by Gary Gibson
She waited until they wheeled her Coupé down the ramp, then supervised as engineers fixed brackets to the hood and rear to support a pair of film cameras. Any footage they obtained—assuming they survived to deliver it—would be edited and broadcast, streamed and displayed around the globe on an endless loop. The boot and rear racks had been stocked mid-flight with the supplies she’d requested—bottled water, survival gear, a repair kit, spare ammo and rockets, enough protein bars to last a week and a spare tyre mounted on the boot.
Nat came over to find her. ‘Everything good?’
‘So far.’ Once the engineers were done, she pulled the Coupé’s door open and looked in the back, where space had been made for weapons racks. She nodded with approval, seeing rifles of different calibers, along with an assortment of handguns, numerous boxes of ammo, and a pair of shoulder-fired rocket launchers.
‘Not bad,’ she said, standing back up. ‘Now all we need to worry about apart from giant hungry monsters that want to eat us is a couple of dickbags out to kill me.’
‘Maybe they’re waiting to see if you survive the Run first,’ Nat suggested.
She gave him a pointed look. ‘Or maybe we could ask Elektron if Muto hired him to kill me.’
Nat shook his head. ‘No way he’s involved with Muto.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I’ve been looking into Elektron—he’s received a lot of warnings from race officials over the past couple of years. Based on what I’ve been hearing, it’s far more likely he meant to sabotage the car to keep us out of the race.’
‘Then there’s something else I’ve been wondering,’ said Dutch. ‘How did the first guy Muto sent to kill me know I’d be in that hotel? Or Muto know I’d be arriving?’
‘Good question. If you find out, let me know.’
‘Before I went to the warehouse to get the Coupé I paid a visit to a guy called Hiro who does all of Muto’s computer hacking. He said Muto hired the ninja, but if she did, it would have to have been before we even landed in Japan. My guess is Hiro found some way to hack into Wu’s communications. There’s no other way she could have known.’
‘That would be worth looking into,’ Nat agreed, taking out his phone. ‘I’ll get his tech people onto it.’ He paused. ‘Maybe it’s worth checking the Coupé over again, a second time.’
‘There something worrying you?’
‘You said it yourself—there are two people out there who want to kill you. Elektron’s one thing, but there’s just one of him, and we can’t rule out any of the other contestants. Plus with all these engineers, mechanics, race support staff and the rest, there’s any number of opportunities for someone to try to sabotage or hurt us.’
‘Do we have the time?’ she asked skeptically. ‘We won the trials, so we’ll be the first over the starting line.’
A smile curled one corner of his mouth. ‘They decided to flip the order of departure this year and put the team with the worst time in pole-position.’
Dutch groaned. ‘You mean we’ll be the last to leave?’
‘Yeah, but think about it. It’ll give us a few extra hours to check the Coupé over.’
Dutch sighed and stripped off her jacket, throwing it on the roof of the Coupé before cracking open the boot and fetching the toolkit. ‘Then I guess now’s as good a time as any to get started.’
Nat started to take off his own jacket, and she gave him a look. ‘I think you’d know by now I work better on my own when I have a choice.’
He gave her a sharp look, then shrugged his jacket back on. ‘And there was me about to give you some advice on team-work.’
* * *
Dutch checked over the engine, chassis, drivetrain, ignition system and tyres for any signs of sabotage. She felt a sour sense of unease when she found something.
‘Someone cut the fuel line,’ she said a while later, handing Nat a rubber hose. A tiny incision had been cut in it. ‘It’s not enough to stop us—at least not straight away.’
He nodded, his face grim as he turned the hose in his hands. ‘But enough to bring us grinding to a halt a couple of hours into the race and stranded in the middle of nowhere. Nice.’
‘Which would make us a sitting target not just for an assassin taking part in the race, but any Kaiju that happened to be in the vicinity.’ She glanced towards Elektron’s Peterbilt semi. ‘Look, the one person we know who’s been acting in a suspicious manner is Elektron. I still think we should—’
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘We are not making an official report.’
‘But—’
‘I told you, it risks exposing our real reason for being here—and that’s final.’ He looked hard at her. ‘Understand? If he causes us any more trouble, I can deal with him.’
She watched him walk away, then threw the cut hose to the ground in disgust. She thought about going to find Elektron herself and wring his scrawny, foul neck, but she had a sense that would put her on a fast track back where Wu found her.
Hold it in, girl, she told herself, fighting down the anger before it erupted and took control. Save it until you need it.
* * *
A little while later, she paused from putting in a replacement hose to watch Vishnevsky the Kaiju-hunter trundle up to the starting line. Now they’d flipped the race order, he’d be the first to depart, having come last in the time-trials.
Rapid-fire, borderline-hysterical commentary came, as ever, from Wayne Wilson, broadcasting from the flat roof of the command centre-cum-holiday apartments. Wilson had covered the race since its inception and had the demeanour of a radio DJ permanently on the brink of an apocalyptic nervous breakdown.
The sun rose higher, and the day grew hotter. She tried, as she often had in the past, to summon up more memories of Teijouan from when she was young, before the Rift and before the Kaiju came. But all she could summon up was that one moment standing on the docks amidst all the thousands of others hoping for rescue, clutching her father’s hand and looking up at him and seeing the thick red curls of his beard.
It was hard to be nostalgic for a place you barely remembered, if you remembered it at all.
She cracked a beer and sat on the hood of the Coupé and watched the two priests take their turn at the starting line. General Hurley and his navigator came next. Then came Lucifer Black, the engine of his all-black vehicle growling like it was alive.
The flag came down, and Black shot towards the raised steel gate in the security fence, accompanied by Wilson’s frenetic rambling and stuttering rock music blasted through speakers.
After Black’s departure, Countess König was next. Dutch felt an old and familiar excitement grip her. Her own turn would come before long.
She found one of Nat’s security team and got him to keep an eye on the Coupé while she took a leak and to get something to eat in a tented mess hall. She was on her way back out of the tent with a burger and fries when she heard a roar of engines and raised voices.
People came swarming out of the tent behind her to see what all the fuss was. Dutch cast a wary eye towards the Coupé, saw the security guard was still standing next to it, and decided to find out what was going on.
Instead of some Kaiju emerging from the sea, as she’d half-feared, Dutch saw six Zodiac semi-rigid motorboats come powering up to the shore. Each carried about a dozen people, all carrying protest signs or shouting through loudspeakers.
Soldiers moved to intercept them, but there were too many protestors wading ashore for them to cope with—not to mention that every news camera in the Security Zone had turned around to film their arrival.
‘Hey,’ Dutch asked one of the mess cooks, standing watching the approaching Zodiacs with a greasy spatula in one hand, ‘is that Adam Figueroa?’
The kid nodded. ‘Sure looks like it.’
Figueroa’s beard and ponytail appeared a little greyer than Dutch remembered. He strode up the beach, his trouser-legs damp with saltwater, waving to the other protestors to follow.
‘We have a right to protest!’ he shouted, his amplified voice booming across the flat plain. ‘The Devil’s Run is a travesty. We should study the island, instead of trying to make a profit from it! Instead of funding research to reverse the Rift, foreign billionaires use it to make themselves even richer! We should be—’
A response came in a sudden wave of feedback. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the press,’ bellowed Wayne Wilson, sounding twice as loud as he had moments before, ‘if you would please direct your attention to the starting line, Doktor Elektron is set to blast off into the far reaches of the unknown!’
Elektron, up high in the cabin of his semi, slammed his horn. It blared out across the shore like the anguished moan of a lecherous dinosaur. Wilson kept up his patter, working hard to drown out Figueroa.
The soldiers now formed themselves into a cordon between the protestors and the starting line. Dutch looked out to sea. A rusty freighter sat two or three miles offshore, one of many such that resupplied the blockade. She guessed Figueroa must have bribed its captain to ferry them up close to the Security Zone.
‘Doktor Elektron!’ bellowed Wilson, ‘scourge of muggers and thieves, rescuer of little old ladies, but let’s not talk about that tell-all book by his former sidekick, not unless you want him to grab you by the balls with those electric gloves of his!’
This got scattered laughter from the press, and Elektron mouthed something inaudible in Wilson’s direction.
‘You cannot keep sending people to certain death in the service of entertainment,’ Figueroa responded, his voice barely audible over Wilson’s rambling. ‘The derangement field alone represents a unique opportunity to study a phenomenon that still defies our understanding—’
‘Let’s start the countdown!’ Wilson shouted into his microphone. ‘The flag is up! Doktor Elektron’s easing off the brake, aaaand…’
The starting pistol fired, and the flag came down again. Elektron’s semi-truck shot forward, aided by the enormous rockets mounted on its rear bed.
Ahead, the gate lifted to let him pass through the security fence. By the time Elektron’s truck reached it, it had become shrouded in flame and smoke. All flash, no grit, thought Dutch.
Figueroa and Wilson competed for a while longer, but it soon became clear Wilson had won by virtue of more powerful amplification. Dutch finished her fries and watched from beside the Coupé while the rest of Figueroa’s people settled in for the long haul, chanting and raising signs where they knew the cameras could see them. A few had already pitched tents close to the shore. Figueroa had always been a canny operator in Dutch’s experience; every time he and his protestors found a way onto Teijouan, viewer figures spiralled upwards. She suspected that was why security was never quite tight enough to keep him out.
Then, at last, came her turn.
Nat appeared from the direction of a comms tent where he’d spent most of the day conferring with Wu by remote link. They nodded to each other without speaking and got inside the Coupé. Dutch placed her hands carefully on the wheel and worked at keeping her breathing shallow and even, her mind a storm of elation and panic. Once they were past the fence, they would be on their own.
Across the Security Zone, the gate slid upwards like the blade of a guillotine.
‘Dutch McGuire, imprisoned for life in Russia, but free again to drive in the Devil’s Run!’ Wayne Wilson screamed into his microphone. ‘McGuire is the only person to survive seven—count them, seven—consecutive Runs, but has never once come in first place. Will this be the year that turns her into a surefire winner? Or is her luck going to run out like it has for so many others before her? With so much money hanging on this year’s race, you have to wonder what she should be more scared of—hungry Kaiju, or her fellow drivers. But after that stunning win in the time-trials, all bets are off. Whichever way the race goes, this girl has nothing to lose!’
Dutch peered out through the windscreen at Wilson up on his perch on the roof of the apartment block, surrounded by sandbags, radio techs, TV cameras and microphones. She wound down the window and gave him the finger, raising it high to be sure he could see it. He looked her way and responded to the gesture with a grin and a wave.
‘That’s the spirit!’ cried Wilson. ‘I’ve got no doubt Dutch McGuire and her navigator are in with a chance this year. Their Ford Falcon Coupé is a thing of beauty, ladies and gentlemen, real old-school—and now they’re heading for the starting line. And the countdown has started! It’s a clear and sunny day, and reports show that the coast road is quiet. Even the d-field is showing low levels of activity for this time of year. We’d better hope it stays that way for our live transmissions from the blockade! But should we lose signal, rest assured we’ll get as much as we can on film and ship it to the technicians waiting on our support vessels. Oh! And here it comes…three…two…one!’
Dutch worked the gas. The wheels shrieked against the tarmac, the Coupé fishtailing for the briefest moment before it sped up hard towards the fence and through the gate.
Guns, Cars and Kaiju
Beyond the Security Zone lay nothing but ruins and highways that were crumbling apart with no one brave or foolhardy enough to maintain them. The fence receded from view behind them, Nat unfolding a paper map and spreading it across the dashboard. Dutch glanced towards it, seeing dozens of tiny corrections showing where the road had become blocked or crumbled away entirely, along with a plethora of potential detours.
‘Christ,’ Dutch muttered, returning her attention to the road, ‘five years makes a lot of difference, huh?’
Nat peered ahead, then back down at the map. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Last time I drove here, I kept the pedal to the metal for the first fifty, sixty kilometres of the Run.’ She swung them around and past bushes sprouting from the broken tarmac. ‘The road’s gone to shit since then.’ She nodded at the map. ‘How long before we reach Takau?’
Takau was a small city further north. ‘Couple of hours, factoring in detours.’ He studied the map. ‘Says here sections of the coast highway showed signs of slipping into the sea during the last race. That might delay us.’ He looked back up and frowned. ‘Hey, is that smoke up ahead?’
‘Wondered when you’d notice.’ A dark smear rose into the sky from behind hills several kilometres to the North. ‘Keep your eyes out for anything that moves,’ she added, tightening her grip on the wheel.
They passed a garage collapsed on one side, a fading sign in Chinese still about readable. Dutch glimpsed the ocean through tall bushes that grew wild alongside the highway. She saw that a blockade ship lay anchored a mere two hundred metres from the shore—close enough its Captain risked getting his onboard electronics screwed up by the constantly fluctuating derangement field. Chances were he considered the risk acceptable: camera crews on board were undoubtedly tracking them at that moment and uploading the video to an audience numbering in the hundreds of millions.
Nat tapped the d-meter mounted on the dashboard. ‘Reading’s climbing.’
The ground on their right grew steep, becoming tall hills coated with dense forest. Dutch steered past several rusting vehicles abandoned on the highway close by a former evacuation point, and she glimpsed the rusted-orange hulk of a former rescue ship keeled over on a beach.
She glanced at the d-meter. The readings were still climbing. The closer you got to the centre of Teijouan, and the Rift, the worse the effects were. The d-field didn’t just mess with electronics—it screwed with your head. Get too deep into it for too long, you risked losing your mind.
The sky flickered, changing from blue to darkest night and back again. Dutch glimpsed unfamiliar constellations scattered across a desolate sky, as sure a sign as any that the Rift had just birthed a new monster.
�
�Blockage up ahead,’ said Nat. ‘The next—’
‘The next turnoff on the right,’ she said, slowing the car. ‘I’ve been here before, remember?’
Nat pursed his lips and said nothing.
A pile of crumbling wreckage had blocked this section of coast road for as long as the Devil’s Run had existed, but a well-mapped detour cut through the ruins of a nearby village. She drove past a cluster of bleached white bones the size of girders, and a Kaiju skull twice as big as the Coupé.
The smoke billowed upwards from the other side of the village.
‘D-meter’s still climbing,’ warned Nat. ‘This detour takes us deeper into the d-field. We could wait it out…’
‘No. Could be days before it drops again.’
She drove between ruined and empty buildings, headed north-east—deeper into the derangement field. The air throbbed like something alive and she wondered when she’d start seeing things.
‘Next left,’ said Nat. ‘Then left again, and we’re headed back west.’
Dutch nodded, tantalising shapes dancing at the edge of her vision like a promise of incipient madness. The next turn took them into a street lined with mismatched buildings, the road potholed and uneven. Halfway down, she saw that the smoke rose in a tall black column from a Toyota Hilux knocked over on its side.
General Hurley’s car, she remembered, her heart bouncing around inside her chest like a frightened starling. She saw a pair of blackened outlines inside the blazing wreck and felt her hands tighten on the wheel until the knuckles turned whites.
‘Could be whatever killed them is still around,’ said Nat.
‘Won’t know for sure until it shows itself,’ said Dutch. She looked away from the burning wreck. ‘Take a picture while you can.’
Nat nodded, digging around beneath the dashboard before producing an old-style Polaroid camera. Normally they’d retrieve the film canisters too and collect the bounty for whatever footage they contained, but those had gone up in flames with the Hilux.