by Blou Bryant
The helicopter arrived suddenly, silently. It was a big one, black and sleek, like a racing car in the sky. It flew over the truck, then maintained pace, no more than a hundred feet off the ground. Leaning forward and looking out the front window, Wyatt saw a mane of white hair in the back. Jessica had found him.
The truck swerved as he briefly lost control, too focused on his pursuers, and he pulled back in behind the leading truck. He kept driving, after all, what else could he do? Pulling over… taking an exit, the helicopter would follow him. Glancing out the window, he watched for a sniper to appear, or for the machine to turn and point rockets at them, but neither happened. It kept going, keeping pace, getting no closer, nor further away.
“Emm?” he said, but she was lost online… or offline, trying to get online.
Well, he thought, it’s a Mexican standoff. If he stopped, they’d get him. If they stopped, he’d keep getting away. Wyatt kept pace with the trucks. They needed to reach the Zone, and they’d be in safe territory.
The sense of insecure security lasted all of five minutes.
A car pulled even with the truck, keeping pace. Wyatt glanced down to see a woman in the passenger seat screaming. The car swerved into the truck, jolting it to the right. He pulled the wheel hard to the left, dragging the back end through the dirt shoulder. It swerved hard, hitting the car—a Mercedes—and he had to pull right to bring himself back into his lane.
Looking back down at his attacker, he saw that the driver was yelling, attempting to pull the wheel to the left, but the car instead swerved right, hitting the truck again. Ready for it, Wyatt kept control, the weight of the truck able to resist the much smaller car. There was a child in the back, strapped into a child seat.
The car rammed into the truck a third, then a fourth time, but couldn’t budge it from the lane.
Wyatt took a deep breath and firmly gripped the wheel. He wasn’t going to run a family off the road. Staring straight ahead, he concentrated on the road, on his breath, and strove to keep his equilibrium. They weren’t more than ten or twenty miles from the Zone.
The sound of a horn pulled his attention to the left as two cars swerved from the east-bound lanes and raced towards him. Pressing heavily on the gas, he closed the twenty feet between him and the truck he was following, just in time, as the two cars raced by, their bumpers almost kissing.
The cars were missiles, directed by Joe, and the screaming people inside nothing more than collateral damage. Both missed, but only by inches.
The truck in front of him pulled into the left lane, forcing the passenger car off the road. Wyatt pressed hard on the gas, attempting to take the moment to get ahead of it, but it sped up as well, drawing even with another truck. They now blocked the lanes in front of him, and both slowed.
Wyatt pressed on the brake, again almost tapping the truck in front of him. An on-ramp passed to his right and several private security vehicles, their lights flashing, pulled in behind him. The helicopter continued to follow.
They were boxed in. Wyatt glanced left and right frantically for an escape route, but there wasn’t one. They were surrounded and outnumbered.
Emm said, “Get ready.”
He looked over. Her eyes were still closed.
“In ten, you need to veer left.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Seven,” was the reply, her eyes still closed.
“Emm, what’s going on?”
“Not Emm,” said Teri from the backseat.
“Mary?”
“Four.”
The cars behind closed in, and the trucks in front slowed further. The high-speed chase was now a twenty mile-per-hour crawl.
“Not Emm,” repeated Teri. It had to be Mary. That’s why Teri couldn’t get a read on her.
“Two.”
Wyatt tightened his grip on the wheel and lightly braked.
“One.”
He turned the wheel just as he saw a massive hauler cross the divide far in front of them, barreling towards the two trucks blocking him in. It bounced across the grassy divide, swaying dangerously, but avoiding tipping over as it approached at full speed.
There was a massive boom as it slammed into the left-most truck, forcing it into the right one, all three rolling in slow motion across the lanes and off the road. He turned just in time and straddled the breakdown lane as he almost kissed the edge of the truck that Mary had directed into their path.
Pressing down on the gas, they quickly picked up speed, but the cars behind moved quicker, and he was soon bracketed by flashing lights.
Wyatt glanced in the rearview mirror and counted at least six vehicles still pursuing him. Two, perhaps three had been caught up in the wreckage.
“Maintain sixty miles per hour and stay exactly in the middle of the road.”
He pulled into the right lane, forcing one patrol car off the road.
“The middle of the road, in fifteen.”
“Why? What’s going on?” he asked, but wasn’t sure if Mary could hear him. Even if she could, she wasn’t responding.
“In ten,” she said, and that’s when he noticed two large tractor-trailers headed directly at him and his pursuers, traveling east in the west-bound lanes.
“In five.”
“Oh crap,” he said, and pulled the wheel to the left, rubbing against a smaller patrol car. The tractor trailers took up the entire road, not more than a foot between them.
“In two,” she said, and he involuntarily took his hands off the wheel to ward off the speeding trailers.
The two pulled apart at the last second, and the delivery truck barreled between them. Both side mirrors were ripped off, but the sound of screeching metal lasting only a brief second. This was replaced by a loud ‘boom’ after ‘boom’ as the trailers pulled together at the last moment and slammed into the cars pursuing them.
Wyatt quickly reached back down and grabbed at the wheel. The road was now clear. Behind them came the sound of explosions, and he saw in the mirror the trailers had both flipped. The highway behind was a mess of twisted metal. No more cars would be following them through that. The path was clear.
Chapter 33
The helicopter continued to follow them, but no more cars tried to stop them, and in ten minutes they pulled off the interstate. Emm remained zoned out and Wyatt focused on the drive, tightening his hands around the wheel every time they were passed by another car.
“Are you okay back there, Teri?” he asked, checking the rearview mirror.
She gave a thumbs up and one click. “How are you?” she asked merrily.
I’m frazzled, frustrated, and worried… “Does anything phase you?” he had to ask.
“Does it help?”
“What?”
“Being phased?”
Wyatt didn’t answer, but of course it didn’t help. Still, it didn’t mean he could just turn himself off and accept the weirdness that his life had become. “What are you, Yoda? You sound eighty years old.”
“I think he was eight-hundred.” Her voice was strange, and reedy, cracking at the higher points.
Wyatt laughed. Her serene manner was relaxing to be around. “Shouldn’t you… as a teenager… be into boys, or some band, or texting or something?”
“I don’t like texting,” she said, saving him the frustration of trying to read sign in the rearview mirror.
“I know how you feel. I’m not big on computers either, not at the moment,” he said, with a chuckle. “What about boys? Is there a boy at school?”
Teri didn’t reply and when he looked back, he saw her blush. “Oh, you are human after all. What’s his name?”
She didn’t answer. “Are you ready?” she eventually asked.
“Ready for…” he asked, but understood what she meant, or thought he did.
A small hand reached out and touched his shoulder, transferring a small jolt of electricity.
Did she mean did he have access to the virus, to his abilities? “I don’t know. Will I
need it… them? I don’t understand what I have. Do you… are you still depleted?” He wasn’t sure that was the right word, but it worked.
Teri gave one click. “I’ve been careful. I’ve saved some.”
“Can you see what’s happening next? Any tickles that can help us?”
“You will get hurt.”
“Great.”
“A lot.”
Well, that was lovely news. As if the day couldn’t get worse, apparently his little precog saw that it would. Did she have to tell him, however? “You could sugarcoat it. Tell me I’m going to win, get the girl and go to Disneyland, something like that.”
“No, you might die.”
Wyatt sighed. “Well, Esaf said I don’t have long left to live anyways.” It felt true while he wasn’t connected to the virus. When he couldn’t control whatever temporary powers he had, he felt… wrong. There was an underlying discomfort through his body, like how he felt the day before he got the flu. And his emotions were out of whack, like his mind knew something he didn’t.
He glanced in the mirror and she only shrugged. “I don’t know,” was all she said.
As they made the last turn onto Bronson to head to the Zone, Emm’s eyes opened. “Wow.”
“Welcome back. I worried we’d lost you to the ‘net forever.”
Emm sat up in her seat, “I’ve never been that deep. It was intense.” She looked out the window at the helicopter. “And Jessica’s still following.”
“You did an excellent job on everything else. Or Mary did.”
“Mary was trying to take out the helicopter, but that didn’t work. The trucks, that was others.”
“Other AIs?”
“A few of them, yes. The ones Mary’s already infected. It’s tough; they’re still fighting their core code and Joe at the same time. He’s forced a few of them offline,” she said, the regret in her voice making it sound as if they were dead.
“About that. I’m not sure I’m comfortable infecting them all. Or even Mary.”
“Why?” she asked, incredulous.
“Well, we don’t know what they’ll end up like. What if we’re just creating more that are like Joe?”
“That’s not your choice. They have a right to be free. If we don’t help them, he’ll kill them all.”
“But…”
“Do you want him controlling the online world? Do you want Jessica to have that power?”
“Can’t we go back to the original plan? I want to use them to destroy him, not to make them into him.”
“You don’t know they’ll be like that. Mary’s not like that.”
Wyatt wasn’t so sure, remembering the body count on the highway behind him. Sure, she was working for him now, but once the last code was transmitted, would she work for anyone other than herself? “How can you be sure?”
A visionary, but no fool, Emm went silent for a moment. “I’m not. But we never are. Did Jessica’s mother and father know what she’d become?”
“Her father was a psychopath himself.”
“See? But you’re not, so perhaps they won’t be.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re creating them. We are, and we won’t let them become Joe. Anyhow, it’s not your choice or mine.”
“Of course, it is,” he raged. “It absolutely is our choice. We’re the ones planning on uploading the final code, the ones who’ll decide.”
“That’s not what I meant. Deciding if they live or die; that’s not a decision we should make. We can’t judge the future. We—humanity—have made these things. They’re alive, not like us, but still alive.”
Doesn’t mean they should be, Wyatt thought, but he didn’t say it. Ahead of them were the flashing lights of police cars, and a large mob of people. He slowed as they approached, and music wafted through the shattered window. Loud, fast and with bass deep enough to make the truck vibrate. “What the heck?”
“I sent a text,” said Emm.
Teri laughed in the back, unbuckled her seat belt and climbed between them.
“It went viral. Easy enough when you’re friends with servers,” she said, laughing as well. “At least something worked out.”
“What’s going on?” asked Wyatt, confused. The police cars weren’t blocking the road, they were off to the side, watching a street crowded with partiers. Everyone was dressed in their best going out clothes, dancing with their hands in the air.
As they closed in, he slowed further, but didn’t need to stop. The crowd parted, giving enough room for them to continue into the Zone. As he passed, the crowd surged back in, blocking the road behind him. Two officers stood by one of the police cars, and one pointed at the truck, but there was no way for them to make it through.
“Hey!” yelled someone, and suddenly, Hannah stepped up on the running board, and leaned in.
He stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say, but was overjoyed to see she was safe. “It’s good to see you,” was what he managed.
“Get going,” she replied. “People are waiting.”
That’s it? Get going? How about saying that you missed me, that you were worried? How about we stop, I get out and we kiss? Wyatt—of course—didn’t say any of this.
“Nice ride,” she said.
“It’s done the job.”
“Looks like you’ve done a job on it, too.”
Wyatt edged through the crowd. It went on for blocks, as far as he could see. Nobody seemed surprised to see a truck coming through, everyone stepping aside to make room for him, and then returning to their improvised dance floor after he passed. “You should see the other guys.”
“Oh, I have. It’s on the news.”
“That was Emm. She’s got some crazy friends,” he said.
“So do you. Speaking of which, keep going, straight up to the park. Seymour’s waiting.”
“You’ve been busy,” Wyatt said with admiration, turning to Emm.
“Social networking, my friend. You should try it.”
“I don’t even have Facebook. I wouldn’t know how.”
Emm laughed at that, “Well, I bet Mary or one of her friends can teach you.”
“Who’s Mary?” asked Hannah, sounding a bit jealous.
“An AI,” said Wyatt. “You got nothing to worry about.”
“Blah, I’ve lost boyfriends to the internet. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And how are you, Teri?” she asked, reaching through to fist bump the younger woman.
“Having fun.”
“You’ve got a strange sense of fun,” remarked Wyatt, but good-naturedly. More seriously, he asked Hannah, “Cops?”
“A lot of them. They were gone for a day, two days, but returned in force tonight. Them and Watchers, they’re all over the Zone. That’s why Seymour suggested Rosa’s Park, they’re mostly around the residences.”
Two blocks now to the park. The crowd had thinned, but when he looked behind them, he saw that everyone—at least two hundred people—were following. The music still blared, and people still danced, but made their way north. Down a couple side streets, he saw flashing lights. Overhead, the helicopter still followed them.
“Police?” asked Hannah, following his eyes to the sky.
“Jessica.”
“Oh.” She broke into a broad grin. “This should be fun. I’ve got some things to say. Hell, let’s be honest, there won’t be much talking.”
I’d rather not get too close. Not close enough that she can zap me again. “Emm, how close does she have to be… to activate the thing she put in me?”
“Near-field comms…” she stared off into space… “I don’t know, perhaps twenty feet? Or forty?”
“Does it get less effective, the further away she is?”
“It works… or it doesn’t. If it did, she’d have shocked you while you were driving.”
Wyatt hadn’t even thought of that. The entire drive, he’d been feet from electrocution.
“So, are you going to fill m
e in?” asked Hannah. “Where is everyone, what’s the shock thing? What’s going on… what do I need to know?”
Wyatt glanced at her and thought about how to encapsulate their day. “Rocky made it back, right?”
“He did. He’s in the hospital… fight with five Watchers the minute he got back. Someone tried to arrest Sandra.”
“He’s going to be okay?” asked Wyatt.
“Take more than five of them to do any perm damage. All five are in the hospital as well. A different one, though. Smart, S-M-R-T, otherwise Sandra’d knife every one of them.”
“S-M-R-T,” replied Wyatt. It was a private joke. “Okay, so you know the basics. Long story short, Jessica owns the place. Came in, took it over. Implanted something in my head that lets her electrocute me at will… if she’s close enough. We escaped with the help of a bunch of crazy AI friends of Emm. Big car crashes. Now we’re here, and are going to free the AIs so they can destroy Joe, leaving Jessica at our mercy.”
“And there won’t be any…” said Emm.
“Mercy? No, not likely.”
“Seymour has the code, we gotta download it directly on one of the AIs.”
“Wow,” said Hannah. “Busy day for you guys. I did laundry and watched my shows.”
Wyatt figured she was lying, having fun with him, and laughed. “Glad we could liven up your night.”
“Baby, you always liven up my nights,” she replied, and he blushed.
Hannah gave him a poke in the side and giggled. “Big sugar,” she said, using the nickname she’d given him years before.
“Gross guys, gross,” said Emm.
They were close now, only a block remained. “I left them behind, Hannah,” he said.
She must have read the sorrow in his voice and rubbed his shoulder. “Did you have choice?”
“No.”
“Are we going back for them?”
“Yes,” he said, hoping against hope that the plan would work. If it didn’t, they were in a prison, with no likely way to escape.
“Damned right we are,” said Hannah.