by Gary Gibson
Nat pointed the camera out the window and took a snap of the Hilux as Dutch pulled up alongside. The camera whirred and spat out a square piece of paper. Nat peeled off the backing and waved the photograph in the air to help it dry.
‘We’ve hardly started and that’s one team down already.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s got to be a bad omen.’
‘I liked Hurley,’ said Dutch. Something sour had gathered in the pit of her belly, a feeling somewhere between sadness and rage. ‘If it’d been Elektron or even the Countess, I wouldn’t feel so bad.’
While she talked, Nat got a pen from the glove compartment and scrawled the time on the back of the picture. Then he pulled one of the rocket launchers free of a rear rack. He aimed it out the open window and nodded to Dutch. ‘Figured we’d best not take any chances.’
‘In my experience, Nat, the most you’ll do is annoy the hell out of whatever killed Hurley with that thing.’ She got them moving forward again. ‘That’s why I only ever use weapons as a last resort. You’ve got a far better chance of outrunning a Kaiju than taking it down.’
They got back to the coast road without further incident, and the d-field loosened its grip on them. The hills on the inland side grew higher and more primordial. Just when Dutch thought they’d left any trouble behind them, a sudden, powerful tremor almost caused her to lose control of the Coupé. She looked up and saw something the size of a blockade ship come crashing down the hillside towards them, roaring like a chainsaw with laryngitis.
A Blackjack, Dutch realised with horror; one of the ugliest, biggest and meanest types of Kaiju. But also, as she knew from experience, painfully dim.
Dutch pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go, hoping to outrun the beast before it came crashing onto the road. Nat, meanwhile, struggled to get his rocket launcher aimed at the beast.
‘Nat!’ Dutch yelled. ‘Don’t—!’
Too late: a missile went corkscrewing through the air like an oversized firework, striking the slope a dozen metres above the descending Blackjack.
‘If you’re going to shoot at all, at least shoot at the damn Kaiju, you asshole!’
But then she saw the missile had triggered a mini-avalanche, rocks and boulders tumbling down from higher up the slope and striking the Blackjack on its head and shoulders with sufficient force that it, too, went tumbling. It crashed to a halt before it even reached the coast highway.
‘Not bad, right?’ said Nat as they passed the Kaiju by.
‘I could still have outrun it,’ she said. ‘All you’ve done is piss it off.’
He stared at her with a look of incredulity. The Coupé’s tyres screeched as they took the next bend, and the next.
‘You can slow down,’ he said. ‘It won’t come after us.’
‘We’re in a race, Nat. The whole point is to drive fast.’
‘We’re not here to win—’
‘Maybe it’s about time you told me what the fuck we are here for,’ she shot back.
He pushed the rocket launcher into the back. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We’re going inland.’
At first she thought she’d misheard him. ‘Say again?’
‘I said, we’re—’
She turned her attention back to the road in time to see the same Blackjack reappear on their right, crashing through small houses and sending trees tumbling before it landed on the motorway before them, its jaws wide.
‘Brake!’ Nat screamed.
Dutch did nothing of the kind. Instead she took a left that sent them crashing through bushes before landing on the shore. The car bounced and shook as she pushed it forward, driving through another cluster of bushes and back onto the coast road. The Kaiju, meanwhile, lumbered through a half-circle as it tried to track them.
‘Check the map!’ she screamed. ‘I think there’s a road tunnel up ahead.’
Nat twisted the paper around until he had it oriented the right way. ‘There is, about half a kilometre ahead.’
The road continued to bend and twist as it followed the contours of the land. Then she saw it, dead ahead—a tunnel that drilled straight through the hillside. She made for it at speed, all too aware that any mistake would be her last one. Once they were inside the tunnel, she pulled over, listening to the beast as it bellowed in impotent rage.
They sat like that for a minute without speaking. ‘A word of advice, Nat,’ she said at last. ‘Don’t shoot the damn things unless you have to. It’s counter-productive, believe me.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Nat, his voice small and still.
She pushed the door open. ‘I need to stretch my legs.’
She got out and walked towards the tunnel exit. The ground still trembled as the Kaiju thudded about somewhere outside. After another minute, Nat came to join her.
How long has it been? She wondered. An hour into the race? And as close as I’ve ever come to dying.
In that moment, Dutch realised her five years in jail were the reason she was still alive.
‘You said we were going inland.’
‘That’s right.’
She let out a slow breath. ‘Nobody’s gone inland and returned with their sanity intact since before they evacuated Teijouan. It’s impossible.’
‘But say a shortcut existed,’ he said. ‘A place where the derangement field doesn’t affect you. A safe corridor, stretching the whole way across the island from one coast to the other.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Bullshit.’
‘Someone did it—got to the Rift and back and lived to talk about it.’
‘What happened to them?’
Nat shrugged. ‘They died. Eventually.’
Dutch felt a tightness in her chest like she was about to have a heart attack, and realised she was holding her breath. ‘Not what I’d call encouraging.’
Nat stepped closer to the tunnel exit and listened. ‘I can’t hear it. Maybe it’s gone.’
Dutch didn’t share his optimism, but then again they couldn’t hide in the tunnel forever. Nat followed her back over to the Coupé and slid in beside her.
‘I want you to tell me everything,’ she said, one hand on the wheel, ‘starting the moment we’re sure the coast is clear.’
‘Sure. Nice driving back there, by the way.’
She regarded him coolly for a moment, and started the engine.
* * *
She eased the Coupé out of the tunnel at a bare crawl, peering up the neighbouring slope, ready to reverse back inside at a moment’s notice. She took it slow at first, afraid of drawing the Blackjack to them with the noise of the engine, but they saw no further sign of it. Before long, they reached the outskirts of Takau.
Dutch checked the dashboard and observed that the day was heading towards evening. ‘Tell me the rest.’
‘Back about nine years ago, they rescued someone alive from the ruins of a coastal village near Truku Gorge. He’d been there for years, since before the Rift first formed. The way he babbled at the ship’s crew that found him, they figured constant exposure to the d-field had fried his brain. They put him in an asylum and forgot about him until he died a few months back.’
‘And?’
‘The coroner who autopsied him found a map, tattooed onto his chest. It showed a route cutting across the centre of the island, starting from Shinchiku in the north-west and cutting across to Truku Gorge in the East, passing a few kilometres north of the Rift. Apparently, during his more lucid moments while he was still alive, the man was in the habit of insisting he’d found a safe route across the island.’
‘And nobody believed him?’
‘Would you have?’
Dutch’s hands flexed on the wheel. A shortcut—impossible as it seemed—would cut most of a day out of the race. She pictured herself breaking the all-time round-island record and felt a rush of adrenaline. ‘Go on.’
‘Wu learned of it and locked the coroner into a very expensive NDA. Six weeks ago, he had a remote-controlled robot sent along the same route as the ma
p on the dead guy’s chest. The robot got most of the way to the Rift without its electronics losing any of their functionality—which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, unprecedented. So Wu had his people follow up with a manned scientific expedition aboard an armoured RV.’
‘I never heard about any of this.’
‘With good reason,’ said Nat. ‘Anyway, the RV and everyone on board disappeared without trace. We figured Kaiju got them all, but then a week ago a survivor made his way to the coast on foot and fired off a distress flare. A Japanese corvette picked him up. He’d been burned by Kaiju venom and died within a day. But first, he gave this to his rescuers.’
Nat reached inside his driving suit and pulled out a thin, cigarette-length rod of dull grey metal. He passed it over and Dutch took a hand from the wheel to study it, turning it this way and that.
‘Doesn’t look like something worth dying for,’ she said dismissively, passing it back.
‘It’s worth a thousand times its weight in gold or diamonds. This,’ Nat explained, ‘is a room-temperature superconductor.’
‘A what?’
‘The solution to all the world’s energy problems, Dutch. The scientist who brought it back insisted there were a lot more where this came from before he died.’
‘So what killed the rest of the expedition? Kaiju?’
Nat shrugged. ‘That’s the assumption.’
‘Who did they take with them?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘A driver,’ she said. ‘Someone experienced with Kaiju. You’re not going to tell me Wu sent those people inland without any kind of backup?’
When Nat didn’t answer, she looked at him.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘There was a concern that if they involved someone from outside, even an experienced driver, word might get out of what they’d found. They went in on their own.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘Dumb fucking mistake.’
‘That’s why you’re here, Dutch. So we don’t make the same mistake twice.’
‘So why all the subterfuge? Why break me out of jail, instead of sending in another expedition?’
‘Word got out about what we’d found, and Wu’s afraid Strugatsky might try to grab the rest of the rods first. That means we have to be sneaky to avoid triggering him into a pre-emptive grab.’
‘You said the route starts near Shinchiku. Where, exactly?’
‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’
‘What do you think I’ll do, shoot you and steal the map?’
He favoured her with a thin smile. ‘I’d rather not find out.’
Thanks a bunch, asshole. ‘And after we find the rest of these super-whatsit rods? What then?’
‘We hide out for a while. Then we follow the route to the East Coast, and drive south to the finishing line.’
She frowned. ‘Why hide out?’
‘Because if we get back to the Security Zone in half the time it takes anyone else, it’ll be pretty obvious we found a shortcut. If we wait before rejoining the race, we’ll get there about the same time as the other teams.’
She felt a tingling in her skin. ‘But we could come first. We could—’
‘No,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘You’ve never come first in the Devil’s Run, Dutch—not once. We’re not taking any chances that might arouse suspicion.’
A sour sensation pooled in her belly. ‘Because we’re not here to win the race,’ she muttered, imitating his Australian accent.
He glared at her. ‘Correct.’
Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt. ‘Sun’s coming down,’ she said, her voice tight with fury. Driving after nightfall was too much of a risk since headlamps drew Kaiju to them like sharks to a surfer. ‘We should look for someplace safe for the night.’
* * *
They soon left the ruins of Takau behind them. Ahead lay Shinchiku, a hundred and fifty kilometres further up the coast. The first evening stars came out as she drove.
Dutch found she wanted to believe Nat, no matter how the rational part of her mind insisted a cross-island route was impossible. Even if such a thing existed, nobody had been suicidal or foolhardy enough to go searching for one. For a long time it had been little more than a myth, something rumoured but which couldn’t be real.
But if such a route did exist, whoever successfully navigated it would become an instant legend—assuming they could ever talk about it: and the idea she might not be able to do just that made Dutch want to scream. She caught Nat giving her a sidelong glance and guessed she was doing a less than stellar job of hiding her frustration.
They came to another stretch of coast road that had crumbled away, and so turned inland, following a suggested detour that led them to the remains of a small town. The d-meter flickered briefly, but continued to show low readings.
Before long Dutch threaded the Coupé through narrow streets half-blocked by debris. At one point, they got out and pushed the Coupé most of a kilometre after spotting the hulking outline of a Silverback sleeping amidst the ruins.
They were still looking for a place to hide until daybreak when they heard the dull roar of an engine a few kilometres north of their position. Dutch guessed they weren’t the only ones trying to find somewhere safe to spend the night.
They decided at last to park the Coupé inside the foyer of a hotel. Nat took care of mounting a fresh reel into the front and back cameras and loaded the footage they’d so far shot into the boot.
Most of the upper floors of the hotel had collapsed, making them inaccessible, so they crossed the road and broke into the stockroom of a neighbouring 7/11. The moon had risen, flickering as its light passed through the d-field. Even though the readings stayed low, Dutch still saw furtive shapes moving at the edges of her vision. She didn’t like being this deep in the d-field, but they had little choice.
She spread a sleeping bag on top of some flattened cardboard boxes in the stockroom. Nat took first watch sitting on the shop’s counter, a rifle by his side. She flicked through a few pages of a discarded manga by torch-light, then fell asleep almost without realising it.
* * *
Dutch came awake a short while before dawn to steady, rhythmic vibrations rolling through the ground beneath her. She rolled upright, listening until they faded. The sleeping Silverback they’d skirted earlier must have risen from its slumber.
Stepping out of the stockroom, she found Nat asleep with his back against the counter, the rifle propped by his side. Even a passing Kaiju wasn’t enough to wake him.
The moon didn’t flicker when she slipped outside and looked up at the night sky. She made her way across the road and inside the hotel foyer, her boots crunching on broken glass.
Nat had stashed the navigator’s map in the Coupé’s glove compartment, along with a second torch. She found her old bandana in there as well, and she pocketed it before spreading the map on her knees. She had to risk turning on the torch so she could see it. She saw that he had marked the safe route with a thick black line slashing more or less diagonally across the map, starting from north of Shinchiku and following a series of twisting roads through Teijouan’s central mountains to the East.
Something clattered outside the hotel, and Dutch froze, hearing scuffling movement. She switched off the torch.
She waited, lungs tight in her chest, and heard nothing more. Even so, she reached into the back of the car and took hold of a rifle. She sank low in the seat with the rifle gripped in both hands, the map discarded beside her.
‘Help me,’ cried a man’s voice, ragged and full of terror.
Dutch listened to the sound of her own breathing for a long moment, then pushed herself back upright, her throat tight with terror. Whoever the stranger might be, it sounded like they were right outside.
‘Please,’ said the voice, sounding weaker now. ‘For God’s sake. Help me!’
The rifle felt warm in her grasp.
&nb
sp; ‘Please!’
She pushed the Coupé’s door open as silently as possible and slid out, keeping low. She moved with careful steps towards the foyer entrance, ready to duck back into the shadows.
Could be it was another driver, injured after a Kaiju attack—but there was something disturbingly familiar about the voice.
Then she realised who it sounded like.
She came to a halt. It wasn’t possible, and yet, she’d recognise that voice anywhere. And as Nat himself had said, sometimes people found a way to survive on Teijouan, sometimes for years…
She swallowed hard and moved out into the street. Then she saw him: Johnny Lear, crouched low by the entrance to an alley, one leg soaked in blood. He was breathing with difficulty, his face drained of colour.
‘Dutch,’ he said, his voice ragged. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’
She stared at him. ‘You can’t be here.’ Or alive.
‘I’m hurt.’ He reached a hand towards her. ‘I need your help, Dutch—’
She heard a click from behind her, and in the next moment the side of Johnny’s head exploded.
The air reverberated with the gunshot. She whirled around to see Nat standing outside the 7/11, a rifle raised to his shoulder.
‘What the fuck did you do!’ she screamed.
‘For Christ’s sake, Dutch,’ he yelled. ‘Run!’
She turned back and saw something huge and reptilian crouching where Johnny had been. It dug long claws into the brick wall beside it as it let out a shriek of pain and anger, the side of its long, cruel-looking snout dark with blood.
Nat fired a second shot, and then a third, and the creature—tiny by Kaiju standards, being not much larger than an elephant—slid to the ground and became motionless.
Dutch stared at it, her blood cold and sluggish. ‘What is that thing?’
Nat hurried over to her. ‘A shapeshifter-Kaiju.’
‘I never heard of such a thing.’
‘I guess you were in jail when the first ones appeared. What did you see?’
She turned to look at him. ‘Johnny Lear.’
‘I have no idea who that is,’ said Nat, ‘but what I saw looked like my sister, and she’s been dead fifteen years.’