by Gary Gibson
Gary Gibson
Devil’s Road
First published by Brain in a Jar Books 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Gary Gibson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Gary Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover Art by J Caleb Design
First edition
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Contents
Jail Break
Death Notice
Signature Move
Island of Death
Guns, Cars and Kaiju
Sidekick Du Jour
To The Rift
Endless Highway
About the Author
Jail Break
Before the riot started and the cannibal came looking for her, Dutch McGuire dreamt she sat behind the wheel of a ‘69 Ford Mustang that rode low on the road, its chassis stiffened from high torque, the starred and broken tarmac of a desert highway reduced to a smooth blur beneath its wheels. A city rose up at the end of the road, and a great beast prowled through its streets, sweeping apartment buildings into dust as it searched for her. She should have been afraid, yet she felt nothing but a kind of serenity emanating from somewhere deep in her bones.
At last the beast faded away, and the city, and Dutch woke to unexpected darkness.
She blinked and sat up. For as long as Dutch had been an inmate the cell-block lights burned twenty-four seven from behind metal grilles, but for the first time they were dark. Indeed, the very absence of light had been sufficient to wake her.
She listened, hearing others come awake and calling to each other. A series of mechanical clicks and thuds echoed up and down the steel-grey corridor outside her cell, as if every door in the block had come unlocked at once.
For a moment the whole of the cell-block fell deathly quiet, followed by an uproar of yelling.
Yara stirred and muttered something foul in Russian from the bunk above Dutch’s, her voice still thick with sleep.
Dutch swung her feet onto the cold concrete floor and listened to the shouts of the other inmates. Judging by what she could hear, nobody else had any idea what had happened. She stood and touched the barred door of their cell. It slid open with ease.
Well, thought Dutch. That’s what you got for relying on a centralised computer-controlled prison system.
Dutch stared at the corridor beyond until a sudden thought sent her to the cell’s one tiny window, which looked out across the prison yard. She had to stand on tiptoe, but from what she could see, the cell block on the far side of the yard had also gone dark—and if both blocks were thus affected, she might as well assume the whole damn prison had gone dark.
Dutch listened. It sounded like some of the shouting came from over there too.
She grabbed hold of the iron bars in front of the glass and pulled herself up so she could get a better view. She looked across the yard in time to see a door come crashing open. Inmates spilled out in a flood, some carrying improvised weapons.
Dutch dropped back down and searched under her mattress until she found the bar of soap hidden there. She fumbled with it, cursing when it slipped out of her hands, picking it up once more and breaking it apart to reveal a shank.
Yara swung her legs over the side of her bunk and looked down at her. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ she asked in Russian.
‘Riot,’ Dutch replied, also in Russian. ‘Or some kind of mass breakout. Maybe both.’ By now, her sight had adjusted to the darkness.
Yara levered her immense bulk out of her bunk, climbing down beside Dutch and flexing arms made thick and ropy with muscle from long hours of weight-lifting. ‘A riot?’ she asked with ill-concealed enthusiasm. ‘What started it?’
‘I don’t know. But all the cell doors just came unlocked at once.’
Yara let out a heavy breath, her broad, meaty hands flexing at her sides. Once, Yara told Dutch she’d considered a career as a Sumo wrestler before killing three men in a brawl. ‘All of them?’
Dutch nodded. ‘Far as I can tell, yeah. The other blocks look like they’re all opened up too.’
‘The guards?’
‘Are vastly outnumbered,’ said Dutch. ‘We don’t have much time.’
Yara’s heavy brows drew together. ‘You’re making a run for it?’
‘Aren’t you?’
Yara’s lips pressed together in a thin line of disapproval. ‘Why even try? They can find us easily enough.’
She meant the tracker chip embedded deep beneath the skin of every prisoner, of course. ‘Yara,’ asked Dutch, ‘exactly when is your release date?’
You could almost picture the wheels clicking into place one after the other any time Yara thought through anything of sufficient complexity. ‘I don’t have a release date,’ she said at last, glancing at the open cell door.
‘Me neither,’ said Dutch. ‘So since they’re never going to let either of us out, what else is there to do but run while we have the chance?’
‘But—!’
Dutch touched the other woman’s wrist. ‘There are well over a thousand prisoners, Yara. They can’t catch every last one of us.’
Yara nodded with a ponderous motion and reached out with her other hand. Dutch hesitated before grasping both of Yara’s hands in hers, wincing at the other woman’s powerful grip.
‘Good luck,’ said Yara. ‘And watch out for Anna. She still hates your guts.’
‘I’ll be gone before Anna can find me,’ said Dutch. ‘Good luck, Yara.’
Yara nodded, then loped out of their cell and into the darkness and chaos without another word. Dutch never saw her again.
Dutch tucked the shank into a pocket and slipped into the corridor. The cell block’s main doors weren’t centrally controlled, and the other prisoners had started applying themselves to the problem of opening them with considerable vigour. Most, like Yara and Dutch, had little or nothing to lose.
It occurred to Dutch whoever had shut down the power must also have disabled the backup generators designed for such an eventuality. Clearly someone had thought this through.
Dutch looked around, trying to figure out her next move. A dark mass on the floor of a neighbouring cell resolved into a body, outlined by a growing pool of blood. When you put nearly fifteen hundred extraordinarily dangerous people together in the same confined space for a number of years, she had soon discovered following her incarceration, certain enmities tended to develop. There would be more such reckonings before daylight arrived. Survival meant putting as much distance between her and anyone else who might feel the same way towards her.
Making her way down the corridor away from the main entrance, she found a steel conduit bolted to a wall and rising to the ceiling. One of the skylights looked like it might be within reach, were she to shimmy up the pipe.
It took some effort, but Dutch managed to grip the pipe around its circumference with her hands and knees. After several minutes of steady work, she’d managed to climb all the way up to the ceiling. She rested there for a moment, her skin slick and her leg and arm muscles burning. On any other day the guards would have beaten her unconscious and thrown her into solitary confinement by now.
A roar came from the far end of the corridor, and Dutch guessed the main cell block door had been forced open. She resisted the urge to climb back down and join them. She’d made too many enemies over the last five years for it to be worth the risk.
Dutch grabbed hold of the frame with her other hand as well before unlocking her knees from around the conduit. She hung loose for a moment, then pulled herself up, all the while employing some of the more colourful Russian expletives Yara had taught her. At last she emerged into the night air, straining to pull the rest of her body onto the roof.
She lay there panting for a while, then stood and looked across a flat roof coated in asphalt. A flash of light came from the direction of the main gates, followed by the echoing sound of gunfire. At a guess, the guards were fighting to restore order. From further off came the distant wail of more sirens, this time belonging to police cars.
Dutch searched around and soon located a gutter pipe bolted to the block’s outer wall. She worked her way down to the ground before running across an expanse of concrete towards the three-metre high wall surrounding the prison. She crouched in the shadows and listened until she felt sure none of the other prisoners had come this way.
She looked up at the top of the wall and realised, with a rush of despair, that she hadn’t thought through how she’d get over it. Could be with all the prisoners milling about at the front gates, or making a run for it, her chances of escaping that way weren’t so bad…
Before she could do anything more, Dutch heard an indrawn breath from behind her shoulder.
She started to twist around, the shank gripped hard in one hand, and felt a boot connect with her ribs. She fell backwards, and a fist soon followed, sending her sprawling. The shank went skittering into the shadows and out of sight.
Dutch coughed and grunted, then tried to get up. Her assailant shoved her back down with a boot.
Dutch looked up to see a small, almost grandmotherly woman in late middle-age. She had large white teeth that gleamed from beneath blond hair cut close to the scalp. Anna Dubayev, the Cannibal of the Steppes. She grinned at Dutch, a meat-cleaver clutched in one hand.
Dutch stared at the cleaver and wondered how the hell she’d kept it hidden from the guards all these years.
‘Oh, bublik,’ said Anna, ‘were you going to leave without saying goodbye to your old friend?’
‘I thought I’d wait until we were all a long way away from here, Anna,’ Dutch grunted, her eyes mesmerised by the cleaver. ‘Wouldn’t want to get myself locked up all over again, now, would I?’
Anna laughed. ‘They’ll catch us all soon enough.’ She shifted the cleaver into her other hand, her smile growing wider. ‘This might be the only chance I get to give you the farewell you deserve.’
Dutch glanced past Dubayev’s shoulder. ‘It’s too late, Anna. They’ve caught us already.’
‘Is that the best you can do? How very sad.’ Dubayev raised the cleaver above her head. ‘You know, I always wondered what you’d look like without any—’
The side of Anna Dubayev’s head sprayed outward in a fine red mist before she could finish her sentence. The lid of her remaining eye fluttered for a moment before her body went tumbling to the ground, her thin, greasy lips still twisted up in a snarl.
At first, Dutch had been sure the figure creeping up behind Anna must be a prison guard, but on closer observation changed her mind. He held an assault rifle, and had dressed for concealment, in all-black clothing and a balaclava that hid everything but his eyes.
‘Dai-Hsi McGuire?’ asked the man. To Dutch’s surprise, he had an English, not Russian, accent.
‘I prefer Dutch,’ she growled.
‘Whatever,’ he said in English. ‘You’re coming with me.’
She blinked at him. ‘Why?’
The Englishman stared at her. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’
‘It’s just that—’
A helicopter passed overhead, sweeping a searchlight across the prison grounds. The Englishman grabbed Dutch by the shoulder and dragged her deeper into the shadows, where a second man, also carrying an assault rifle and similarly dressed for concealment, stood watch.
The Englishman kept pulling her along the side of the wall, the second man following close behind. After about fifty metres he came to a halt next to a black rope hanging down from the top of the wall. Dutch watched as he slung his weapon over one shoulder before rappelling up the rope with consummate ease. He dropped into a crouch on top of the wall and gestured to her to follow.
‘You know how?’ the second man said to Dutch, gesturing at the rope with a tilt of his chin. Unlike the Englishman, this man’s accent was very definitely Russian.
‘I’m not sure…’
‘Just grab hold of it.’
She stared up at the waiting Englishman with considerable uncertainty, but the sound of more shooting from across the prison gave her all the impetus she needed. She gripped the rope in both hands and struggled to ascend the same way the Englishman had, her boots scuffing against the rough bricks, but her muscles felt like worn rags after all the climbing she’d already done.
She felt her grip loosening when the Englishman reached down and grabbed her wrist, hauling her the rest of the way up. Dutch soon scrambled into a sitting position beside him on top of the wall, gasping for breath.
‘I’ll go back down the other side first,’ said the Englishman, ‘then you. But please don’t try to run away, Miss McGuire. I don’t want to have to shoot you.’
‘What are you—military?’ she asked, still gasping for breath. ‘You’re not Russian Special Forces, for sure.’
Instead of replying, he scrambled back down the rope to the street outside. The rope’s other end came from a winch, mounted on the rear of a decrepit-looking mini-bus. The bus had the name of a children’s charity written on one side in Cyrillic.
Climbing back down turned out to be easier, but not by as much as she’d hoped. She dropped the last metre, landing hard. The Russian followed close behind her.
She looked around. A row of warehouses stood on the opposite side of the road, and she could see the dark waters of a river beyond them. Instead of re-winching the rope, the Russian cut it with a knife, discarding it at the foot of the wall.
‘Okay,’ said the Englishman, turning towards Dutch, ‘now we—’
He saw the punch coming and tried to dodge back out of range, but not fast enough. Dutch clipped him on the jaw with sufficient force to send him stumbling against the side of the bus, the assault rifle slipping from his grasp. She ran, legs and arms pumping, aiming for a narrow gap between two of the warehouses.
The Russian shouted something after her, but didn’t shoot. Her gut told her it wouldn’t take her more than fifteen, maybe twenty seconds to swim to the far shore of the river. It meant risking hypothermia, but at least it wouldn’t kill her. Or so she hoped.
She heard one of the men come running up behind her. Dutch willed herself to run faster, but exhaustion slowed her. She cried out as hands tackled her from behind, knocking her flat.
‘Don’t move!’ shouted the Englishman, twisting her arms behind her back.
She shoved an elbow back and felt it connect with his ribs. He let out a grunt, and in the next instant an armour-plated elephant danced a waltz on Dutch’s spine. Her back arched, her body going into convulsions and her teeth clenching together. She recognised the angry buzz of a Taser.
At that precise moment, staying flat on the ground with her face in a mud puddle seemed like the best idea ever.
‘Get the tracker,’ she heard the Englishman say.
The Russian grunted and his shadow fell across Dutch. She cau
ght the glint of light from a blade and struggled to lift herself, but her muscles felt like broken rubber bands.
His fingers probed the back of her neck, working their way down to her left shoulder. The blade broke her skin and began to dig deep into the upper muscles of her back. Dutch opened her mouth to scream, but the fingers of his other hand had already clamped themselves around her mouth. A guttural howl escaped from between his fingers regardless as he worked the blade deeper.
When he finally unclamped his fingers from around her mouth, she gulped air and vomited noisily onto the ground. She coughed and spat, then grunted as the Russian pushed her onto her back. He stood over her with something resembling a ball-bearing grasped between two fingers, his hands sticky with her blood.
‘Don’t want the Russian authorities following us where we’re going, da?’
He threw the ball-bearing away, then, with the Englishman’s help, got her back on her feet. Her arms were pulled behind her back and something tightened around her wrists. She was dragged aboard the mini-bus and deposited on the floor at the rear, rows of empty seats on either side of her.
The bus started forward, and Dutch rolled against the iron base of one of the seats. Up front, one of the two men sat on an improvised driving seat made from an upturned bucket, a jacker’s plug-in wheel pushed into a hole smashed through the dashboard. Dutch recognised the technique; hacking self-drive cars had provided much of her income as a teenager living on the streets of New Detroit.
The bus kept moving for another half hour. When it finally stopped, the two men dragged her back outside and propped her up against the side of the bus. Dutch saw they were in an empty back-street next to a long, dark limousine with tinted windows. The limousine door opened, and a driver—an actual, human driver, judging by her one brief glimpse of a non-jacker steering wheel—stepped out.
‘You run into any trouble?’ he asked the Englishman. He wore an expensive-looking dark wool suit, his accent Australian.
‘Nothing more than expected.’
‘Good.’ The driver nodded. ‘We should move fast, before they cordon off the whole town.’