeing. Without Overdrive, Detroit’s playing to an empty house.”

  Sofia waved her arms at the comscreen. “Look at this. You’re trapped in some virtual nightmare. This is not real. This is not healthy.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You didn’t answer your phone.”

  “I know. I was the one not answering it.” Andre turned his back on her and walked to the kitchen.

  Sofia followed. “Why weren’t you at the funeral this morning?”

  Andre shrugged. “Black isn’t my color?”

  “Andre, the last thing I want is to hurt you, but it’s still on the list.”

  “Me being at Elway’s service would have been like spitting on his grave.”

  “Not being there is like pissing on it!”

  He couldn’t look at her. He opened the refrigerator and stared into it as if it were modern art in need of interpretation. “I’ve got spinners calling me at all hours. It’s only a testament to the strength of the privacy laws that they haven’t found my house yet. You know they were staking out the funeral.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “If I had shown up, the attention would have been on me, not on Elway.”

  “Elway is beyond caring. Everyone else isn’t. You should have been there.”

  Andre reached into the fridge and rearranged the bottles there. “I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t take the idea of everyone hating me.” He closed the door and leaned forward against it. “I guess that makes me a coward.”

  “Just human.”

  He could stand straight now, could turn and look at her. “I should have let you in the other day.”

  “Well, it’s probably for the best. Last time, I just wanted to kick your ass. But that isn’t why I’m here. I need you. I may have a lead on our Overdrive terrorists.”

  Andre stared into her eyes. Did she have Nikhil’s name? Was that why she came here? “You got the court order to unseal the database?” If the false fourths still didn’t know the badges could be tracked . . .

  “Honeywell is still stalling and she’s got the U of M legal machine in gear. No, I got an anonymous tip. Routed through an info broker. They didn’t know it was one of ours. I got a name. A girl named Wilma Riley.”

  Not Nikhil then. He counted to ten, hoping she’d go on, but she waited him out. “How did she know to call you?”

  “She didn’t. She called you. I’m still showing up as the head of the task force—for now, at least—so all of your calls are coming to me. There’s been a hell of a lot of them, thank you very much.”

  “Spinners?”

  “Anchors too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t think I can handle them?”

  “This tip. Why’d it come to me? I’m off the task force. Even if I weren’t, this isn’t our case.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. We’re investigating dead fourths, you saw fourths sabotaging Overdrive. Don’t tell me it’s not connected.”

  He said nothing, letting the question eat into the silence. Finally, her lips compressed into a line, she forced a breath through her nose. “I’m trying to save your ass. You don’t deserve the roasting you’re getting. At least not all of it.”

  “Did they mention any names?” Did they say Nikhil? Did they say LaCroix? But he had to tread carefully, even here, even now.

  “No names. This Wilma Riley says she knows who the terrorists are, where they are. Might just be a pissed-off girlfriend. Sounded angry and scared. She said she’d meet with us, but only face to face. Gave me an address near River Rouge Park.” />
  Doubt spread small wings in his stomach. “In the zone? I don’t like that.”

  “We’re not delivering pizzas, we’re armed law enforcement.”

  “You’re armed.”

  She rolled her eyes toward his empty gun holster hanging near the door. “Do you—”

  “I’ll be right back.” Andre marched to the bedroom, knelt on the floor, and ran his thumb over the lock to open the hidden safe. The Yavorit had almost the heft and size of the Guardian, if not its range and accuracy. He holstered it, wondering if he was just reacting like a typical Detroiter to the oh-zone. Or maybe just like a typical cop, who wanted his informants in an interrogation room, in broad daylight, with recording equipment at hand. If he wanted the terrorists stopped, he had to go where they were. Still, something about it didn’t sit right. He called to Sofia from the bedroom. “If she wanted to name names, why not just tell you on the phone?”

  “You could have asked her that yourself if you’d taken the call.”

  “LEAVING OVERDRIVE, TAKE MANUAL control,” the Banshee’s dashboard announced. “Leaving Overdrive, drive safely.”

  Sofia resettled her hands on the wheel a moment before she absolutely had to, a gesture Andre wouldn’t have noticed last week. He wondered if that was a universal habit and if so, how that kind of thing began. He resolved to look for it in the future then dismissed the idea. Let it go.

  Houses at the edge of the zone showed token efforts toward renovating. Some were lit by kerosene lights or electric generators. Others had smoke coming from the chimneys. It was too warm for a fire, but people still had to cook. As they moved deeper into the zone, occupied houses and rudimentary businesses gave way to the sad emptiness of the truly abandoned.

  The display showed their path moving through a complicated maze of once-suburban neighborhood, their headlights piercing a bright path through the fading twilight. “I’d love to meet the genius who laid these streets out in looping curves,” Sofia said through gritted teeth.

  Andre had liked neighborhoods like this when he was a kid, but he saw her point. His nostalgia disappeared altogether as another thought occurred to him. A story he’d heard from an older patrolman about these neighborhoods and sightlines from a patrol car. He reached out and accessed the companel.