by Gary Gibson
‘Same procedure as before,’ said Rozalia. ‘We stick to the safe routes as much as possible. It’s a long time until nightfall, which is to our advantage since we won’t have to deal with any night patrols.’
‘It’s settled, then,’ said Yuichi. ‘We head for the labs. The other stage has to be there.’
Oskar peered at him. ‘And if it isn’t?’
‘Then we figure something else out,’ Yuichi spat at him from between gritted teeth.
‘Hey.’ Oskar put his hands up in mock surrender. ‘I was just—’
‘No, please,’ Yuichi barked. ‘Feel free to share your brilliant and incisive insights. But in the meantime, how about we just go fucking look and see what we find?’
I looked away so Oskar couldn’t see me smirk.
We were soon off, all four of us crammed into the bile-free SUV. I gripped the wheel hard as I guided us once more beneath the ruined bridge, across the shallow waters and back up onto the road on the other side. I soon threw caution to the wind, taking my foot off the accelerator only when I was absolutely forced to.
‘Careful,’ Yuichi shouted, bracing himself against the ceiling with one hand as we hit a particularly nasty bump. ‘I don’t think I could deal with the irony if you wind up trashing the car before we get there.’
I didn’t reply, my eyes fixed straight ahead as I picked out routes around wrecked cars and rubble. I’d come this way enough times now that I pretty much knew it off by heart.
I slowed only once I reached the elevated motorway over the Pinheiros so I could navigate my way past the blockade of cars. As I eased past the obstruction, I couldn’t help but glance towards the high-rise car park, only to find that it was now almost entirely demolished.
I caught a glimpse of a line of bee-brains, straggling along a street far below. What if, I wondered, Nadia hadn’t simply drowned as I had assumed? What if the bee-brains had taken her alive? Would they have made her into one of them? I suddenly imagined Nadia among their number, and ground my teeth until my jaws ached. As soon as we were past the blockade, I floored the accelerator again.
‘Slow down,’ said Rozalia as we came back down from the motorway. ‘We don’t know if Casey has any other surprises waiting for us.’
‘Sure.’ Even so, it took an effort of will to make myself ease off on the pedal.
A few minutes later we reached the avenue leading towards Retièn, and by then I had little choice but to slow down anyway. The whole length of the road was just as crowded with ruined vehicles and rubble as I remembered.
‘Hey,’ Rozalia said suddenly, her voice tense. She was in the rear, leaning over the side of my seat and pointing ahead. ‘Did anyone see something?’
‘Like what?’ I asked, leaning my head back slightly without taking my eyes off the road. ‘Bee-brains?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. I could hear puzzlement in her voice. ‘I don’t think so. Or at least, it didn’t look like it.’
‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Yuichi from beside me.
Rozalia blew air through her nose. ‘Well, it was moving too fast to be a bee-brain, anyway.’
‘Some kind of animal?’ Oskar ventured.
Rozalia laughed hollowly. ‘See, I would have agreed with you, except there isn’t anything with four legs in a ten-mile radius of any Hive. The bee-brains’d just kill them for food.’
‘Aren’t they infected by the virus?’ I asked.
‘Animals?’ Rozalia shook her head. ‘No, it’s human specific, far as we know.’
‘Then what did you see?’ I asked.
She shook her head irritably. ‘I don’t know. Besides, it’s not like we have any choice except to keep going.’
She was right, of course. My hands grew damp where they grasped the wheel. As I steered, I had been studying not only the way ahead, but also possible avenues of retreat. I could see the part-collapsed building up ahead that had forced Nadia into an unexpected detour, and thereby sealed her fate. I knew I had no choice but to make precisely the same detour, in order to reach our destination, and had to fight down a mounting sense of dread. But when I turned the corner, there were no milling crowds of bee-brains ready to launch themselves at us: only empty, deserted streets and the wreck of the SUV we had been forced to abandon.
Maybe the bee-brains are all late risers, I thought to myself, forcing myself to relax a little to reduce the painful tension in my chest.
And then, incredibly, I heard what sounded like a dog barking.
‘Did anybody else hear that?’ Rozalia demanded, her hand nearly crushing my shoulder. ‘Did you?’
‘I think we all heard it,’ Yuichi said drily. ‘Guess something’s managed to stay alive around here after all, despite the bee-brains.’
I glanced at Oskar in the rear-view mirror; he had a strange look on his face. Small beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. I kept on going, taking the next left to get us back onto the main avenue, after which we could head straight for Retièn.
‘Goddammit,’ Oskar croaked from behind me. ‘Goddammit, stop the car!’
I glanced at the rear-view mirror again in time to see him clawing for the door handle.
‘Fuck, Oskar,’ I shouted, ‘what are you . . . ?’
‘Look,’ said Rozalia, pointing ahead.
I looked, but I couldn’t believe it. It was Oskar’s dog, Lucky, straight up ahead at the next intersection, her belly to the ground and her tail wagging furiously. She leaped up and barked again, then started to bound down the length of the street towards us.
Oskar slammed the door open and jumped out almost before I had pulled to a halt. Rozalia followed him, climbing out of the car and starting towards the dog.
‘Well, goddam,’ said Yuichi, shaking his head in wonder as he got out as well. ‘Looks like his hound didn’t drown after all.’
I jumped out. Oskar had stopped in front of the SUV, a look of boundless joy on his face. Lucky came dashing across the intersection and straight towards her owner. The brilliant morning sunlight made it hard to see her clearly at first.
Too late, I saw the thick belt of explosives wrapped around the dog’s midriff.
‘Oskar!’ I screamed. ‘Run!’
He turned to look at me, his expression faltering at the sound of my voice.
After that, everything appeared to happen in slow motion, with the grim inevitability of a nightmare playing out to the very end.
I dropped my rifle and ran, just as Lucky came bounding up to Oskar. Something picked me up and carried me through the air before slamming me back down again. My ears filled with a muted roar that seemed to go on forever; intense, painful heat bathed my legs, and I cried out, afraid I was on fire.
I tried to crawl away, gasping and choking on the thick dust that now filled the air, and tried to push myself up on my elbows. My hands were raw and bleeding, and there was a pain deep in my chest that gave me pause.
But I was alive.
I looked around, hearing a sound like rain pattering down. A hand, neatly severed at the wrist and wearing a signet ring I recognized as Oskar’s, hit the tarmac close by. Bits of metal and ground concrete fell all around.
I finally staggered back upright once more and gaped at what was left of our SUV. Its windows were shattered, the front crumpled and stained with red gore. There wasn’t much left of either Oskar or Lucky that was remotely recognizable.
Lucky. I like to think Oskar might have appreciated the irony.
I limped back towards the SUV and found Rozalia lying face down some metres away, her legs and arms sprawled out around her. She wasn’t moving.
‘Jerry.’
I looked around and saw Yuichi, who’d dragged himself over to the side of a building, propping himself up against the wall. One of his legs was twisted in a way that was deeply unnatural, the blue denim of his jeans dark with blood.
I hurried over to Rozalia. At first I was terribly afraid she might be dead, but as I kneeled by her she suddenly shifted an
d coughed, and I felt a wash of desperate relief. I took hold of her shoulders, helping her onto her side just as carefully as I could.
Her eyes flickered open, and she stared up at me. ‘Casey,’ she whispered.
‘It’s me, Jerry. Casey’s not here. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Oskar . . . ?’
I shook my head. ‘Can you move? Get up?’
She licked her lips. ‘Think so. Maybe.’
I got an arm around her shoulder and helped her up, pausing only once when she yelped with pain. She leaned heavily on me as I helped her over towards Yuichi, seating her beside him.
Finally, I collapsed onto the pavement, worn-out and aching.
‘You know what this means, right, Jerry?’ said Yuichi. ‘Neither of us are going anywhere fast. You need to go and find Casey.’
I shook my head. ‘I need to get you somewhere safe first.’
Rozalia shook her head. ‘Listen to him. Casey must have been watching when he hit the detonator. He could be getting ready to pick us off with a rifle and a sniper sight. There is nowhere safe you can take us.’
‘I—’
‘No, Jerry,’ she gritted. ‘Get the fuck out of sight now, while you can. If there’s another stage around here somewhere, find it first and then come back for us.’
I glanced at the windows and rooftops around us. Casey must have been hiding somewhere up high and watching us, I figured. I knew Rozalia was right, but I still felt that I would be committing some terrible betrayal by simply leaving them both here like this, entirely vulnerable should any bee-brains happen upon them.
I pulled myself back up and hunted around until I had gathered all but one of our rifles. Where the last might have gone, I had no idea. Presumably the force of the explosion had flung it somewhere far away, and the air was still too thick with dust for me to be able to see where it might have landed. Of the three left, one was clearly too badly damaged to be operational, so I discarded it. I checked over the two remaining rifles, then pulled one over my shoulder by its strap before handing the other to Rozalia.
‘I’ll be back,’ I said to them both.
Yuichi nodded tightly. ‘Good luck, Jerry.’
I ran for cover, trying to ignore the very real possibility that this might be the last time I’d see them alive.
I kept one eye on the surrounding buildings as I hurried along to the next intersection, keeping to the sides of buildings and the shelter of doorways. Some instinct, however, made me sure that Casey wasn’t anywhere nearby any more.
I figured that Lucky must have escaped from the river and got lost in Sao Paolo’s streets until Casey came across her on one of his secret visits. In the brief moment I’d seen her, she looked to be in good condition, as if someone had been looking after her. I’d have admitted to a certain grudging admiration for Casey’s strategy if I wasn’t so intent on blowing his fucking head off at the first opportunity.
I reached the corner of the next block and pulled myself into the recessed doorway of a bank, then stuck my head out to take a look around. The front entrance of Retièn was just across the road from where I crouched, a dozen metres away on the far side of an intersection. The building housing the labs was a blocky concrete affair, and its empty shattered windows offered no end of opportunities for Casey to take potshots at me if he was hiding in there somewhere. Nonetheless, I had to find some way inside.
A truck lay on its side across the middle of the intersection, partly blocking my view of the entrance to the labs. It angled across the road towards a children’s play park bordered by a waist-high concrete wall. The wall was perhaps six or seven metres in length, and at the far end stood the gutted remains of a taxi. I sketched out a route in my mind, took a deep breath, and made my move.
First I scuttled towards the truck, dropping down behind it and waiting. Nothing happened. I stayed there for another minute, sucking up my courage, before running towards the low wall, pulling myself over it and flattening myself to the ground.
Still no sound or sign of any kind of reaction.
I started to crawl on my hands and knees to where the concrete wall terminated. I peered around the corner towards the taxi, then ran towards it, dropping down to take advantage of what meagre shelter it offered.
Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as I thought. Directly neighbouring the labs was a garage, the skeleton of a car still mounted on a part-raised hydraulic platform. A narrow alleyway between the garage and the labs led to the next block down. Perhaps if I headed down that way, I could enter the labs from the rear and circle around behind Casey . . .
I ran towards the alley, then came to a halt, looking around.
Still nothing. I steadied my breath and began to make my way down to the far end.
I felt something press against my ankle and heard a click. I looked down, too late, to see a tripwire had been stretched across the alley.
Then the strangest thing happened: I saw myself die – and also escape death – not just once, but multiple times.
I saw how the detonation neatly separated my legs from my upper torso, like taking a piece of soft toffee and twisting it in half.
I saw the silver wire tense against my ankle, heard the same click, the crude, home-made mine somehow failing to detonate.
I saw myself take an entirely different route, never encountering the tripwire.
I saw sunlight glinting from the tripwire, making me hesitate just at the last moment.
I saw all of these, superimposed on each other, somehow happening, yet not happening, all at once.
Then I was somewhere else – somewhere that was neither here nor there. It was as if I had suddenly found myself in a darkened cinema, the alleyway reduced to a kind of projection, with me standing outside the universe and looking in.
A myriad possible outcomes merged and broke apart, until it became impossible to distinguish one from another.
‘Hello, Jerry,’ said a voice, and I crashed back into the real world to find Haden Brooks crouched against the wall beside me, his eyes flashing silver in the sun.
TWENTY-FOUR
I looked down again at the tripwire, almost invisible in the sunlight, just inches from my foot. One more step . . .
And yet I could clearly remember walking straight into it. I had heard the click, felt the heat and thunder of the detonation as it tore me apart . . .
Or had I? It was getting hard to remember, like trying to hold on to the memory of a dream.
I shuffled slowly back from the tripwire, my nerves singing with imagined pain.
‘What the hell did you just do?’ I demanded, my fear morphing into fury. ‘And where the hell did you . . .’
‘I interfered,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t supposed to.’
‘You . . . interfered?’ I stared down again at the wire, then back up at Haden. ‘Nobody could find you,’ I said. ‘You disappeared. I thought maybe the Patriots locked you in a cell, or you ran away once the fighting started . . .’
He shook his head. ‘None of the above.’
‘Haden,’ I said, ‘how can you even be here?’
‘You still have time,’ he said. ‘Here.’ His hand pressed something into mine. I looked down and saw an envelope crumpled into my palm.
I looked back up at him. ‘What the hell?’
‘You won’t see me again,’ he said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder, a warm grin on his face. ‘It’s been good, Jerry,’ he said, taking a step back.
‘Haden, wait. I . . .’
I blinked and looked around. My position had changed. I was once again standing with my foot just inches from the tripwire.
I stepped back again, darting my head around wildly. There was no sign of Haden.
It was as if the whole universe had suffered some glitch and reset itself; as if Haden had never really been there.
And yet, when I looked down at my open hand, the envelope was still grasped in it.
I squatted down on my haunches back at the mouth
of the alley and pulled the envelope open with trembling hands. Inside I found a single sheet of paper with nine names scrawled in neat, cursive handwriting: Chloe, Randall, Selwyn, Winifred, Yuichi, Rozalia, Oskar, Wallace and, finally, my own. Below each, Haden had written out a series of numbers and letters that were clearly transfer coordinates.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly desperately dry. My mind kept trying to reject everything that had happened in just the last minute or two. I had a hard time accepting even the reality of the envelope. Somehow I managed to slide the sheet back inside the envelope before pushing it deep into a pocket where I was sure it would not be lost.
I stepped carefully over the tripwire, with no lack of trepidation, and continued on my way down the length of the alley. When I came to the next street, I looked around and saw a rear entrance to the laboratories. I hustled up some steps to the frame of a smashed-in door and stepped through to a foyer, my rifle at the ready.
Now I knew just what to look out for, I had no trouble spotting a second tripwire. I moved with extreme caution, stepping over the wire and continuing deeper into the building.
I found myself surrounded by empty doorways. I swung my rifle from side to side, half expecting Casey to come charging out of one of them with guns blazing. I was met only by silence. I saw the mouth of a corridor, extending deep within the building, most of its length lost in darkness.
I heard a rattling sound from the other side of the foyer and twisted around, bringing my rifle to bear. An empty beer can rolled across the floor before bumping into a wall and coming to a stop.
Too late, I realized my mistake.
I turned. Casey emerged from the shadows, bringing the butt of his rifle crashing down on my head. The foyer tumbled around me, darkness limning the edges of my vision.
‘Too fucking easy, mate,’ I heard Casey say, before the darkness swallowed me up.
‘C’mon. Get up.’
A hand slapped my cheek. Something warm and liquid hit my face and I spluttered, rolling forward and onto my knees, the taste of brackish water on my lips. I blinked my eyes open, my head feeling as if it had been stuffed with old rags, and quickly discovered that my hands were cuffed together in front of me.